ARIEL
Sasha makes love to me that night, slow and soft and tender. When I come in his arms, it feels like falling through clouds.
I fall asleep soon after, still warm from his touch. We wake at midnight to do it again, half-asleep and blindly fumbling through the dark, and again when dawn slants through the shutters.
His scars have never looked more beautiful to me than they do then. They’re practically glowing, and I can’t stop myself from tracing each one from start to finish. I save his throat for last. My fingers linger on the cut of his jaw, and when his Adam’s apple bobs with a swallow, I smile.
What hurts is the crash landing back in reality.
Not the actual landing in New York—that goes smoothly, probably because Sasha would spike the pilot’s head on a stake in his front yard if he so much as jostled Mama’s tea the wrong way. But as soon as we step foot off the jet…
Pandemonium.
The first flash goes off like a bomb. The second, third, and fourth are like the moments in a war movie when the heroes realize suddenly that they’re exposed and under enemy fire.
The voices follow, shrieking like zombie seagulls. I’m still dazed with sleep and trans-Atlantic brain fog, so I stop halfway down the jet’s stairs and look back in terror at Sasha.
“Blyat.” His entire body tenses. His arm snakes around my waist, yanking me behind him. Meanwhile, from the horde on the tarmac, flashes erupt like landmines. At least two dozen ravenous paparazzi swarm us—shouting, jostling, iPhones thrust through the gaps in the thickets of arms all reaching toward us.
“Mr. Ozerov! Who’s the lucky lady?”
“Is it true you’re connected to the Brighton Beach shootings?”
“Ariel! Look here! How’d a nobody reporter bag the Butcher of Brooklyn?”
Sasha’s fingers flex against my hip. I can feel the earthquake building in his chest. Mama, holding my hand, looks every bit as confused and terrified as I am.
“Keep moving,” Sasha growls. Feliks shoves his way through the crowd to meet us at the bottom of the stairs, gripping Mom’s arm to steer her through the chaos. But the pack follows us, rabid. They hedge closer, and closer, grabbing and plucking, until a beefy guy with a telephoto lens shoulder-checks me in his haste to reach Sasha.
That’s when Sasha snaps.
He pivots so fast I get whiplash. One second, he’s a marble statue; the next, he’s got the photographer’s collar in his fist, slamming him against a pillar in the hangar. The camera smashes against the floor and plastic shards go skittering across polished tiles.
“You touch her again,” Sasha snarls, his scarred throat flexing with every word, “and I’ll feed you your own fucking camera.”
The photographer gurgles in Sasha’s grip. “I-I’m sorry, man—”
“Not to me. Apologize to her.”
The man’s bloodshot eyes dart to mine. “Miss—”
“Forget it,” I choke out. My hands won’t stop shaking. “Just let him go, Sasha. He’s not worth it.”
For a long, taut moment, I think he won’t. Violence rolls off him in waves, that coiled Bratva rage I’ve only glimpsed in dark alleys and blood-slick boardrooms. Then he releases the man with a shove.
“If I see your face again…” He doesn’t finish. He doesn’t need to.
Feliks herds us toward the exit, barking orders in Russian at the security team who come charging up to surround us. The paparazzi fall back, cowed but still snapping shots from a safer distance. Sasha keeps his palm pressed between my shoulder blades, hot through my coat.
We hit the icy curb where three black SUVs idle. Sasha bundles my mom into the middle car. When I move to follow, he stops me.
“With me,” he barks, steering me toward the lead vehicle.
I wrench free. “I’d rather ride with my mom.”
“Ari—”
“That was…” I struggle to find the words. Not scary—I’ve seen too much of his world by now to be scared of him. But something about the whole scene has left me shaken, off-balance. “A lot.”
His expression softens fractionally. He steps into me, all heat and cologne, and cups my face in his hands. His fingertips come away wet. I hadn’t even realized I was crying.
“This is the world you’re marrying into, Ariel. We don’t apologize. We don’t back down. Not when it comes to protecting what’s ours.”
“I know that. I do. It’s just…” I gesture helplessly at the aftermath of chaos around us, my brain scrambling to make sense of what just happened. “I wasn’t… I mean, I didn’t think…”
“Stop. Breathe.” I listen and he nods. “Good. Now, tell me what’s going on in that head of yours.”
“They were everywhere.” The words tumble out of me in a torrent. “Like—like vultures, all those cameras—and they knew my name, Sasha. They knew who I was. How did they—?” My voice cracks. “I’m nobody. I’m just a reporter. But now, they’re going to—” I break off as the full implications overwhelm me. I feel nauseous.
His eyes narrow. “Going to what?”
“Start digging.” It comes out as barely more than a whisper. “About me. About… everything.”
Understanding darkens his expression. He knows what I mean—about Leander, about my past, about all the secrets I’ve spent years burying.
“Let them try.” His voice drops to that dangerous register that makes my spine tingle. “If anyone so much as whispers your name wrong, they answer to me.”
I search his face, finding nothing but steel in those winter-blue eyes. “You make it sound so simple.”
“Because it is.” His fingers thread through my hair. “Your past is yours to tell or keep. Nobody gets to take that choice from you.” He presses his forehead to mine, his next words barely a whisper. “I’ve buried worse secrets than yours, Ariel. Let me carry this weight for you.”
Something in my chest cracks open at that—at the fierce tenderness in his voice, at the way he’s offering not just protection, but partnership. My fingers curl into his shirt and cling there. He’s the only solid thing left in a world gone sideways.
The car ride from the executive airport is silent. Sasha spends it glued to his phone, firing off curses while I stare out at the blur of the passing city. Everything feels sticky and wrong—like Paris was a dream and this is the noose dragging me back to reality.
Eventually, the SUV slows to a halt outside my apartment. Sasha hasn’t stopped typing furiously on his phone, jaw clenched tight enough to crack molars. When I don’t move, he glances up—impatient, harried, drenched in that bitter, smoky smell that clings to him after violence.
“Go inside,” he orders. “I’m assigning a man to stay with you now. Feliks is sending extra security.”
My fingers curl around the door handle. “That’s it? Just ‘go inside’?”
He doesn’t answer for a moment. His thumb swipes across the screen. Orders go flying out somewhere in the cyber-ether: to kill someone, to hunt someone, every bit as violent and icily controlled as he was the first time I ever heard his voice. Finally, he looks up. “What? I’ll see you later.”
“Right. Yeah. Later.”
Icy December wind slaps me across the face as I stumble onto the curb. Tires squeal before my door even slams shut. I watch the caravan peel away through a haze of exhaust, the hulking black vehicles shrinking to cockroach specks in the distance.
The security guy Sasha assigned—Yuri? Yakov? He tells me his name, but I don’t catch it—falls into step beside me without a word. Somehow, his presence makes Sasha’s absence feel all that much more palpable.
I’m two feet from the lobby doors when brakes shriek behind us. Heavy footsteps pound pavement.
I look up just in time to see a blue-eyed blur before Sasha crashes into me again. His arms band around my ribs, lifting me clear off my feet as he crushes his mouth to mine. The kiss tastes like regret, his teeth scraping my bottom lip hard enough to hurt.
“Little bird,” he rasps against my cheek. His breath steams in the cold. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t paying you enough attention.”
My eyes are burning, so I look away. “I don’t need it,” I lie. “I can follow orders. Isn’t that what a good mob wife does?”
But Sasha doesn’t allow that. His gloved hand caresses my chin. “Look at me.” When I still don’t, he gives me a gentle shake. “Ari. Eyes here.”
I blink up at him. Snowflakes catch in his lashes, crystalline against azure irises. The raw hunger in his gaze scorches through my winter layers.
“I will keep you safe,” he says fiercely. “You are mine. You’re still getting that ring. Still taking my name. And anyone who thinks they can come between us… They’ll learn what Sasha Ozerov does to threats.”
I shiver, not entirely from the cold. “Is that what I am now? A tactical vulnerability?”
“No.” He walks us into the shadowy alcove beside the bodega, his security detail tactfully looking away to give us room. “You’re what matters to me. The only thing that matters. That circus at the airport? That’s my world testing us. My enemies sniffing for weakness. My allies judging if I’m strong enough to keep you.” He pulls back just enough to meet my eyes. “But you are not some trophy on my mantelpiece. You’re what I’m fighting for. Do you understand the difference?”
“I want to,” I whimper. “I just spent so long trying to put this behind me, Sasha. For it to come back like this is terrifying. Fifteen years of running, and now, I’m front-page news because I’m stupid enough to…”
Love you. The unspoken words hang between us, fat and radioactive.
“You want to breathe,” he says. “I get that. But the answer is this: Trust me. Let me strangle everything that suffocates you. Let me be the knife in your shadow. The wolf at your door.” His forehead presses to mine. “I don’t ask you to love this life, Ariel. Only to let me love you through it.”
My heart is doing backflips. All this time, I’ve been seeing his violence as something to temper, to hide from. But maybe it’s been his way of showing devotion all along—the wolf’s teeth bared not at me, but for me.
“Okay,” I whisper. “I’ll try.”
He kisses me again, slower this time, deep enough to make my toes curl in my boots. When he finally sets me down, his eyes are dark with promise.
Then he shrugs off his coat and settles it around my shoulders. The wool swallows me whole, rich with his mint-and-cedar scent.
“Keep that,” he orders. “So you don’t forget whose heat keeps you safe.”
I watch him stride back to the idling SUV, my fingers buried in coat sleeves that dangle six inches past my fingertips. He pauses at the car door and shoots me that roguish grin over his shoulder.
He winks. Just that. Not a word with it, nor a gesture, but a wink that says everything he claims he’s not ready to say quite yet.
Then the door slams. Tires scream. The cars disappear once more.
And I’m left to stand there in the middle of the sidewalk as snow falls around me in flurries, grinning like an idiot, wondering when hell froze over enough for me to fall in love with the devil.
