thoughts, I should leave her to stew in her misery alone. But I needed something from her. Something to hold me over. Something to tell me she thought about me inside her as much as I did. With her wrists secured, I sat on the side of the bed and was unable to stop myself from trailing a hand up her bare thigh. She wasn’t given a razor on the off chance she might slit her wrists, but now I had the feeling she wouldn’t take the easy way out. There was something novel and innocently sexy about running my hand over smooth skin and a light dusting of blonde hair. I hadn’t been with an unwaxed woman since I was a teenager, and those were usually clothed fucks against an alley wall. “You need to shave, kotyonok.” “You need to reach into your darkened soul and find your conscience.” I chuckled and slid my palm up, bypassing the place I wanted inside the most, and beneath her shirt, where I caressed the flare of her hip with a thumb. “I’m not the one who just killed a man, am I?” I almost regretted saying it when a single tear slipped down her cheek. She probably wanted to attend Adrik’s funeral and apologize to every member of his worthless family. In actuality, I didn’t know if they were worthless, but most family was. “Stop crying.” “I’m not crying,” she insisted as another tear escaped. Fuck. This was killing the mood. “It was self-defense,” I said, not giving a shit she’d killed Adrik. I didn’t need men on my side who got bested by soft-hearted women. “Say it.” “But—” “Say it.” “Tt was self-defense,” she parried emotionlessly. I didn’t know why I was offering out a tiny olive branch. The unsettling tears, maybe, but it was more so the fact it’d been a long time—if ever— since I met a woman with feelings. Mila was uncharted waters to me, filled to the brim with a selflessness I didn’t understand. And like a cat with a mouse, I wanted to play with her for a while. I gripped the indent of her bare waist, which was so small I could probably touch fingers if I wrapped my hands around it. A waist wasn’t exactly the first thing I noticed about a woman, but ever since I’d stripped