Nikolai chuckles and shakes his head, somehow making it look convincing. “Well, I have to be honest with you, officer—I’m in one hell of a great mood,” he begins brightly. It takes all my strength not to gasp or whimper. What the hell is he doing? He squeezes my hand.
“Oh. Is that so?” the officer inquires, frowning slightly. “And why is that?”
Nikolai holds up the hand that’s gripping mine and grins from ear to ear. “Because tonight, my wife and I are headed off to our honeymoon. I’ve never been happier,” he declares.
The cop looks mildly amused. “Your honeymoon? Really? In the middle of the night?”
Oh god. He knows we’re lying. But Nikolai doesn’t flinch. “Well, you see, we eloped in secret,” he explains, lowering his voice to a conspiratorial tone.
“Eloped?” repeats the cop, folding his arms over his chest and widening his stance.
“Yes, sir. See, my wife and I were supposed to have this big, lavish wedding. Really over the top. The budget was going to be just totally crazy. I mean, her mother was talking about flying in a full orchestra from Germany to play the wedding march, imported lavender from the south of France, a wedding cake with twenty tiers—the works. We’re talking a hundred-thousand dollars blown on one big night,” Nikolai explains.
“Uh-huh. Wow,” says the cop. Oh my god. Is he… starting to believe our cover story?
“And I mean, don’t get me wrong, if that’s what my sweetheart wanted, I would’ve written off that check like it was nothing. I love my little angel, and she can have whatever she wants. But we started talking and realized, you know what?”
“What?” asks the cop, smiling now.
Nikolai gives him an exaggerated shrug. “We don’t need all that! After all, our marriage isn’t about money or fancy orchestras or any of that shallow, superficial stuff. It’s about love. And love doesn’t have to cost a damn thing.”
“That’s real nice,” the cop admits. Holy shit. He’s buying it. He’s drinking our Kool Aid.
“I agree,” chuckles Nikolai. He glances over at me with a twinkle in his eye. A genuine twinkle. He lets go of my hand and lets his fingers roam up my thigh, gripping me softly. Again, that warm and tingly twinge passes over my body and I have to remind myself to breathe.
“So, anyway, we went down to the courthouse and decided to just get the paperwork done there. Found a random witness, made up our vows right on the spot, and got hitched. You’re looking at a brand new pair of married lovers! Husband and wife, can you believe it?” Nikolai exclaims, still grinning. His smile is infectious. The cop smirks, nodding at us.
“That’s a beautiful story. Congratulations, you two,” he says. “But why are you leaving in the middle of the night?”
“Oh,” I cut in suddenly. “Well, to be perfectly honest with you, my mother is the one who wanted the big wedding in the first place. She had her heart set on it. So when she finds out we eloped, she’s going to be… disappointed, to say the least. We want to get out of town and head off to our honeymoon before she finds out. We’ve got a cabin up in Montauk where we’re going to spend the weekend, just the two of us. Don’t worry, I plan on giving Mom a call before we disappear. But for right now, it’s just better if she doesn’t know.”
Nikolai looks impressed with my ability to lie. The cop nods slowly, taking it all in.
“Well, I suppose that makes sense. But don’t you forget to call her. My mother would kill me if I pulled something like that,” jokes the police officer. Nikolai and I both force a laugh. The cop looks pleased. “Alright, folks. Hang tight for a moment. Let me go check with something in my squad car. I’ll be back in just a minute. Don’t worry. I won’t keep you waiting long.”
“Sure, sure,” Nikolai replies good-naturedly. The cop stalks back to his car and Nikolai rolls the window up, then turns to me. “Good work,” he says.
“Thanks,” I answer quickly. “But what the hell do we do now? He never said why he pulled us over. What if he runs the plate and finds out you’re lying?”
Nikolai’s hand is still on my thigh, and his fingers have found a patch where the denim is torn from the hedges earlier. He strokes the bare skin there and I shiver, feeling a new, strange sensation between my legs. My eyes widen, and he smiles. “Everything is fine,” he says softly.
I can’t deny that I love the way it feels—his hand on my thigh. It’s such a warm, intimate gesture that suddenly I can’t keep my feelings bottled up anymore. He makes me feel vulnerable and strong at the same time, and I need to get this all out.
“Nikolai, I’m scared,” I confess. “Uncle Liev—Mr. Ovechkin—is not a good man. I-I can’t explain how I know that, but I do. He’s been in my life for years, since I was a little girl, and I was too naive to realize it then, but I think he’s some kind of criminal or something. But not just any run-of-the-mill bad guy; he’s powerful, Nikolai. He’s got so much money and influence. He owns a lot of stuff. A lot of people. What if he owns the police, too? What if they’re, you know, in his pocket or whatever they say?”
Nikolai nods calmly, listening to my fears without reducing them or making me feel silly for it. Then he squeezes my thigh gently and my fear melts into lust instantly for a moment. I wonder if he knows just how much of an effect he’s having on me. How can he not know?
“I know a lot about Liev Ovechkin,” he growls darkly. “I know precisely what kind of a man he is, and you’re right in your suspicions. He is not someone you want to mess with.”
“Oh god. What do we do? He’s going to find us. Maybe that cop is calling to tell him where we are right now!” I whisper fiercely. But his hand just wanders higher and higher up my thigh, making my breath hitch in my throat. Nikolai gives me a slow, knowing smile. My heart skips a beat.
“I can handle it. Whatever happens, I will take care of it. And I will take care of you,” he promises me, those bright blue eyes piercing into my very soul.
The cop comes strolling back over, and Nikolai turns to face him with a smile, same as before. “So, officer, what’s the damage?” he asks cheerily.
“Well, nothing too serious, sir. I can see why you’d be in a hurry, but you still need to be careful, alright? And this is a nice neighborhood, quiet at night. You might want to slow down and make sure those brights are on. I know you’re trying to make a sneaky getaway, but you don’t want to sneak up on some other motorist without your brights on and cause a collision, do you? I mean, that would slow you down a whole lot more than your mother-in-law would,” the cop guffaws, clearly proud of his own joke.
Nikolai forces a laugh, and I’m impressed at how natural it sounds. “Sure, sure. That makes perfect sense, officer. You got it,” he says jovially.
“Okay, then. I’m going to let you off with just a warning, but you be more cautious from here on out, you hear?” the cop insists.
“Of course, sir. You’re right. We don’t want to cause an accident. Do we, sweetheart?” Nikolai asks, glancing at me. I hurriedly force my lips to shape into some semblance of a smile and nod vigorously.
“Yep. You’re right. Yes, sir. We’ll be more c-careful,” I reply.
“Alrighty, then. You two lovebirds have a nice night. And congratulations again on the nuptials,” says the cop.
“Thank you!” Nikolai and I both quip at the same time. The cop gives us an awkward little salute and heads back to his car. Nikolai calmly rolls up the window, turns on the engine, and starts to slowly pull away onto the road again. I’m wracked with emotion. Fear, relief, elation, confusion, amazement—and lust. He handled that so well, so calmly. He’s perfectly in control, making me feel safe with him.
He said he would take care of me, and I find myself believing him.
As we drive away, Nikolai’s hand is still on my thigh, making its way up slowly. And I like it. I don’t know what kind of magical hold he has over me, but my fear is turning into adrenaline, and it’s a different kind of rush than what I felt before. It’s more primal. Warmer. More
intoxicating, and in a good way. I find myself wanting to rip off my clothes and his. Suddenly, the danger of our predicament feels less like a bear trap waiting to snatch us up and more like, well, a thrill. We make it only a little bit farther down the road, though, before some fresh panic attacks us: the engine, previously purring smoothly, suddenly cuts out.
Nikolai
“What happened?” Ana says as I guide the car to a slow stop on the side of the road. Thankfully, nobody else is on this particular road, giving me free rein to pull over at a convenient spot. “Are we out of gas?”
“No,” I say, peering at the blank dashboard. “The engine died.”
“What?!” she blurts, starting to look more panicked. “How? This car looks, like, ridiculously nice, doesn’t it have failsafes of some kind?”
I crack a smile, raising my eyebrows at her. “Ever hear the saying, ‘they don’t make them like they used to’?”
She tightens her jaw as I pop the hood and step out of the car. Circling around to the front, I see no smoke or flames, so that’s one plus. I start checking the usual culprits of a stalled engine, but it doesn’t take long for Ana to open the door and step out, creeping around to the front of the car with me.
“Are you a mechanic, too? Is that part of your cover story?” she asks, and there’s a playful smile on her face. To say I’m surprised by her candor in a situation like this is an understatement, but not an unwelcome surprise.
“No,” I admit, “but you don’t grow up in Russia without learning your way around a car, no matter who you are. If your vehicle breaks down on a forest backroad in the middle of a Russian winter, you’d better know how to get it running again. Or you’ll be running for your life.”
She hovers around me, craning her neck to look at what I’m doing, and she occasionally glances back and forth down the long, black road.
“Should... should we be worried about them? The guys from the mansion, I mean.”
“No,” I say a third time. “There are many different directions we could have taken out of the neighborhood, and this is one I planned ahead of time and cased for several nights. They don’t check down this road, and we’re already a long way away.”
She nods, swallowing, but she looks vaguely reassured by my words.
“What do you think is wrong with it?” she asks.
“Faulty fuel injector,” I grunt, standing up from the hood and wiping my hands on my pants, frowning. “I was hoping for just a dead battery, but this isn’t something that is easy to fix on the roadside.”
“Shit,” she murmurs as I pull out my phone to start thumbing through an app, furrowing my eyebrows. “Okay, so...any ideas on what to do?” She gets a wry smile on her face, sarcastically suggesting, “I don’t suppose they have some kind of roadside assistance for tense, borderline-illegal road trips?”
“That’s exactly what I’m calling in,” I say as I finish filling out the short request for roadside assistance, and Ana’s jaw drops.
“Are...are you serious?”
“Unless you like the idea of hiking the rest of the way to where I was taking you,” I say mildly, sitting on the hood of the car after I shut it, “then yes, I am.”
She stares at me for a few moments in disbelief, then gives her head a little shake. “I can’t believe this. What kind of rescue involves a tow?”
“The kind that was never meant to be a rescue in the first place,” I say with a challenging smile. “I had a very different plan for how the night was going to unfold before you decided to test your skills climbing out of a window.”
Her face turns pink, but she knows she can’t argue that.
“Besides,” I say, crossing my arms, “this is no rescue, remember? We’re just a young couple out for a drive on this lovely night.”
She smirks, and she takes slow, meandering steps toward me, smoothing her clothes out as she avoids my gaze for a few moments before speaking again.
“Well, what was the plan for tonight, before things...changed?” she asks, measuring the last word carefully.
I stand up from the car, taking a few steps directly toward her, and she freezes in place on the road. This is the first time that we’ve stood face to face without being about to run for our lives, and it’s the first time that she has had to look up at me like this. The sight of her small frame contrasted with my tall, broad one makes her still. She bites her lip as I peer down at her thoughtfully.
“Take my young lover somewhere nice and private, of course,” I say in a low tone. “Somewhere quiet, preferably,” I add. “The traffic tonight has left something to be desired.”
She can’t help but smile at that, but even she can sense how ridiculous this all is. She very literally fell into my arms barely an hour ago, yet we’ve been working together as well as if we’ve been working together for years. She catches on quickly and acts skillfully. I can’t say the same of some supposedly seasoned veterans I’ve worked with in the past.
And the energy that has been crackling between us the entire time has been harder and harder to ignore—for both of us.
“I think that doesn’t sound half bad,” she says.
A shadow of a smile crosses my lips just before my phone buzzes. I glance down at it and see that I have a text from roadside assistance. My smile turns back into a frown.
“ETA: two hours,” I say. Damn. This is the time of night drunks get into accidents, so it should be no surprise that we’ll have a wait before we get picked up. But her face falls, and she looks worried.
“Do you think they’ll catch up to us?” she asks. “That’s a long time to be sitting ducks.”
“It is,” I admit, “but of all the things they could expect from an escape like ours, breaking down on the side of a road is not one of them. They won’t even be looking down these roads, much less watching for a broken-down car.”
“I guess we have some time, then,” she says. I arch an eyebrow at her, and I see a little pink come to her cheeks, as if she wasn’t even sure where she was going with that comment. This girl is getting more intriguing by the moment.
Adrenaline is still running through our veins. It’s a strange feeling, but I’ve felt it enough to give it some thought. It’s like a primal, unstoppable force urging you to do something, anything to get all that energy out. It makes your senses so much higher and your reflexes quicker that standing still and waiting is the absolute last thing you want. In other words, it’s the most agitating feeling imaginable for this exact situation.
I have felt it enough to know how to restrain it.
But for Anastasia, this is her first time feeling that rush. I can see it in her eyes. There’s a spark to her that she’s almost afraid of, but in the rush of everything, staying still is the worst fate imaginable. Her mind has to stay moving if her body doesn’t, and it can wander to places she never thought she could go.
After an uncomfortably long silence, she opens the back door and takes a seat, with her legs sticking out the front as she looks up at me.
“Thank you, by the way,” she says. “I don’t know why you did what you did, or whether I’m even safe now, but... whatever’s going on, it’s better than being back there.”
“How can you be so sure about that?” I say, putting a hand on the open door and looming over her. She gives me a nervous smile.
“Now, that’s not the most reassuring my rescuer can say,” she says, but the excitement in her voice is so thick I can taste it in the air. She’s frightened and excited all in one, and she is the kind of person to keep pushing that as much as she can.
“Always be ready for anything in the future,” I say.
“You told me you were taking me somewhere safe,” she says.
“And we’re not there yet,” I say. “But tell me, Anastasia, do you feel safe with me?”
She stares up at me for a few tense moments, then swallows. “I...I don’t know. I want to.”
“How do you decide whether to trust a man?” I ask, narrowing m
y eyes.
“I trust my instincts.”
I put my foot on the bottom of the car and bend over, halfway inside the car, just a few inches away from her face as she blushes. I look long and hard into those eyes, those storms of feelings that want so desperately for her to get a hold of herself.
“What do your instincts tell you?” I ask in a low, husky tone.
“That I’m in danger,” she whispers. As she does, I feel a small, warm hand on my thigh. I put my hand over it and give it a squeeze.
“You should listen to your instincts better,” I growl, and without a second thought, I wrap my hand around the back of her head, fingers through her hair, and I draw her into a deep kiss.
Her whole body tenses up at first as I lean into the car, slowly lowering her onto her back in the back seat. I let go of the outside and enter, kneeling over her as our lips press into each other, and the sound of her sharp, surprised gasp is sweeter than an angel plucking a harp. At first, she doesn’t know what to do. She is young, frightened, and desperate for attention. Her body is warm, and her face gets warmer the longer the kiss goes on.
Finally, I bring my lips away. I see her face—eyes closed, mouth hanging open, then a sudden look of worry on her face, asking me silently why I stopped.
“And what do they say now?” I ask.
“That you just took me for yourself,” she whispers.
“Would you like that?”
“I just want to forget, for one night,” she answers, and one of her hands touches my chest, grasping me, pulling me.
It’s all the invitation I need.
This is wrong in many, many ways. This was supposed to be an assassination, and it has turned into not only a rescue, but a near-kidnapping. The girl in my hands is inexperienced. I can feel it in her every nervous movement. But those eyes have drawn me in from the moment I saw her, and neither of us want to hold back those feelings anymore.
I am a cautious man. The risks I take are measured, and when I act, I am deadly. But now, in this empty road with nothing but the stars and two personalities that seem to click against all odds, in the heat of being hunted, it feels like all those restraints are gone. In some way, this is the world she lives in, but only ever under her father’s steady hand.
Killing for Her Page 8
