14. Nero
NERO
When Zeno asks me to accompany him to Moscow, I assume he’ll be proposing this weekend and wants everyone, minus his mother and Elio, around to break the news all at once.
I nearly made an excuse to stay home. How will I survive the entire weekend aware that, as my best friend gets engaged to the woman he loves, his other parent isn’t around to share the news with?
Zeno doesn’t seem bothered by it, but that’s the thing about self-blame.
It makes little sense. Stress will build, as will the voice in my head that’ll demand the sweet poison of liquor.
So I agreed, because over the last couple of weeks, the concept of extinguishing the rest of the old Elite seems more and more appealing, and the easiest way to figure out where they’re all hiding is to get close to the current Elite themselves.
Vanessa picks us up from the airfield, immediately announcing we’re all going to one of their clubs. The weekend just got better. Clubs mean liquor. Liquor means sanity. Turns out, I will survive the weekend.
We’re inside the mansion for minutes before the door opens again, Anastasia drawing up short. Her grip around her gym bag tightens—as does her expression before she strides by us with a murmured greeting to Zeno and a scowl for me.
“Van, you never mentioned you’d be inviting him.”
“You did say ‘everyone.’” She winks at Anastasia, whose scowl deepens.
Some hidden joke passes between the women that even Zeno shrugs at.
“An hour,” Vanessa calls up to her as she starts up the stairs, waiting until Anastasia is out of view before twisting to me.
“Sorry ’bout her. Come, I’ll show you to a room in the guest wing. ”
“Grazie.”
I follow Vanessa and Zeno upstairs and to the left, but my attention remains on the other half of the hallway, to where Vanessa mentions the rest of their bedrooms being. I wonder which door is Anastasia’s.
While envisioning the woman within it who clearly doesn’t like me.
Unfortunately for her, I’ve never quit a challenge.
And she’s my most entertaining one yet.
Vanessa has a driver take us downtown to a club called Posol’stvo, which is where she and Zeno first met when he was playing Italian tourist with the intention of getting close enough to her to strike.
It puts the four of us inside the spacious limo-style backseat of the car. Zeno and Vanessa claimed the side bench, which forces Anastasia beside me. She wasted no time pressing herself to the opposite door. So far, she’s only spoken to Vanessa and Zeno, but I vow to change that when we arrive.
At the club, I climb out before the driver can do his job and reach inside for the victorious pleasure of being able to help Anastasia out of the back seat, playing the gentleman she’s determined to believe I’m not.
Lips the colour of red wine curl, but she takes my hand with feigned kindness and steps out onto the curb, her side pressing against my chest. She’s warm and smells fucking fantastic.
And looks it too.
My arm snakes around her waist before she can step away. “You look incredible, Petrov. Bellisima.”
The thought has been pounding at my head since the moment she descended the stairs earlier. Despite the November weather and snow outside, she acts as though it’s summer in her tight leggings, heeled boots that make her my height, and top that might just burn the entirety of the world down.
Or I will, if someone looks down it.
A protective thought for my best friend’s soon-to-be-fiancée’s best friend, and nothing more.
A V-neck leaves her shoulders bare while dipping dangerously low, nearly to her belly button, and exposing skin no man will be able to avoid studying with the same intensity I am.
Tattoos peek from the edges around her shoulder blades that have me begging to undress her and see them for myself.
It doesn’t fucking help that her hair’s been wrangled and contained in some hairdo I wish I knew the name of, but leaves the nape of her neck bare, face framed by loose strands.
It’s the perfect place to trace with my tongue.
Even now, having her against me, my eyes can’t help but trail it, pausing on her pulse.
“Thanks,” she mutters, stiff in my arms while Vanessa straightens her own clothing and takes Zeno’s arm before leading the way to the doors. Anastasia uses that as an escape and slips from my side to follow.
I catch up in one large stride, wrapping my hand around hers to tug her against me. “I didn’t realize you were capable of the word.”
“I said it once before.” She yanks her hand away before rushing closer to the others. At the darkened doorway, the bouncer lets the four of us through.
The club’s practically pitch-dark and takes my vision a few seconds to adjust, even as Vanessa heads for a nearby staircase guarded by another bouncer. Music thunders beneath my feet and throughout my body, and despite alcohol being somewhere close by, I really don’t want to be here.
As my vision starts clearing thanks to the fluorescent lights, so does the smaller section of the club—a balcony overlooking the downstairs.
Vanessa claims the nearest couch and staff immediately pounce to gather drink orders.
Zeno drops beside her while I lower myself into the single low-backed chair across from them, kicking an ankle over my knee.
Anastasia is the only one who remains standing, and she grabs her drink as soon as the server returns with them.
“Gonna sit?” Vanessa and Zeno are already lost in their own world, leaving only her and me which I’m okay with.
“Nope, I’m going to dance.” She takes the shot and spins for the stairs we just ascended. It sends me out of my chair before I realize what I’m doing, even abandoning my drink to block her exit. She stops short of my chest, her nostrils doing this flaring thing I find almost endearing.
“Why does it feel like you’re avoiding me?”
“You’re the tagalong. I’m here to have fun, so if you’ll excuse me.” She steps to the side, but I block her exit with one arm while offering her my other—and the hope in my next question.
“You still owe me a dance. Let’s have it here.”
Red-painted lips, a colour so opposite from the angel I first met her as, roll together. “Dancing with you will counter my entire purpose of coming here.”
To find other men. It’s ridiculous because I hardly know her and certainly have no claim on her, but all she’s done is make me more insistent to get her in my arms, showing everyone here she’s not theirs.
She’s not mine either, but they have no rights to her.
Their arms don’t deserve to be around her.
“One dance, then I’ll leave you alone for the rest of the night.”
“I wish you’d leave me alone now.” Scowling, she tries to move again, but I walk into her, my hands landing on her hips to keep her still. Behind us, Zeno’s watching with the same protectiveness he has for his sister.
My fingers slide against literal silk—the strip of skin between her pants and top. We both know she could very well get me off her if she wants, even pushing me down the stairs I’m blocking.
But she doesn’t.
Instead, it’s like we’re the only ones present. Her, me, and her fucking silky angelic body that’s entangled in my mind, halfway between the old shame and fresh desires.
“Friends, Petrov.” My offer hangs, both of us watching the other, not knowing what to do with it.
“Our people have made themselves into two happy little couples, which means we’ll be spending a lot of time around one another.
Being friendly is in our best interest. And friends dance with one another. ”
“Friends,” she repeats with a little lift of her lips. It’s that lift, though, that makes me a winner. “Fine. One dance, then go away. People will assume we’re together, and I won’t have you ruining my night.”
I plan on making her night.
With her hand in mine, I lead her down the stairs to keep her close.
People glance over as we slink through the crowd, but I couldn’t care less.
Anastasia is a beacon for attention, and while I have it all to myself, I’ll be taking advantage of every second to get under her skin.
To be…close. For no actual reason other than wanting her to look at me without disdain.
On the dance floor, she disengages her hand, throws her head back with a wicked grin, then turns to give me her back.
The music sweeps her away in a sensual dance meant for a bedroom, not the club. A dance that requires fewer layers of clothing and a different song in the background—one of her moans, cries, and screams as she drenches the bed.
She turns around until her body presses against mine.
Her angelic tenderness and ballerina fluidity are as captivating as the first time I watched her on stage.
She rotates her hips, tempting parts of me into getting on my knees and begging for more, and loops her arms behind my neck as her eyes slide shut.
Her expression is all peace and terror wrapped in beauty.
Holy fuck, she’s on the verge of killing me.
Her lids flutter before she’s pinning me with eyes that look nearly black in the low light. “Dance, Nero. This is what you wanted.”
This is not what I wanted. This is cruelty when I promised to leave her alone. This is sweet torment wrapped in a lithe body that ties my tongue in so many knots, I’ll never be able to drink again.
There’s no denying that Anastasia Petrov is sexy.
But it’s more than her beauty that calls to me—has called to me since that first meeting in a back hallway when I should have been kidnapping her.
Instead, I was lured by her siren abilities and drowned by her bravery that day.
She could have taken my knife and stabbed me in my heart herself, so long as the angelic version of her met me up in heaven.
“Or do you need help?”
She spins, linking one hand around my neck and does this little shimmy thing women seem to master at some point in their life that rubs her ass not once, not twice, but three goddamn times against my cock, which is increasingly difficult to conceal.
As she straightens, her head falls onto my chest, leaving zero space between us. Her eyes flutter shut, she sighs, and that’s what does it for me. The little moan of happiness I long to swallow, to ensure no one else ever hears it. Pleasure she has for me and is only mine.
I grip her hips but don’t take over, leaving control with her while pretending to fall straight into her web.
My fingers slide over her skin again, but this time, they hook into the waistband of her pants.
She stiffens for a second but then seems to mentally shrug it off.
Her shoulders lower again, and she doesn’t push me away.
“He’s figuring it out.” The music drowns out her murmur, but I read it from her lips.
My head lowers into the space between her shoulder and ear, breathing in a scent bound to haunt me after today. “Consider me entrapped by you. I was unable to help myself.”
“Sap.”
“Since the moment we met.” If that isn’t the truth, I don’t know what is.
Something moves in my chest. Maybe it’s simply strands of her hair against my shirt, but it feels deeper—inside me.
“After Sera’s engagement or as teenagers?”
“Both.” My finger slips around the front of her hips, thumbs pressing into her hipbones until I hear what I crave—the little intake of breath as she loses the position of distant dominance. “We work, don’t you think?”
“You’re only saying that because you don’t know me.”
“So let me know you.”
Since she’s yet to throw me off her, I continue, nipping the tip of her ear with my teeth until her breathing is ragged, words stuttered as she manages, “I’m not sleeping with you.”
Her skin makes me want to groan, but I won’t give her that power. But fuck, she smells delicious and tastes better. For the first time since deboarding the plane earlier, I’m not thinking about getting a drink.
She is all the intoxication required, and that…that’s dangerous. This little slip of a ballerina whose life I once saved can’t replace the liquor that chases my guilt. I won’t allow it to because that’d be depressingly ironic.
“I’m not asking you to. Just to let me know you. I want to learn who Anastasia Petrov is.” Ana. Mio angelo from eleven years ago. My tempting little ballerina.
Although I’m remiss to slide one hand away from her waist, I trail it up her side, over the curve of her breast, to reach her collarbone. Her skin is something I could very well get used to touching forever; a substance as heady as liquor.
Her throat moves, urging me to wrap my hand around it. “Impress me first.”
“Why do I feel you won’t make impressing you an easy task?”
“Because you’re smart enough to know I won’t.” Her dark eyes glint as a spotlight passes over us.
I return my lips to her neck to nip her pulse. “Unfortunately for you, I’ve always loved a challenge. Game on, Petrov.”