29. Kane
KANE
I shouldn’t have said that.
They never gave her a place to sit.
Lilah looks from me to the photograph behind my shoulder. Everyone else at the table keeps eating, but I can tell exactly who heard by the looks on their faces.
Niko has gone silent beside us. Anton pauses near the kitchen door. Two of my oldest captains become very occupied by their plates.
I have spent decades refusing to explain my mother to these men.
They know the broad, chalked-in outlines of the story.
They know Semyon Makov discarded her. They know she died with almost nothing. They know I visit her grave every Sunday morning and punish anyone stupid enough to mention it without permission.
But they never heard the rest from me.
They don’t know what it’s like to be haunted by a ghost story—and then see that ghost come to life.
Because that’s how Lilah looks to me right now.
When she circled the table with serving dishes in her hands, offering help to whoever needed it—I saw my mother in every step.
It’s only now that I realize what I’ve been trying to do.
Some deep, dark part of me thought, If I bring her here, into the same spaces she used to inhabit, I can rewrite the ending.
That’s why I ensured she had the place of honor.
Does it actually change anything?
Fuck no.
But you can’t blame a man for trying.
“Kane?” Lilah asks.
I turn my hand over and link our fingers beneath the edge of the table. “Eat.”
Her eyebrows draw together. She wants more of an answer.
She will not get it here.
“Trust me,” I add with a hint of a smile to encourage her. “If you don’t, Niko will start stealing from your plate.”
On her other side, Niko gasps in mock horror. “I reject this vicious attack on my character!”
Lilah glances at my brother, then at me. She understands the retreat I’m offering and allows it.
For now.
She takes another bite.
Only then do I release her hand.
I watch her throughout the meal. She’s happy, eating freely, chatting with everyone within conversational distance.
The meal goes long. It’s a house full of Russians who live to one-up each other and bust each other’s balls.
And to drink, of course.
Vodka and wine get poured, and the little ones consume enough sparkling grape juice to render an elephant comatose.
And gradually, effortlessly, my family closes around Delilah Dorsey.
Between his third and fourth plates, Niko keeps sneaking glances at my hand resting on Lilah’s thigh. “We should establish a rule,” he announces as the liquor starts to affect him. “Poppy-seed rolls at every Makov gathering from now until death.”
“And honey cake!” Yuri declares.
Anton holds out a finger. “Cookies, too.”
Niko looks at Lilah. “Do you take standing orders?”
She looks delighted despite herself, although maybe a bit overwhelmed by all the attention. “The bakery accepts most legal forms of payment. And, for a small extra fee, some illegal ones, too.”
“That’s our baker,” someone declares confidently.
Someone else takes it up in agreement, and then another, and another, until everyone at the table has agreed that yes, Delilah is our baker, and not one living soul who calls themselves a member of the Makov Bratva will ever patronize another bakery or sweet shop ever again.
Our baker.
My father used to say that for all the people he owned. Our driver. Our maid. Our cook. He reduced a person to what they could do for him, and then, when their usefulness ended, he tossed them aside.
The men and women at my table mean the opposite. They claim responsibility. If Lilah is ours, then her enemies become ours. Her safety becomes ours. Her victories give everyone in this room a reason to celebrate.
She can’t hear the difference yet.
But she will.
Dessert is done and the plates are stacked and I’ve had exactly enough vodka to be dangerous when Lilah stands up and says the last of the pirozhki she brought have to be cooked.
“There’s a mountain of food left,” I tell her. “We’ll be fine without.”
“The dough’s already proofed,” she replies. “If I don’t cook it tonight, it goes in the trash, and I did not carry a tub of dough the size of a toddler across two boroughs to throw it away.”
Two of the men offer to help her.
I tell them no. Not harshly. I just say their names and shake my head, and they very quickly find somewhere else to be.
“I’ll join,” I say instead.
I follow her into the warm kitchen.
Lilah pulls an apron off the hook and ties it over her dress, then dumps flour onto the counter and pulls the dough out of the tub.
She turns the dough out. Presses the heels of her hands into it.
I lean against the range and watch.
Her palms flatten it. Her fingers gather the edges and fold them in, over, under, quick and certain. There’s flour on her forearms and a smear of it high on her hip where she’s braced herself against the counter.
Her hips shift as she works. Left, right. Weight into the counter and back.
I could stand here until morning.
She looks up and catches me. “Are you going to contribute, or are you just supervising?”
“You’re folding it wrong.”
Her hands stop. “Are you aware that I literally do this for a living?”
“Mm,” I agree, “but you don’t have that Russian blood in you to guide your hands properly. Let me show you how it’s done.”
“By all means, Chef Makov,” she says sarcastically.
She starts to back away, but I push off the range and come around behind her before she can escape. I box her in, my chest against her back, pressed together.
I slide my hands over hers. Her fingers are dusted white and cool from the dough. I fold them down and take her through the same motion she was doing thirty seconds ago — gather, fold, press, turn.
“This,” she mumbles, “is exactly what I was doing.”
I put my mouth close to her ear.
“Then you should find it very easy to follow along.”
She knows this is bullshit.
So do I.
But then she does something I don’t expect, something that makes my whole body pull tight:
She leans back into me.
Her hips press into mine, her ass full and perfect. She tips her head back just enough that her hair brushes my throat.
I have been shot at. I’ve had a knife go into my side in a parking garage in Bensonhurst. Nothing has ever tested me the way this woman is testing me in a kitchen while forty of my people laugh in the next room.
“Was that one better?” she asks in a husky murmur.
“Marginally.”
“Oh, how I live for your approval.”
She cuts the dough. Rolls the pieces. Fills them and crimps them shut with a twist at the end. The longer we stay flush from head to toe, the more she starts to grind against me, just the tiniest little bit.
“Careful,” I warn. “Disobedience is not a good trait in a student.”
“Maybe the teacher is distracting me.”
Then the filling slips and smears across the pad of her index finger. “How’s this for a distraction?” I ask.
I catch her wrist. She turns toward me and watches as my mouth closes around her finger. Salt touches my tongue first. Then cheese. Then her skin.
Our eyes are locked on each other. Nothing else exists but her, filtered through every one of my senses.
The taste of her skin on my tongue.
The whisper of her breath.
The softness of her body.
The scent of flour.
The perfect Cupid’s bow of her slightly parted lips.
Then Niko walks into the kitchen.
He takes one uncooked pirozhok from the tray.
“I saw nothing,” he says, “which is heroic considering how much there was to see.”
Lilah snatches the dish towel and throws it at his head.
Niko ducks, grinning, and escapes with the pastry.
“He cannot eat that raw,” she warns as the tension of the moment bleeds away.
“I assure you, he’s put much worse things in his mouth and lived to tell the tale.”
Niko sticks his head back in. “I heard that,” he says acidly. Then he smiles. “By the way, it’s family photo time. I was sent to make sure you two didn’t miss it.”
I look at Lilah and smirk. “I’ll give you a moment to clean up.”
Then I casually walk out, leaving her flushed and still breathing hard behind me.
I want to be pissed at my brother. But it’s probably for the best that he came in when he did.
If he hadn’t, then by the time I was finished with Liilah, there’s no way that those pirozhki would have been sanitary to eat.
Niko is directing traffic as I emerge. “Crotch goblins in the front, old fogies in the back!” he calls out, which earns him several middle fingers from both the older and younger members of the party.
Little by little, we all crowd into place. I take the center chair, as tradition demands, but my eyes scan the crowd again and again.
Until, finally, she arrives.
Lilah enters last after washing the flour from her hands. She scans the group, calculates, and begins edging toward an open spot in the back row.
She expects to disappear behind someone.
I expected that.
“Lilah,” I say. It’s quiet, but my voice carries. “Come here.”
“There’s nowhere to sit,” she says.
I pat my thigh.
Forty people wait to see what she’ll do.
Every conversation in the room dies.
Lilah stares at my thigh. “No way.”
I nod.
“Kane, there are children present.”
“They’ve seen laps.”
Niko cups his hands around his mouth. “For the record, I support women’s right to choose chairs.”
“Keep chirping,” I tell him, “and you’ll be photographed in a coffin.”
The room laughs, but Lilah does not. Pink climbs from her chest into her cheeks, and fuck, that’s a good look on her.
“There’s space behind Vera,” she says.
“There’s space here.”
“You are enjoying this.”
“Immensely.”
Her eyes narrow. Then she crosses the room with her mouth screwed up tight. Everyone suddenly finds something else to be interested in.
She gathers her skirt, then slowly lowers herself onto my leg with most of her weight held away from me.
Ridiculous.
I hook an arm around her waist and pull her fully down.
“Comfortable?” I murmur.
“No.”
“Pity. I am.”
Her hand clamps down on my shoulder for balance. Beneath the silk, her body is warm and lush against me. The room returns to motion in cautious increments.
Niko positions the camera and prepares to hit the self-timer button. “Try to look less like you’re negotiating a hostage release.”
“I am a hostage,” Lilah mumbles.
I move my hand from Lilah’s waist to her hip. Her body shifts against me, and my cock hardens beneath her ass.
She feels it and gasps, just as Niko calls for us to look forward.
I don’t.
At the flash, Lilah is glaring at me, her mouth fighting a smile. I am looking at her like the rest of the room has ceased to exist.
For me, it has.
She slips out toward the kitchen as soon as the photos are done.
I give her thirty seconds.
Then I follow.
She’s standing at the sink with her hands braced on the edge of it. When she hears me come in, she speaks without turning around.
“That wasn’t funny,” she snaps.
She turns. There’s flour on the front of the apron and her hair is coming down out of its arrangement. Her mouth is set in a hard line that isn’t fooling either of us.
“Is everything you do designed to make me lose my balance?”
“Only because I like what you do when you fall toward me.”
Her eyes flash again, and I lose the last thin thread of restraint I have been pretending is moral character rather than fear of scandal in my mother’s old kitchen.
I catch Lilah by the waist and yank her forward.
This kiss has none of the uncertainty of New Year’s. She opens for me at once. She takes my bottom lip between her teeth and pulls. I put both hands on her body because she has spent too many years hiding it and I intend to teach her better.
I grip her hips. I take her ass in both hands. I move up her waist and feel every soft inch the dress displays.
She drags my mouth to her throat.
“Kane.”
I lift her against the wall.
Lilah locks one leg around my hips and pulls me between her thighs. Her dress rises. My hand reaches bare skin above her stocking.
“Fuck, you taste good,” I growl into her mouth.
I push my hand higher beneath her dress. She opens her thighs. I touch lace and heat, and she moans.
I can have her here.
She wants me.
I have waited since the first night in her pantry to hear her admit it.
So why the fuck am I stopping?
I take my hand out from under her dress and set her down on her feet. I hold her elbow until I’m sure she has her balance, and then I step back one full step, which is the hardest thing I’ve done in ten years.
“What?” she says. Her chest is moving fast. “What did I do?”
“Nothing.”
“Then why did you stop?”
I don’t have a clean answer for her. I asked for this out of my own desires, never once giving a fuck what she wanted. I forced her hand at every turn.
And now she’s against my wall with her dress up, breathing like that. How the fuck am I supposed to trust that it’s real?
What if she’s only agreeing to this because I gave her nothing else to agree to?
I won’t collect a debt.
Not from her.
Not like this.
“Kane.” She’s tugging her dress down. Her face is closing up. “If this is the part where you tell me it was a mistake—”
“It wasn’t a mistake.”
“Then what?”
I look at her. Flour on the apron. Hair loose and beautiful around her cheeks. Mouth swollen from mine.
“You don’t owe me this,” I say.
Immediately, her eyes start to fill with hurt tears.
Fuck, this isn’t going how I wanted. She’s not understanding.
“Stop.” I catch her jaw. “You did nothing wrong. Not one thing. Look at me.” Her eyes come up, wet and shining. “You think I stopped because I don’t want you. I stopped because I do.”
“That makes no sense.”
I press my forehead against hers and hold it there.
“When I have you, Lilah, you will know it has nothing to do with what you owe me.”
She opens her mouth to answer.
I step back before she can, and take the envelope out of the inside pocket of my coat.
“Now, come with me,” I tell her. “I got you another gift.”