Page 79 of No Longer Safe

What was happening?

The song ended and he twirled me to the side of the dance floor where Carina’s mother was watching me with her mouth hanging open. Well, if she hadn’t spent her entire day with the Cristof brothers mother she would have gotten a heads-up. I could just picture the conversation that would happen later. I’d signed my soul over to the devil too.

Oh well.

This devil worshipped between my legs, still wouldn’t let me take care of him, and we hadn’t even broached having sex yet. He wouldn’t hear it. He said we had plenty of time but there was no way he wasn’t sexually dying inside.

Alexei kept his hand firmly on my hip. Emeline breezed by us and did a double take. She blinked between his hand and then his face as he leaned down to press a kiss to my bare shoulder.

“Well, this is certainly unexpected.”

I raised my eyebrows and laughed. “Isn’t it?”

“I definitely didn’t have it on my bingo card for this year,” Dimitri raised his champagne flute to us as he passed his mother. I hadn’t seen any of the other brothers yet and figured they would all turn up right before it ended. All they needed to do was show face for their mother.

“It’s about damn time,” Nana said as she patted her daughter’s shoulder before she turned her eyes on Dimitri. “When are you going to find a lady?”

Dimitri coughed. “I have a lady, thank you.”

Grandmother chose that moment to make her appearance. “Strippers don’t count.”

His cheeks colored. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“And you think I’m stupid.” She whacked him with her cane and he doubled over. “I’m old. I’m not dead. I see things, hear things, and knowmanythings.”

Dimitri tried to hide behind his skinny glass. “That’s frightening.”

She tapped him with her cane much softer now. “Find a lady.”

My mouth soured at the comment.

Nana grabbed Grandmother’s hand and pulled her to the bar. Emeline clasped her hands together in front of herself. “I hope you stay around, this is delightful.” She rushed forward and grabbed my hands. “I was always worried I wouldn’t like the women my boys chose, but I am delighted.”

It took everything in me not to run and hide from that comment. We hadn’t been seeing each other that long. The most he’d done was worship me and talk dirty. I didn’t even knowwhat he did during the day though I had a feeling it was highly illegal. Especially after he showed up at Ace’s the other day with a fresh bruise coloring his eye and a few cuts on his knuckles. When I asked him about it, he pulled me in for a searing kiss. Anytime I tried to get information about his life outside of the bedroom, he would distract me with his tongue and his fingers. I wasn’t complaining, but I also wasn’t ready to be public with someone I knew next to nothing about but I couldn’t say any of that to his mother so I just smiled. But I wouldn’t let it die now, I wouldn’t allow him to distract me again.

Chapter Fifty-One

Audrey

The nightof the last engagement party, Alexei must have felt a change in me. After that night, he didn’t come over again. He texted me dirty things about what he wanted to do to my body but I didn’t see him for two days. The night of the engagement party, he didn’t even take me to my room. He’d kissed me like a starved man. But he made an excuse about Carina’s mother and I felt something inside of me wither. I tried to let it not get me down, tried to keep it from affecting me, but it was difficult. I had to keep reminding myself that I couldn’t get wrapped up in this feeling, that it probably wasn’t real.

Alexei went on to text me almost all day every day about random things but I didn’t see him for a few days after the engagement party and I wondered if it had something to do with me and my reaction to thehard launchor just the launch in general. So I continued with my life as if Alexei hadn’t come into it. I went to lunch with Lu and talked manuscripts, I chatted with Carina about wedding planning, but I would have been lying to say I didn’t think of him in the back of my head and wonder if I did something wrong. I knew that if it did come down to it, I didn’t insist on the hard launch. I hadn’t insisted on makinganything official. I was completely content with keeping things casual but I didn’t know how to even tell him that.

My phone pinged with an incoming message as I was walking through Central Park. Lu was chatting about this new book that she wanted desperately but I was only half listening. My heart wasn’t in it this week and I hated it.

Alexei

Work has been really overwhelming this week, sorry I’ve been MIA. Would you like to come over to my place for dinner tonight?

My heart stopped, as well as my feet, on the busy Manhattan sidewalk. People elbowed me and tried to get around me but I couldn’t feel it. I stared down at my phone as if it bit me. I don’t remember even typing a reply. Lu stared at me as if I’d grown a second head.

“Are you okay?”

I blinked up at her. “Alexei invited me over to his place tonight.”

Her eyebrows jumped. “Does this mean you two are seeing each other now?”

I’d forgotten that I’d left out some key information about the previous weekend. I could feel heat rush into my cheeks. “It wasn’t anything serious,” I began and then covered my face with my hands. “It wasn’t supposed to be anything. Honestly, I thought if I let him into my bed it would get him out of my head and my system. I thought it was just insane attraction and then it wasn’t just insane attraction and he did a hard launch at his brother’s engagement party.”

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