Conflicted (Undercover #2)

by Helena Newbury

  When I finally returned downstairs, the coffee was cleaned up and the clothes and shoes had already been packed into my cab. The driver was still waiting patiently for me, even though it had been over an hour. Luka’s money was going to take some getting used to.

  “Please,” said Alina, squeezing my hand. “Give Mr. Malakov our regards.” Her eyes were wide with fear when she said his name.

  I felt bad about the store assistant. She’d been rude, but she didn’t deserve to lose her job. “Please...you don’t need to fire that woman. Could you...get her back?”

  From Alina’s astonished face, compassion wasn’t high on the list of traits when it came to Luka’s previous women. Maybe, when you were that powerful, people started to look like bugs to be stepped on. And now everyone thought I was one of those women.

  “Of course,” said Alina. “Whatever you wish.”

  The scary thing was, I sensed that I could have asked her to fire the woman, or get her back, or cut off one of her fingers and she would have done it, without question. And it was Luka who had instilled this fear in them.

  The man who wanted to corrupt me.

  Back at the hotel, I dumped the shopping bags and then called Adam, telling my “dad” excitedly about how the guy I’d met wanted to take me on his yacht. He was silent for a moment. Then he told me he had a surprise for me. “I’m here,” he said.

  “Where?”

  “Here. Let’s meet. Gorky Park.”

  What?!

  I got a cab there and waited on a bench, watching couples laugh and cling to each other on the ice as I sipped a coffee. When a man sat down on the bench next to me, I had to study him for a few seconds before I really believed it. “You’re here?!”

  “I flew in last night,” said Adam. He pulled his winter coat tighter around himself. “Goddamn, I forgot how cold it gets here.”

  My head was spinning. Someone as senior as Adam didn’t normally leave Langley, except to go to Washington. They certainly didn’t jet off to Moscow to meet up with field agents. Not for the first time, I had that twinge of unease. This was my first mission, so I had nothing to compare it with...but still, nothing about it seemed normal. What if Roberta and Nancy had been right? “Why—Why are you here?”

  “We followed Luka’s car to the nightclub, then back to his penthouse. You stayed the night. I assume you...hit it off?”

  Deep, hot embarrassment rose up in me. Only the icy wind stopped me turning beet-red. “Yes.”

  “That’s when I thought I should come out here. Things may move very quickly, now, and I want to be on site, where I can help. You’ve done well, Arianna.”

  Despite my unease, the praise triggered a deep, warm glow inside me. It was almost scary, how much I’d needed to hear it. “What are we going to do about the yacht?” I asked. “I don’t even know where we’re going.”

  “Go with him,” said Adam without hesitation. “We think this trip is tied in with the arms deal. Stick to him like glue and see if you can find out who the buyer is.”

  “But I’ll be...alone with him. Out at sea.” There’d be no way anyone could tail us, out there, without being seen. I’d be totally without backup.

  Adam put a fatherly hand on my back and leaned close. “You can do this, Arianna. I wouldn’t have sent you here if I didn’t believe you could.”

  Again, his words sent a wave of pride flooding through me and that helped to counter my fear. I tried to look at it rationally. If I wanted to bail, this was the time. Adam would be able to get me on the next plane out of the country. Luka would be pissed, but would think his new girlfriend had gotten cold feet and run home. I could go back to listening to his phone calls from a safe, cozy office.

  And I’d never see him again.

  He’ll kill you if he finds out. Roberta’s words. I didn’t doubt they were true. I thought I’d seen glimpses of warmth in him—vulnerability, even. But that didn’t change who he was. And whatever lust, whatever affection he held for Arianna Ross, American tourist, it didn’t extend to Arianna Scott, CIA spy.

  But Adam believed in me, in a way that Roberta didn’t seem to. He’d seen something in me that she hadn’t seen in years. I wanted to prove something—to him, to Roberta, to myself.

  Mainly, though, what was going through my head was the feel of Luka’s hands in my hair. The things he’d whispered in my ear as we stood by the door of his penthouse. He had to have me. No man had ever wanted me with that intensity and it sat like a burning coal at my very center, glowing through the layers of ice. Maybe even melting it.

  He’s going to end my innocence. In every conceivable way. Was it worse that he wanted to do it, or that part of me wanted him to?

  “I’ll do it,” I said quietly. “I’ll go with him.”

  I’d seen luxury yachts in movies. That didn’t prepare me for this.

  The thing was the size of a house, all smooth white lines and smoked glass. The sort of yacht a movie star charters when they want to party away from prying eyes. I’d put on some of the new clothes from the store: a short gray jersey dress with a scoop neck teamed with thick black stockings so that my legs didn’t get frostbitten; a pair of shining, four-inch pumps with scarlet soles that were very hard to walk in and a long black woolen coat that managed to be fashionable and warm. But, even in the expensive outfit, I felt out of place. This was millionaire—maybe billionaire—territory.

  It had taken us all afternoon to get there. First a drive to the airport, then a first-class flight to St. Petersburg, where the yacht was moored. Luka had already disappeared inside, talking to the captain about getting underway.

  I climbed carefully up the gangway and then stopped, eying the polished teak decking. I clung to the rail and balanced there unsteadily, trying to take my heels off without falling over.

  “What are you doing?” asked Yuri from behind me. The bodyguard was looking his usual gruff self—scar, somber suit and the bulge under his jacket that I was sure was a handgun. The only thing that spoiled the effect was the six shopping bags he was carrying.

  “Taking off my shoes. Aren’t you meant to do that? So you don’t scratch the deck?” I was sure I’d heard that somewhere.

  Yuri pushed me forward onto the yacht. “Who gives a fuck about the deck?” he muttered.

  It was a wake-up call. The next one was the crew. I was expecting smiling guys with tans and polo shirts. Instead, the deck was patrolled by men with crew cuts and muscles, all dressed in black combat fatigues. And of course the sundeck was covered in an inch of snow.

  This was not a holiday. This was a luxury yacht pressed into service as transport and carrying something that had to be very well protected. I wasn’t there for some romantic getaway. I was—I tensed—I was Luka’s entertainment, a distraction from something very serious indeed.

  Inside the yacht, it was more like what I’d expected. The freezing weather couldn’t spoil the luxury of the stateroom Yuri showed me to—bigger than most hotel rooms and with a huge, circular bed and—

  And with a mirror on the ceiling. In fact, the decor of the whole yacht was pretty bling.

  “It belonged to a German,” said Luka, walking in. “A businessman who liked to party.” He slid his arms around my waist from behind.

  “Really?” I asked. “What was his business?” I had to remember to play dumb.

  “Chemicals,” said Luka.

  I had a pretty good idea what sort of chemicals. “And what happened to him?”

  Luka exchanged a look with Yuri. “He tried to expand into Russia. And found that he’d overreached.”

  He hadn’t even chartered this thing. He’d taken it as a trophy after—I shuddered as I thought of what must have happened to the German drug dealer.

  Luka wrapped his arms around me a little tighter. “You’re cold,” he said, his face so close to my neck that I could feel each word. “Let me warm you up.”

  “I’ll get the rest of the bags,” muttered Yuri, and left, leaving the door open.
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  Luka’s hand stroked down over my stomach, the heat of his palm soaking through the fabric of my coat. He started working at the buttons, popping them one by one. At the same time, he started to lay kisses on the nape of my neck, his stubble rasping gently against me.

  At the first touch of his lips, I felt the room spin. I tried to cling onto the memory of what I’d just felt, the cold fear and the lurch of my stomach as he’d basically told me that he’d killed a guy. But however much I focused on the wrongness of it, I could feel myself getting hotter with each kiss. And it wasn’t that his evil was overridden or that I ignored it. The scary thing was that it sort of twisted together with the pleasure, enhancing it. There was a sort of power coming off of him, an aura. Everywhere we went, people got the hell out of his way and I understood why. It wasn’t just his money or his power or his armed bodyguards. He could be unarmed and alone in an alley and people would still run from him. It was just something he had, maybe something he was born with. And something about it made me—

  He finished with my coat’s buttons and whipped it back off my shoulders. It tangled on my arms, trapping them. He didn’t seem to be in any hurry to release them.

  Instead, his hands worked their way around my front, sliding around my waist and then up to my breasts. My back was arched a little because of the way the coat was tangled behind me so my breasts jutted out, practically thrusting into his hands. When his warm palms enveloped them, I felt the heat begin to build and spin inside me. He wasn’t gentle. His big hands squeezed while his thumbs rubbed, finding my nipples through the layers of fabric. I squirmed and shifted under his hands, closing my eyes for a second. My wrists pulled at the coat, but the fabric was folded back on itself around them, too tightly bunched too pull the sleeves off over my hands. “Luka…” I said warningly.

  His response was to bring one hand up and under my chin, tilting my head back so that he could kiss my upside-down face. His lips came down on mine, savage and hard, our teeth clacking together in our urgency, his tongue thrusting into my mouth. I drew in a shuddering breath through my nose and jerked my wrists again. This time, it wasn’t an attempt to get free. I just wanted to feel the cloth trapping me.

  What the hell is wrong with me?!

  He kept his hand under my chin, forcing my face up to meet his, while his other hand roughly massaged my breast. I writhed, sparkling hot pulses of pleasure twisting down from my engorged nipple to my groin. Then his hand was sliding down my body.

  And I remembered the open door.

  My eyes flew open. Even as I watched, one of the black-uniformed thugs strode past the doorway. He didn’t look inside, but Yuri would be back any second. “Mmmffp!” I said through the kiss.

  Luka ignored me. The kiss was deepening with every passing second, his mouth open and hungry and mine was opening, too. Despite my protests, I was losing myself in him again. I knew we had to stop, but it felt so good.

  His hand cupped my groin through the dress and I groaned. Then he started hauling the dress up my body. I suddenly felt the cool air of the cabin on my stockinged thighs, then on the bare skin above my stockings and that woke me up. I managed to pull my face away from him. “Luka!” I gasped. “Yuri will be back!”

  I could hear how his breathing had changed, his huge chest expanding and contracting against my back like that of a bull about to charge. “Fuck Yuri,” he growled. His fingers ran lightly over the front of my panties, feeling me through the soft black fabric, and my knees buckled at the sensation. I could feel myself throbbing with need behind the material, my arousal already changing to wetness.

  And then he hooked two fingers into the waistband of my panties and ripped them off.

  “Luka!” I hissed. I thrashed with my trapped arms but...I don’t think I was trying to get free, exactly. I was embarrassed, scared of being exposed, but the pleasure he was giving me easily topped that. I could feel the darkness of it, the wrongness of it overwhelming me and dragging me down towards something dark and deliciously hot.

  Luka’s fingers slid down over the lips of my sex and I moaned. Then they were spearing into me, spreading me with their thickness, and I bent forward, my legs going rubbery. Luka took my weight easily. His fingers slid up inside me, thick and knobbly and God I was wet—

  A rustle of paper, in front of us. My hair had fallen forward over my face when I bent forward, so I had to toss it back to see.

  Yuri was in the doorway, crouching slightly to set down the paper store bags he carried. He was carefully keeping his eyes on them. I felt myself flushing.

  And then, as he stood, Yuri looked up and stared straight into my eyes and I felt a deep, hot jolt go through me. I could feel his eyes on my squirming body, on Luka’s fingers buried in me, and I saw a flicker in those normally emotionless eyes. Lust, and maybe sorrow.

  Then he turned and was gone, and I was desperately breaking the kiss. “Luka!” I said, panting. “St—ahh!”

  He’d started to stroke his fingers in and out of me, hard and fast, while simultaneously circling my clit with his thumb. A shudder went through me, the pleasure spinning faster and faster. “You want me to stop?” he asked, a smile in his voice.

  I flushed even deeper as the heat spiraled out of control. Yes. No. I didn’t know what I wanted. We were in public, with people walking past the door and Yuri had just seen us and this was wrong but God it felt so good. I was wetter than I’d ever been, his fingers sliding easily in me and I could feel the hardness of his cock against my ass. But this was wrong. I couldn’t just let him use me like this, all restrained and...trapped.

  “Nrrrggghhhh!” I groaned. Stars exploded in front of my eyes. My whole body went mannequin-stiff against him, my hips grinding against his thrusting fingers, and his mouth recaptured mine. I panted my orgasm between his lips, my breath coming in shuddering gasps.

  He supported me as I trembled and shook and finally relaxed. Then, as he released me, I staggered forward and my dress fell back into place. I shrugged my coat back onto my shoulders and tossed my hair out of my eyes, and I was decent again.

  Apart from the ripped panties on the floor.

  “What was...that?!” I panted.

  “Didn’t you enjoy it?” he asked innocently.

  It would be ridiculous to say no. I glared at him, but he had that hint of a smile on his lips that completely disarmed me. I settled for, “You can’t just do things like that! People could see! Yuri saw!”

  “So? He’s seen me plenty of times. Sometimes, in the back of the car.”

  So I’d been right about why he wanted all that legroom.

  He reached out and grabbed my hand, pulling me up against him. Dammit, he was gorgeous and so assured in his power. He knew he could do whatever he wanted. “And usually,” he told me, “the girls are naked.”

  I thought about how I must have looked: dress hiked up, panties gone, his fingers inside me. How was I going to look Yuri in the eye again? I shook my head. Now that the sexual heat had died away, I was starting to get mad. At him, for doing it and at myself, for letting him. I was meant to be on a mission. I was meant to be the one in control. The anger rose and bubbled. I could have said stop but—I flushed—I’d been enjoying it too much. I didn’t know how to say any of that, so I lashed out in another direction. “Is that what I am, then, just another one of your girls to—to fuck whenever you like? Another Natalia?”

  He froze. “How do you know about Natalia?”

  Because I listened to your phone calls. Every drop of blood in my veins turned to freezing sludge. Shit!

  I thought about saying aren’t all Russian women called Natalia or Natasha? But I was pretty sure that wouldn’t fly.

  “You said her name in your sleep.” It was the first thing that popped into my head.

  He frowned. “I don’t talk in my sleep.”

  I thought I was going to be sick.

  Then he frowned more deeply, looking uncertain. “Do I?”

  Nancy had once told me that
the best way to make a lie believable was to believe it yourself, to convince yourself that you were telling the truth. I imagined Luka spooning me, so close that I could feel his breath on my ear. I could easily imagine that sexy Russian accent, muttering a name. “You did last night,” I said confidently. “You kept muttering about her.”

  Luka’s jaw set. I could tell he believed me, but tentatively. He seemed disturbed that I’d supposedly discovered a weakness. “What did I say?” he asked.

  My mind flashed back to all those phone calls. When he’d dumped her, she’d angrily reminded him, in her precise, clipped tones, about all the wonderful things she’d done for him. The things she’d let him do to her.

  “You were telling her”—I felt myself redden, which hopefully made it seem authentic –“you were telling her you were going to take her up the ass again,” I said.

  And for the first time ever, Luka dropped his eyes from mine. Was that a tiny hint of a blush in his cheeks? If it was, it was gone in a second. “Okay,” he said.

  Whew.

  Then he frowned. “How did you understand what I was saying?”

  Shit! I hadn’t thought of that. I wasn’t supposed to understand Russian, let alone muttered Russian sleep-talking. I decided to go for broke. “You said it in English,” I said nonchalantly, digging my nails into my palms.

  He frowned again. Then he seemed to remember something and nodded to himself, as if he now understood. “Ah. I see.”

  “What?”

  He shook his head. The matter was closed. But, now that the danger was passed, I was intrigued. “No, tell me—what?”

  “Is sex thing, is not for you.” His English always got mangled when he was flustered, or excited.

  “Because I’m an innocent?” I asked, raising an eyebrow.

  “Yes.”

  “But it’s okay for you to corrupt me when you want to?” I asked.

  Now there was a gleam in his eye. “Yes.”

  I kept staring at him and, eventually, he relented. “I must have been dreaming about a sex game I used to play with Natalia,” he said. “I used to speak to her in English, when we played it.”