Linos smirks and crosses his arms after a beat. “Even better if there are two,” he replies, turning to me. “Though I’ve never heard your name. No nickname?”

Tai pipes up before I can reply. “Never,” she says, as if she’s aghast at the suggestion, her voice thick with a sad excuse for a throaty Russian accent. I lean in to hear her over the eerily upbeat whine of a saxophone. “It’s a beautiful name. Our parents would be devastated if she shortened it. It means glory to the ties between the city and the countryside.” Locking eyes with me, she adds something else in rapid-fire, vaguely patriotic Russian that no one at the table understands.

Linos leans forward on an elbow, amused—and I can see it, how he’s drawn to Tai’s inimitable, bizarre shine. I wonder if they’re really dating, like the tabloids say. I wonder if he knows just how much of a wackadoo she can be when she wants. A snort bursts out of me, and I catch eyes with the shy one, who half smiles, half laughs, sending another wobble through my legs. I look away again, fast—is there nowhere safe to look? But heat spreads along my left thigh, where my flesh borders his.

“Well, Daz, this is Dmitri, and I’m Vlad,” replies Linos, smacking the shy guy on the back as he’s taking a long sip of what looks like whiskey.

The shy guy almost splutters but corrects himself. I hear his sharp intake of breath.

“Like Vlad the Impaler,” Tai says daintily, lazily stirring the branch of green around her second drink. Before I can explain that’s not a good thing, she leans into him with a minxish grin. “Now. Have you ever sampled the delicacy that is borscht?”

“Chilled beet ambrosia,” he replies, and I think I might hurl if I have to keep listening to their distressing banter, so I take a deep breath and turn to the shy guy, just as a waiter is setting down a fresh glass of amber liquor. “What are you drinking?”

He looks up at me through those long, long, lashes, and his eyes look like forest, dark emerald-meets-black, shimmering with secret life. “No idea, to be honest.”

A hot flush overtakes my cheeks. I’m never … girlish. And just thinking that makes the blushing rashlike, so much worse.

“Sorry,” he says. “What I mean is that Linos ordered me this without telling me what it was. It’s good, though. Want it?” he asks, pushing the glass toward me. He has perfectly shaped, clean fingernails. But not intentionally. Just … naturally. “Seriously, have it. I haven’t touched this one yet.”

“I’m … good, thanks,” I say, nudging his drink back toward him.

His mouth quirks up in the corner as he accepts it. “I’m Hérrakí.”