Chapter 5: I can keep your secret

Chapter 5 — Ofiura's POV

I felt him before I saw him again,that same shift in the air I'd felt when he first walked in, like the room had quietly rearranged itself around where he was standing. Damon was still deep in conversation with two men from a shipping conglomerate, gesturing with his glass, when Nikolai excused himself from whoever he'd been speaking to and crossed the floor toward us like the decision had already been made before he moved.

"Ofiura." He said my name carefully, testing the shape of it. "Damon tells me you don't come to many of these."

"I prefer smaller gatherings."

"Do you." His eyes didn't leave mine. "What do you do, when you're not standing next to him at these things?"

"I manage most of the household. Some of his correspondence, when he needs it." The words came out steadier than I felt, though my pulse was doing something I didn't have a name for.

"Interesting." He tilted his head slightly, like he was turning the answer over to look at another side of it. "You sound like you do considerably more than manage correspondence."

"I don't know what you mean."

"I think you do." A faint curve touched his mouth, gone before it fully arrived. "Married to a man building an empire, and somehow I doubt he's the one keeping track of which deals actually need his signature and which just need someone competent standing behind him."

I didn't answer that. I didn't trust what would come out if I did.

"How long have the two of you been married?"

"Three years."

"And in three years, no children." He said it plainly, without the cruelty Patricia had used at the start of the night, but it still landed somewhere tender.

"That must be difficult. For both of you."

"It's not something I discuss at parties."

"Fair." He didn't push it, which somehow unsettled me more than if he had. "What did you study, before all this?"

The question caught me off guard..small, ordinary, nothing anyone had asked me in longer than I wanted to admit. "Business administration. I never finished."

"Why not?"

"Life happened." I heard how flat that sounded and didn't correct it.

"That's not an answer."

"It's the only one you're getting tonight."

That earned something closer to a real smile, brief and unguarded, and it did something uncomfortable to my chest that I didn't have time to examine before I noticed Damon had gone quiet beside us, his eyes moving between me and Nikolai with the particular, dawning suspicion of a man realizing he's missed something.

"You two seem awfully familiar for two people who just met," Damon said, half a laugh in it, like he was waiting to be told he was imagining things.

"We're discussing business," Nikolai said, easy, unbothered.

"Is that what this is." Damon's gaze settled on me. "Ofiura. Have you two met before tonight?"

"No." The word came out too fast, too clean, and I felt my face go warm the instant it left my mouth.

Nikolai didn't correct me. He simply watched me say it, something unreadable behind his expression, and let Damon's attention drift back toward business the way it always did when nothing in front of him seemed urgent enough to hold it.

I excused myself a few minutes later, murmuring something about air, and made it to the powder room before my hands started shaking too badly to hide.

The door opened before I'd finished putting myself back together.

"This is the women's restroom."

"I'll be quick." Nikolai closed the door behind him, unhurried, like he had every right to be there.

"Someone will notice you followed me in here."

"They'll notice less than they'd notice if I said your name the way I wanted to say it out there." He leaned back against the door, arms folded, watching me with that same considering look from the club.

"I love my husband." I said it before he could ask anything at all, the words coming out fast, a little too rehearsed. "Whatever happened between us doesn't change that. I'm willing to endure a great deal for this marriage, and I'd appreciate it if you respected that."

"You don't believe that," he said.

"You don't know what I believe."

"I know you haven't stopped thinking about that night since it happened." He said it without cruelty, which somehow made it worse. "I can see it right now, in the way you won't quite look at me. I'm going to prove it to you eventually. Not tonight. But I will."

"You're wrong."

"I'm not." He let that sit in the small space between us for a moment. "You should leave him."

"He's my husband."

"Then why did you come to my room last night?"

The floor seemed to tip beneath me. "I didn't know who you were."

"Would it have mattered?"

"Of course it would have mattered." My voice cracked. "Do you understand what happens to me if anyone finds out I slept with you the same week my husband's mistress announced she's pregnant?"

"You think I'd tell him."

"I don't know what you'd do. I don't know you."

"No," he agreed. "You don't."

"Please." Please don't say anything. It was one night. If this comes out, I lose everything."

He watched me the way you'd watch someone doing math out loud.

"I can keep your secret," he said finally. "But you're going to give me something in return."