The position afforded Evgeni an unobstructed view of her ass, full and round in the tight cradle of her stretch denim jeans. She was such a tiny thing, he bet his hands would cover the whole of both cheeks without much trouble at all. His cock twitched at the thought.
It took a few seconds of work for her to inch it close enough that she could pull it from the shelf, the precarious dance ending with it safely in her hand. She retrieved the shot glasses from beneath the counter and stacked them together next to the bottle. “Do you run a tab, or pay as you go?”
“You tell Kirill I take it, he know what to do.”
Her look was quizzical, but she didn’t ask him to explain. She knew how to mind her own business. “Sure. Okay. Anything else?”
He trapped his cigarette between his lips, pulling his billfold out of his back pocket. He extracted a couple of bills, the equivalent of fifteen dollars, and extended them her way. “No, solnyshko. That is all.”
She took the offered money, but when she realized how much he’d given her, she frowned. Elena folded the bills back up and slid it toward him. “Hey, you gave me way too much.”
Evgeni covered her hand with his own, gently pushing the money her way again. “You want to hurt my feelings?”
Her eyes widened, gaze darting between his face and the hand perched atop her own. “No! I only mea—”
“Then you take, no fuss.”
He gave her hand a squeeze, his index finger tracing a lazy line along the side of her thumb down to her wrist. She inhaled sharply, then tried to play it off by covering her mouth and pretending to cough. He didn’t buy it. The air may as well have sparked when he touched her. The chemistry was there, an electric charge pulsing beneath her skin. She felt the attraction, the draw, same as him.
Evgeni forced himself to release her hand and retrieved the glasses and bottle before sliding off his stool. “I see you, solnyshko.”
“Sure, thank you.”
Her knit brow suggested she was wary, most likely of his motives. That too pleased him. She was right to be suspicious.
“Da. Have good night.”
He resisted the urge to look back, even though he could feel her eyes following him.
*
Kirill sidled up next to Elena as she was watching Evgeni saunter off, startling her from her thoughts. When she looked his way, the older man was staring in the same direction she had been. He didn’t look happy.
“He is a bad man,” he declared in Russian. Kirill didn’t use English for her sake like Evgeni did. “Stay away from him, girl. He is no friend to have.”
His words were low and somber, meant for her alone. A warning, clear as day.
“I… Sure,” Elena said. Whatever Kirill knew or thought he knew, she wouldn’t change his mind. Besides, he was probably right; Evgeni did feel dangerous. She sighed, slipping the money in her front pocket. “He said to tell you he took a bottle of Beluga.”
“Of course he did,” Kirill snorted, shaking his head as he slid past her. “Take, take, take, all the time.”
He was still muttering to himself when he rounded the corner of the bar and vanished into the back hall, leaving Elena alone with her thoughts.
Kirill didn’t like him. But Kirill didn’t seem to like much of anything.
Neither Luka nor Kirill acted very pleased with Elena being here. It may well have been Evgeni’s fault too. She felt a little like he forced her on them. She really liked the vibe of this place, though, so she was glad she had the chance. Now all she had to do was win them over. If she could prove herself to be a good worker, maybe they wouldn’t see her as such an imposition.
When she’d shown up that afternoon, Luka had given her a brief tour and went over what her duties would entail. He didn’t talk much outside of his brusque instructions. His English was broken and littered with Russian where he didn’t know the word for something, but Elena didn’t have any trouble understanding him.
Luka had then passed Elena off to Kirill with a hushed warning for him to be nice. Kirill, a stereotypically sour-looking, middle-aged man, had even less to say to her than his boss. He showed her how to work the cash register and card machine, and told her not to bother him unless a customer asked for a drink she wasn’t familiar with.
The early evening crowd consisted mainly of regulars, judging by how many of them Kirill was on a first-name basis with. As the evening went on, the patronage made a gradual shift from blue collar folks trying to relax after work to a younger, rowdier crowd looking to have some fun.
It was somewhere in the middle of that changeover that Evgeni and his friends had arrived. It was hard not to notice, considering both Evgeni and the man she’d spilled vodka on the other day were a head taller than almost everyone else.
They’d sat at a table across the bar, the same one they’d been at the first time she saw them, where she only caught a glimpse of them now and then through a gap in the crowd. Sometimes Evgeni would almost catch her looking his way. She’d glanced away in a rush, worried he’d think she was staring. But the last time she’d done it, he’d winked, and Elena’s cheeks had prickled with hot embarrassment. He definitely knew she was watching him.
When he had finally come to the bar, she’d tried to play it cool. He’d made a point of destroying that feigned control when he overloaded her with a cheerful greeting and a charming smile. She’d been grateful for the excuse to turn away and get the bottle of alcohol—it gave her a chance to steady her breathing. Or it would have, if the look on his face when she turned back around hadn’t made her feel like he wanted to eat her up.
His not-so-casual-touch when she’d tried to refuse his tip sent a little trill of excitement through her, making her stomach clench and her pulse flutter girlishly. The way he’d assessed her when she drew the money back after he accused her of trying to hurt his feelings only reaffirmed the feeling. He was definitely a big, bad wolf. A very sexy, older wolf.
Elena blew out a sigh and plastered on her customer service smile as a couple of men sidled up to the bar top. Once she’d served them, she took out her rag and started wiping down the counter.
She didn’t have time to daydream. The bar was too busy.
Only three more hours to go.
Chapter Five
Thursday nights at the bar weren’t bad. It was busy, but not too overwhelming. Fridays and Saturdays, on the other hand, were a different story.
There was no gradual increase in business. Instead the crowds started early, only an hour or so after she got there. With as cold as it was outside, Elena was surprised. But then, these people obviously didn’t let the cold hamper their social lives.
How Kirill ever did it alone, she didn’t know. Elena was constantly moving, rushing back and forth filling drink orders at the bar, hurrying to deliver trays of drinks to tables, cleaning up dirty dishes, cutting fruit, restocking supplies, and taking payments. The pace was dizzying.
She was always exhausted by the time the late crowd rolled in, but there was rarely time to take a break. Besides, she was sure Kirill would use it as an excuse to get her fired if she left him alone with the mob of young people cluttering the floor.
But her second week, she finally found her rhythm.
The plus side was that the patrons were mostly happy, exuberant people her own age. The novelty of an American behind the bar excited many of her customers and initiated friendly, curious conversations. She learned a lot about the city and its people—the best places to eat, have tea, drink vodka, see a show, and the most popular clubs, which tourist traps to avoid, and which to be sure she saw before she left. It only reaffirmed Elena’s initial assumption that this was the best place to get the authentic experience she wanted.