Page 13 of Vicious Betrayal

"It is a big deal." I turn around and she's sitting up now, sheet pulled to her chest, watching me with an expression that borders on hurt.

I've done a lot of things I've had to make peace with. I've hurt people, taken money for hurting people, committed a near-endless list of crimes. I've never once, not one time in twenty-two years of no strings, no names, and no mornings after, woken up next to someone and felt like I'd done something I couldn't undo.

But I do this morning. I feel like I've made a mistake, like I've done something wrong with another person's body, and it makes me feel like shit… even as I want to crawl back in bed with her and do it all over again.

"It doesn't have to be," she says. "I wanted it. I still want it."

"That's not the point." I drag a hand down my face. "You're twenty years old."

She glares at me. "I know how old I am."

"You're half my age." I shake my head. "That's a whole other life, Oksana. You were in high school when I was already—" I stop myself. She doesn't need the rest of that sentence. Neither do I.

She's quiet for a second, and I can see her deciding whether to push or not. Something about the way she watches me tells me she's already read most of what I'm feeling and doesn't like it. I've never had a woman see me that well, and I'm not sure I like it, either.

Especially one so young and naive.

"This can't happen again," I say firmly.

She swallows, and I see that flash of hurt again before she banishes it. Her voice goes hard and flat, too. "Okay. Fine."

"I mean it."

"I heard you the first time." She climbs out of the bed, gathering her dress off the floor where it landed last night. The set of her shoulders tells me she's angrier than she's letting the words show. "You don't have to say it twice."

This isn't how I wanted to part ways, but I don't know how else I expected it to go. She's young and her feelings are easily hurt, one of many reasons I should never have done this in the first place. I should just feel relieved that she's not continuing to fight me on it, stubborn as she is, but I just feel worse than I did before. Not only did I do something inappropriate, but now I've hurt her on top of it. I stand there watching her get dressed after the best night I've had in longer than I want to admit, and all I feel is sick with myself—the specific kind of sick that comes from knowing exactly what you did and why it was wrong, and doing it anyway.

"I'll call you an Uber," I say.

"Sure." She doesn't look at me while she fixes her hair with her fingers. "Great."

I go out to the kitchen and pull up the app on my phone. She puts the address in when she comes out, and she still looks so fucking beautiful that it makes my chest ache. I'm still hard.

"Ten minutes," I tell her.

"Great," she says again. There's an edge to the word this time that she doesn't bother hiding.

We stand in my kitchen not talking. The refrigerator hums. Somewhere outside a car alarm goes off and stops. I think about saying something else—that it's not about her, that she did nothing wrong, and if she were ten years older I wouldn't be standing here feeling like this. But every version of that sentence sounds worse out loud than it does in my head, so I say nothing. She says nothing, either, and when the cab pulls up outside she goes to the door without waiting for me to walk her to it.

"Oksana."

She stops with her hand on the knob, but doesn't turn around.

"Get home safe."

For a second I think she's not going to answer. Then she shrugs. "I always do."

I watch from the window as the car pulls away from the curb, and I stand there a long time after it's out of sight.

—

The day doesn't get easier from there.

I go into the club at noon to check on things after last night, go over how the lines were handled, and if there were any security gaps that we need to address. None of it holds my attention the way it should. Twice I catch myself standing in the middle of a conversation with Marek thinking about the sounds Oksana made when I had her against the desk in the office, and both times I have to drag myself back and ask him to repeat what he just said.

By six I'm done pretending I'm useful, and I text Rian, one of the other top enforcers and a friend close enough that I consider him a brother. If there's anyone I want to hang out with while I'm in this current mood, it's him.

Cormac: Drink?