Chapter 7
MILO
Iknew her coffee order.
Vanilla latte. Oat milk. Extra hot.
I knew she wrapped both hands around the cup and lifted it to her nose before she drank. I knew her shoulders dropped on the first sip. I knew she closed her blue eyes—beautiful and useless as they were—like that coffee was the first good thing to happen to her all day.
I knew because I'd watched her. Because I couldn't stop watching her.
And now I was standing in line at the café near her apartment, ordering her fucking coffee, telling myself I was only doing to fuck with her. Keeping her on her toes. To see if she would slip up and give me something to tell the Russians.
The barista handed me the cup. "Have a nice night!"
I smiled. The easy one. The one that made people trust me.
It died the second I turned away.
You've lost your goddamn mind.
My father's voice suddenly slammed through my head. Cold and disgusted.
You're buying coffee for a mark. What's next? You gonna braid her hair? Write her a poem?
Once again, I told the ghost to go fuck himself and walked to my car.
When I arrived at The Silver Table, hot coffee in hand, the service entrance was unlocked.
It always was during the dinner rush with the staff sneaking smoke breaks and deliveries coming in through the back.
Normally, I would point this security gap out to Viktor before some rival family snuck in a bomb, or worse.
Tonight, however, it got me inside without anyone noticing.
I moved through the back hallway, past the walk-in freezer with its incessant humming that easily covered the sound of my footsteps, and slipped into the alcove beside the platform where Raven played.
The piano sat empty. Her shift didn't start for another eleven minutes, and she would be here in four.
I set the coffee on the closed lid of the Steinway, positioning it where her right hand would land when she reached to open it.
Then I pressed my back against the wall where the candlelight didn't reach me and waited like the obsessed fuck I'd become.
This is insane.
It really was.
Viktor will put bullets in both of you.
Most likely.
But until then, I made myself comfortable, and I waited.
She walked in at 7:14. One minute early.
I tracked her as she made her way across the restaurant—the tap of her cane against the marble floor in the entryway, the way she sidestepped Geoffrey without breaking stride when he lunged for her elbow. Good girl. She didn't need his hands on her.
She didn't need anyone's hands on her.
Except maybe mine.
Stop.
Inhaling deeply, I watched and waited.
Tonight's dress was emerald green. It wrapped her waist, left her shoulders bare, and pushed her tits up just enough to make my mouth water. The neckline was cut low, giving me a shadow of cleavage that was much more visible when she bent forward. Her collarbones caught the candlelight.
Delicate.
Lickable.
I wanted to trace them with my tongue. Map the hollow of her throat. Find out what sounds she'd make when I bit down on that soft curve where her neck met her shoulder.
She mounted the platform and reached for the bench, making sure it was in the right position before she sat. Then she felt for the edge of the key lid. Her fingers brushed the coffee cup.
She stopped.
Her head cocked to the side with that bird-like tilt that meant she was processing, cataloging, filing information away. Her nostrils flared as she brought the cup to her nose.
She became very still, and then a smile spread across her face. Not the vacant one she gave everyone else. This one was sharp. Knowing. Secretive. Meant only for me.
She took a long sip and set the cup beside the bench. Then her fingers found the keys.
Debussy. Clair de Lune.
She was playing me a fucking lullaby.
My cock stirred against the zipper of my slacks.
I leaned back against the wall, tension coiling through my shoulders, and watched her hands move across the piano keys. Her fingers were long, her touch precise. They pressed and released, pressed and released, coaxing notes from the instrument like she was stroking a lover.
I thought about those fingers on my chest. My throat. Wrapped around my hard cock.
Jesus Christ.
The music swelled, soft and aching, and Raven swayed with it. Her eyes were closed. She always closed them when she played, retreating into whatever world existed behind her blindness. I watched as her lips parted, her chest rising and falling with the melody.
She looked like a woman mid-orgasm.
God, I wanted to live in that world with her.
I was fully hard now. My cock aching and my muscles aching from forcing myself to stay where I was. My hand curled into a fist inside my jacket pocket, and I forced myself to breathe through my nose.
Don't touch her. Don't even think about touching her.
I groaned aloud.
If I stayed here another ten seconds and watched her face twist in that silent, musical ecstasy, I was going to ruin everything. I was going to walk over there, drag her off that bench, and take her right on top of that fucking piano in front of the entire goddamn restaurant.
And that wasn't the plan.
With monumental effort, I peeled myself off the wall. I needed distance. Now.
Turning my back on her took more willpower than I thought I possessed, but I forced my legs to move, retracing my steps the way I'd come in.
The music followed me, growing fainter with every step. But the image of her with her head thrown back and her fingers dancing across the keys was burned behind my eyelids.
I shoved through the heavy steel rear exit, and the night air hit me like a slap to the face as the door slammed shut behind me.
The ghost of her music still played in my head, taunting me.
But it was the visual that broke me. The memory of her head thrown back, her throat expose, her face twisted in that beautiful, silent ecstasy.
With a quick glance around, I shoved a hand into my waistband, ripping my zipper down and freeing my cock.
It sprang out, aching and heavy, already weeping.
Bracing my forearm against the rough brick wall, I buried my face in the crook of my elbow, and wrapped my fingers around the steel-hard length.
Raven.
My hand moved. Fast. Rough. Unforgiving.
Squeezing my eyes shut, I plunged myself into the dark where she lived. Every stroke was a desperate bid to replace that piano. I wanted to be the reason she made that face. I wanted to be the one drawing those sounds from her throat. I wanted to ruin her for anyone—or anything—else.
My jaw ached, teeth grinding together as the pressure built in my balls, insistent and painful.
"Fucking... hell."
It didn't take long.
The climax hit me hard and fast. A guttural groan tore from my chest as I came, hips bucking instinctively.
Opening my eyes, I spilled hot and messy against the cold brickwork, coating the grime of the wall in white.
I stroked through the release, milking every drop of the madness out of my system until my knees felt weak.
Gasping for air, forehead resting against the sleeve of my jacket, I waited for the world to stop spinning. Then I gingerly tucked myself back into my pants and zipped things up.
The alley still smelled slightly like chemicals, and the area I'd cleaned was still lighter than the surrounding asphalt. Give it another few weeks and the rain and rats and grease would erase the evidence.
That's what I was supposed to be. A man who erased things. Who left no trace.
Instead, I was standing in the shadows beside a dumpster, with my come dripping down the wall, waiting for a blind woman like a dog waiting for his owner.
You're fucking pathetic, that voice inside my head told me. But in this moment, I didn't care.
The steel door opened at exactly 10:47.
Raven stepped out. Her cane was folded, tucked under her arm. But she didn't need it, because she wasn't going anywhere.
She stopped just outside the door.
"I can hear you breathing," she said.
I didn't answer. Didn't trust my voice.
She tilted her head, and the streetlight caught the angle of her cheekbone, the shadow beneath. "Did you watch me play?"
"I always watch you play."
"Not always," she said softly. "I felt the tension in you tonight. I felt you leave."
Watching her chest rise and fall with quick, short breaths, my cock swelled. She couldn't possibly know, couldn't possibly see the evidence straining against my pants, yet I couldn't shake the feeling that she knew. She always fucking knew.
"Viktor is right about you," I said. "You are dangerous."
Little lines appeared between her eyebrows as she frowned at that. "To the Russians?"
"Not to the Russians."
Her brow smoothed out as she took a step closer to the sound of my voice. "To you?"
"Yes," I breathed.
"And yet you keep showing up."
"Maybe I'm an idiot."
"Maybe." Another step. She was close enough that I could smell her over the chemicals and the trash—sweet warm skin and something muskier underneath. Arousal? Or was I imagining what I wanted to smell? "But I think it's something else."
"Yeah? What's that?"
"I think you like being close to me." She reached out, and her fingers found my chest. Pressed flat against my sternum, right over my pounding heart. "I think at first you were just doing a job, but now I think you like it too much to stop."
I grabbed her wrist. Held it there. Her delicate pulse fluttered against my fingertips, quick and light. Like a bird.
"You don't know what I like."
"Then tell me."
The challenge hung between us as she lifted her chin defiantly.
Tell her. Tell her you want to pin her against this filthy wall and hike that green dress up around her hips.
Tell her you want to drop to your knees and bury your face between her thighs until she's shaking.
Tell her you want to hear her scream your name in this alley where you scrubbed a dead man's blood off the concrete.
"I like control," I said instead. My voice came out rough, scraped raw. "And you make me feel like I'm losing it."
Her breath caught. I heard it—felt it—the tiny hitch in her rhythm.
"Good," she whispered.
I released her wrist. Stepped back. Put distance between us before I did something we couldn't take back.
"Go home, Raven. And take the front exit from now on."
"No."
"That wasn't a request."
"And I'm not yours to command." She smiled, and it was wicked. Hungry. "Or control. Not yet, anyway."
Not yet.
My cock jerked against my zipper. She had no idea what she was playing with. No idea what I'd do to her if I let the leash slip.
Or hell, maybe she did. Maybe that's why she kept pushing.
"Same time tomorrow," she said. It wasn't a question.
She turned and walked toward the street, her cane unfolding with a snap. Tap. Tap. Step. Her hips swayed with each stride, the emerald fabric clinging to her ass.
I watched her disappear around the corner.
Then I pressed the heel of my hand against my aching cock and bit back another groan.
Fucked.
I was completely fucked.