by Amy Deason
Shoving the erotic thoughts away, she poured peroxide onto a cotton pad and began wiping his shoulder. Focusing intently on the wound, she couldn’t bear to meet his eyes. If she was going to ask her questions, she better do it now before she lost her nerve.
Start with something easy.
“The scar on your forearm. Were you burned?” She’d noticed the puckered skin as her eyes devoured every inch of his upper body back in the kitchen. The four-inch scar looked old, by at least a year, maybe two.
When he didn’t answer, she glanced up. For a split second, there was an unfathomable expression in his dark eyes. Deep and brooding, it was gone in an instant. If she’d even seen it at all.
“Yes. Next question.” From his tone, it was obvious she would not be getting any more details on that particular wound.
“Have you ever been shot before?” Thank goodness. Her voice sounded normal, at least to her ears.
“Why do you want to know?”
Shrugging carelessly, she continued to swab at his shoulder. “Just curious.”
He leaned back slightly, forcing her to look up at him. “Haven’t you ever heard of curiosity killing the cat?” His tone was light, teasing. And completely enticing.
Breathe, breathe.
“Of course I have. It’s an American saying. I’m surprised you do though.”
“And why is that?”
“Well considering you’re Russian, I didn’t think you would know many American sayings.”
“Kind of stereotypical don’t you think?”
“What are you talking about?”
“You think that just because I’m Russian, I don’t know anything?”
“No. That’s not what I meant.” Shit, what had she meant? She’d just been rambling, trying to forget he was the most gorgeous man she’d ever seen and she was on her knees between his strong thighs.
“Well, what did you mean then?” Tilting his head, he glanced at her, one perfect eyebrow arched.
“I just meant that, since you were . . . were . . .” she fumbled, not sure what to say. God, why couldn’t she think?
“Were what?”
He was looking down at her, an amused smile on his sexy lips. He was laughing at her!
“Oh never mind.” She couldn’t believe how much she was letting this man get to her.
Gritting her teeth against the curses forming on her lips, she dropped her eyes and soaked a gauze pad with rubbing alcohol. Not bothering to warn him, she placed the pad directly on the wound, hoping it would hurt. The asshole didn’t even flinch.
The silence stretched between them until she thought she would scream. What was she going to do now? He was refusing to answer her questions and insisted on poking fun at her. Well to hell with this. He could take of himself. Putting the bloody gauze in the trash, she stood spinning on her heel and walked to the door.
“Yes, I’ve been shot before,” he offered.
She stopped in her tracks and turned around, crossing her arms over her chest. “How many times?”
Nikolas shrugged, the muscles moving underneath his strong shoulders. “Once or twice.”
“Who are you?”
“It’s not something you need to know.”
“Why? Are you one of the bad guys?”
“Bad guys, good guys, there’s not much difference.”
Intrigued, she stepped closer. “What do you mean?”
“Nothing. Forget it.”
“I don’t want to forget it. I want to know what is going on. And what all of this has to do with my dad.”
Nikolas stared up at her from his perch on the bathtub, studying her, his eyes revealing nothing. She stared right back, determined to win this battle of wills. She had to.
“Like I told you before, we believe you have information we need.”
“Who’s we? Are you like the Russian CIA or something?”
The smirk crossing his lips was brief. “Hardly. Let’s just say that I work for some very important people. People that don’t care if you live or die as long as I get what they need.”
She licked her lips nervously, considering what she’d just heard. How is it that everyone wanted her dead?
“Don’t worry, I have no intention of killing you but I do need answers,” Nikolas said, rising to his feet.
He towered over her, making her heart beat faster.
“What kind of answers?” she asked, not believing how steady her voice was. She was in a bathroom with a dangerous man and yet she sounded normal.
“I need to know what your father was working on and where he stashed it before he died.”
Cadence’s breath caught in her throat painfully. Dead? So it was true. She’d been right.
The blood on the floor. It was her dad’s. The only thing left of him. A red stain on the dirty concrete.
Oh, Daddy . . .
She reached up, clasping her locket in her hand, and felt the room spin but fought against it. She was not going to pass out. Not here, not now. Without another word, she turned and exited the bathroom. Behind her, she heard Nikolas’s muffled curse but it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered anymore.
Somehow she made it to the sofa and sat down. With her hands in her lap, she just sat there, not moving, not seeing anything. She wouldn’t cry. Not when there was a stranger around to watch her heart breaking. She had to be strong. She’d done it before when her mom died. She could do it now. But damn if it wasn’t so much harder.
Slamming her eyes shut, she breathed deep, keeping the tears at bay.
Push it away, push it away, she thought, closing her eyes, push the pain away.
Repeating this litany helped to calm her, to steady her nerves somewhat. As long as she kept up the little chant, she would be okay.
The sound of the freezer door opening announced Nikolas’s arrival but it was all so far away, coming at her in muted tones as if cotton had been wedged into her ears. Instead of being alarmed at her reaction, she embraced it. Making herself remote from everything helped to ease the pain, turning it into a dull, more manageable ache. And the longer she sat still and quiet, the less her heart hurt. There would be time for that later. Just not right now. Please God, just not right now.
A freezing plastic bag settled onto her wrist but she didn’t open her eyes. It was probably more peas.
“Cadence,” Nikolas said softly, his voice coming from a thousand miles away.
His breath was warm on her face but she refused to acknowledge him. She was fighting a war with herself, trying to escape the image of the blood on the floor. Her dad’s blood. It was a battle she was losing as the truth continued to ram against her shaky wall of protection. Her dad was dead. He was gone.
Forever.
And now she was alone.
Forever.
She felt Nikolas’s fingers dig into her shoulders seconds before he shook her hard enough to make her head snap back. Blinking, she looked at him, his handsome face swimming into focus. Still holding her shoulders, he sat down beside her, twisting her body and forcing her to look at him.
The first thing she noticed was he was wearing a shirt. Thank God. The less distraction, the better. The second thing she noticed was his anger. And it made her furious. What right did he have to be angry? It wasn’t his dad that had been tortured for God-knew-how-long before being brutally murdered in that cold, concrete room. He probably didn’t even have a father. Or a mother for that matter.
The bastard.
“Get your hands off of me!” she yelled, trying to get up from the sofa.
Nikolas held her shoulders tight, not allowing her to escape. His eyes were dark and expressionless and his mouth was drawn, the lips pressed together in a determined line. “I’m sorry about your father. I
really am. But I need you to answer some questions. And I need you to do it now.”
Chapter 6
“What do you mean she got away?” Dmitry roared, his voice booming inside the office walls. Standing, he gripped the edge of his desk to keep from strangling the life out of his assistant. The twenty-something young man in front of him was scared shitless. He should be. If Dmitry wanted to, he could snap the man’s neck in seconds flat. But he didn’t want to. At least not yet. He needed to know what in the hell was going on and how one teenage girl had managed to escape him.
“Well, sir,” the assistant stuttered, “I checked the security footage this morning and it seems there was a thirty minute period where everything on this end of the building was shut down.”
“Shut down? By who?” Dmitry struggled to contain his anger but he could feel his control slipping. It was building inside him like an inferno and he would have to let it out soon. And if this little pipsqueak was still in his presence when it happened, then God have mercy on his soul. He could always get another assistant. He’d been through three already.
“It was Viktor, sir.”
“Where is he now?”
The young man in front of him blanched before continuing. “He disappeared shortly after the system was deactivated. Some of our men caught up to him just outside of town. They tried to stop him but it ended badly. He’s dead, sir.”
Dmitry felt his brain begin to boil and his fists clenched against his thighs. “And the girl?” he asked through clenched teeth. So help God if she was dead too, he was really going to show his assistant how angry he could be.
“She, uh, she wasn’t with him, sir.”
Dmitry grabbed the lamp from the corner of his desk and threw it. It shattered against the wall in a rain of glass and metal. His assistant flinched violently, looking as if he wanted to hightail it out of the office. But he knew better than to leave before he was dismissed. “So you’re telling me Viktor shut down the system, took the girl, and killed two guards before he disappeared? And now he’s dead and the girl is missing?”
“Not exactly, sir.”
Dmitry could see his assistant’s Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed. He thought about wrapping his hands around it and crushing it like a paper cup. But he restrained himself. He needed whatever information this miserable excuse for a man had.
“Go on,” he said, his teeth clenched so tight his jaw was beginning to ache.
“Uh, well, it appears that sometime during the thirty minutes the system was down, someone else came in and took the girl.”
Holy fuck, this just keeps getting better.
His anger quickly turned to fury. Someone had broken into his compound, his property, and taken something belonging to him. Unforgivable. “Who the fuck was it?”
The man in front of him shuffled his feet and swallowed again before taking a timid step back. “We don’t know, sir. It appears he had the access codes not only to the gate but also to the elevator. He was able to get in and get out easily. In fact, he might have made a clean get away except the girl fell just as the system rebooted and he was caught on camera. We’re running his image through the database but we haven’t had any hits yet.”
“How long will it take?”
“A couple of hours, maybe more.”
“I want the results on my desk in an hour. One hour, got it?” he yelled. “And get me those security tapes.” He slammed his fist on the desktop.
“Yes, sir,” the assistant replied meekly. Not quite racing for the door, he left in a hurry, careful not to slam it behind him.
Furious, Dmitry picked up his coffee mug and slung it at the door. The porcelain shattered upon impact, spewing hot coffee across the solid oak finish. The dark liquid ran over the wood and dripped onto the gray carpet, staining it like blood. Usually breaking things helped to ease his anger but not this time. It would take more than breaking a lamp and a coffee mug to calm him down. He needed to hurt someone. He would prefer Phillip’s daughter or the bastard who took her. And he would hurt them. Oh yes, he would tear them apart as soon as he got his hands on them. But until then, he needed to rid himself of this insurmountable rage before he could even think straight. And there was only one person he could turn to.
Stepping over the mess on the floor, he stomped out of his office and left the building. Not bothering with his seat belt, he tore out of the parking lot, squealing tires as he went. He made the ten-minute drive in less than four. Slamming the car into park, he jumped out of the car and ran up to the cerise two-story mansion, his wrath nearly consuming him now. The door opened before he even knocked.
“Oh baby, you look so upset,” the petite redhead cooed, her painted lips jutting forward in an exaggerated pout. Unbridled desire flashed in her cornflower-blue eyes. Dressed in an emerald-green teddy of lace and silk which barely covered her creamy flesh, she stepped back, letting him in.
Slamming the door behind him, Dmitry grabbed her roughly, his fingers digging into her skin, and threw her to the white marble floor.
She fell with a cry, her hair flying wildly. Gingerly, she pushed herself up and moved the hair out of her eyes with a shaky hand. Looking at him with tears in her eyes and a warm smile on her crimson mouth, she spread her legs wide. “Come on, baby, hurt me. Please, I need you to hurt me,” she begged, her voice cracking with need.
Happy to oblige, Dmitry bore down on her, ripping the clothes from her body. Tossing them aside, he bit her, his teeth sinking deep into her flesh, drawing blood. She yelped but dragged him closer and he moaned as the warm, coppery taste filled his mouth. He pinched her nipples unmercifully, eliciting sharper shrieks of desire, cries of pain and lust that excited him, turning him into an animal. Tearing his pants off, he violently rammed himself inside her over and over, hard enough to bruise. Biting and clawing at her, he increased his speed and force, his ragged breath mixing with her piercing screams until his anger spilled out of him in a hot, wet rush and her wails of pleasure followed him into oblivion.
~ ~ ~
“I already told you, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Holding her shoulders, Nikolas refused to let Cadence move away. There was no question she was furious. But that wasn’t all. The girl was hurt and terrified. She’d come to Russia to find her father but instead she’d been kidnapped, drugged, threatened, and shot at. And to top it off, she’d just been told her father was dead. A lot to take in. So he couldn’t blame her for trying to get away. But he couldn’t let her. Not yet. He needed answers. He could keep hammering at her and maybe she would answer him or maybe she wouldn’t. He needed to try a different tactic.
He released her shoulders. “Are you hungry?”
Her sculpted eyebrows drew together in confusion. “What?”
“Come on, Cadence, I know you got knocked around but I doubt it affected your hearing. I said, are you hungry?” He stood, staring at her on the couch.
“Are you serious? You just told me my dad is dead and now you’re asking me if I’m hungry?” she asked incredulously.
“Consider it the first of many questions you’re going to answer,” he replied, walking to the kitchen.
“What makes you think I’m going to do anything for you?”
He heard the scathing anger in her voice. Good. It was better she be angry than in some stupefied state. Although she would be easier to manage, he couldn’t very well get any information from her that way.
Pulling open the refrigerator door, he rummaged through its contents before glancing over his shoulder. He shot her a crooked grin. “Because I’m in charge, that’s why. You may as well get used to it. Now, are you hungry or not?”
With her eyes narrowed into thin blue slits, he expected her to continue to argue but she surprised him. Again.
“Actually I’m starving.”
/> “Well you’re in luck, we have food. So,” he asked, grabbing the packages of lunch meat and turning back to her, “what’s your preference? Bologna or salami?”
She crinkled her nose in disgust. “Ewww, neither.”
“Oh let me guess. You’re too good to eat butterbrots?”
“Butter what?”
“Butterbrot. It’s basically a sandwich but with only one slice of bread and topped with meat.”
A fair amount of pink tongue protruded from Cadence’s lips in an obvious gesture of revulsion. “Gross.”
Frustrated, Nikolas stared at her. Did she have to make everything difficult? “Seriously? You said you were starving.”
“I am starving but not enough to eat that.”
Slapping the packages of processed meat onto the counter, he reached into an overhead cabinet and removed the bread. “Suit yourself. I hate to break it to you, princess, but this is not a luxury hotel where you get caviar, oysters, and sparkling water at your every beck and call. If you don’t want to starve, you’re going to have to eat something.” Removing the twist tie from the bag of bread, he proceeded to make his own sandwich.
Cadence advanced on him, holding the bag of frozen veggies on her injured wrist. “I am not a princess so stop calling me that,” she exclaimed heatedly. “And I am not too good to eat your sandwiches or butterbrots as you call them. I’m a vegetarian.”
Nikolas glanced up, a butter-coated knife in one hand. “I don’t understand.”
“A vegetarian is a person who doesn’t eat meat,” she replied, enunciating each word carefully as though he was mentally slow.
Biting his tongue against her uppity tone, he smiled at her instead. “I know what a vegetarian is, princess. What I don’t understand is how you can be one.”
Keeping her eyes on him, she slid a chair out from the table and settled herself into it. “What do you mean?”
