Total pages in book: 108
Estimated words: 103712 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 519(@200wpm)___ 415(@250wpm)___ 346(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 103712 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 519(@200wpm)___ 415(@250wpm)___ 346(@300wpm)
She opted for cuteness. “Hi.” She waved nervously. Maybe it was the wine. Sober her would piss herself at such a threatening look.
He obviously hadn’t realized he had an audience. “I was just getting…” He caught himself mid-justification and scowled. Hunter wasn’t one to explain himself. He lifted the book. Some Russian title she didn’t recognize, and then looked down at her lap. “What are you reading?”
Her cheeks heated. “I was…trying to learn your language.” She shouldn’t feel embarrassed for wanting to understand them better, but for some reason, admitting her efforts left her feeling incredibly self-conscious. “I was bored,” she adapted, diminishing the value she placed on fitting in with them.
He crossed the room and tipped the book to read the cover. “That won’t help you.”
“I know. It was just a way to pass my time.”
He turned away and searched the shelfs. In the corner, where some reference texts collected dust, he pulled down an old hardcover and blew away a cloud of grime. “Here.”
She cautiously accepted the book but frowned at the cover. Even the letters were unfamiliar. “I can’t read this.”
“You can. It’s how I learned English.”
She cracked the spine, and the scent of aged paper tickled her nose. The yellowed pages smelled of vanilla and time, each one filled with handwritten notes in the margins—some in English, others in Cyrillic script that looked more like art than language.
“You wrote these?” Her finger traced one of the annotations, careful not to smudge the faded pencil marks.
Hunter dropped into the chair opposite her, the leather creaking under his weight. “When I was much younger.” He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, bringing with him the scent of smoke and something darker—the snowy outdoors maybe, or just him. “Ash taught me. Then I taught Stone.”
The admission cracked something open between them. Hunter, volatile and brutal, had once been a boy struggling with foreign words just like her.
“Could you teach—” Her words cut off, the request escaping before she could stop it. A blush crept down her throat. “Never mind.”
His dark eyes flickered with surprise, then consideration. He dragged his chair closer, one massive thigh brushing the edge of her seat where her bare knee showed from under her short dress. Recalling that Ash was the last one to touch her and what Hunter had said about her coming to him fresh, she self-consciously tried to cross her legs.
He noticed her posture shift and studied her for a moment, either trying to understand why her position turned from open to closed off, or he already knew.
Her heartbeat doubled as nervous energy rushed through her. “I’m sure you have more important things to do.”
He turned the page, ignoring her objection as he pointed to a passage. Small scars marked his knuckles, and his nails were clean and cut to the quick. Heat radiated from him like a furnace as he leaned down, his warm breath causing the small hairs at the back of her neck to rise.
“The alphabet first.” His voice rumbled differently when he wasn’t angry, deeper, richer, like aged bourbon. He dragged his finger over the foreign letters. “This letter,” his finger pointed to a symbol that looked like a backwards R, “makes the ‘ya’ sound. Like the end of ‘Россия.’”
“Rossiya,” she attempted the unfamiliar sounds, each syllable clumsy on her tongue.
“No.” He moved closer, and lifted her fingers to his lips, the scruff of his hard jaw sending shivers down her legs. “Roll the R.” He demonstrated, the heat of his breath heating the palm of her hand. “Feel it here.” Without warning, his fingers pressed lightly against her throat, right where the sound should vibrate.
Her mind leapt to memories of him choking her, and she wondered how this could be the same man. Her pulse hammered against his fingertips.
“Россия,” she tried again, hyperaware of his skin on hers.
“Better.” His hand lingered a moment too long before pulling away. “Next letter.”
For the next hour, Hunter transformed into someone she didn’t recognize. Patient when she expected frustration. Gentle when she anticipated roughness. He corrected her pronunciation with careful touches, fingers trailing beneath her chin to adjust the angle, a palm against her ribs to demonstrate proper breathing. Each contact lasted seconds but burned for minutes after.
“This word,” he pointed to something scrawled in the margin, “means ‘yearning.’ But not in the manner of wanting food or sleep. It’s...” He paused, searching for the English equivalent while absently dragging his finger over her bare knee. “Soul-deep wanting. The kind that leaves you hollow.”
“Toska,” she whispered, testing the weight of it.
His gaze dropped to her mouth. “Тоска,” he corrected, his voice going rough. When she glanced up, he continued watching her mouth with an intensity that made her stomach dip and flutter.
The room had grown warm despite the frost coating the windows. Or maybe it was just her, burning up from the inside out every time he shifted and pressed against her ever so slightly.