Page 78 of The Beast of Moscow

Or her touch.

On the fourth of six steps leading into the tub, Vaslav had a decent amount of room to stretch out his legs as he leaned back. Massaging his fingers into his eyes did little to give him relief; he found more when his thoughts drifted back to the way Vera’s fingernails had glided over his wet scalp, scratching lightly enough to make the fine hair on his body stand on end. Thinking about that led into the way she’d traced the three tattooed spires on his chest, placed between the thieves cross he had done under his throat, and the Cyrillic spelling of his family name along his lower stomach. The name had been a prison job he was never fond of due to shaky lines and shitty ink.

Once on, though, a vor’s tattoos were there. He didn’t believe in do overs when it came to the tattoos he’d earned—from the eight-pointed stars under his clavicles to the captain’s epaulettes on his shoulders. Some of his tattoos had faded, having been done when he was young, and he never even bothered to have a fill in for color after the whites and pinks on his spires practically disappeared. The only way one of his tattoos would change, was if they were burned off.

And there was no man powerful enough to order it done. Not while he sat in the seat he did, anyway.

“Is that okay—like that, I mean?” Vera had asked him, always willing to meet his gaze when she was touching his body, but never for too long.

She had asked the question again when she moved onto the crown, a newer piece added into the thieves’ cross, in the middle portion of his chest. She got the same answer then, too.

His silence.

If he didn’t like it, Vas would have told her so.

Immediately.

The problem was, he liked it too much.

She had the hands of a goddamn angel—it took him no time at all to figure that out. Delicate, but strong fingers that worked softly into aching muscles in his arms, thighs, and calves that he didn’t even realize he had until she worked the knots out. She spent extra time on each of his tattooed fingers. Her touch stayed steady and slow on the skull, black oval, tiny crown, and even the first initial of his family’s name tattooed on his left hand. The number—the year of his birth—on his right hand was probably easier for her to understand.

He couldn’t have told her to stop even if he had wanted to, but the woman had been intent on staying in that shower with him until he told her to leave.

Vas couldn’t form the words.

It’d been a long time since something felt good.

Especially when he was in pain.

“Is this what you need?”

The question sent Vaslav sitting up straight on the steps again to find Vera had come back to the bathroom without him even hearing her footsteps. Outstretched in her hand where he could see, she showed off a small, thin plastic latch box. One shake of her hand, and the pills inside rattled.

“Well,” he settled on saying, the gruffness of his tone belying the fact he still had a lot of pain behind his eyes, “there’ll be something in there, anyway. Bring it to me, kisska. Leave the lights off.”

She did, not reaching for the switch on the wall and instead popping open the little latch box as she crossed the large bathroom. “There’s just a bunch of pills in here, how do you know which is which?”

“Depends on what I want to do, doesn’t it?”

Vera gave him a look as she extended the box to his outstretched hand once she was close enough. At least, she’d changed her wet, oversized t-shirt into a new, dry one.

“Who does that belong to?” he asked her, not bothering to pay attention to the box of pills that could put a serious dent in the scale of his pain depending on which he took.

Or rather, they could make the time pass easier.

“What?” Vera asked.

“That shirt you’re wearing. And the other one.”

“I just ... I don’t know, I found them and threw them on. I didn’t want to bother wasting time looking for—”

“It’s not yours?”

Vera cocked her head to the side a bit, saying, “No.”

And the shirt wasn’t his.

“Go change,” he muttered. “Into something you recognize.”