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He drove the blade into the man’s throat, straight in, then twisted. Deep. A savage, merciless turn that cut the air with a slick, awful sound. The man spasmed once. Twice, and went still.

Yuriy stood, his knife dripping blood and his hair falling from its bun, rippling past his shoulders and down his back. He pushed the mess of curls back from his face, revealing a splatter of blood on his cheek.

My breath caught in my throat. Yuriy Orlov was every bit the bloodthirsty monster I knew him to be.

He’s breathtaking.

I was painfully hard, and there was no use pretending it was just the adrenaline.

Snapping out of my Yuriy-induced trance, I grabbed his arm. “We need to go. Now.”

His chest rose and fell, each breath sharp enough to fog in front of his lips. His pupils were blown wide, pulse hammering behind his jaw.

Slowly—too slowly—he stood.

“Fine,” he said, voice low, scraped raw by leftover fury. He wiped the blade on the corpse’s jacket, sheathed it, and let me pull him toward the truck. “Let’s get the fuck out of here before someone notices their boys forgot to come home.”

13

YURIY

After we left those bodies behind, Stas didn’t speak for a full minute, hell-bent on getting us as far away from the bloody murder scene as possible. He drove like the steering wheel had personally offended him, hands locked tight around the leather, shoulders coiled, teeth grinding so loud I felt the vibration through the seat.

I watched him instead of the road.

His jaw.

His knuckles.

The faint tremor in his forearm every time the truck hit a patch of ice.

My arm stung like a bitch. If not for knowing what a bullet felt like, I would have thought I was shot instead of grazed. Thank fuck, I was still hopped up on adrenaline, which helped me to deal with the pain.

“Hey,” I said lightly, “on the bright side, the guy had terrible aim. Could’ve grazed my face, and we both agree that’s my best feature.”

Stas jerked the wheel sharply right.

The SUV swerved off the main road, tires skidding on ice, then gripping again. We shot into a narrow alley wedged between an abandoned storage building and a rusting metal fence. Snow piled in dirty drifts. No houses. No cameras. No witnesses.

He slammed the truck into park so violently the whole frame shuddered.

“Uh.” I lifted one eyebrow. “Romantic detour?”

He didn’t answer.

Stas threw his door open and jumped out, boots crunching hard into the snow. He rounded the hood with the energy of a man about to commit a felony. My pulse kicked.

My door yanked open.

“Easy, babe,” I started, but he wasn’t listening. Still not talking. He didn’t wear his usual smolder either, which was scary.

Stas grabbed me by the jacket, hauled me out like I weighed nothing, spun me, and pressed me against the SUV.

His hands were rough, searching, urgent, but not sexual. He was checking for holes. Checking for blood. Checking that I hadn’t died on him when he wasn’t looking, as if the proof wasn’t standing in front of him.

He brushed the graze on my shoulder with his fingers, then yanked off my jacket and rolled up the sleeves of my shirt to reveal the blood oozing down my arm.

He hissed.