Her friend skidded to a stop behind her, but Irina didn’t even notice. And when she saw how we were looking at each other, her friend slowly backed away.
I lowered my voice, making it as gentle as I could. But I couldn’t stop the hard edge of lust that crept into it: I needed her too much. “Irina,” I started—God, I loved saying her name. “Why did you run? Why do you keep trying to run?” I blinked. Glanced down at myself. Had I gotten so used to intimidating people that…. “Are you scared of me?” The idea sickened me.
She shook her head. And the weird thing was, I believed her. She had every excuse to be scared of me, but she wasn’t.
I took a deep breath. “You dance like a fucking angel,” I said. “You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen. I just want to get to know you.”
She stared up into my eyes and it was like all those layers of ice were slowly melting away. I could see deeper and deeper into her, down into her scalding, molten depths—
And then she shook her head quickly and looked away. “I can’t.”
The frustration boiled up inside me. “Why?” I’d studied every inch of her so intently, I would have noticed a ring but I checked her finger anyway. Nope. “Do you have a boyfriend?”
She closed her eyes for a split second as if she’d given a silent, bitter little laugh. “No.”
“Then let’s go for coffee!” I held out my hand towards her.
She pressed her lips hard together and shook her head again. And then she started to slip the overcoat from her shoulders. I felt a sickening lurch of fear—that panic again, like I’d felt in the theater. What the fuck was going on? I’d never felt anything like this before. “Give me your number, at least!” I said. “Tell me your last name!”
Another shake of her head, and now she was tossing the overcoat to me and turning to go. My eyes locked on her wrist. I could grab her again...but then what? Take her prisoner? “What the hell is the matter? Tell me!”
She gave a sad little smile—just a tiny twitch of her lips. God, it was heartbreaking. I wanted to find whatever was causing her this much pain and batter it into submission against the frozen path. “I just can’t,” she said.
She turned and walked away, not even stopping to pull her hooded top over her head, even though the wind was like breathtakingly cold. I stood there helpless for a second and then called after her, “Cafe Auben. I get dinner there at eight, every Thursday. I’ll be there tonight.”
She faltered, long enough that I knew she’d heard me. But then she walked resolutely on and I stood there watching her until she was out of sight, my chest tight with the thought that that might be the last time I ever saw her.
4
Irina
I didn’t get into my street clothes right away. I wanted to put as much distance between Angelo and me as I could because I was having to fight the urge to turn around and….
Throw myself into his arms and let him devour me with those lips. Press my body so hard against that hard chest that my breasts flattened against him and every inch of us was in warm, close contact, from my chin to my ankles—
What the hell is wrong with me? I’d never reacted this way to a man before. And I’d never had a man pursue me like this, charging straight through every layer of ice I threw out like a crazed bull. Doesn’t he know when to quit?
I remembered that focus in his eyes, that drive. No, he really didn’t know when to quit. He never would.
And part of me really liked that. I started to feel a pull in my shoulder, an ache. I wanted so much to turn around and look at him.
No! Starting something with him would be beyond crazy. My uncle would never allow me to date an American—a civilian. And as soon as Angelo found out who I was, he’d be scared off anyway—and with good reason. Either way, we’d be broken apart and I couldn’t take that pain. Better to be numb and not feel at all.
I drew in a big lungful of freezing air. The warmth from dancing had long since faded and, in only a leotard and tights, I was getting seriously cold. It should have felt good. It always felt good. But now….
Now I just wanted to be warm again. I wanted to be wrapped up snug in his huge overcoat, the faint scent of his cologne and the heat of his body enveloping me. I wanted to wrap it around both of us and press myself tight to him, let his blood and fire melt me into liquid.
My chest tightened. I didn’t want to be alone anymore.
I shook my head and cursed myself. Slabovol'nyy chelovek! Weakling!
I stopped and pulled on my jeans, then my Fenbrook Academy hooded top. I’d be just fine. But when my clothes were on, I didn’t feel any better.
I was on one leg, swapping my ballet slippers for sneakers, when Rachel slammed into me like an enthusiastic puppy. I yelped, flailed and managed to keep us both upright.
“So?” Rachel asked. “Who is he?!”
I groaned and shook my head. “It’s not going to happen. And please, don’t send any more men my way. You know I can’t.”
Rachel knows that my uncle won’t let me date Americans. She just doesn’t know why. She has no idea my whole family are bratva—Russian Mafia. And if I have my way, she never will. She’s my best friend and I couldn’t take it if she was scared away.
“You could see him in secret,” said Rachel. “Your uncle would never have to know.” A slow grin spread across her face. “That would be so romantic! He could send you love letters!”
For a second, I imagined Angelo writing love letters. He did come across as romantic: the old school, hot-blooded, sweep-you-off-your-feet kind. I’d never known a guy like that. Then I sighed and shook my head. “Leave it.”
“But he’s a total—” Rachel’s phone bleeped, thankfully cutting the conversation short. She dug frantically in her purse for it and almost dropped it twice getting it up to her face. Then she read the email and punched the air. “Yes!”
I felt my eyes go wide. “Is it—”
“Yes! Check your phone, see if they—”
At that second, my own phone bleeped. I grabbed it and checked the screen. I’d gotten the same email Rachel had: a callback from the audition for a TV commercial we’d both attended the day before. “Yes!” And the best part was, we were auditioning for different parts so we weren’t competing.
Rachel put her arm around my waist and tugged me forward, leading me out of Central Park and into the street. “This is going to be awesome,” she said. “And have you any idea how much they pay for those things?”
I grinned back at her. She was right: if we got the parts, neither of us would have to worry about rent for months. Then I noticed something in the email and my grin disintegrated.
“What?” asked Rachel.
“It’s tomorrow,” I said quietly. “At two.”
Both of us work in the same electronics store. I wasn’t due to work tomorrow—my shift started in a few hours—but Rachel was.
“Oh shit,” said Rachel softly. Both of us stopped walking. “No. No, no, no…” Her shoulders slumped under her leather jacket. I felt my chest constrict. “These things are like getting hit by lightning. You remember Natasha Liss? She got her big break doing that commercial for washing powder.”
“There’ll be others.”
“Not like this! God, I could have danced the shit out of this one!” She bit her lip. “I could just quit the store.”
“You need the money. What if you don’t get it?”
She bent almost double and let out a long, strangled groan of frustration, drawing stares from passers-by. “Argh! Why do you have to be so damn Russian and logical all the time? You’re like a Russian Mr. Spock!”
I nodded sadly and rubbed her back. It wasn’t fair. She deserved to get this part….
I closed my eyes. “I’ll work your shift tomorrow,” I said. “You go to the callback.”
Rachel spun around and gaped at me. “What? No!”
I swallowed down the lump in my throat. “You worked really hard for this. I heard you pr
acticing in your room, doing the allegro over and over.” I shrugged. “I probably wouldn’t have got my part anyway. You have a better chance, so you should go.”
“That’s bullshit! You’re a way better dancer than me!” She shook her head. “No. I won’t let you do this!”
I put my arms around her and drew her close. My own disappointment was swelling up inside me, but I crushed it back down. “You’re going to go to that callback,” I told her firmly, “and you’re going to ace it.” I bent her forward and kissed the top of her head, then ruffled her hair. “Da?”
“Da,” she said reluctantly. It sounded funny in her soft, American accent. Then she threw her arms around me and crushed my ribs. “Thank you, Irina.”
* * *
By the time I made it across town to our house, I only just had enough time for a quick shower and change before I had to head out to my shift. I hurried up the path and ducked under sparkling icicles that hung two feet long from the roof of the porch. Rachel and I had a bet going on how long they’d get before the end of winter.
Our place isn’t much. The clapboard is stained and broken in places, it’s freezing in winter and hot in summer and it’s not really convenient for Fenbrook or anywhere else. But it’s cheap and lovably quirky: my room even has an old, wrought-iron balcony I can stand on when I’m having my coffee in the morning.
I raced inside, already peeling off my clothes. Naked, I climbed into the shower and was just about to turn on the water when the doorbell rang. Chyort!
I wrapped a towel around me, padded back to the door and checked the door viewer. My heart sank as I saw six-foot-plus of imperious suited muscle, topped with hair as silver as a bullet.
Vasiliy. My uncle.
I opened the door. “You didn’t think to call, first?”
He waved away my protests. “I was in the neighborhood.” He looked around and sighed, shaking his head as he always did when he visited. “Why do you live in this place?” He sounded genuinely confused.
“I like this place.” And we both knew what I meant by that. I liked it because I could afford it without help from him. We glowered at each other for a second and then kissed each other on the cheeks.
I love Vasiliy. He helped raise me when I was young and then, after my parents died, he took care of me. Without him, I wouldn’t be alive today.
But without him, I wouldn’t have been in danger in the first place. Vasiliy is the embodiment of everything my family is famous for, everything I ran away from. He isn’t in the Russian Mafia; he is the Russian Mafia.
“You’ll have to make yourself tea,” I said as I closed the door. “I really need to take a shower—”
The door was pushed open again from outside. Chyort! Vasiliy hadn’t come alone.
“You look fine as you are,” said Mikhail, grinning as he stepped inside.
Mikhail is the epitome of everything I hate about Russian men. He doesn’t have an ounce of Vasiliy’s class or intellect, just lots of money. And while Vasiliy, even in his sixties, is still a tough, good looking guy, Mikhail is running to fat even though he’s only forty. His face is always pink and shiny, as if he just ran up a flight of stairs, and when he looks at me a chill goes the entire length of my spine. It would be bad enough if he was just Vasiliy’s business partner, but he’s more than that.
As far as Vasiliy is concerned, Mikhail’s going to be my husband.
Mikhail’s eyes crawled over me. I pulled the towel tighter around myself and wished I’d put my clothes back on before I answered the door.
“I’ll make tea,” said Vasiliy. “You have your shower. Then we can talk.”
I hurried off to the bathroom, feeling Mikhail’s gaze on my ass the entire way.
It’s not a forced marriage, as such. Vasiliy won’t make me marry Mikhail. He’s happy for me to choose a man....as long as that man is Russian and a member of the Russian mob. I know he’s doing it out of love: he thinks only a gangster can protect me from our family’s enemies. But that doesn’t stop my future feeling like a prison cell being built brick by brick around me.
Back in Moscow, I’d been surrounded by gangsters—suitors, in Vasiliy’s mind. That’s when I’d learned to be cold, to keep pushing them away. I’d thought that I’d escape my fate by moving to New York, but I’d only made things worse.
I’d been in America only a few days when Vasiliy arrived and told me about his new partnership with Mikhail, a local bratva boss who needed Vasiliy’s money to expand. By then, I’d enrolled at Fenbrook and it was too late to change my plans. Now Vasiliy spent almost all of his time in New York and visited me almost daily. Escape? I saw more of him than ever. And here, instead of a procession of suitors, there was just one: Mikhail. No way was I going to marry that creep...but that left us at an impasse, because no way was Vasiliy going to let me be with an American. I was going to be unhappy...or very, very lonely.
I closed the bathroom door, dropped the towel and climbed back into the shower. The steaming water slowly thawed me...and reminded me of a different kind of heat.
Angelo...I silently mouthed his name. Just thinking about him, remembering those brown eyes, made me gently sway my hips in a circle as if being touched. The whole thing was impossible, of course. I’d done the right thing—the only thing—by pushing him away.
But there was something about him...he had a passion that I’d never seen in a Russian man. Angelo was dark, smoky lust and scalding anger. He was chaos to their logic, impulse to their cold rationality. Angelo was red wine and thorny roses and hot, hot blood. He was the opposite of everything I’d known, everything I was. That should have made us completely incompatible...so why was I so drawn to him?
I caught my breath as I remembered the looks he’d given me, like he’d been ready to throw his coat down on the frozen path, tear off my clothes and take me right there on the ground….
I realized I’d spent longer soaping my inner thighs than I really needed to, the edge of my hand rubbing, my hips grinding in slow circles. I forced myself to stop, rinsed off and grabbed a towel. But however hard I tried, my thoughts kept going back to Angelo and, every time they did, I felt myself flush from the inside out, just the memory of him lighting me up.
Then I turned off the water and the sudden chill brought me back to reality. Idiot. My future was out there, lounging on the couch.
I hurried into my room and pulled on the pants and polo shirt I wore for the store. Then I opened the door so that I could call down to Vasiliy and Mikhail. “I have to run to work,” I told them as I sat down at my dressing table to do my make-up. “I’m sorry—you should have called.”
Vasiliy’s heavy footsteps came up the stairs. In the mirror, I saw him lean against the door frame. “Why do you insist on working?” he asked.
“You know why.”
Another sigh. He thought I was stubborn, refusing to take an allowance or gifts. But I didn’t want his blood money. I was determined to support myself, even though it meant working two jobs.
“You are as stubborn as your mother was,” Vasiliy grunted. He moved a few steps closer and lowered his voice. “You should get to know Mikhail. He could look after you.”
“I can look after myself,” I said tersely, combing my hair.
“If you don’t like Mikhail then come back to Moscow: there are more men there.”
I met his eyes in the mirror. “I have a life here!”
He walked over and looked down at me sadly. “Irina...what do you think you’ll do when you graduate? Become a dancer? Marry some American and get a little dog and a house with a white picket fence?”
I said nothing, just stared resolutely at his reflection.
He squatted down behind me until his face was next to mine. “You are a Malakov,” he said, squeezing my shoulders. “This is your life.”
“I don’t want it.”
“It’s not something you choose, Irina! The family needs you. Even if we didn’t, you can’t have this...civilian life you dream
of. Even if you turn away from us, other people will never forget who you are. My enemies are your enemies. You need a man like Mikhail to protect you.” He glanced over his shoulder towards the living room, then lowered his voice. “Marry him and you could stay here in New York.”
I stared helplessly up at him. What could I say? That the thought of sharing my life, my bed with Mikhail made me want to throw up? That I just didn’t see anything approaching warmth or love when I looked into his eyes, only ugly lust and a hunger for power? That whenever Vasiliy’s back was turned, Mikhail tried to grope me?
There are some things you can’t say to your uncle. I settled for: “I don’t love him.”
Vasiliy just looked at me sadly, as if I was a child who didn’t understand how the world worked. The worst part was, he hadn’t used to be like this. Back in Moscow, he’d been tough but fair...he’d used to smile and joke. Then I announced I was moving to the US and he became...cold. Something had changed and I couldn’t figure out what.
The frustration rose inside me, hot and jagged: it wasn’t fair. I crossed my arms and glared at myself in the mirror. If I kept looking at Vasiliy, I was going to start crying and a Malakov never shows weakness.
Vasiliy’s hands relaxed on my shoulders and he let out a long sigh, then leaned sideways until his head rested against mine. “Chyort,” he cursed. “I wish your mother was here to talk to you.”
I closed my eyes and felt my anger slowly slip away. He was the closest thing to a father I had and he thought he was doing the right thing. “I really do need to get to work,” I told him, my eyes still closed.
Kissing The Enemy Page 3
