Page 71 of The Beast of Moscow

His dark chuckles accompanied the tempo of the song picking up slightly. He led their steps accordingly, and Vera, unsurprisingly, never missed a beat. She might not be on the stage dancing anymore in full traditional costume, but once a dancer ... always a dancer.

Even if only to waltz under the Eiffel Tower.

She was all straight lines, grace on her toes, and a wide smile with every step and twirl. He couldn’t look away.

To ignore the rush of lust that kept washing through his gut every time he met Vera’s gaze, making him want to lean in and taste the red lipstick painted on her lips, Vaslav asked, “Are you letting your hair grow out again—it used to be long, no?”

“I haven’t actually made time for a cut, that’s all,” she explained, “but maybe I’ll let it grow again. I could do more with it when it was long, that’s for sure.”

“The bob fits your face, too.”

And her pixie-like features.

Vera laughed. “Believe it or not, but it used to be curly when I was little. I had a whole headful of black ringlets until I started straightening the hell out of it.”

Somehow, the picture of a young Vera in her childhood, with a head of wild, unruly curls, made him smile. He bet she had been a curious and precocious child—clearly talented and driven, as well. The way his muscles pulled upward on the scarred side of his face was so unusual that for a second, it felt strange.

Wrong.

He knew the way it made the crevices of his scar more prominent; how the jagged ridges became even more prominent. And yet, Vera just smiled back.

She didn’t look away from his face, but it was like she didn’t see anything but his eyes. Unaccustomed to someone holding his stare so blatantly for so long, Vaslav took the chance to let Vera swing away from him again, spinning under their raised hands before she drew closer. With his hand at her back, he kept his gaze locked over her shoulder as she held on to the side of his neck with her soft palm.

“You could have just said what you wanted to,” he heard her whisper.

“Pardon?”

“Instead of asking about my hair. You could have asked what you really wanted to ask.”

He cleared his throat, keeping her close enough that she had to turn her head to look at him, but he didn’t look back.

“What do you think I wanted, then?”

She didn’t even think about it before saying, “To kiss me.”

He almost missed a step.

But not quite.

“Or,” Vera added quickly, “even that you liked it when you touched me, and that you might want to do it again. Or maybe, Vas, that you noticed how I liked it when you touched me.”

Most people who had come in and out of his life couldn’t manage to crack the safe that was Vaslav’s mind. No one ever knew what he was thinking—they couldn’t get past his severe expressions, long silences, and his usual disgruntled nature to figure out there was actually a constant stream of conscious thoughts inside his head.

This woman did it without even trying.

He liked that too much.

He liked too much about her.

Vera Avdonin was dancing with the devil, and she didn’t even know it. If he was a better man, one with honor or morals, he would have told her as much.

Oh, well.

The song ended faster than Vas expected it to—this time with a zip of piano keys from one side to another as the string instruments came to a stop. The clapping encouragement of the crowd sent the band into yet another faster, jazzier song. They practically had their own stage for the night, as long as they kept playing. He stepped a long stride back from Vera before he asked her for one more dance.

And humiliated himself because he couldn’t dance to something like the makeshift band was currently playing.

“You should get back to your friend,” he said, not meeting her gaze. “It seemed like it’d been a while since you saw her; I’d hate to interrupt more than I have.”