“I’ve been out,” he said. “I had a meeting and you were still sleeping, so I left you in peace.”
“A meeting?” My gaze snapped to the hallway window. It was light and bright outside, winter sunshine streaming through the glass. “The fuck?”
“It’s the morning. You fell asleep yesterday afternoon and you did not wake up.”
I blew out a breath. “That’s fucking insane.”
“You were tired from life, no?”
“I guess so.”
Alexei nodded and presented me with a paper bag I hadn’t noticed him holding. “Breakfast. I have coffee too. Then you should probably answer your phone before your brothers come looking for you.”
He spun around and strode away, leaving the bag in my outstretched hand. I peered inside it. A fruit pot and a breakfast baguette greeted me, and my belly growled so loud I knew I needed to eat before I did anything else.
I retrieved my phone from where I’d dropped it on the floor after River had hung up on me and followed Alexei to the kitchen.
He was tapping on a laptop set up on the counter, frowning the same frown I’d seen when he’d scrutinised the books from the yard. Concentrated. And too clever for the likes of me.
I kept a respectable distance and demolished the breakfast he’d brought me, noting that there was nothing in front of him except a mug of coffee that looked like tar. “What are you doing?” I asked eventually. I didn’t mind companionable silence, but I was curious enough that I couldn’t contain myself. “Is it work?”
Alexei tore his sparkly gaze from his laptop screen. “Do you want to see?”
He beckoned me closer. I slid from my stool and stepped into his personal space, ignoring the screen in favour of burying my face in his neck. Fuck, he smelled so good. If I kept my face pressed against his skin forever, the rest of the world was a place I could barely remember.
Alexei chuckled.
Goddamn.I raised my head, more curiosity burning through me. “Are you laughing at me?”
“You are very sweet for a gangster, my friend.”
“Three things wrong with that sentence,mate.”
He twitched a brow. “Enlighten me.”
“I’m not sweet. I’m not a fucking gangster. And, Lexi?”
“Yes?”
“I’m not your friend.”
Alexei stared, and something shifted between us, literally, as I tugged him closer, and a crackle of new energy wrapped around us, binding us together. I brought my hand to his throat, pressing my palm over his pulse point. It thundered, mimicking the roaring storm my own heartbeat had become. “If we are not friends anymore,” he said. “Then what are we?”
“This.” I kissed him, letting emotions I didn’t know I was capable of seep into the rough way I held him and claimed his lips.
I didn’t even know what I was trying to say to him or what it meant, but I couldn’t contain it. I needed him to know he was my port in a storm right now and it meant something to me.
It meant everything.
I pulled back, already knowing Alexei wouldn’t speak, but I was okay with that. If I’d learned anything about him, it was that he’d let me know if he thought I was talking shite.
That, and he was like no one else I’d ever known.
I peered at his laptop screen. “Pensions?”
He nodded. “My job most days. I help people who have lost their pensions through no fault of their own get something back.”
“You mean, like, if their employer goes bust and takes everything down with them?”
