Page 7

He steps closer, and the cedar wraps around me again. “Come have a drink with me. Not here, though—a quieter place of mine.”

“Asking a woman out usually comes with a reason,” I say.

“My reason is simple. You had a terrible day. Let me make the ending of it a little better.”

I cannot locate the word no anywhere in my mouth. I wonder how much he already knows about my history with his twin. And I admit, quietly and only to myself, that I keep wandering straight toward the most dangerous ground I can possibly find.

3

LEV

The bar belongs to me—not the lounge where she pours drinks, but another of mine across the city. It’s one quiet line in a long portfolio of holdings, nothing more than that on paper. Above us the entire ceiling is a single sheet of stained glass, cut in the old Russian church style, and the light spills down lazy, gold, and indulgent over everything it touches.

I watch Delaney sink into it. She drinks freely, one glass and then another, and her lips grow fuller and more glossy with every sip she takes. I already know how those lips feel. I felt them in the lounge barely an hour ago, and her saliva tasted like warm honey on my tongue.

Her figure is lush inside that new dress. Every curve of her would fit my hands as though she had been measured for them. She’s the sexiest woman I’ve ever set my eyes on. Without that cursed knock at the door earlier, I would’ve tasted every inch of her already.

I harden the instant I think it. Fuck this, I tell myself. I force the heat down and lift my glass instead of my hand. My cock strains against my trousers in open protest.

Down, I tell it. It doesn’t listen. It never does around her.

“To a terrible day,” I say, clinking my drink against hers. “Do you like the bar?”

She tips her head back toward the ceiling, and her eyes brighten at all the color. “Anyone alive would like this. It’s gorgeous.”

“I only build places worth pleasing people in,” I answer. The words carry far more than she catches.

She blinks at me. “Wait, you own this place?” A soft laugh escapes her. “You seem so low key. I pictured something minimalist. Not this ornate.”

I don’t care one bit about style. The bar is simply an acquisition, one property among dozens. Holding bratva honor in this city takes more than black market work now. Dirty money has to be washed into clean cash flow. Every precinct wants its quiet payoff, and legitimate business buys the cover I need to pay it. The gentleman she believes she sees is only the mask that keeps me walking free.

“You think you have me figured out,” I say, watching the flush climb her cheeks.

“I gave up on understanding anyone.” Her eyes dim over the rim of the glass. “The man I loved and my best friend cured me of that habit. He cheated on me, and then he still came into my work tonight to humiliate me. Maybe it is my body. I honestly don’t know.” She drains what remains in one swallow.

The words only confirm what her texts already told me, and my brow tightens. “You dated Maksim.” It is not a question.

I never once pried into my brother’s private life. We are twins, two men wearing a single face who have not held a real conversation in a decade. I had only stopped in to look over one of my own rooms that night and nothing warmer. My brother is a worse creature than I ever believed. Our father kept him clear of this life to protect him, not so he could break good women for entertainment. For half a breath I wonder whether she reached for my face only because it is the face she lost. Then I decide it doesn’t matter to me at all.

“Maksim is blind,” I say. “Men would kill for a body like yours. He is a stupid bastard.”

She rests that captivating face in her palm and looks at me sidelong. “Are you one of those men?”

“What if I said yes to that?”

“Then somebody should do something about it.” Her lashes tremble as her eyes drift shut.

Lemon soap rises off her warm skin, and her breath quickens under my attention. She gathered her nerve to invite a near stranger to kiss her, and refusing her now would make me no kind of gentleman.

I lean in and take her mouth. Her lips melt open, and she pushes her tongue to mine before I can lead. She tastes of sweet liqueur, and I swallow every drop of her greedily, as though she were a ripe peach split open and running with nectar. I have devoured softer things and remembered not one of them. She kisses like she has been starved of it, like every careful year she spent waiting is spilling out of her at once, and I feel it go straight into my blood. My hand finds the curve of her waist and refuses the order to let go. Solnyshko. She has no notion of the ruin she is inviting, leaning into a man like me in a dark booth, tasting of my own liquor and asking, without a single word, to be undone.

When we finally part she stays wrapped around me, her chest crushed against mine. Her square neckline gapes and lifts her breasts into a feast I can barely drag my gaze away from. Our booth is tucked deep in the back where almost no one wanders. Thank God for that mercy.

She swings a leg over and settles straddling my lap. “Lev,” she breathes, dragging her fingers across my chest.

My control cracks straight down the center. I’m fucking losing my mind over this woman.

Solnyshko. Little sun. She has no idea what she does to a man like me.