Maybe that's why I don't move when he reaches up with his free hand and tucks a loose strand of hair behind my ear. Or maybe it's just because the bathroom lights are hitting his eyes in a way that makes them look like Arctic ice at midnight.

"Your friend did a nice job with these braids," he murmurs, fingers trailing down one plait. "Shame about the one coming loose."

I blink. "How did you⁠-?"

"Your dress is safety-pinned in the back, which means it doesn't fit, which suggests you borrowed it from someone. The braids are too complex to do yourself, and they're actually even in the back, and I'm fairly certain you don't have eyes in the back of your head. So I took an educated guess."

"I... You... Are you showing off?"

"Maybe." His hand settles at the nape of my neck. I can feel my own pulse hammering against his palm. "Is it working?"

My throat is dry. "That depends on what you're trying to achieve."

The corner of his mouth quirks up, and I realize I've never been more aware of another person's lips in my entire life. "I thought that was obvious," he says.

I laugh deliriously. "There is not one single, solitary thing about you that is obvious."

"No? Then let me be clear."

His face is so close to mine. It's all I can see, all I can possibly bring myself to care about. I'm bathing in his scent as his lips draw closer and closer.

And closer still, and closer still, until⁠-

The bathroom door creaks.

We spring apart like teenagers caught behind the bleachers. My mysterious stranger's face transforms instantly, that almost-softness hardening into marble as he turns toward the door.

He doesn't have to say a word. The newcomer takes one look at us-me with my bandaged hand and flushed cheeks, him with his thundercloud scowl and general aura of Do not fuck with me-and backs right out again.

When the door clicks shut, we both exhale. But the tension doesn't go away. Something lingers in the air between us, electric and unfinished and dangerous as all hell.

"You should go," he warns, though it sounds like it costs him something to say it.

I gulp. "Should I?"

"Yes." He runs a hand through his hair. "Because if you don't leave now, I'm going to kiss you. And once I start, I'm not going to want to stop."

He's right. I should go. I take a half-step toward the door, then pause and turn back. "What if I don't want you to stop?"

His face is half-shadowed. A dark pit where his left eye should be. "You should be very, very careful before you say things like that to a man like me."

I look at him. His head almost brushes the ceiling and his shoulders seem to span from wall to wall. I was spot-on the first time: he's a bad idea made real. Mama would've whispered a scary fairy tale about him. He's a beast, a golem, a dark prince who curses everything he touches.

I look at the door. It's there. I could grab the knob-avoiding cutting my hand on it this time, preferably-and twist. I could open it. I could leave.

But whether it's masochism or recklessness or just plain old stupidity, something compels me to turn back instead. To open my mouth, and to tell this demon...

"Or else what?"

3

ARIEL

In two strides, he's pinning me against the wall. One hand tangles in my hair, ruining what's left of Gina's handiwork. The other hand grips my waist and bunches my dress into a disaster of borrowed silk. His mouth crashes into mine like storm waves breaking on a levee.

I've been kissed before, but not like this. Never like this. He kisses me like I'm air and he's drowning. And God help me, that's exactly how I kiss him back.

When I gasp, he thrusts his tongue past my teeth and claims my mouth. I moan and let him.

"Last chance to run, ptichka," he growls.

In answer, I drag him back down to me. The sink edge digs into my back as he lifts me onto it. My dress rides up my thighs and his hands follow, leaving trails of fire on my skin. When he breaks the kiss to trace a path down my neck with his lips, I have to bite back another moan.

"Someone could walk in," I manage to whisper, even as my fingers work at his shirt buttons.

He reaches past me to lock the door, the movement pressing him even closer. "Let me worry about that."

Then he's kissing me again and it's easy to do exactly that: let him handle the worrying. Some days, it feels like all I do is worry. So for him to pick me up and move me here and move me there and take all that burden off my plate? I feel light. I feel weightless.

I feel like I could fucking fly.

Time melts and skews as he gathers me against him and nips his way down the curve of my throat. I let my head drape backward as I gaze up at the ceiling through half-lidded eyes, fingertips clawing into his thick shoulders for dear life.

He keeps murmuring things against my skin-"ptichka" and "I shouldn't" and "fucking hell, you taste good." Every single one makes my toes curl.

When his fingertip ventures up to find the edge of my panties, I suck in a sharp gasp. "This is a⁠-"

"-bad idea," he agrees. "Tell me something I don't fucking know."

But neither of us stop when that finger slides beneath the lace and strokes through my wetness. I bite down where his neck meets his shoulder so I don't scream. Stuttering half-syllables come pouring through my muffled mouth.

"P-pl-p-pl..." It never quite makes it all the way to a word.

It doesn't have to, though. He knows what I'm pleading for. Like the first aid kit, everything he touches is exactly where it's supposed to be.

When he parts me, I come so fast that my cheeks burn red with embarrassment. Scarcely a dozen pumps of two scarred fingers into me and I'm falling apart and quivering in his arms.

It gets messier from there. Clothes fumble. Belts unlatch. My underwear slides down my thighs and vanishes, heaven only knows where.

But when he lines his hard cock up with my pussy, he stops. His forehead is pressed to mine. Eyes huge and blue. Breath rattling in and out of his lungs. He's just this side of undone, like the humanity in him is thrashing against the steel bars of the cage he uses to keep it stowed away.

I, on the other hand, look absolutely ruined already, if my quick glance into the mirror is anything to go by. The braids are a distant memory. The straps of my dress have fallen down my shoulders to let my boobs peek over the neckline of my dress. My skin is flushed red everywhere he's touched and kissed and bit.

Of all the things about him that have brought me to this moment, though, this line in the sand, this one door closing and another opening, it's that look in his eyes that pushes me over the threshold.

He really doesn't do this.

Not "this" as in sex, because any man that handsome and that obviously wealthy and that supremely confident in his own skin can clearly have women in his bed at the snap of his fingers. What I mean is that he doesn't do "this" as in gaze down at the woman he's about to fuck like she might be the death of the self-control that defines him. He doesn't do "this" as in show that there is anything accessible within him that might charitably be called a soul. He doesn't do "this" as in let his bedmates look back and wonder just what it might take to crack him open for once in his grim, bloodsoaked life.

He doesn't do "this."

Neither do I.

But then he slides into me, and we both do something we've never done before.

For all the build-up, it's almost remarkable how fast the sex is. Brutal things can never last that long. And besides, I'm skittering in and out of awareness, too overwhelmed by how it feels like he's fucking my heart, splitting me wide open, wider, wider.

The thump and rattle of the sink touching the mirror glass times every thrust. I moan, broken, helpless. His hands carve divots in my bare waist.

"Spread for me," he orders. "Spread those fucking thighs and give me all of you."

But even as he orders it, he does it for me, molding me like putty. My hips are screaming with the strain and my throat is raw from the effort of holding back the kinds of moans that would draw attention from the partygoers on the other side of the wall. But I want so fucking badly to give him what he's asking.

Every twitch of his muscles drives him deeper into me than anyone's ever gone before. I'm a bouncing, sweaty disaster and I don't have the brain cells left to give a damn. Even as our mouths clash and our breath mingles and he keeps murmuring filthy nothings that are half-exhale and half-fuck-you're-dripping-for-me, all I can do is hold on and pray that the climax doesn't kill me.

He's not wrong-I am dripping for him. More broken syllables fall out of my mouth. "P-pl-pl... M-m-more..."

And just when I think he couldn't possibly give me more, he does. He drags me down onto his cock, crushing my waist between his palms, fucking harder and faster and more relentless.

Almost...

Almost...

Boom.

He growls, I whimper, and then we both explode, one on the heels of the next. Light fractures in my vision as the orgasm cleaves me in two. A few starlit, timeless seconds suck us in. For as long as those last, I'm soaring.

Then gravity reclaims us. Time reclaims us. Common sense reclaims us.

And all I can think as I float back down is, That really was a bad idea.

Returning to reality is an ugly affair. I'm suddenly aware of how unkempt my dress looks scrunched around my waist like that. How cold and sticky the sink countertop is. How what I just did-fucking a stranger while literally on the job-was so unbelievably rash that I should probably tender my resignation at the Gazette and go become a nun, because a lifetime of prayer and solitude is the bare minimum of what I'll need to redeem my soul after this idiotic stunt.

It would help if the stranger would say something. But as he straightens his clothes, shoots his cuffs, and steps back from me, it's as if he's pulling up the drawbridge and locking down the castle gates behind his eyes. Those glimpses of soul I saw swimming in the blue of his irises are long gone now. The shreds of humanity are hidden. He looks the way he did when he first opened the stall door.

Cold.

Cruel.

Merciless.

I open my mouth to tell him-I mean, shoot, something, if only because it feels like the silence is gonna swallow me whole if I don't. Should I ask his name? Should I give him my number? Should I see if he regrets this or if he maybe wants to do it again?

But he beats me to the punch.

He gives me one crisp, formal incline of the head, jaw clenched brutally tight. "Enjoy the gala," he says in that tar-on-rubble voice of his. "Try not to cut yourself again."

Then he's gone, leaving me leaking and lonely on a sink counter, wondering what in the fuck just happened.

4

SASHA

It's a fucking pity I'll never have that again.

I mourn the loss even as I stride away down the hall and leave the bathroom behind me-not looking back, not ever looking back, because looking back is the act of a fucking ssyklo. A pussy. A coward.

That doesn't mean I don't listen, though.

I hear the door close behind me. I hear my footsteps echo off the ceiling like a pulsing, thudding heartbeat. I hear the murmurs of the people I pass.

I hear it all.

But I never, ever look back.

The voice snarling in my head sounds like my father's-though, to be fair, everything sounds like my father's voice these days. Yakov Ozerov's ghost has been especially loud lately, ever since this arrangement with the Greeks started taking shape. I can almost smell the reek of cognac on his breath as he reminds me what matters: Power. Control. Empire.

Love is for children and fools. I am neither.

My phone vibrates in my pocket. Feliks. "The package is secured," he says in Russian when I answer. "But it's getting anxious about the delivery time."

Code for: the Serbian spy he caught snooping around an Ozerov warehouse earlier tonight is starting to panic.

"Keep it fresh," I reply. "I'm on my way."

I find a side exit and slip out into the December night. The cold bites through my suit jacket, but I barely feel it. St. Petersburg winters were far worse than anything New York can throw at me.

Still. Something about tonight's chill makes me long for what I left in my wake just now. Soft skin under my hands. Green eyes watching me like I might be worth saving.

She smelled like peaches. It's just now hit me that that's what that sweetness was. Ripe summer peaches, sweet ones, the kind that leave juice dribbling down your chin when you sink your teeth in. Peaches. Fucking pea⁠-

So you're a fucking poet now? Forget her, Yakov bellows. She's nothing. A distraction. Remember what happened the last time you let yourself get distracted?

As a matter of fact, Father, I do remember.

The scars on my back remember, too.

My car waits at the curb, Klaus at attention behind the wheel. He doesn't speak as I slide into the back seat, just pulls smoothly into traffic.

Good man. He knows when I need silence.

As we drive, the city flows past my window in rivers of neon and shadow. Ten minutes to the abandoned restaurant where Feliks is holding our guest. Ten minutes to get my head in order. Ten minutes to forget the way that little ptichka whispered, "Or else what?" like she wasn't afraid of me at all.

I wonder if she's aware of how easily little birds like her get their wings broken.

It could've gone that way, after all. I could've clipped her feathers the moment I realized she'd overheard my conversation on the phone with Feliks. A quick twist of the neck and it would've been bye-bye, birdy. Another unfortunate mess easily swept under yet another bloodstained rug.

Wouldn't be the first time.

Won't be the last.

But one look at those wide green eyes told me what she truly was. Not a threat, not a spy, but a dove snared in the wrong trap.

So I did what I shouldn't have done: played with my food. I gave myself this little indulgence.

And why not? I deserve it. I fucking deserve one goddamn moment for myself before I hurl the last of my humanity into the gaping maw of this Bratva that always wants more, more, more from me.

It took my mother. It took my childhood. And now, it's taking my freedom.

Because once I return to the gala from this little errand, I'm going to meet the woman I have to marry.

That's the only reason I've bothered attending this bullshit dog-and-pony show in the first place. Fuck knows I don't usually make an appearance. Invites for these kinds of social torture sessions stuff my inbox on the regular. Everybody-civilian and criminal alike-wants Sasha Ozerov to darken the door of their little soirees. I'm a curioso, an oddity, a man who lives so far outside of the ridiculous lines into which they've boxed themselves that all they can do is gawk and whisper behind their hands.

There he goes, they tell themselves. Don't get too close or he might bite.

They're right-I might. And normally, that threat is enough to keep the gawkers at bay.

It wasn't enough for the reporter, though. That little bird flew close enough for me to snatch her out of the air and make a meal of her.

And fuck, what a meal it was. Her moans are still echoing in my head. She couldn't even spit out the word Please-that's how badly she wanted, needed me.

Fuck me if I didn't feel the exact same.

It was a lifetime's worth of impulse all distilled into one moment. Because I don't bend, I don't break, I don't waver, ever.

Except for once.

Except for tonight.

But as I said-that's behind me now. And I am no ssyklo.

The car stops. Klaus opens my door. The restaurant's broken sign casts sickly purple shadows across the cracked pavement.

Time to go to work.

Inside, the restaurant reeks of mildew, rust, and spoiled meat. Empty plates still sit on some tables, coated in years of dust, like the diners just got up and walked away mid-meal. The leather booths are cracked and peeling. Rats scatter at my approach.

Feliks emerges from the shadows with an unlit cigarette dangling from his lips. His scarred face twists into what passes for a smile. "He's in the kitchen. Been crying about his family for the last hour."

I grimace. They always cry about their families.

"Any complications?" I ask, shrugging off my jacket and handing it to him. No point in getting blood on good Italian wool.

"Nyet. Clean grab. No witnesses." Feliks follows me through the swinging doors. "Though he did try to swallow something when we caught him. Some kind of data chip."

I roll up my sleeves. "And?"

"Made him cough it up. Literally." He holds up a small plastic bag containing a bloody micro SD card. "Haven't checked what's on it yet."

"Give it to Roza. She'll have a field day."

The spy is zip-tied to a steel prep table, face mashed like a fucking eggplant and caked with dried blood. Remarkably, he's still conscious.

Young, too-younger than I expected. No doubt fresh out of whatever shithole the Serbs train their operatives in these days. Still soft with baby fat at the edges. His left eye swells shut; the right darts like a trapped roach.

The good eye widens when he sees me. "Y-y-y..."

"Yes," I agree. "Me. As always, I'm touched by my reputation." I grab a chair, spin it around, straddle it backwards. Feliks hands me a crowbar. The cold steel sings in my grip. "Let's talk."

The boy-because that's what he is, really; not a man, not even close-tries to look brave. "I have n-nothing to say to you."

Something tickles at the back of my mind. A flash of green eyes, defiant words: Or else what?

I shove the memory away. Focus on the job.

"Everyone says that in the beginning," I inform him sadly. My voice stays flat. Detached. A scalpel, not a sledgehammer. "But eventually, they all talk. The only question is how much it has to hurt first."

Many men say things like that. Few mean it. The Serbian boy knows that I do, because when he looks into my eyes as I speak, he flinches.

But that's just because he wasn't raised like I was. I don't flinch. I haven't flinched since the night my father held my fingers over the stove burner for tracking mud on his Persian rug. "Pain is a language," he'd said, flames licking my skin. "Learn it."

This kid in front of me has no idea just how fluent I am. He doesn't know how deep the old scars go or how thick the callus is that's grown over them.

It's not his fault. But ignorance won't save him.

"Let's try questions. What's on the data chip?" I ask.

He whimpers but shakes his head, snot bubbling over split lips.

I sigh.

I stand.

I swing.

The crowbar cracks his kneecap-a wet snap of bone and tendon. His scream carves the room.

Ariel's face flickers in the aftermath-green eyes blown wide, lips bitten raw. I wrench my attention back to the present and grind my boot into the kid's shattered knee. He howls.

"Second opportunity. I cannot promise a third."

"F-fu-fuck you!"

Another swing. Ribs cave like rotten timber.

Her gasp against my mouth. The hitch in her breath when I slid inside her.

I drop the crowbar. It clatters, loud as a gunshot.

Feliks raises an eyebrow but says nothing.

The spy wheezes, pink foam on his chin. Lung puncture. He'll drown in his own blood soon.

I crouch to eye level. "Last chance to die useful."

In response, he spits. A weak arc of blood and saliva grazes my cheek.

I exhale and wipe it off. "Poor choice."

My knife finds his throat before he blinks. Steel parts flesh-a hot, red smile. He gurgles. Twitches. Stills.

And just like that, another little bird dies.

In the corner, I hear the rasp of gears and the burble of flame as Feliks finally lights his cigarette. "Messy," he comments.

"Efficient," I correct.

But my hands stutter as I clean the blade. Her fingers, trembling as I bandaged her cut. The way she laughed-reckless, bright, a lit match in a oil well.

I sheathe the knife, and with it, I put away those distractions.

Blood cools sticky between my fingers as I light a cigarette of my own off Feliks's flame. At our feet, the corpse leaks onto linoleum.

For a moment, I'm twelve again-watching my father gut a traitor in our kitchen. Mother scrubbed crimson from grout for days.

"Folks at the gala are whining," Feliks informs me, smoke curling around his jagged face. "They're asking when you'll make your rounds."

They. The vultures. The ones who'll clap like seals when I complete my deal with the Greeks tonight. They won't quite understand what it means, what will change, but they'll still applaud and cheer like the good little puppets they are.

I drag the smoke into my lungs until they burn. "Tell them to hold their standing ovation until after I sign my life away."

He snorts. "Don't sound too eager, brattan." He taps the ash off his cigarette. "Heard your bride-to-be's got fangs."

"Don't they all." The ember between my fingers pulses like a dying star. "The first Makris girl did, too. Look how it served her."

Something flickers behind his milky eye. "Leander is running out of spares."

My pulse hiccups. Green eyes. Nips at her lower lip when she's seething. Orgasms like a wildfire catching. And when she moans, it's⁠-

The cigarette snaps between my fingers. I grimace, then drop it and crush it beneath my heel. "I don't keep track of their litter. As far as I'm concerned, one is as good as the next."

I start rolling my sleeves back down, smoothing my hair back in place. I walk a fine line between the shadow and the sunlight, and the civilians at the gala can only handle so much darkness before they shrink away in fear. Best to keep things buttoned-up.

Even when I'm reassembled, though, and Feliks has helped me back into my suit jacket, I feel filthy.

I need a shower. A scalding one. To strip this stink of fear sweat and cheap cologne.

"Leander's probably throwing a fit," I remark.