Page 125 of Ruthless Rustanovs

“CAN I go somewhere today after you leave out? Somewhere without Dexter?”

They were lying in bed, Bair casually playing with her breasts.

The breasts she’d gotten to cover up the damage left behind by the disease that had tried to claim her, take her from him.

In the space of thirty-six hours, he’d gone from loathing to treasuring these breasts, and now he played with them, teasing himself hard again.

It had been a lovely weekend. A perfect one filled with good food, forgiveness, and the kind of make-up sex that can only be had after a relationship divide had finally been crossed.

Which was why his hand stilled at her question.

She turned over inside his arms. “It’s not anywhere bad I’m going.”

“Then why can’t you let Dexter take you there?”

She peeped up at him, “Because I need to go there by myself.”

“That is no answer, Sirena.”

“I know it isn’t. But this is…it’s something I need to do alone. Have you ever had anything you just had to do alone?”

Da, his entire life after she left him, he thought bitterly. But aloud he said, “I do not like the thought of you in city you do not know all alone. It is not safe.”

She shook her head. That teasing smile he remembered so well, pulling up her lips. “I’ve been taking care of myself for years now, Beast.”

“Da, and that time is done,” he answered simply. “Now I take care of you again. You can let Dexter drive you to this place, or you cannot go. Those are your choices.”

“Bair?” she asked on a sing-song sigh, splaying her hands against his chest.

“What?” he gritted out between clenched teeth.

“You know this is a test, right?” she said, looking him straight in the eye. “To see if we really can do this again without the same old shit tearing us apart. Do you want it to go back to the way it was that last year before I split out?”

He ground his teeth, but nonetheless admitted, “Nyet.”

“Okay, well then you can’t be keeping me under your thumb anymore. I’m a thirty-one-year-old woman. You’ve got to let me do me this time.”

“I do not know what that means,” he grumbled, disliking all the colloquialisms she’d been using in arguments lately. Disliking that they argued at all. Back in Germany, this conversation would have been over at his first nyet. Back in Germany, she wouldn’t have even dared to ask this of him.

“I think you do know what I mean,” she said with a frank look.

Yes, he did understand. Her meaning, if not her words. And he understood even more what saying no to her now would do to the fragile shoot of the relationship they were trying to rebuild.

In the end he let her go.

He fucked her three times before he finally gave in—but he did as she asked.

When she pulled him down for a kiss before getting into an Uber, he wrapped her in his arms, ensuring anyone who came anywhere near her would get a whiff of his Tom Ford Private Blend cologne—but he let her go.

He even let the Uber get all the way around the corner before he picked up the phone and dialed Dexter.

“Right behind her,” her bodyguard answered without greeting. “I’ll text when I know exactly where she’s at.”

About twenty minutes later a text vibrated on his phone: Got eyes on her a coffee shop in the Mission District. She’s sitting in a booth at the window. Waiting for somebody, maybe. Will text when they show up.

Yet, three hours later, it was Bair who texted Dexter. “Is she still there?”

“Yes, and nobody’s joined her yet. She’s just been sitting there.”

Bair frowned, not sure what to do or how to feel as Dexter explained that his siren had been sitting in a window booth all morning.

Drinking several cups of tea while she stared through the glass.

She was obviously waiting for someone, but so far, she’d not so much as spoken to anyone other than her waitress, according to Dexter who was in a building across the street where he could keep an eye on her without being seen.

Neither of them had a clue what she was doing.

Not knowing what else to do, Bair tried a tactic he’d never used with Sirena before. He texted her, “I miss you.”

Her text came back immediate and swift. “I miss you, too. How are you?”

“Fine,” he answered, already impatient with their small talk, even if her ‘I miss you, too’ warmed his heart. “Where are you?”

“At a little café called Sophie’s in the Mission.”

Her immediate and truthful answer surprised him so much, it took him a minute or two to come up with a return text. “May I come to you?”

“You’re still here?”

“Yes.”

“Then yes. Please come.”

Bair was unprepared for the leap his heart gave when he came through the door of the café just twenty minutes after their text conversation, and found her sitting in one of the window booths.

However, the heavily made up young waitress was less than thrilled to see him. “You planning on eating?” she asked with a surly attitude almost as soon as he sat down.

Before he could answer, his wife slid a $100 bill across the table. “Here’s your tip,” she told the waitress. “Is that enough to earn some good service for him, even though I’ve already been here for a few hours?”

“I forgot how sharp this tongue of yours can be,” he said to her after the chastised waitress skulked away with Bair’s order.

His siren shrugged. “I understand her being a little put out with me, but she don’t have to be rude to you because I’ve been here all day.”

“You should eat, too,” he said, sliding the menu across to her.

“How do you know I haven’t?”

“Waitress would not be so angry if you had,” he answered, keeping his face neutral.

“Okay, fine, I guess I’ll have a hamburger.”

He called the waitress back over and ordered a cheeseburger for her with no toppings. Meat and cheese. The way she liked them. “Everything else feels too complicated,” she’d once told him.

But when he got done giving the now friendlier waitress their order, he found Sirena once again staring out the window.

She’d always been a bit of window gazer, he remembered now. Even going so far as to call it “rehearsal” when he found her staring out of one, lost in her thoughts on a particular song.

But this was different. She was staring at something. Something specific. With a wistfulness that bordered on sadness. He followed her gaze, and found a little mint green town house on the other side the street.

Accusations immediately began to burn in his mind. Who lived in that house? A past lover? A new boyfriend?

But then he remembered all the entries in her diary. A daily accounting of how he used to ask her questions just like these, followed by fucking her until he believed her answers.

You know this is a test, right? To see if we really can do this again without the same old shit tearing us apart.

Resolving himself to pass this test, he moved over in his seat so he could sit directly across from her.

Stretching out his long legs, he hugged hers between them.

They used to sit like this all the time toward the beginning of their relationship, wanting to stay connected even when they were sitting across from each other in cafes and restaurants.

“Who are you waiting for, my little siren?” he asked, forcing more calm into his tone than he actually felt.

This brought her eyes away from the window and her legs shifted inside his. “You won’t believe me.”

Their past shone in her eyes. So what if other boys want me, I only want you, she’d once said to him with a teasing smile, I only get wet for you.

She’d said this before she’d come to fully understand that other boys wanting her wasn’t something he could abide. She said this, and no, he hadn’t believed her. In fact, he’d ended up using her teasing words against her. What had she called him in her diary? Generous, but not kind.

But he was trying with her now. He wanted to at least try to pass her test.

So he answered, “Tell me, and we will see.” Tone simple, even if his heart was not.

She looked at him, seemingly trying to discern if he was telling her the truth or not. Then she gave up with a quick suck of her teeth. “Okay, I might as well tell you. Why the hell not? You already know my mom is crazy…”

He frowned. Not understanding what any of this had to do with the strange owl-like woman he’d encountered at her sister’s wedding.

“You are waiting for your mother? She is here in San Francisco?”

“No,” she answered. “I’m waiting for my dead brother to get home.”

Thel didn’t know how she expected Bair to respond to that, but he didn’t even flinch. Just sat there, waiting for her to continue.

Another endearing memory surfaced then. That when he listened, he really listened, staying quiet until the end of the story, even if it was about something as silly as a piece of music she was finding difficult to sing.

So she began telling him the whole story with a tentative heart.

“My brother Trevor got hit by a car when he was sixteen. It was my fault because I left the door open after I came home late that night. It was my nineteenth birthday and I’d been out drinking with my other loser friends who’d stayed on in Greenlee after high school.

Mama didn’t ever care about me staying out late, but locking the door when we came in was the one rule we had at our house, because Trevor would get to wandering outside if you didn’t watch him.

He had some mental disabilities. Give him a knife and some wood and he’d make you all the bookshelves you could ever want, but he couldn’t figure out how to work the lock on the front door.

So it was our one rule, and I broke it…”

She shook her head, still so angry at herself.

“That’s why I ran away from home. I couldn’t take living there anymore. Couldn’t stop thinking about how Trevor would still be alive if I hadn’t left that door open. If I’d just remembered to lock the door behind me…”