Page 67 of Sinful Hearts

“He’s really okay?”

Sean chuckles. “Relax. He’s gonna be fine. But for real, man. Where the fuck did that come from tonight? Who were you fighting out there?”

Elsa, that’s who. I was fightingElsaout there.

I mean, not literally or figuratively. I wasn’t hitting Lamar picturing her face or anything psycho like that. But Iwasswinging to smash away the chemical addiction to her I seem to have developed.

Break the chain that keeps me circling her like a snarling dog, unable to run away. But I have to break it. Ihaveto pull myself back from whatever insane, irrational attraction I have toward the snarky, frosty little lawyer.

There’s no way anything good would come from any of that. Not a chance. The best-case scenario that could come of me pursuing…whatever this is with Elsa Guin…is that she would become just one more woman out there with an ax to grind with me after I invariably piss her off or ghost her.

Worst-case scenario, she could drop my family from her legal schedule. Not just refuse to become our full-time counsel, like Ares keeps gunning for. I mean drop us as in quit whatever she’s working on with us through Crown and Black. And that’s alot.

Attorney-client privilege is one thing. But as much as I’ve grumbled about her, there’s something about Elsa that justworkswhen it comes to handling my family’s legal—or at times not-so-legal—needs.

I know Elsa makes a big show of distancing herself from the darker and more sinister work she’s done for us—like overseeing the removal of that dead body from Ares and Neve’s wedding, for instance, and locking down the band and the guests on the official story. But I can tell she secretly kind oflovesit. There’s a thrill she desperately tries to hide in her eyes that I know I’ve spotted while she’s working things like that for us, and it makes her just click with the Drakos family.

That’s a rare thing to find. And I don’t think it would be easily found again in other legal counsel. Which means fucking around with her, and inevitably pissing her off, is a gigantically terrible idea.

If I could just convince the rest of me that can’t stop thinking about the taste of her lips, the whimper of her submission, the silken feel of her cunt swallowing my cock, and the sensual way her body begged me for more…

Well, that would be fucking swell.

After I shower and get dressed, Sean and I head over to the other locker room to check on Lamar. He gives me a wary look from where he’s slumped on a bench. But he does grin and shake my hand when I squat down to tell him what a good fight it was.

“Bro, you were a fuckin’animalout there.”

“Sorry about that.”

“All good, brother. All good.”

When we’re done there, Sean takes off to go meet Maya after her shift at the restaurant. I sit on the fender of my Z28, sipping a beer under the dingy glow of flickering streetlight.

“Does it work?”

I frown, startled by the voice from the shadows. When I turn and peer into them, a slender, pale young guy with dark, beady eye, a shaved head, and a pock-marked face slips out of the darkness. The acid-wash jeans and tight jean jacket paint him pretty clearly to me as European.

I eye him warily, not moving from the car.

“Does what work? The Camaro?”

He grins a toothy, yellowed smile.

“No. Fighting in the gutter. Does it make you feel less like the privileged little princeling you are?”

Nope, not European.

Russian.

And slowly, I realize I know him: Pascha Andreev, one of Leo Stavrin’s goons. I’ve seen him around The Pearl here and there, and skulking around with Leo the couple of times I’ve tailed him.

He obviously knows who I am. But I don’t know a thing about him, aside from the fact that he looks like a complete, utter creep. And that fixed smile of his and the unblinking way he’s just staring at me aren’t exactly doing much to change that impression.

“Nope,” I shrug, answering his question with a dry smile. “But what can I say? I just like hitting people.”

I keep my body language casual. But I do tense a little on the inside when he slips a hand into the pocket of his jacket. The hand comes back out, but only with a pack of Russian cigarettes, not a weapon. I watch coolly as he slips one between his lips and lights it before holding the pack out to me.

“You want?”

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