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I even gave outstanding head, whenever he fucking asked.
He didn’t fucking deserve it.
Bitterness feels better than being sad, honestly. Anger is better than the yawning hole in my heart left by the fact that I really had been falling in love with him, that I’d believed him when he’d said he was falling in love with me. The part of me that had adored what we’d had together, before I knew it was all a lie.
The anger warms me up a little, at least.
The train jerks to a stop, and I surge forward with the crowd, stumbling over the gap onto the platform where the wind is whipping bitterly through the train stop. I pull my scarf up over my nose and mouth, and catch a glimpse of a man that I’d seen just as I’d gotten onto the train, a few seats down from where I’d been holding onto the railing. He’s wearing a black cap pulled low over his eyes and a black wool trench with a thick black woolen scarf wrapped around his neck, but even all of that hadn’t kept me from catching a glimpse of the piercing blue of his eyes, bluer than anything I’ve ever seen. Almost dangerous, in a way that made my heart race a little.
What are you thinking, Lidiya? As if you need to be noticing another man right now.
The small voice in my head always sounds like mybabushka, chastising me. It’s a good thing, usually, although where was it when I was missing every red flag that Grisha ever waved? It’s not as if there weren’t plenty of them. I just hadn’twantedto pay attention, because it had been so long since a handsome man had noticedme, and he did everything right.Tooright. I’d wanted it to be real, so I’d ignored my intuition.
The same intuition that is pinging wildly right now, telling me that there’s something off aboutthisman, too.
Or maybe I’m just being suspicious, because I’m pissed at men in general right now.
The man is getting off of the train too, looking around, and for a moment I think he’s looking for me. That’s insane though—why would he be? I hardly know anyone in Moscow, other than my few friends from the department, and even then, we don’t get to spend nearly enough time together.
I certainly don’t know any tall men with piercing blue eyes who wear all black.
I push forward in the crowd of commuters, later than ever now. I’ll never hear the end of it from my ancient history professor, who despises tardiness more than anything and yet has the gall to have one of the earliest classes of the day. But I can’t shake the feeling that there’s eyes boring into my back, and I resist the urge to look over my shoulder for several feet, until I can’t anymore.
When I finally do, my pulse leaps into my throat.
The man is several paces behind me, his head lowered, pushing through the crowd—towards me.Not towardsme,I tell myself,just in the same direction.But then I turn the corner to take the stairs up to the street level instead of riding the escalator with everyone else, and when I glance over my shoulder again, he’s still there.
Closer now.
Fuck.I pick up my pace, faster and then faster again, but he’s still there. I swerve to the right, my heart hammering, looking for another exit, a way out of here that might enable me to lose him, feeling crazier by the moment. There’s no reason for anyone to be following me. But he’s right there, closer now, and I’ve taken too many turns at this point away from the normal path out of the station for it to be a coincidence.
I grab the railing to head down a set of steps that heads down to the next level, entirely in the wrong direction, but I don’t care anymore. I’ll miss class if I have to. I never have, not all semester, not even when Grisha tried to get me to play hooky and stay in bed all day with him, warm and naked. But I just want this man away from me—in fact, ifallmen could stay away, that would be just fucking—
My foot slips on ice on the stairs, someone’s leftover wet footprints frozen over from last night, and I try to catch myself on the railing but my feet are already going out from under me. I hear myself let out a screech as I tumble down the stairs, ass over beanie. Luckily it’s only a half-flight, but the stairs are hard, cold metal in the frigid temperature, slick with ice from disuse, and I hit the landing hard, my head striking cement as I lie there groaning.
The world is swimming, and I have just a moment to look up and see the man coming down the stairs, his piercing blue eyes visible under the cap, and realize that unless I’m hallucinating, he’s fuckinggorgeous. Strong jaw, long nose, stubbled cheeks and of course, those fucking eyes.
But then again, I could also have a concussion.
“Lidiya Petrovna?” His voice carries towards me, thick and heavily accented, and I peer at him from where I’m lying and trying to decide if I also have a cracked rib or three, as well as the aforementioned concussion.
“How do you—know my name?” I manage, through lips that feel thick and numb.
I don’t have a chance to hear his answer before I pass out cold.
Levin
Ihadn’t expected the girl I was following to be clumsy as a penguin—actually, clumsier, because most of the time penguins can walk on ice. Well—there was that one YouTube video I watched, but—
I shake my head, looking down at the pile of girl that’s on the landing of the stairs, and hoping against hope that she’s not actually dead or brain-damaged, both of which would make her completely ineffective for what we need her for. My job is already harder than it needs to be—of course she would have broken up with Grisha Fedorov the same day I was meant to have a discussion with her about what, specifically, was needed from her out of their relationship.
Not that she knows who I am, or who I work for, or why she’s a person of interest to us. I’d planned to explain all of that, somewhere quiet. But now she’s unconscious, and I have to figure out how to get her out of here inconspicuously and somewhere safe until she—hopefully—wakes up.
There’s nothing I like less than dealing with women in the course of my job, and Vladimir knows that. Actually—that’s not exactly true. Ilovedealing with women, both for my job and after hours, when there’s some pleasurable aspect to it. For instance, seducing a woman that we need information from? Right up my alley. Exploring the entertainment district of whatever city I happen to be doing a job in when my time is finally my own? My favorite way to pass the late hours of the night and the wee ones of the morning.
But I don’t harm women, and I don’t like interrogating them unless there’s some pleasure to be had from it—on both sides—and I definitely don’t like feeling as if I’m kidnapping one.
Unfortunately, there’s not really any way out of this particular situation. Lidiya Petrovna is an important part of this particular mission, even though she doesn’t know it yet, and I’ve been assigned to be the one to pull it all together.
