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I slid my fingers down his spine as slowly as I could. Instead of veering right, where his primary holster was, my hand drifted left, along the waistband of his jeans.
Come on, baby… please tell me you didn’t start listening to me…
“You have some balls showing up here,” Sasha said with a scoff. “You think my people won’t find you? You’ll be dead by sunrise. Youandyour families.”
“I don’t think you’re in a position to issue threats.”
My fingers brushed something cold and hard under Sasha’s shirt. I bit the inside of my lip to make sure I didn’t inadvertently give anything away.
“Solnyshko.” Angling his head toward me, Sasha growled the word over his shoulder and not in a sexy kind of way.
“Ne perezhivaj, u menya vse pod kontrolem,” I whispered, hoping I didn’t fuck up the translation too badly. I wanted to let him know it was ok, that I had it under control — sort of. Hopefully he’d at least get the gist. Although in my defense, nothingin the Russian language was easy, exceptyesandno.
His head turned the rest of the way, his icy eyes full of warning. If those guys didn’t kill me, that look alone promisedhewould.
Oh, God. What the fuck did Ilya say? Eyes open. Inhale on the draw. Aim, hold your breath, and fire. Simple steps. Routine. We drilled and drilled and drilled. Day after day, I logged hours at the range. Hundreds, thousands of rounds.
But that was for fun, for fuck’s sake! I didn’t actually intend to use those lessons in real life! I just wanted to impress my boyfriend if we could ever go on a date like normal people! Same with the conversational Russian I decided to casually throw around in life and death situations — I didn’t expect to be fluent, I just wanted totry, for Sasha, somaybehe would communicate a little more.
“What’s it gonna be, asshole?” the guy across the alley said with a huff. “I ain’t got all day.”
“How many rounds do you think they’ll get off before I make it across this distance and rip your fucking throat out?” Sasha took a small step forward, giving me more room to move. “Think it’ll be enough to put me down?”
“Good point.” The leader tipped his chin toward me. “Put a bullet in his head.”
The guy closest to me moved forward, shifting his aim from Sasha to me.
I stopped thinking.
In a split second, I grabbed the pistol. All I heard was metal scraping against the kydex holster. I took a step to the side, raising the gun at the same time.
The recoil reverberated through my hands.
Once.
Twice.
Three times.
I couldn’t hear anything anymore, except the ringing in my ears. It was so much louder than I expected. So.fucking.loud.
The guy in front of me disappeared.
One by one, the guys across the alley disappeared.
Then Sasha was there, his piercing blue eyes the only thing in my line of sight. He touched my cheek and vanished again.
In slow motion, I watched Sasha cross the alley in smooth strides, a gun miraculously in hand. He fired directly into the face of leader. Six times, until his face looked like ground hamburger. Then he turned to the other guy and shot him in the face — once. He bent over the third man, the one who was ordered to kill me, and grabbed him by the collar of his jacket, dragging him toward the backdoor of Delirium.
I didn’t move to follow him. I was too busy staring at the dead bodies laying less than fifteen feet away from me. Again. How many people had Sasha killed since I’d known him? Scratch that — it was probably impossible to know. How many had he killed in front of me? Four? Now seven? Shit. Was it only six? Did that mean I…?
The warm roughness of Sasha’s large hand covered mine while the other slid down my wrist. Carefully pulling the gun out of my hand, he ducked his face so he was eye level with me. “You’re ok?”
I nodded slowly, unsure if I really was or not. How could anyone be ok at a time like this? Well, any regular person. Of course Sasha was fine. He probably didn’t consider it a productive day if he didn’t kill or maim at least one person.
Nodding, he re-holstered the weapon and pulled out his cell phone, speaking rapidly in Russian to whoever answered. Whatever it was, it was a brief conversation.
Laying a hand on my shoulder, he physically turned me toward Delirium and started walking that way, keeping a grip on me.
