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Sasha

The Morettis have a nice club, I’ll give them that. Gilt sits right on Sunset. Black marble, gold everything, low lights, music with way too much bass for my liking. The place is packed with the LA crowd. Influencers who film their drinks before they taste them, actors nobody has heard of, producers in linen shirts open to their bellybuttons. Everybody here wants to be seen. I want to be back home in Santa Cruz.

I’m in the back booth with Enzo Ricci, one of Dario Moretti’s lieutenants, and we’ve been done talking business for half an hour. My containers come through San Pedro; his trucks pick them up, everybody gets paid. Easy. The jet leaves Van Nuys at nine tomorrow morning, and I’ll be home by lunch, where the air smells like salt instead of money and nobody wears sunglasses inside at midnight.

But Enzo won’t fucking let me leave. This motherfucker just keeps waving at the waitresses for another round I didn’t ask for.

“One drink, Maksimov. Celebrate with me.”

“I don’t celebrate.”

“Everybody celebrates.”

Misha snorts next to me. My right hand for twelve years, and he still thinks it’s funny when people try to make me do shit.

I’m reaching for my phone to tell the driver to pull the car around when she walks up to our table…

And I fucking freeze.

She’s tall in her little black heels, and thick every fucking where. Fucking everywhere. The club makes the girls wear a white button-down and a short black skirt, and it was not made for a body like hers. That shirt is fighting for its life across her big, round tits. One button in the middle is hanging on by a thread, and I’m praying to God it loses. Her waist dips in soft and then her hips spread out wide, and the skirt clings to them and to her juicy ass and stops high on the thickest thighs I’ve ever seen. The kind of thighs a man wants wrapped around his head while he eats until he passes out. Her skin is a deep, rich brown that glows under the gold lights. Her braids are piled up on top of her head in a big knot with a few loose ones falling down her neck. Big brown eyes, a cute little nose, and full lips shiny with gloss. Gorgeous. Fucking stunning. And tired as hell. I can see it in the way she’s smiling with her mouth but not her eyes, and the way she keeps shifting her weight from one foot to the other.

Her name tag says DYLAN.

Dylan.

My cock is suddenly very fucking interested in this conversation. And then a thought slams into my head out of nowhere, one I have never had in all my forty-two years on this earth.

I want to get her pregnant.

Not just fuck her. Fuck her, yes. Obviously. All night, every night. But then keep going until her belly is round with my kid and every motherfucker who looks at her knows exactly who she belongs to.

What the actual fuck, Sasha?!…

“Hey, y’all. Sorry about the wait, it’s crazy tonight.” Her voice is low and a little raspy, and it goes straight to my balls. “What can I get you?”

Enzo orders a Negroni and talks to her tits the whole time. I’m gonna remember that.

She turns to me. “And you?”

“What’s good?”

She hesitates for a second. I can see her deciding whether to give me the club answer. Then she leans in a little and lowers her voice. “Honestly? Whatever’s quickest. Kevin’s on the bar tonight and he’s making old fashioneds like he’s defusing a bomb.”

Misha laughs out loud. I grin at her, and she blinks like she wasn’t expecting that from me.

“Macallan eighteen. Neat.”

“See, that I can do fast.” She points her pen at me. “Good choice.”

She walks away and I watch that ass the entire fucking time. The skirt rides up a little with every step. When I finally turn back to the table, Misha is staring at me with his eyebrows in his hairline.

“What?”

He raises his hands, palms up, grinning like an idiot. “Nothing.”

“Say it.”