by Sybil Bartel
Oh.
My God.
A bullet hole between his eyes, Peter’s dead gaze sightlessly stared at me.
Dry heaving, I scrambled.
“Stay down,” a voice barked out.
Oh my God.
Heavy boot steps and clicking of dog nails rushed across the porch. Car doors opened then slammed shut. The porch vibrated with footsteps again. “Clear. Get up.”
I shook. My hands, my arms, my legs, everything shook. Driving rain simultaneously spread and washed away Peter’s blood, and I shook harder. My knees spasming in time to the bile trying to leave my body, I couldn’t stand.
He shot him.
I couldn’t breathe.
He shot Peter.
Oh my fucking God.
An arm curled around my waist and lifted.
Panic set in and I kicked out. “Get off me!”
The dog gave a low, warning growl.
“Hunter, stand down.” His voice softened. “I’m not on you. You’re okay, sweetheart.”
“Get off, get off, get off!”
A hand grabbed my chin and forced my face up. Stormy eyes zeroed in on me, and a killer did the one thing I understood. He issued a command. “Take a breath, right now.”
Dominance blanketed my panic and I inhaled.
Dane gripped my chin tight. “Another.”
My body listened and air filled my lungs.
Then he made a crucial mistake. He released me. “Go inside.”
My tether broke.
Anger and fear rushed at me like water from a broken dam. I wasn’t freefalling, I was spiraling. And that spiral landed on a dead Russian bodyguard at my feet.
A bodyguard who’d called me a slut.
Five years of abuse culminated into one single driving force, and I growled with rage at a corpse. “You called me a slut?”
I kicked a dead man.
“I’m a fucking slut?” I kicked again. “You watched me every second of my life for five years and you’re CALLING ME A SLUT?” My heel drove into his stomach. “You know how many dicks I’ve come in contact with?” I stomped on his chest. “One, you motherfucker!” I stomped harder. “One goddamn dick because I’m not a slut. You are!” I kicked and kicked and stomped and stomped until I slipped in blood and fell to my knees.
My hands landed on still warm flesh, then my fists closed and I started pounding.
“You asshole!” Inhuman screams of anger and humiliation cut through hurricane-force winds and carried out into the night as I pummeled a dead body in rage. “I hate you! I hate you I hate you I hate you!”
Strong arms wrapped around me and lifted.
Rain hit my arms like needles and my bare feet slipped through hot, sticky blood. “No.” I wanted to kill Peter.
“Calm down, you’re getting blood everywhere.” Dane set me down and shoved my back against the house.
With the same force I’d used to hit Peter, I hit him. “No! You killed him. You did this! You shot him.” Both of my fists landed against his hard chest.
His fierce storm-colored gaze leveled me with a look, but he didn’t touch me. “Irina.”
The accusations started. “You could’ve killed me! He could’ve shot me! You didn’t care what happened. You didn’t care if he blew my brains out!”
The dog rushed at me with a snarling growl.
His impenetrable mask of control dropped and he roared out a command. “On your knees!”
The anger, the rage, the fear, it all instantly froze as if he’d pushed the pause button for my life. Stunned, I dropped to the porch.
“Stay.”
The dog sat.
My head down, my arms at my sides, I kneeled in utter confusion as Dane searched Peter’s pockets and came away with keys. Using the key fob, he opened the back door to the SUV, then he bent and lifted Peter’s body with the strength and grace of a warrior.
As if he didn’t have four staples in his side or a gunshot wound on his arm, he carried Peter over his shoulder to the SUV and threw him in. Locking the vehicle, he climbed the steps with his automatic rifle strapped to his back. Without breaking stride, he scooped me up like a child and strode into the house.
My shaking turned to shivering and my teeth started to chatter. Both of us soaked, Dane paused only long enough to kick the door shut, lock it, and swipe his finger across the security panel. Then we were moving again.
With the sound of canine steps following us, Dane walked down the hall.
I knew where he was going. I’d searched every inch of his house before he’d gotten here, and there wasn’t anything at the end of the hallway except the master suite.
With a dead man’s blood on my feet and the killer holding me in his arms, my mind bent. “He-he-he’s going to kill me.” Dane would fuck me and Viktor would kill me. “He’ll f-f-find you and he’ll k-k-kill you.”
Dane said nothing.
I tried to force my chattering jaw to still. “I’m dead. You’re d-d-dead.” Everyone was dead.
He walked through his bedroom and into the master bathroom. He didn’t pause, he didn’t speak. He walked into a shower bigger than a closet.
“St-st-stop.”
He didn’t listen.
One swipe of his hand, and water was cascading down on us from two sides and the ceiling. His huge hand gripped a handful of my hair and he set me on my feet as he put my face under the spray.
Forced to hold my breath or drown, I closed my eyes, but my hands went to cover my face.
“Stop,” he commanded. “Wash his blood off.”
Blood. The single word made my eyes open, and the realization of what the hot splatter on face was sank in. Red-tinted water ran off my hands and down my arms as revulsion mixed with horror. My stomach lurched. Black spots crowded my vision, and ringing filled my ears.
Oh God.
My knees buckled.
Grabbing me around the waist, Dane shoved my head between my legs and barked out an order. “Breathe.”
My stomach pressed against my thighs, I dry heaved as my lungs fought for air. “Blood,” I cried. “Everywhere.” My legs, my arms, dripping down my hair, pooling at my feet. So much blood. I clawed at my stained dress. “Get it off!”
Impossibly warm hands whipped my dress up my back and over my bent body, yanking it off. A boot, then a pant-covered knee, then storm-colored eyes came into view. Water cascading down his face, my silk dress bunched in his hand like a rag, Dane gently brushed the material over my face. “We’re washing it off.”
I shook. “Pl-pl-please hurry.”
“Sh,” he murmured, wiping across my mouth, my cheeks. “You’re okay.”
“S-s-soap.”
Dropping my dress, he reached behind him without taking his eyes off mine and grabbed a bar, but he didn’t give it to me. “I’ll clean you up in a minute. Take a deep breath. I don’t want you to faint.”
“N-n-not….” I fought to steady the chatter in my jaw. “Not going to pass out.”
He searched my face, then finally nodded. With utter control and grace, he rose and took me with him. “Slow, deep breaths.”
I panted shallowly, but the warm water pounding down on us eased the chattering. I didn’t care that I was naked in front of him. I wanted Peter’s blood off my body and the bitter taste of copper in my mouth to be gone. “Give me the soap.”
His gaze never leaving mine, he didn’t give it to me. He lathered his hands and issued another command. “Close your eyes.”
I never considered not obeying. I closed my eyes, and rough, calloused hands soaped my face. His thumbs traced my cheekbones and his fingers gently scrubbed my forehead. The heat of his touch soaked into my bones as he scrubbed the blood away.
Tilting my head, he gave me a warning. “Rinsing.”
Water cascaded down my face, but this time I embraced it. Angling my face into the direct spray, I held my breath until large hands gently turned me away.
Afraid to touch my dirty hands to my fac
e, I blinked through the water on my eyelashes and looked up. The hard angles of his face morphed from killer into man, and his stare cut through five years of tempered emotion.
I swallowed. “Your gun.”
Without a word, he slipped the strap over his head and set the riffle in the corner behind him. Reaching for a bottle on a shelf, he continued to stare at me as he poured shampoo into his palm. Slow, as if I would flinch, he raised his hands and spread the earthy-scented shampoo that smelled like him through my hair.
Hands that had pulled a trigger to take a man’s life mere minutes ago massaged soap into my hair. Fingers that shouldn’t feel good ran through my blood-soaked locks, and I closed my eyes. I wanted to feel his hands on me forever.
“He wasn’t here for a retrieval.” His deep voice broke the cocoon of avoidance I was floating in. “He was going to dispose of you.”
“Viktor wouldn’t let anything happen to me.” The response was automatic. Viktor had fed me the lie for so many years, I was reciting it like a puppet even though his bodyguard had held me at gunpoint.
Dane picked up on the obvious. “Did Fedorov or any of his men ever pull a gun on you?”
“No.”
At Dane’s silence, I opened my eyes.
His stormy gaze didn’t waver. “The guard was going to kill you.”
Every minute of the past five years ran through my mind, painting a glaring picture, but I still stupidly questioned it. “You don’t know that.”
“He was a guard.”
“So?” I knew what Peter had been.
“He left his charge.” Dane paused for effect. “In a hurricane.”
Peter had left Viktor’s side many times over the years… hadn’t he? “He’s not with Viktor twenty-four seven.”
“When he’s not with him, he’s not with you.”
Despite the mounting evidence, my mind tried to deny the twisted sentence. “That doesn’t mean anything.” It meant everything. Peter had no loyalty to me.
“What does he usually drive?”
He always drove Viktor’s Maserati sedan. “I don’t know what kind of car he has.”
Dane tilted my head under the water to rinse the shampoo. “When he’s working, what does he drive?”
“Viktor’s car.”
“Which isn’t a stolen SUV.”
Stolen? “How do you know it was stolen?”
“Out-of-state plates, a tourist keychain and a stroller in the back.”
“Maybe he borrowed it.” He didn’t. Peter didn’t know anyone with small children. He knew Viktor and the other bodyguards.
Dane’s hands slid down my hair like he was my lover. “You’re not going back to him.”
I knew I couldn’t. Not now. Viktor would blame me for Peter’s death, and I didn’t want to know what that punishment would entail. “He will come for me.” The mounting evidence, what I knew about Viktor, it should’ve terrified me. But with Dane’s hands in my hair, I stupidly allowed the false sense of security he was offering to wrap around me like a blanket.
“Yes, he will.”
I looked up at the marine who’d already saved my life once today. “What then?”
He didn’t hesitate. “I’ll kill him.”
I watched her for signs of shock, but all she did was breathe. Her colorless eyes stared, her chest rose and fell, and she simply breathed.
I didn’t take my promise back.
She swallowed. “Are you going to call the police?”
We both knew the guard hadn’t come to bring her home. He’d come to dispose of her and the weather was a perfect cover. “No.”
“Why?”
I lied to everyone. Omission was my religion. But the second I saw her on her knees on my kitchen floor, fighting not to fall apart, I saw what I was when my wife left me. Broken and despondent, she didn’t need any more shit. I wasn’t going to lie to her. “I’m going to dispose of the body, wipe the vehicle then dump it.” But I wasn’t going to give Fedorov his wife back. No fucking way. “Are you legally married?”
“What?”
“To Fedorov. Did you sign any legal papers?”
She inhaled and reached for the soap. Small, delicate hands twisted around the bar. “I only signed a prenup,” she admitted. “He said he took care of everything else.”
The asshole probably hadn’t even married her. “What’s your legal last name?” I should’ve run a background check on her the second I’d had a chance.
“I didn’t legally take his name.”
One less complication. “Anything else he holds over you?”
Her head down, she didn’t answer. She scrubbed the dead guard’s blood off her arms.
I gave in to the temptation and stared at her hard nipples and her perfect fucking small breasts. She wasn’t pretty, she was fuck-my-life-up beautiful. I fought to keep from touching her. “I asked you a question.”
She scrubbed the same spot over and over. “I wasn’t born in Russia. I was born here. I’m American.”
The accent. “Okay.” I knew where this was going. “And?” I’d forgotten to ask about it.
“I don’t have an accent. I don’t even speak Russian. My mother does. Her English is accented. I copied it.”
“Why?” The fucking asshole had even controlled her damn speech.
“Viktor likes me to speak a certain way. He made me.”
He’d done a lot more than that. “What else?” My jaw ticked.
She ignored the question. “He’s going to punish me.”
My nostrils flared. “He’s not going to touch you ever again.” Not him or any of his guards. Not as long as I was breathing.
“He’ll find me.” She didn’t speak the words in fear, she stated them as simple fact.
“Good.” Then I wouldn’t have to find him to kill him.
She finally looked up at me. But instead of the panic or fear I was expecting, she stared at me with zero emotion. “You want him to take me?”
She was steeling herself by cutting off feelings, and detaching. She was doing what she’d probably done for five years. It fucking killed me to see it, but it also told me how damn strong she was. “You don’t have to worry about him anymore. I’m not going to let him do a goddamn thing to you. And yes, I want him coming for you. It will be the last thing he does. I promise.”
“He owns me.”
No, he fucking didn’t. “Not anymore.”
“Because you decided to own me now?” Zero intonation in her question, she could’ve been asking me about the weather.
“I don’t own women.” No real man did.
“Then why are you doing this?”
Because she’d dropped to her knees in my kitchen and spread her legs for an impotent arms dealer. I didn’t need a goddamn reason beyond that. “You need help.”
She held my gaze. “I didn’t ask for it.”
“You’re getting it.”
Something I couldn’t decipher crossed her expression, then she inhaled and dropped her head. “Your clothes.”
I didn’t say shit.
She stared at my shirt. “They’re soaked.”
“I know.” Goddamn, I wanted to fucking touch her.
“You should take them off.”
I studied every nuance in her face, her voice, but there was nothing sexual about her comment. “You don’t want me to do that.”
“Why not?”
I told her the truth. “Because I haven’t fucked in weeks.”
Her head popped up and she looked at me with surprise. “But you said you take women as clients.”
“On occasion.” Most of the time I was too damn busy, but recently, none of the women had done it for me.
“Then what do you do the rest of the time?”
I stared at her. Then I said the last fucking thing I should. “Turn around.”
She didn’t question me, or even hesitate. She simply turned.
I reached around her and took the soap from her. Lathering my ha
nds, I ran them over her back. Her soft skin, her submissive nature, her gorgeous fucking body, all I could think about was sinking inside her, but I wasn’t going to. “Do you have family?”
“Why?”
“Because you’re going to need somewhere to go after.” If she stayed here, I’d fuck her for days.
She leaned back toward me. “After he’s dead?”
I didn’t repeat my intention. She’d heard me, but I fucking got it. Words were just words to her. She didn’t know me enough yet to know I wasn’t fucking around, but she would. “Parents?” I moved my hands slowly up the middle of her back.
She dropped her head forward. “My mother.”
I rubbed circles on her neck with my thumbs. “She in state?”
A small moan escaped her lips. “Yes.”
I pressed my fingers deep into the tight muscles below her shoulder blades. “Can you go there?”
She exhaled and suddenly her tone changed. “What do you care?” She stepped forward.
I spun her around and grasped her chin, then I did the first smart thing since she’d walked into my life. “I’m going to solve your problem. Then you’re going to walk away from me.”
Bitterness filtered into her voice. “Because you don’t do repeat clients.”
It wasn’t a question, but I answered it anyway. “You’re not my client.”
She crossed her arms. “Good, because I’m not paying you.”
I searched every inch of her face because, God help me, I was looking for a fucking in. One damn sign that she wanted me to touch her. Bitterness, defiance, it wasn’t the opposite of indifference, I fucking knew that, but I wanted more than that small moan. “What do you want?”
She pulled out of my grasp. “Is that a joke?”
Her accent had all but disappeared. “Do I look like I’m joking?”
She gave me her back. “I want to finish showering, alone. Please leave.”
I stepped out of my boots. Pulling my T-shirt over my head, I dropped it then unbuttoned my pants.
She turned back around. “I said….” Her gaze cut to my rock-hard dick, and she trailed off. “What are you doing?” Her throat moved with a swallow.
I kicked off my wet pants. “Leaving.” I reached for the soap. “After I rinse off.” I scrubbed my hands and arms. “Unless you want to fuck.”
