Hazel hesitates, pressing her lips together and looking down.
“Why do I get the feeling it’s something else I shouldn’t do?” she asks, looking up at me.
“Because it is,” I say, and half-smile.
“You know, Kostya, everyone thinks you’re the perfectly upstanding, well-behaved prince, and here you are telling me to burn my clothes and asking me if I want to see the seedy parts of the city.”
“It’s a good reputation to have,” I say, and I let my mouth curve up, just a little. “Do you think you believe it, zloyushka?”
“I think I need to find out what that word means before I say yes to anything else,” she says, eyebrows raised.
“I’m sure you can figure it out,” I say.
“So you’re not going to tell me.”
“Where’s the fun in that?”
Her hand is still in mine. Neither of us has let go, and the warmth of her skin against mine is making electric ripples spread up my arm and across my chest.
“It must mean something bad,” she says. “What is it? Loud? Mouthy?”
Now she’s smiling up at me, the challenge back in her eyes.
“Déclassé drug smuggler,” she guesses.
“We don’t have a single word for that,” I say.
“Rude foreigner,” she goes on.
I put one hand on the stone wall above her head and lean over her, just a bit. She doesn’t move or flinch, and it takes every ounce of self control I’ve got not to push her against it right then and there.
“Tomorrow night,” I say. “The bench in the garden nearest the stone arch. Midnight. If someone sees you, say you can’t sleep and you’re taking a walk.”
She cocks her head to one side and examines me. I can’t remember the last time I was this close to someone else. The air between us is crackling and snapping, and it feels like I’m breathing in electricity.
I don’t know how much is the pot and how much is Hazel, but I’m not that high. Barely buzzed.
“Does it mean something like hot mess?” she asks.
“No, but that’s closer than déclassé drug smuggler,” I say.
“You won’t tell me where we’re going, you won’t tell me what zloshka means,” she says.
“Zloy-ush-ka,” I say, very slowly. “You’ve got to spell it right if you want to figure it out.”
“Or you could tell me,” she says, her voice low and quiet.
Somehow, her face is even closer to mine than it was before, and the urge to kiss her, to push her back against the wall and press myself against her is overwhelming.
This is stupid, I think. This is impossibly stupid.
“Tomorrow night,” I say.
Then I finally drop her hand and step back. The electricity disappears. I almost feel like I can breathe again.
Hazel gives me another long look, and then the corners of her eyes crinkle, just a little.
“Maybe,” she says.
Then she walks back to the door in the tower, still wearing my shirt and carrying hers, heaves it open, and disappears inside. I watch the door shut behind her, then walk back to the wall.
I look out over the ocean and force my breathing to slow. I force myself to stop thinking about the swell of her breasts, the dimples in her back, her nipples poking through my shirt.
Most of all, I wonder what the hell I was thinking, inviting her out tomorrow night.
Chapter Eleven
Hazel
When I get back to my bedroom I sit on the edge of my huge four-poster bed, still wearing Kostya’s shirt, and put my head in my hands.
What the fuck are you doing, I think.
I take a deep breath, grit my teeth, and remind myself that nothing actually happened. Yeah, we both got half-naked sort of in public, and now I’m wearing his shirt and my entire core is one feverish, hollow ache because he does things to me, but we barely touched each other.
I take another breath.
We didn’t do anything, I think. See? No international relations problems.
Slowly, I lay back on my bed. I stare at the ceiling because every time I close my eyes, I see Kostya standing in front of me, shirtless, that massive bulge in his jeans.
Holy hell.
My eyes snap open and I stare at the ceiling, clenching and unclenching my fists.
Despite myself, I think about Kostya leaning over me, one hand on the wall behind me. Still shirtless. So close that if I’d moved at all we’d have touched.
Zloyushka, I think. The memory of his voice saying it low and slow sends a shiver down my spine, and the ache inside me deepens.
I sigh and slide my hand under my shorts, unsurprised to find that I’m wet as fuck, my underwear pretty much soaked through. I squeeze my eyes shut and rub myself fast and hard, thinking of Kostya in the moonlight, until my toes are curling against the bedsheets.
I come hard, and as I do, I wonder whether Kostya’s doing the same thing.
After breakfast — sardines, thick yogurt, and toast, which is actually much better than it sounds — I wander the palace halls for a bit. There has to be a library here somewhere, and that library’s going to have a Russian dictionary in it.
I could probably just ask someone, but I have no idea what it means. I don’t think Kostya is calling me a stupid gorilla vagina or something, but I still prefer to find out from a book, not someone who can make a face at me.
Zloyushka is a challenge, and I fully fucking intend to at least show Kostya that this loud, awkward, déclassé American can at least use a dictionary.
Well, after I find the library.
I walk around for twenty minutes, and start to wish that this place had a directory, like a mall or something. I’ve always had a good sense of direction, and I could find my way back to almost anywhere in the palace, but these doors aren’t labeled, and I’m not about to be the idiot American girl who just walks about opening doors in a foreign ruler’s house.
At last, staring a big double door in a stonework arch, I hear someone clear his throat behind me, and I turn around.
It’s Nikolai, one of the king’s aides.
“Miss Sung, correct?” he asks very, very politely.
“Yes,” I say. I walk toward him and hold out my hand. “Please, call me Hazel.”
He doesn’t smile, but he does shake my hand.
“Are you lost, Miss Sung?” he asks.
Shit, I think. I’d been hoping he’s remind me of his full name, because it makes me feel like a dick that he knows mine and I don’t know his.
“I’m actually looking for the library,” I say. “I wanted to learn a little more about Sveloria’s fascinating history.”
And also find out what the prince keeps calling me, I think.
He raises both eyebrows so slightly that I could be imagining it.
“It’s on the ground floor,” he says, and points down a corridor. “Down the main stairs, to the hall on the right. Heavy wooden door with a stained glass inset.”
I nod once, very slightly, and remind myself not to smile.
“Thank you,” I say.
He nods formally, and we walk in opposite directions.
The library is exactly where he said, and unlocked to boot. There are high, iron-wrought windows set in all the walls, and the place is beautiful and sunny. I’m practically humming as I grab a thick Russian dictionary, an English-to-Russian dictionary, A Guide To The Svelorian Dialect For English Speakers, and a pencil and scrap paper.