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Another ghost of a laugh. It didn’t reach his mouth, but it lived in his eyes. Slowly he pushed off the glass and turned to face me. His chest rose against mine, damp skin to damp skin, nothing frantic left in him now, just the heavy, quiet afterburn between us.

His hands came up to my shoulders, sliding down my arms until he laced our fingers together. His pulse was still quick, but steadying.

“Yuriy…” The way he said my name—it wasn’t a warning, wasn’t frustration, wasn’t even desire anymore.

It was something that scared me more.

I lifted one hand, cupping his jaw. His eyes fluttered shut for a heartbeat.

“What is it?”

“I’m afraid for you,” he whispered. “My men⁠—”

I placed a finger over his lips. “I’m not that easy to kill, remember?”

“But—”

“Just promise me one thing.”

“What?”

“If I die, you’ll make whoever is responsible suffer.”

He tightened his hands on me, and panic streaked across his face. “I gave the warning. No one is supposed to touch you.”

But he and I knew there was no way he could prevent it if any of his men decided they’d had enough of me corrupting their pakhan.

“That’s the only thing I want from you,” I said quietly. “No speeches. No flowers. No fucking mercy. If someone takes me from you, you make them wish they’d never been born.”

“That’s what you want from me?” he asked.

“That’s what I expect from you. Otherwise, what’s the point of dating a pakhan?”

A muscle ticked in his jaw. He clenched his fingers around mine just enough to border on pain.

“If anyone touches you,” he said, voice low and steady, “they won’t just suffer. They’ll wish they were never born.”

He held my gaze, unblinking.

“I’ll start with whoever gave the order. Then the ones who carried it out. Then their families. Their businesses. Their safe houses. I will erase them, Yuriy. Not quickly. Not kindly.” He brushed over my knuckles, almost tender. “I won’t stop until there is nothing left of whoever dares to touch what’s mine.”

My heart did a slow, dangerous roll in my chest.

“Oh, see, that’s the kind of reassurance a man needs in the morning. Save the diamonds and the fancy restaurants. All I want is a man who’ll get blood on his hands for me.”

“Of course,” he said simply. “You don’t even have to ask.”

I swallowed around the sudden tightness in my throat. “Good. Because I’d do the same for you in a heartbeat.”

28

STAS

“Yuriy, I said no. You’re not coming with me.”

He didn’t even glance my way. Just kept buttoning his shirt—crooked the first time because he was in too much of a rush to prove a point—then irritatedly fixing it while throwing me a glare.

Yuriy Orlov, in full defiance, was a natural disaster. Loud, dramatic, impossible to ignore. So loud, so dramatic that even my men, who’d survived everything from street wars to federal raids, found the floor or the ceiling or their own shoes absolutely fascinating.