by Nic Saint
CHAPTER 9
Emily wanted to scream out when the first wave of her climax undulated through her, taking her by surprise. She’d known that when she was tasked to seduce and kill this man, she might have to go to bed with him at some point, and was resigned to the fact the same way she undertook all her assignments: with cool detachment. It wasn’t a lie when she told him she hadn’t been with a man in months. Her last assignments had all been carried out quick and easy, not engaging with her targets. Nor had they been men she really wanted to get close to. Pieces of scum, every single one of them. Mike Petrov was the first man she’d felt a kinship with, then a strong attraction that had taken her by surprise. The moment he kissed her, she felt a quick and sudden desire spark a light inside her she hadn’t felt in a very long time.
Reminiscences of her first boyfriend returned in full force, along with a desire that set her core alight. The moment she caught a glimpse of his hot rod she gasped. A thing of beauty as it soared in the light of the pale moon, she just had to touch it. Feel all that male prowess under her fingers. His skin was burning, his cock throbbing under her fingers. She wanted to feel him inside her, the yearning clouding every warning sign. She needed to feel him inside—reach the heights with him. When he finally took her, she slammed her head back, all thought wiped from her mind, leaving nothing but pure pleasure and a thundering desire coursing through her veins.
He ravaged her deeply, and she breathed his name in the mindless rhythm of their lovemaking. When his lips crushed down on hers, the same way his cock slammed into her slick sheath, she was carried up and over the cresting pinnacle of her first climax. The surging power and sheer intensity sent rivers of tears streaming down her face, and when Mike dabbed his fingers in them, his eyes burning with concern, she placed her hand on his cheek, drawing him in for a kiss. She darted her tongue into his mouth in search of his, and then she was lost in the turmoil of emotions roiling and swirling in her gut.
She let her hands trail along his broad back, digging in her nails, running her fingers down until she found his clenching buttocks. She felt him bunch and flex as he plunged into her over and over again, his length pressing up against the walls of her cunt, eliciting such pockets of concentrated delight inside her shuddering belly she was soon carried on the waves of her second release. When she slung her legs around his waist, prepared to take him deeper still, her breasts mashing against his hard chest, she dug her teeth into his massive shoulders to keep from screaming out her intense pleasure.
He lifted her from the counter and took her to the floor, and she found herself riding him, bucking her hips against the saddle of his loins. Their sex connected, she tossed her long blond mane over her slender shoulders, rested her hands on his chest, and rode him like an amazon. His hands found her swaying breasts, then took a firm grip on her hips, moving inside her with ease.
It was as if they were made for each other—as if they’d been lovers always. When she gazed into his smoky eyes, dark with desire and lust, she saw her own emotions mirrored in them. She leaned over, crushing her breasts against his chest, her taut nipples scraping his skin, and then he was meeting her thrust for thrust, slamming inside her with such ferocity she was carried over into the first shivers of another climax.
The wet sounds of their lovemaking added fuel to their fire, and when he let out a deep growl, she knew they were reaching the heights together. She watched his face as he unburdened himself deep within her quaking belly, mixing his cream with her own. Finally collapsing on top of him, his cock still rooted between her folds, he kissed her bedewed brow, pushing tendrils of damp hair from her face. To her surprise, tears formed in her eyes.
They hadn’t merely made love. The way he’d taken her had stirred something deep inside her soul, a memory long forgotten—touched a spot she’d thought healed but now found was still as raw as all those years ago.
He trailed a fingertip along her cheek, dabbing at her tears, and murmured, “Did I hurt you?”
She shook her head, afraid her voice would break when she spoke. She simply lay there with him, allowing him to kiss her tenderly, and wipe the tears from her face. She hadn’t thought it possible, but Mike Petrov had touched her heart, a precious commodity she’d carefully locked away a long time ago.
It wasn’t the first surprise of the night, but it was definitely the greatest.
CHAPTER 10
She soon drifted off to sleep, and Mike was surprised by the fierceness with which she held on tight. The desperation with which she clung to him. He frowned as he watched sleep wash over her. There was so much about her he didn’t know, so much that still eluded him. There were secrets upon secrets, and he found himself wanting to plumb them all, wanting to know all there was to know about her. He was obsessed, he realized—deeply obsessed with the young woman who’d accidentally crossed his path.
Not accidentally, he corrected himself. His gaze drifted up to the skylight, where the milky moon was visible overhead. Their meeting hadn’t been an accident at all. Someone had meticulously planned it this way. Emily was assigned to him, either so he would be silenced or she would or both. But why? The contract had come through email, originating from Roman himself, which is why he hadn’t doubted the kill order for a moment. But when he told him about it, Roman had insisted he never sent that message. Never gave that order.
Someone wanted Emily dead, and had gone to great lengths to make sure she was. Not only had they poisoned her, but they’d also hired him to finish the job.
He was going to have to get to the bottom of this, and soon. When they discovered she was still alive, they would come for her—would come for them both this time. It was imperative he discover who wanted her dead, and why, before it was too late.
Easily lifting her and carrying her up the stairs, he tucked her into his bed, and drew the comforter over her. He watched for a moment as she lay sleeping, then headed into his office down the hall and booted up his laptop. As he brought up the email, he quickly scanned it for details he might have missed the first time. A clever hacker could change the sender, making it look like as if it came from Roman. Since he wasn’t a clever hacker at all, it was impossible for him to figure out the culprit’s identity.
He decided to enlist the help of his brother. David was the computer guy in the family, and after he hit forward, he typed a few brief lines, then hit send. If anyone could figure this out, it was Dave. Then he opened the file that was attached to the email. Emily’s file.
Reading through the particulars, there wasn’t much of note. But then his eye fell on a name and he went rigid. Whistling through his teeth, he read the passage again.
“Well, I’ll be damned…”
According to this information, Emily had once been engaged to a genuine prince. Prince Rudolph, son of the King of Montinia, had only been in the States for one semester, taking some classes at Brown University, at the end of which he’d returned to his homeland in the South of France. His abrupt departure had come one week after the announcement of the prince’s engagement to Emily Fox. After his return, the engagement had promptly been broken off.
The name rang a bell. Rudolph was first in line to the throne, and whoever married the prince, would one day become queen of that small country.
He leaned back, lacing his fingers behind his head and staring up at the ceiling as if to draw inspiration from it. So Emily had once been engaged to a genuine royal. What the heck…
He had no way of knowing if this information was relevant to what had happened tonight, but his gut told him it was, and his instincts were rarely wrong. But why would this affair have come back to haunt her now? Surely this week-long engagement hadn’t meant a great deal to her, or else she would have gone after the guy, and followed him to wherever this Montinia place was.
He checked the dates. This had all happened five years ago. He googled this Prince Rudolph, and the first news item that cropped up was the recent engagement of the young royal. Pictures of the hap
py couple soon filled his screen, the prince, a pale-faced bearded specimen, looking particularly proud. Then his gaze shifted to the bride-to-be, and he was struck by the uncanny resemblance to Emily. He whistled through his teeth. So Rudolph had found a new fiancée, and she was the spitting image of the old one.
He scrolled through the images until he found one of Rudolph’s dad. King Francois of Montinia was a stern-faced man, his white beard covering jowly cheeks, his pale blue eyes hard and calculating. Not a man to be trifled with. He wondered how a man like this might feel if his oldest son, the heir to the throne, fell for some American girl. He must have had his security forces do a full profile on her. He could only imagine dear old dad’s surprise when the name Stiletto Tonya cropped up. The fact that the future queen of Montinia was a hitwoman for the Russian Mob must have given the old guy an apoplectic seizure.
Had Prince Rudolph tried to contact Emily? Perhaps rekindle the old flame? He could see where that might have elicited a strong reaction from the old monarch. So strong he might have tried to have Emily killed this time? Be done with this nonsense once and for all?
“What are you doing?”
The voice had come out of nowhere, and he started. When he turned to face her, he saw that her eyes were hard and her face implacable as she stared at the picture of her ex-fiancé. The woman he’d made love to was gone, and Stiletto Tonya was back.
CHAPTER 11
Emily stared at the face of her ex-fiancé, and all the resentment she thought she’d tucked away suddenly returned full force. She still hated him for what he’d done. After filling her head with promises and dreams of a golden future, he'd simply dumped her without so much as a final meeting. A scribbled message on a piece of paper had been all he thought she was worth.
‘I’m sorry—Rudolph’
The servant who brought her the slip of paper had informed her the prince had returned to Montinia early that morning, and would not return. She’d read pity in the man’s eyes. At first she didn’t understand. Only the night before he’d promised to take her to his father, and then the road to an official engagement lay wide open. His father might not immediately approve, he’d said, but once he met her in person, he would soon be mollified by her beauty and her grace, just like he’d been charmed from the moment he first laid eyes on her.
The auspicious moment had occurred during a reception at the Montinian embassy in honor of the prince’s graduation. They’d been inseparable ever since, and he’d showered her with gifts, their courtship romantic and sweet. They’d never made love, something which she regretted at the time but was thankful for now. Her heart had been bruised but not broken, love never having blossomed. They’d never been more than acquaintances with the promise of something more. The moments they’d spent together had failed to make a lasting impression, though she still harbored resentment for the way he’d ended the affair.
As she stared at the man now, she saw nothing but a stranger.
“What do you want with him?” she asked, her voice cold as ice. Men hurting her was something she was used to by now, and she had but one way to retaliate: by turning her heart into a stone and hurting them back.
“I was trying to figure out who’s trying to kill you.” He nodded at the screen. “And I think I just found a very likely suspect.”
She frowned. “Rudolph? Why would he want me dead? That engagement ended years ago. No one even remembers.” Even she had practically forgotten about him.
He pointed to the woman by Rudolph’s side. “Recognize her?”
She stared at the woman dumbly. She was a blonde, looking resplendent in a dark green frock dress with gold trim. “Never seen her before in my life.” She wasn’t the least bit interested in Rudolph’s fiancée. The man could marry a goat for all she cared.
“Doesn’t she remind you of someone?” he probed.
She reluctantly took in the willowy blonde. “Nope. Why?”
He tapped the screen. “She’s your spitting image, darling. Your Prince Rudolph has gone and found himself a lookalike.”
Her lips tightened. “First of all, he’s not my Prince Rudolph, and second, that woman doesn’t look one bit like me.”
He grinned, then clicked open an email. Her eyes went wide when she caught a glimpse of the missive. It was one she’d found in her inbox many times herself. A kill order. She froze. It was one thing to know someone was gunning for her, it was quite another to see it in writing.
“Have you found out who gave the order?” she asked, trying to tamp down the sense of dread at the thought someone wanted her dead bad enough to hire one of the best contract killers in the business.
“My kid brother is working on it.” He pressed her hand. “Don’t worry. We’ll figure it out.”
She nodded, and watched as he clicked the picture attached to the email. It wasn’t one of her best, taken when she walked out of a Starbucks, cup in hand. So they’d been following her, huh? Damn.
Mike positioned the picture right next to the one of the future princess.
The resemblance hit her like a punch to the gut. The same heart-shaped face, tip-tilted nose, bewitching blue eyes, wispy flaxen hair falling past her shoulders. She even had the same slightly bemused expression on her face.
“Christ!” she cried out. “She looks exactly like me!”
“Told you.”
“But…why…how?”
“Prince Rudolph must still be in love with you, darling.”
“But he can’t be. He was the one who broke off the engagement.”
“I don’t think it was Rudolph’s idea to break off the engagement. I think dear old Dad had something to do with that. Just look at the guy.”
She did. King Francois looked like one of the hoods she’d been associating with all her life. He wouldn’t look out of place in any of the establishments they frequented. Hard eyes. Hard face. Hard soul. “I never met him.”
“Good thing you didn’t. Don’t think you would have received a warm welcome.”
So this was the guy who was after her. She frowned. “But why now? It’s been years. We haven’t spoken a word since. I’m no threat to the throne.”
“Yeah, that’s what puzzles me.” He clicked another picture of the king, taken at close range, and studied it carefully. “My instincts are screaming this is the guy that wants you dead, Emily, and my instincts are rarely wrong.”
She knew all about Mike Petrov’s instincts. They were uncanny. You don’t become the go-to guy for Roman Loginovsky by chance. If Mike said King Francois was after her, she was going to pay attention.
“But why me? Why now?”
He shrugged. “Only one way to find out.”
He took her hand and pressed a kiss to her fingertips. The touch galvanized her system, and the ice that had formed on her heart melted. Her eyes softened and she rested her chin on the top of his head. “What did you have in mind?”
“I think we need to pay this Prince Rudolph a little visit. Him and his dad.”
She jerked her head back up. “No way,” she snapped. “I swore when he dumped me never to set eyes on the man again, and I won’t. No way, no how.”
And with those words she stomped off. She hadn’t gone ten paces before he was upon her, and lifted her face, forcing her to look at him. His green eyes bored into hers, and she felt the sheer power of his gaze. “Put your pride aside for a moment. These guys mean business, honey. One way or another, they want you dead, and they’ll keep on coming until you’re six feet under.”
She shivered. He was right, she knew. Dead right.
CHAPTER 12
The airplane trundled on the tarmac and Emily’s stomach churned and roiled, only this time it wasn’t from any poison but the possibility of seeing her ex-fiancé again. After five years she wasn’t exactly looking forward to coming face to face with Rudolph, but as Mike said, it was the only way.
She’d been hesitant to fly out to France on a hunch, but then Mike’s brother had called and told
him he’d managed to pinpoint the email to an ISP…in Montinia. It was as close as he could get, but it was close enough for her. He was right. The royal family of Montinia wanted her dead, and for the life of her, she didn’t know why.
Mike had talked things through with his boss, and Roman had signed off on the mission. Though it was perhaps unusual for a member of the Gornakov crew to reach out and help one of Demiakov’s, a new wind was blowing through the organization since Yulian Gornakov had taken over. It was too much to say peace now reigned, but rumors of an entente were rife.
After all, the head of the Demiakov family now spent his days in a Moscow prison, and the American leg of his organization had sustained some serious setbacks of late, the FBI coming down on them like a ton of bricks.
The fact that Mike had jumped to her defense was a testament to the changes. Even forty-eight hours ago she would have scoffed at even the remote possibility of a collaboration between the likes of her and Mike. Now it was happening, and she was still stunned by his generosity and valiance.
After they made love, she figured he’d had his fill and would want nothing more to do with her. Instead, he’d gone above and beyond the call of duty to set up this elaborate mission to discover the reason behind the attacks.
She glanced over at him. Mike had already pulled the strap across his broad chest, and gave her a comforting smile when he noticed how nervous she was.
“Don’t like flying?”
“Hate it.”
“Don’t worry, honey. You’ve got this,” he assured her.
The plane gained speed, and in spite of her best efforts she found herself gripping Mike’s hand firmly in hers while they were roaring down the runway. Holding on for dear life, she held her breath and closed her eyes shut when the plane jerked free from the tarmac and tore itself into the New York sky. Though she wasn’t a religious person, she whispered a quick prayer that they’d arrive at their destination in one piece.
