“What makes someone the right person?” he asked.
I hated this, the normalcy of our conversation after sex. I didn’t want him to get to know me better, and I certainly didn’t want to humanize him. He was all but a killing machine in my mind, and I didn’t need him to be anything else. It was already bad enough that I knew how well he sucked and rode a dick.
“It’s more of a vibe.” I was pulling back the shower door before the last word left my lips. “I think I’ll call the hospital after all and let them know I’m not coming in.”
More like I should get away from him so I can think. Am I really going ahead with this dangerous plan?
If he found out what I was up to, I was as good as dead.
“Leo—”
I pretended I hadn’t heard, shutting the door behind me. I grabbed a towel, wrapped it around myself, and made a beeline for the bedroom.
“Oh, my God.”
The words left me on a breath that didn’t feel like I was getting enough air. My chest tightened, an invisible force cinching around my ribs as I dragged in another inhale that refused to go deep enough. My fingers curled into the towel wrapped around me, gripping it to anchor myself to something solid.
It didn’t help.
My pulse was too loud. Too fast. A relentless pounding in my ears that drowned out everything else. The room felt smaller, the walls pressing in as heat crept up my neck and into my face.
What the hell am I doing?
I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to slow it down, trying to think, but my thoughts came fractured, disjointed. Sergei’s hands on me. His mouth. The way he had looked at me.
My breath hitched sharply. “I can’t do this,” I whispered, the words trembling out of me before I could stop them. “I’m not—this isn’t?—”
This wasn’t me.
I wasn’t built for deception like this. For getting close to the enemy. For letting someone like Sergei into my space, into my bed, into my head.
I pressed the heel of my hand to my chest as if I could physically steady my heart. This was a mistake. A massive, irreversible mistake, and I needed to end it before it got worse.
A sharp, insistent ringing cut through the room, and I flinched. For a second, I didn’t recognize the sound, my brain still caught in that spiraling haze. Then it registered—Sergei’s cell phone.
I turned toward the nightstand automatically, my movements slow, like I was moving through water. The screen lit up, the name glowing starkly against the screen.
Morozov.
Everything inside me froze.
The panic, the confusion, the overwhelming noise in my head fled, replaced without warning by the image of Brad, broken, his body laid out on the cold steel table in the morgue, skin pale and wrong, bones crushed in ways that shouldn’t have been possible. The fall had done that. The height. The impact.
A long, endless drop onto concrete.
I swallowed hard, bile rising in my throat as the memory flickered, vivid and merciless. They did that to him. Maxim Morozov.
I wiped a hand down my face, forcing the last remnants of panic back where they belonged. I could do this. I had to. It was the last thing I could do for Brad.
The ringing stopped as the bathroom door opened. Sergei stepped out, completely naked, water still clinging to his skin, droplets tracking down the hard lines of his body. For a moment—just one—I forgot everything again. Forgot the panic, the plan, the reason.
Because he looked?—
Jesus.
How had I gotten a man who looked like that to submit to me?
I dragged my gaze away before it lingered too long. The phone buzzed again.
