Page 6 of Claimed By the BRATVA Grump

He takes the cup and pays, looks at me for another second in that footnote-reading way, and then he goes to his table, where Lucifer is already waiting like a sentry.

The day passes the same as they all have, Old Bill and his theories becoming wilder and wilder. Delilah entirely wrapped up in the conspiracy theories. I’ve already warned them both, but flash them another glance when I catch them at it again just after the lunch rush. Bill takes this as his sign to leave.

I go about my business, cleaning up the table near the bookshelf where a small group of women just celebrated a birthday, filling my tray with almost-empty mugs of now-cold tea and coffee. The routine is always the same. I start at the tables furthest away and make my way around, gathering used mugs and plates and wiping down the tables.

I see Lemur. I step over Lemur. What I don’t account for is that Lemur is approximately six seconds from deciding the middleof the floor is no longer interesting, and he executes a sudden diagonal movement directly into my path.

My foot catches his tail, not enough to hurt him, he is already gone, vanished, truly unbothered by the chaos he has single-handedly created. Only I lose my balance, and the tray pitches hard to the left. I overcorrect and it makes everything worse, because all four mugs with cold leftover drinks go directly onto Eduard.

Tea, two lattes, and what remains of a hot chocolate, distributed across his chest, his lap, and one immaculate sleeve.

He spins, standing from his chair, startling a sleeping Lucifer in the process.

"Oh my God," I say. "Oh, no. Okay. Don't move."

He stands in his ruined suit with the expression of a man who is doing extremely controlled breathing and choosing not to comment on anything.

I grab napkins. A lot of napkins. I start at his shoulder, which seems safest, and work my way down, pressing and dabbing like a maniac. I'm talking the whole time because I always talk when I'm panicking, and I'm saying something about Lemur and dry cleaning, and I will absolutely pay for whatever this costs. My hand moves down, and down, and then I stop.

I look at what my hand is doing.

My hand is very helpfully dabbing a napkin directly at Eduard's crotch with complete and total commitment to the job.

I realize what I’m doing, and there is a moment of profound silence. Until I squeak, at least.

He takes each of my wrists in his hands, pulling mine away from him, because apparently that wasn’t my first instinct. I felt what I felt and froze, hands in situ, both paused mid dab and now resting on his crotch.

Heat races up my spine. My face is now a temperature that could rival the sun.

I look up from my crouched position in front of him. He is looking down at me with those gray eyes, and the expression on his face is completely unreadable except for one thing: his jaw is working slightly, the way it would if he were trying very carefully not to laugh.

"I’m sorry," I whisper.

"It's fine," he says, and his voice comes out about half a register lower than usual.

I stand up straight, still holding the napkins, wishing the ground would just open right up and gobble me down.

Someone clears their throat behind me, and I turn to find Bill helpfully holding up the broken pieces from the mugs that fell and Delilah laughing with abandon behind the counter.

I nod at Bill, take the broken ceramic from him, and make my way into the kitchen where I can die quietly from the embarrassment.

Eduard

I'm sitting in the back of the car in a suit that smells like a beverage menu, and I am thinking about her hands.

This is a problem I identify immediately, the way I'd identify a tail in traffic or a voice on a call that doesn't belong there. Identification is supposed to be the first step toward resolution. I identified it four minutes ago, but I'm still thinking about her hands.

Dmitri glances at me in the mirror when I get in. He's driven me for six years, through wars and funerals, and in that time, he has learned exactly when to speak and when to pretend he's a piece of the car. He looks at the tea drying on my lapel, the latte on my sleeve, and the hot chocolate across my thigh. He says nothing and pulls into traffic.

Smart man.

I run the incident back in order. The cat, Lemur, the one with the ringed tail that appears to operate independently of the rest of him. She caught his tail, lost the tray, overcorrected. The physics were straightforward. Nothing about the physics requires further review.

What requires further review is the seconds that followed.

She moved before the mugs finished landing. That's the first thing I noted. No freeze, no apology delivered from a safe distance. She was in front of me with a fistful of napkinsbefore I'd fully registered the temperature of the now cold hot chocolate. Talking at a speed I've only otherwise heard from men who know they have one sentence left to convince me of something. Something about the cat. Something about dry cleaning. Her hands were moving the entire time, pressing and dabbing with the focused efficiency of a field medic.

And then her hands arrived at a location that neither of us registered until it was too late.