Latvis Security Services

by Lexie Ray

  She dug into her pocket and pulled out the house key that she had convinced Mads to give her once when he had consumed one drink too much. She had never given it back and didn’t have any intentions of doing so. Not until Mads worked through whatever this was.

  The house pulsed with a steady beat. Over the last few weeks she had learned to judge his behaviour based on the music he played. He was the only person she knew that played lively music when depressed. But then, he was the only one she knew who danced when depressed. Willow lingered in the doorway. Guilt clawed at her for doing so, but a dancing Mads wasn’t something easily passed up.

  His shoulders were broad and sturdy, his legs strong and impressively long, and he moved like gravity had given him a free pass. She told herself that she’d just watch until he noticed her. After all, coming out of nowhere unexpected would just startle him. Or he might consider it rude, which would have him fortifying his internal walls until they were like a battlement and she wouldn’t even get a word out of him. From somewhere in the dark recesses of her mind, a voice whispered that she just wanted to watch him move. That she was watching him purely as a personal indulgence. She hated that voice and did her best to ignore it.

  She still couldn’t get over seeing Mads like this, his normally iron-clad grip on control crumbling, taking his usually pristine appearance with it. His dress shirt was draped over him, not a single button done up. Which didn’t help suppress Willow’s guilt. Mads’ chest was a thing of glory. It seemed to have been perfectly tailored to her personal tastes—toned, lean, with just the right amount of muscle. She also blamed it for awakening her newfound, and little understood, attraction to chest hair.

  He spun around and, through the disarray of his gold-dusted hair, finally spotted her. A huge smile spread across his face. Her musings were interrupted by Mads suddenly rushing towards her.

  A hundred words passed his lips before he engulfed Willow in a tight hug, and the only one that she understood was her own name. Embraces were also something that only seemed to come around during times of intoxication. It was a shame, because he was great at them. As he rested one hand against her lower spine and pressed the liquor bottle between them, his other hand slipped deep into the curls of her hair, cradling her head.

  Willow pulled back, but Mads was reluctant to let her go. His hands ghosted down her arms, leaving a trail of warmth until he closed his fingers around her wrists. He was still talking, pausing only to take a mouthful from his bottle. Her stomach knotted at the display. That was definitely not a Mads thing to do. Her attempts to pull the bottle from his hand only resulted in a scowl, and his continuous words took on a harsher edge.

  “Easy now,” she soothed.

  It didn’t work, and he tugged loosely to try and get the bottle loose from her grip.

  “Come on, Mads,” Willow sighed. “You don’t want to slosh it all of the floor while you’re dancing, right?”

  Apparently, he could understand more English than he let on. His eyes lit up at the reference to dancing and the wide, glowing smile was back. He sacrificed the bottle, but didn’t surrender Willow’s wrist. The once loose fingers became tighter as they pulled her towards the space he had created in the middle of the room.

  “Oh, no. Mads, no dancing. How about we just drink a lot of water instead?”

  All of her protests only resulted in his free arm wrapping around her waist. The gross amount of alcohol in his system wasn’t enough to keep him from adopting a proper dance frame. Without having to hold onto his bottle, his free hand almost covered the full expanse of her back.

  Willow knew enough about proper waltz form to know that there should be a decent distance left between partners. Actually, everything she knew about dancing she had learned from Mads on a stormy night in a Scottish castle. As she rolled it over in her head, it seemed like an odd way to learn how to dance. Stranger still that Mads now cast aside all of those rules and pulled her into a tight embrace.

  His body was a wall of warmth that she couldn’t help but melt into. While the music’s beat was fast and erratic, the pace Mads set for them was a slow, smooth slide. He pulled Willow closer until even air couldn’t separate them. With a sigh of contentment, he buried his hand into the tangled mass of her hair. It seemed to soothe him and his movements became looser and slower. He drew in deep breaths, and Willow was pretty sure that he was smelling her.

  But that wasn’t what captured her attention the most. It was his hands. Ever since she had first seen him play the piano, she had been hyperaware of Mads’ hands. They were large, with long, tapering fingers that moved with a fluid, ethereal grace. It was fascinating to watch them move.

  At first, it had just been a guilty pleasure. She’d sneak glances at him when he was writing or passing something or really doing anything at all. It hadn’t seemed like a big issue. He, along with most of the employees at Latvis Security, were pretty easy on the eyes. Showing some silent appreciation for the company’s aesthetics couldn’t be all bad. But Willow knew something important had shifted when she began thinking up excuses for Mads to touch and caress or really just manipulate anything for her own amusement.

  Her hand felt tiny in his, weak compared to the strength that lingered under his skin. Before he had sunk into this emotional turmoil, Willow had never seen Mads as anything other than polished and sophisticated. He was always clean shaven, wearing expensive suits that were perfectly tailored to display his form, each and every hair in place. The calluses on his palms were the only thing that every betrayed his carefully cultivated persona. Willow could feel them now, a slight scrape earned by things she couldn’t even begin to guess at.

  Mads steadily became heavier in her arms. She acknowledged the sensation, but it wasn’t enough to pull her from her thoughts. Not until she was practically the only thing keeping him upright.

  “Oh, no,” she said as she tried to pull back. “No, no, no. Do not pass out yet. There is no way in hell I will get you up those stairs on my own.”

  He rocked on his feet and mumbled something she wasn’t quite sure of. She really needed to learn at least a few phrases of Lithuanian.

  Each of Willow’s attempts to separate them were met with resistance. Mads mumbled under his breath and strengthened his grip, doing his drunken best to keep her close. It was far more resistance than he had shown in the past. On the few other occasions when it had fallen to her to wrangle him, it had only taken a few well-placed words for him to grudgingly drag himself off to bed. Tonight, it didn’t seem like he would move an inch until she was right there with him.

  Shuffling to his side, Willow wrapped an arm around his waist to keep him steady, and nudged him forward a step.

  “Okay, big guy. Time for bed.”

  He wavered on his feet but held his ground, still protesting. She muttered a few choice words of her own as she fished her phone out of her pocket. Fumbling with the Internet, she managed to look up how to say ‘bed’ in his native tongue. Her plan of getting him to read it fell apart when he showed a near disgust for the device.

  Willow choked down a growl and hoped that she didn’t completely mangle the pronunciation. It must have meant something to him because he seemed to sober instantly. Planting his feet, he looked down at her with a strange look on his face.

  “Lova?” he parroted.

  She nodded. It looked like it took all of his concentration to just understand that one word. When he did, a smile pulled across his face, wide enough to hesitantly allowing her the slightly glimpse of his teeth. She took advantage of his good mood to get him moving. Mads smiled. He could say a thousand things, and hid many more, with just the slightest tip of his lips. But he never smiled without reason or care. It was always controlled. Measured. And he never showed his teeth.

  As soon as she had noticed it, that little thought had lodged in her head. Of all the theories Willow had come up with, the two most enduring were that he was that much of a control freak or that he was oddly insecure about his teeth.
She still had yet to get a good enough look to judge if the latter might be the reason.

  Side by side, they staggered up the staircase, reaching the landing before Willow realized that she had no idea where to go next. For all her visits, she had never been shown the second floor. And Mads certainly had never given her a tour of his bedroom. He wouldn’t have considered it polite.

  Once they were far enough away from the stairs that Willow felt comfortable holding him up one-handed, she gestured to indicate the long hallway lined with doors. Mads was still watching her. His gaze was somehow focused and hazy all at once. Willow was completely baffled over how he could still be intimidating when sloshed. But there was simply a natural intensity about Mads. Like a crocodile resting on the bottom of a lake. He might be placid, or he might be sizing you up, but there was no way to know until his teeth were sinking into your flesh.

  By the time he caught on that he needed to take the lead, her arms were starting to ache from keeping him upright. He brushed one hand along her side as he began walk again. Willow shivered under the lingering caress and instinctively leaned closer against the hard wall of his body. It was a motion he evidently welcomed, and his whispered words took on a more husky tone.

  Until then, Willow had been able to ignore it, letting the foreign words become a white noise in the back of her head. The further they walked, however, the harder it was to tune out. His voice was rich and warm. His hand drifted in time with it, like the ebb and flow of a tide against her skin. As much as she tried to suppress it, Mads seemed hell-bent on finding and exploiting every possible way of making her shiver.

  Finally, they made it to the right door. It seemed like a feat of mythical proportions to keep Mads upright and open the door at the same time, and Willow still wasn’t sure how she accomplished it as she pulled him into the dark room. The glow from the streetlights poured through the massive window that lined the far side of the room. Fine, heavy drapes hung from the edges, the excess fabric gathering on the floor like pools. Since they were open, she could make out the basic shapes of the furniture in his bedroom.

  “Who on earth has a canopy bed anymore?” she muttered as Mads suddenly decided again that he was capable of walking unaided.

  Really, Willow shouldn’t have been surprised. Mads had a flare for antiques and wasn’t one to save his best for company. Her appraisal of his room was cut short when the door clicked shut behind her. Turning, she half expected to find Mads sprawled across the floor. Instead, warm hands cupped her cool cheeks, holding Willow in place as heated lips pressed against her own.

  Her brain stuttered, crumbling into a useless fuzz at the realization that Mads was kissing her. In a luxurious slide, he swiped his tongue across the seal of her mouth, drawing her closer, begging for entrance. It was an onslaught of sensation her mind couldn’t process. Her head whirled until she felt lightheaded and drunk in the face of his attentions. Not waiting for her to piece herself together, Willow’s body reacted on its own. Mads plundered her mouth at the first opportunity, taking all that he could find and leaving no room for hesitation.

  His hair was silk under her palms and his lips were tinted with fine wine. But it was his hands that sent her reeling. For all of his overindulgence, his hands were steady and strong, exploring her with the same confidence shown by his lips and tongue. Without warning, he sank his teeth into her kiss, swallowing her bottom lip, and Willow’s world just shattered.

  It was when her back hit the mattress that the situation hit her full force. A very drunk, and surprisingly handsy, Mads was draped over her. And apparently, he had decided to devote himself to giving her an aneurism. He’s drunk, she reminded herself sharply. It was enough to make her stomach sour and she reached up, searching for his shoulders with the intent of pushing him up.

  Mads moved at her touch, but not as Willow had intended. He pulled at his shirt instead, awkwardly stripping it from his shoulders in hurried jerks and leaving her with nothing but intoxicatingly smooth skin under her fingertips. He turned his attention to her neck, sucking and licking. Despite his state, he knew how to manipulate her. Every time Willow summoned the strength of mind to push him off, he would graze his teeth along the tendons of her neck. It was something raw and primal that made her eyes roll back in her head.

  Gathering what limited mental faculties she had left, she pushed again at his shoulders. He only took this as a-not-so-subtle hint to move his attention downwards. He eagerly complied, tracing a path of sucking, hungry kisses down her body. It didn’t matter that Willow was still wearing her shirt; she felt every one of the kisses as if it was upon her flesh.

  Not good, she thought, even as a part of her mind repeated very loudly that she was lying. His mouth, his hands, the warm weight of his body, were a perfect combination to make her brain melt. Each move was so sure and precise that it took a lot longer than it should have for her to remember that Mads was heavily intoxicated. The second that thought hit her, she snapped out one of the few words of Lithuanian that she knew, one that she had to use on Brahms whenever he decided that her couch cushions were a chew toy. Stop.

  “Sustabdyti.”

  Mads instantly froze, his hands skirting from her like he had just touched a live wire. Eyes wide and chest heaving, he looked up to her, confusion and worry warring in his gaze. Willow had no idea what the flood of words were that left his mouth, but the concern that laced each syllable was clear.

  “You’re drunk.” She cursed herself when her voice came out slightly hoarse and feathery. “This isn’t happening.”

  His face scrunched up in complete confusion. “Lova?”

  “Okay, I see where your confusion is coming from.” She bit her lips and gently started to push him off. He didn’t offer resistance this time, but didn’t exactly help either. “I did invite you to bed.”

  His smile came back and he attempted to lower his mouth once more to her stomach. She locked her arms and kept him back.

  “To sleep.”

  It was getting frustrating to see him constantly confused. He was fluent in numerous languages and she couldn’t tell if he really didn’t know what she was saying or if it was just selective hearing. She scrambled for her phone, which had dropped onto the bed beside them. Mads settled down, half on top of her, and began to study every line of her face, his gaze both lazy and unmistakably hungry.

  It was distracting and she might have declared it with a bit too much excited victory when she found the Lithuanian word for sleep. “Miegas!”

  Mads’ lips quirked and he whispered something in a voice of smoke and honey. That alone was enough for Willow to seriously reconsider her actions. But drunk trumped sudden lust and she quickly scurried off the bed. Getting some distance between them was like emerging from a fog. Grasping harder concepts like logic and morality were a lot easier without him consuming all of her senses.

  She repeated the word in both languages and threw in a bit of charades for good measure. Apparently, her acting needed some work, because her impression of sleeping was enough to send Mads into a fit of giggles. It was absurd and completely unrestrained, stark evidence that she had never seen him this far gone before or this far removed from all of the self-imposed rules that kept him constantly in control.

  With a contented sigh that made Willow’s insides do things they really shouldn’t be doing right now, Mads draped himself back onto the mattress. His feathery light hair brushed across his forehead and ghosted over his eyes, highlighting their rich darkness. He rested one arm over his head as he watched her. Intentional or not, the position displayed his body in what had to be the most tantalizing way possible.

  Willow could feel her resolve starting to crumble as her eyes instinctively moved along the long, firm ridges of his body. The soft street light made him glow like a creature from another world. It was just unfair that, while Mads lost the ability to speak English, nothing seemed to limit his abilities of observation. And, if his conquering smile was anything to go by, it wasn’t acci
dental that Willow was so tempted. He knew exactly what he was doing.

  His smile grew large enough to make the skin around his eyes crinkle. She watched with fascination as he lifted his hand to her, beckoning her closer with a graceful curl on one finger. Rooting her feet to the floor, Willow fought back every instinct that begged her to cross the few feet of space separating them. He spoke to her, and she quickly shook her head.

  “There is no way that is working on me.”

  His brow furrowed again and he looked at her with sharpening suspicion.

  “No, I don’t suddenly understand you. But smug doesn’t need interpretation.”

  Mads laughed. So he definitely did understand her and was just being difficult. Toying with her. The bastard. His smile grew as he pillowed one arm under his head, making the muscle stand out stark and chiseled under his marble skin. Rolling his hips as he shifted, he actually patted the bed next to him. It was strange. It was cocky. It damn near worked.

  “You actually know how gorgeous you are, don’t you? You play that you don’t, but you do.”

  He shrugged, the movement slightly sloppy just around the edges. Just enough to remind Willow just how gone he really was. Still, she huffed a laugh.

  “I don’t care if you can rival Adonis. You’re drunk; it isn’t happening.”

  It was possible to tell the exact second the words sank it. Without the potential of fun times, he lost all will to fight against the alcohol in his system. He flopped back onto the bed with a withering groan and a hand against his forehead.

  “I’ll get you some aspirin.”

  He made no indication that he had even heard her, let alone that he had done the mental acrobatics necessary to understand. Willow left him to his misery and started her search for his bathroom. Just like at his family castle, his house seemed designed to hide things. Unfortunately, he seemed to think that doors were unsightly and the door to his ensuite was designed to blend into the wall.