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I wrap my arms more tightly around my body. But my lack of response is an answer in itself.
“This is not going to end well,” she warns. “If you were just fucking him… I don’t know. Maybe that would be okay. But you can’t have feelings. You cannot.”
“What’s the difference? How is meaningless sex different than this?”
“Spoken like someone who has never had meaningless sex,” Natalia scoffs. “It’s in the name, silly rabbit. Meaningless sex is meaningless. No feelings are involved, so no one gets hurt. There are no expectations. But feelings don’t have that kind of good sense. You are going to get all of these ideas in your head about this man and he’s going to disappoint you.”
“I don’t have any ideas!”
Natalia arches a brow and tosses the hair on the non-buzzed side of her hair back over her shoulder. “Okay. Then what do you think is going to happen between the two of you when he leaves in a few weeks to go back to New York City?”
I’ll go with him.The words are on the tip of my tongue, but I manage to bite them back in time.
It doesn’t matter. Natalia sees right through me. “You think you’re going with him, don’t you?”
“He asked me to,” I blurt.
Her face puckers and there is sympathy there. I’ve never felt more pathetic.
“He asked me to go and work with—to work for him,” I recover. “He asked me to stay on his permanent staff.”
“He asked you to keep being his maid? And you’re okay with cleaning up after him and getting the scraps at the end of the day?”
I shrug. “It’s not like I have anything else going on.”
I may not even have that going on, actually. Kirill demoted me yesterday. Did the offer to go with him to New York City disappear with that? Or is it back on now that we’ve kissed in the hallway and he wants me to go see Ilya?
“That makes it sound like I’m desperate, but I’m not,” I continue. “I like working for Kirill. It’s good money. That’s why you’re here.”
“But there’s a difference between working for a man like him for three months and being full time on his staff.”
“‘A man like him?’” I snort. “What does that mean?”
“A criminal,” she says, deadpan, like I’m being obtuse. “Someone who is the boss of an entire fucking Bratva. Please tell me you’ve figured that much out, at least.”
I’ve had my suspicions. I knew Kirill’s world was very different from mine. But finding out he’s some sort of underworld royalty does widen the already large gap between us.
“I know enough. I’m not stupid.”
“We’re all stupid in love, Rayne,” Natalia says gently. “That’s why I’m here to beat you upside the head and tell you to make better choices.”
Natalia has a way of chipping at the walls I build. I uncross my arms and sag back against the wall. “You probably should have hit me upside the head a few weeks ago, then.”
She looks at me sympathetically, eyes bright. “What’s been going on between the two of you?”
“It’s a long story. But you’re probably right. It was supposed to be a meaningless hookup, not a relationship.”
Cold hard reality is hitting me hard and fast. I can feel all of my childish fantasies disappearing around me. It’s like watching snowflakes melt on your skin. Just a hiss of cold pain, then it’s gone. As if it never even existed to begin with.
“Is that what Kirill told you?” she asks.
I shake my head. “He didn’t tell me anything. He didn’t make any promises. I just felt… Ifeelso connected to him. I thought maybe he would feel the same way, too.”
A pathetic part of me hopes Kirill does feel that way. But thinking back on all of our moments together, his attachment to me never lasted long after the sex. As soon as we would sleep together, he’d pull away. He’d get his little fix and then toss me to the side.
Like a good girl, I sat and waited patiently for him to come back to me each time.
But not again. I can’t keep doing that.
