“Hmm.” He plants himself beside me, watching me intently.
It’s overwhelming—his mismatched gaze, his focus, everything about him. I can’t look into those eyes for long; they’ve bewitched me, and now I’m here, drinking gingerkombucha in an empty gas station with the one man I should never be with.
So instead, I stare at the sky as it clears, dawn unraveling the cocoon of night we’d been hiding in. Pale blue and violet bleed across the horizon as the sun breaks through.
Maybe that’s what unsettles me—that the night, our sanctuary, is dissolving, and my body and mind are clinging to it, desperate to hold on just a little longer.
“You don’t like that you might lose control with alcohol,” he says more like a statement than a question. “That tracks.”
“And you like losing control, judging by all the drinking and partying and fighting and fucking.” I take a sip of my drink to stop talking.
“Hell yeah. It makes me feel alive.”
He grimaces after gulping his drink, and I smile, because he’s definitely not a quitter. He obviously doesn’t like it, but he keeps pushing himself to give it more chances.
“Speaking of fucking, let’s go home so I can bend you over and fuck you. I’ll ride you, too, make you feel so good, you won’t be able to move, baby.”
My spine jerks at that image, and I have to briefly close my eyes to chase it away. “Do you truly only think with your dick?”
“When I can, yeah, and right now, Itotallycan.” His hand that’s lying beside mine on the seat of the bike slides closer, and he interlinks his pinkie finger with mine.
The motion is so hesitant, it makes me swallow hard, because, as careless as he is, Yulian is fully aware of the outside world. Yeah, he thinks there are things he can getaway with, probably with Cyrus having his back in the mansion, but he also knows wecan’tget caught.
I should remove my hand, but I can’t.
I don’twantto.
There’s no one here anyway. I’ll just stay like this for a minute, that’s all.
“No, you can’t,” I say.
“See? Even fucking is being policed now. I’ll hit you up with my therapy bill when the stress gets to be too much due to the lack of one important part of my loosening-up routine.”
“Stop whining like a baby.”
“I thought I was yourbaby, baby. That’s what you called me when you were fucking my brains?—”
“Shut up, Yulian,” I say, trying to sound stern, and he just sulks, so I add, “I don’t want to get hard in public.”
That makes him grin, completely forgetting what just happened. I wish I had the same sense of freedom he possesses in spades.
“Do you even attend classes in the midst of your busy curriculum?” I ask in an attempt to change the subject.
“I do, sometimes.” He shrugs. “I don’t really care about school. I’ll get my degree one way or another.”
“Then what do you care about?”
“Becoming as strong as possible to take over and protect my sister.”
I nod. He’s always had the same goal. Though four years ago, it was his mother and Alina. I know his mom passed away due to cancer, and I don’t want to ask about it in case it’s still a sore spot.
“Hey, Mishka?”
“Yeah?”
“If you weren’t in the Bratva, what would you be doing? For me, I’d be a tattoo artist or, like, a boxer.” His eyes flash, looking bright under the slowly erupting sun, a glow covering his features. “Maybe even join the army, but that would be my last resort, because I don’t like rigid discipline.”
“You’d be every commander’s nightmare.”
