Page 19 of Scarlet Vows (Yegorov Bratva #3)

Chapter Fourteen

ALINA

When their time in the park is done, we take the dogs back, poop-scooping along the way.

Eva tells me the walks are important for that, as it’s easy to let them get used to the wee-wee pads, but she prefers those for emergencies, and if a dog gets to know outside is the place for business, then it’s much easier for adoption.

“But they’re not puppies…mostly,” I say when we arrive back.

“Some have trauma, and we work through it with routine, with rewards. But the goal is to have clean pads on the floor each morning and then take them for their morning walk.”

“You’d be surprised,” says the young guy who’s clipping leads on the kennel two members, “how many shelters just leave the dogs to go in their cage and then wonder why there’s a higher rate of returns.”

Jane wraps the leads around her hand. “That, and people are lazy.”

After they go, we let cage three out to play, as well as some of the individual dogs who have their own singular cages .

“The ones,” Eva tells me, “don’t like to mix with other dogs. Or the more traumatized or troublesome ones.”

To me, they’re all good. They all have their quirks, sure, but not one dog here is bad or hopeless.

“They just need love and patience.”

“So true,” she says.

I go around, giving the dogs cuddles and treats until I’m back at Albert’s cage.

He stares at me with liquid eyes, and I let him out, sitting cross-legged on the floor with him.

Albert considers me. Sniffs the air; he knows I have a treat. But he doesn’t go for it.

Instead, he comes up and crawls onto my lap with a tiny whine.

I giggle, and he perks up, looking at me a little anxiously but happily, and then starts to lick my face.

I offer him the treat, but he just gives me doggy kisses until he’s decided it’s enough. He curls up, nudging my hand, and I open it. He snuffles up the treat then sighs and flops all the way down.

I pet him. He’s soft, heavy, warm.

“Albert seems very taken with you,” Eva says with a smile.

I smile down at him, scratching behind his ears, which makes his tail wag. “The feeling’s mutual.”

Albert sighs again and turns a little so I can get to his tummy.

“How long has he been here?”

“Nearly a year,” Eva admits. “I rescued him from another shelter that was going to euthanize him because of his age. And he was so withdrawn and listless after his owner passed.”

“That’s horrible.” My heart clenches. “Albert, sweet Albert. You’re safe here.”

“He seems to be with you.”

The warmth in her voice warms me, like I’m doing something so right that it’s hard to deny. Yet how can something so natural and small bring waves of joy?

Like Ilya in the frilly apron with a ready smile that lit him from the inside out, a smile just for me.

“He’s just so sweet and gentle. How could that kill shelter exist?”

“Oh, Alina, the norm tends toward that kind of shelter.”

I frown. “Aren’t they all like this?”

Eva looks at me like I’m na?ve, and I can almost hear her ask herself where I come from. Then she glances at my shoes and jeans, and I know she knows they’re all expensive designer pieces. Even my bag.

Heat starts to rise from my toes upward.

“Not every shelter has a no-kill policy like this one. And the sad truth is,” Eva says as horror blooms inside me, “that money and space go against us. Like right now, we’re nearing capacity, so soon we’ll need to send dogs elsewhere.

Hopefully to another no-kill place, but sometimes we don’t have control.

“What we do, though, is adoption drives online and in person, in the hopes that we can find some forever homes.”

The fact that there are kill shelters and that places like this sometimes have to send the dogs there is abhorrent to me.

But I’ve got a trust fund with more money than I know what to do with. I don’t need it all. It doesn’t buy me happiness, I’m aware of that. And if I asked, Demyan and Ilya would help.

Demyan would because Erin and his kids would want it, and Ilya would because it’s Ilya.

Ilya is a good man.

And I need to stop thinking about him.

But right then, with Albert on my lap, I make the decision to do what I can to help.

Beyond volunteering and just donating money, there must be other things.

Like funding on a bigger scale with all the no-kill shelters, setting up a forever home outside Chicago and around the country for dogs who can’t find a home to live a happy life.

But of course, any goal would be to stop those puppy mills I’ve read about, and to help rehome dogs.

I finish my day at the shelter with a newfound energy and goal.

When I get back to the mansion, I play around with some ideas for the upstairs bedrooms and other rooms. I’m thinking we’ll keep things on a more formal level downstairs and where Ilya’s office is, and then modernize upstairs where I am. Have it almost as a living-quarters floor. Ilya’s home base.

Mine, too.

No… I stop that thought and sip my wine, curling into the armchair in the living room downstairs with my laptop. Ilya’s home. I’m just here for the year.

I open another tab on my search engine and a spreadsheet and settle in to do what I really want.

Helping the dogs.

The first thing, my starting base, is Eva and her shelter. I want to help, and I already have a recurring donation that I set up in Max’s name to start going to them, so hopefully it’ll help.

But I’ve really got the feeling it’s more than recurring donations that will help.

There must be ways I didn’t think about earlier.

Ways to make it way more viable. And though I’d love to throw money at my ideas, I’m aware that getting the right people to understand how everything works is the most important thing, because that way, the money is used wisely. Anything else is a waste long-term .

I want to do something that makes a difference long-term.

I want to be, I realize, part of the fix.

The front door opens and closes, letting in the sound of voices. And my skin pricks all over at one of them.

Ilya.

I can’t help how I tense up in excitement and anticipation as his footsteps approach.

Something hits the ground, and I look at the door. He just dumped his gym bag and a satchel.

“ Malyshka , how were the dogs?” He comes in, kicks off his shoes, pours himself a glass of wine, and sits on the sofa opposite. “I’m shocked this place isn’t full of them yet.”

Excitement races through me. “I can have a dog?”

“You can have anything you want, Alina.”

I look back at the spreadsheet on my laptop. “Well, right now, apart from a dog, I want to help them, as many as I can.”

“We can donate.”

“I set a recurring donation up,” I say, and bite my lip. “In Max’s name.”

“Then,” he says, taking a sip, “we can set up a second one, too. In my mother’s and father’s names.”

“Are you sticking it to your grandfather?”

He chuckles. “Only if it’s for a good cause.”

Our eyes meet a moment and the air vibrates with heat between us.

He pats the seat next to him. “Show me.”

Eagerly, I cross to him and take him through my plans and thoughts. It’s not until I’m done that my nerves hit. I don’t know what I’m doing and?—

“This is great, Alina,” he says softly. “And it’s the most passionate I’ve seen you in a long time. I like it. All of it.”

I smile. I can’t help it, and my heart flutters. “It’s good to focus my energy on something so useful and good. Sometimes I just feel like…” Like it should have been me, the rich, useless member of society who should have died that day. Not Max. “I just feel like a waste of space.”

“Never. Not you, Alina. You light up people and spaces when you walk in. You calm things down when things get heated. I’ve seen you with Demyan.

Until Erin, you were the anchor. And you helped make him change his behavior when he didn’t know what to do when he found out about Sasha.

When his feelings overwhelmed him, you helped.

Without you, it would have been too late.

She would have gotten away, and he’d have lost everything. ”

I shake my head. “Demyan wouldn’t let that happen. He’d have hunted her down.”

“Hunted, not wooed. There is a difference.”

“Well, this makes me feel good. Happy. Excited.” I glance at him, and my heart skitters at the way his eyes are on me.

Hooded, like a thousand secret thoughts are hidden there, all of them electrified.

“What is it, Ilya?”

“Nothing.”

“No,” I say, “it’s not nothing. It’s something. What are you thinking?”

“You don’t want to know,” he murmurs, not taking his gaze from me.

I’m falling down into the center of him. I can’t stop it, and I’m not sure if I want to.

“I wouldn’t have asked if I didn’t want to know,” I whisper, even though I’m not sure I can handle his response.

“I was thinking how beautiful you are…more beautiful…utterly mesmerizing when you’re in your element like this.”

The breath in my lungs catches, and I don’t move.

I can’t.

Ilya reaches over and slides his fingers along my cheek. “It’s such a fucking turn-on. ”

“I…”

“Dog gone and got your tongue?” He doesn’t smile.

I don’t laugh. “Your jokes are getting worse.”

“And you’re just getting prettier.”

“Ilya…I…” My voice chokes as everything in me leans into him, craves him, wants more of that touch, his heat, the scent of him.

He really is gorgeous. And I can’t look away from those brown eyes that swirl with an entire unexplored world, one I desperately want to know.

“I should go.”

“No.” The word’s out before I can stop it, and I touch him, too, running a finger along his lips and over his unshaven cheek.

It’s like I offered him an invitation.

And he accepts it when he moves toward me. Slow. Steady.

There’s plenty of time to run, to change the subject. To pull back.

I don’t.

And his lips touch mine.

My world rocks under me, the soft zing of his lips meeting mine sliding down into my belly to writhe, stirring up all the feelings and sensations I haven’t felt in a long time. The buzz of arousal, the rush of blood to my clit and a dampness that seems to pool.

My lips part, and the kiss deepens, his tongue slipping into my mouth. I meet his with mine.

The kiss is deep, wild, dirty, and I throb like he’s feeling me up. The edge of passion is electric, something I want to plug into.

The kiss deepens, our tongues slow dancing, and I’m losing myself in him, in the heat of his mouth, the wetness, the sweet stroke and tease of his tongue .

It’s like he’s playing me, making me come alive on a different kind of level I’ve never, ever felt. And I want more. I want to drown in him, fly with him, explore those deep, wild, and dirty depths.

A moan escapes me. His fingers start to slide down my side, and?—

“No.” Ilya breaks the kiss and pulls away.

My head spins, and trying to form words in that moment is impossible.

“I’m sorry. I was out of line,” he says to me in Russian. “I made a promise to keep things between us simple, and the last thing I want to do is ruin our friendship by taking a step you’re not ready for, Alina.”

Or he just doesn’t want the complications of a woman who may transfer affection from the dead to the living. Of course he doesn’t want that. He doesn’t want my baggage. Perhaps he just doesn’t want me. He hasn’t ever made a move before. So why now?

Him seeing me excited about something tells me how lifeless I’ve been.

Heat burns up my throat and coils through me at his rejection, one which comes with all the excuses, lined up at the ready.

“What I am ready for is bed.”

“You don’t want dinner?” He gets up with his glass of wine and moves to the other side of the room, like he really can’t wait to put as much distance between us as possible.

I shake my head. “No. It was a long day, and I had something at the shelter. I need to be back tomorrow morning. Thanks for looking at my ideas. Have a good night.”

With that, I take my computer and race out of the room and up the steps. When I’m in my room, the door locked behind me, I sink into the chair in there, one I put near the open balcony door .

My emotions churn inside.

On one hand, I’m glad Ilya stopped things from going further because I don’t think I would have. He tapped a hunger in me and made me see how two years without a man’s touch is two years too long. I need something, something that no vibrator or clit stimulator can hope to emulate.

They give orgasms, but I need that extra something, the touch of want, need, affection.

But on the other hand?

I wish he hadn’t stopped. I wish he’d pushed it and that we’d kept going.

And that terrifies the living fuck out of me.

The awful truth is he was right to break it off. Because I have no idea what I want.

Until I figure it out, though, I do know one thing.

I need to keep the hell away from Ilya.

I need as much distance as possible.

No matter how hard that may be.