“I’ve never been with a man before. Not until you, and now you’re mine,zaychik. I’m not letting you go.”
My breath catches in my throat.
“We need to watch ourselves. In your country, you can love whoever you want without consequences. But my family? My culture? It’s different.”
“You mean, mafia families?”
“You don’t understand what the Avrorin name means. My family created the Russian underworld. We didn’t join it, we built it from the ground up. Every rule, every system, every network from Moscow to New York exists because we made it that way. Generations of absolute power and control. Mafia is what people call organizations with someone above them. We answer to no one. We are the authority everyone else fears.”
So mafia. I freaking knew it.
Except apparently, they’re the mafia that other mafias are scared of. Cool. Great. But he’s not answering the actual question.
“What does being with a man have to do with any of that?”
He sighs, then glances down my neck. “Because it’s old blood and old rules passed down for generations.”
I clear my throat. “They were probably made by men who were choking on cock behind closed doors and didn’t want anyone else getting the same idea.”
He smiles, and it hits me then that I’ve never seen him smile before. It is beautiful, transforms his entire face from cold and dangerous to something almost soft.
We end up spending the rest of the day curled up in bed after washing ourselves.
After we both get off again, slower this time, lazy and drawn out, we’re completely wrecked. Everything catches up at once, and we’re both passed out before eight, still wrapped around each other.
Chapter 12
Kelly
Aweird sound makes me open my eyes. Light filters through the curtains. I shut my eyes again and groan. The bed’s cold behind me, Alexei’s warmth completely gone.
I reach back and touch the mattress, then sit up and look around.
He’s on the floor next to Clover’s setup, sitting cross-legged while petting her and holding out a carrot. He’s wearing one of my clean boxers that’s bright pink and ridiculously tight on his muscular frame. I’m genuinely confused about how he squeezed into them without cutting off circulation.
Wait. I don’t even have carrots in my fridge.
I squint. “Where did you get a carrot?” Then blink again. “And are those my boxers?”
He looks at me, deadpan. “Dato both.”
I sit there for a second, trying to process this. “Okay, but where did the carrot come from?”
He scratches Clover’s ears. “I went to the store and got it for her.”
I rub my face, trying not to laugh because this man broke into my apartment to take care of me, raided my underwear drawer, and bought vegetables for my rabbit.
What is my life turning into?
I’m about to ruin this moment, but I have to say it. “Carrots aren’t actually healthy for rabbits. They’re really high in sugar.”
He frowns. “They’re not?”
“Yeah, I know it’s confusing. But it should be more of a treat than a regular thing.”
He pets her behind the ear gently. “What should I bring her then?”
I can’t help but smile because he’s genuinely asking, sitting there in my too-small pink boxers like this is a completely normal morning conversation.
