Page 28 of Bratva Prisoner

“Sure. Tennis.”

She stops walking and turns to face me with a grin that could power the entire city. “You’re terrible at this whole hiking thing, aren’t you?”

“I’m terrible at a lot of things. Hiking, cooking, pretending I’m not completely obsessed with the woman I’m supposedly protecting.”

The last part slips out before I can stop it, and it loiters between us like a confession neither of us expected. Her grin fades into something more serious, more wary.

“Maksim…”

“I know. Wrong time, wrong circumstances, wrong everything.” I gesture to the trail ahead of us. “Keep walking. I promise to behave myself.”

“That’s not what I was going to say.”

“What were you going to say?”

She doesn’t answer immediately and instead chooses to resume climbing. I follow behind her, admiring the view and trying not to think about how perfectly her hiking pants showcase her curves.

“I was going to say the obsession is mutual,” she finally admits without turning around.

The words stop me dead in my tracks. “Alyssa.”

“Don’t read too much into it. I’m just acknowledging that this situation is trickier than either of us planned.”

Tricky. That’s one way to put it.

We hike in comfortable silence for the next twenty minutes, and the tension between us settles into somethingmanageable. When we reach a clearing with a panoramic view of the valley below, she finally stops to rest on a fallen log.

“This is beautiful,” she breathes as she surveys the landscape spread out beneath us.

“Not as beautiful as you.”

She rolls her eyes at the line, but I catch the blush that colors her cheeks. “Do you use that on all the women you bring hiking?”

“I don’t bring women hiking. I don’t bring women anywhere, actually.”

She scrunches her nose and asks, “What do you usually do with women?”

“I have sex with them and never see them again.”

The blunt honesty makes her blink in surprise. “Well. That’s refreshingly direct.”

“I’m trying something new with you,” I admit as I rub the back of my neck. “It’s called telling the truth.”

“How’s that working out?”

“Terrifying, actually.”

She laughs again, and this time, there’s no distance in it. This is the woman I met at the club, the one who challenged me and made me work for her attention.

“Tell me about your family,” she suggests, changing the subject to safer territory. “You mentioned five brothers the other day.”

“Six of us total. I’m the fourth in line.” I settle beside her on the log, careful to maintain some distance. “Aleksei is the eldest, then Grigor, then Dimitri, me, Akim, and Nikolai.”

“That’s a lot of testosterone in one family.”

“You have no idea. Family dinners are like war councils, except with better food and more alcohol. We did have a sister, Anya, but she passed away.”

“Oh,” she says with a gasp. “I’m so sorry.”