Page 10 of Nikolay

By the time I angled toward the bar, I had almost convinced myself I could bury the whole thing under work. Not forget it. That was asking too much. But box it up. Put a lid on it. A girl learned how to do that in a world where men with power had a habit of making their discomfort your problem.

I was three strides from the bar when he appeared in front of me.

No warning. No sound. One second open floor, the next Nikolay standing squarely in my path as if the dark had decided to put on a tailored jacket and scowl at me.

I stopped so fast the glasses on my tray clicked.

He was immaculate, of course. Broad shoulders straining clean lines of dark fabric, beard neat, sunlight hair in a tidy low ponytail, orderly in a way that made me want to put my hands in it just to ruin something. His face gave nothing to the room around us. But up close, the fury in him was plain enough. Not loud. He didn’t seem like a man who shouted unless the world had ended, and even then probably only once. This was worse. This was precision.

“Having a good time?” he asked.

His voice stayed pitched low, private in the middle of a crowded floor.

I looked at him, then around him, as if considering whether I could get by without answering. “Move, please.”

The words slipped out before I could decide whether it was wise. His eyes sharpened.

“Your section,” he said, ignoring me, “appeared to be unattended.”

I shifted left. He shifted with me.

“My section,” I said evenly, “is handled.”

“Is it?” His gaze flicked to the tray in my hand, then back to my face. “From where I stood, it looked very much as though you had abandoned your responsibilities to indulge yourself.”

Heat rose mean and fast under my skin.

He could not have chosen a cleaner way to say what he meant if he’d sat down with a knife and honed the sentence first.

I started walking again because I was not going to stand in the middle of Bohdan’s floor and spar with a prince like a fool. Nikolay matched me step for step, close enough that anyone watching might have mistaken us for engaged conversation instead of this quiet execution.

“You were standing there,” he went on, “slack-jawed, tray at your side, while paying patrons waited.”

I kept my chin up and said nothing.

Maybe that was a mistake. Silence did not cool him. If anything, it seemed to make him more exacting, as though he could not bear that I wasn’t flinching hard enough.

“Does Obsidian’s entertainment usually distract you from basic competence,” he asked, “or was tonight a special occasion?”

The bass pressed against my ribs. My grip tightened on the tray handle until my fingers ached.

“You seemed very affected,” he murmured.

I refused to look at him.

He laughed once, softly, and there was no warmth in it. “Perhaps the clientele deserves staff with a touch more discipline.”

That did it.

I stopped walking and turned my head enough to meet his eyes. “You done?”

He leaned in just slightly. Not enough to look intimate. Enough to remind me how much bigger he was, how easily he could crowd a space without ever touching me. His scent hit me before his next words did—clean male skin, some expensive dark note beneath it, and the living heat of his body that made no damn sense and yet my wolf noticed every time.

“Not remotely,” he said.

Then he straightened and gestured with two fingers toward the bar ahead of us where Kyra was already watching, her expression narrowing by the second.

“You are employed to work,” he said. “Not to stand in public arousal while others cover for your lack.”