Warrior Knight

by Aarti V Raman

  Krivi shrugged. “A couple days more. Then I want to move someplace more secure.” He gave Ziya a bland look. “Someplace with no electronic or digital access.”

  “Rendition,” she shot back.

  He shook his head, grasping his fork with unnecessary pressure.

  “I will call you,” Harold said. “Get some balls rolling…The funeral is fast-tracked for next Wednesday. Whatever we do, we can’t move before that. She needs to talk to the FRTs. I’ll arrange it.”

  ~~~~~~

  Ziya couldn’t believe, what she was hearing because it sounded suspiciously like…

  “Are you saying, you will let me work with you, Mr.Wozniacki?”

  “For me, Ms. Maarten,” he corrected her. “For me. And believe me, when I say, you are going to wish that you had never volunteered your services. It is not the life one wants. Ever.”

  She gave him a sad smile, and thought of Noor. Happy, bubbly Noor who had told her she would get Sam to kick Krivi’s ass for breaking her heart.

  “I have no life anymore, Mr. Wozniacki. Thank you.”

  Then she walked out, feeling as if the weight of the world had settled on her shoulders, and she welcomed it. Because it meant that she didn’t have to think about what had happened to the rest of her.

  Twenty-Seven

  Ziya walked into the bathroom, shedding layers as she walked into the motel room while Krivi shut the door.

  “I think I want another room,” she said absently. “I am not interested in sharing a bathroom with a man. Even one who is a neat freak like you.”

  She gave him an absent smile in the mirror and registered the military precision with which he was unbuttoning his sheepskin jacket. There was a strange stillness to him that she was only registering now on her thought processes.

  If she were a fanciful sort of woman she would have thought he was the predator and she was prey, one he was waiting to pounce on.

  Ziya bent down and splashed cold water on her numb face.

  She was numb everywhere, now that the weight of the world had settled on her shoulders. Every single part of her was numb.

  Then he whirled her around and some of the water from her face, splashed on his chest.

  She stared at him in amazement, as heat spread from the point of contact with his fingers on her arm. It was burning her, making her skin itch because the skin was coming back to life. Warming under the sheer life-force generated by this man.

  “You had no business promising Harold full co-operation in their investigation. Let alone volunteering your fucking services.” Krivi bit off.

  “Why not?” she asked mildly.

  She didn’t try to free herself from his hold. She was curious to see if the heat would level off, or burn hotter.

  “Because.” He bit off, his granite-hard face, thunderous with the expression she could see playing on it.

  He was furious. No, she amended silently, he was ragingly furious.

  “Yes?”

  “Because I don’t want you getting hurt and this game you want to play will end up with you getting hurt.”

  “You’re going to do the same thing, once you stash me in your so-called safe house. Aren’t you?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “Aren’t you?” she insisted, stubbornly. “Then why can’t I come with you and help you? I already have an in. That DNA test.”

  “You’re not going to be bait, Ziya. I won’t have it,” he said, flatly.

  She shook his hand off from her, this time. Deliberately, slowly, watching his eyes the whole time. They went pitch-black by the time she had finished shaking him off.

  “You don’t have a say in it. You put me in this position. Now I am going to do what I can to end this. No one else is going to die at the hands of that fucking maniac.”

  ~~~~~

  Her words were all the more effective for being delivered in an even tone.

  He rubbed a hand over his face as he tried to think of a strategy, a line of logic that would convince her to back off.

  “Look at you, Krivi,” she continued, still in that even tone. “You, with your dead eyes and your misplaced sense of honor and guilt. I can’t end up like you. I won’t. Chasing ghosts and refusing to believe I am alive.” She pushed one hand through her pixie hair.

  “The only way I can function at all is if I help bring about an end to what was started. It’s just the way it is.”

  “You’ll be dead in two minutes in my world,” he threatened.

  She shrugged again, a casual movement of her shoulders. “Then teach me to survive in it. I’m smart, resourceful and able to think on my feet. I think I can be a real useful asset to you, if you will, but let yourself consider it.”

  “I can’t,” he gritted out.

  “Why not?” she challenged.

  He clenched his hands into hard fists before he did something barbaric and stupid and unforgivable like drag his fingers into her scalp and kiss her till she started seeing sense and stopped talking about killing The Woodpecker.

  That was his job.

  “Why not, Krivi? Why can’t I help you? You know you need me.”

  “Because.”

  “Yeah, because?”

  “Because I want you.”

  ~~~~~~

  Ziya stared at Krivi for an endless second, the air charged with electricity that mingled anger and passion and grief in a condensed swirl.

  Then her hand snaked between them and she slapped him.

  The sound resounded in the confines of the bathroom, the running water from the tap a background score to what was transpiring in there.

  Krivi stood stock-still, even his chest was unmoving, as if he wasn’t breathing.

  She slapped him again, with the other hand, her palm hurting with the force of impact against the hard bones of his cheek. She hit him again, then again and he stood, immovable and intractable like a stone while she rained blows on him.

  Hitting him where she could.

  His shoulders, his cheeks, his chin, his nose.

  Ziya was breathing hard by the time she wound down, tears burning the backs of her eyes again, red-rimmed, chest heaving. Her palms were stinging from the contact with his face and body, and yet there he stood…

  Not one iota of reaction visible on his face.

  His eyes as pitch-black as ever.

  “Damn you,” she whispered.

  “Damn you straight to hell, Krivi.”

  She slapped him again, once, the sound cracking against the white tiles of the bathroom.

  He caught her wrist when she withdrew after the move.

  And he kissed the hammering pulse, so obvious over the thin skin, it was visible. Thud, thud, thud, thud. His eyes were still impassive, but his hot breath whispered over her hand, breathing more life into her.

  Setting off tiny fires everywhere his hot breath came in contact with her flesh.

  Ziya shook once, a rippling shudder that he felt too.

  “I hate you,” she said, trying to tug her hand away from him.

  He shrugged, a careless twitch of powerful shoulders.

  “I know. I would have been surprised if you didn’t.”

  She took a hitching breath, curling her fingers into her palms, because feeling the pain was so much better than the other, far more dangerous thing that was invading her lethargic, dead limbs. Forcing her blood to flow faster, for her heart to start pounding as if in preparation for a race.

  But a race to what?

  Ziya stepped back, a conscious movement of retreat.

  “I am sorry for hitting you.” She was glad her voice was level, even if her emotions were all over the place and most probably visible on her paper-thin face.

  “Don’t be.”

  But he came forward, just as she exited the bathroom. And he caught her hand, twining their fingers together in a tight, unbreakable grip.

  Ziya didn’t have the heart or the energy to engage with him again when it was so much more difficult to fight
her own instincts that were screaming for her to step closer.

  Step into his willing heat and soak it in till she was all thawed out. From the inside out. Maybe she wouldn’t feel so dead if he held her.

  Maybe a miracle could take place…

  “Ziya.”

  She stiffened as he followed the script in her head and placed his incredibly strong arms around her. Banding her to him, the contours of her soft body fitting, yielding to the hardness and strength in him.

  At first, she stood rigid, her bones stiff against the warmth pervading her.

  He breathed, deep and even, his chest moving solidly against her head, since bare feet, she barely cleared his shoulder, her nose comfortingly squashed against his pecs. She breathed of his clean scent, the lightest tinge of sweat since the weather was so cold and some soap that only enhanced his special Krivi smell.

  All man, all there.

  Ziya took another deep breath, and it shuddered through her body.

  He tightened his hands around the small of her back and she grabbed hold of him, her arms stealing around his back, his waist, holding on, just holding on with all the pressure she could muster.

  Her nails dug into his back, when she spread her fingers over the broad expanse of his back and she stepped closer to him. Molding herself to him, chest to chest, rib to rib, thigh to thigh.

  ~~~~~~

  Krivi leaned down and buried his nose in her hair, inhaling the sweet, citrusy scent of her shampoo and the soft scent of wild roses that clung to the soft skin under the hair.

  Sensitive, too sensitive for all the blood rushing underneath, traceries of which were visible in the veins that stuck out.

  He shuddered too, once.

  “I can’t lose you, Ziya,” he whispered thickly.

  He wondered if she heard the torments of the damned in his husky voice. “I can lose everything but not you. You have to be safe, okay? You just have to.”

  Her lips trembled, and she held on tighter, screwing her eyes shut.

  He kissed the side of her neck where his face was currently lodged. “Ziya,” he husked out.

  “Ziya.”

  He felt an enervating heat flood through her. A heat that left him limp and strong in her arms, as if she was the thing holding her upright and not gravity.

  “Ziya,” he said her name again, pleading and sanity, and salvation… all three of them evident in him.

  “Krivi.”

  “Don’t hate me,” he said.

  His fingers were shoving through her sweater and tee shirt and pressing coldly against the warm, satin skin of her spine. He absorbed the softness, the fragility, feeling desire steal what little reason and compassion he had left.

  Leaving no room for anything anymore.

  Not grief…not even guilt, his constant companion for most of his adult life.

  “Please, don’t hate me.”

  ~~~~~

  Ziya took another shivering breath; feeling her control and her will crumble against the onslaught of his body against hers.

  His beautiful hands holding her close, holding her together, his breath releasing goose bumps that started in a tremble deep in the pit of her stomach and reached outward, fanning to every pore of her body.

  Her fingernails, her teeth, the spaces between her toes…

  Until all she could feel was him.

  Krivi.

  The man she was supposed to hate.

  “I should hate you. I should hate you,” she murmured, turning her face more fully into him, taking in more of the essence, the strength of him because for this one moment, this moment out of time when he was near her, it felt okay.

  It felt all right to not hate him.

  To feel…just to feel past the numbness.

  “But don’t.”

  She gave a wobbly smile at the way he phrased that particular sentiment.

  She raised her head up, her brilliant eyes a little clear, a little cloudy and sighed.

  “Kiss me, Krivi. Kiss me so I don’t hate you anymore.”

  He didn’t even hesitate, didn’t give himself or her time to rescind, to retreat. He just closed his lips over hers, at that awkward angle, their limbs all tangled around each other so they were as close as two people could be.

  And he kissed her with all the feeling burgeoning inside of him.

  Twenty-Eight

  Ziya knew it was wrong.

  She understood it in her brain that was screaming for her to step back, just step back from this man and his rough hands and rougher passion. His animal heat that was seeping into her bones… seeping there when she didn’t want to feel anything.

  Nothing as violent as desire.

  Pure want.

  But nothing her brain was screaming about, could make her not offer her lips to him. To not mold her mouth against the soft, wet, warmth of his as they shaped and reshaped around each other. Kissing…just kissing.

  Soft and quiet, with none of the raging desire she knew was swirling around them, enclosing them in a bubble that came up when he touched her with any sort of intent.

  She’d never been desired by someone like him before.

  She had never desired someone like him before.

  And it undid her that he could reach to the most primal core of her and draw out a response she had never given to any other man. And certainly not to him.

  Not to Krivi Iyer who had come into her life with the express intention of destroying it.

  Ziya tore her lips from his, her breath hitching past her throat.

  He cupped the back of her head and forced her lips against his, this time consuming everything he wanted, because he could. Because he was who he was and she wanted him exactly as he wanted her.

  Completely. Irrationally. With no thought to consequence beyond this moment.

  ~~~~~

  Krivi speared his tongue inside Ziya’s warmth and their tongues mated in a heavy, instant prelude to what was to come. He ran eager, aggressive hands over her sweater, her tee shirt, and shoved what clothing he could out of the way.

  She rippled against him as if the rough, casual touch was too much to bear.

  Then, she attacked his jacket, throwing it down on the cold floor. His buttons went flying when she simply ripped his shirt apart.

  Krivi shrugged out of his tattered shirt and grabbed her sweater and tee shirt to toss them away with no finesse whatever.

  And she was kissing the side of his neck, his jaw, biting his earlobe in a sexy move that almost made him take her right where they stood. Right on the cold floor of the cheap motel room. No romance, no bed, no sheets, nothing.

  He grabbed the back of her head and kissed her hard, endlessly.

  Ziya’s eyes were dazed, murky and depthless with passion and swift-rising desire, so her hands were limp, inactive against his back. She could barely hold herself together when he had melted not just her spine, but her limbs too. With just one, rough, open-mouthed kiss.

  Heat flooded through the core of her, when he picked her up, and carried her to the bed, as if she was weightless.

  She wound her legs around his waist, adding heat to hardness and he hissed, hot and savage in her ear.

  Then he bit her on her earlobe before soothing the bite with a quick kiss.

  ~~~~~

  She rubbed restlessly, invitingly against him, grabbing the ends of his hair, and kissed him ruthlessly. Letting her tongue say everything her lips still wouldn’t permit her to say. Winding around him, teasing him, arousing him so that when he stripped her off her jeans and boots, he practically tore them from her body.

  She only arched and asked for more, easing out of her black lace and cotton bra by herself. Tossing it over his shoulder, so that it landed the jumble of clothes already littered around them.

  He prowled towards her, nestling between her slim, long thighs, his muscles bunching and gleaming as he rested his big, hard body against hers.

  Ziya ran a trembling hand over his back and felt…

&nb
sp; Ridges, grooves…as if…She sat up and peered at his back. It was a mass of bruises, tiny bruises as if stones had embedded in his back and he had…

  Ziya drew back to face him with shocked eyes.

  “What happened to you?” It was a shocked whisper.

  He shrugged. “Flying shrapnel, occupational hazard.” He smiled; a low-watt smile that seemed inappropriate under the circumstances.

  She ran a shaking finger, tracing the lines of war, of bloody and brutal war on his skin. The surface was uneven, callused, hurt. Like the man himself. It was healed but the scars remained, always to be seen, to be felt every time he looked at his ruined back.

  “I don’t…”

  Krivi shook his head, and took her hand away from his back, kissed the palm. A sweet, soft kiss.

  “It’s okay, Ziya. It happens. I don’t hurt anymore.”

  She leaned forward, wrapping her limbs all around him and laid her head against his chest. Where she could hear the rapid, steady beat of his heart.

  He was alive…

  He was alive even when he did something so terribly, damnably dangerous with his life

  ~~~~~.

  He stroked one gentle hand over her short hair, cupping the back of her neck and trying to offer whatever comfort it was that she needed.

  Because, just like that, arousal and desire had taken a backseat. Oh, they were there, a fever in his blood that wouldn’t cool until he was inside her, had spent himself inside her.

  But, right now, he wanted to calm her.

  It was as important as having her.

  Finally, Ziya exhaled over his chest, and he felt it in every part of his body, and she raised her head up.

  A new emotion was shimmering in those quicksilver eyes, in the bright loveliness of her face. He couldn’t place it, because he had never understood emotions.

  And her face he hadn’t really forgotten in the last six months. Not since the last day he had seen her.

  He whispered the backs of shaking fingers over her soft cheek.

  She leaned into the touch, and her kiss caught the pads of his fingers. He felt that kiss everywhere too.

  “I missed you, Ziya,” Krivi said, hoarsely.