by Sybil Bartel
“Yeah.” Luna didn’t sound happy. “I’ll see you at quarter of. I know you work solo, but I’ve got two men on standby that I think should be on perimeter. We could use the extra eyes.”
“No.” I knew how Fedorov worked. Extra men were potentially extra collateral damage. I didn’t know how green Luna’s men were, and I didn’t want to find out.
“Fine, but for the record, you’re stubborn as fuck. I’ll leave coms at your penthouse before I head to the restaurant. Anything else you need?”
“Two clean cell phones and a rental. Park it in the garage and leave the keys with the phones in the penthouse.” I didn’t have time to get new phones, and she’d need a vehicle if I didn’t come back.
“Done. Anything else?”
She dropped her chest and her head to the bed and looked over her shoulder at me as I absently stroked two fingers in and out of her. “Don’t wear the uniform or use a company vehicle.”
Luna smirked. “Okay, boss. You wanna hold my dick while I piss too?”
“Negative.” But I wanted to fuck her again. “Don’t be late.”
“Don’t you be late. I hear what the fuck you’re doing, amigo.” Luna laughed and hung up.
He answered the phone while he was still buried deep inside me. I didn’t even care. I never wanted him to pull out, but one slow inch at a time, he slid his huge cock out of me, and his release dripped down my leg.
God help me, all I felt was loss. I wanted to carry his child. I wanted to be tethered to this man who was a killer so bad, I could taste it. As if he were having the same thoughts, his fingers ran up my thigh and slowly drove into me, pushing his seed back inside.
I was more fucked than I ever was with Viktor.
Dane hung up, but his fingers didn’t leave my body. “I want to see you come again.”
“Do you?” I rocked back on his hand. I didn’t care what he did to my body. It was my heart he was stealing.
He didn’t answer. His thumb circled my clit, and then he gently pulled his fingers out. Grasping my hips, he rolled me to my back.
I sucked in a breath at the sight of him standing over me. His expression fierce, his pants unzipped, his giant cock wet from my pussy, he stole my breath and my reason. I foolishly opened my mouth. “I don’t want you to do this.”
His hands on my knees, he pushed my legs wide and leaned over me. Gentle and slow, he sank his still hard cock inside me and cupped my face. “Nothing is going to happen to me.”
“I want us to leave,” I blurted.
He stroked my cheek. “I will never hide in fear.”
I exhaled as he seated himself all the way inside me. The invasion was all at once too much and not enough. He was so big and consuming, he could make me come just by being inside of me. I grasped for reason. “Running isn’t hiding.”
“There’s no difference.” He pulled back an inch and slowly stroked.
I grasped his rock-hard biceps and closed my eyes for a moment. “Stop.” I couldn’t think while I was looking into his stormy eyes.
“Look at me, beautiful.”
No willpower, I opened my eyes.
He touched his lips to mine once. “I’m not going to let you hide in fear either. Understand?”
I nodded but then bit my lower lip as he pulled halfway out. “How are you still hard?” I arched my back to get him to sink back inside me.
He grasped my hips and stayed only halfway in. Making short, quick, hard strokes, he thrust against my G-spot. “I’m always hard around you, love.”
I wrapped my legs around his waist and fought from coming. “Stop calling me that.”
His hips froze and he caught the side of my face. “Why do you think you don’t deserve to be loved?”
My breath fast, my heart rate faster, a lump formed in my throat.
“Answer me, damn it.”
I’d told myself for five years that love didn’t exist. I lived it. Men didn’t love, they used. Women were toys and men used them up. Viktor used me. Over and over, he said I had to earn his love. But I couldn’t tell Dane that.
His chest heaving, veiled anger tightening his jaw, Dane still looked down at me like I was the most important woman ever to him. “Do you know why I’m inside you?”
I didn’t move.
His thumb stroked my cheek and his voice dropped even lower. “Do you know why I told you who I am?”
I didn’t blink.
“Do you know why I’m not letting you go back to him?”
Dane wasn’t making me earn anything. He would never do that. Traitorous tears welled in my eyes and one slid down my cheek, because I knew right then how damaged I was. “I’m sorry,” I whispered.
“No,” he barked. “Don’t fucking cry.”
I squeezed my eyes shut and fought like hell to keep from bursting into tears as I blurted out the ugly answer to his question. “He said love was earned and I—”
“Open your goddamn eyes!”
No matter how much I wanted to ignore him, I couldn’t. I was trained. I did what I was told. I opened my eyes, but I didn’t look at him. I couldn’t.
He grasped my chin and forced me to face him then he lowered his voice. “You want to cry over any other goddamn thing, you do it. But don’t you ever cry over what that piece of shit said or did again. You fucking hear me? He doesn’t deserve it. He doesn’t deserve a goddamn thing from you.” He abruptly pulled out.
Tears slid down my cheeks and I curled into a ball.
“Irina.”
He barked my name like Viktor barked my name, and I flinched.
“Goddamn it,” he cursed. “I am not yelling at you, sweetheart. I am not yelling.”
His voice only slightly raised this time, he was right. He wasn’t technically yelling, but it hurt nonetheless. God, it hurt. “You said I was broken.” I never denied it. What did he expect? I didn’t know what I was supposed to do. I didn’t know how I was supposed to act, or what I was supposed to say.
Huge arms scooped me up then he sat on the bed. Cradling me to his chest like a child, he dropped his voice to a quiet baritone. “You were abused, Irina. I can’t undo that. Only you have the power to heal… if you want to.”
Oh God. Tears of humiliation and regret dripped down my cheeks.
“I’m here. I’m fucking here, but you have to let me in.”
I wrapped my arms around the neck of a man who gave me more than anyone ever had, and the words, they just started pouring out.
“I can’t let you in, don’t you see that? I can’t let you hurt me. You could hurt me so much worse than he ever did, and I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. I don’t know what to say. I don’t know how to act. I don’t know who to be without someone telling me how to be it. I can’t be your love or your sweetheart. I’m no one. I have nothing, not a name, not an opinion, not even a wardrobe I picked for myself. Everything, everything you see is him. It’s all him. I am nothing….” I choked on a sob. “I have nothing.”
Strong hands held my face and firm lips kissed my forehead. “You have me.”
I forced myself to look up at him. “Why?” He had to know this wasn’t normal. He had to know no sane person would be saying that. “Because I’m a problem you can solve then move on from?”
“No.”
“Don’t you see? You can’t say those things to me. You can’t throw away words and not consider that they’ll stick. You can’t tell me you’ll take care of me if I’m carrying your baby.”
His chest rose with an inhale and his expression turned fiercely protective. “I am not careless.”
I wanted to scream in frustration, but at the same time I wanted to throw my arms around him and never let go. He was careless. More careless than any man had ever been with me. And I knew that meant that he was dealing with feelings himself, but how could he not see how careless he was being? “Your release is dripping out of me.”
“That wasn’t careless.” He stared into my eyes and reached for my soul. “T
hat was intentional.”
As if the world stopped spinning, everything froze.
Me. Him. The chaos in my head. The insecurity. The questions. The anger and hurt and self-hatred and the regret. All of it went silent.
That was intentional.
He intentionally wanted me.
He intentionally tried to tether us together.
He intentionally came inside me.
“Dane,” I whispered.
He kissed me once. “You don’t need to question my intent.”
“We don’t even know each other.”
“I knew when I saw you on my kitchen floor that you were the first woman I’ve wanted since I was eighteen years old.”
I bit back hope. “Because I was submissive?”
“No, because you were beautiful and resilient and I was looking at a survivor.”
I didn’t deserve it. I didn’t deserve any of his words. “I sold myself for five hundred thousand dollars.” There was nothing poetic about that.
“The weak don’t have a price.”
“Don’t romanticize who I am. You’ll only be disappointed.”
“You think I didn’t sell myself?”
“You sold a service. It’s different.” Killer, escort, it didn’t matter, it was still a service he was selling, not his soul.
“When I got out of the Marines, do you know what I knew how to do?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “Wreak havoc. I know more ways to kill you than fuck you. Causing the most amount of pain with the least amount of effort wasn’t a service, it was an addiction, and I was weak.”
Stunned, I stared at him. “I’m sorry.” No words could undo what he’d been through.
“Channeling four tours worth of rage into a desk job was never an option. I was unhinged.”
I didn’t know what to say, so I said nothing.
“I was you.” He sounded like he was admitting defeat.
I couldn’t even be angry at the comparison because I knew who I was. It’d taken me five years and three days to walk away.
“I saw you on my kitchen floor and I knew who you were. I knew what was going on inside your head.” He stoked my hair, my back. “You were thinking survival.”
I didn’t deny it. “Better the enemy you know.”
“I wasn’t the enemy.” His quiet determination filled the space between us.
“I didn’t know that.” Not at the time.
“I know.” He easily lifted me and set me on the bed next to him. “I purposely didn’t tell you either.” He stood and picked up my suitcase from where it sat by his dresser. Realizing he’d moved it into his bedroom while I’d slept made my stomach flutter. Placing it on the bed, he opened it without asking and quickly, but systematically, looked through the clothes.
His movements were precise, almost as if he’d choreographed them. “Why?”
“You didn’t need to hear who I was.”
I didn’t understand. “But you told me anyway.”
“Later.” His gaze caught mine as he handed me clothes. “After you saw what I was capable of. After you realized I would protect you. Put these on.”
I took the leggings I worked out in and a blouse I would have paired with dress pants or a skirt. “Why did you tell me?” I didn’t question his choice of clothes for me. If I stopped to think about it, I’d have had to admit to myself that I liked him making the decision for me.
“Because you had nothing to lose.”
He was right. I didn’t have anything left to lose. It was why I’d chosen that exact moment to leave Viktor, but hearing Dane say it made me feel ashamed, and that made me angry.
Dane immediately picked up on it. “You’re angry.”
I stood. “I’m not. I’m going to shower.”
Dane caught my arm. “You don’t need to run from me.” He paused. “But if you want to, then after this is done, I’ll take you wherever you want to go. No questions asked.”
I stared at his hand on my arm. Huge fingers, bruised knuckles, a cut across the back of his hand. My first thought was rejection. It spread through my mind before I could fight the emotion and back it down. He wasn’t getting rid of me. He was offering me a way out. He was offering me what no one had ever offered me. And I had to question it. “Why?”
“A caged bird never flies.”
I looked up at storm-colored eyes and war-hardened features, and I thought of every reason why I should take him up on his offer. “Thank you for the offer.”
His hand dropped. “You’re welcome.”
Goddamn it. She was going to run. I saw it in her eyes.
I locked down my expression. “Shower. I’ll meet you in the kitchen.” As I turned toward the door, Hunter went to her side.
“Dane?” Desperation filled her voice.
The mission, I reminded myself, the fucking mission was still the same. Fedorov was dead. I turned. “What?”
Her hair fell over her face as she looked down. “I wouldn’t know where to go,” she quietly admitted.
I didn’t give her an in. I fucking wanted to. I wanted to tell her to stay, but I’d meant what I said. I wasn’t going to cage her in. “Whole world out there.” And I hated most of it.
“I don’t need to see the whole world.” She held the clothes that fucking tool bought her in front of her naked body.
I didn’t want her to dress in them any more than I wanted her to think about him, but she was so damn small, I couldn’t put her in anything of mine. “You need to get ready.” I didn’t want to fucking talk to her about where she was gonna go.
She sucked in a breath and nodded. “Give me a few minutes.”
Taking only a few minutes was an accommodation for me, but I didn’t care. Somewhere I’d lost the battle. Maybe I’d never won. Maybe I’d never gotten through to her. I didn’t fucking know. But now I was going to have to deal with the fact that there was a woman walking around who could be carrying my kid.
Pissed at myself for not seeing how this could play out, I snapped my fingers at Hunter. Instead of coming, he lay down at her feet.
God-fucking-damn it.
Now she’d stolen my fucking dog too.
I stalked to the kitchen and put on the tactical vest I’d retrieved from the barn this morning. I disassembled my McMillan CS5 sniper rifle and packed it into a backpack. I checked the magazines on two of my untraceable handguns and holstered them. I was scrambling eggs when she walked into the kitchen with Hunter on her heels.
She paused when she saw me at the stove. “You’re cooking.”
I plated the eggs. “You’re eating.”
She stared at the food.
I put a fork on the plate and shoved it across the island to her. “Eat.”
She didn’t move.
I poured a cup of coffee, put cream in it and set it in front of her. “We don’t have much time.”
“You made this for me?”
If I wasn’t so fucking pissed off, I would’ve taken her mouth. She looked fucking gorgeous standing there with no makeup and her hair down. “Yes.”
“Thank you.” She reached for the mug.
“Food first,” I warned. “You didn’t eat last night.” Nothing in my fridge had been touched, and I knew from the security feeds what time she’d gotten to my house.
She picked up the fork. “You’re bossy this morning.”
“I’m bossy every morning.”
She glanced at Hunter. “Your dog is following me.”
“I noticed.”
“Why is he doing that?”
“He likes you.” He was protecting her. From me.
She looked down at him and he wagged his tail. “Last night he wanted to bite me.”
“Now he doesn’t.”
She didn’t look convinced. “What will he do if I pet him?”
Give up his last ounce of loyalty to me. “Lick your hand.”
She didn’t pet him. She took a small bite and slowly chewed like she hated it.
I
stared at her. “Something wrong?”
She set the fork down. “I’m not sure what’s right.”
She was. For me. “Eat. Then we’ll discuss it.”
She looked at me over the rim of the coffee mug. “Why are you angry?”
I picked the least inflammatory reason from my growing list. “You’re in his clothes.”
Slowly, as if she understood something I didn’t say, she set the mug down and nodded. “Thank you for making me breakfast.” She picked the fork back up.
I wasn’t going to watch her eat. It’d make me want to fuck her again. Everything she did made me want to fuck her. Like her cunt was my own personal redemption. “I’ll be in the garage when you’re ready.” I didn’t wait for a reply. I gave Hunter a hand command to stay before I walked out, but I didn’t know why I bothered. The traitor was lying at her feet.
I loaded my shit in the truck, cursing myself for not getting a rental under one of my aliases. I was closing the door when she walked into the garage followed by Hunter.
“Hunter, stay.”
She looked over her shoulder as Hunter walked back into the house with his head down. “Why can’t he come?” She crossed her arms protectively around herself. “What if we don’t come back?”
“He has a dog door.” I’d trained him to unlock it and use it if he needed to. He could get out, but he couldn’t get back in. “If I don’t come home, he’ll go to the neighbor’s house.” I knew she said we, but she never said she didn’t want an out.
She looked out the open garage door at the surrounding woods. “You don’t have neighbors.” She didn’t mention coming back.
“Seven miles to the north.” Hunter had made the trip a few times. The old man who lived on the next property north of mine always fed him and brought him back.
“And the neighbor will what? Keep him?”
“If he has to.” We had a deal. If Hunter showed up at the neighbor’s and I didn’t contact him within three days, Hunter was his. “Get in.” I opened the door for her.
She stepped up on the running board and gracefully got in.
Refraining from touching her, I closed her door then got behind the wheel.
She didn’t speak until we were miles from my house on the county road. “You know Viktor can find any properties you have.”
