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Dmitri takes a step forward and my skin tingles with anxiety. I can only imagine how the waiter feels. “It better not. Because if it does, I promise you, you will lose all three. Your job will go quickly. But your balls and your life… those will take a long, painful time. Got it?”
He nods fervently and stammers out, “I’ll s-send another w-waiter with her drink.”
“Smart man. I don’t want to see your face again.”
The green-eyed flirt sprints out of the suite while I just stare on in disbelief. “Was that really necessary?” I demand when we’re alone again.
He advances on me, huge and fragrant and terrifying. “Any man who thinks he can lay a finger on you in my presence is a dead man, Wren. That one was lucky. The next one won’t be.” I’m quaking when he sighs and the storm clouds on his face part. “Now, I think your friend is here.”
The distraction works. I turn back to the crowd and catch Syrah entering through the club’s main entrance. I wave desperately but she doesn’t see me. Shouting doesn’t help, either. The music consumes every other sound.
“You can go down there.”
I whirl around in surprise. “Really?”
“I’ll be watching. You’ll be safe.”
I squint suspiciously. “That’s… out of character.”
He grimaces and rubs a hand over his chin. “This is me trying to… loosen the reins. Give you some freedom. A bit, at least.”
I’m waiting for a catch, but it doesn’t come. So I decide not to look a gift horse in the mouth. “Thank you,” I murmur quickly before I slip out of the booth.
Syrah and I embrace excitedly when I find her. She drags me onto the dance floor immediately and we start pumping ourselves up for the band as the opener goes full tilt into their set. I throw myself into the dancing, reveling in the freedom of letting loose.
As the band segues into another song, I close my eyes and move my body to the beat. And even in the depths of my reckless abandon, I know he has one eye on me.
It makes me realize that I’m not free at all.
Because I’m not dancing for myself.
I’m dancing for him.
29
DMITRI
“Hello, old friend. I heard you were here tonight.”
Ever since I got the call that Cian O’Gadhra was in the building, I knew, I fucking knew, that he would find me.
Which is the main reason I gave Wren permission to go down to the dancefloor on her own without me. Because as much as I dislike her being out of arm’s reach, there is no way I’m going to put her in this Irish fuck’s path if I can help it.
Cian’s voice does something to my body. It’s like all this energy, all this adrenaline, is congregating inside me, ready to combust.
Except that it can’t combust. Not so publicly and certainly not so recklessly.
Not with Wren in the line of fire.
“Cian.”
The Irishman has a deceptively charming smile. The kind of smile that you trust. Not that I ever trusted him—but Elena did.
Look what it cost her.
He’s dressed simply tonight, in a white shirt with short, cuffed sleeves that puts all the tattoos down his fair-skinned arms on display. I see Gaelic characters swirling across his biceps. The shaven sides of his head gleam with the copper tint of his hair.
He floats to the balcony, leaning against the banister as though this is his box. He always did have an eye for other people’s things.
