“I’m hungry,” Misha said with a shrug. “Aren’t you? We have to eat, and this is a good place to stop.” He sent a look through the car’s dark interior, eyes catching the pink gleam of the neon signage. “Safe.” He stressed the word, as though he knew all of Toly’s worries.
He probably did.
“Fine.” He was hungry, and when he got back, the prospect of cooking for himself, or, worse, for whoever had been left to babysit Cass, didn’t hold much appeal.
It was seat yourself inside, and Misha chose a booth along the far wall, away from the windows. A tired waitress in flat-soled shoes and stained apron brought them coffee and took their order without bothering with a pad. Something hit the flat-top grill in back with a mighty hiss, and Misha spoke just loud enough to be heard above it.
“Don’t worry: he’ll call.”
Toly stirred sugar into his coffee. “I’m not worried.” He added a second packet, and a pod of fake cream. When he finally lifted his head, Misha was watching him in a penetrating way that made him want to squirm in his seat. He’d not squirmed as a boy, so he resisted the urge now – though it was stronger than it had been back then, for some reason.
“Maybe not,” Misha said, “but I think maybe so.” He lifted his own mug. “You fidget more than I remember.”
Toly forced his hands still on the table – he’d been toying with the spent sugar packets, damn it – and sent him a flat look.Really?
“It makes sense,” Misha said, and sipped his coffee. “You have more to lose, now.”
Toly bit back a sigh. “What are you saying?”You didn’t use to play games like this, he thought, more than a little vicious. He supposed leadership inevitably changed a person.
Their food arrived, two plates heaped with eggs, hash browns, and sausage. “Thank you,” Misha and Toly both murmured, never breaking eye contact. Misha’s gaze wasn’t threatening – not outright – but intense in a way that Toly didn’t like. A predator observing prey behaving in a strange manner, more curious than cunning…but Toly knew exactly what he was capable of.
He didn’t reach for his silverware until Misha did; forced the other man to break the gaze first, and that felt like a pathetic victory of sorts. If the Dogs were metaphorical dogs, then Misha was a tiger, and the first rule of tigers was this: never take your eyes off them.
“Toly,” he said, chiding, voice gentling, and that squirmy feeling persisted in the pit of Toly’s stomach. It killed his appetite, but he shoveled in a bite of eggs anyway. “I’m not…” He sighed. “I’m trying to understand, that’s all. I used to think I knew you better than anyone, but you’re like a different person, now.”
On an intellectual level, Toly knew the words shouldn’t have stung the way they did, but there was nothing to be done about the burn of them. “No,” he said, firmly. “I’m the same. The situation is different.”
Misha frowned. Caught his gaze again, and held it fast. His voice dropped another notch, just barely audible across the table, the rumble of it in his chest driving home the tiger comparison. “I understand why you got rid of Oleg. It needed doing a long time ago; he should have never been in charge to start with. But why didn’t you take his place? They named you Pakhan on the spot. Why not stay? Why not lead? Andrei would have supported you.” He sounded…hurt, almost.
“We brought you up,” he continued, and, yes, that was definitely hurt in his voice. “And you turned your back on us. Threw us over for yournewfamily.”
Toly pushed food around his plate, and knew that no matter how he phrased things, he could never make Misha understand. There were nights he laid awake and didn’t understand himself.
“Was it the woman? Was she the reason?”
The woman. Ravenwasthe woman in his life, but hearing Misha say it like that left his hackles bristling.Don’t talk about her. Don’t even think about her. The thought of the two of them ever occupying the same space turned his blood cold.
“She wasn’t even in America then,” he said, in a tone that saidleave it. “It wasn’t about her.”
“But it’s about her now,” Misha pressed.
Toly stopped pretending to eat and laid his fork down. Folded his hands over the table and sent his former mentor a narrow look. “Raven had nothing to do with me leaving. She’s not a part of this: she’s only involved because that bastard wants at me.”
Not put off by his tone in the slightest, Misha leaned forward and said, “I don’t get it, though. You had plenty of women before. You were always one of the pretty ones. The girls always wanted in your lap on Saturday nights at the pub.”
Toly made himself take a measured breath and release it again slowly. “It’s not about sex.”
Though sex was an inextricable, addictive part of it. The hot clutch of her body on his cock, the way her nails scored his skin, the way she leaned into his thrusts, and clung to him, and murmured formore, more, yes. The hot-blooded, needy, genuine enthusiasm of a woman who’d never before gotten what she needed in bed. Thrilling enough to get high on.
And the reason the sex was so good, he suspected, was because before, when she sent him those sparking, heated looks, and during, when he lost himself in her, and after, when she laid her head on his shoulder, and covered his inked-over heart with her hand, they felt something like equal. Not like a wealthy model-turned-agent and a bratva-thug-turned-outlaw-biker. But two hungry animals, suitably matched. As cliché as it sounded, theyclicked; he’d never had that with anyone before.
Misha searched his expression a long moment, and chewed thoughtfully at a triangle of toast. “Youlikethis woman,” he said, with something like wonder. “You care for her.”
“Stop calling herthe woman,” Toly snapped, before he could check himself.
“Hm. She’s important to you.” It wasn’t a question, and there was no way for Toly to hedge backward, now. “I didn’t think you could feel that way about someone.”
Insulted warred with nervous. It was a statement that revealed more about Misha than Toly wanted to know – though he’d always suspected it. Hell, he’d suspected it of himself: that inside lay a total coldness, a frigidity; an iced-over heart incapable of feeling.
