Page 69 of Kings of Violence

Kotya laughs, his deep rumble soothing me. “I hope not. I’m not somebody you need to protect, Yura. In fact, I think it’s my job to protectyou.”

I shake my head, but I know he’d never agree with me.

He doesn’t know just how much it meant to me that he noticed me at all, that he saw my pathetic, uneducated self and decided to take me under his wing and help me rise up in the world.

The first few times we’d shared a woman, I’d been elated. He claimed he was showing me the ropes, but his hands were on me the entire time, I’d felt his cock brush against me, and a few times his lips were on my skin.

I close the gap between us and press my face against his neck. I can smell the sweat and the sawdust on him, and I don’t even care.

“If you want something, we should get Sierra,” Kotya mumbles.

“I just had Sierra,” I answer. “I just want a taste of you right now.”

“You don’t know what you’re saying,” Kotya grumbles, but he lets me stay like this for a few moments longer.

It’s the sound of approaching footsteps that has me pull away from him. I move back to the rocking chair.

Nikolai rounds the corner to the shed, his body silhouetted in the open doorway. “Kotya? Have you seen… oh, Yura’s here.”

“Yep,” I answer, waving to him. “You need something?”

“To talk about your weirdness,” Nikolai says, looking between the two of us.

It’s not like he doesn’t know Kotya and I have a more intimate relationship than he has with either of us. I’ve seen the jealousy before, but Nikolai tries to hide it.

Mostly unsuccessfully. He’s easy to read sometimes.

“We’ve resolved the weirdness,” Kotya says definitively. “But what’s this about somebody cheating on Sierra?”

“Ah…” Nikolai looks between the two of us. “Her ex-boyfriend. They split up when she found out.” He pauses, then adds, “She may have found out the day we took her.”

Kotya bursts out laughing. “We made her forget about him very fast, then.”

That doesn’t really soothe the anger I feel about somebody having used her like that. Part of me realizes how hypocritical it is, considering what we’re doing to her, but that’s different. She’s ours. We aren’t going to discard her for some other woman.

I’m not, at least.

“Speaking of Sierrochka though,” Kotya continues. “How doyou two think she’s doing? Has she been keeping up her end of the bargain?”

Nikolai shrugs. “She’s been receptive enough, I guess. She argues, but she always gives in.” He pauses, his expression turning pensive. “I don’t think I’d like it as much if she just meekly bent over and took it, though.”

“She isn’t like that,” I mutter. “She helped find her brother’s secret notebook. And we got a few leads thanks to her.”

Kotya nods and goes to sit at the bench he’d restored last summer. “I caught her eavesdropping on me when I was on the phone with my father, but we spoke only in Russian.” He glances over to Nikolai. “Have you noticed her doing anything she shouldn’t be?”

Nikolai shakes his head. “I don’t think so, unless she did it during class.” He purses his lips. “But then, I wouldn’t know. If she’s as good with computers as she says she is, it’s possible she’s doing something right under our noses.”

“We could ask Lev—I assume he’s still doing the credit card scams for us? He might be able to check her work,” I suggest. “If you trust him near those computers.”

Nikolai glances at Kotya, shrugging. “If we did, why didn’t we have him do it from the start?”

I scowl at him. “I don’t know. I wasn’t there. You made all the decisions without me.”

He glares right back at me. “I was asking Kotya, not you,” he retorts.

Kotya holds up his hand to silence us. “Lev is good with the credit cards. I don’t want to involve him with the guns. I am also not keen to allow him access to that much information.”

“So we rely on our little rabbit,” Nikolai says. “We…trusther?”

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