I took the bottle with shaking hands. I’d already had the equivalent of a couple of shots. But I put the glass neck to my mouth and tipped it back until the liquor ran like silver fire over my tongue and down my throat. I lowered it and took a long breath, the club’s warm air suddenly freezing next to the burn of the alcohol. “Limits are good,” I rasped. “Limits keep things safe.”
He smirked at that and patted his leg. It took me a second to realize that he wanted me to sit there. I stood up and walked over to him, my legs trembling.
I went to sit sideways on his leg, like a princess riding side-saddle on a unicorn. He admonished me with a little shake of his head and an amused crush of those sensuous lips.
I swallowed, stood slightly, and sat again. This time, I sat back on his leg so that I was astride it. I managed to keep my knees together, though.
I kept my eyes forward because I thought that, somehow, if I did that, I might not lose control. I felt his hand on my back—so warm!—and then sweeping up through my hair, letting the strands spill and play over his fingers as his thumb ascended my spine. I arched my back in response, trembling.
Suddenly, he lifted his knee, taking his foot off the ground and raising me into the air as if I weighed nothing. I slid backward, my thighs opening, my heels skittering for purchase on the floor. My ass pressed against his groin. His mouth was at my ear, his accent wrapping each syllable in ice before it slipped into my brain. “What are you really doing in Moscow, Arianna?”
My whole body went tense. My feet were still off the ground—I had no traction, no way of struggling up from his lap. I tried to lurch forward but that only made my ass grind more firmly against the hardness I could feel at his groin. Cold fear erupted inside me, freezing my brain, numbing my response. I opened my lips but nothing came out. I’m blown. I’m blown!
But then his mouth was at my ear again. “You come on vacation by yourself, but I don’t think it’s to meet people. You are too…” he fumbled for the phrase in English. “In own head.”
Introvert. A language geek, I thought. I’m just a language geek. I nodded, still rigid with fear.
His hands were on my thighs, steadying me as I balanced precariously on his leg. He still hadn’t lowered his knee. I glanced up for a second and spied the blonde again. She looked even angrier than before, and her gaze was locked on my open legs, and on Luka’s leg between them.
His hands started to slide upward, tugging the dress with them. I gulped. We were in the shadows, but still in open view of everyone. I watched as the hem rose up my stockinged thighs. “I think,” Luka said, “You came here to find something you couldn’t find at home. Something you needed.”
I shook my head. My cover wasn’t blown but I didn’t like the way this was going.
His lips were even closer, now, stroking the super-sensitive edges of my ear as he spoke. “I think you lie awake in America thinking of bad men.”
I felt myself flush with embarrassment, remembering the way I’d played his phone calls over and over. I had fantasized about him, but I hadn’t come out here to chase after him….
Had I?
One hand settled on my shoulder and then slid down my collar bone to my throat. I swallowed slowly. The feel of it resting there, massive and powerful, was frightening. Intoxicating. Dammit, how does he do this to me?!
The hand slowly rose, stroking up my throat to the underside of my chin and tipping my head back. My hair cushioned my head against his shoulder. Now I was nestled in his lap, my eyes looking up at him. My legs were either side of his, the hard bulge of his cock between the cheeks of my ass. Why wasn’t I running? Why was I just sitting there, staring up at him? I could feel the heat starting to build inside me, spiraling up in urgent waves.
He was looking at me with hooded eyes and his voice had gone deeper than I’d ever known it, almost a growl. The music was loud, but he could have whispered to me from twenty feet away and that voice would have carried. “I think you came looking for me,” he said.
I stiffened. The heat was rolling through me, leaving me throbbing and drunk with desire. My arms reached up and grabbed for him, seeking anything solid to cling onto and finding his shoulders. His fingers lightly touched my wrist and then traced all the way along my arm until it reached my upturned face. He brushed my cheek. “And I think that maybe...I’ve been looking for someone like you.”
I swallowed. “What am I?” But I already knew, because I’d already heard him say it.
He smiled a lazy, cat-like smile. “An innocent,”
I thought of all those sophisticated, beautiful Russian women. “Why do you want an innocent?” I croaked.
His lips twisted, the smile growing cruel. “To corrupt her.”
A deep, liquid heat pooled at my core and then rippled out to fill me, leaving me breathless. My own reaction scared me. But there was something else. When he’d said it, there’d been another flicker in those burning, frozen eyes. A glimpse of something behind the mask, a need that went beyond just lust. I felt my heart lift and open a little, tentatively unfurling for the first time in many years.
And then I saw him lean down, his eyes closing, and—
Oh God, he was going to—
I had time for a single, overwhelmed breath before his lips came down on mine. My hands came up off his shoulders in shock and I grabbed for his head—I’m not sure what I had in mind. Push him away? Pull him in harder?
His fingers knitted with mine, holding my arms out from my body.
The kiss was as urgent as that need I’d seen inside him, a release of something that must have been building up all day. His lips brushed mine and I just had time to take a shuddering breath. I could feel his need to own me, to possess me utterly. His tongue toyed with the chink between my lips. He didn’t want to force his way in; he wanted me to open up to him.
I opened.
His kiss was like a drug entering my body, one made entirely of blackness and heat and sin. I felt my insides turn to liquid, my legs at last relaxing and slumping either side of his, no longer caring who saw. My hands squeezed his and he squeezed back. His tongue thrust deep, exploring me, filling me, and I saw stars. I drew in air through my nose but it didn’t do anything to cool me or clear my head. I was sinking into him, becoming one with him, my ass grinding unconsciously against his cock through his jeans.
I felt as if some part of me that had never been connected before had just been hooked up to a live wire.
He broke the kiss, then kissed me again, open-mouthed and panting. His leg lifted more, tipping me, and I slid back until my whole back was pressed against his chest. I could feel my skirt sliding higher, pulled by his raised knee. I could feel air on the tops of my hold-ups, on my bare thighs. How much is on display?! But I was past caring.
The kiss went on and on, dark heat soaking down from my lips to my core...and I drank it down hungrily. Because on the way through me, the heat was awakening something, coaxing it from a three year slumber. Not my lust. Not even my closed-off heart. Something deeper and more vital than that. It felt as if he was waking up me.
He finally lifted his lips and it was like something had been ripped from me. I actually tried to pull him back towards me. He was staring down at me with an expression that I guessed matched my own.
Total. Loss. Of control.
But then he shook his head minutely and glanced towards the dance floor.
I sort of shook myself and returned to reality. I was still nestled in his lap, much tighter against him than I had been before. I flushed as I realized I was basically sitting on his groin, legs spread languidly either side of him, my dress up around my hips.
I let out a strangled groan and shoved the hem down as fast as I could, jerking it awkwardly out from between our bodies. I heard him give a low chuckle and the sound of it made me shudder in a way that was worryingly pleasant.
Get it together! This is not a guy you can lose control with! But I already had. Would again, as soon as he touche
d me. The vodka had made me merely tipsy, but I was drunk on Luka Malakov, utterly wasted. Right now, I’ll do anything he wants me to.
“Let’s dance,” he said in my ear, pushing me up to standing. I didn’t really have a choice, even if I’d been lucid enough to protest, because he almost lifted me to my feet. As we walked towards the dance floor, I wondered why he’d interrupted the kiss to go do something as tame as dance. Did he want to slow things down? That didn’t seem like his way at all.
Then we were in among the press of bodies. He stopped us in the shallows of the crowd, where bodies ground and twisted against each other. Where dancing was just an excuse.
Oh.
He swung around in front of me and suddenly I was up against him, as close as we had been in New York. Then, I hadn’t been able to move back; now, I didn’t want to. He was so damn big, up close, his chest like a solid wall. I laid my hands on his shoulders and pushed back to give me time to think but, as soon as I lost the warmth of him blazing through his shirt, I couldn’t think at all. I pressed myself close again. I needed that contact with him like I needed to breathe.
I looked up at him, lost..., and immediately lost myself even more when I saw the hunger in his eyes. There was an edge of anger to it...as if he resented wanting me so much.
As if he’d make me pay, for making him want me. But I’m not doing anything!
We began to dance.
I didn’t dance—ever. The few times I’d actually been to clubs, back in college, I’d been too self-conscious. I’d done everything possible to stay off the dance floor while trying to look as if I was having a good time. Now, though, as his arm captured my waist and snugged me tight against him, I was beyond caring what other people thought.
I forgot about my body, my nerves, even the people around me. The only thing that existed in the world were his eyes, gazing down into mine. I could feel the deep bass throb of the music pounding through my bones, lifting me like a wave, and I started to unconsciously move to it. He followed my movements, our bodies joined from thigh to neck, until I wasn’t sure if I was moving him or he was moving me.
I closed my eyes and just let go, flexing and swaying and twisting with him, my breasts crushed against his chest, my groin pushed hard against his. I could feel him throbbing there, the two of us separated by a few inconsequential layers of fabric. And I could feel my own response, the twisting heat inside me turning to slick moisture.
The beat shifted, the DJ mixing in another track, and Luka twisted me around so that my back was to him. His hands ran up my sides and drew my arms up and around his neck so that I was stretched out like an offering, almost hanging down the length of his body, my front exposed.
Immediately, his palms were on my hips, stroking upward, and it felt as if they were pulling the heat inside up with them. I still had my eyes closed, shutting out everything else as his palms moved up over my sides...up to the sides of my breasts. He rubbed there for long seconds, his thumbs just nudging the soft flesh, keeping me on the razor sharp line between where I’d allow it and where I’d stop him. He could sense me, somehow. He knew exactly how far I’d let him go.
And he was going to keep tempting me further and further. Leading me astray. Corrupting me. He wasn’t hiding it. He’d damn well promised it. And I was letting him.
For the mission. Just for the mission. I have to.
Bullshit.
His hands suddenly swept down my body, his fingers catching the hem of my dress. He began to slide it up my thighs, and this time we weren’t in the shadows. This time we were right out on the edge of the dance floor, with people all around us.
I didn’t open my eyes. I tried to tell myself that I was embarrassed, that I didn’t want to think about all those people watching us. But a deep, hot squirm inside me reminded me that wasn’t true. The feel of their eyes on us, the feel of the cool air against my—God, my bare thighs, how high has he got my skirt?!—was turning me on. Grinding back against him, letting his hands run all over me in the middle of a nightclub, I was more turned on than I could ever remember being, even during sex. Is this what letting go feels like?
His fingers were on my thighs. My inner thighs. Thumbs stroking at the very edge of my panties, then moving inward—
I had to open my eyes. That would nudge me over the line from arousal to embarrassment, and I’d stop him.
His thumbs drew a line upward, less than a fingers-width from the line that separated the lips of my sex. I groaned.
I didn’t want to open my eyes. I didn’t want it to end.
His thumbs lifted. Returned. Another line, this time practically touching my lips. I could feel his breath hot in my ear. He was as turned on as I was.
The next, one, I knew would be right on my lips, and then I’d be completely lost. I was liable to let him bring me off, right there on the dance floor.
My eyes fluttered open.
Either we’d drifted, as we danced, or the couples around us had gotten friskier. Immediately in front of me, a woman with long red hair was clinging to her partner, her legs wrapped around his waist as they kissed, his hands up under her skirt. To my left, a dark-haired woman was pressed between two men, one in front and one behind. The one behind her was kissing her neck. The one in front had unbuttoned her blouse all the way to her waist and was palming her breasts.
I pulled free of Luka’s hands. He let me go immediately. When I twisted around to look at him, there was no anger—if anything, he looked amused.
“I need to—” I realized I was panting. I pushed my dress down to cover me, my groin still throbbing with the memory of his hands. “I’ll...be back in a minute,” I told him. And turned and stumbled from the dance floor.
I didn’t even know where I was heading, at first. I just aimed for where the music seemed quietest and the lights seemed most steady. My whole body was trembling, my legs like rubber. I felt like I’d mainlined something. Every sense was intensified, every nerve ending twitching. I wanted his touch; I wanted his lips; I wanted him.
I found the bathrooms and almost fell through the door into the ladies room. In there, the lights were white and bright and I could think—just. A few other women were in there, redoing their make-up. I grabbed onto the edge of a sink, trying to get my breathing under control.
Staring at myself in the mirror, I replayed the evening in my head. I’d been completely unprepared for how I’d react to him, once things got started. I’d known that I liked him. I’d fantasized about his voice and then about his body. But I was realizing—too late—that something else was going on here, something far deeper than just an infatuation. It made no sense. I knew he was the worst sort of man. I knew the sort of things he’d done. I shouldn’t be able to like him. And yet I felt something between us, something soul-deep and undeniable.
He wanted me because he thought I was an innocent. I was an innocent, in some ways, probably far more innocent than he suspected. And, at the same time, I was lying to him, preparing to betray him. I’d seen that flicker in his eyes- that need for me that no man had ever shown. And I’d felt myself waking up, big chunks of ice that I hadn’t even realized were there cracking and splintering inside me as I was roused. Now that I was alone, I could feel myself shutting down again, closing up.
I couldn’t process it, standing there in a bathroom. I needed time alone to figure it out. But it was almost as if I’d briefly come back to life, after being frozen for—
For three years?
I stared at myself and shook my head. I didn’t like the implications of that. I couldn’t handle the idea that he might be that important in my life.
I noticed something out of the corner of my eye. The woman next to me, thrusting her make-up bag into her purse so fast that a lipstick went skittering across the floor. She almost ran out of the room. And I realized that the other women had left, too. I seemed to be alone.
And then, in the mirror, I saw the blonde from the dance floor step into view behind me. I had time to bl
ink in surprise, just once, and then she grabbed the back of my head and rammed my head into the mirror.
My forehead struck first. There was a cracking sensation that I prayed was the mirror and, an instant later, white-hot pain flooded my brain.
She still had hold of my hair. She used it to yank me backward and I stumbled in my heels.
“Blyadischa!” she yelled. Whore. Something cracked against my cheek and I fell sideways, landing on my knees. My face burned and I thought I tasted blood. She’d slapped me, with the full weight of her oversized rings.
Tears sprang to my eyes. My head throbbed so hard I couldn’t think. Why does she hate me?!
“American shalava!” She was calling me a slut. She’d been glaring at me all night, ever since she’d first seen me with—
Oh no.
She kicked me, then, aiming for my breasts but fortunately hitting me in the shoulder. I sprawled backward, almost going full-length on the tiles. My brain was trying to catch up with what was happening. I’m being attacked. Things like this don’t happen to me. I’d never been in a fight in my life. Part of me wanted to curl into a ball and pray that, if I just took it, she’d run out of steam and stop.
But she wasn’t even close. Hitting me just seemed to make her madder. “Yob tebye suka!” she screeched, almost hysterical. She grabbed me by the hair again and I had to scramble onto my knees or she would have ripped it out by the roots. She half-dragged me forward, into a stall.
Don’t panic. A voice from my past, one that was meant to cut in at times like this. I just had to listen to it.
She rammed my head into the toilet bowl and there was a sudden roar, deafeningly loud. Freezing water filled my ears and nose. I clamped my mouth shut.
The woman screamed something, muffled through the water. I tried to lift my head but her hand was shoving my head down, holding me under. My hair was being pulled around by the currents, wrapping around my face like seaweed. My lungs screamed for oxygen.
Panic won’t help you. The voice had an accent. A Texas drawl. Rick Espiano, my unarmed combat instructor, back when I’d done my basic training. I hadn’t been good at it, not like Nancy.
Lying and Kissing Page 7
