Page 27 of Baby for the Bratva

Who says I need a man?

Just as I begin to imagine what life would be like without anyone at all, I hear a voice from behind me. “Thought I’d find you here.”

Fuck, it’s him again.

I sit up in my chair, grabbing my drink off the table defensively as he sits down beside me. I take a big gulp of it. I’m going to need the buzz if I have to deal with him again.

“Been a while,” he says, adjusting his impossibly small shorts. They’re all he’s wearing, aside from a watch that probably costs more than the car I left parked in my mom’s driveway back home. I didn’t want Tyler getting into it, and he doesn’t know where my mom lives. I figured it was safe there.

“It hasn’t been that long. I just saw you,” I say, shaking my head at him and wondering if he can see my eyes wandering down to his crotch from behind the dark tint of my sunglasses.

“You just saw me?” he asks, squinting through the sunlight. “Have you been stalking me or something?”

I laugh. “As in the other day, dummy. I wouldn’t stalk you. If anything, I’d avoid you.”

“Why?” he asks, sounding genuinely curious.

I shrug, pulling the celery out of my drink and taking a bite. The crunch is phenomenal. “I don’t trust you. That’s all.”

“Why not?”

“Why all the questions?” I snap. “Why follow me out to the pool instead of minding your own business?”

He grins. “I like it when you’re feisty.”

I roll my eyes, setting down my drink and reclining back in my seat. “Whatever.”

“But serious, why don’t you trust me?” he asks.

I close my eyes. “Because I don’t know you.”

“Would you like to?”

I grit my teeth. “No.”

“How about lunch? It’s on me.”

I pretend like I’m ignoring him, but I’m really thinking about what the consequences would be if I say yes. I was interested in getting to know him better, so it’s not like this is way out of line. It’s not another naked session in the sauna.

It’s just lunch.

Fully clothed.

In public.

“Don’t you think it would be nice to?—”

“Yes!” I blurt, sitting up again. “Yes, fine, let’s do lunch.”

I try not to look at him, but I can still see the glint of his pearly teeth as he grins beside me.

“But let me finish my tan first, okay?” I lie down, my heart beating much harder than it should. Maybe it’s the alcohol, but I suspect it’s the excitement of going to lunch with Yuri. He’s hard to predict, but that’s what makes him so enchanting. He gives me the impression that anything could happen.

My heart doesn’t stop racing until a good ten minutes after our conversation. Yuri is still lying in the chair beside me, his eyes closed and a little smirk on his lips as he soaks up the sun.

He thinks he won, but he doesn’t know how much trauma I’m about to dump on him. I’m going to scare him so bad with stories of my past that he’s never going to want to look at me again.

And then I’ll finally be left alone.

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