by Anna Zaires
My job is to ensure he can do it safely.
“The new recruits are already far in their training, so we can take some of the more experienced guys with us,” I say, thinking out loud. “Two dozen should probably suffice.”
“That sounds about right. Also, I want armored vehicles for all of us, and a good supply of ammo.”
I nod, already thinking through the logistics of that. Some would say Esguerra’s being paranoid—bulletproof cars are hardly a necessity in the Chicago suburbs—but I don’t blame him for being cautious. Al-Quadar may have been squashed for now, but there are plenty of others who’d love to get their hands on him and his pretty young wife.
“I’ll make the arrangements,” I say, even as my chest tightens at the realization of what this trip will mean.
For two whole weeks, I’m going to be separated from my captive.
“How long do you think it’ll take to set everything up?” Esguerra asks. “Nora should be done with her exams in about a week and a half.”
“I’m guessing about two weeks.” Two weeks during which I’ll still have Yulia. “Procuring the cars and all the weapons will take some time, especially if we don’t want to set off any alarms at the FBI or CIA.”
“Good thinking. We definitely don’t want that.” Unlocking his hands from behind his head, Esguerra leans forward. “All right. Two weeks should be good. Thanks.”
I incline my head and stand up so I can leave and start making calls, but before I can turn away, Esguerra says, “Lucas, there’s one more thing.”
I stop, my attention caught by an unusual note in his voice. “What is it?”
“I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but my wife and her friend saw Yulia Tzakova in your house yesterday morning. Nora mentioned it to me today.”
“What?” That’s the last thing I expected him to say. “Why were Nora and her friend—Wait, what friend?”
“Rosa, our maid,” Esguerra says. “They’ve become close in recent months. I have no idea what they were doing over there, but you need to make sure your house is secure.” He pauses and gives me a grim look. “I don’t want Nora exposed to anything disturbing in her condition. Do you understand me?”
“Perfectly.” I keep my voice even. “I’ll keep an eye out for any visitors, I promise.”
And the next time I see Esguerra’s maid, I’m going to have a little talk with her.
11
Yulia
“Hey.”
A quiet rapping on the window draws my attention. Startled, I look up and see the dark-haired young woman from before—the one I thought was Lucas’s girlfriend.
“Hey,” she repeats, pressing her nose against the window. “What’s your name?”
“I’m Yulia,” I say, deciding I have nothing to lose by talking to the girl. At least I’m not naked this time. “Who are you?”
“Yulia,” she repeats, as though committing my name to memory. “You’re the spy who caused the plane crash.” She says that as a statement, not a question.
I look at her silently, letting none of my thoughts show. I have no idea who she is or what she wants from me, and I’m not about to say anything that would get me in trouble.
She nods, as if satisfied by my non-response. “Why did Lucas bring you here?”
Instead of answering, I say, “Who are you? What do you want?”
I expect her not to answer either, but she says, “My name is Rosa. I work over at the main house.”
Her name sounds familiar. I frown, and instantly, it comes to me. Lucas mentioned a Rosa this morning. She must be the one who gave Lucas that pot of soup.
“What do you want?” I ask, studying the girl.
“I don’t know,” she surprises me by saying. “I just wanted to see you, I guess.”
I blink. “Why?”
“Because you killed all those guards and almost killed Lucas and Julian.” Her expression doesn’t change, but I hear the tightness in her voice. “And because for some reason, Lucas has you in his house instead of strung up in the shed, where they take traitors like you.”
So I’m right to be cautious. The girl hates me for what happened—and possibly has a thing for Lucas. “Do you like him?” I ask, deciding to be blunt. “Is that why you’re here?”
She flushes brightly. “That’s none of your business.”
“You’re here to look at me, which makes it my business,” I point out, amused. The girl looks to be only a little younger than me, but she seems so naïve it’s as if decades separate us instead of years.
Rosa stares at me, her brown eyes narrowed. “Yes, you’re right,” she says after a moment. “I shouldn’t be here.” Turning quickly, she ducks out of sight.
“Rosa, wait,” I call out, but she’s already gone.
* * *
At least two hours pass before Lucas returns, and my stomach is painfully hollow by then. According to the clock on the wall, it’s one in the afternoon when the front door opens—which means my early breakfast of Rosa’s soup was nearly seven hours ago.
Despite my hunger, a prickle of awareness dances over my skin as Lucas approaches, walking with the athletic, loose-limbed gait of a warrior. Like yesterday, he’s wearing a pair of jeans and a sleeveless shirt, and his body looks impossibly strong, his well-defined muscles flexing with each movement. I’m again reminded of an ancient Slavic hero—though a Viking raider comparison would likely be more apt.
“Let me guess,” he says, kneeling in front of me. His blue-gray eyes glint at me. “You’re starving.”
“I could eat,” I say as he unties my ankles. I could also use a form of entertainment that doesn’t include watching lizards, and a more comfortable chair, but I’m not about to complain about such minor things. After my stint in the Russian prison, my current accommodations are positively luxurious.
Lucas chuckles, rising to his feet, and walks around me to free my arms. “Yeah, I bet you could.” His big hands are warm on my skin as he undoes the knots. “I can hear your stomach rumbling from here.”
“It does that when I don’t eat,” I say, an inexplicable smile tugging at my lips. I try to contain it, but it breaks through, the corners of my mouth inexorably tilting upwards.
It’s bizarre. I can’t possibly be genuinely happy to see him, can I?
It’s because he’s about to feed me, I tell myself, managing to wrestle the smile off my face by the time Lucas removes the rope and tugs me to my feet. It’s because I’m subconsciously associating his arrival with good things: food, restroom, not being tied up. Even orgasms, as unsettling as those may be.
It’s only my second day here, but my body is already becoming conditioned to regard my captor as a source of pleasure, much like Pavlov’s dogs learned to salivate at the sound of a bell. I know that one day soon Lucas may hurt me, but the fact that he hasn’t so far has gone a long way toward soothing my fear of him.
There’s no point in being terrified if torture and death aren’t imminent.
“Come,” Lucas says, his fingers an unbreakable shackle around my wrist as he leads me to the kitchen. “We still have some soup, and I can make us a sandwich.”
“All right,” I say. I’m hungry enough to eat wallpaper, so the sameness of the meals is not a problem. Still, as we stop in front of the table, I can’t help offering, “Do you want me to try making something for dinner? I really can cook.”
He releases my wrist and looks at me, his lips curving slightly. “Oh, yeah. You and knives. I could see that working out.” He pulls out a chair for me. “Sit down, baby. I’m going to make those sandwiches.”
Baby? Sweetheart? It’s all I can do not to react as he takes out the sandwich ingredients and pours soup into bowls. It’s a small thing, those pet names, but it’s a reminder of what passed between us earlier.
Of the way he caught me at my weakest and tried to make me crack.
Lucas turns away, focusing on microwaving the soup, and I take a calming breath. This is not worth
getting agitated about. The invasive doctor exam, yes, but not this. I need to be playing along, acting like I’m starting to trust him. That way, when I slowly open up to him, it will be believable.
The emotional bond between us will feel real.
“So,” Lucas says, placing one soup bowl in front of me, “how is it that you speak English so well? You don’t have an accent.” He takes a seat across from me, his pale eyes regarding me with impassive curiosity.
And so the gentle interrogation begins.
I blow on my soup to cool it down, using the time to gather my thoughts. “My parents wanted me to learn English,” I say after swallowing a spoonful, “so I took extra classes, beyond what they taught us in school. It’s easy not to have an accent if you learn a language as a child.”
“Your parents?” Lucas raises his eyebrows. “Were they preparing you to be a spy?”
“A spy? No, of course not.” I eat another spoonful, ignoring the ache of old memories. “They just wanted me to be successful—to get a job in some international corporation or something along those lines.”
“But they were okay with you being recruited?” He frowns.
“They were dead.” The words come out harsher than I intended, so I clarify in a calmer tone, “They died in a car crash when I was ten.”
He sucks in a breath. “Fuck, Yulia. I’m sorry. That must’ve been rough.”
He’s sorry? I want to laugh and tell him he has no clue, but I just swallow and look down, as if the subject pains me too much. And it does—I’m not acting this time. Talking about the loss of my parents is like picking at a barely healed scab. I could’ve lied, made up a story, but that wouldn’t have been nearly as effective. I want Lucas to see me this way, real and hurting. He needs to believe I’m someone he can crack without resorting to brutality or torture.
He needs to see me as weak.
“Are you—” He reaches across the table to touch my hand, his fingers warm on my skin. “Yulia, are you an only child?”
Still looking at the table, I nod, letting my hair conceal my expression. My brother is the one piece of my past Lucas can’t have. Misha is too closely associated with Obenko and the agency.
Lucas withdraws his hand, and I know he believes me. And why wouldn’t he? I’ve been completely truthful with him up until now.
“Did any of your relatives take you in?” he asks next. “Grandparents? Aunts? Uncles?”
“No.” I raise my head to meet his gaze. “My parents didn’t have any siblings, and they had me in their mid-thirties—really late for their generation in Ukraine. By the time the accident happened, I had one grandfather who was dying of cancer, and that’s it.” It’s the truth once again.
Lucas studies me, and I see that he already knows the answer to what he’s about to ask. “You ended up in an orphanage, didn’t you?” he says quietly.
“Yes. I ended up in an orphanage.” Looking down, I force myself to resume eating. My stomach is in knots, but I know I need food to regain my strength.
He doesn’t ask me anything else while we finish the soup, and I’m grateful for that. I hadn’t expected this part to be so difficult. I thought I’d gotten past it after all these years, but even a brief mention of the orphanage is enough for the memories to flood in, bringing with them the old feelings of grief and despair.
When we’re done with the soup, Lucas gets up and washes our bowls. Then he pours us two glasses of water, makes the sandwiches, and places my portion in front of me.
“Is that where they recruited you? At that orphanage?” he asks quietly, taking his seat, and I nod, purposefully not looking at him. We’re getting too close to the topic I can’t discuss with him, and we both know it.
I hear him sigh. “Yulia.” I look up to meet his gaze. “What if I told you that I want the past to be the past?” he asks, his deep voice unusually soft. “That I no longer plan to make you pay for following orders and just want to find the ones truly responsible—the ones who gave you those orders?”
I stare at him blankly, as though trying to process his words. I had expected this, of course. It’s the logical next move. First, sympathy and caring—some of it genuine, perhaps—then an offer of immunity if I give up my employers. Bringing me to his house, washing me, feeding me—it was all leading up to this. Only sex wasn’t part of the equation; the intimacy between us is too raw, too powerful to be staged.
He fucked me because he wanted me, but everything else is part of the game.
“You’re going to let me go?” I say, sounding appropriately incredulous. Only a total idiot would fall for his non-promise, and hopefully, Lucas doesn’t consider me quite that stupid. He’ll have to work to convince me that I can trust him—and during that time, I’ll be working on getting him to lower his guard.
To my surprise, Lucas shakes his head. “I can’t do that,” he says. “But I can promise not to hurt you.”
I run my tongue over my suddenly dry lips. This is not what I was expecting; freedom is always the carrot dangled in front of prisoners. “What exactly are you saying?”
He holds my gaze, and my heartbeat accelerates at the dark heat in his eyes. “I’m saying that I want you, and that if you tell me about your associates, I’ll keep you safe from them—and from anyone else wishing to harm you.”
My insides twist with an unsettling mix of fear and longing. “I don’t understand. If you’re not going to let me go…”
He looks at me silently, letting me draw my own conclusion.
My pulse is a rapid drumbeat in my ears as I pick up my glass of water, noting with a corner of my eye that my hand is not entirely steady. I gulp down the water, more to buy myself time than out of any extreme thirst. Then I force myself to put down the glass and look at him.
“You’re offering me protection in exchange for sex,” I say, my voice wavering slightly.
Lucas inclines his head. “You could think of it like that.”
“What about your boss?” I can’t believe this turn of conversation. “Isn’t he expecting you to hack me into pieces, or whatever it is you typically do to make people talk? Isn’t that why he had me brought here?”
“I had you brought here, not Esguerra.”
I gape at him, caught off-guard once more. “What?”
“I wanted you.” Lucas leans forward, resting his forearms on the table. “We had that one night, and it wasn’t enough. It’s true that I wanted to punish you for what happened, but even more than that, I wanted you.” His voice roughens. “I wanted you in my bed, on the floor, up against a wall, any fucking way I could get you.”
“You brought me here for sex?” This goes beyond anything I could’ve imagined. “You took me out of prison so you could fuck me?”
His gaze darkens. “Yes. I told myself I did it for revenge, but it was to get you.”
“I—” Unable to sit still, I stand up, no longer the least bit hungry. My voice is choked as I say, “I need a minute.”
On shaky legs, I walk over to stand by the kitchen window. The sun outside is bright over exotic tropical vegetation, but I can’t focus on the natural beauty in front of me. I’m too stunned by Lucas’s revelations.
Is he telling me the truth, or is this just another attempt to throw me off-kilter and get answers? A startlingly different interrogation technique that uses our mutual attraction as the base? I’m used to men wanting me, but this is something else entirely.
What Lucas is saying indicates a degree of obsession that would be frightening if it were real.
As I stand there trying to come to grips with his revelations, I hear his footsteps. The next moment, his large hands grip my shoulders. He’s already aroused; I feel his erection pressing into my ass as he draws me against his hard body.
“This doesn’t have to be bad for you, beautiful.” His breath is warm on my cheek as he bends his head and brushes his lips against my temple. “You could be safe here, with me.”
A tremor of treacherous arousal ripple
s through me, my nipples tightening under my shirt. “How?” I whisper, closing my eyes. His chest is hard, sculpted muscle under my back, his strength terrifyingly seductive. It’s as if he’s tapped into my deepest desires—into my longing for safety in his embrace. “How can you promise that when your boss could have me killed in an instant?”
“He won’t touch you.” Lucas’s powerful arms fold around me, restraining and comforting all at once. “I won’t let him. Esguerra owes me, and you’re the favor I’m going to collect.”
“Lucas, this—” My head falls back onto his shoulder as he nuzzles my ear, the bulge in his jeans pressing into me more insistently. “This is insane.”
“I know.” His voice is a rough growl in my ear. “You think I don’t fucking know that?” Releasing me, he spins me around and grips my hips, pulling me to him again. Startled, I open my eyes to see savage need tightening his features. He drags me to the right and presses me against the wall next to the window, his lower body pinning me in place. “You think I haven’t told myself that a million times?” His cock presses into my stomach as his gaze burns into me. His pupils are dilated, and there’s a vein throbbing in his forehead.
He’s not acting.
Far from it.
My breath hitches, arousal mixing with a primitive feminine fear. The man in front of me is not about to listen to reason—and my body may not want him to.
“Lucas.” Fighting the drugging pull of his nearness, I wedge my hands between us and press my palms against his chest. “Lucas, I think we need to talk—”
“You want to talk about this?” He rocks his hips in a crude, suggestive motion, his cock thrusting against my lower belly through two layers of clothing. His hand catches my jaw, holding my face immobile as he leans in, his lips hovering centimeters from mine. I freeze in anticipation, my heart hammering, and at that moment, a flicker of motion catches my attention.
