Chapter 13 - Irina #2
“About as much as you’d expect.” Irina took a larger sip this time, feeling the warmth spread through her chest. “Ilya actually laughed when I told him. Said I could run an aquarium or a beach resort if I really like sea animals that badly.”
“Asshole,” Anka said cheerfully. “They’re all assholes, really. Loveable, protective, infuriating assholes.”
“Including Matvei?”
Anka’s expression grew thoughtful. “Especially Matvei. He’s the worst kind of asshole, the kind who thinks he knows what’s best for everyone and actually has the power to enforce it.”
The words should have stung, should have made Irina defensive. Instead, they settled in her stomach like a cold weight, because she was beginning to suspect they might be true.
“But,” Anka continued, “he’s also the kind of man who would burn the world down for someone he loves. The question is whether you want to be loved like that.”
Before Irina could respond, the music shifted again, this time to something with a Latin rhythm that made her hips want to move. She slid off her stool, surprising herself with her boldness.
“Dance with me,” she said, extending her hand to Anka.
“Now you’re talking,” Anka grinned, abandoning her drink to follow Irina onto the dance floor.
The crowd swallowed them up, a sea of moving bodies and pounding bass that made conversation impossible and thought unnecessary.
Irina let herself get lost in it, in the simple pleasure of moving her body to music, of being anonymous in a crowd, of being just another woman having a good time instead of a Bratva princess or a mob wife or any of the other labels that had been attached to her.
She closed her eyes and let the music take her, her body finding the rhythm instinctively. This was what she’d been missing, she realized, this sense of being fully present in her own skin, of moving through space without constantly calculating the political implications of every gesture.
When she opened her eyes again, she found a man dancing near her, his movements confident and his smile inviting but not aggressive.
He was handsome in a completely ordinary way, with dark hair, nice eyes, the kind of face that wouldn’t look out of place in a business meeting or a coffee shop. Normal. Safe.
The thought sent a pang through her chest because she realized how long it had been since she’d encountered anyone who felt truly safe, truly separate from the dangerous world she’d been born into.
The man leaned closer, saying something she couldn’t hear over the music, and she found herself smiling back, letting him move a little closer, enjoying the simple pleasure of flirtation without consequences.
And then a hand landed on her waist, familiar and possessive, and she knew without looking that her night of freedom had just come to an end.
Matvei appeared beside her like a storm cloud, his presence instantly changing the energy around them. The ordinary man took one look at him and melted back into the crowd, clearly recognizing danger when he saw it, even if he couldn’t identify its exact nature.
“Having fun?” Matvei asked, his voice pitched low enough that only she could hear it, but there was an edge to it that made her spine straighten.
“I was,” she replied, not bothering to hide her irritation. “Until my husband decided to crash the party.”
His hand tightened on her waist, not painfully but possessively, and she could feel the tension radiating from him despite his casual pose. “Your husband was worried when his sister and his wife disappeared without telling anyone where they were going.”
“We’re adults,” she shot back, having to raise her voice to be heard over the music. “We don’t need permission to go out for drinks.”
“In a club owned by the Kozlov family?” His eyes were hard, scanning the crowd with the practiced alertness of a predator. “Did you think about that before you decided to make yourselves targets?”
The name meant nothing to her, but she could see from his expression that it should have. Still, she refused to be cowed. “We can take care of ourselves.”
“Can you?” He moved closer, close enough that she could smell his cologne over the club’s mix of alcohol and bodies and artificial fog. “Because from where I’m standing, it looked like you were about to be very friendly with a stranger who could have been anyone.”
The jealousy in his voice was unmistakable, and despite her anger, it sent a thrill through her. She’d never had anyone be jealous over her before, never had anyone care enough to track her down in a crowded club just because another man had smiled at her.
“Maybe I wanted to be friendly,” she said, the words coming out more provocative than she’d intended. “Maybe I wanted to remember what it felt like to talk to someone who didn’t see me as a chess piece or a problem to be managed.”
His eyes flashed, and for a moment, she thought he might drag her out of there by force. Instead, he stepped even closer, his body pressing against hers in a way that was unmistakably territorial.
“Dance with me,” he said, and it wasn’t a request.
She should have refused, should have asserted her independence, and walked away. Instead, she found herself melting into him, her body responding to his nearness in ways that had nothing to do with rational thought.
They moved together with an ease that surprised her, his hands on her hips guiding her movements, their bodies finding a rhythm that was both public enough for the dance floor and intimate enough to make her breath catch.
The music seemed to fade into background noise, everything else disappearing except the heat of his body against hers and the way he was looking at her like she was the only person in the room.
“You’re angry with me,” he said, his mouth close to her ear.
“I’m angry with myself,” she replied honestly. “For letting you make me feel guilty about having a good time.”
His hands stilled on her hips. “That wasn’t my intention.”
“Wasn’t it?” She pulled back enough to look at him, seeing her reflection in his golden-brown eyes.
“You didn’t come here because you were worried about rival families or security risks.
You came here because you couldn’t stand the thought of me being somewhere without you, having fun without your permission. ”
The words hung between them, honest and cutting, and she watched him struggle with them.
Part of her wanted to take them back, to smooth things over and go back to the careful peace they’d built.
But a larger part of her needed to say them, needed to push against the boundaries he kept trying to set around her life.
“You’re right,” he said finally, and the admission was so unexpected that she nearly stumbled in his arms. “I hated the thought of you being here without me. I hated that someone else was making you smile. I hated that Anka knew something about what you needed that I didn’t.”
His honesty disarmed her more effectively than any argument could have. “Matvei...”
“I know it’s not fair,” he continued, his voice rough with something that might have been guilt or frustration or desire.
“I know you’re not actually mine to control, despite what our marriage certificate says.
But when I realized you were gone, when I couldn’t find you. ..” He trailed off, shaking his head.
“What?” she prompted, her anger beginning to fade into something else entirely.
“I felt like I was losing my mind,” he admitted. “And that scared me more than any rival family ever could.”
The vulnerability in his voice made her chest ache.
This was the problem with Matvei, just when she was ready to be properly angry with him, to establish some boundaries and assert her independence, he would say something that revealed the man beneath the Bratva leader—the man who was just as lost and confused by what was happening between them as she was.
“I’m not going anywhere,” she said softly, her hands coming up to rest on his chest. “But I need you to understand that I can’t be your prisoner, even if it’s a beautiful prison. I need to feel like I have choices.”
“What if I can’t promise that?” he asked, his hands tightening on her waist. “What if caring about you means I’ll always want to lock you away somewhere safe?”
“Then we’ll figure it out together,” she said. “But you have to try.”
He stared at her for a long moment, something shifting in his expression. Then he leaned down and kissed her, right there on the dance floor with hundreds of people around them, and she forgot why she’d been angry in the first place.
The kiss was desperate and claiming, full of all the things he couldn’t say out loud, and she found herself kissing him back with equal fervor, her hands fisting in his shirt to pull him closer.
Around them, the music pounded and the lights flashed and the crowd moved, but all of that faded into irrelevance.
When they finally broke apart, both breathing hard, she could see something had changed in his eyes. There was still possessiveness there, still that territorial gleam that made her pulse quicken, but there was something else too, a kind of wonder, as if he couldn’t quite believe she was real.
“We should go home,” he said, his voice rough with want.
“We should,” she agreed, but neither of them moved.
Instead, they stood there in the middle of the dance floor, wrapped around each other, letting the music wash over them while they tried to memorize the moment.
Because somehow, despite everything that had brought them together, despite all the complications and contradictions and impossibilities, this felt like the beginning of something real.