by Em Petrova
Max grunted and stepped away from her. Ruby realized he’d slammed her down into the chair, but she was free to stand now. She popped to her feet, and, ignoring the bruised sensation on her back, she hurried across the room.
Elias’s eyes flew open wide as she latched on to his thick forearm.
“I have your clothes. From the laundry.”
His eyes flickered over her face. Beneath her arm, she felt his muscles coil. Knowing full well that Max was watching her, she stepped closer to Elias. His masculine, spicy scent rushed in, and her mind reeled.
From the corner of her eye, she caught Max taking a step toward them.
Too late to back down, she realized what she must do or risk the bouncer catching her in a lie.
She very slowly, very purposely, rubbed her breasts against Elias’s chest.
He froze like an ice sculpture, his stare locked on her. Her insides flip-flopped between nervousness and real desire she hadn’t felt in…how long now?
Releasing him, she twitched her jaw. “Come with me.”
As she passed the table of men, she called out, “Welcome. A waitress will be with you in a minute.”
Without checking to see if Elias followed her, she strode out of the restaurant. The hallway linked the kitchen with her office and the laundry area. No sooner had she stepped over the threshold of the laundry room than Elias crowded behind her.
Surrounded by dirty sheets and towels, she had nowhere to escape his big, overbearing presence.
“What the hell’s going on?”
She couldn’t meet his eyes. “I’m sorry about out there. I had to make it look as if I have a thing for you.”
His brows shot up, which emphasized his manly features. “Ruby, you better start talkin’. But first, I have to do this.” Without warning, he hooked his big hand around her waist and tugged her up against his broad chest.
Her breath whooshed out, but she didn’t have time to pull it in again before he kissed her. The pressure of his mouth and the flood of liquid heat sinking between her thighs was a hundred percent genuine. She didn’t have to act for Max’s sake when she issued a throaty moan and slipped her arms around Elias’s neck.
With a grunt, he deepened the kiss, angling his head to crush his lips down harder, applying pressure to her spine with his fingertips. Oh God, she’d tempted the beast and now she was receiving what she’d asked for.
Did she want this? Elias was a stranger. Sure, she’d seen him half-naked and knew how hard he was from shoulder to strong calves. She knew his preferences for food and drink, but knowing these things didn’t make him kissing material.
Except holy steamy hell, he was. Every sweep of his mouth across hers had her rising on tiptoes to wiggle closer. A shiver coursed down her spine, and he yanked her tighter against him, locking an arm behind her back to pin her in place as he switched the kiss to tender nibbles.
The soft caresses suddenly stopped.
A breathy sigh left her. She opened her eyes to find the man staring down at her with confusion and desire stamped on his rugged face.
“We found the purple buoy.”
She dropped to her flat feet, but he didn’t let her go, and she didn’t tear free of his arms. It really had been ages since she let a man touch her. Maybe a whirlwind fling was exactly what she needed to break up the tedium and push away the constant fear in her life.
“Why did you give me that information?”
The question of the century. Right up there with if Mars could really be inhabited and what exactly was happening to the polar ice caps.
Her brow pinched as she fought to puzzle out a reason for what she’d done. “I-I can’t think with you touching me like this.”
A gleam hit his blue eyes. But they weren’t only blue, were they? They were really like a night sky, a swirling galaxy.
“Well, I’m not letting you go, Ruby. Tell me why you rubbed yourself against me out there.”
“That…” She wanted to sink through the floor boards. “That was for the bouncer’s sake.”
“Tell me his name.”
Did she give his real name or his shorter, Americanized one? She didn’t know Elias, so why should she place her trust in his hands? Just because her body felt good in those very hands didn’t mean squat.
“His name is Max.” It wasn’t a lie—he answered to it.
“And the other one?”
“Big Mike.”
“They don’t work for you, do they?”
A hiccup of air lodged in her lungs. “I don’t want to talk about them.”
He studied her, his gaze roaming from her hairline to the point of her chin. Why was he looking at her this way—like she was a treasure hauled up from the depths of the sea? Her insides heated more.
Footsteps sounded in the hallway outside the laundry room. She didn’t have time to peek over Elias’s shoulder and see who it was, because he turned her so her back pressed against the dryer, his shoulders blocking her from view.
Barricading her. Protecting her?
She shuddered.
“Who are you really, Ruby?” He slid his rough hands up to her shoulders.
“Who are you? We don’t know each other, and it needs to stay that way.” Why did a stab hit her heart when she said that? She must be losing her mind, or he sucked it out with those kisses that weren’t nearly deep enough.
“Talk to me, sweetheart. Give me something—anything. Tell me if you’re safe here.”
She shook her head. “I can’t answer those questions.” She reached behind her and laid a hand on his clothes she’d rescued from the laundromat. She shoved them at him. He spared the items a glance before taking them and dropping them on the floor.
“Why don’t I tell you what I see? Will that make things easier on you?”
She gulped.
“I see a tough woman trying to hold together a business, but there’s some undercurrent here. Something darker than bowls of chili and bags of cornbread.”
She didn’t speak. How could she?
“I see two bouncers in an empty bar. There’s something funny with you switching the menu on the door.”
She bit off a cry of despair. “Stop. Please just stop talking.”
He eased a fingertip along her jaw and then cradled her nape. Her head tipped at the feel.
“And I see a beautiful woman who hasn’t been touched…or kissed…” A puff of air rushed over her lips as he lowered his mouth to hers once again. “In a long time.”
She surged onto tiptoe to crush her mouth to his. The wild need pulsing through her veins made her bold, and she grabbed at his shoulders, pulling him down.
He pressed the tip of his tongue against the seam of her mouth, and she opened to invite him inside. She wasn’t prepared for his taste, though. Desire pounded through her. She locked her arms around his neck at the same time he picked her up and settled her atop the clothes dryer.
Elias flicked his tongue over hers, and they shared a primal moan even as he crowded between her legs, splaying them wider to accommodate his size. From the bulge of his cock against her pussy, she knew he was as big down there as he was everywhere else.
“Fuck, I can’t get enough of you,” he rumbled before his mouth slammed over hers again.
She cried out, rocking against him, needing more of this mindless pleasure. The images of her battered father on that screen and her fears for her girls upstairs faded in a meteor shower of heated kisses.
Raw power coiled in this man’s every fiber, and she drew from those strengths. He could help her—he’d already found the purple buoy. And she knew he’d also found what was under it. The package that would have hit her back door by way of a barrel in a week or so. Then a few young women would be sold with the drugs, but now that couldn’t happen, right? The drugs were gone, and the girls’ leaving would be postponed for a little while.
Elias threaded his fingers into her hair, trapping her, tilting her head further in order to delve his tongue into h
er mouth in languid passes that left her quaking. Suddenly, he withdrew to stare at her hard. “You’re so goddamn beautiful.”
Her heart throbbed at his compliment, just as it had when he said he saw a strong woman. The fact he’d been in this shit town for mere days and saw her as more than a mule coerced by the men holding her father prisoner lifted her spirits more than anything had in far too long.
She wiggled closer. “Meet me out back tonight. In the garden.”
“Nothing could stop me.” He rocked his hips, bringing his hard length up against the V of her legs. Her pussy flooded with want, and she sucked in a gasp.
“Uh…Ruby?” The woman’s voice shattered her sexual haze of sweeping kisses, whispered promises and callused hands.
Elias stiffened and tossed a look over his shoulder. “It’s your waitress.”
Reality struck hard as any blow. She wasn’t being washed away in a current of pleasure with a hot guy—she was the granddaughter of the original Ruby, her father was a prisoner of the Russian mafia, and no sun would shine down upon her today or any day after this.
She met Elias’s stare. His eyes still held the heat of their make out session, but he stepped aside to allow her to jump down from the dryer.
As her feet hit the floor, she snapped into her role once more. “Inessa. What do you need?”
“There is…something for you to handle. In your office.”
The woman’s eyes flicked from her to Elias. She knew better than to spill her guts in front of a stranger, so she waved for Ruby to come forward. She hurried to her side, and seeing her white face and pinched expression, she slid her arm around the girl’s shoulders and led her out of the laundry room.
She took the girl into her office. The minute she saw what awaited her there, her stomach bottomed out. She rushed to the chair, where Jenicka slumped over.
Immediately, she grabbed the girl’s wrists and checked for track marks on her arms. Seeing the injection sites, she jerked her face toward Inessa. “What happened here?”
She twisted her hands. “She claims a guy from last night wanted her to get high with him. Then she went limp on the stairs. I could barely move her into your office. What will you do, Ruby? We all know the rules around here—you get high, you’re out.”
Ruby straightened, staring down at Jenicka, who eyed her blearily. “She’s out.” She cupped the girl’s face. “Do you hear me? You have to leave. You broke my rules—no drugs!”
“But where will she go? She doesn’t have family or friends besides those in this building!” Inessa jumped to her defense, even though she told her about the girl shooting heroin in the first place.
It broke Ruby’s heart to do it, but she had rules and couldn’t have her girls using the drugs meant for the streets. Either way, this ended badly—with a girl alone in the world to forge her path through prostitution or worse, and Ruby would be left to feel like the murderer. Or she let her stay, and pretty soon she had a house filled with druggies. She’d learned the hard way that as soon as one girl tested her by using drugs, they all would.
She issued a shaky sigh. Elias’s scent still clung to her skin, but she felt far removed from the woman who’d kissed him back with abandon.
“Pack her things and meet me at the back, Inessa.”
“No! Ruby, please don’t do this. She’ll be alone to starve.”
“I can’t have people breaking my rules,” she answered in a flat tone.
Jenicka, slumped in the chair, shot Ruby a grin. Clearly, she would be out of it for a long time. But when she came out of her drug haze, she’d find herself locked out of the only home she had here in America.
She stomped to the door and threw it open. When she called for Max, the man appeared instantly. He was never far away. He’d probably watched her kissing Elias and grinding on him, which was good for her cover.
She pointed to the young woman. “She must go.”
Max nodded and moved to the chair. He tossed her over his shoulder and walked out.
Ruby watched her go, ignoring Inessa’s noisy sobs. Any softness she’d felt a few minutes before at Elias’s hands was long gone. She was Ruby again—hard and ruthless. A woman who had no choice but to do what would protect what she had and what she loved.
Was it worth it anymore?
Chapter Six
What the hell happened? He’d lost his grip—something he never, ever did. Years ago, he’d fought alongside plenty of men who did the same, and he didn’t have any respect for their dalliances with generals’ daughters or one-night stands with the wives of diplomats.
Ruby was neither of those things—at least, what digging he’d done on the woman matched what she presented to the world. Still, he wanted to kick his own ass for messing with her.
Kissing her had been as easy as breathing, though. Touching her body, lifting her, thrusting his tongue against hers, plunging his fingers into the thick mass of her red hair…all those moments had come so naturally that he didn’t need to think.
But the expression of fear on her face when that woman walked in on them wouldn’t quit revolving through his damn mind.
She’d told him nothing and everything in that moment. He and his team knew all didn’t add up in Ruby’s Place. Everything was off.
All appeared quiet. No customers came or went. The inhabitants didn’t step outside for fresh air, take a walk or even peek out the windows. With a wall at his back, he raised his binoculars and scanned the front of the building.
He only sat there about an hour before the sky opened up and a storm swept in. Walls of rain pushed by the pressure systems of the Bering Sea struck him hard and soaked him to the skin. He could return to the truck stop and dry off, but his gut was tingling again, and it wasn’t the food at Ruby’s Place.
What people were on the streets would seek shelter in a storm such as this. So what better time for an illegal transaction to take place?
The longer he sat there, and the wetter he became, the more he knew with an instinct born of experience that he must stick it out. Sheets of rain continued to slam the streets, but over that din eventually came the noise of a truck engine.
He twisted his head to see up the street. Sure enough, the vehicle was rolling into town. In a town this small, a person quickly learned the regulars who frequented the laundromat or small corner store. He’d never seen a truck like this before. On the side, a logo stuck out to him.
A liquor delivery.
“I’ve got something,” he told Penn through the comms unit. “I’m moving closer to have a better look.”
“I just sent Winston to relieve you.”
“Winston can come if he likes, but I’m not leaving this post.”
He wasn’t directly disobeying an order, but it came close. Why was he so invested in this mission? First he’d slipped up and kissed the hell out of a beautiful woman who may be enemy or informant, and now he was basically telling his captain to shove it.
He wasn’t sorry, though. He ducked and rushed to the next building. Hitting his knees, he made himself small so as not to be seen easily through the slanting rain.
The truck downshifted. Gasper was close enough to see the flash of red on the pavement when the driver braked.
He had to move in, find a better angle. Running through the rain didn’t bother him—he’d done it plenty as a kid, and he was from the land of ten thousand lakes. He swam so much that if he was dry, his family commented on it.
When he dropped to a crouch behind some garbage containers, the truck backed up to Ruby’s. Someone wearing a black slicker emerged from the building, but he couldn’t make out who it was.
Until the wind ruffled the hood the person wore, and he saw a bright red tendril of hair escape. Snatched by the wind, that red lock looked like a beacon.
He stared hard through the screen of rain at Ruby. She glanced around nervously as if expecting someone to pop out at her. Then someone got out and approached her. She quickly signed the clipboard he handed he
r before she vanished inside.
Seconds later, the tailgate of the truck lifted, and two men began to unload crates of whiskey and vodka.
“Whatcha got, Jack?” his captain asked in his comms unit.
“The bar’s receiving a shipment of booze.”
“Seems suspect. How busy is the bar? How drunk are the people of White Fog?”
“Have Lip run these plates for me. Alpha November Oscar three one seven.”
“Copy that. Winston’s approaching on your seven.”
“Damn. Patch me in with him. I don’t want to risk this driver seeing him.”
“Will do.”
Gasper clutched his binoculars. They weren’t much good in this heavy rain, and the fog was rolling in to coat the ground in a thick layer. Evening was falling too. Soon it would be time to meet Ruby in the garden.
He wanted to kiss her again, but that couldn’t happen.
He burned to pull her against him and make her trust him enough to tell him the real story.
Winston’s voice filled his ear even as he signaled his coordinates from across the distance.
“I have eyes on you, Winston. What do you see?” Between the two of them, they might get a complete picture of the deal going down. Gasper didn’t for a single second believe this was an ordinary liquor delivery.
“Two men unloading.”
“That’s what I got too. Any sign of the women who work here?”
“Negative.”
Winston was often split from the main team of six and placed into a second team here in Alaska. The state was too big for one unit to cover most times, and Winston, Day, and Paxton, along with three others, formed the second unit. But since Paxton’s injury, he may not be rejoining them, and that was a damn shame. Gasper would miss the hell out of the guy if he was sidelined.
More activity in the back of the bar caught his notice, and he peered through the rain and fog. After the cases were unloaded, a big wooden cask was rolled off the truck. He’d been in Alaskan bars enough times to know that wasn’t normal. He’d never seen the likes of this.
