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“Turn that filth off,” he said, voice even.

I chuckled, shuffling closer to him so our thighs brushed. “What’s the matter, Stas? Too much man-on-man for your delicate sensibilities? Thought you’d be old enough to have seen everything.”

His jaw ticked. He didn’t look. Not really. But he heard, and that was good enough.

“You know…” I swiped to replay the best angle and shoved the screen a little closer toward him. “If you’ve never tried it, you really can’t knock it. Some of the best fucking I’ve ever had was with another man. Raw. Filthy. Honest. Look. Isn’t that exciting?”

I slid the phone into the space between the newspaper and his face, the screen a window of thrusting bodies. His hand shot out faster than I could blink, but not to shove me away, as I thought he would. He took the phone from me.

My grin widened. “Knew it. Knew no one could resist that sight.”

Maybe he wasn’t as bad as I’d thought. Maybe the way he looked down on me wasn’t because of my sexual preferences. Maybe there was no truth to the story that he’d executed one of his enforcers without mercy for being gay. Being gay or bi in the Mafia took guts, so I’d established myself from day one as the man not to be trifled with. The brutality I was known for kept questions about my sexuality at bay.

For a heartbeat, I thought he might actually look. That the rumors about his homophobic ass were wrong. Zhukovsky rolled down the window, thrust his arm out, and let the phone tumble into the blur of passing asphalt.

“Hey!” I twisted in my seat, half leaning over him to watch my phone bounce, skid, then vanish beneath the tires of the car behind us. “The fuck, man? Do you know how much that phone costs?”

Zhukovsky didn’t even flinch. He shoved me back into my seat like I was nothing but a rag doll, rolled the window up, and smoothed out his paper as if my outrage were no more than background noise. A crisp fold, a deliberate turn of the page, and he might as well have erased me from existence.

My blood burned. The faint jingle of the Christmas carol piping from the speakers only made it worse. Cheery bells, syrupy voices about peace on earth, while I sat here ready to gut the man beside me.

“If you don’t understand how to behave in public,” he said evenly, “then I’ll teach you proper manners. You’re a pakhan, not a fuckboy. Act like it.”

Was this fucker really trying to teach me manners?

Out of habit, I reached for my knife, tempted to ram it under his chin and up into that bitter tongue of his. “Why the fuck can’t I be both?”

Zhukovsky shook his head, his lip rising in a snarl as if I was a bad taste he wanted to get rid of. “You’re hopeless. Your brother’s expecting you. Are you really going to pick a fight with me before we even get there and give them a reason to change their minds about us?”

I sat rigid in the seat, jaw clenched so tight it hurt. My phone—my brand-new fucking phone was destroyed, subscription wasted. Rage boiled through me, restless and useless, with nowhere to go. Because what was I going to do? Leap across the seat and strangle him while Arty drove us like a goddamn babysitter?

No. I had to sit there, stewing in it, while Zhukovsky rustled his paper like he was auditioning for some mobster role on cable TV. The arrogance. The calm. The way he carried himself like a man who never lost. A man who was always right.

I hated it.

I hated him.

And I hated how aware I was of every twitch of his mouth, every shift of those broad shoulders under his suit.

“Fine,” I muttered at last, stretching my arms wide, feigning a yawn. “But there better be the latest iPhone in my Christmas stocking, Zhukovsky. Or the turkey won’t be the only thing getting stuffed this year.”

The paper lowered just enough for his pale gray eyes to spear me. “Do you think with anything other than your dick? I thought those rumors about your lack of self-control might not be true, but it seems they were being kind.”

I dipped my gaze for a second. I’d been talking about filling him with bullets, but his misinterpretation twisted in my skull until all I could picture was him beneath me, that cold composure cracked, his body gripping me tight where he’d never admit he wanted it.

Fuck.

To have a man like Stanislav Zhukovsky spread open for me was wild. Would he be pretty and pink back there for me? That virgin ass would grip me so tight.

I shook my head.

Fucking Zhukovsky was out of the question, no matter how horny I got. I still had standards, and if my dick didn’t know better to shrivel up at the sight of the man, at least my brain still worked.

3

STAS

Yuriy couldn’t sit still for five damn minutes, and it drove me fucking crazy.