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It wasn’t a question, but he responded anyway. “Yes.” And that had been the point. A reminder of what life was like.
The way he felt when she used him as a source for her drawings was the falsehood, just like the lies Willow had told herself about them getting free of Ivankov. A phantom of a promise that would never come to fruition was dangerous.
It was better to focus on the hurt.
So it should have been a simple thing when she reached out and wrapped her fingers around his wrist.
“And this?” Alina’s words came to him as if they were much farther away than at his side.
The arcing pain was immediate and familiar. The tingles that followed were as well, but so much more recent.
The sudden heat that rushed toward his lower body was almost completely foreign, and he jerked free of her, smacking back into the wall.
“Sorry! I’m sorry,” Alina said.
He’d only experienced the sensation once before, when he’d watched Giovanni with his wife, and the man had cried out toward the end. The sound had caused Luka’s own erection.
With Giovanni, it had made sense. Luka had been mimicking him for years. His body’s reaction had been more of the same.
The mixed pain and tingling of Alina’s touch causing that reaction was all wrong.
Luka was less than skilled as he disappeared from the room, his body jangling the doorknob. Alina called after him, but he ignored her.
Confusion chased after him as he ran away.
He’d resolved to return to Ivankov, and his feet carried him to the pakhan’s den.
Ivankov had yet to move on to a new family’s home. Luka knew he couldn’t do so too soon. It raised too much attention, even in a big city. In between, he resorted to prostitutes or others discarded in the streets—the homeless or the destitute or the desperate. The gender and age of his victims would vary, but the look in their eyes toward the end was always the same.
That was the expression Luka would have recognized. Hopelessness or blankness was familiar. Even the anger that had once woven through him had faded.
Only with Giovanni had there ever been a longing for what might have been. That was the expression Alina had drawn, but there was no way she could have seen that from him.
The panic filling Luka turned off every other thought. He gave into stupidity as he entered the room where Ivankov had already strangled his newest victim. The monster was still buried inside the dead woman, his hands around her throat. His own throat gleamed beneath his thrown-back head, his face filled with greedy ecstasy.
It was the perfect reminder of what erections were used for. Greed and selfishness.
Luka made no sound as he lunged with his knife, slicing for Ivankov’s exposed throat.
The man was the devil. There was no other explanation for how he moved so quickly.
Luka’s knife cut across his chest instead, deep enough to bleed, but not to gush, not like the throat would have. He’d expected to miss, but he took advantage of his luck. Luka continued to attack, managing to pierce Ivankov’s side, then his thigh.
The pakhan had begun to laugh and stepped into Luka’s next lunge, taking the knife in his shoulder. It buried there too deeply to pull free from a single tug.
The punch that followed caused Luka to fall away. He rolled into it, on his feet before Ivankov could reach him. They hit each other, and Luka absorbed the second punch, putting all his effort into pulling the knife free.
Another successful slice, this one along Ivankov’s back, which continued to come at him as the man slammed him into the nearest wall.
Pain from the barely healed marks along his back flared in a dizzying spin, almost bringing Luka’s awareness into focus.
Ivankov tried to pin him to the wall, his hands slick with blood as they pressed into the cotton along Luka’s arms. The additional pain from the touch, even through cloth, scattered his focus again. Luka didn’t want to reexperience that moment of heat with Alina. His fear of it faded when the heat didn’t return with the pain.
Ivankov’s pale gray eyes gleamed. “It’s been a while since I’ve tasted this frenzy.” He darted in as if to lick Luka’s cheek.
Luka headbutted him. He aimed for the nose, but again he missed, their foreheads colliding instead and sending a ringing into his ears. His arm had been released, and he managed to nick Ivankov’s other side. The man rushed backward, and Luka lunged after him.
He missed completely this time. Ivankov had darted to the side, and Luka’s momentum carried him to the bed, his knife plunging into the chest of the dead woman’s body.
