“You have no idea the kind of world you’ve stumbled into.”
“Actually, I do. You’re all the same. You’re just the latest in a long line of powerful men with money to burn who think that those things give you the right to do whatever the fuck you want to whoever the fuck you want. Guess what, Uri Bugrov? They don’t.” I step towards him, pushing myself into his space. “You don’t get to use me and fuck me and then discard me when you decide you want to fuck some other sl—”
“Blyat’, Alyssa!” he roars. “There’s no other woman!” My mouth snaps shut as he glowers down at me. “I’m not entertaining anyone else up there. And since you seem so keyed up about it, I’m not fucking anyone else, either.”
My heart is beating unevenly now. Everything feels uneven, actually. Maybe it was a mistake to get so close. Between his words and his scent, I’m feeling a little weak in the knees.
He grabs me by the back of the neck and hauls my face close to his.
I should be terrified.
I’m not.
“There’s no one else?” I whisper tentatively.
His eyes flash. The next thing I know, he’s kissing me so hard that I feel like my head’s about to explode. When he finally breaks away, I’m in danger of tipping right over. Except he’s still got my neck in the palm of his hand.
“It’s just you and me, Alyssa. There’s no one else.”
Then he pushes me up against one of the basement walls and starts ripping at my pajamas. For the first time, I don’t feel the cold in the basement. All I can feel is him—his warmth, his strength, his desire for me.
How did we end up here so fast?
The little nagging voice in the back of my head chimes in. Because he told you exactly what you wanted to hear.
But I’m not willing to question it now. I’m not willing to stop him, either. His lips come down over mine again and again. He takes the kiss as though it belongs to him. As though he has the inalienable right to.
It’s a blur of kissing and touching and my clothes falling away. In the blink of an eye, I’m naked, with one leg hitched over Uri’s thigh. I’m so wet that he slides in easily. There’s precious little build-up—he just starts pumping hard, banging my body against the wall like he’s trying to punish me one thrust at a time.
It takes only minutes before I’m succumbing to a drooling, sputtering orgasm. While his hands scour my body, leaving trails of bruising heat wherever they go, I try to get a hold of myself; I try to remember that this is temporary. Anything that burns this wildly was never meant to last.
We have an expiration date and it’s coming sooner than I think.
Maybe that’s why I surrender myself to the moment and stop questioning it.
Maybe that’s why this feels like a goodbye.
Maybe that’s why, as I come hard against the wall, I can’t stop the tears from rolling down my cheeks.
40
URI
Nikolai’s eyes zero in on me like a laser. “Anything you’d like to tell me?”
I resist the urge to roll my eyes. “You’re always so relaxed after you come back from these business trips. You should really take them more often.”
“I closed the deal on the Benioff merger and I got us three new investors. You’re welcome.”
He still has that calculated look in his eye, though. The one he gets when he has a shit ton to say but he wants me to show my hand first. Another thing he learned from our father.
“You have something to say, Nikolai. Just fucking say it.”
He leans back in his seat. The way he’s acting, you’d think he was the one in the boss’s chair. “Heard you had quite the little outing just before the weekend.”
This time, I can’t hold back the eye roll. “Who snitched?”
Nikolai’s back straightens. “Who didn’t? Everyone is talking. You haven’t been seen with her once; you’ve been seen with her twice. You promoted her from arm candy to girlfriend. You’ve made her important.” His words are sinking in heavily and my chest churns. He has a point. “Whatever you’ve got going on with her, it needs to stop. Starting now.”
I’m so pissed at myself that I have no room left to be pissed at Nikolai. He’s not wrong.
“It’s already over,” I rumble.
“You’ve said that before.”
I slam my fist down on the table and Nikolai takes notice. His jaw clamps shut and his eyebrows pinch together. “I’ve ended it,” I reiterate. “There’s nothing more to discuss there.”
It isn’t a total lie. I have ended it; I just haven’t told her yet. Of course, there’s a chance Alyssa is already onto me. I pulled out of her yesterday only to find tears streaming down her cheeks. She tried to hide them and I pretended like I didn’t see them. But the sadness on her face was the final nail on our coffin.
We’ve been playing with fire all this time. Whatever we have was never made to last. And the sooner I end it, the better.
“Can I ask you something without you getting all defensive and snarky?”
I glare at my brother. “Of the two of us, you are the snarky one.”
He sighs and looks at me, so I wave wearily for him to continue. “What is it about her?” he asks.
I shift in my seat, doing my best to look detached and uncaring. “I don’t know.”
“Come on, brother.” He leans forward, elbows on his knees. “You’ve been with a lot of women. None of them have ever held your attention longer than a night. So what’s so special about this one?”
There are a hundred different answers I could give him. Since the moment I saw that hideous underwear ogling me while she dangled from my fence, I’ve been enamored. She snores when she’s exhausted. She wrinkles her nose when she’s trying to decide if I’m being earnest or sarcastic. She blinks twice before she sneezes and she chooses to believe the best in people even when the evidence suggests she shouldn’t. Any one of those would suffice.
Instead of saying any of that, though, I opt for the simplest and yet the heaviest explanation. “She’s good with Lev.”
Nikolai’s eyebrows hit the roof of his forehead. “No one is good with Lev.”
“Except for her.”
He leans towards me just a little. “And Lev?”
“I think Lev might have his first ever post-accident crush.”
Nik is quiet for several beats while he takes that in. “Is fucking her your twisted way of keeping her around for him?” he ventures.
I scowl. “She’s a good lay. Which is why I keep going back for more.” Those words should be easier to say than they are. As it is, it feels like spewing poison.
“Why do you think she’s so good with Lev?”
I’m on the verge of telling him about Ziva, but something stops me. It feels wrong to tell him anything that Alyssa shared with me in confidence. “How the fuck am I supposed to know that?” I scoff instead.
He raises up his arms in surrender. “Your preoccupation with her has been noted, Uri. That’s all I’m trying to stress to you.”