The God (Bratva Blood #3)- S.R. Jones Page 0,42
I don’t find screwing around something I like the idea of. I don’t know why, but I see the way men and women look at me, and a lot of the time it turns my stomach. It reminds me far too much of the way my father’s fucking sick friends would look at me.
When I hit the downstairs of the apartment block and turn right into the spacious but worn foyer, I spy a group of girls. I glance at them, uninterested, but see a flash of red hair amongst them.
The hair reminds me of Dasha so much. Then the girl turns, and pale blue eyes hit mine. What the fuck?
“Dasha?” I step forward.
The girls part like the red sea, and Dasha is all I focus on.
It is her, and she’s grown up. She’s still the shiny jewel she always was, though.
“Bohdan!” She runs to me and throws her arms around me.
She smells divine, like strawberries and bubble gum mixed with a tiny hint of something darker and sexier.
I pull back to look at her. She’s got thick, pale pink, gloopy gloss on her small mouth, her eyes are ringed in kohl, and her hair is wavy.
She’s not the little girl I threw leaves over and told her they were pixie dust when she was upset or scared. This is a young woman.
“You want to go for a walk?” she asks me.
“Yeah, okay,” I say. Fuck the bar, hanging with Dasha seems a better idea. I want to know what she’s been up to.
As we walk side by side, suddenly both seemingly unsure, I catch her glancing at me.
“You’re very handsome,” she says finally.
I burst out laughing at that. I don’t mean to, but come on, who says very handsome.
“You’re all proper now,” I reply with a smile and a tug on her hair. It’s different, thicker than it used to be.
“Well that’s what a few years in Siberia will do for you. I spent most of my time watching old TV shows and reading historic British novels. I’m surprised I don’t sound like someone from Vanity Fair.”
We pass the small food stores, the pharmacy, and the bakery and then turn right without even consulting one another. We’re heading to our place. The woods.
When we reach the copse of trees, we head into the center.
“It’s still here,” she says with a smile. “I worried it might have been concreted over and built on.”
“It allegedly is going to be,” I inform her.
“Oh, no. That’s awful.”
She scuffs her toe on the ground, glancing at me from under long, reddish-brown lashes. “So… How have you been? What are you up to?”
“I’m good,” I say. I can’t stop looking at her eyes. I’ve never seen anything as beautiful as this new version of Dasha.
“Is that all you’ve got to tell me?”
“Well, what about you?”
She starts to rattle off all sorts of news. Most of it about her family. She tells me how cold it was in Siberia, and how long the hours were that her father worked at the power plant, and that things are hard now and her parents aren’t getting on. Then she tells me she’s going to be a ballerina.
She always wanted to do that, but it seems time and growing up some haven’t dulled her desire for it.
“You always wanted to be a dancer,” I say with a smile. I lean in and take hold of her hair again, fascinated by the length and weight of it. I let it trail through my fingers, silky and soft. Dasha blushes and looks away.
I let go and step back. “Sorry.” I shrug. “Your hair is gorgeous.”
“Let’s go look at the lake,” she says. And we do. We go look at the lake, and we talk most of the evening until darkness falls. In summer, it is light for much of the night, so I miss midnight, when I officially become nineteen.
I don’t care for once that I won’t get any presents. I don’t care that I’ve an alcoholic mother waiting for me at home.
Everything seems a bit brighter. We talk for hours, and it’s late when we get back home.
I go to bed, and for once life doesn’t feel hopeless and dark.
My bright shiny jewel is back.
Chapter Sixteen
Dasha
My sexual appetite is like some mythical beast asleep for centuries and now awakened with a ravenous desire. For three days I avoid even looking at Bohdan as much as I can, because I know I’ll do something highly inappropriate, like ripping his clothes off