“You know,” Kaz said as he took a seat at the bar in his kitchen, drifting his eyes over Violet’s backside as she was bent over, rummaging through his fridge, “I could get used to this.”
“There’s nothing in here, Kaz, besides milk that went bad a week ago and a bag of shredded cheese. How have you survived this long on your own?”
“Vera usually brings whatever I need, but now that you’re coming around here, I told her I would hire someone to do it—it was a waste of her gas anyway. Now, what are you in the mood for? I know a great place that makes French toast.”
“Just order me whatever you’re getting. I’m going to go use your shower.”
Kaz had already dialed the place, his phone to his ear, as he watched her walk past him. “Was that an invitation?”
She didn’t even look back as she said, “Yep.”
Violet was going to be the death of him.
Kaz finished his call rather quickly, and since they had a good twenty-five minutes before the food would show, he decided to make the best use of that time. The shower was already going, and he could just imagine her standing beneath that spray of water … but before his mind could properly seize on that image, there was a hard knock at the front door.
It couldn’t be the food, no one’s fucking delivery time was that great, and he knew it wasn’t anyone that answered to him because they knew better than to just show up at his place unannounced.
There were only two people that would, and as he crossed the short distance between where he was sitting and the front door, he hoped that it wasn’t Vasily.
Looking through the peephole, he saw Ruslan standing on the other side. He chanced a look back, still hearing the shower going.
One thing about his brother, he wouldn’t have come up without having checked to see that Kaz’s car was parked down in the lot, so he couldn’t pretend like he wasn’t home. He had no choice but to let him in and hope that he was there just to deliver a message.
Swinging the door open, Kaz stood in the threshold, uncaring that he was only clad in a pair of boxer-briefs. “Now’s not a good time, Rus.”
“When is it ever a good time for you, brother?” When he still didn’t move, Ruslan frowned. “Are you going to make me stand out here?”
Reluctantly, Kaz shifted to the side, waving for him to come in as he peeked out the door to make sure he was alone.
“Is there a reason you’re acting so strange?” Ruslan asked from behind him, getting comfortable on his couch. Then, almost seconds after the question was out of his mouth, Ruslan’s head tilted as he listened, his smile growing. “So it’s true then. You’re seeing someone.”
“Yes,” Kaz said, not adding anything more than that. “Next time, when I’m not pressed for time, you can meet her.”
But that wouldn’t happen. Not ever.
If they were two different people, or maybe just in a different life, Kaz wouldn’t have hesitated in introducing the two. He didn’t doubt that Ruslan would have liked her, and once someone got past that gruff outer shell that Ruslan always had up, it was clear that he was a good guy.
“What’s the issue?” Ruslan asked, that teasing quality to his tone fading away. “You keeping your secrets from the bratva is one thing, but you’ve never hidden anything from me. Why are you now?”
Kaz glanced in the direction of his bedroom, hearing the shower finally cut off making his heart kick up a notch. Looking back to his brother, Kaz said, “Don’t … Don’t make me lie to you.”
“Why would you need to? Shit Kaz, who the fuck do you—” Ruslan paused, his expression shifting. “You didn’t …”
“Ruslan, walk away.”
“Fuck having to lie to me,” Ruslan said as he got to his feet. “That’s the least of your concerns. If who’s back there is who I think is back there, you’re begging for a fucking funeral.”
“I—”
“Don’t,” Ruslan cut him off, not giving him the chance to get another word out. “Whatever excuse, whatever bullshit reasoning that you’ve fed yourself into thinking that this would work out, don’t give me that. Because that … whatever it is you have with her, it’s not going to end well. For either of you. And the last thing I want to do is bury you because of it. Walk away, Kazimir, before you’re not able to.”
“I can’t do that,” Kaz said, making sure his brother heard every word. “She’s under my skin, and I want to keep her that way.”
Ruslan didn’t say anything, not for a long time, and whatever he saw in Kaz’s face had him shaking his head. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”
But that question didn’t require an answer, not when the evidence of it was behind the closed door of his bedroom.
“Is she worth the trouble that’s going to come your way?” Ruslan asked, then smiled, the sight of it breaking up the tension in the room. “Because your ass isn’t.”
Laughing, Kaz shook his head. “She wouldn’t be here if she wasn’t.”
“Right. Call me later, once you’re actually alone.” Ruslan said opening the front door, startling the delivery man that stood ready to knock on the other side. “Be careful out there, Kaz.”
Ruslan disappeared down the hall, boarding the elevator once the doors opened. Once he had grabbed the food and tipped the man, he closed the door, dropping the bag on the counter.
Standing there, it was almost like a weight was lifted from his chest. He couldn’t explain why Ruslan knowing almost felt like a good thing to him.
Even as he was glad for it, it was just another reminder that this wasn’t going to be easy for them.
Ruslan had reacted as Kaz expected, calmer even.
And that only meant that everyone else’s reactions would be exactly as he thought.
Violent.
Violet listened in the bedroom doorway as the apartment quieted of voices. She kept clutching the large beach-sized towel around her body, not sure if she should run back to the bathroom and lock herself in, or just stay where she was for another minute or two.
Just to be safe.
In all the many times she had come to Kaz’s place, no one had ever interrupted their time. Not during the evenings, and certainly not in the mornings. Sure, he’d gotten calls—work, she suspected, for his father—but it had never been so immediately important that he needed to leave her there and handle it.
Kaz had never warned her that someone might show up, either, and she strongly believed that was because he didn’t think someone would without prior notice. Violet might not know every little detail about Kaz, his business, or his family, but she knew enough.
Enough to say he wouldn’t put her in that kind of situation if he could help it.
“Violet?” she heard him yell from the kitchen.
She started on the spot, brought out of her thoughts with a bang.
“Yeah?” Violet called back.
“I know you’re waiting back there. It’s safe.”
“I’m indecent at the moment.”
She swore he was smirking in that fucking way of his when he replied, “And that makes a difference how?”
“Let me pull something on, Kaz.”
“You’re no fun this morning.”
Violet let him have his complaints as she bolted back for the bathroom. Knowing she had to at least try to preserve the cleanliness of her blue lace dress from the night before—the damn thing needed to be dry-cleaned, not just shoved into a washer—she snagged a red, plain cotton T-shirt from Kaz’s closet, and pulled on a pair of clean boy-shorts from her messenger bag.
At least she was remembering to keep an extra pair of those on hand, now.
Violet eventually made her way back to the kitchen, tossing Kaz a sly grin when she caught his gaze roving over her figure before she took a seat at the bar.
He already had the bags of food emptied, and the containers waiting to be opened. Violet grabbed one he pushed toward her, plucking up a plastic fork to go with it.
She couldn’t help but notice how he didn’t say a thing about his visitor.
“Kaz?”
“Hmm?”
“Your brother was here,” she said, never taking her gaze off her French Toast.
“He was,” Kaz replied at the same level.
“And I take it … he knows now.”
“Ruslan has a pretty good idea, yes.”
Fantastic.
Violet didn’t want to be worried about the fact Ruslan knew, given that Kaz seemed so unbothered by it all, but the panic was still welling in her gut and spilling into her throat.
One person might lead to two, and then three.
She glanced up to find Kaz watching her, and she wasn’t the least bit surprised. He always watched her like that whenever he could, but especially when he thought she wasn’t looking at him. Almost liked he enjoyed the sight of her when she was inside her thoughts, unaware and quiet.
Violet liked it a lot—she liked it a little more each time she caught him doing it, and he didn’t look away.
She didn’t have the first clue what to make of that at all.
To feel like she was important—significant—to Kaz, simply because she graced him with her very person, and her time, and he didn’t ask for more.
People always wanted more.
“You know,” Kaz started to say, tossing his fork into his container, “you always get a little dimple in your right cheek whenever you think too much, or you’re frustrated.”
Violet’s brow lifted at his admission. “Do I?”
“Among other things.”
“Like what?”
“We’ll stick with the dimple, because it’s the most obvious,” Kaz said in a murmur. “And I wouldn’t be very good at my profession if I weren’t capable of reading body language. So what I might notice, someone else probably wouldn’t, or if they did, they would overlook it as nothing unusual.”
Violet licked her bottom lip, trying to relax the tension in her shoulders.
“Still there,” Kaz said after a moment.
“I’m nervous.”
“Because of my brother.”
“Aren’t you?” she asked.
“That Ruslan will run to the first person he can and spill what he knows about me? Not highly. Not at all.”
Oh.
“Why?”
Kaz smiled, softer than usual. “Because I know my brat, that’s all.”
Violet had a feeling there was more to the story, but she let him have his secrets. She still had a few of her own, after all. But it seemed like all Kaz had to do was prompt and press in just the right ways, and she couldn’t hold a thing back.
“Still, he’s just the first person to know,” Violet said softly.
Kaz’s jaw tightened briefly. “You know who I am, yes?”
“Uh, yes?”
“And you know who you are, obviously.”
Violet sighed. “Kaz, get to the point.”
Kaz shrugged. “We’ve known from the beginning that this was going to continue one of two ways, Violet.”
Her chest suddenly constricted with the heavy undercurrent of his words. They seemed safe enough on the surface, but had no doubt they would probably hurt if she looked a little deeper.
“Either we ended it,” Kaz said, as cool and calm as ever, “or we didn’t.”
Violet swallowed the lump keeping her quiet. “We didn’t.”
“What do you want, hmm?”
“I don’t understand what you’re asking.”
Kaz lifted a hand, gesturing to his place, and then between them. “How many times do you want to keep coming here? Staying the night? Sleeping with me, in my bed? Wearing my clothes, cooking in my kitchen? Sneaking away from your father, waking me up in the middle of the night … and I can keep going, Violet.”
He could.
“So maybe I haven’t seen it like that,” she whispered.
“That’s a lie. You see it exactly the same way, or you wouldn’t do it at all because you wouldn’t want to do it.”
Violet hated how he always did that in one way or another. She was used to turning cheek to things she didn’t want to see, or even sticking her head in the sand because it was easier.
Kaz didn’t let her do that.
He forced her to look around, to take inventory and accountability.
She lived a hell of a lot more in the short time she spent with him then she ever did when she was alone.
It was good.
But it was bad, too.
“For the record,” Kaz said quietly, making Violet look up at him again.
“What?”
“I like you being here. Doing those things, all of those things. And the things I didn’t say, too. If I had wanted you to stop, if I didn’t want to see where this was going to go, then it would have ended a long while ago.”
Yeah, she knew that, too.
Violet didn’t understand a lot of the shit she felt and thought where Kaz was concerned, but what she did, she liked. And she wasn’t ready to end it like that.
Pushing off the stool, Violet made her way around the island to stand beside Kaz. He watched her the whole while, saying nothing. Moving sideways a bit, he offered her a hand, and she took it, stepping up to sit on his lap. An arm wrapped around her waist, and his hand landed to her bare thigh.
The touch alone was possessive.
Like he intended to keep it there.
“Eat,” he said, tugging her container across the counter and picking up the fork for her to take again.
Kaz’s chin rested on her shoulder.
“What are we doing?” she asked.
Violet didn’t feel like she had to expand on that statement.
Wasn’t it obvious enough?
What were they doing with one another?
Together?
Kaz used his fork to cut a piece of her French toast, and lifted it to Violet for her to take. “Eating.”
“Not what I meant.”
“I think this is exactly what you meant.”
It was, sort of.
The realization came hard and swift.
She wouldn’t be there, otherwise. She wouldn’t have crossed that distance to be closer. She wouldn’t want him holding her like he was.
Intimate.
Sweet.
What was that word he’d used once?
Domestic?
“We’ll figure it out,” Kaz said, his words whispering along her skin.
“Will we?”
“Somehow.”