Page 5

MIA

My heel taps nervously against the sidewalk.

I’m still processing the craziness of the past half-hour. I couldn’t even explain myself properly to Kallie and Eli. I just took the fastest shower in history and ran back down in my third-hand Cavallini heels.

Cue the most awkward seven minutes and a half of my fucking life.

Mr. Cheese Grater Abs is impatient.

Very impatient.

He keeps checking his phone, snarling at passing cars, going through the five stages of pissed off and then starting over again at the beginning.

Whoever’s keeping him waiting, I wouldn’t want to be them.

But do you want to be his date?

In short: fuck no.

He’s right about one thing, though: I do need the money.

Upstairs, my kid has a pair of basketball shoes filled with holes that I can replace if I do this. My bills, my loans—I could pay it all off for a month or two.

I could breathe.

I just need to get through tonight.

The purr of an engine snaps me out of my thoughts. A sleek black limo rolls up, stopping right in front of us.

“Yo, Yulian!” A big guy with facial tattoos and a wicked grin waves from the driver’s seat. “How’s it hanging, new girl? I’m Maksim.”

“Mia,” I blurt before remembering we weren’t supposed to be doing names. Fuck. “I mean?—”

“Get in.” The man— Yulian, apparently—throws the car door open. “Now.”

It’s the least gentlemanly way anyone’s ever held a door open for me, to say the least. Someone ought to teach him what “please” means or what a “smile” is.

But a payday’s a payday, so I grit my teeth and slide into the limo.

Yulian doesn’t sit in the front. Instead, to my mounting horror, he sits right next to me.

“Drive,” he barks to Maksim.

The car merges back into traffic. I stare wistfully at my beaten-up Honda as she disappears into the distance, wondering if it’s too late to change my mind.

“Put this on.”

I startle at the item in Yulian’s hands. “What’s this?”

“Your dress.” His gray eyes rake over my midnight blue A-line. “One that doesn’t come from a thrift store.”

“Hey! It’s pre-loved.”

“It’s a disaster. Change.”

I gawk in confusion at the opaque garment bag he thrusts in my hands.

Conflict twists my chest. I may need this money, but no one ever said anything about having to strip naked in a car with a stranger to get it.

In fact, I was pretty clear on this not happening.

But Yulian is still staring at me, gray eyes cold as stone, fingers drumming impatiently on his thigh. “Put it on, Ms. Winters. Unless you’d like to back out of our deal.”

With a swallow, I unzip the bag. “Fine. But you’re turning around. And— oh. ”

The words die in my throat.

Cool, pale blue silk shimmers in my hands, spilling through my fingers like water. I’ve never seen anything this beautiful, let alone touched it.

The fabric, the handiwork—it’s exquisite. A far cry from any “pre-loved” dress I’ve ever owned.

This piece has never been loved before.

I’m its first.

“And?”

I startle back to the present. “What?”

“You said ‘and.’” A faint smirk paints Yulian’s lips. He’s having the time of his life watching me squirm. “I’m turning around, and… ?”

Pettiness flares inside me. “And I’m keeping the dress,” I snap. “Now, do your part, Bright Eyes. Sit and spin.”

With that smug smirk still firmly in place, Yulian obliges.

Yulian.

I roll his name on my tongue as I strip.

It sounds way sweeter than the man it belongs to.

My hands fumble every step of the way. The limo may be big, but it isn’t that big. No car is big enough for someone to get naked next to someone else without accidental contact. Every near-brush with him makes my heart leap up into my throat.

I swallow my nerves and do the only thing I can think of to make this bearable: conversation.

“So, uhh… you do this often?”

It’s a lame joke at best, but Yulian doesn’t even pretend to play along. “You’ll have to be more specific than that.”

“Bribe women into being your date,” I bite back acidly. “Is that a typical Friday night for you, or do you sometimes score without the help of your thick, fat wallet?”

I could swear I detect the faintest hint of a laugh dancing on the edge of his voice. “Nothing about this is typical. Well, that’s not quite true. You’re far from the first woman to strip naked in my car. But you are the first one who’s in it because you got my car towed.”

My face heats up. I said nothing sexual, but we’re thirty minutes into this absurd scenario and I’m naked, he’s talking about all the women he sleeps with, and we’re both probably picturing things we definitely shouldn’t be.

“To be fair,” I mumble, “you deserved it.”

“I thought nurses weren’t supposed to cause harm?”

“I’m sure your car is perfectly fine. And no one at NYU told me that cars fell under the Hippocratic Oath.”

“So that’s where you got your degree,” he muses. “NYU.”

Goddammit . I told myself I wouldn’t let this man know anything about me. Now, he knows my name, where I live, what car I drive, and where I went to school.

Nice going, Mia. Why don’t you give him your Social Security number, too?

Think he knows that your blood type is O-neg?

What about the freckle on the inside of your thigh? Why not just give him a peek of that for good measure?

“Maybe,” I say, trying to sound casual and mysterious and sounding more like I’m unsure about my own alma mater instead. “Maybe not.”

It’s a pathetic attempt. I know it, Yulian knows it—hell, even Maksim probably knows it.

Five minutes I’ve been in this car, and I’ve already made myself ridiculous in the eyes of all its occupants.

“Alright, I’m decent. You can look?—”

Now, I wanted to say, but my breath catches halfway.

Because there are hands on the zipper at my back.

And they’re not mine.

“Keep still,” a hot, gravelly voice whispers behind me. I can feel his breath on my neck, the warm pressure of strong hands. “We wouldn’t want to rip your new dress, would we, Ms. Winters?”

I hate the way he says my name.

My not -name, the one I resurrected from my great-grandmother’s diary when my real one became unusable.

But at the same time, I’m glad it’s not my actual name he’s saying.

Mia Winters —she’s tough. She can take it.

Euphemia Collins —the name I was born with—absolutely could not.

But then again, Euphemia Collins couldn’t take a lot of things. That’s why she’s dead and buried. That’s why I’m Mia now.

“I told you not to look,” I hiss, hating the way my voice trembles.

“I wasn’t. I turned around, like you asked.” He sounds way too pleased with himself. “Towards the window.”

Which is a reflective surface. Of fucking course. Talk about malicious compliance.

“You’re awful.”

“I’ve been called worse things.” Again, that hot breath on my neck, closer than sin. “You should know—you said several of them.”

Yulian’s fingers deftly work the zipper up, one hand still buried in my hair to keep it from getting caught. I feel myself go slack under his touch, pliant, malleable. Play-Doh in his hands.

All things I haven’t let myself be in a long time.

Desperate for a distraction, I turn my attention to the window. The limo is gliding smoothly over the Brooklyn Bridge now, city lights blurring as we zoom past.

But no matter how hard I try to pretend otherwise, I can still feel Yulian’s gaze on me.

“So, uhh… What’s this event we’re going to?”

“You’ll see.”

Great. Thanks. Really helpful.

“You’re not a big conversationalist, are you?”

“I’m a man of action, Ms. Winters,” he whispers into my ear. “Not words.”

My mind runs off with it—the image of Yulian in action. The question of just how much this dark stranger is capable of.

It paints a vivid picture, starting with the tattoos I can see crawling up his hands and wrists.

I catch myself wondering how far they go. How they might flex and curl around his muscles in motion, if by some wave of my fairy godmother’s wand, his suit was to suddenly disappear…

“If I had a nickel for every time some fuckboy said that to me, I wouldn’t have had to take you up on your stupid offer,” I retort.

It’s a little feisty—I’m definitely biting the hand that’s literally feeding me—but something tells me that Yulian here will appreciate a spark of defiance.

Sure enough, he’s not bothered in the least. In fact, he makes a humming sound deep in his throat, like a purring jaguar. It vibrates through every inch of my skin.

“What would it take?” he murmurs, tracing the line of my shoulder strap. Goosebumps bloom where he touches me, a thousand tiny alarms. “For you to believe me?”

I want to tell him.

I want to tell him exactly how he could convince me—with his tongue, hands, lips—of anything he wanted me to believe.

God, I want it so bad.

“I…”

And then, suddenly, Yulian’s phone rings.

He growls in his throat as he pulls away. “One moment.”

He glances at the screen. His eyebrows furrow, and all the heat that had been simmering in the air disappears beneath the smog of his irritation.

“Tell me you’re not seriously calling me from the driver’s seat, mudak. ”

As if by magic, the partition slowly sinks, revealing Maksim’s face. “What? You might’ve been busy.”

“I was.” My cheeks flush at the thought of just what he’d been busy with— me. “Start talking before I chuck this at your head.”

Undeterred by Yulian’s threats, Maksim grins. “Just got a quick question for ya. The men are taking care of the, ah, Boylan problem. Only, the usual dumping ground is a no-go. Apparently, there’s a construction site right over it.”

“Then melt him and turn him into fucking soap,” Yulian snarls. “I don’t care how you do it. Just make sure there’s nothing left to find.”

Welp, that’s a mood killer.

Literally.

The illusion shatters. My thoughts sharpen again, fog clearing all at once.

Suddenly, I remember.

I remember way, way too much.

There’s a man in New York. A hotshot CEO, constantly at the top of Forbes 40 Over 40 and Most Eligible Bachelor lists.

A man who’s rumored to be involved with the Russian criminal underworld. Nothing anyone can prove, but enough that the whispers are barely even whispers anymore.

And his name is Yulian Lozhkin.

Yulian.

Fuck. I can’t believe it. Of all the people in this city—all the rich assholes with money to throw at their problems…

… Did I seriously just land in a car with the most dangerous one of them all?