Please Note: This story will be reduced to a sample on August 17th, 2020 - it is available in full on Radish Fiction.

Pasha was surrounded by women. On either side of him in the nightclub's VIP booth were dancers from Mia Malone's Mending Hearts Tour. The cloying smell of perfume and body lotion clung to the air around him. He raised his beer to his lips and took a long pull. While being at the nightclub wasn't his first choice, his front-row seat to the dance floor gave him a great view and provided endless entertainment.

"I can't believe Mia finally let you come out with us. We all had bets on whether you were a monk or a priest or something." Jazz giggled beside him and sipped her fruity drink.

She was his least favorite, constantly trying to push him into a conversation, rarely anything interesting to say. Mia had gotten him an English tutor, and apart from an accent, his English was fluid now. She'd tired of using various translation apps or listening to him talk in stilted or broken sentences that didn't keep their meaning. The tutor had been a gift he'd gladly accepted. Now, he could speak fluently and well on a variety of topics, but he chose not to most of the time. He'd earned a reputation as a man of few words. While he had more English words than he'd ever expected, he tended to save them for Mia or Tyler or baby Victoria. They were his adopted American family.

"Yes," he said, picking up his pint of beer. This would be the only drink he'd have tonight. While he was sure the Sullivan-Malone family were safe with Gerald and the other security personnel back on the tour buses, as the head of her security, he had a responsibility to them. Getting drunk in a bar wasn't part of his job description, even if Mia had tried to insist tonight that he needed to blow off some steam. Whatever that meant.

"I don't think he wants to talk to you," Amy, another dancer, said from the other side of him. "Might as well hit the dancefloor and see if you can lure some poor sucker with your sick moves."

Jazz took out the straw in her drink and chugged the last of the icy concoction before leaving the booth with a huff.

He sighed. It was one thing for him not to talk to her, another for Amy to hurt Jazz's feelings. Not that Amy's comment would matter in a few minutes. Jazz's middle name was persistence. She'd be snuggled up to him with a new drink before the next song started. If he'd thought Jazz would be a one and done woman, he'd consider having sex with her. Maybe they'd both get a bit of satisfaction, but he hated doing anything to screw up his job, his position in Mia's security detail. So, no excessive drinking, no sex with her dancers. His rules were nothing Mia had suggested or imposed; he just didn't want any complications.

"Christ, I'm hot," Alyssa said, taking Jazz's vacated spot. She grabbed one of the ice cubes from Jazz's glass and smeared it across her chest. Pasha's pants tightened.

Alyssa Miller.

Unlike Jazz, Alyssa was his favorite. Her dark blonde hair fell in thick waves down her back. Tall and lithe, she glided across the floor. From the first moment he'd seen her, Pasha had been secretly obsessed. She was the only returning dancer from the Blind Faith Tour. When he'd asked Mia about her rotating door of dancers, Mia had said it was a different tour with different ideas, and not all dancers could do all things. Alyssa, who'd been better than average to make the first tour, must be phenomenal to get a second shot. She held his attention when she was on stage, and he had to work to keep his adoration of her a secret from everyone.

Now, sitting beside her in a nightclub lit up by strobe lights and a disco ball, he realized she wasn't just a good dancer, she could do amazing things with an ice cube. The trickle of water running between her breasts kept drawing his gaze, although he tried to pretend he didn't notice. One part of his body was definitely paying attention, and leaving this booth was impossible, even if he wasn't surrounded. He hadn't been drawn so immediately to another person in a long time, well, only one other time. Zoya. They'd almost gotten married.

She leaned across him, practically falling into his lap to talk to Amy. Her hand gripped his thigh, and he tensed, not at the contact so much as how his body reacted to her proximity. As she finished her conversation with Amy, she eased back and looked at him under her lashes. Did she know the effect she was having on him? Could she sense it? All the nerve endings in his body were poised to react, pin her to the booth, drag her into the backroom, haul her onto the table. He'd give almost anything for a taste.

"Sorry," she said. "I think I'm a bit drunk."

"Just a bit?" he murmured as they made eye contact. Her eyes were brown, a rich, deep color that made his gut clench. Soulful. That's what he'd call them. So different from his own pale blue.

A grin split her face, and she held up one finger to him. "Back in a sec." She scooted out of the booth and raced over to Jazz on the dancefloor and held out her hand. Her gold mini dress had ridden up her thighs, and she tugged it down while she waited. Jazz frowned and stared in his direction for a moment before removing some bills from her bra and passing them to Alyssa. He took another drink of his beer. Odd. Very odd.

When she returned, she sat next to him and patted his leg. "You just got me twenty bucks. Want me to buy you a drink?"

"Twenty bucks?"

"Yeah." She picked up another ice cube and ran it along her arm. "Because you spoke more than one word to me. Jazz said you only spoke in one word sentences, and I bet her I could get you to say at least three."

"How much for five words?" he asked. The joy spilling out of her was contagious. He'd never spoken to her before, but the music of her voice was familiar. On the last tour, he'd heard her talking to her boyfriend all the time on the phone backstage—lovesick or furious. Those had been her two moods. This playful vibe was new to him, reminded him of when she came off stage at the end of the night, relaxed, happy. Drunk on the high of the crowd, now, she was just drunk.

Alyssa laughed and bumped his shoulder. "Next time, I'll bet her ten dollars per word. We'd probably have to record the conversation. Nobody would believe me." She laced her fingers with his and tugged him out of the booth behind her, practically dragging him to the bar. "I owe you a drink."

"No, no, no." He tried to extract his hand, but she hung on, and when they got to the bar, she looped his arm around her back so she was pinned between his body and the wooden surface.

"One shot," she said, holding up a finger, her eyes alight with mischief. "Just one. What's the harm?"

He shook his head, but when she turned in his arms to order two shots of vodka from the very attentive bartender, he was a goner.

"If I drink both of these," she said, dangling the two shots from her fingertips. "I'll be too drunk, and I'll have a massive hangover tomorrow. But if you drink one of them, you'll be saving me." She batted her eyelashes at him and grinned.

He took the shot from her fingers and cupped it in his hand. Without looking, he tossed it over his shoulder. Would someone get doused with alcohol? Possibly. Most of the people in the VIP section were already out of their mind on something. A vodka shower added to the party. Besides, he'd have no problem taking care of himself if someone was pissed off.

She scoffed and then burst out laughing. "Hey, that's my hard-earned money you're throwing over your shoulder."

"No," he said. "It's your hangover."

Alyssa eyed him above the rim of her shot and then swallowed the liquid. She waved to the bartender without looking at him, and he slid another vodka across the bar toward her.

When Pasha glanced down, she smirked. "I'm not that drunk yet."

"Quit while you're ahead?" It was an expression he'd learned from Mia, although he'd had to ask her to explain it to him the first time she'd used it.

"You know, everyone says your English isn't great. But, apart from an accent, which, personally," she put the hand not holding the shot on her chest, "I find incredibly sexy, you speak really well. Why don't you talk more?"

Instead of answering, he plucked the shot glass out of her fingers and drank it.

A slow smile spread across her face. Rising on her toes, her lips grazed his ear, and his pants tightened even more. Getting this hard over the proximity of a woman was unsettling.

"I'll be right back." She stepped around him and headed to the booth where Amy held out another bill to Alyssa.

Pasha shook his head. He wasn't sure if her bets were impressive or annoying. When she slipped under his arm so she was pinned against the bar again, she waved the money at him.

"Another?" she asked.

He braced his hands against the bar, one on either side of her. "Any more bets?"

She stared at him and a smile threatened. "Amy wanted another one, but I said no."

"Another bet? About what?" He didn't mind the teasing, but he couldn't figure out what she wanted from him. Was this a bit of fun on her part? Had she sensed his interest? Was she taunting him? Other bodies pressed against him trying to get close to the bar, but he held firm, refusing to let anyone get near her or the space they'd claimed.

"I like this whole protective vibe," she said, her finger circling their enclosed space. "All the guys I've known have been possessive, and that's not the same as protective. So many of them don't get that. You know?" She cocked her head, never breaking eye contact.

This is how he'd always been with women—his mother, Mia, his fiancée. The guys he'd been friends with in Russia had different codes of conduct and honor systems. They'd thought women needed to be dominated, controlled, and he'd never understood why. Tyler Sullivan, Mia's boyfriend, was the opposite of those men, and Pasha liked him a lot. Most women, at least the ones he found interesting, didn't want to be controlled. In his experience, they wanted to be understood, and that took a lot more effort than asserting dominance.

"Listen," she said taking another shot he hadn't realized she'd ordered. "Come dance with me." She placed the empty glass on the wooden surface and tugged on his hand braced against the bar.

He let her dislodge his grip and slide her fingers along his. She had such soft hands. "I don't dance." Without his arms creating space around them, other people gathered close, too close for his liking. His job with Mia was to create space, to keep people at bay, and he was allowing himself to be trapped by the crush of the crowd to stay close to Alyssa.

She turned in his arms and placed some money onto the bar. Although the VIP section had gotten a lot busier, the bartender picked her out of the crowd with almost no effort on her part. When she crooked her finger for him to lean closer, he came across the bar so her lips were almost against his earlobe. Pasha gritted his teeth at the close contact. Maybe he had a bit of possessiveness in him after all. He'd never had Alyssa's undivided attention before, and it annoyed him to lose it so quickly.

The bartenders set two bottles of beer on the bar, and Alyssa waved him off with a grin when he tried to give her change. As far as Pasha could tell, the bartender had given her a few free shots already. He returned her grin, and as Alyssa scooped up the two bottles with one hand, gripped Pasha's hand with the other, and led him away from the bar, away from the other dancers, deeper into the VIP section.