Twilight Sins (Kulikov Bratva Book 1)

It’s late when I get back. The mansion is dark.

I drove for hours after dumping Luna’s ex on the pavement, but I couldn’t outpace reality. I couldn’t outpace her.

Because Luna is under my skin.

No other woman has ever gotten close enough to have the opportunity. But days of circling around each other is doing shit to me on some primal fucking level that defies logic. She’s in my house; I need to protect her.

It will fade when she’s gone, I’m sure. I just need to keep a grip on myself until then.

I assumed Luna would be asleep by now, but as I walk down the hallway, blue light flickers from the living room. I hear muffled voices from the television.

Keep walking, you bastard, I tell myself. Go straight to your office and go the fuck to sleep.

But I stop in the doorway to the living room instead.

Luna is lying on the couch. She has a blanket over her legs and her cat on her lap. But my eyes are drawn upwards to what she’s clothed in.

“You’re wearing my shirt.”

She jolts at the sound of my voice, sending Gregory flying. The little mongrel dives under the coffee table with a hiss.

“I didn’t hear you.” She blows out a sharp breath, her hand pressed to her chest. Pressed to the fabric of my shirt.

She crossed a line. She touched my shit. I should rip it off of her and take it back.

The problem is that that’s exactly what I want to do—rip it off of her.

But for all the wrong reasons.

“I let you into my room. I didn’t let you into my dresser.”

Luna looks down at herself self-consciously. “I’m sorry. I only have one pair of pajamas here and they’re in the laundry. I would have asked, but you weren’t here, and⁠—”

She stands up suddenly. The blanket drops to the floor around her feet, making it obvious she isn’t wearing any pants. It’s not like she needs them. The shirt is massive on her. The hem falls somewhere around mid-thigh. I’m so fixated on the spot that it takes me a second to realize she’s walking towards me.

“What happened?” Luna breathes. She reaches for me but pulls back with a gasp. “Yakov, your face…”

Fuck.

I didn’t even look at myself when I got back in the car. Benjy’s single blow must have left a mark.

“I’m fine.”

“Your eye is purple. And your—Oh my god, Yakov. Your hands.” Luna doesn’t stop herself this time. She cradles my hand, her thumbs hovering just over the broken, bloodied skin. “If your knuckles look like this, I should probably be more worried about the other guy, huh?”

I pull my hands back. “Don’t bother. He’s not worth it.”

“But who⁠—”

“I’m fine,” I snap.

She crosses her arms, but doesn’t back away. Her mouth slants in annoyance. Then she points to the couch. “If you want to sit down, I’ll clean you up.”

“I don’t want.”

Her eyes narrow. “Then you’ll get an infection and ruin your pretty face forever.”

“I thought women like scars.”

“That may be true, but a festering wound isn’t a scar.” She walks past me to the hallway, already disappearing around the door. “I’ll be back.”

I don’t need her to clean me up. I’ve cleaned myself up after enough fights to know my way around a first aid kit. What I’m not as familiar with is having someone around to tend to my wounds.

It’s curiosity more than anything that pulls me towards the couch. A glimpse into another, more domestic life.

Commercials have been playing on the TV since I walked in, but the movie comes back on now. It’s in black and white and the chyron underneath says Roman Holiday. There’s a flicker of recognition somewhere in the back of my mind.

Then two paws come creeping out from under the coffee table. Followed by two wide eyes.

Gregory glances towards the screen as the male lead says something, and I remember. Luna’s favorite movie.

“Your namesake?” I ask, nodding at what must be Gregory Peck on the screen.

The cat looks up at the TV for a long moment before whipping his attention back to me. Inch by inch, he crawls out from under the coffee table, slinking closer and closer to the couch.

Finally, he jumps up onto the end of it, his tail swishing behind him.

“Stay over there if you know what’s good for you,” I warn him.

I can’t believe I’m even looking at a cat in my house, let alone talking to one. Today has not gone at all how I thought it would.

Luna stomps back into the room with a bundle of supplies. She lays everything out on the table and then perches on the edge of it, facing me. There’s nowhere for our legs to go, so they end up intertwined. Just like they were before I left the dinner.

It’s an effort not to follow the hem of my shirt as it slides further and further up her thigh.

When she grabs my hand and balances it palm down on her knee, I give up that effort. I could have her out of my shirt and on her back on the coffee table in two moves. One move if I let her keep the shirt on. She looks so fucking good in it that I just might.

“Well?” she asks, dragging a damp cloth across my knuckles. “Are you going to tell me what happened?”

“You don’t need to worry about it.”

“Tough. I am worried about it.”

Luna scrubs at my hand like she wants to leave a few marks of her own. She’s angry.

Odd.

“Where I was tonight has nothing to do with you.”

Before she can say anything, Gregory settles himself against my leg. I didn’t even see him slink down the couch, but now, he’s purring loudly against me.

“Oh, just great.” Luna pries him away from me and shoves him onto the floor. “He doesn’t need you fawning over him, too, Gregory. He’s fine. Didn’t you hear him? Bloody knuckles and a bruised eye are normal.”

Gregory dives back under the coffee table with a loud meow and Luna rinses out her rag and starts in on my other hand.

She’s worried about me, but she wishes she wasn’t. And fuck me, but I don’t want her to be upset. God only knows why.

“This isn’t normal for me,” I tell her.

She hesitates for a second, glancing up and then quickly away again. It’s like she’s trying not to let herself look at me.

“Normally,” I continue, “I give men the chance to back down from a fight with me. Most of them do the smart thing and take it. But tonight, someone got what they deserved.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means I had everything in hand. You don’t need to worry.”

She’s staring down at my hands, but her brow furrows. “So… Does that mean I’m not in danger anymore?”

“What?”

Her blue eyes are wide and vulnerable when she looks up at me. “Does this all mean you took care of the person who was threatening me? Will I go back to my apartment now?”

The moment snaps. She isn’t worried about me—she just wants to know when she can leave. I pull my hands back and shake off the water. “You’re not going anywhere.”

“But if you took care of it, then⁠—”

“If I could have this issue dealt with in one night, I never would have kept you here in the first place,” I snarl.

Luna is frozen for a second. Then she turns and throws the rag into the bowl. Water sloshes over the side and drips off the edge of the table.

She snatches up the ice pack and turns back to me. But as she starts to raise her arm, it falls. “I want to know why you—Never mind. It doesn’t matter.”

She moves to press the ice pack to my eye, but I snatch it out of her hand and toss it to the side. “Say it.”

Her lower lip is pinched nervously between her teeth. When she releases it, her chin wobbles. “I don’t understand why you’re going to so much trouble to keep me safe when you don’t even like me.”

My brain empties. Everything I was thinking is gone in a breath.

She shrugs like she’s unaffected, but her eyes are filling with tears now. “You’re trying to save me from this threat—whatever it is—but you don’t want me around. I woke up the morning after we had sex and you were gone. You ran from the room earlier tonight when I tried to kiss you.” Luna looks down and chuckles sadly. “Look at you. You’re clenching your fists so hard you reopened your cuts. I just don’t understand why being around me is so terrible for you.”

Being around Luna is terrible.

The night I first brought her back here, I knew she was a mistake. I just thought she was a mistake I could get rid of in the morning.

Now, she’s here day in and day out. A temptation I can’t escape.

I have no desire to be close to someone. I know how that ends.

But everything that has happened tonight—the dinner, Benjy, sitting here while she patches me up like we’re playing fucking newlyweds—is proof that it’s too fucking late. Whether I wanted to or not, I’ve given in to Luna’s temptation.

I’m in deep.

“Yakov?”

The sound of my name in her soft, trembling voice is the last straw. I release my tight grip on my self-control and grab Luna instead.

Then I haul her against me and kiss her.