The woman who’d just turned her head, as if in slow motion, to face a man who’d come up behind her.
A man who placed his hands on her upper arms.
A man who then bent forward to drop an intimate kiss to her temple.
The roar that sounded off in Alek’s head was tortured and enraged, and without even being aware of it, he surged to his feet with his hand already closing around the nine millimeter under his jacket. A chair scraped, falling back to land on the tile, and before he could aim and take out the dreaded competition, his uncle was in front of him, blocking Alek from view of the other patrons eating their dim-sum.
“Put that goddamn gun away!” Vasily whispered furiously in Russian.
But Alek wasn’t listening. Because Sacha had glanced over at the commotion and was now staring right into his eyes with an expression of such shock, such horror, all Alek could do was try to deny he was seeing it. It should be love and tenderness in those gold eyes. This was wrong. All wrong.
And then she was turning and rushing by the man at her back, who quickly and wordlessly followed her out with a concerned expression on his soon to be inanimate face.
Alek immediately went to follow, his heart feeling as if it were tearing in half, but he was stopped by a python wrapping his neck in a tight hold and jerking him back around the corner into a narrow hallway that led to the restrooms. He struggled like a madman for a few seconds until a solid fist to the gut had him doubling over. His pride was all that kept him from vomiting on his shoes. But that’s what came after a hit from six-and-a-half-feet of impudence wrapped in a package of tattooed malice. Maksim Kirov was one of their organizations most respected and valued. He was also their resident hacker and one of Alek’s best friends.
“Sorry for that, brother,” Maks said, clearly meaning it. Then he held up his phone.
Alek pulled in some air and looked at the face of the man who’d just left with Sacha.
“Facial recognition software is fun. I’ll tell you who he is and where we can find them in five minutes, then we’ll go get her together.”
Five minutes? On top of the sixteen months he’d already waited to reclaim what was his? Fuck no!
Outwardly, he nodded, but the minute Maks let his guard down, Alek was shoving hard through the bodies in his way. A round of Jesus Christs followed him as he left the restaurant.
Moving at a smooth but steady pace down the sidewalk, he leisurely did up the button on his black Tom Ford, uncaring that he’d left his coat behind. Barely felt the frigid bite of the early December evening. He was concerned about only one thing.
Stopping her.
He’d waited too long for this moment, and not a damn thing was going to stand in his way of getting to the one he so badly needed. Not his uncle, or his best friends; not even the woman herself, whose gloved fingers had just closed around the door handle to a sleek black Mercedes.
“Sacha.”
The volume of his voice was low, but the warning carried on the still air. As he spoke her name, his blood sped through his veins, energizing him, bringing him out of the death sleep he’d been in since he’d last seen her.
“Do not open the door.”
Her back went rigid at his quiet order spoken in Russian, and remained that way when she turned her head. Their eyes met, and Alekzander’s chest filled as that connection immediately breathed life into the walking corpse he’d become. A rich gold in color, and tipped up just slightly at the outer corners, her eyes had never failed to draw him in. One shy glance and he was lost.
She let go of the handle just as he reached her.
And so it was on the sidewalk outside a small Chinese restaurant in lower Manhattan that Alek came face-to-face with his soulmate again for the first time in sixteen months. Sacha Urusski. The innocent girl whose heart he’d broken.
And it was there that he fell in love all over again. Fell with a shattering speed. He landed, broken and bleeding, which was a state he’d become too familiar with in the time they’d been apart.
He covetously took in the fair skin and the fragility of her jaw, and stared openly at the bow lips that were the softest he’d ever known. Her nose was dainty but was blessed with some character in the form of a graceful little bump on the slope that she’d always hated. He loved it. Her lush sable hair with its gold highlights had grown and now fell past her shoulders in loose, wanton waves.
They stared through the cloud their exhalations produced in the cold air between them. Neither said a word. But then, that had been their way. Words hadn’t always been necessary.
They’d met over two years ago when he and one of his friends had gone to a small diner after having attended a funeral. Sacha had been his and Gabriel’s waitress. Alek had taken one look at the angel—literally, as it had been the end of October and she’d been in wings and a halo for Halloween—and he’d known. Known without a doubt that she would be his. The rush of it at that moment had been so spectacular he’d refused the very idea of leaving that grungy little place without her. And he hadn’t.