Twilight Sins (Kulikov Bratva Book 1)

My name in his mouth does something weird to me. When he says “Luna” with those proud, sinful lips and the slightest hint of a smirk, it’s like he’s tasting me. All of me. Like every single important detail of my life, my past, and my future is all bound up in those two syllables.

Eerie.

But like the feeling from outside, it passes quickly. He blinks and that smirk twitches just a bit wider into something resembling a smile—at least as much as this man ever smiles; he seems to have a face built exclusively for smoldering.

And just like that, I feel like I can finally smile back.

“That was a rough start,” I say with a nervous laugh. I go to unsling my purse from my shoulder and promptly get the strap caught on a flanged piece of the chair’s armrest.

“Here, let me.” He reaches across and gracefully untangles it, then loops it on a hidden hook beneath the edge of the table.

“How chivalrous.” I sink shakily into my seat. “You must do a lot of these.”

“No, actually. You are my first and last.”

“Ouch!” I press a hand over my chest melodramatically. “I’ve barely sat down and you’re already swearing off dating forever?”

“Or maybe I’m just presuming that you and I are fated to be together,” he replies with more of that amused smirk.

I snort. “Even if I believed in that kind of thing—which I don’t—something tells me you definitely don’t.”

“Oh?” He arches a brow. “What else do you think you know about me, solnyshka?”

Tapping a finger on my lip, I look him over. His suit is impeccable—black as night, with a cream-colored shirt, top few buttons open, enough of his lightly-haired chest visible to see that he’s obviously fit. He’s got a two-hundred-dollar haircut and a twenty-thousand-dollar watch.

He screams wealthy.

He screams arrogant.

He screams I will break your heart and forget you ever existed.

“I think that there’s no way in hell this is your first blind date, that’s for sure.”

“You’d be surprised. Men in my position don’t usually make time for distractions like this.”

Laughing, I say, “First, I’m the woman who made you quit dating, and now, I’m a ‘distraction’? Keep up that stream of compliments and you might even get lucky.”

“I don’t need to compliment you to get lucky.”

I roll my eyes. “I take back what I said about the chivalry. Your arrogant score is quickly taking the lead.”

He leans back in his seat, head tilted to the side as he regards me. “Pity. I was just starting to picture the wedding. I was thinking beach.”

“I hate the sand.”

“Mountains then.”

“Too cold.”

“Vineyard.”

“Red wine gives me a headache.”

“Well, this won’t,” he assures me—just as a maître d’ appears out of nowhere, bearing a silver tray with a glistening bottle of vodka and two chilled glasses.

“Compliments of the chef,” the man explains as he sets the liquor down on our table and vanishes again before I can ask any questions.

I squint at Sergey. “That was suspiciously smooth,” I tell him warily.

“Things have a way of working out for me,” he explains as he pours two shots and slides one over to me.

I take it reluctantly between my fingertips. It feels like holding onto a glacier, but the liquid in the glass shimmers in a way that seems to have nothing to do with the actual ambient light in here. “Do they now? Must be nice. I have no idea what that’s like.”

He chuckles. “The trick is to relax.”

“That might be true for you,” I say, “but you’re a wealthy, good-looking giant man in a world built to cater to your needs. Try being a five-foot-three female making sixty K a year selling industrial plastic products and tell me how often things just magically ‘work out.’”

“Careful,” he warns with a mischievous spark in his eye. “Keep up that stream of compliments and you might even get lucky.”

I hide my surprised laugh behind the glass before I manage to get control over my facial expressions again. “Who are you?” I ask accusingly when I’m back in charge of myself. “This whole thing is starting to feel staged.”

“Who do you think I am?” he retorts, throwing my own question back in my face.

“I dunno. Hopefully not, like, an ax murderer or something.”

He looks offended, pressing a hand to his chest like I’ve wounded him. “No, of course not.” After a pause, he adds, “Axes are way too messy.”

He keeps a serious face for just long enough that my heart plummets into my stomach acid before it splits into a smile again.

“You’re going to scare girls away when you joke like that,” I advise him.

“Who says I was joking?”

“That’s gonna scare them away, too.”

“You can rest easy,” he reassures me. “No one is dying here tonight.”

“What a relief. I wish this wasn’t true, but the bar for these dates is literally that low.”

He lifts an eyebrow. “How many of these bad setups have you been on?”

I set down my menu and start counting them off on my fingers. “Well, let’s see. We’ve done all the classics: guy was married, guy was wasted before appetizers even hit the table, guy was dead broke and waited until the check came to tell me I was paying.”

“Tales as old as time,” he agrees solemnly.

“Guy who shares a bed with his grandmother was definitely the weirdest of the lot, though.” I clear my throat. “Which of the standard clichés are you?”

Sergey leans over the table and locks eyes with me. He was beautiful from afar, but he’s even more gorgeous up close like this. His eyes dance and shimmer and melt into themselves over and over again. It’s bizarre that his lips are so soft and kissable when they’re framed in such a masculine face.

“I’m like no one else you’ve ever met, solnyshka,” he says in a quiet rumble. “I can promise you that.”

Something about the way he says it sends a shiver down my spine.

Then his seriousness fades and the music and conversation comes pouring back in. That little pocket of silence breaks up and I wonder if I just imagined the whole thing.

Once again: eerie.

Fidgeting uncomfortably in the full blast of his attention, I pick up my menu and wield it between us like a shield. “So, uh, what’s good here?” I ask. “I’ve never been here before—never had Russian food at all, actually—but I am starving.”

He looks at me for one more long breath before his eyes flick over my shoulder. A waitress materializes there immediately. She looks scared of him.

I get it, girl. So am I.

“We’ll take one of everything,” he orders.

My jaw hits the tablecloth. “Oh, you really don’t need to⁠—”

“And two of the zharkoye.”

The waitress nods and scampers off, leaving me to look at him and wonder what the hell is going on. With just about any other guy, I’d worry that he was trying to be impressive with some flashy rich dude stunt. But something tells me this man couldn’t care less about impressing me.

“That’s a lot of food,” I mumble. “I’m a cheap date, I promise.”

“Then you should value yourself higher.”

I do a double-take. “I said I’m a cheap date, not a pathetic one.”

Sergey arches an amused eyebrow. “Did I offend you, solnyshka?”

“No, it’s not—You didn’t—I’m just—Goddammit.” I scowl. I’m walking a precarious line between being a bitch and being dumbfounded by the way this man just rips through the world at odd angles and makes no apologies for it. He’s like a freaking force of nature, bulldozing everything in his path with no regard for social courtesies.

He was right about one thing, though: I’ve never met anyone else quite like him.

I decide to let sleeping dogs lie and change the topic. “You pronounced the name of that dish flawlessly. Are you Russian?”

“Born and bred,” he confirms with a nod. “My family came over when I was four.”

“Mom? Dad? Siblings?”

“Yes,” he says with such a sudden, polished vagueness that it’s like he’s hypnotizing me to forget the subject altogether. He props his elbows on the table and leans in again. “What about your family?”

That’s odd. Some people don’t like talking about their families; I get that. But it’s a blind date and it’s a normal-enough question, right? And yet something in his reaction makes me feel like I just crossed about a dozen serious lines he’d drawn in the sand.

“Uh, family, let’s see… no, not really. Dad was never a thing. Haven’t seen my mom in a long time. Ditto for my brother. We just never really… connected, I guess. I’m sorry—did you say yes to having a mom, a dad, siblings, or all the above?”

“I only said yes.”

He stares right at me, practically daring me to keep prying. I want to. I ought to. But for some reason, I don’t.

I glance down at my shot glass instead. “Are we drinking this or just babysitting it?”

Sergey laughs. “It would be a waste of good vodka to let it sit. What should we toast to?”

“You’re the one with all the smooth lines,” I fire back. “You decide.”

He raises his glass, that mouth of his twitching up into yet another amused smirk. “To the last first date either of us will ever go on,” he suggests.

“Amen to that.” I tap my glass against his and throw it straight down the hatch.

It burns like hell on the way down, but as soon as it hits my stomach, a pleasant chill ripples all the way through me from the inside out.

Sergey licks his lips. One quick flash of his tongue. It’s strangely seductive for something so unthinking and automatic.

“It’s good, no?” he asks me.

“It’ll suffice.”

“You’re hard to impress.”

I bark out a laugh. “I am the exact opposite, I assure you. I already told you about my blind dating history. If you’d seen the winner I actually stayed with out of that batch, you’d think I’m as pathetic as they come.”

“I doubt that,” he purrs. “I doubt that very much.” His cryptic gaze flits down to his phone resting on the table. It takes me a moment to realize that it’s vibrating. He picks it up and his frown deepens when he sees whoever’s calling.

“Is that your wife?” I tease. “Or maybe your grandmother, wondering why your side of the bed is empty?”

For the first time tonight, he doesn’t flirt back. “You’ll have to excuse me for a moment,” he says. “Don’t move.”

Without waiting for an answer, he strides out of the restaurant.

I’m left there toying with my empty shot glass, wondering if there was any truth to his toast. To the last first date either of us will ever go on. Wouldn’t that be a blessing? I’ve got that raised-hairs-on-the-back-of-my-neck feeling that all the good rom-coms say is the sign of true love. He’s smooth, he’s handsome, he’s obviously got money.

I can’t help feeling like there’s something else beneath the surface, though. But who am I kidding—maybe that’s just another part of the charm. Maybe I’m sick and deluded enough to think that the man I somehow ended up with tonight is a beautiful mystery I’ll get to spend the rest of my life unpacking.

When I hear footsteps, I turn and smile. “There you are. I was starting to wonder if you were back there sharpening your ax, or⁠—”

Someone drops heavily into the booth and grunts. “You ordered without me? Damn. A little rude, but I’ll agree to look past it.”

I blink in stunned surprise at the pasty, greasy blob sitting where Mr. Smooth and Charming was supposed to be. “Sorry—what’s happening?”

He scowls over at me. “What’s happening? I’m Sergey. Your date. Kayla set us up, remember? Do I need to show you my ID, or what?” He plucks his driver’s license out of his wallet and slides it across the table for me just to prove his point. Sure enough, I see SERGEY SMIRNOV printed next to a picture of the man in front of me.

My jaw hits the table, just as a familiar masculine scent invades my nostrils. I look up into the cruelly beautiful face of the man I first sat down with.

“If he’s Sergey…” I ask him with slowly dawning horror. “Then who the hell are you?”