Katerina
The club is nothing like I expect.
I’ve never been inside an American club, not a real one, but I have seen enough films to imagine flashing lights, drunk girls screaming over music, men shouting into each other’s ears, the whole room designed to make everyone look younger, louder, and more foolish than they are.
This place is darker than that.
Older, too, though I can tell at once that nothing in it is old by accident.
The walls are black lacquer and smoked mirror.
The ceiling is low over the bar, then opens into a high, shadowed space where chandeliers hang like cages of gold light.
Music moves through the room with a deep, steady pulse, not frantic, not cheerful.
People do not dance as if they are trying to be seen.
They dance as if being watched is part of the transaction.
Women in silk dresses lean over small round tables with men in dark suits.
Cigarette smoke drifts from a private room somewhere beyond the main floor, though I’m almost certain smoking is not allowed.
No one looks drunk, exactly. They look expensive and alert, which is somehow much more intimidating.
Roman seems completely at home.
He keeps one hand on the small of my back as we move through the club, not pushing, not displaying me, only making it very clear to anyone looking that I’m with him.
The crowd changes around us as we pass. Men shift aside before he reaches them.
Women glance up from their drinks. A few people smile, but carefully, the way Elena smiles.
I lean closer to him. “Do people always move for you like that?”
He looks down at me. “Only the sensible ones.”
“That’s not reassuring,” I say.
“It was not meant to be.” He raises a brow.
I can’t help but stare at him. This is probably insane. I’ve known this guy for forty-eight hours, but he already has my stomach doing cartwheels.
I can’t be falling for him. It’s too early for that, absolutely crazy.
So, I shake myself out of the thought. Just because he fucked me that good doesn’t mean he’s my prince charming.
And no, I don’t want to think about our dance earlier today.
There was nothing lustful about that, only tenderness, raw and aching.
Get a grip on yourself, lady, I think to myself. I’m Katerina Markova, not a desperate hoe. I deserve better than this.
I should be more nervous, but the music is warm under my skin, and the evening has already done something strange to me.
Dinner had been beautiful. The city lights had blurred past the windows.
Roman had been quieter after one of his calls, but not distant.
Whenever I looked at him, he looked back as if the room, the road, the city, all of it was less important than my face.
So, when he leads me to the edge of the dance floor, I let him.
“You dance in clubs too?” I ask.
“When required.”
“Am I requiring you?”
His mouth curves. “You’re difficult to refuse.” That should sound practiced, but it does not. Roman says it like the admission annoys me.
I like that far too much.
The music changes, slower now, with a heavy beat that seems to climb through the floor and into my body.
Roman takes my coat from my shoulders and hands it to one of his men without looking away from me.
The black dress beneath is closer to my body than anything I would have chosen for myself before yesterday.
It’s elegant, yes, long-sleeved and high enough at the neck to be respectable, but the fabric follows every curve, and Roman notices.
His gaze moves over me once. Only once.
It’s enough to make me forget how to breathe.
“Come here,” he says.
He draws me into the music as if the dance has already begun and I’m the only one late to it.
His hand settles at my waist. My palm rests against his chest. We do not dance like the couples around us, not really.
There is less performance in it. Less room.
Roman keeps me close, guiding me with small movements, his thigh brushing mine, his body warm through the fine fabric of his suit.
I should feel awkward.
Instead, I feel dangerously graceful.
With Lev, dancing had always been a public duty. His hand on my back, his smile turned outward, his attention drifting toward whoever mattered more in the room. I knew the steps. I knew where to place my hands. I knew how to look pretty beside him without demanding too much space.
But Roman dances with me.
He watches my face when he turns me. He notices when I hesitate. He adjusts before I can stumble. Once, when the music dips lower, his hand slides a little farther around my waist, and I feel the pressure of his fingers through the dress as if he has touched bare skin.
“Stop looking at me like that,” I say.
“Like what?”
“Like you know what I’m thinking.”
“I often do.”
“You absolutely do not.”
His head lowers a little, his mouth near my ear. “You’re thinking this dress was a mistake.”
My pulse jumps. “Wrong,” I say.
“No?”
“I’m thinking Elena has excellent taste for a woman who hates me.”
Roman laughs quietly, and the sound goes through me better than the music. “She does not hate you.”
“She looked at me like I had been dragged in on someone’s shoe.”
“She hates surprises.”
“Then she must adore you.”
His eyes warm with amusement, but before he can answer, his phone vibrates.
The change in him is immediate.
He glances at the screen. “I have to take the meeting.”
I knew it was coming. But I feel disappointed anyway.
“Now?”
“Yes.”
I try to pull my hand from his. “Then go.”
He does not release me.
Instead, he leads me off the dance floor, through the darker edge of the club, toward a table set into a curved alcove.
It gives a clear view of the main room but sits far enough from the crowd that no one can approach casually.
A man I recognize from outside the apartment stands nearby.
Another one appears near the bar, pretending great interest in his drink.
Roman pulls out the chair for me.
“I can sit by myself,” I say.
“You can do many things. Sit.”
I roll my eyes but sit.
He leans down, one hand on the back of my chair, his face close enough that his cologne cuts through the smell of smoke and perfume around us.
“You stay here.”
“I’m not a dog.”
“No. A dog would obey faster.”
I glare at him. “You’re very close to ruining all the charm you built up during dinner.”
“I will risk it.”
“Where are you going?”
“Upstairs.”
I glance toward the balcony level above us. It’s darker there, guarded by two men near a velvet rope. Private rooms line the upper floor, their doors half-hidden behind bronze screens.
“For how long?”
“Not long.”
“Roman.”
His gaze holds mine. “I mean it. This is not a place to explore alone.”
The seriousness in his voice takes some of the argument out of me.
“Fine,” I say. “I will sit here like expensive luggage.”
His mouth shifts. “You’re much more trouble than luggage.”
“And yet, here I am.”
“Yes,” he says, and his gaze drops to my mouth for one dangerous second. “Here you are.”
Then he straightens and walks away.
I watch him cross the club. People notice him without making it obvious. One man stands before Roman reaches the stairs. Another opens the rope. Roman does not look back.
I hate that I want him to.
Once he disappears upstairs, I try to enjoy being alone.
That lasts about four minutes.
A waiter brings sparkling water and a plate of small things I do not recognize but immediately decide to trust because Roman is bossy about food in a way that has worked out well for me so far. I pick at them and watch the club.
It’s fascinating when I stop feeling out of place long enough to look properly.
The women are different here. Not freer, exactly. More deliberate.
A brunette in a silver dress sits on a man’s lap near the bar, but she’s the one watching the room, not him. Two women by the dance floor speak to each other behind their hands while staring at a table of men with the cool assessment of buyers at an auction.
The men are worse.
Some try too hard to look dangerous. Those are easy to spot.
They sit with their legs spread, their watches visible, their voices loud enough to prove they are not afraid.
The truly dangerous ones are quieter. They are the men no one interrupts.
The men servers approach from the side. The men who look bored until they are not.
Roman belongs to the second kind.
I take a sip of water and tell myself that’s fine.
I already know he’s dangerous.
After a while, I need the washroom.
I look toward the stairs.
Roman is still gone.
His man near the wall glances at me when I stand. I give him a polite smile and point vaguely toward the sign near the back corridor. He looks like he wants to object, then seems to decide no reasonable adult woman can get into trouble walking twenty feet to a bathroom.
Poor man.
The downstairs washroom is terrible.
Not dirty in the normal sense, exactly. The counters are marble, the mirrors are gold-framed, and the lighting is flattering.
But one sink is wet, one stall has a broken latch, and there is a strong perfume smell failing heroically to cover smoke, spilled liquor, and something chemical.
Two women stand at the mirror touching up lipstick while pretending not to cry.
Another sits on the counter texting with the dead-eyed concentration of a person making a bad decision.
I take one look at the line and regret having a body with needs.
A blonde woman beside the sink catches my eye through the mirror.
“You’re not from here,” she says in English.
The accent is American.
I blink, surprised by the familiar language. “Is it that obvious?”
She smiles. She’s pretty in a sharp, glossy way, with a short black dress, a fur jacket slipping off one shoulder, and eyeliner precise enough to frighten me.
“A little. Also, you looked personally betrayed by the bathroom.”
“I was promised luxury by the rest of the building.”
“Yeah, downstairs is for everyone. Upstairs has the good one.”