Her Relentless Russian (Karev Brothers Book 3)

by Leslie North

  Harper reclined in her foldout chair across from him, shapely legs crossed and propped in front of her on top of the desk. Her arms hung folded beneath her pronounced breasts. Dmitry thought her body language betrayed her own discomfort, even if she was giving a valiant effort to appear otherwise. Her hair hung in limp violet ringlets around her face; she had left her raven wig on the dashboard of his car. Her makeup was smudged, with special amorous attention paid to her lipstick, which tracked a rouge smear along the left side of her cheek. The fact that she so perfectly embodied the portrait of a woman so recently fucked shouldn't have been such a turn-on for him. He should feel sated, satisfied, at least for the moment. He shouldn't be so readily imagining what it would be like to come around the desk and bend her over it; to smooth his hand along the inviting, and as yet unexplored indent of her back, and take her begging from the—

  "Do what?" she queried. "You mean sleep together?"

  "Don't pretend like you don't know that's exactly what I mean," he responded. Maybe he confirmed the subject of their current conversation a little too quickly. Maybe he had just given away the true, depraved contents of his thoughts to the woman who would probably be all too willing to make them a reality. She will embody any distraction to avoid making a plan and establishing a code of conduct of any kind. Disturbingly, he was beginning to find Harper's impulsiveness magnetizing to the point that it was borderline irresistible.

  Time to correct their course, and fast.

  "Rule number one: no more public places. And we use protection," he added, wishing that hadn't crossed his mind as an afterthought. Birth control deserved to be priority number one.

  "That's two rules, but I agree," Harper stated. "At least, I can promise you I already have the second point covered. I've been on the pill since I was in fifth grade."

  Her easy dismissal didn't cover all of his concerns, not by half. Dmitry eyed her skeptically and crossed his own arms to mirror her posture. "I'm glad you practice safe sex." At least I'm glad one of us had the thought to take it into account earlier this evening. Now that the impenetrable haze of lust had momentarily subsided, Dmitry felt determined to make all future decisions for them well in advance.

  "I want us to be exclusive," he said. "If you're inviting any other men home, I want it to stop. You can expect the same from me."

  "I can expect that you won't invite any strange men home?" Harper quipped.

  He debated on whether or not to let himself feel annoyed that she wasn't taking this seriously, when he noticed the hard look that had come into her expression. How had he missed it before? She could level the ancient foundations of his bookstore with the withering quality of her glare.

  "Let's get one thing straight between you and me," she continued. "You don't own me, Dmitry. I'm not some rare one-of-a-kind book you get to enjoy and then lock up behind a glass display case. You don't get to dictate rules about this sort of thing, and you don't get to set the bar for the sort of sexual relationship you think we should have."

  "Actually, I think I do," he replied. He leaned forward on the desk, and Harper did the same, glaring him down with eyes as pale as blue fire. "You exist here in my store because I allow it. I let you meddle in my family affairs because I gain slightly more than I lose by having you around. Now I've been inside you. You've let me claim you for my own every step of the way, Harper, and I have no plans on letting you go."

  "Yeah? I bet you don't need me to tell you where you can take your plans and stick them," she retorted, face flushing slightly beneath her mop of unruly curls.

  "If only you could see yourself right now," Dmitry said. "I think only one of us here expects to be taking something in the near future."

  The silence that descended between them was almost deafening in its unvoiced promise. If they continued working together, he would claim her again—it wasn't a matter of if, but when. They both knew it with every fiber of their beings. It was one thing to trade scathing remarks, but the attraction they shared was inescapable, even if the exact terms by which it was defined were less easily explained. If there were feelings between them, it felt dangerous to put a name to them, to explore them—at least on this front, he thought they could both agree. It was better to take what was willingly given and leave it at that.

  "Huh," Harper said finally, just when he thought the tension between them was enough to drive one of them over the table. "I think I might actually like this side of you. I know that a modern, empowered woman like me shouldn't get so easily turned on by your sexually raw, Neanderthal promises, but I guess I just can't help myself at the end of the day."

  I have a feeling neither of us can. Dmitry didn't admit his own newly-realized weakness for her out loud. He decided not to press Harper any further for a clear agreement to his terms, either. A part of him—the civilized, college-educated part—knew that he was being irrational. But the sex had been extraordinary, explosive. It went beyond anything he had ever experienced in the bedroom with Lily, if he was being honest, and his dead wife had been his first love before addiction had taken her away from him. Intimacy with Harper was a revelation that even five years of noncommittal rebound sex in the wake of Lily's death hadn't prepared him for. It was far too good to give up willingly. The thought that he might get more of it in the future was making him into a sex-crazed monster, as unrepentantly wolfish as either of his brothers. He needed to have rules established for her sake.

  "Fortunately, what I can help is our investigation." When Harper rose, Dmitry rose with her. She surprised him by leading the way out of the office and back out to the front of the store. He reached forward to catch her arm before she could escape.

  "You're going home?" he guessed. She nodded, and he withdrew momentarily as she shouldered on her coat. "Why don't you just stay here and work?" The thought of losing their working relationship had only just occurred to him, and he wondered how far he could backpedal in his alpha male talk in order to get her to stay. Thankfully, when Harper turned back to him, the genuinely happy quality of her smile was enough to put his sudden agony to rest.

  "Why? You going to miss me?" She cocked a hand on her hip to punctuate her question, but Dmitry didn't answer her outright. He drew himself up closer to her, helpless to stay away now that there was no longer a desk between them.

  He wanted to kiss her. He didn't. He hadn't worked out what the rules were for that sort of thing in his head yet, going forward. Instead, he lifted his finger to her temple to shift one of her loose pin curls back behind her ear.

  "As you can see, I'm in dire need of a shower after the day's activities," she murmured through pursed lips. Despite her defiance earlier, she appeared to submit readily to his attention now. "And I've got to take this most recent data dump back to the home base to decrypt it."

  "I thought we agreed the bookstore was your home base," Dmitry said.

  Harper shook her head. "See? You think you're in control… but I only let you think that." She drew his finger away from her face and planted a quick kiss on it. The thoughtless gesture made something wrench to life in him, something wonderful. She could upend his carefully ordered existence with just a glancing touch of her lips. She could make him want things he had never expected to have again…. not since Lily. "I'm still running my own server out of my house. It's a lot more powerful than the—admittedly excellent—hacker's paradise you've helped me set up here. I'll get myself cleaned up while the decryption runs and then I'll be back."

  "Jesus, I forgot what time it is." Dmitry glanced at the clock near the register. "Get some sleep if you can. Finding my father's killer can wait a few more hours."

  "Likewise. You should try to schedule in a few Z's yourself," Harper advised as she pulled away from him—a little reluctantly, he thought. "I can't guarantee how much rest you'll be getting in the future now that you think you'll be exclusively monopolizing my time."

  It was the sort of parting comment he expected from her by now; still, he couldn't help turning it over in
his mind hours later as he went about unpacking shipments in the back room. Contrary to Harper's advice, Dmitry found he couldn't bring himself to sleep just yet. He was at a real risk of burning his candle at both ends, but he couldn't get the beautiful hacker and her effect on him out of his head for longer than a few minutes at a time. His uncle Igor usually stopped by early Saturday mornings, anyway, to browse his newer stock before he opened. Dmitry would hate to deny his uncle one of the very few pleasures the other man allowed himself in life, so he worked tirelessly now, knowing his uncle would probably show up with an additional cup of coffee at the end of it all to make his sleeplessness worth it.

  Despite his best efforts, the book titles and checkmarks on his shipment ledger started to blur together. His mind wandered, and he found himself wondering what color Harper's hair would be when she returned…

  A slip of paper fell out of the hardback he was holding and ghosted across the floor. Dmitry bent to retrieve it, expecting a receipt—what he found instead was a printed note depicting a sequence of numbers.

  He paused to study it. Something tugged at his awareness, but it was more of a nagging sensation than a feeling of outright recognition. Had he seen these numbers somewhere before? Not these ones specifically, but a pattern like them? They looked as if they could form a cypher.

  Maybe Harper was right about his sleep schedule being disrupted. Dmitry shook his head to dispel his exhausted, suspicious thoughts. He considered crumpling the paper up in his fist and tossing it into the waste bin—when the nagging feeling came again. This time, he listened.

  Harper had predicted something like this. Hell, she had outright proven to him that something was going on inside his own store, but Dmitry still wanted to believe it was a fluke. He’d found plenty of notes forgotten by their previous owners inside his books. Maybe someone in the mob was using his store as a front, cooking his books and encrypting and funneling messages through his work network, but there was no one stupid or brazen enough to physically do it right under his nose.

  Dmitry kept the note intact. He set it aside on the desk and studied the remaining pile of books stacked in front of him critically. He was completely awake now. After a moment, he pulled a random book toward him and flipped it open.

  By the time the backroom phone rang an hour later, he had accumulated half a dozen notes.

  "This is Dmitry," he intoned into the receiver as he picked up. He was stunned enough by his discovery of the code that he sounded completely neutral, completely devoid of emotion—which was good, because he didn't know who might be calling him at this hour, or how they might be involved—

  "Dmitry, it's Har—er, Belvedere," Harper corrected herself quickly. "I finished up that chore I promised I'd look into completing for you. You might want to come inspect it. Scratch that, you definitely want to see what I've managed to do for you."

  She sounded nervous. Excited, but not in a good way. They hadn't discussed phone calls to the shop, but he decided to follow her lead on this one and speak in their own improvised code. Who knew who might be listening in.

  "Sorry to keep piling more stuff onto your plate, but I might have another, immediate chore for you." He fanned the accumulated notes in his hand, glaring like a peeved poker player who had just been dealt a terrible hand at the table. "We discussed that it might come up before. You remember. Why don't you meet me—"

  A crisp knock resounded from the front of the store, and Dmitry froze. He could hear his own pulse pounding in his ears almost loud enough to drown out Harper.

  "Was that somebody at the door?" Her voice sounded faint on the other line, almost like she was whispering. Dmitry craned to look out into the other room. The shutter was still drawn across the window in the door, and the 'closed' sign still faced the street.

  A tall figure loomed on the welcome mat outside.

  "Dmitry, whatever you do, do not answer it," Harper breathed. "Especially if it's someone in your family."

  "It's Uncle Igor." Right on schedule. Dmitry watched the shadow of his uncle turn a small circle on the sidewalk, before shaking out his sleeve to check the time on his watch. He held a carrier with two coffee cups in his other hand.

  Every suspicion Dmitry had been juggling in his subconscious slammed into him at once. His uncle. His father's brother, and the man Sergey had trusted most—probably more than he had trusted his three sons, who had always been loose cannons with conflicting senses of commitment when it came to mafia affairs. Why hadn't he seriously considered it before? Igor was the associate with his fingers in the most pies, the spider who was perfectly placed in the web. Igor was the one who came by the bookstore most often, the one who had encouraged Dmitry to step away after his wife's death, the one who had whispered in Sergey's ear to let him go. Igor had encouraged the division between Sergey and his sons every way under the guise of releasing them from the mafia's stranglehold.

  What if the reality was different? What if it had been Igor's design all along to not only encourage the Karevs to strike out on their own—but to step away from protecting their father in his time of need?

  "Unfortunately, I think you're right," Dmitry replied measuredly, still tracking the shadow in the doorway. "I don't have time to meet with him today."

  Harper recovered her grasp of their code. "Right. We've got chores to do. Are you okay with taking a day off from work?"

  "More than okay." Leaving the shop closed would prevent his uncle, or anyone else who might be involved, from realizing that he had discovered their code. Dmitry pinned the phone to his shoulder with his ear and whipped his coat on. "I'm heading out. Don't want to hurt Uncle Igor's feelings, but I think it's better if I just pretend like I'm not here. I'll catch up with him later."

  "Perfect," Harper said. "I'll meet you at—"

  "I've changed my mind about meeting," he interjected. "There's something else I need to look into first. Alone. I'll call you once I clear up a few details."

  "That has to be the single dumbest idea I think I've ever heard come out of your pretty little mouth," Harper stated, completely breaking character.

  Dmitry winced. "Give me a few hours to clear some things up, and we'll meet for coffee. We'll go for a walk."

  "Dmitry, wait—"

  He hung up the phone. He knew deep down that Harper was absolutely right about his change of plan: it was ill-advised for him to break from their mission and go alone, but for the moment he didn't want to pull her any further into his family's mess. It was his world, whether he liked it or not. Just because he had disowned it a long time ago didn't mean the mob didn't still own a part of him.

  It wasn't a good excuse. Not one he thought would stand, anyway, when he had to explain himself to Harper later.

  But the reality was he could feel it inside him: the Karev temper, rising like a woken leviathan inside him. He resented its appearance, but he knew he would need it for the trials to come.

  He just didn't want Harper to see what he was capable of.

  6

  Harper

  Dmitry didn't know it, but yesterday wasn't the first time Harper had picked his pocket.

  She pulled her coat closed against the brisk autumn wind and hurried down the street, glancing down at her phone screen every other block to ensure the green blip was still within her range.

  So she had stolen his cell phone and installed a tracking device on it when he wasn't looking—big whoop. Now, knowing he was going off the rails on his crazy train without her, she felt completely justified in doing so. It had been a basic, if only slightly suspicious, security measure, and one she was grateful for having taken now.

  "You are in deep shit, Karev," Harper muttered to herself as she hustled across the street to the boxing gym on the corner. "Or as they say in Mother Russia, deep derr'mo."

  It wasn't a necessarily true statement, of course. If she didn't belong to Dmitry—and she would insist until the day her warranty ran out that she didn't—then he didn't belong to her, either. But she sur
e as hell felt he owed an explanation for this latest stunt. Investigative partners didn't just get to arbitrarily decide when they did or did not get to shut the other half of their team out. If she didn't get to fly solo any more, than neither did he.

  The Dmitry Dot on her tracker indicated that he hadn't moved from the inside of the boxing gym for the last fifteen minutes. Harper swiftly approached the man she spied posted up outside the entrance. He was young, maybe twenty, his muscles overcompensating for the fact that he probably still got carded at the underground fight clubs he frequented. The cigarette he was smoking fell out of his mouth as Harper breezed past him through the door.

  She would have to savor his reaction later. Right now, she only had one objective in mind, and that was letting Dmitry know just how little she appreciated being hung up on. Men dropped their cigarettes when she was around; they did not willfully drop her calls.

  All activity ceased the moment she stepped into the main practice room. The Mafiosos matched up outside the ring paused mid-flow; those engaged in one-sided matches against punching bags had to dodge out of the way to avoid getting pulverized by downswings.

  Her eyes traveled the length of the room until she spotted Dmitry. He stood outside the ring toward the back of the area conversing with a shorter, more compact man who looked to be about Dmitry's own age. Both men held themselves ramrod straight, arms crossed. While neither moved, Harper could tell even from a distance that they were engaged in a match with even higher stakes than anyone else currently sparring in the gym.

  Clearly whatever lead Dmitry had accidentally stumbled upon in her absence had led him right into this den of testosterone. Well, she had never shied from inserting herself in Karev business before. Harper crossed the room in a storm of heels. Dmitry's eyes snapped up in recognition of the sound.