“Dinner’s here,” he said. “You have five minutes before I start without you.”
“Don’t. I just have a call to make.”
“Five minutes, Sergei.”
He disappeared before I could answer, leaving the door halfway open and the room warmer for the fact that he’d been in it at all. I stared after him for a second too long before I started at the realization that the clock was ticking and I didn’t want him to eat without me.
I dialed Nik’s number. He answered on the fourth ring, sounding breathless. “What’s up?”
“I’m going to the club tonight. You should be there too.”
There was a pause, followed by a groan so loudly dramatic that I held the phone away from my ear and hit the speaker button.
“I thought you said you were taking the night off to be loverboy’s toy.”
I rolled my eyes. “That’s your spin on it. Maxim’s dropping in, and I need you there.”
That shut him up for two seconds, then he cursed. “Of course, he’s showing up on the night we didn’t plan to bethere. And fucking Darius didn’t say anything. He was just here five minutes ago!”
“Let me guess, you distracted him?”
“Maybe. But that’s beside the point.”
“The point is, you have to be there. Bring Jess, if that makes you feel better.”
“But then I’ll have to watch her dancing while working.”
“For fuck’s sake, Nik, you’re a grown man able to control your urges while your woman dances. Consider it foreplay for later.”
“Hah! The doc taught you what foreplay is. This is epic.”
“Nik,” I growled his name.
“I’ll be there with Jess. Does that mean you’re taking Leo with you?”
The smile left my face. “No.”
Nik hummed. “Why not?”
“It’s a bad idea. I don’t want Leo mixing in our world.”
“That’s a little too late, don’t you think? You already got him involved with Arkady’s son.”
I hated when he was right.
“This is different. I want Leo as far away from Maxim as possible.”
“You can’t keep them apart forever, Sergei. At some point, they’re going to clash. If you ask me?—”
“I’m not asking you.”
“I’m going to answer anyway,” Nik said. “You need to put them in the same room and let them hash out their differences, preferably with you nowhere near it, because we both know what happens if you’re forced to choose. You can love the doctor all you want, Sergei, but your contract with Maxim wasn’t written on paper. It was written in blood, and the only way out is when one of you dies.”
I said nothing.
Nik’s voice softened, but only slightly. “You took an oath to die for him. That doesn’t magically disappear because you’ve got feelings now. So, for all our sakes, you’d better wrap up this whole brigadier situation quickly and get back where you belong. Maybe I’m selfish, but I don’t want Darius to become the permanent head of security. That means he’d have to take the same oath, and the only two people he should ever be willing to die for are me and Jess, and even then, I don’t wish that to happen.”
When I first took the oath over a decade ago, I never thought this day would come. That I would have a man in my life I loved enough to live for more than to die for the one who gave me a second chance at life in the first place.