I nearly dropped the platter of syrniki (cottage cheese pancakes) when I heard Dmitry’s casual announcement. “You what?” I asked.

Dmitry gave me a mild look. “I invited Yulia to dinner tonight,” he repeated. “That’s not a problem, is it?”

I groaned. Stupid, meddling cousins…

“It’ll be good to see her—and to hear what she’s up to,” Nikolai chimed in.

I shot him a look. That traitor. “Do I need to remind you that these dinners are for us, as a family, so that we can catch up?” I asked, gritting my teeth.

“I thought they were just an excuse to make borscht every couple weeks and to pig out on some pelmeni!” Andrei said, grinning unrepentantly as he snatched one of the jam-filled blini off another tray.

“Plus, we all remember how difficult it was for us when we first came from Russia,” Nikolai pointed out. “I imagine Yulia just wants something normal right now.”

“She’s only been in Barcelona for three days,” I reminded him.

“Sure, but three days can feel like a lot longer when you don’t have any friends in the area,” I was reminded.

“I’m sure she’s doing fine,” I protested. “After all, she at least speaks English—better than any of you dogs.”

There was laughter around the kitchen. Dmitry slung an arm around my shoulders. “Come now, Alyosha,” he said, sounding infuriatingly reasonable. “Yulia may as well be family. The sister that I never had. She used to come to family dinners all the time.”

“But she’s not family,” I reminded him, still grinding my teeth. “And she’s never going to be.”

“And whose fault is that?”

I scowled around at the lot of them, even though I knew that by now, it was too late to do anything about their scheming. Yulia would be on her way, and I wasn’t going to make a scene turning her away at the door. Nor was I going to storm out of there now. My cousins would never stop teasing me about it.

We were both adults. Surely we could sit through dinner together. Especially with all my cousins there as buffers.

Finally, I shook my head. “All right,” I said, putting both my hands up in concession. “But not a word about how great our relationship used to be, or if we’re getting back together, or anything like that—all right?” For just a moment, I allowed them to see my vulnerability. “This isn’t the way that I wanted things to turn out, remember. If I had my way, I would never have come to Barcelona. I’d still be back in Russia, even now.”

“Oh come now, Alyosha,” Andrei said, rolling his eyes. “Are you really telling me that you hate the billions of dollars available to you? I mean, your house might not be as nice as mine, but that doesn’t mean that you haven’t built quite the empire for yourself so far.”

I sighed and pinched the bridge of my nose. These conversations were always tricky. They might be family, but they would never really understand where I was coming from; they had all settled into life here much more easily than I had.

Finally, I shrugged and grinned at them. “Maybe I don’t regret the money,” I told them. “But maybe I’m ready to retire.”

There were laughs around the room; everyone knew that you didn’t just retire from a life with the mob. And nobody else would dream of retiring and settling back into some dreary, colorless existence in Russia. Because that’s what St. Petersburg had always been to them. They remembered the cold and the winters; I remembered the buildings and walking along the water through the historic sections of town. I remembered the museums, the churches. Life was different there, but in that city, more than anywhere else in Russia, maybe, life thrived.

And I missed that.

For a moment, I thought about my house here in Barcelona. It had high ceilings and an open floor plan. It felt more like a palace than a home. It had to be ten times the size of the cramped apartment that Yulia and I had once rented above a butcher’s shop in Petersburg. But my place here was empty. My footsteps echoed over the tiles in the hallways, and despite the warm weather and the beachside nature, it never really felt warm like our apartment used to on cold winter nights when Yulia and I used to snuggle up on the couch together.

I just wanted something different, I guess.

I shook my head, tearing myself away from those reveries. As if on cue, the doorbell rang. Dmitry smiled sharply at me. “Why don’t you answer that Alexei,” he suggested.

I rolled my eyes but did as he asked, praying that they would be merciful that evening. When I answered the door, though, I saw that I should have been praying for Yulia to be merciful that evening. She looked too good, in that long, burgundy velvet dress.

“Well, are you going to let me in?” she asked, raising an eyebrow at me as she lingered in the doorway.

My eyes snapped back up to meet hers—they’d been glued somewhere in the vicinity of her cleavage, which was just peeking out from the neckline of the dress. I swallowed hard and stepped back mutely to let her in, wishing all the while that I could think of some snappy comeback.

Instead, I trailed after her and watched as she greeted my cousins, hugging and kissing them as though there had been no time between when she’d last seen them and now. I shook my head, trying to pull myself together. There were a million sexy Spanish girls that I could do instead of her. Thousands of tourists who came to the city every summer, just looking to lay on the beaches all day and get fucked long into the night.

I didn’t need Yulia. We had outgrown our childish crush.

“So Yulia, what have you been up to?” Nikolai asked as we sat down at the table.

From the seat across from me, Yulia shot me a look. Then, she squared her shoulders and tossed back her hair, clearly thinking about our conversation from earlier that week and the disparaging comments that I’d made. “I did exactly what I planned to do,” she said. “I graduated from college a few years ago, and now I teach English at a bilingual school.” She laughed. “It may not be the most glamorous job ever, but I enjoy working with the kids.”

“I bet they all adore you,” Dmitry said, smiling at her. “You were always great with our young nieces and nephews.”

For a moment, I thought back to those family reunions, once upon a time—but we were beyond that now.

“Could you pass the salt?” Yulia asked me, and I held it out to her, my hand clenching too-tight around it for a moment as Yulia’s fingers brushed mine—on purpose, if the sweet look on her face was anything to go by.

I fought the urge to roll my eyes, wondering what she was playing at. Just teasing me, I’m sure.

I couldn’t help wondering what it would be like, though, to be inside of her again. Her body had once been so familiar to me, but now…

I gave her a heated look across the table, wondering what those womanly curves would feel like. I wondered if she would still let me take charge, moving her the ways that I wanted, or if she would intersperse my actions with her own moves this time. She had to have more experience now than she’d had all those years ago. It excited me, wondering just what she would bring to the table this time.

But now, sat at this table, with my cousins all around me, I had to stop thinking about that.

“Have you ever thought about moving away from St. Petersburg?” Andrei was asking Yulia.

Yulia laughed and shook her head, giving me another pointed look. “Of course not,” she said. “Petersburg is home—it always has been. I’ve been lucky enough to do some travel, and nowhere else in the world compares. I’m sure I will live there until the day I die.”

There were smiles around the table. “You know,” Dmitry said conspiratorially, “Alexei wishes he was still in St. Petersburg too. There is something wrong with him, he does not like the beaches of Barcelona.”

A couple of my cousins laughed. Andrei gave me a worried look, clearly guessing that Dmitry’s remarks—drunken or not—hit a little too close to home.

I stood abruptly, needing to get out of there. Just to clear my head. “I’ll be back in a minute,” I said, disappearing across the house to the kitchen. Once there, I leaned back against the countertop, kneading my temples with my fingertips, the start of a headache coming on.

I looked up, startled to hear footsteps enter the kitchen. It was Yulia standing there, biting her lower lip. “I’m sorry about…them,” she said softly. “I didn’t expect they would tease you so much. I just wanted to see you again. To see how you were around them, when you weren’t just thinking about how unhappy you were with me.”

I stared at her for a long moment. Finally, I blew out a long breath. But I still couldn’t think of anything to say to her.

It turned out that words weren’t necessary between us, though. I’m not sure which one of us moved first, but the next thing I knew, I had her backed up against the pantry door, kissing her passionately. She hooked a leg around mine, pulling me in closer, until surely she could feel my half-hard member pressed insistently against her thigh.

I tilted her head to the side, pushing my tongue into her mouth. She moaned and I pulled back, giving her a chiding look. “Be quiet,” I told her in a hushed voice. “My cousins are right in the other room.”

I knew we shouldn’t be doing this here, in light of the circumstances, but it was as though neither of us could contain ourselves. Those years of denied passion swept through both of us. I reached around behind her and opened the pantry door, pushing her into the cramped, dimly-lit room and pulling the door closed behind us.

Once inside, we continued to make out sloppily. I pushed her dress up until I reached her flimsy panties, which I pushed aside so I could stroke her damp, velvety folds. Yulia made a soft noise, but I could tell she was trying her best to be quiet. What I wouldn’t give to take her someplace private and really make her scream… I knew that if anything broke the moment, though, we would both come up with a thousand reasons not to go through with this.

With that thought in mind, I turned her around and pushed her down until she was grasping at her ankles, her ass high in the air. I ripped her panties aside and thrust into her in one smooth motion, not caring if she was ready for me or not. She made a punched-out noise, like I had pushed all the air from her lungs—but she didn’t stop me. Instead, she grabbed my hand tightly, where I held on to her hips, and slowly, she began to rock back and forth, trying to get me to move.

I wouldn’t call it making love. There was too much need and too much anger. I thrust hard into her, forcing her body to accept me, one hand over her mouth to muffle her cries. My other hand gripped her hip, hard enough that it would surely leave bruises behind. Yulia dug her own fingernails into my arm, pushing against the wall for leverage against my thrusts, meeting my fury with her own.

Suddenly, she looked back at me over her shoulder, and I could tell that she was close to cumming. She was trying to stave it off, though—and I wondered if she thought she could get me to cum first. Not likely.

I reached around in front of her, in between her legs, and found her clit, stroking it mercilessly in time with my thrusts. Yulia groaned behind my hand, her whole body going first tense and then lax, her pussy contracting as wave after wave of pleasure jolted through her.

Shortly after I pulled out and came as well, leaving sticky white stripes across her behind, careful not to get any on her clothes—because I would be the one getting teased by my cousins if we were caught with that much visible evidence of what we’d done. Still, there was something satisfying about it, another way of leaving my mark on her. I closed my eyes and rode out the waves of my own orgasm, slumping forwards as well, using the wall for support.

Yulia sank down onto the floor, and for a moment, she looked up at me, as though she had something that she wanted to say. There was an intense vulnerability in her eyes, a look as though maybe our breakup and the years since had left her feeling just as raw.

But then, she grimaced and stood up slowly, wincing and holding her dress out of the way of the mess I had made. She reached around me and grabbed a roll of paper towels, wiping herself off. Then, she straightened her clothing, patted her hair, and headed back out into the dining room.

After a moment, I took a deep breath and followed suit.

There were a few smirks around the table as I rejoined the group, but fortunately, no one said anything as I picked up my fork and took a sharp bite of whatever was left on my plate.

I couldn’t even taste it. I was still caught up in what had just happened in the pantry. I wanted to talk to Yulia about it. I felt a moment of regret, wishing that I had done things the right way: taken my time with her, spread her out on the sheets, showed her how much I had really missed her, how much I wished that I had never had to give her up in the first place.

But there was no going back now. And as Yulia said goodbye to my cousins, pointedly ignoring me, I had to bitterly accept the fact that if anything, tonight had only worsened things between us.