His Ward (10 page)

“Not when it’s about his eating habits,” Nicholi said, voice filled with exasperation.

“I made one comment.” She held up her index finger to emphasize her point. “One.”

“Today,” he teased. “Yesterday you told me to remind the hotel chef of his allergy to peanuts.”

Okay, fine, maybe she was going a bit overboard, but that didn’t mean she was wrong. Misha’s peanut allergy was a serious issue. “If you’re going to keep being this persnickety, then I’m going to stop FaceTiming with you.”

“You’re just mad because I’m right. Admit it. You no more want time away from him than he wants it from you.”

Tionne sighed. He wasn’t wrong. The dream she’d had just moments ago was proof of that alone. “Doesn’t mean I don’t need it. He went too far this time, Nicholi.”

Nicholi smiled sadly into the camera. “Where you’re concerned, there is no too far. You should know that by now.”

She didn’t want to talk about this with Nicholi, with anyone really. No one could possibly understand the complexities of her and Misha’s relationship. Heck, the two of them could barely understand it, and they were the ones in it. “All I asked was for you to monitor his bad fat intake, not for you to play Dr. Phil.”

“Can’t I do both?”

“No, because you’re just going to take his side.”

“Not true. I’m a neutral party. When he’s being an idiot, I tell him. Seems only fair that I do the same with you.”

“Are you implying I’m being an idiot?”

“No, I’m flat-out saying it.”

Tionne gasped. “Rude.”

“No, honest.”

“I didn’t ask for your opinion.”

“That’s because you’re too busy asking me about my cousin.”

“What’s the big deal with me wondering how he’s doing?”

Nicholi made an impatient sound. “You know what?” The background changed behind Nicholi, and his image became bouncy as he moved around.

“What are you doing?”

He didn’t say anything as he moved the iPad away from his face and down to his side, putting a denim-covered thigh on her screen.

“Nicholi. Nicholi,” she called out, confused about what was going on.

He didn’t reply, though. Instead, she heard the sound of a door opening, then Misha’s voice as he said, “What’s going on?”

Nervous, she called his name again. “What are you doing?”

“Cutting out the middle man.”

Before Tionne could say another word, Misha’s face was peering back at her from Nicholi’s tablet. It happened so fast, she didn’t have time to disconnect. If she closed the conversation now, it would look like she was running, but she was having a hard time meeting his gaze after the dream she’d just had.

“Tionne?” Misha said hesitantly, with a frown.

“Hi,” she meekly replied back.

“Hi.” There was an uncomfortable pregnant pause where they both just stared at each other silently before Misha finally broke his gaze and focused it above the screen at something or someone in the background. “What’s going on?”

“Talk,” Nicholi ordered before a loud slamming noise pierced the otherwise silent room.

Tionne shook her head and groaned. Nicholi had just gone from her second favorite person to the top of her people-to-eat-first-when-the-zombie-apocalypse-finally-started list.

“Okay.” Misha glanced back down at her, his face a mask of confusion. “Why do I feel as if I missed something?”

Tionne sighed. “You didn’t. Your cousin is just being a brat.”

“About?”

“Nothing.” Tionne didn’t want to rehash her argument with Misha. All she wanted to do was stare at him. It had only been four days, but it felt like a lifetime. Hungry for any tidbit of him, Tionne ran her gaze over his face, taking in everything from his tousled hair to his wary eyes, down to the hint of a beard shadowing his jawline. From the dark circles under his eyes, she could tell he already had enough on his plate without her adding her warring heart to the mix.

“So…”

Sighing, Tionne sat up on the bed. She leaned back on the headboard as she thought of what to say and placed her feet flat on the bed with her knees bent in front of her. After a few seconds of painful silence, she finally gave in and admitted she was exactly where she wanted to be. With Misha. “Hi.”

Chapter Six

Misha was in complete shock, and he was also in unfamiliar territory for him. He was scared. Not that he would ever admit to that part, but he really was afraid he would say or do something to send her scurrying even farther away from him. His uncertainty and fear left him with only one reply: “Hi.” It wasn’t Shakespeare, but it was a start. “You’re looking well.”

She scoffed and rolled her eyes in her very Tionne-like way. “Please, I just woke up. ‘Well’ is the last thing I look.”

True, in her present form, the cover she would grace would be a catalog for a mattress company, but she did look truly rested, as well as inviting. An invitation he could not accept, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t admire her beauty. “Then we’ll just have to agree to disagree, because, as always, I think you look beautiful.”

“Trying to sweet talk your way back into my good graces?”

“I wasn’t aware I needed to. Are you still so very angry with me, moja draga?”

“No,” she said gently. “Not even a little.”

His face softened, and the tension he hadn’t even been aware of eased from his shoulders, freeing him at last. “That pleases me. I don’t like it when we are at odds.”

“Unfortunately, it can’t always be cupcakes and fluffy unicorns.”

“If only it could.”

She sighed comically. “Things would be oh so much better.”

“Very true.”

“Are you being careful and getting enough rest?”

“Yes,” he answered quickly, but she immediately saw through his subterfuge.

“Lies,” she admonished softly. “You look tired.”

Misha ran a hand over his face, then smiled warily into the camera. There was no need to bullshit a bullshitter. “If I knew I was going to be entertaining, I would have been more presentable. Regrettably for you, you’re not receiving me at my best.”

“Oh please,” she scoffed. “You’re gorgeous, and you know it.”

“I don’t feel it.” He laughed, secretly pleased that she thought so, though. “But I’ll take the compliment anyway. Now, less talking about me and more talking about you. What have you been up to?”

“Hold on for a second.” Tionne placed her tablet on the nightstand next to her. From the angle of the camera, he couldn’t really see what she was doing, but after a minute or so, she grabbed the tablet again and brought it closer to her. Tionne had gone from sitting to lying down under the covers. From the way the tablet was positioned, it looked as if it was leaning back against another pillow, giving him the false sense he was there beside her. In her bed. Ending his day the way he could only dream. With her. Getting a little glimpse of what the reality would look like was more painful than he could have ever imagined, because it only reminded him of what he couldn’t have. “Comfy,” he finally choked out once it seemed she was settled in.

“Very.” She smiled innocently, probably completely unaware of the war she incited inside him. “Now, where were we?”

“You were just about to tell me what you’ve been doing since I’ve been gone,” he said, hoping to get the conversation flowing in a different direction than his dirty mind had wandered down before.

“Why don’t you tell me?” she teased a bit smugly. “Aren’t you getting your daily reports?”

Misha refused to take the bait. Besides, after their time apart, fighting was the very last thing he wanted to do with her. “Darby only gives me the status of your health and any news on perceived threats and whatnot. He doesn’t tell me what you do every day.”

Tionne gave a sad little shrug. “Because there’s nothing to tell. I’m very uninteresting.”

“Untrue. I find you very interesting.”

“That’s because you have low standards.”

“Now we both know that isn’t the case.”

Tionne smiled. “Okay, you have a point, but really, I haven’t been up to much. Just trying to figure out what to do with my life.”

“Yes, not much at all,” he said drily. “Have you narrowed it down a bit?”

“So far all I’ve figured out is that I don’t want to work for you.”

He refused to take that personally. If she wanted to spread her wings and fly, he was not going to be the net that held her back. “It’s a start.”

“Not a very good one.”

“I read somewhere that the best way to figure out your career aspirations is to think about the one job you would do if money wasn’t an issue. If you could do anything in the world, anything, what would be?”

“I’m trying to…” Her words were cut off by a yawn that was loud and long. “Oh, excuse me. Trying to figure that out. I know I should already know this, but I don’t.”

Misha settled back in his chair and got a little bit more comfortable. This was probably the most relaxed he’d felt since leaving her apartment four nights ago. “There isn’t a timetable on when you’re supposed to know yourself, and if there was, I seriously doubt it starts in your twenties. Take your time to make sure that you’re making the right decision for you, and no matter what it is, I’ll back you, a hundred percent.”

“So if I decide that my life goal is to be a stripper, you’d…”

“Buy out the club every night so you could perform to a sold-out empty audience,” he replied without missing a beat.

Laughing, she shook her head. “You’re crazy.”

“I just want to help you realize your dream.”

“Speaking of dreams”—Tionne glanced at the time at the top of her tablet—“I’m exhausted.”

Misha did the same. “What is it, two a.m. there?”

“Yes. What time is it where you are?”

“Going on lunchtime.”

Tionne settled deeper into her pillow. “You have a meeting?”

Misha glanced down at the calendar on his desk before looking back at her. “Right now, no, but in a couple of hours.”

“And what are you going to do between then and now?”

“Go over reports, answer e-mails, save the world.”

“So the usu”—she yawned—“ual.”

“Exactly. I should let you go. You’re tired.”

“I am.” Tionne reached out blindly with one hand and grabbed the cover. She pulled it over her shoulder and snuggled in deeper to her pillow. “But I don’t want to stop talking to you.”

He smiled. Tionne never liked going to bed, even as a child. “Pretty soon it won’t be an option.”

“Pretty soon, but not yet, okay?”

“Okay.”

Tionne grabbed one of her decorative pillows from behind her and used it to prop the tablet so it was sitting up horizontally without her having to hold it, then tucked one hand under her cheek. “That’s better.”

“Want me to tell you a bedtime story?” he teased.

“No, we don’t even have to talk. I just like knowing you’re near.”

Misha opened his mouth to shoot off a snappy comeback but then thought better of it, because, truth be told, he liked being near. The space idea wasn’t helping at all. In fact, it just made him want her more. With a heavy sigh, he rotated the cover of the iPad then set it near him on his desk.

“What did you do?”

“I set the tablet up so I can work while you sleep.”

“Are you going to watch over me?”

“For as long as you let me,” he said, while thinking to himself, forever and ever.

“I like that.” Her eyelids looked heavier, and he watched as she blinked several times to keep them open. “I miss you.”

“I miss you too, moja draga.”

“No more fighting. Deal?”

“Deal.”

“When are you coming home? You know the benefit is in two days.”

“I won’t miss it.”

“Promise?”

Nothing would keep him from it, or from her. “I promise.”

“Good.” Tionne closed her eyes. “Night, Mish.”

He replied quietly, not wanting to disturb her as she drifted off to sleep. Misha muted the volume on his side so she couldn’t hear him typing and shuffling papers about, then grabbed the contract he’d previously been perusing and laid it out in front of him. He’d glance down every few minutes or so to read a line, then look back up at Tionne sleeping soundly on the screen.

Fifteen minutes or so later, Misha gave up the pretense that he could possibly get any work done when the only thing he really wanted to do was reach out and touch the screen. The sound that poured out through her slightly parted lips was not that of a snore, but a sweet, gentle sigh that made his cock swell beneath his slacks. All she was doing was sleeping. Nothing erotic about it, yet his body was reacting just the same. It made no earthly sense. This power she possessed to seduce him without even trying.

It would be so easy to give in to the devil inside him and follow the general direction of his perverted thoughts. Image after vulgar image of Tionne played on a loop in his mind, and he immediately thought back to the last night he’d seen her and how she’d felt on his lap. The sweet haven of her sex had only been inches away. All he would have had to do was slip his fingers through the loose opening of her shorts, past whatever underthings she might have been wearing, and he would have been there. At the gate of heaven. He could have nudged past her lips and pressed his fingers knuckle-deep into the welcoming heat of her body.

Even though he’d dare not ask or foolishly assume, a big part of him was sure she was still a virgin—a thought that excited him on an entirely visceral level. The very idea of being her first and only man was heady enough to cause his shaft to harden beneath his pants.

Misha leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes from the way too tempting sight as he imagined what it would be like to pleasure himself as he watched her. He could stroke himself to the thought of “what if.” What if they did finally take the next step, what would be the first thing he would do?

The last thing he wanted to do was hurt her, so he’d have to take his time and make sure she was ready. That was a task he would relish. First he’d pleasure her with his mouth. Feel her quake against his tongue as he brought her to orgasm again and again; then, when she begged him for more, bury himself inside her tight, wet pussy.

Squeezing his eyes shut even tighter, he imagined Tionne lying on her back beneath him. From the way she was in her everyday life, he bet she’d be a vocal and passionate lover, one who would beg, demand, and get what she wanted from him, mainly because he would give it up so quickly just to please her. And once he was finally inside her, finally home, her pussy would be tight but well worth the effort it would take to sink balls-deep inside her.