“What the hell is wrong with me?” I kept my head down. The last thing I wanted to do was look in a mirror. What I’d see looking back at me scared me.

I was going to get myself killed if I kept this up.

My face felt incredibly hot, but with the small amount of makeup I’d put on, there was no way I could splash my face.

After running my wrists beneath the cold tap, I reached out for a towel when my arm was grabbed and I spun around. Slavik was in the ladies’ room. He pressed me up against the bathroom counter.

I nibbled on my lip and tried to get as far as I could with the counter stopping me. There was nowhere for me to go.

“What is your problem?” he asked.

“I don’t have one. I don’t see a point in being here wasting our time if we’re not even going to have a civil conversation.” Why would I even want to have Slavik talking to me? The man was scary.

He made grown men afraid.

Here I was offering up a conversation with a man whose expertise was death.

“You’ve never seemed to mind before.”

“I always minded. Once or twice was fine, but we’ve been doing this same dance for far too long and I’m bored of it.”

In the back of my mind, I literally screamed for myself to shut the fuck up. Whatever I was doing, or thought I was doing, was going to get me killed.

“You’re bored.”

“You can’t tell me you’re excited about eating dinner with me when you’re checking your cell phone every two minutes.”

He didn’t say anything.

His body pressed against mine, and not for the first time, I became very aware of him as a man.

****

Slavik

I caught the flash.

Aurora didn’t understand it, but I did.

My wife felt a spark of attraction. The way she moved her body, like she wanted to get away from me, but only made me aware of her as a woman.

In fact, I’d been made aware of it several times.

I’d never allowed myself to get attached to anyone. Not even Ivan or Cara. I cared for them, and they were like a family, but the truth was I had no real emotion when it came to them. It was business. We’d survived by banding together and creating the world we now lived in where we were on top.

Aurora was different. I’d sensed it the first time I met her.

Now, she proved it. Even as she was afraid, her mouth couldn’t seem to stop, and I, for one, fucking loved it.

Don’t get me wrong, the women in my life had all known the score. I was good for a quick fuck, nothing else. I never got close. Always kept them at arm’s length. They always knew I was there for a release and I didn’t always care if they felt it too. In fact, I’d even used lubrication when I hadn’t been in the mood to make them wet enough to take me.