Except that painting is permanent.
Mia could slip away at any minute.
She slaps her hand over her mouth and gasps, jumping back a few feet when she sees it framed and hanging in the corner, a light shining down over it. That smile on her face is something I would spend every last dime I had to see forever. Knowing it’s my fault in the first place makes me feel human for a minute.
I straighten my tie and walk down the long hallway, standing outside the room for a moment just so I can soak in her beauty. It overwhelms me. It catches me off guard.
“Wow,” she says before doing a flirty catcall when she spots me. “You clean up nice, Serafin.”
I walk over to her, taking her elbows in my hands and she shivers at my touch.
“Are you cold?” I ask, knowing those aren’t goosebumps from the temperature. They’re mine. I gave them to her.
She bats her long eyelashes. “Thank you for the beautiful dress. You really didn’t have to.”
I guide her to the chair by the table, placing my hand on the small of her back. The way the dress hugs her ass, accentuating her every step makes my skin hot all over. I pull out her chair for her and she sits down.
“I have been trying to buy you that dress for twelve years,” I say. “You wouldn’t let me back then. Now, you don’t have a choice.” I sit down at the table across from her and she leans in, her eyes getting thinner. She twists her lips into a smug grin.
“So that’s how you get what you want? You take away people’s choices?”
I uncork a bottle of red wine. I’m not a fan of the stuff, I’m more of a vodka guy myself, but the chef says this is the best pairing for the feast he made for us tonight. I slowly pour her a glass.
“You have plenty of choices, misiu. Nobody locked you in that bedroom. You could walk out the door any minute. You could leave right now and you know it.” I bite my lip and smile, and she picks up her glass of wine and puts it to her lips, her eyes never leaving mine.
“I’d only be exchanging one prison for another if I did that,” she says with a shrug. “At least this one has a private bathroom.”
I chug down my glass of wine and stare at the ground. I know I haven’t exactly been around the last few days, but I’ve been trying to clean up the mess she made with Jakub and doing extra favors to make sure the cops stay off her trail.
Plus, I was trying to save myself the heartache of her inevitable rejection, which she obviously is about to deliver on a silver platter.
“I’m kidding, Serafin,” she says. “I appreciate what you’re doing for me. I don’t know why you’d want to after everything I put you through, but I appreciate it. I swear I’ll do whatever it takes to pay Jakub back. And you, too. For your kindness.”
She reaches across the table and grabs my hand, and it all comes washing over me again. Her touch has always been a special sort of magic. It’s like when her fingers are on my flesh, she turns me into a better person, a kinder person, like being wrapped in a security blanket where the evils of the world just melt away. It’s fucking goofy, but even twelve years hasn’t been able to change that feeling.
I squeeze her hand back, and I can’t help but imagine what it would look like with a giant rock on her ring finger. Mine. My leg travels under the table and I graze the inside of her calve with my foot.
“You like my boots?” she asks with a chuckle.
“They were an appropriate choice. If you knew what was going on in my mind right now, you’d probably want to kick my ass,” I say, licking my lips.
It’s like a lifetime has gone by, but no time has gone by at all. Everything feels exactly the same as it did, but everything is different. There’s a whole world between us, but in this moment I feel closer to her than ever. She’s a totally different person, and so I am I, but the familiarity, the lust, the pure love in my heart I have for her is exactly the same.
“Maybe not,” she says, raising her eyebrows. “The night is young.”
I put my fist to my mouth and shake my head. In the worst possible example of bad timing, my chef walks into the room in his pristine black and red coat, followed by two servers with trays in their arms.
Mia watches wide eyed as the servers set up food on the trays behind them.
“Do you do this like… every night?” she asks in a whisper.
“Only when he’s entertaining a very important guest,” he says, shooting me a wink. “Normally Serafin takes his dinner in his office. Or on the run.”
One of the servers places plates in front of us with giant shrimp on a bed of greens with some sort of sauce drizzled all over it. Mia groans like I imagine she would if she was about to get off, and I smile politely as I dismiss them, hoping the next course brings more of that groaning.
“Oh shit, do you want to pray or something?” she asks, clutching her fork in her hand like she’s planning
