Page 93 of Cashmere Cruelty

When June speaks again, her voice is quiet. Softer. “You know you’re allowed to enjoy good things, right? You don’t have to keep waiting for the other shoe to drop.”

Of course she’d hit the nail on the head. She’s known me for too long to miss what’s actually bothering me.

“I just…” I hesitate, looking for the right words. In this mess, it feels like there aren’t any. “I don’t want things to get complicated. Again.”

June hums in understanding. She knows what “complicated” means for me: the glares, the silence. The awareness of being unwanted. “Then you’ll just have to keep them very clear. Think you can do that, A?”

CanI do that?

Matvey’s a force of nature. He takes what he wants and is absolutely unapologetic about it. He’s strong-willed, mercurial, and unbearable to the extreme.

So can I keep this purely physical?

Put like that, it doesn’t sound like much of a challenge. In fact, it doesn’t sound like a challenge at all. That’s what I tell myself as I huff into my phone and murmur back to my best friend, “Yeah. Yeah, I think so.”

“Attagirl,” June replies, a smile in her voice. “See? That wasn’t so hard now, was it?”

Wasn’t it?I ask myself in the silence of Matvey’s empty room, on Matvey’s empty bed, next to Matvey’s empty space.

“Yeah,” I tell June, trying to force a smile into my voice, too. “You’re right.”

28

MATVEY

Not once in my whole fucking life have I failed to sleep when I needed it.

I don’t toss and turn restlessly, replaying my regrets. I don’t ponder. I don’t reflect. I just close my eyes and sleep the sleep of the dead, the sleep of a man who’s earned six hours’ respite from a world intent on putting him in the dirt.

My men—even Yuri and Grisha—know better than to intrude on my sleep, because my work demands that I am at my best at all times. Most people, when they are a step too slow, a day too late, a dollar too short, accept it and trudge on anyway.

But when I’m off my game, people die.

So all those around me understand it. The one entity that seems not to have gotten the memo?

My dick.

I’m lying awake in the pre-dawn murk with a raging hard-on and sleep nowhere in sight.

I know whose fault it is, of course. The same person who’s been haunting my dreams. Ever since we resumed our “changing room activities,” I can’t seem to close my eyes without the images of it hounding me: April’s legs, locked around my waist. April’s lips, sealed around my cock. April’s?—

Suddenly, my phone lights up.

I don’t have to check who it is. The only people brave enough to call me at this hour of the day are Yuri and Grisha. And Petra, but I can’t imagine she’d do something as pedestrian as call when she can just storm in.

Note to self: change the goddamn locks before she gets any ideas.

However, when I look at the display, my mood changes.

It’s April.

For a second, I wonder if something’s happened. If this is an emergency call. Even after I promised to be available 24/7, she’d never actually used the burner phone I gave her. If she’s using it now…

Without a second’s thought, I accept the call.

“April.”

“Oh—hi, Matvey.” On the other end of the line, April sounds surprised by how quickly I picked up. “Sorry, did I wake you?”