Ashe and Vitaly and whatever bromance the two of them were having.
She moved around the club, serving patrons and enduring their lewd comments. Just another night in downtown hell. Except that it wasn’t. She couldn’t shake her hyperawareness of Ashe sitting in the corner with her boss. Her dangerous mobster boss. Their heads were close together, and they laughed uproariously now and then like they were trading war stories.
Vitaly called for a refill of crushed ice, and when she approached the table, she was stunned to hear them conversing in Russian. Ashe was freaking fluent? Bastard. Unreasonable jealousy surged through her that he was getting further with her boss in one lousy hour than she had in months.
It wasn’t fair. She was a no-account female, and Vitaly ignored her existence for the most part. But Ashe could stroll in here and order some hoity-toity vodka, and just like that, Vitaly was hanging on his every word.
The level of vodka in the parrot-beak bottle dropped steadily over the next hour, and Vitaly demanded yet another refill on the ice. But this time, when she approached the table, her boss grabbed her rear end under her short skirt and gave it a humiliatingly familiar squeeze through her panties.
It was all she could do not to pull away from his hard fingers digging into her tender flesh. “Evgeniya the Ice Queen,” he drawled in Russian. “Needs a man to screw her lights out. I tell her the pay is much better in the lap dance lounge, but always she refuses.”
“Maybe a real man hasn’t offered to do the job right,” Ashe replied drily in the same language.
It was all she could do not to stick her tongue out at him. To date, Vitaly thought she understood only a few words of the simplest Russian, and she needed to keep it that way. She’d been able to eavesdrop on countless conversations between him and his associates because of it.
“You think you’re man enough?” Vitaly hooted. “I’ll give you a bottle of this vodka on the house if you convince her to do it. Make a lap dancer of her if you can. I’ll earn a fortune on her in the lap dance lounge if I can get her back there. Get a load of those legs. And just feel this ass...”
Ashe glanced up at her for just a moment, his eyes mirroring regret for just an instant. But it was enough for her to know he was not enjoying this any more than she was. “Come over here,” he drawled in English. “Vitaly says you have a great ass. I want to check it out.”
Was he kidding? Apparently not, for he stared at her expectantly. Silently livid at her boss, she stepped away from his invasive grip and moved to Ashe’s side, standing so close that her knees rubbed his thigh. “Go ahead, buddy. It’s not like you’ll ever get more than a handful of this action.”
Vitaly hooted with laughter. He sounded more drunk than not, but she never could tell with him. He held vodka like nobody’s business.
Ashe’s palm cupped the back of her knee, sliding up the back of her thigh with maddening slowness. With light pressure, he pushed her leg until she took a step to the side, turning so her back was to the room. What? He didn’t want the other patrons to see him checking out her posterior regions? If the man weren’t feeling her up, she might actually think his action was chivalrous. But as it was, his hand headed inexorably toward her rear end.
His fingertips traced the seam of her stockings up under her miniskirt, up to the swell of her backside, paused, and then continued higher until her entire cheek was cupped in his big, warm hand. Her glute muscles clenched involuntarily.
His hand kneaded her gently and he murmured cajolingly, “Relax, baby. I’m not gonna hurt you.”
No, but he was embarrassing her to death. It was one thing to have random drunk strangers grab her as she passed by them. But he was no stranger, and this was no random grope. It was a full-scale invasion. His fingers dipped into the tight crevasse between her cheeks, in the same place Vitaly’s had, but where her boss’s grasp had been rough and impersonal, Ashe’s fingers were beguiling. Intent on winning her acceptance. They stroked and probed gently, asking and waiting for her to relax and give him access to her most secret places. Something hot and liquid erupted low in her belly, startling the hell out of her and momentarily distracting her long enough that she did relax her tush.
Ashe’s hand dipped deep between her legs immediately, and she tensed up once more. But the damage was done. His hand cupped her lady parts with shocking intimacy, and any move she made would rub said parts against said hand. She froze, staring down at him in shock. It was one thing to go along with Vitaly’s misogyny for the sake of gaining the guy’s trust. It was another thing entirely to embarrass her in public. Although, truth be told, the worst of her embarrassment stemmed from the fact that she was a little turned on by Ashe’s hand cupping her like she already belonged to him.
“Trust me, Vitaly,” he declared in Russian. “She’s no ice queen. She’s all woman. And hot for me.”
She didn’t stop to think about it. She went with her reflex reaction and slapped Ashe’s cheek with all her might.
Vitaly surged halfway to his feet, swearing and apologizing as words tumbled out of his mouth in a garbled jumble. But it was Ashe’s reaction that shocked her. He stared up at her in stunned disbelief for a heartbeat and then threw his head back and laughed. Heartily.
“Sit, sit, Vitaly,” he chortled in Russian. “I like my women a little wild. It’s more fun that way to tame them.”
Her gaze narrowed. As if he would ever tame her. Hah!
Vitaly sank back into his chair, but he was looked genuinely angry and glared at her with a grim promise of serious retribution when Ashe left this place. So much for looking out for her best interests. Heck, for all she knew, her boss might drag her upstairs by the hair and let the clients do their worst to her. Her insides turned to jelly and her entire being quailed at the thought of what could happen to her up there. They could shoot her up with heroin until she was hooked, lock her into a room in the brothel...
Who would come looking for her? There was no one to rescue her from the hellhole Vitaly could throw her into. She would be lost. And now that Max was gone, not a living soul would care.
“...don’t let women slap me without punishment,” Ashe was saying in Russian. He leaned back in his chair, tossed back a shot of the expensive vodka and grinned at Vitaly. “How do you propose I do that, my friend?”
Vitaly scowled. “I’d beat her until she couldn’t sit for a week.”
Ashe tilted his head to one side and studied her while she defiantly glared back at him. “Nah. She’s got fair skin. She would bruise like mad. Someone would call the cops on you.”
Vitaly jerked his chin at her. “What would you do to punish her?”
A slow smile unfolded on Ashe’s face. “You want her to work in the lap dance lounge, yes?”
Aghast, she stared at him. He was not actually going to throw her to the wolves like this, was he? Ashe was supposed to be one of the good guys! Worse, she wasn’t supposed to know Russian, so she couldn’t respond in any way to this little exchange between the men.
“Yes, of course,” Vitally answered a little too eagerly. Apparently he wasn’t so drunk that he’d missed where Ashe was going with his line of reasoning, either. Dammit.
Ashe asked in English, “How about I teach her how to do a decent lap dance?”
It
