Page 16 of Broomsticks and Bloodstains
“No one,” I insisted. My cheeks flamed.
“You always were a terrible liar,” she whispered with a wicked grin. “We’re going to talk.”
“Isa, it’s just really new and it may not go anywhere. If it does, you’ll be the first to know.”
“I better be. At least tell me where you met him.”
“At O’Malley’s,” I lied, but didn’t. We had officially met at the bar.
“He better be sweet to you,” she warned as she artfully hefted the tray and walked off.
Sweet? Maksim? I snorted to myself. He was protective. Possessive. Danger encased in expensive suits and steel. And God help me, I let him wrap me tighter around his finger every day.
Still, in the quiet moments between his visits, the fear lingered. Men like him didn’t come without a cost. They weren’t sweet.
I got my reminder one night when I slipped out of the bar, exhausted, only to find Maksim’s friend, Konstantin, leaning against a black car at the end of the block. He wasn’t Maksim, but the resemblance in the cut of his suit and the weight of his stare was enough to make my breath hitch.
I’d met Konstantin once when he had shown up at my bar to quietly speak with Maksim in one of the corner booths.
“Maksim is distracted,” he said simply, his accent softer but no less sharp. “Do you know what happens when men like him get distracted?”
I swallowed, throat tight. “No.”
“They bleed.” His eyes flicked over me, cold, assessing, like I was nothing more than a piece of lint on his coat sleeve. “And so do the people who make them weak.”
I opened my mouth to speak, but headlights flared, and Maksim’s SUV pulled to the curb. The driver’s side window rolled down, and there he was—jaw clenched, eyes dark, watching Konstantin like he’d already decided how many bones he’d break if he didn’t move along.
Konstantin smirked faintly, pushed off the car, and disappeared into the night.
Maksim didn’t speak as I slid into the passenger seat. But his hand found my thigh, gripping hard enough that I was sure it would leave a bruise.
It should have terrified me.
Instead, it made my pulse race, because for the first time I understood—this wasn’t just lust. It was some kind of dangerous, secret war.
And I was caught right in the middle of it.
Chapter 11
Maksim
Konstantin’s voice still rang in my head days later. He had popped into my apartment after I’d left Sofia’s the night he intercepted her leaving work.
You’ve truly lost your goddamn mind.
Didn’t I tell you? You don’t fuck the liability.
You erase her from the face of the earth.
Maybe he was right. Maybe I was losing my mind because in all my thirty-eight years, I’d never behaved like this. But every time I closed my eyes, she was there—her lips parted beneath mine, her body soft and wild against me. Then there was her heated gaze that made me forget what the hell I was supposed to be doing with my life—almost.
I’d told myself it was just sex. Control. A way to measure her, see what she knew, and decide how long she’d survive. But it wasn’t control anymore—hell, I’d completely lost control when it came to her. It was hunger.
And hunger was a dangerous thing—especially for a man like me.
On Halloween night, I told her we were going out. She didn’t argue—smart girl—but I saw the hesitation in her eyes as we left her apartment. She knew I wasn’t taking her to some restaurant in Midtown. She thought her boss at the rundown bar she seemed to live at had been kind by telling her she had the night off. I’d let her think that.
Little Odessa was alive, buzzing with music and lights. When I heard they were organizing a Halloween-themed midnight market, I knew it would be something Sofia, with her little Halloween heart, would love.
