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I snorted; the sound mirthless as I rolled my eyes. I didn’t even protest his use of my given name. “You tell me one hour—you take more than three. Is this what I’m to expect of our trying to make this situation work for us?” I bantered back, trying to keep the tightness from my words, trying to keep the worry he accused me of out of my gaze.
His eyes flashed and one side of his lips curled slightly in lopsided amusement. “So, you were waiting then.” He stated it as if it were fact, and I could feel the blood rush to my cheeks again.
“You have no TV that I could find and—”
“And you counted the hours I was gone.” His voice was silky, but not with the spite I had heard before. It lifted and twisted around his words as if he were teasing me—as if he were testing me.
I raised my chin, as had become my new defense in this tilted world. “Oh, da, I counted the hours like some lonely little housewife hoping that—”
He didn’t let me finish the sentence.
Before I’d been ready, he had hauled me to him, dragging me by my chin so that he could fit his lips over mine. It wasn’t the soft peck of our wedding, or even the two heated attempts that he had tried after that. It was a raw, savage need. He kissed me as if he were pouring all of his anger—all of his frustration—into that kiss. He kissed me like we were at war and the only weapons he had were his lips.
My gasp went silent, unheard as he caught it between his teeth, his tongue scraping along the edge of my lips as if to extract my willpower.
Whatever fight I might have wanted to put up was gone. All the worry and strife of the past few hours seemed to dissipate as I melted into him. I lifted my face further, opening my mouth so that he could deepen that kiss. I could taste the coppery tang of blood and alcohol as his fingers tightened around my chin, pulling me closer.
When I pushed against him, he let his fingers slide down the heated skin of my throat where they paused, his palm pressing slightly into the pressure point there as if he were measuring my pulse beating so rapidly against it.
I didn’t push away. I didn’t even attempt to. My hands lifted of their own accord, wrapping around his ruined suit jacket and pulling him into me as well. I didn’t think I cared any longer about what surname he held or what life he lived. In that moment he could have been some random beggar off the street, and I would have still kissed him back. Because the attraction between us was undeniable—the sparks flying off our bodies too real to ignore.
It was only the clearing of the throat to our side that jolted us out of it; my body jerked back but was caught by his steady arms. Dmitry looked up at Shura, raising an eyebrow as if to question why he would have made any noise at all.
“You feel like you want to be heard?” Dmitry asked evenly, his voice as unruffled as though he hadn’t just been devouring me in front of an audience.
Shura didn’t flinch in the crosshairs of Dmitry’s impatience, shrugging his shoulders and pulling a cigarette packet out of his pocket. “Da, I like being heard. You like being heard. Human nature, nyet?”
“Do you have a reason that you want to be heard right now, Shura?” Dmitry returned slowly, “Or are you just fucking blind to reading the room?”
“Ah. Maybe yes, maybe no. I don’t know. What I do know though, Dmitry, is that you don’t want to be fucking your wife in this house, nyet?” Shura handed the cigarette to Dmitry without asking, reaching to light his own.
I could feel my face heat up again, at the implication, and at the way that Dmitry’s hand fell so possessively to the round of my hip. His fingers splayed over the silk-covered muscle, his thumb rubbing little arches in the bone just above it.
“Then I’ll leave,” Dmitry answered shortly, moving as if to do just that.
“Your dead mark tell you the news?” Shura interrupted before he could.
“What news?” Dmitry asked, his flinty eyes swinging back to his friend as if only giving him the time for who he was.
“There’s growing distrust in the Bratva, Dmitry. Rumors and whispers. They say you are losing your touch. That you might have . . . other intentions. There is . . . lack of trust. Your name is on too many lips now, too many people have questions.” Shura said the words carefully, obviously saying them despite the fact that he didn’t want to. There was a certain level of apology there as well.
“And you tell me this because?” Dmitry asked, shifting his weight between his feet.
“To tell you to be careful. Because you are my friend. Because today I had to think about coming so close to losing you. Because I am glad you are alive.”
Dmitry’s shoulders sagged somewhat, his head nodding briefly. “I wasn’t sure I would be, for a bit,” he admitted quietly.
Without another word he started walking again, pulling me by the hand and leaving behind his friend with the apparent dead body he had brought there.
