Something in me bristles.
I am not a package he can order around just because he put me on my back ten minutes ago.
Still, I keep walking.
We make it to the elevator. Sergei presses the button. Anton scans the hall. Aleksei stands in front of me just enough to block the view from anyone passing, but he never touches me. Doesn’t look at me. Doesn’t give me anything.
And that, somehow, is worse than the bullets.
The elevator arrives. We step inside. His men do not. That surprises me enough that I look up.
Aleksei finally meets my eyes. “They’ll take the stairs.”
“Why?”
“Because I said so.”
Right. Of course.
The doors close, and suddenly we’re alone again in a too-small space that should feel different now, softer maybe, but doesn’t. It feels strange. Off-balance. Like he’s already putting walls back up and I’m just standing here trying not to notice.
I hate how much I notice.
When the elevator opens into the lobby, his car is already waiting outside. The rain has slowed to a fine mist, turning the city lights into smears of gold and white.
He holds the door for me. I get in. He follows a second later, and the silence in the backseat is unbearable.
I stare out the window, willing my pulse to settle, willing my thoughts not to spin out into things I don’t want to feel. Used. Confused. Angry. Embarrassed for caring this quickly, this stupidly.
I can still feel him between my thighs. I can still hear him laughing low in that suite when I called his whole life complicated.
And now he won’t even look at me.
That’s what gets under my skin the most.
Not the silence. Not the careful distance he puts back between us the second we leave the suite. It’s the way he acts like whatever happened in that room belongs there, sealed off, locked away, while my whole body is still lit up from him.
The entire ride back is quiet.
I sit angled toward the window, watching rain slide down the glass and city lights smear into gold and white streaks. Aleksei sits beside me, one hand resting near his knee, the other occasionally tapping once against the leather seat, the only sign that something is still moving under all that control.
I keep waiting for him to say something.
Anything.
Something about the suite. About Alena. About the fact that I just learned he comes from a family that does things outside the law and then had some of the best sex of my life with him ten minutes later.
Instead, I get nothing.
His expression is unreadable. Closed.
So, I turn away and focus on the window because the alternative is asking a question I’m not sure I want answered.
By the time the car turns onto my block, my mood has gone from shaken to irritated to something dangerously close to hurt. The neighborhood is dim, mostly quiet at this hour. My building looks exactly the way it always does—tired brick, one flickering light over the entrance, windows reflecting the wet street back at us.
The car slows.
Aleksei finally speaks. “You’re home.”
