“Where are we going?” she asked when I slid into the driver’s seat. While I was walking around the car, she’d arranged my coat and her dress to hide the expanse of skin she’d revealed earlier. If she were really my sub, I’d punish her for it. But now, I didn’t have any right to Eva. I’d planned on a pizza joint, an appropriately public venue for a mentor and student to discuss a private matter. Now, with Eva dressed up and trying so hard, the urge to spoil her upended my plans. I was so fucking tired of resisting her pull.
Instead of answering her, I put my SUV in gear and asked, “Why weren’t you wearing a winter coat?”
Eva blushed and turned away from me, her body hunching over with shame. Instinctively, I reached for her hand on her thigh, covering it with mine. Pain lanced through me when she jerked away.
“I don’t own one nice enough to wear with this dress,” she muttered.
Oh yes, my sweet and determined baby girl had an ulterior motive. Eva was too smart to forgive me this quickly, and nothing about her body language indicated she was ready to jump back into a relationship with a man who’d taken advantage of her like I had.
I shouldn’t want it either.
Fuck.
I parkedin front of a shabby apartment building, not in the best part of town, with faded brick and boarded-up windows. Eva arrested her move to open her door when I growled at her, and then she smirked, the brat, and the terrible pressure in my chest expanded until I could barely breathe around it.
A moment later, she allowed me to hold her hand to help her step down from my vehicle then looked around with faint surprise at the run-down neighborhood.
“Trust me,” I told her as I tucked her hand in the crook of my elbow.
“Easier said than done,” I thought she muttered, but she didn’t pull away from me.
I knocked on the door, and it was opened by a tall Russian man who blew his cigarette smoke in my face as he looked me up and down. He glanced at Eva, and I shifted, taking a step up toward the door to block his view of her.
The man smiled, genuine warmth in his eyes. “Welcome back, Aleksandr. I’d wondered when we’d see you again,” he said in Russian.
“Come in,” he continued in English, standing back from the doorway so we could enter through the cloud of smoke. Eva tightened her fingers around my arm.
The lights flickered above us, emphasizing the dinginess of the faded damask wallpaper and illuminating the spiderwebs that hung between the tarnished sconces. At the end of the hallway was a dark green door, warped and as faded as the carpet beneath our feet. With every step, Eva drew closer, as if my presence could protect her from the atmospheric menace.
I pushed the door open, revealing a cozy restaurant.
Eva gasped with delight, and that terrible pressure in mychest returned. I loved her smiles, loved surprising her, loved eliciting joy rather than misery.
“Alek, this is amazing,” she murmured, fucking stars in her eyes as she gazed up at me.
An older Russian man with an apron covering his worn clothes nodded at me, and I walked Eva to a table in the corner, pulling her chair out for her. We sat at connecting sides of the table rather than across from one another, so I could touch her.
I pushed her chair in under her as she sat, and she looked up at me with more delighted surprise. Guilt wracked me. Eva didn’t have anyone in her life who treated her well.
While she was looking around the dining room, I pulled out my phone, debating whether pulling the boys back in was a smart idea. She hadn’t forgiven them—that was clear from the way she and the team still iced them out at practice.
But she needed them.
And more importantly, they had as much work to do to earn her forgiveness as I did.
Me
Eva doesn’t have a winter coat.
Cole
On it.
I’ll have one delivered to her house.
Me
Have it delivered here.