by Leslie North
"It's easier to be ridden," he admitted, and that was all the invitation Savannah needed. She parted her legs wider as Maxim retracted his fingers and slipped his hand beneath her trembling thigh. One-handed, he leveraged her up and positioned his waist between her legs, pinning her back against the wall. One heel slipped off her foot and clattered to the floor as she wrapped her legs around his hips.
"Come on," she urged him. She wasn't beyond begging for it at this point, but thankfully, she didn't have to—Maxim was as revved up and ready to go as she was. No more memories of who they were, no more second thoughts and misplaced inhibitions. Savannah felt the dome of his erection rub against her entry, felt him press forward. Inch by agonizing inch, Maxim slipped his way past her defenses.
His hips butted up against hers, and Savannah let out an incredulous moan when she realized Maxim had sunk himself fully inside her. Her head spun. When was the last time she had felt this full? She was completely oblivious to the cramped quarters and unwieldy position; with a man as strong and powerfully built as the Russian, vertical lovemaking seemed second nature to her already. She clenched her thighs, linking her arms and legs around him. Maxim cradled her with one palm beneath her ass, and slowly began to thrust into her.
He groaned, deep and guttural, and Savannah's head fell back against the wall. Her lips parted, soundless—she didn't want anyone to find them here, she didn't want to be discovered—but her anxieties fell away as Maxim drove himself into her again and again. Soon enough, the rhythmic slap of flesh-on-flesh was only drowned out by her stilted cries, her wordless pleading for more. She wanted it harder, faster, deeper—she wanted him to take her the way they had both known he desired to do so from the moment he first laid eyes on her. Games of repressed attraction between a man and a woman, why did they engage in them? What was the point? Why fight the absolute pleasure, the beautiful bliss, of such a fierce and kinetic union?
Savannah thought she felt a strange vibration from somewhere—Maxim's back pocket? —but he was surging into her harder now, pounding her back against the stall until she thought the walls of their tiny claustrophobic cubicle would collapse around them. She clenched around him suddenly, and they came together with tangled, startled shouts. Maxim poured into her as Savannah's hips operated separate of her will, rolling and plunging and milking ever last drop, every last sensation that dark, brutal man had to offer her.
Once they had finished, Maxim collapsed against her with a spent groan. His hand fell away from the swell of her ass, and Savannah slowly lowered herself down off him. "You've got to get out of here," she whispered in his ear. Her voice shook, rocked by the tremors of her body. Even now, she could feel the echoes of her orgasmic pulses chasing through her, speeding with all the swiftness and heat of strong alcohol through her veins. "This… that was…"
"All a part of our cover," Maxim breathed as he drew back. Savannah said nothing. They both knew this went way, way beyond the pale. What was there to prove by doing what they did? Who was there to even know what they had done together just now?
No. They had to keep what they had done between them or risk losing everything to this chaotic, animalist burst of lust.
Maxim zipped up his fly, snatched his shirt, and banged his way out of the bathroom stall, as Savannah bent hastily to gather her own flimsy things together. Her worst fears remained unrealized: there was no one else in the bathroom there with them. Likely any woman needing to use the toilet had turned and sought accommodations elsewhere when confronted with the universal sounds of a couple getting it on.
Savannah dressed, noting that her face was flushed almost beyond recognition when she looked in the mirror. She did not blush. Then again, there were a lot of things she had sworn she did not do until this evening.
She rearranged her appearance as best she could, before exiting out the bathroom after Maxim. Out on the dance floor, she realized her date was nowhere to be found. The booth toward the back remained empty, and after a cursory peek into the men's bathroom, she realized with a sinking feeling that he was nowhere on the club's premises. She went outside, and was unsurprised to discover that the Nighthawk was gone.
Unsurprised… but furious. Had Maxim jumped her to try and throw her off whatever plan he had in store? Had he actually succeeded?
"Damn it!" Savannah swore below her breath as she hailed for a cab. He couldn't have gotten far, and she would find him. Only one question remained, then: what was it that had called him away?
The cell phone, she realized. It had buzzed in his pocket and received a text while they were holed up together in the bathroom.
Maxim was gone, and so was Gordy Safin's cell phone.
7
Maxim
He may have had his share of hookups in his past life as head of security, but Maxim had never been one to take a woman he wanted so immediately and recklessly.
He hadn't intended to leave Savannah alone back at Roza, but he needed to clear his head. The woman could look after herself—she had proven that much time and again, and he needed to immediately follow up on this latest lead. It was better for them both if she stayed put.
Maxim pulled the Nighthawk up at the next stoplight and fished Gordy's burner from his back pocket. The message read:
6101 E LANSING
ANSWERS HERE
It was worded too oddly, and the timing too coincidental, for it to be anything but a message for him. Maxim's fingers clenched over the phone, only for a moment; then a green cast from the traffic light above told him it was time to move again. He pocketed the burner and kicked the Hawk back to life, tearing off down the street toward Lansing. Everyone on the block was either at Roza or had already gone to bed for the evening. The lone wolf rode alone.
And yet he wasn't alone.
God, he could still smell her on him. He shook his head, trying to clear her from his mind, but she just kept coming back again and again. Savannah Casillero had installed a mental trapdoor in his brain and having sex with her had only exacerbated the problem. It hadn't driven her from his bloodstream—it had made him crave her even more than before, if such a thing was possible, and he was steadily being led to believe that it was. His feelings for her were more than feelings of physical attraction. Even something as basic as lust would have been surmountable at this point, but now? Now, he couldn't focus for thoughts of her.
He was in deep shit already. He may as well try to close the evening with some sort of clarity—and if that meant riding out alone to confront answers about his father's killer, then so be it.
It was dark on Lansing Street. Maxim pulled up outside the address, a two-story apartment block that couldn't have housed more than five or six tenants in all, and noticed that the streetlight was out. He shut off his bike and wheeled it up the drive, conscious of the gravel crunching beneath his boots. He didn't bother stepping lightly. He knew he was expected.
He parked the Hawk and started up the steps to the address. Nothing greeted him: not a person, not a porchlight. He ignored the mental alarm ringing in the back of his head. He had been in plenty of situations that set it off before and gotten himself out of plenty more. Alone.
Still, he couldn't help wishing that Savannah was here with him.
I'm not leaving until I have answers, he reminded himself as he pulled his fist back and hammered on the front of the apartment. The door jumped its frame and eased open beneath his hand with an ominous creak, to reveal a darkened living room. Even after riding all the way over through a mostly uninterrupted night, Maxim's vision wasn't prepared for this. He stepped carefully over the threshold and ran his hand along the wall, pausing only briefly when he located the light switch. He flipped it on.
The room was suddenly bathed in light, and he could now see it was also bathed in blood.
He made no noise. He didn't so much as blink or flinch as the full horror of the scene sank in around him. A man's body lay on the floor in a sickening heap, a puddle of fresh red blood blooming out around him
, leeching into the carpet and likely already dripping down into the neighbor's apartment below. There was gore splashed on the wall behind him as well, and heavy clumps of it clung to pieces of the man's spare furniture.
This had happened recently, then. The apartment's tenant had been murdered that night, and likely within the last hour.
Maxim studied the brutality of the crime scene. Accepted it. Kept any emotion carefully bottled up and isolated away from his logic center. Then, he moved carefully across the room to the lone desk pushed back against the wall. There were papers strewn about everywhere, scattered documents coded in numeric cyphers. Occasionally, he spotted what appeared to be contracts signed and dated in Russian. He wished it wasn't all so familiar.
"Maxim?"
Maxim whirled, his heart flying into his throat. Savannah stood in the doorway, wide eyes drinking in the scene before her. He saw her hand drop to her side, only to come up frighteningly, desperately short of discovering a firearm there.
"What the hell are you doing here, Savannah?" His voice cracked on the air like a shot. Her gaze leapt to him.
"I—I followed you. In a cab." He was startled to find tears leaking from the edges of her eyes. "Did you do this, Maxim? How? How…?"
"That man is a hitman," he stated. "You'll have a hard time nailing him down in your database, but I'm betting it's all there if you dig deep enough.”
"Did you know him?" Savannah whispered.
"I've known men like him. And I've seen this before." Maxim gesticulated to the horror show they were being forced to act in now. "This man was assassinated, Savannah. Likely in the moments before I got here. Whoever is responsible is long gone. I have a feeling I'm being set up."
As if to confirm his theory, the lone wail of a distant siren rent the air. Savannah gave a small start. Soon another took up the call, and then another, until Maxim was certain an entire pack of squad cars was closing in around them. They likely had only moments before the entire place was swarming with cops.
"I didn't call them." Savannah choked, fighting back whatever emotion threatened to take hold of her. "God damn it, but I should have called them. Maxim, this… this is… how am I supposed to believe you had no part in this?"
"Didn't you say you know the man I am now?" he said tersely. He stepped over the victim's body and went to her; Savannah drew back, but there was nowhere else to retreat. He had her by the shoulders before she could back her way out the front door. "Savannah." He wanted to shake her, but he refrained. It was all too much, too much, for him to handle anymore. He thought he could go it alone; he thought he could weather the accusations of his father's murder, but this… seeing the face of the woman he—
"Go. Out the back. We have to get out of here. Both of us." Savannah spoke to him in stilted orders, and Maxim was all too happy to comply. He grabbed her by the hand and pulled her after him, navigating the expanding lake of red as he spirited them both out onto the back porch. They took the stairs quickly, hugging the shadows as the distant sirens drew closer.
"I'll get us out of here," he said. "I parked around back away from the road. We'll take my Hawk and drive as far from here as possible. We'll—"
"You'll take me home," Savannah stated. "And you'll give me that phone. In fact, you'll give it to me now."
Maxim stopped short and turned. Savannah stood rigid at the bottom of the stairs; he knew she wouldn't come with him if he didn't comply. He would run, and she would stay and rejoin the task force. They would turn her against him, and she would hunt him to the ends of the earth if he allowed the night to end this way.
He had to do as she said.
He withdrew the phone from his pocket and passed it to her. Savannah secreted it inside his jacket—the one she had worn into Roza that evening, the one he had left behind him at the club—and they moved off together toward his bike.
He would find a way out of this. He had to. Even though she piled on back behind him, he could tell it was an effort for her to bring herself to wrap her arms around his waist—as if she was repelled by him. As if she didn't know what to think of him. For the first time, Maxim suspected Savannah might be a little frightened of him, and the thought of her fearing him threatened to drive him to insanity.
He would find a way to clear his name and win her back, he vowed as he cranked the Nighthawk to life and they pulled away into the darkness.
He just had no fucking idea of where to start.
8
Split
"You really stepped in it this time, Casillero."
Savannah stared hard at her computer screen. Then, after a calculated moment, she slid her rolling chair out from behind her console and glared across the room. She tried to imagine the intensity of her look could cut Agent Tom Andrews with an edge as honed as the one on her new sword tattoo.
"Whatever you're smelling, Andrews, I'm pretty sure it's not me."
Tom Andrews stood behind his desk, mopping the sweat that dripped down from the dome of his head and onto his brow with a hand towel. He had just arrived at the office; he still hadn't changed out of his running gear, but it was early. Aside from the security guard who had greeted Savannah on her way in, it was likely that the two of them were the only ones in the building.
"You still think your boyfriend isn't involved in all this?" Tom retired the towel over one shoulder and leaned back against his desk, gazing at her incredulously. "Wake up, Savannah. He's a son of the mob, for fuck's sake. You better believe the lab's going to find his prints all over my crime scene."
Not yours, asshole. I was there first.
Savannah said nothing out loud, only rolled back behind her computer, if only to screen her expression from Tom. He could be abnormally dense for someone on the Blood Diamond Task Force, but his confidence about the case troubled her. Maxim had been smart enough not to touch anything at the scene, right? And if he really was the killer…
No! she interrupted her own thoughts vehemently. She had let him out of her sight for only an instant—there was no way his escape from Roza had bought him enough time to wreak that much damage on someone.
Right?
Then again, Maxim was a self-described retired killer. Who knew what he was capable of, much less who had trained him or how. There was a list of names in his file, of course, long-time associates of his father from various backgrounds and disciplines, but at the end of the day, Savannah had to resign herself to the fact that she had no idea what Maxim was capable of. She just had to trust him, trust that the intensity of the pull she felt toward him wasn't clouding her better sense.
Easier said than done.
Fortunately, her loud-mouthed colleague has satisfied himself by saying enough for the both of them. She glanced up as Tom exited, likely to go change out of his clothes in the locker room. Once she was reassured she was alone, Savannah slid her desk drawer open and pulled out Gordy Safin's burner phone, turning it repeatedly in her hand. She had confiscated it from Maxim, only to discover upon her return home that the device was completely wiped—either by the Russian's own hand, or the process had been done remotely by an unknown player. Not even the task force's advanced equipment could recover what was on it… it was just another piece to the puzzle that had been lost along the way.
She flipped it again, glaring at the dead screen, before tossing it into the waste bin with a sigh. There were no prints to be found on it, outside of Gordy's, Maxim's, and now her own. She had a feeling someone had wanted the phone planted on Maxim via Safin—someone had banked on it, in fact, and lured Maxim to the crime scene as a setup. The problem was, her gut instincts were all she had to go on at this point. Either that same someone had engaged a kill switch from afar and fried the phone, or Maxim had managed to wipe it himself… a timeline that would have had to align exactly with the hitman's murder, Savannah reminded herself. If Maxim was the murderer, she thought it unlikely that he would have prioritized destroying any cellular data over cleaning up the grisly mess she had discovered him knee
-deep in at the scene. It just didn't make sense.
But couldn't she be wrong? She had already let her attraction to her only real suspect in the case get the better of her. Now, she risked being taken for more than one kind of ride by Maxim Karev.
Savannah swallowed a growl of frustration, and only barely resisted the urge to drop her head onto her keyboard and give up for the day. A glance at her desktop clock told her it was only a little past seven in the morning. She had been working overtime on this Sergey case, if only because the more hours she put into it, the more time she got to spend pretending to be a suspected murderer's girlfriend. What was wrong with her?
She was just about to haul herself out of her chair and put on another pot of coffee in the lounge when a solicitous 'ping!' from her computer called her back. Savannah alighted once more in her chair and clicked open the messenger window. She already knew who it was:
MADISON: Everything okay? I haven't heard from you in a few weeks!
SAVANNAH: I texted you yesterday!
MADISON: Nothing significant! So why don't you tell me what the hell is going on with you, Annie?
Leave it to Madison O'Conner to intuitively know that something was up. Savannah sat back in her chair, pulling her hands away from the keyboard to rub her temples.
SAVANNAH: I'm just
SAVANNAH: I'm a little in over my head here. With a case.
MADISON: A case. Uh-huh.
MADISON: This wouldn't have anything to do with a certain member of a certain family you warned me against, would it, Agent Hypocrite?
"Maddie," Savannah stressed aloud between her teeth. She had always been careful with the privacy settings on her work computer, but who was she kidding—this was the Federal Bureau of Investigation she worked for. If they wanted to keep tabs on her communications, they had likely already found a way.
SAVANNAH: Can't talk right now. We'll go for drinks soon, I promise.
