This time, when I hold up my hand, Leah comes to me, places her palm in mine, and allows me to draw her closer.
What happens between us isn’t something I’m used to. It isn’t just sex, it’s not the two of us fucking until we pass out. It’s something more, far more, than I’ve experienced before.
Leah and I take our time, kissing our way over each other’s bodies as we remove pieces of clothing, leaving them in piles on the floor like a breadcrumb trail to the bed. We explore, grasp, fondle, learning each other in a way we haven’t yet. I slip in and out of her warm, soft folds as my hands explore her body, finding those spots that truly drive her insane. We shift again, and she takes me in so deeply, we both cry out.
Leah traces the tattoos that tell a story across my skin, kisses each star on my shoulders, her nails digging into the hard muscles of my back as our mouths crash together, then apart so I can kiss every inch of her sweat-slicked skin.
We rise together, fall together, rise again, our bodies moving together until we are the only two in the world.
When we finish, when our cries ring through the room, when I hold Leah, who has collapsed against me so our hearts can beat together, I know I am entirely lost to her, and whatever happens, my heart is lost to her forever.
There can be no one else.
22
LEAH
“Roxanne used to live here.”
I jerk around with the sound of that name, a name I never thought I’d hear again. A name I neverwantedto hear again. Marius is staring up at a short block of apartments, the entrance topped with a green awning against the decorative limestone.
“What?”
Marius’s eyes snap to me, then widen as he realizes his mistake.
“How do you know about Roxanne?” I demand, glaring at him as I wait for an answer. At least until the man standing behind the counter of the sandwich window clears his throat, holding his hand out for my card, and the guy behind me gives an exaggerated, annoyed, New York sigh-slash-groan.
I flash Marius a look that promises this conversation is not over, and I see his grimace out of the corner of my eye as I finish paying for our lunch. We find a spot on a bench, and I adjust my scarf more tightly around my neck. It’s a clear day, but thebreeze is chilly, sending dry leaves scuttling along the sidewalk and pushing shredded clouds across the bright blue sky.
“Okay.” I put my sandwich down and turn to face Marius. “How do you know about Roxanne?”
He pauses in the first bite of his enormous sandwich, then places it back onto the butcher paper lying open on his lap.
“Maybe Uncle should use you for interrogation,” he grumbles under his breath. “You don’t fucking give up.”
“You haven’t figured that out yet?”
It’s a smart-ass answer, but it’s also the truth. When Iliya’s not with me, it’s Marius, and it’s been that way for weeks now. Where Iliya is a silent, brooding presence in the background, Marius is more like a friend tagging along. A dangerous friend with a gun in a holster at his side. He sits in the chair in the corner of my office, or Suzie’s, reading a newspaper or scrolling through his phone. Clients and colleagues glance at him, of course, a little wary, but no one dares to comment. Suzie mostly ignores him, too, offering him coffee, treating him like any other visitor, and probably wishing he were Iliya, whom she is on a mission to distract when he’s on duty protecting me.
I know Iliya will never say it, but I think he enjoys the game, and I think, from the way he goes out of his way to interact with Suzie, he’s starting to enjoy her presence, too.
She doesn’t feel that way about Marius. Even though he’s closer to our age, she’s a little standoffish with him, though I don’t know why. Despite the initial awkwardness, I’ve gotten used to having Marius around. He’s funny and enjoys joking around. He’s also talkative, mentioning the weather, the new coffee shop he found, the opening of some new club or other, sometimeseven a snippet from a news article he’s reading. He’s quick to laugh, too, and the gesture actually reaches his eyes.
He might be Viktor’s nephew and Peter’s cousin, but he’s the most normal out of all of them. You’d never even know he was part of the Bratva, except for the gun and the tattoos dusted across his knuckles and the backs of his hands, which I’m pretty sure go all the way up his sleeves to his chest.
“How do you know about Roxanne?” I press again.
Marius cringes again. “She—” He pauses uncharacteristically and licks his lips nervously. “She hung around with the family for a while.”
“I know that.” Apparently, most of our friends knew Peter was cheating on me with Roxanne, who was part of our friend group, long before I did. And none of them bothered to tell me, which is why I’m not friends with any of them anymore.
“Not Peter,” Marius says, and I don’t like the direction this is going; warnings are blaring in my head.
“Not Peter?” My voice is quiet, strangled.
Our gazes meet, and he doesn’t have to say anything for me to understand what comes next—the logical conclusion to all his hedging and uncharacteristic nervousness.
“Roxanne?” I repeat, my voice barely a whisper. “Peter’s mistress, Roxanne?”
