“Oh, so that’s not something you’d do?” he replied flatly.
Okay, rude. Accurate, but rude.
“You will not visit the warehouse,” he said calmly. “You will not speak to anyone about this, and you will not attempt to fix it.”
“Seems like a lot of assumptions about my personality.”
His jaw flexed. “I’m handling the situation. All I need is for you to stay here.”
Something in my chest dipped in a way I wasn’t thrilled about. He watched me carefully, like he’d noticed the part where my tone stayed light but something underneath it didn’t.
Sasha lifted his head and addressed my guards, barking something in Russian at them. The sound of their boots crunching across the gravel path betrayed their departure.
“I don’t need you near this,” he added, piercing me with his intense blue-gray eyes.
I swallowed hard. “I get it. This isn’t my wheelhouse. But … if I’m going to be here, as part of your life, maybe I deserve to not be treated like a prop.”
His jaw shifted, the movement so faint, yet conveying everything he didn’t say: warning, calculation, obsession. The air between us thickened and became charged as if we were the only two things mattering in this moment. Somehow, he understood that pressing too hard would backfire spectacularly.
“You know you’re so much more than that.” Sasha exhaled out his nose. “Just trust me. I’ll handle it.”
“How?” I couldn’t stop the question from slipping out. Sue me, I was nosy.
“It requires a … ah,specifictype of response.”
I held his gaze, unabashedly. “So what happens? You go somewhere, you threaten someone and suddenly everyone agrees to stop being territorial?”
“It will be resolved one way or another.” He shrugged.
“That’s not really an answer.”
“It’s the only one you need.”
Sasha crouched down to a squat, elbows braced on his knees.
God fucking damn it.It was just plain unfair how hot he looked right now.
I needed to fucking focus, and not on the way his forearms flexed.
He pursed his lips and twisted one of his many silver rings around his finger. “Because I will not have you exposed to any of this.”
“I just want to be your equal,” I blurted out before I could stop myself. “I know I can’t be in the middle of things. I’m aware I’m not a hardened criminal, but you never know if a different perspective couldn’t be useful.”
“You are my equal.” Something flashed in his eyes. His hand shot out to caress my thigh almost reflexively, as if being close to me would solve everything. Never breaking eye contact, he said, “You’re the most important person to me.”
Sasha’s fingers stroked up my leg and came to rest at my hip, where his thumb pressed into my flesh. I bit the inside of my cheek, trying to focus on the conversation rather than the sensation of his skin against mine and his fingers sending sparks up my spine.
A muscle in his jaw jumped. “The thing is, this is not just my problem. It reaches all the way to the top. I’m merely the one who has to fix it.”
For a moment we just stared at each other, with the sun on my back and the pool glittering next to us.
“You might think I’m overreacting,” he murmured, tracing a slow circle at my hip with the rough pad of his thumb, “but I can’t afford mistakes. I want to keep you safe from any motherfucker who might think to harm you just to get to me. Ineedyou to be safe.”
I let my fingers ghost over his shoulder. “You’re making it sound like I’m some fragile antique.”
“You’re … precious,” he corrected. “And I do not gamble with precious things.”
I rolled my eyes, even though the heat in my chest betrayed me. “That’s a bit dramatic, don’t you think?”