Page 28 of Forbidden Bratva Virgin

I smoothed the crinkles on my halter black dress, adjusted the sleek bun on my hair, and retouched the red lipstick before walking back out, resolved to politely dismiss the man.

Axel was still there, waiting on the stool and smiling at me with a fresh drink in hand. I tried to slow down my steps, but who was I kidding? I knew determination when I saw it, and he was determined.

I got close but didn’t bother hopping back on my stool.

He handed the glass to me. “It’s a negroni, and I guarantee you’ll love it.”

The confidence I’d mustered in the restroom fizzled out like a single flame exposed to brittle wind. Exhaling a nervous breath, I reached for the glass, and his fingertips brushed mine. The contact made my stomach churn, but I hadn’t figured out how best to tell him I wasn’t interested.

I was going to try, though. It was the least Nathan would expect of me: to defend what we had. So, I opened my mouth…and shut it again. Drinking up first sounded like a better idea.

What was it they said about alcohol? It gave false courage and false wisdom.

I took the glass to my lips, and…someone snatched it in a swift whoosh. “What the—”

Everything else happened in a blur.

Not a word. No warning.

Before a protest left my mouth, in a quick motion, the negroni got tipped over Axel’s head, and my eyes widened in shock at the horror as it seeped into his hair and drenched his face.

Another shocked gasp rippled through the bar, and I started to reach out to a furious Axel to apologize, but my hands froze midair, and I held my breath when I recognized the lunatic that caused the scene.

My Level One Code Red client.

Miron Yezhov.

***

“Oh, my God, are you crazy!” were the first words that flew out of my mouth the second we were outside The Tavern and out of earshot.

My heart was racing so hard that I was having trouble breathing. I wanted to smack the look of indifference off his poker face until he cared.

“What the hell is wrong with you? Why on earth would you do that to another person?”

I knew I’d skipped the most important question, which was what he was doing there in the first place, because I had to know if it was really therapy he needed or special care at an asylum.

After he’d gone ballistic by dumping a glass full of alcohol on Axel, he’d dragged me by my wrist through the ogling and murmuring crowd to the exit. But I couldn’t decide which bothered me more: Axel’s unwillingness to retaliate or how weirdly the party resumed like nothing ever happened after Miron whispered indistinctly into the ears of some men.

“What the hell is wrong withme? I should be askingyouthat. You’re the one who needs to have better taste in men.”

I gaped, almost choking on my heightened annoyance. “Excuse me?”

My strappy mule heels were six solid inches, and still, I had to tilt my head far back as if I were stargazing. He towered over me, blocked out the rest of the world with his broad shoulders and rolled-up sleeves, and also had the audacity to smell so good that he could pass for something edible.

Blinded by rage, I still couldn’t help but notice—and be further infuriated by—how sinfully handsome he looked tonight. The blue in his eyes was clear, sweeping from my head to toe and back to my face, and the plain curve of his lips strangely called my attention.

He sounded angry, but looked far from it. “Axel’s a bastard. The only thing he can offer you is trouble. You should be thanking me.”

“Thanking—” I wanted to pull my hair out and scream. This man was fully insane. So, they knew each other, but there was no valid reason to justify what he did. “Did you say I should bethanking you?For humiliating someone who didn’t do anything wrong?”

I felt hot and cold at the same time.

Hot because no one else had managed in all twenty-four years of my life to rile me up as Miron did, and cold because I suddenly felt exposed before him. All my senses were on alert that I stood before him, not hidden behind the four walls of therapy, but bare, as a regular girl who could be anything else to him in this moment but his therapist.

Christ. I was losing it.

“Haze?”

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