Page 43 of Lethal Obsession

I’m amazed he’s even still here. Let alone watching me, as my friends claim. I’ve been alone with my limerent fantasies for so long that I don’t trust my perception of reality.

Let’s face it—I don’t trust myself at all.

Not when it comes to Alexei.

I’ve been proven wrong too many times.

“Come and dance,” Benny says, tugging me by the hand. “I want that sexy Viking to see my hot moves.”

“I don’t know.” I hang back. In the dance space of the private booth, several of Lars’s and Mickey’s admirers are already writhing in a blatant effort to gain their attention.

“Come on.” Lourdes tugs my hand with a wicked smile. “If you dancing right in front of Pirate Boy doesn’t make him lose his mind completely, I don’t know what will.”

“Let me at least finish my drink.”

“Fine.” Benny wags a finger at me. “But we’re dancing.”

Whether Alexei is truly watching me or not, I’ve been acutely aware of his still, silent presence from the moment I saw him in the audience. I avoided a physical greeting in the first bar by reminding myself of something Seline once told me during a tarot reading.

Boundaries, she’d said, tapping the Hermit card sternly. You can put boundaries in place, Ofelia, to maintain your peace.

Unfortunately, the moment Alexei spoke to me, those boundaries scattered like ash on the wind, along with my surroundings and everyone else in the bar. And like always, his words cut through the champagne compliments to my very core.

“That’s what I thought of,” he said, “everyone dancing and laughing in the afternoon sun.”

I breathe deeply, mentally erasing the words from my mind, trying to ignore how closely his description matches my own experience. The last thing I need is another Alexei memory to agonize over in solitary darkness.

No.

What I need to remember is how fast he closed down the moment my boundaries softened. The way he physically stepped away from me.

Alexei Petrovsky may well be the only person who experienced what I felt when I played. He may even be watching me from his booth, as Lourdes says.

But we both know that watching is all he’s ever going to do.

“Come on,” Benny is saying to Lourdes and me. “When else are we ever going to have our own private dance floor in the VIP section of L’Arc?”

“Why not?” I say lightly, putting my drink down on the table and smiling at Benny. “Let’s see those moves, diva boy.”

“Yassss!!” He throws his head back, whooping in triumph, and leads Lourdes and me onto the small private dance floor in front of our booth, twirling us both into action as he starts busting his own—admittedly pretty impressive—moves.

I catch Mickey’s eye as I spin. He grins, raising his glass at me, and I blow him a kiss. It was Mickey who finally convinced Papa to allow me out without my security detail, arguing that between him and Alexei, not to mention Lars’s barrage of security guards, I’d get home safely.

His advocacy is even more generous given that I know he isn’t Alexei’s biggest fan. But whatever his private opinions, my brother also understands, better than anyone, how rare it is for me to have a night away from the watchful eyes of Papa’s men. And to Mickey’s credit, he’s also humble enough to accept that Papa would never have agreed to stand my security down without an ironclad guarantee that Alexei will stay with us.

Which is the only reason Alexei came at all, I remind myself. Papa knows that Alexei is a killer every bit as dangerous as he himself ever was. Ironically, that’s also why he trusts him to keep me safe.

Fortunately, Papa has no idea exactly how dangerous to my well-being Alexei truly is.

I was intensely aware of him during the raucous limo ride here. I felt like I was in somebody else’s body when he helped me out of the limo, then positioned himself between me and the curb as we walked straight past the long line of hopefuls waiting to get in, his hand resting at the base of my spine like a brand, watching every passerby like he just might kill them if they got too close.

And now, an hour after we were ushered straight through the velvet rope into the VIP section and he sat down opposite Lars and my brother, I’m acutely aware that he’s barely touched the drink on the table in front of him, despite the others having consumed the best part of the bottle.

And none of that means a damned thing, I remind myself as Benny spins me beneath his arm, making the floaty layers of my dress flare out around my legs.

Protecting me isn’t just Alexei’s responsibility. It’s his obligation, one the men in our world take deadly seriously. My father would hold all three of the men at the table personally accountable if any harm came to me, and they all know it.

Alexei isn’t here because my piano playing made him feel like he was dancing in a fucking summer meadow. He’s here because he knows—better than anyone—the kind of danger that can befall Roman Borovsky’s daughter.