I grunted. Didn't answer. But my silence was apparently answer enough because she lifted her head, studied my face with those too-intelligent eyes.
"You're running through every possible disaster scenario, right?"
"It's called threat assessment."
"It's called anxiety." Her hand came up, fingers tracing the scar through my eyebrow. "I do it too, you know. Run allthe probability matrices, calculate all the ways things could go wrong. It's exhausting."
She was right. It was exhausting. And maybe—maybe just once—I could turn it off. Could make a decision based on what I wanted instead of what was safest.
"Get dressed," I said, the words coming out before I'd fully thought them through. "We're going out."
Her eyebrows shot up, and she pushed herself up on one elbow to look at me properly. The sheet slipped, exposing the constellation of hickeys I'd left on her neck and chest, and I had to fight the urge to add more.
"Out?" she repeated. "As in, outside the compound?"
"The kittens need supplies." The excuse came easily, like my subconscious had been planning this. "Real supplies, not just whatever we've scrounged. Food, beds, toys."
"We could order online—"
"There's a pet store in Brooklyn," I interrupted. "PetSmart. It's . . ." I struggled for words that wouldn't sound completely fucking insane coming out of my mouth. "It's bright. Has colors. Normal people doing normal things."
Her expression shifted, understanding dawning. This wasn't about the kittens. This was about her—about giving her something ordinary, something that had nothing to do with violence or survival or the world we were trapped in.
"You want to take me to PetSmart," she said slowly, like she was tasting the words. "On a date? To buy cat supplies."
Heat crawled up my neck. "It's not a—"
"It's totally a date." The smile that spread across her face was like watching the sun come out after a storm. Pure delight, almost childlike in its intensity. "Oh my god, you're taking me on a pet store date. That's the most romantic thing anyone's ever—"
I kissed her to shut her up, but also because that smile was doing things to my chest that probably required medicalattention. She melted against me immediately, arms winding around my neck, and for a moment I considered saying fuck the pet store, fuck the outside world, let's just stay here where I can keep you safe and naked and mine.
But when I pulled back, her eyes were bright with excitement—real excitement, not the manic energy of survival—and I knew I'd burn down the entire city before I'd disappoint her.
"Shower," I ordered, patting her ass where the marks from last night's spanking had faded to a gentle pink. "We leave in an hour."
She scrambled out of bed with more energy than someone who'd been up half the night should have, completely unconscious about her nudity. I watched her gather her things—my t-shirt from the floor, her underwear from somewhere near the door where I'd thrown it—and felt that thing in my chest expand again.
"Kostya?" She paused at the bathroom door, looking back at me with an expression I couldn't read. "Thank you. For this. For . . ." She gestured vaguely, encompassing everything. "Just. Thank you."
Before I could respond, she disappeared into the bathroom, and soon I heard the shower running. I lay there for another moment, staring at the ceiling, trying to reconcile the man I'd been yesterday with whoever the fuck I was now—someone who took women on pet store dates, who used kitten supplies as an excuse for romance, who was probably going soft in ways that would get us both killed.
But then I thought about her face when she smiled, and decided that maybe soft wasn't the worst thing to be. At least, not with her.
I got up to get dressed, already running security protocols in my head. Two men in a follow car, discrete. Another team tosweep the store before we arrived. I might be going soft, but I wasn't going stupid.
Besides, the kittens really did need better food.
ThePetSmartonAtlanticAvenue assaulted you the moment you walked in—fluorescent lights bright enough to perform surgery under, primary colors screaming from every surface, and a parrot near the entrance that took one look at me and started shrieking like I'd personally offended its ancestors. The whole place smelled like industrial disinfectant mixed with dog food and that particular pet store odor that probably had a scientific name but I just called "animal."
I felt like a shark that had somehow ended up in a fucking goldfish bowl.
The teenage employee stationed at the entrance took one look at me and dropped the stack of sale flyers he'd been holding. They scattered across the floor in a cascade of neon orange paper advertising two-for-one dog toys. His Adam's apple bobbed as he swallowed hard, eyes tracking from my face to my exposed forearms where the bratva tattoos told anyone who knew how to read them exactly what kind of monster had just walked into his minimum-wage Saturday.
"Welcome to PetSmart," he managed, voice cracking on the second word.
Maya didn't notice. She was already three aisles ahead, making a beeline for the cat section with the kind of purpose she probably brought to emergency surgery. I grabbed a cart—the thing looked like a toy in my hands—and followed her, noting how every customer we passed did the same double-take. A mother pulled her kid closer. A man in khakis suddenly remembered he needed something in the opposite direction.Even the Golden Retriever in aisle three tucked its tail and pressed against its owner's legs.
But Maya? Maya was holding up a feather wand with pink streamers, studying it like it contained the secrets of the universe.
