Page 84 of The Pucking Arrangement

She steps in, and my fingers brush over bare, warm skin as I settle the fabric around her shoulders. She shivers.

“Cold?” I murmur, echoing the question I asked earlier.

Erin lifts her eyes to mine, a flicker of heat passing between us.

“No,” she says quietly. “Just…ready.”

She doesn’t have to say more.

“Papa?” Ris yawns, rubbing her eyes. “Can we get ice cream?”

“It’s late, Amnushka.”

“But Erin wassogood!”

“Tomorrow,” Erin promises, but she’s looking at me. “Right now, I just want…” She doesn’t finish the sentence. She doesn’t have to.

I grab her cello case, jaw tight. “Let’s go.”

Liam clears his throat. “We should head out too. Early practice tomorrow.”

I catch the look he gives me as he steers Sophie toward the door.Behave yourself.

But Erin’s eyes are still on me, darkened with want, green irises shadowed and stormy. Her lips—flush with color, slightly parted—pull in shallow, uneven breaths, the remnants of adrenaline and anticipation.

And I’m so fucking done behaving.

Chapter16

Crescendo

Erin

Dmitri hasn’t said a word since we left the club, but the weight of his silence fills every inch of the car. It’s thick, rolling off him in waves, pressing into me, making every breath feel tight and heavy.

He thinks I don’t notice when he glances at me, but I do. Each flick of his eyes, each barely restrained inhale, sends electricity zipping through me, sharp and intoxicating.

The performance high still buzzes under my skin, amplifying everything. The memory of his hands on my shoulders, the way he stepped between me and Luka, the possessive heat in his gaze when he helped me into the car.

Mine.

He didn’t say it.

He didn’t have to.

Ris shifts in her sleep, and I move instinctively, adjusting so her head isn’t at an awkward angle. The shift sends my dress sliding higher up my thigh.

Dmitri’s knuckles go white on the steering wheel.

Good.

I need this man like my next breath. And I can tell he’s made a decision. The kind there’s no coming back from. But if I edge him a little longer, push just a bit more, draw this out like a slow crescendo…I can pretend I’m still in control. That I’m the one setting the rules. That he still has his restraint.

At least while his daughter is in the car.

Because I know the second she’s not, the second we’re alone, I won’t be in control anymore.

The car glides to a stop in the driveway, but Dmitri doesn’t move. His hands remain clamped around the steering wheel, tension coiling through him like a live wire. The kind that’s about to snap.

---