Page 59 of Emerald

17

Sloane

When Ivan and I are finished ruining his sheets, I hop into his sinfully luxurious shower once more.

Once I’m all clean, he lends me some clothes from Maks, who’s shorter and slimmer than Ivan, closer to my own build. I still have to roll up the sleeves of the pullover, but I won’t be tripping over the pants at least.

Nodding toward the rumpled sheets with their streaks of soot and dirt I say, “Sorry about that.”

“It’s fine,” Ivan says. “I’ll wash them later.”

“You wash your own sheets?” I ask him.

It’s hard to imagine this stern-looking beast of a man sorting socks and throwing a Tide Pod into the machine.

“Of course I wash my sheets,” Ivan says indignantly. “I’m not some pampered prince.”

“You have a chef though,” I remind him.

“That’s just my cousin Ori. He’s Bratva too, but he’s no use for anything criminal. Too timid. So he cooks for us.”

I can’t help laughing at that.

“So in the Petrov family, if you want to be a doctor or an accountant, you’re a total disappointment to your parents.”

Ivan knows I’m teasing him, but he answers my question seriously.

“Doctor or accountant would be useful. You could sew up bullet wounds. Balance the books.” He pulls a sweatshirt over his head, hiding that gorgeous body of his behind dark gray cotton. “Now, if you wanted to be an astronaut...” he gives me a small smile. “We haven’t expanded quite that far.”

Ivan doesn’t smile much, but when he does, it has quite the effect on me.

It makes my legs go wobbly and my thoughts drift off in a dozen different directions.

I feel like I need to give myself a good slap so I can focus on the task at hand.

“I need to use your computer,” I tell Ivan. “To get Zima’s IP address.”

“I thought you already had it?” Ivan says.

“I did,” I explain patiently. “But it burned up in my apartment, along with most everything else I own. It doesn’t matter though—I store copies of my files remotely. I can get the address again.”

“Hmm,” Ivan says.

I can tell he’s mildly nervous to let me touch his computer.

And he should be. In ten minutes, I could probably find everything he has stored on there and copy it too.

But I don’t want to steal from Ivan.

Except maybe a few nudes . . .

“Come on,” I assure him. “You can watch me the whole time.”

Ivan takes me down the hall to his office, which is directly across from the library. I remember passing it on my way to Ivan’s suite, the night I snuck into the monastery.

The office is a gorgeous old room, octagonal in shape, with dark wood paneling on the walls and a ceiling painted to look like a map of the world, circa 1780 or so. Australia is still New Holland. Large swathes of Africa are blank.

I see several more walls of books—even more than in Ivan’s suite. I’m beginning to think Ivan is a little more scholar, a little less brute than I imagined.

---