24. Aleksandr
CHAPTER 24
Aleksandr
“ S he needs protection.”
“Fine, then send some of our men. You don’t need to be there,” Anya says to me a week later. Cinita woke up from her coma two days ago and is coming down from the drugs. She’s promising anyone and everyone anything they want in hopes to get her next fix. She’s a fucking mess, just like the last time I saw her in Russia.
“You don’t love her,” Anya says. “You have a savior complex when it comes to her. Write her off, Alek. You owe her nothing.”
I know she’s right, but I don’t say anything else. I don’t love her. That much I know now.
But when I first met her, and she would talk to me—Cinita loves to talk—she would tell me stories about how she was sad. How she had no one. How the foster care system failed her. And how the men who were sworn to protect her did the opposite.
Anya had the same experience with our second foster father, and we returned to his home when we were teenagers to put him in the grave for what he’d done to her when we were children.
Cinita didn’t have anyone; she was alone in the world. She was in the orphanage at the same time as us, and was forgotten. Whereas our foster mother, Meredith Forks, took us in and taught us how to defend ourselves. She was a ruthless old bitch who brought us into her fucked-up world.
Cinita simply dragged herself into it and hasn’t been able to escape since.
We’re alike in that way. Neither of us can resist the urge, but where she struggles against her demons, I’ve become mine.
It’s why she keeps running back to a world that she never should have been a part of.
I later found out it was her foster father who first introduced her to drugs when she was sixteen.
I hated the fact that, as a young man, I couldn’t always protect my sister. But Anya is the only person I know of who doesn’t need protection. She took back what was taken from her, and made herself a lethal woman. She cut men down for sport, used them for sex whenever she felt the need, and lived how she wanted to.
But Cinita has never truly escaped.
I killed her foster father last year, after I saw her dancing for the first time, hoping in some way it would set her free. It didn’t.
Now she sells herself to men who will only use her.
She’s still not willing to give me the name of the man who did this to her, choosing to protect him rather than herself. Is it fear or stupidity? I don’t entirely understand.
“Send my men if it makes you feel better,” Anya says gently after my long silence.
Dark brunette hair catches my eye, and I lick my lips in anticipation. I haven’t seen her for a whole fucking week, and it’s killed me not to touch her or even stand in the same room as her.
“I’ll deal with it,” I say as I hang up on Anya and pocket my phone.
Lena Love.
Fuck.
Her.
And the ballet dancer she works with, what was her name… Julie?
I step into the hallway in front of her, and she stops. Julie looks back and forth between us and then says, “I’m going to check on Cinita. I’ll give you two some time.”
Lena watches her friend as she leaves, then tucks her hair behind her ear and looks down at the floor. She has on a blue sweater, jeans that hug her ass, and a pair of cowboy boots.
I wait for her to say something since she’s ignored all of my calls and texts. Instead, she goes to step around me, but I sidestep into her path.
She glares up at me, agitated.
“We could play this all day,” I tell her.
“You don’t seem to take a hint well,” she fires back, rubbing her hands over her arms, and I wish it was me touching her. This little ray of sunshine somehow has me wanting to touch her. Something I’ve denied myself for most of my life, and for her I want to embrace and feel every inch. I refuse to look into it any further. I know I’m fucked-up. But I can’t deny the yearning I have for her any more than I could stop breathing.
“Not when it comes to you. You might think we’re done, but we’re not.”
She looks at me in disbelief. “Do you really kill people?”
That’s what she wants to ask me after ignoring my calls for a week?
“Sure, why not? Got someone you need dead?”
Her eyes widen in surprise before they narrow. Fuck, I love when they narrow at me.
“No, I’m being serious. Did you really kill Cinita’s foster father?”
I lean in close so I can whisper into her ear. She sucks in a breath, and I savor the hit I get of her floral scent.
“I sliced him from his cock”—I reach out and touch her chin with my gloved hands—
“to here.” I trail my hand to her stomach.
Her gaze doesn’t leave mine, and as I touch her, I notice how the voices and immediate revolt from touching isn’t as bad. It doesn’t cripple me, and I think it’s because I’m so fucking hungry for her. She’s the only thing that’s ever amounted to any bit of peace I’ve had, and it’s terrifying as much as it is unyielding. I need her.
“No. You wouldn’t have,” she says, shaking her head in denial.
She’s mistaken if she thinks I’m a good man.
I want this ray of sunshine to myself. I tried to stay away far too many times .
But I won’t lie or delude her into thinking I’m anything other than what I am.
A killer.
“Whose cock did you think you were sucking?” I ask. Surely, she’d heard enough to know that I’m not a kind man.
She immediately steps away from my touch, and I feel her absence heavier than I’d like to admit.
“Lena, can we talk about this?” I follow her as she heads in the opposite direction of Cinita’s room. She’s walking into a dead-end exit. I know because I made it my business to know every exit in this hospital.
“Funny, talking isn’t really your thing,” she retorts.
“Lena, please .”
It’s the please that has Lena spinning around with her finger pointed in my face, seething rage in my direction.
“Will you just let me leave? You run off on me, and now you try to block me from leaving? Talk about back and forth.”
Before I can stop myself, I step forward, palm the back of her head, and slam my lips to hers. At first, she tries to push me away, then her lips melt against mine.
She tastes like all the right decisions and everything I shouldn’ t be drawn to.
She’s the light to my darkness, something I want to keep drinking in for days.
It’s selfish for someone like me to want her. But I can’t get her out of my thoughts or my system.
I might not be good with words, but I can express that much this way.
Her nails dig into my chest as she opens up to me, and a small whimper escapes her.
She’s the calm to my raging mind. The thoughts are silent. My hands only want to trace every line of her body.
I need her like my next meal, and I’ve been starved this last week.
Pulling back, I stare at her, and she takes a deep, startled breath.
There are so many emotions in her eyes, none of which I understand. But one thing I do know is she wants me just as much as I want her.
“Come home with me.”
“No,” she answers with swollen lips. “Cinita is waiting for you.” She pushes past me.
My jaw tightens as she’s quick to stride by a nurse and toward Cinita’s room.
It’s not Cinita I want.