“But I want you. Will you come back again tomorrow? I need you. I want to touch you again. I can’t bear to think of you with him.”

Dressed as best as I could manage, Raze’s fingers linked through mine, and when I looked up, he was staring at me in deep concentration, his eyes darting from side to side, like he was trying to remember something. I was mush the moment his head tilted to the side and his lips pursed.

This was definitely my Luka.

I had to figure something out.

“I’ll be back here tomorrow after dark,” I told him. Raze’s tense shoulders sagged in relief. “But tomorrow when you train, you can’t let on to Alik that we’ve been together. He can’t find out.”

Raze tensed again. “He doesn’t faze me.”

I touched his cheek and said, “I know. But we really need to keep this quiet.”

Raze blew an annoyed breath through his nostrils, but he nodded in agreement. Balancing on tiptoes, I pressed a kiss to his full lips, once more admiring his naked ripped body. Reluctantly, I backed out of the room, keeping his gaze until I closed the door on the lost love of my life.

My head was spinning, my stomach filled with both fear and excitement.

Exiting the gym, I caught Serge’s questioning glance as I slipped into the car, but I ignored it, still feeling the aftereffects of Raze inside me.

I smiled to myself.

Kisa-Anna… Only Luka ever called me that name.

I had found my love again.

I just had to make him remember who I was to him… before the Gulag changed him. Before he’d been ripped from my life.

Chapter Fourteen

RAZE

“Come with me,” the boy encouraged the girl, sneaking into her bedroom on the ground floor of her father’s mansion. He checked that none of the Byki were near enough to catch him.

“Where are we going?” the girl asked sleepily. Crawling out of her bed and throwing on a sweatshirt over her pink tank and short set, she accepted the boy’s outstretched hand. He was hanging out of the window. He was dressed all in black, like a thief. The girl couldn’t help but laugh.

The boy tilted his head to one side, pursed his lips, and asked, “What are you laughing at, solnyshko?”

“You,” she teased but took his hand anyway as she melted under his smile. Her bedroom door creaked open. The boy and girl froze in panic and the girl’s brother staggered into the room.

“What’s all the noise, Kisa?” her brother asked, wiping the sleep from his eyes before lowering his hand and fixing his gaze on the couple sneaking out the window. He wasn’t surprised to see the guilty faces of his twin sister and his best friend. The brother rolled his eyes and shook his head.

“Where the hell are you taking Kisa at this time of night?”

The boy looked to his best friend and shrugged. “Out? For fresh air? Any of them work?”

“At one in the morning?”

The boy shrugged again. Then the brother crossed his arms over his chest and lifted his eyebrow. The boy came into the room and faced the brother. “Rodion, come on, man! Don’t be an asshole! I want to spend time with Kisa away from our fathers.”

Rodion pointed at Kisa. “That’s my sister you’re trying to corrupt!”

“And my girlfriend,” the boy shot back. “I’d never do anything to hurt her. You know it. I’m going to marry her one day.”

“Please, Rodion, we’ll owe you,” Kisa pleaded from behind the cover of the boy’s protective stance. Rodion stared at his sister, then the boy, then back again. Then her brother shook his head.

“Fine, go! I need to sleep.”

He began walking out of the room, dismissing them with a wave, but looked back and said, “Don’t get her pregnant, or Papa will cut off your balls. She’s thirteen and she isn’t your wife yet.”

The boy rolled his eyes at his best friend, but Kisa’s face flushed bright red and she threw a pen from her desk at her brother. He laughed playfully in reply.

Rodion left the room, and the boy knew he’d cover for them. He then turned back to the girl, taking her hand and leading her out of the open window.

“Where are we going?” she whispered as he led her down toward the beach.

Once they were out of sight of the house, he draped one arm around her shoulders and pulled her close to his side. “Our cove. Where else, solnyshko?”

Kisa wrapped an arm round his waist. Within a few minutes, they were at the closed-off cove, and the boy led them to their favorite spot. Taking off his sweatshirt, he spread it on the sand and, sitting down, he gently pulled Kisa to sit between his legs and wrapped his arms around her waist.

The boy and his Kisa watched the rolling waves in silence, the bright moon huge against the dark water. Kisa dreamily looked up at the boy and smiled. They were alone on a beach and it was perfect.

Kisa’s blue eyes were misty as she looked at the boy. He knew right then how much she loved him. She was so beautiful to him. He didn’t have a single memory that she wasn’t in. Even from young kids, she was always with him, and he’d always kept her close, protecting her, cherishing her. He couldn’t see anyone but her. Even then, at fourteen, no other girls enticed him to look their way. He loved this girl. He knew she was it for him, a gut instinct telling him so. Together, he believed they were perfect.

They were from the same criminal life. The boy knew as the years passed and their duties came into play, she would support him and never question his line of work or choices as the Bratva called upon him to lead the Russian underground in New York.