Chapter 3
Lev
Mornings are for men with respectable jobs, weak coffee, and wives who ask irritating questions about school runs. My life usually starts later. Cleaner. Bloodier. More honest.
Yet here I am at eight-fifteen in the fucking morning, parked half a street down from a Kensington terrace with a flat white going cold in the cupholder, staring up at woman’s flat window like I’ve got nothing better to do.
If I want a woman, I take her back to her place, put her on her knees, get bored halfway through her pretending she is not impressed, then forget her name as I unload and walk out.
Satisfying? No. It’s why I stopped doing that about three months ago. It’s about as boring as missionary with the light off.
But this Varvara Krestova, a twenty-eight-year-old hostess whose information was too easy to find, has caught my attention, and I’m not sure what to do about it. My first problem is that I already know too much.
Born in London to Russian parents who kept one foot near our world and one foot very deliberately out of it.
Only child. Mother has been dead for four years.
Father is alive and remarried, an accountant, owns a practice up north with an impressive talent for filing taxes on time and staying forgettable.
Current employment at one of Baron’s clubs because London rent likes to put its boot on your throat and keep it there.
No boyfriend listed anywhere obvious. No public social media worth a damn. Rent paid every month. A small overdraft she dips into and out of with grim regularity. No criminal record. No addictions.
My second problem is that knowing all that has not made me less interested.
I take a sip of coffee and immediately regret it. Cold. Bitter. Pointless. I set it back in the cupholder and keep my eyes on the building.
The black front door opens.
It gets all of my attention.
She steps out in running clothes, her dark hair pinned up, her tits encased in a tight black sports bra, peach arse covered by cropped leggings.
She puts her earbuds in and sets off. I watch her for a few seconds and then get out of the black Ferrari I’ve been sitting in all night.
Lucky for her, I went home to change into sweats and a tee before I pulled my all-night stalking event.
I slam the door shut and set off, keeping a reasonable distance behind her.
She runs like she is trying to outrun the entire state of her life.
No lazy pace. No stopping to admire pretty houses or stretch at corners.
She eats pavement with the kind of determination I respect in a person and distrust in an enemy.
Her shoulders stay tight. Her head stays up.
Every few seconds, she checks the reflections in parked cars or shopfront glass without making it obvious.
It means she’s cautious.
It also means she might notice me if I get sloppy, which would be embarrassing for both of us.
I keep back and let two dog walkers and one miserable man in a suit act as cover while we cut through streets that get steadily greener and more expensive.
Kensington at this hour is all polished windows and people pretending the world is civilised before nine.
Nannies push prams. A cyclist nearly kills himself trying to beat a light.
Delivery vans choke up the road. Nobody looks at her twice.
I do.
Constantly.
It would be easier if she were less attractive in daylight. Last night she had club lighting and attitude. This morning, she has flushed skin, no make-up, a black sports bra that makes a liar out of every saint in England, and that same expression of annoyance, even when she is only running.
I should go and do the job Baron actually gave me.
I don’t.
Fuck me, but I don’t.
There is something about this woman that has flipped a switch, and I can’t unflip it, no matter how hard I try.
Even when I tell myself she would be horrified by me, by what I do, what I enjoy, it still doesn’t make me turn around, head back to my car and hunt down Nathaniel Mercer.
She pauses on a corner as the light changes and jogs in place to keep her timing.
Then, she spins around and gives me the most furious glare I’ve ever seen aimed at me, and that is high praise.
“Why are you following me?” she says.
I stop and look past myself, like she must mean some other poor bastard out for a morning jog.
Then I point at my chest. “Me?”
She yanks one earbud out and gives me a look that could strip paint. “Don’t take the piss. You’ve been behind me for six streets.”
Caught. Annoyingly quickly.
Paranoid or not just a hostess?
Unfortunately for her and me, the level of intrigue in this woman shoots up into the stratosphere.
I glance down at myself. Dark grey joggers. Black tee. Trainers that have seen less exercise than murder. “Maybe we just share a route.”
“Maybe you’re full of shit.”
A laugh tries to break out of me. I let a bit of it. “You always this friendly before nine?”
She plants her hands on her hips and breathes hard through her nose as she rotates her hips to keep warm, chest rising under that sports bra in a way that does fuck-all good for my self-control. “I asked you a question.”
“Not following you,” I say, stepping up to her and purposely leaning over her to stab the button for the lights to change, even though she’s already done. “Talk about an ego.”
I step back and stare over the road. She doesn’t recognise me. Yet. Or not at all. She doesn’t remember me from the club last night, but she is all I can fucking think about.
“Ego?” she exclaims as if I just insulted her ancestors. “How dare you?”
“How dare you accuse me of following you?” I reply, rolling my shoulders and casting a fleeting glance at her.
Her jaw drops for half a second. Then outrage slams straight back into place. “Jogging in the same direction for six streets is called following.”
“Only if one of us is interesting enough to justify the effort.”
She glares. Green. Sharp. Properly furious. Fucking beautiful. “You’re either arrogant or thick.”
“Could be both.”
The pedestrian light changes. She looks at the road, then back at me like she’s debating whether murder before breakfast is socially acceptable in Kensington. I would say yes, but I’m from a family that treats homicide like admin, so my standards are skewed.
She steps off the kerb.
I keep pace beside her.
I get another look. “What are you doing?”
“Crossing the road.”
“Do it somewhere else.”
“I’m going this way.”
She makes a disgusted sound and speeds up once we hit the opposite pavement. I match it easily. She is furious, and it makes me want to find out exactly how much further it goes.
“Fuck off,” she says and veers off into Holland Park, sprinting as if the devil is on her tail.
If only she knew.
I grin and go after her.
She is fast. She cuts across the path, trainers hitting the path hard, dodging a woman with a buggy and a man walking two spaniels that immediately decide I am suspicious. Correct instinct from the dogs.
Varvara doesn’t look back straight away. Looking back wastes speed. She knows that. She also knows I’m still behind her, because her shoulders tighten and she shifts left at the fork without hesitation, taking the narrower path under the trees where the morning crowd thins out.
Interesting choice.
Fewer witnesses. More room to deal with a problem.
My dick has no business reacting to that, but here we are.
She knows this route. Takes the left path by the tennis courts, then the narrower one lined with trees, where the visibility drops for a few seconds at a time.
I hit the turn a beat later and catch sight of her.
She is standing dead still in the middle of the path, one earbud hanging against her throat, hands braced on her thighs as if she has stopped to catch her breath.
The second I get close enough, she straightens and swings a small black canister right at my face.
Pepper spray.
Well. That is new.
I stop at once and lift both hands. “You do know that’s illegal, right?” Oh, how the irony chafes on that one.
“Don’t come any closer.”
I look at the spray, then at her. “You carry that on a morning run?”
“You just proved that I need to.”
“That’s fair. How about you don’t spray me, and I run the other way?”
She waits, then moves her hand forward. “Go then. What the fuck are you waiting for?”
I hold my hands up and jog backwards for a few feet before I turn around, all the way intrigued with this woman.
What the fuck?
I never expected to be so fucking turned on by a woman threatening to blind me.
She is vicious.
She is fucking sexy.
If she thinks this is the end, she is dead wrong.