I thought it was gone, but there it is again: that fire dancing over my skin. His hands are hovering just centimeters away from my shoulders, but I can feel their heat. I can smell his scent. Most of all, I sense his intensity. He’s a blazing sun. Almost angry at me, for some reason I can’t quite fathom. It scares me and thrills me at the same time.

“My body is changing,” I whisper, almost ashamed.

“You’re growing a human being. It’s supposed to change. It’s going to change even more in the coming months. But it won’t matter. You’ll be beautiful to me. Then. Now. Forever.”

“You won’t say that when my stomach enters the room half an hour before the rest of me does,” I laugh.

He doesn’t so much as crack a smile. “Fucking watch me.” He smooths his palms down my upper arms and settles his hands on my hips.

I like it more than I can explain.

I smile shyly and glance at his eyes where they’re smoldering in the mirror. “Thank you, Kolya.”

“Don’t thank me. Just believe it yourself,” he says, still so solemn that the laugh dies on my lips. “Believe it when I tell you your calves are beautiful. Your shoulders are beautiful.”

“So you don’t think they’re—?”

He talks over me calmly. “The birthmark just under your right shoulder blade is beautiful,” he says. “The scars around your wrists are beautiful. The freckles across the bridge of your nose are beautiful. Every inch of you is beautiful, June, and if you can’t see that, then you’re blind. But that’s fine, because I see it. I see it enough for the both of us. Awake and asleep, naked or clothed, in my bed or my car or by my side, I see it. I see all of it. I see all of you.”

The feeling that rises up inside me when he says things that makes me feel breathless. Like someone has just knocked the wind out of me.

I lean back and kiss him softly, my core melting with white-hot desire. We haven’t been having sex because of Kolya’s injuries, and right now, I’m feeling that absence keenly.

Apparently, he is, too, because his hand comes down around my waist and pulls me hard against him. My mouth opens underneath his, and I can taste the vanilla on his tongue.

Then, of course, a voice interrupts.

“Pardon me, Mr. and Mrs. Uvarov?”

“Fuck me,” Kolya growls as we break apart. “That idiot has the worst timing.”

I giggle softly. “You better get out there and deal with it, sir.”

He mutters something unintelligible and probably very unflattering to Marcel, and then he steps out of the dressing room and closes the curtain behind him. Smiling to myself, I try on the next item on my personal rack.

This time, when I look at myself in the mirror, all I see is beauty.

38

KOLYA

She’s been quiet all morning.