Alik slams his palms against the door, arms braced on either side of my head. We’re so close I can’t help but inhale the smell of him, earthiness, sweat, and unbridled frustration. His breathing is even, almost inaudible, but his muscles are locked tight and his eyes are boring into mine like he’s trying to reachthe center of the earth. “What. The fuck. Did you think. You weredoing?”
His voice is hostile, condescending. I’ve been in a state of shock since we left the club, but his question breaks me out of my trance and suddenly I’m so mad I’m shaking. “What the fuck didyouthinkyouwere doing?” I spit back. “At a place like that, with people like that? With a woman like that? I don’t think having a bimbo give you a tonsillectomy with her tongue is going to get us the answers we’re looking for.”
Alik ignores my taunt. “Is that what you were looking for—answers?—when you ignored my direct orders and left the fucking carandDimitri and ran into that place without any protection whatsoever?!Pizdets! That was too fucking reckless, Sera! And exactly why I should never have let you go!”
“Let me go?” I screech, volume unhinged. “Letme go?! I don’t need you toletme do anything, you asshole. I’m a grown woman and I’m done having people tell me what I can and can’t do, especially people who hang out at the same filthy place as—” I cut myself off. I don’t want to talk to Alik about Renzo di Salvo. Definitely not when I’m so mad I can barely see straight.
Alik’s gaze sharpens. “At the same places aswho, Sera? Who did you recognize?”
“Nobody,” I lie. “Nobody but that harpy you were feeling up for all the world to see.”
“You recognize her? You know her?”
“Yes, duh. She came here to the house. The woman in gold. The one freezing her tits off when she picked you up wearing nothing but that teeny tiny dress. She’s the same one you were making out with at the club.”
I swear I see disappointment on Alik’s face before his expression goes blank. “So, you’ve never seen her before tonight?”
“No. Have you?”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“Yes, it does,” I say before I can stop myself.
“Why?” Alik’s gold-shot hair shifts tauntingly as he tilts his head to the side. “Why does it matter,moya voitelnitsa?”
“Never mind. It doesn’t.” I clench my jaw, refusing to back down as he stares at me. I can’t let him see how jealous I was when I saw him touching her, kissing her, that woman who will always be more beautiful than me.
“You’re wrong, you know,” Alik steps away, taking my ability to stand with him.
I sag against the door, knees trembling. “About what?”
“About what you can and cannot do.” Alik props his hands on his hips, his suit jacket tenting open in the process. More buttons on his white dress shirt must’ve come undone during our escape from the club. I hate that I can’t stop fixating on the exposed part of his chest. I’m staring at the hard line of his collarbones when he says, “You can only do the things I let you, Sera. That’s what our arrangement means. You don’t get to go anywhere, do anything without my explicit agreement. The only things you get to do, are the things I let you. Or have you forgotten?”
A whirlwind of homicidal feelings whips through me. “What, because I’m your prisoner? Your captive?”
He shrugs, so unbothered by my rage. “You said it, not me. A deal with the devil, remember?”
“Porco Dio! I really hate you.”
“Good. That makes us even.”
“What?” I’m caught off guard by his sudden vehemence. “You can’t hate me. I haven’t done anything to you.” I barely repress the impulse to stomp my feet. He’s called me a child once; I don’t want to give him ammunition to do it again. “What could I possibly have done to make you hate me?”
“You,” he says, taking a menacing step forward, “are the reason I almost lost Rocco Pagano.”
“I didn’t ask you to save me.”
“But you’re happy to blame me for not doing it sooner,” he levels back. “I lose either way. Not that you care.” The animosity pouring off Alik is sudden and intense, the polar opposite of our explosive attraction in the pool. He dismissed me then. Did the same in his gym. He was all over that woman at the club. He doesn’t want me, doesn’t care for me beyond the arrangement we’ve made. Rationally, I know it. But that doesn’t make it any less painful when he continues, voice unforgiving, “And tonight—I was so close to getting that fucking Albanian. I almost had him, but then you showed up and everything went to hell.”
I can see the pulse pounding in the base of his neck. The sweat gathering at his hairline. There’s a solid two feet between us. I have the space to run away, but something about the way he’s staring at me glues my feet to the floor.
“Dimitri told you to stay in the fucking car.” He cuts the gap between us in half. Thank God the door is keeping me upright, otherwise I’d drown in the storm brewing in his eyes. “You should’ve stayed in the fucking car.”
“Why, because you hate me so much you can’t stand being around me? Because I’m so useless I can’t possibly help you hunt these people down!? I’m more a part of this than you are, Alik. These people tookme. Were going to sellme. Fuck. They still want to own me.”
“Oh, trust me. I am aware.”
Something about Alik shifts in that moment, but I’m too caught up in my own emotions to notice. “I’m a part of this fight whether you like it or not. I’m not standing on the sidelines, not letting you decide how involved I get. I’m not some broken little girl who needs protecting, Alik. I’m as much a part of this world as you are, not some weakling to toss aside and ignore.”
