He shot me a smirk. “That’s not me trying to distract you. I was just getting comfortable. No. If I wanted to distract you, this,” he reached behind him, grasped his shirt and tugged it over his head, “is what I’d do.”
My mind came to a standstill as I took in his utter perfection. The ink covering every square inch of skin, the glint of the silver chain around his neck in the sun, and the wayward strand of hair falling into his forehead.
Fuck me. This was just unfair.
Thankfully, though, I was still wearing my sunglasses, so my ogling shouldn’t have been painfully obvious. I swallowed audibly and cleared my throat.
“Nice try.”
“Had to give it a try.” Sasha shrugged, his hands coming to rest on my thighs and kneading them softly. I bit back a moan, narrowing my eyes at him.
“You’re not going to distract me, so might as well get it over with. It can’t be that bad, right?” I laughed nervously. “I mean, I already know you’re a murderer. Is this going to make it worse?”
“Could go either way,” he replied dryly.
I couldn’t tell whether he was joking or not.Cool, cool, cool, cool.
“You want me to trust you? Stop stalling, then.”
“Alright,” he conceded, though his hands kept caressing me. Taking a deep breath, he launched into a seemingly well-rehearsed story.
He told me about how his mom always chose the wrong guys. About meeting his stepbrother, Hunter, for the first time and discovering his aversion to being touched. About how Hunter’s own mother had died in anaccidentin the very house they were still living in.
And finally, about the day all his suspicions were confirmed, and he faced the monster known as Steven Rhodes.
“I saw red. When I found him putting his hands on my mother, I lost it. Pounded his face with my bare hands until there was no trace of humanity left in it. It was a bloody fucking mess and I would’ve carried on if mymom hadn’t been screaming her head off.” He didn’t have to continue. We both knew he hadn’t survived.
“He deserved it,” I hissed, surprising both of us with the venom dripping from my words.
The corner of his mouth twitched. “Damn. I had no idea you could be so vicious, Little Devil.” Sasha paused, looking off into the distance thoughtfully. “I think Mom was always scared I would turn out this way … but in the end it saved her life.”
“And condemned yours,” I added quietly.
Sasha chuckled. “Nah. I don’t see it this way. I’m not built for a normal life. As much as I hated being locked up, it opened a lot of doors for me. This isn’t just a career choice. It’s in my fucking blood.”
“What do you mean?” I furrowed my brows.
He gave me a wry grin. “I might be the boss here, but I’m nottheboss. My uncle, my father’s brother, is the pakhan. He runs the entire Bratva, and we all answer to him. I might just be his brother’s illegitimate son, but when I ended up in prison, he gave me a choice: Either join the Bratva ranks in there, work my way up and prove myself to him, or try to survive on my own.”
I felt a multitude of emotions swirling inside me: pity, because no eighteen-year-old dreams of ending up in prison; anger; and also a confusing surge of pride that he had managed to assert himself and work his way up.
His fingers drew lazy patterns on my skin. “Guess I don’t have to explain which option I went with. And I haven’t regretted it, not even a second … especially not since I somehow ended up right here. I could never regret that.” He squeezed my thigh, and my core tightened. “This is what I am. Second thoughts?”
I took a minute to really think it through, to sort through my feelings. Sasha wasn’t a good man by conventional standards, but as fucked up as it was, it had never actually bothered me. I knew the truth, knew where his heart lay — in protecting those he loved.
We had some sort of crazy connection sparking even when we were just exchanging letters. Life had never felt easy or right until he came along and filled a void inside me that I hadn’t realized was there. There was no rhyme or reason to it; no logic.
Sasha might have been the bad guy, but in my story, he wasn’t the villain. He was the missing half of my soul, the order to my chaos, the calm to my storm and the anchor I never thought I’d find.
“No.” I slowly shook my head. “I’m exactly where I want to be.”
The blue of his eyes lit up, a fire burning in them, white-hot and scorching me with a single look. “Good. So, I’m gonna ask again … Do you trust me?”
“I do. I just want you to trust me, too.”
Sasha studied me like I was the more complicated conflict. “I don’t doubt your strength. But this world is different than the one you’re used to, and I know that must be hard to come to terms with, but sometimes the best thing for you to do is to not do anything.”
His quiet words softened something in me, even if they didn’t solve the issue.