by Em Petrova
“Fuck, sweetheart. I can’t last.”
She met his stare, her mouth full of his cock. He almost lost it on the spot, but he held back somehow as she pulled off him. “I want to pleasure you,” she whispered.
“You do. God, you do.” He took control, rolling her gently into the covers and sliding down her body, kissing, licking and teasing her skin with kisses all the way to the V of her thighs.
She cried out when he covered her slit with his open mouth. She bucked, and he slipped the point of his tongue into her tight cavern. Delicious juices hit his tastebuds, and he groaned for more. Cupping her ass, he feasted on her drenched hole and folds. When he reached her clit and lapped at the bundle of nerves, she cried out and came.
All the missions in the world didn’t compare to this moment with this woman. The light of his life.
The love of his life.
He laved her with his tongue, bringing her down from her high. When he moved up her body with his cock poised to enter her, she met his stare.
She grasped his cock at the root and guided it toward her pussy, granting permission to take her with no barriers.
Why did he feel like it was a claiming?
In one shove, he filled her pussy. Her mouth popped open on a gasp, and he thrust his tongue inside. She wrapped her arms and legs around him, riding his cock and driving him to the point of no return.
Her insides clamped on his length.
“Come with me. Now, Ruby!” He lost it first, the first spurt hitting her bare walls. He had no cares whether they made a child, because he’d take care of them both for the rest of his days. He’d live for them alone.
A roar bottled in his throat, but he held it in, groaning through his orgasm and rocking hard and fast while she shattered too.
Their kiss spiraled on for long minutes after completion, and she ended up in his arms where she belonged.
“Ruby…” Did he confess his love for her? A woman like her would more than likely run. Besides, until he knew what promises he could even offer, there was no point in saying them.
She met his stare, her eyes deep pools of tumult. Did she feel anything for him in return?
He didn’t speak what was in his heart. He cupped the unbruised side of her face. “Did I hurt you at all?” he murmured.
She shook her head and covered his hand with hers. “No. You can’t hurt me, Elias. We both know that.”
Chapter Ten
“How did a nice girl like you get mixed up in this?”
Ruby snuggled closer to Elias’s chest. The pleasant aftershocks of an amazing orgasm coupled with feeling safe after what happened in the kitchen with Big Mike left her feeling boneless.
“I’ve never told anybody this, but…my grandmother, the original Ruby, ran a brothel. Everyone knew and no one ever told.”
“Did you know growing up?”
“I knew she let young women board here. I saw men coming and going, but this is a fisherman’s town. And women are scarcer than men in Alaska.”
The brush of his fingertips over her spine lifted the tiny hairs on her body, and she stretched like a cat for more. What was it about this man? He was different.
She’d think on that later, though. For now, he wanted the story.
“After my grandmother passed, my father took over, but he spent most of his time in the bar instead of the kitchen. He started running poker games out of here and ended up in deep with the Bratva.”
“Unfortunately, it’s an age-old story I’ve heard many times before.”
She nodded. Her throat was suddenly thick, and she swallowed hard to dispel a lump. “I hate it here. I never wanted this life, but I have to work off my father’s debt before I can leave.”
He fell silent, but Elias was one of those men who was always energized. She felt his muscles humming under her body and could practically hear his mind ticking. When she lifted her head and looked at him, he winced.
“What is it?” she asked.
“You have one hell of a shiner.” He skimmed his fingers over her brow while staring at her cheek.
“Just what I need.” Big Mike would be puffing out his chest that he’d done this to her. She’d seen what kind of man he was too many times.
“Was it that asshole you call Big Mike?” A tendon in the crease of Elias’s jaw seemed to pulsate, and she heard the creak of his molars.
“I don’t want to talk about it. Please don’t stir up more trouble than you already have.” She sat up and drew the sheet over her breasts. “What did happen to Polina? What did you do?”
He scooted into a seated position with his spine propped against the pillows. “She’s safe. That’s all I can tell you for now.”
She arched a brow at him.
“If someone pressures you, they can force you to tell them what you know about her, Ruby. It’s better if you know nothing.”
Okay, she saw his point—didn’t mean she liked it.
She started to tell him as much, but a crash sounded in the front of the building.
Leaping from the bed, she reached for the first garment she saw, which was a thick robe. She shoved her arms into it as she ran from the room. Elias was only steps behind her.
She whirled to him, hand out to stop him in his tracks. “Stay here. Nobody knows you’re in here, and I need to keep it that way!”
His eyes narrowed on her face. “I won’t leave you unprotected again.”
“I’m fine! Stay here. I’ll call you if I need you.” With that, she took off through the hall and pushed on the kitchen door to send it swinging. When her bare feet hit the wood floors of the restaurant, she spotted several girls grouped at the bottom of the stairs.
Ruby rushed over. “What happened?”
“Alina fell.”
Pushing her way closer to the group, she assessed the brunette on the floor holding her ankle. “Is it broken?”
She shook her head and in rapid Russian, spouted off that she thought her ankle was merely twisted. Ruby helped her up, and with another girl supporting Alina on the other side, they helped her to a chair. She sank to it and moaned in pain.
Ruby looked to her go-to girl. “Anushka, call the mobile health unit and see if they’re in one of the nearby villages so Alina can be examined.”
Anushka hurried to do her bidding, and Ruby bent to look closer at Alina’s ankle. It was puffing up.
“How did you fall?” she asked her.
“I was in a hurry to tell you that Marta is gone!”
Ruby’s blood turned to ice like the shore of White Fog in January. “Gone?”
Alina nodded. “We share a room, so I’d know.”
“Are her belongings gone?”
She nodded and bit her lip as tears filled her blue eyes.
“Son of a bitch!” Ruby rocketed to her feet and took off upstairs to see for herself. After a quick sweep of the room the girls shared, she ran down again at breakneck speed.
She gave rapid orders to elevate Alina’s foot and to ice it until they heard from the health unit. Since White Fog was so small, there wasn’t a resident doctor, and a mobile clinic traveled the area, making rounds from small village to village. Who knew when the next time they’d show up on the single street of White Fog?
The alternative was to drive the girl to a bigger town with a hospital and pray Ruby could dodge questions about the girl who didn’t speak a lick of English. No—she had to hope the clinic showed up here or tend to the injury using the knowledge she had acquired over the years.
First, she needed to speak to the man hiding in her room. Curse those guys for ever coming here!
When she threw open her bedroom door, Elias was on his feet, fully dressed, waiting for her.
“What happened? I don’t like not being in the action.”
She hurled the door shut, and the perfume bottles on her dresser shook from the force of the slam. She faced him, hands on hips to keep them from shaking with anger. “A second girl’s gone missing! Why do I hav
e a feeling you know where she is?”
“Goddammit.” He sliced his fingers through his hair and moved toward her.
She sidestepped him to avoid touching him. She couldn’t trust her body to obey her command to stay away from the man—she wanted him too much.
“What did you do, Elias?” she hissed furiously.
“I—”
She cut him off, hand raised. “I know—you can’t say. Well, I can’t say I need you here anymore. All you’re doing is causing me trouble!” She ignored the way his expression blanked as if he’d severed any emotions he had.
“Wait. Take this.” He thrust a slip of paper into her hand. “Memorize it and then throw it out. You can reach me without being traced. Remember this if you need me.”
She crushed the paper in her hand, grabbed some clothes and stormed away, intending to dress in the bathroom across the hall. “You can see yourself out!”
As Gasper approached, the knot of men grouped at the SUV broke apart and looked at him. Each stride he took felt loaded with all the frustration and power he couldn’t do anything with.
What happened to this being an in-and-out job? They were fucking around too long. They knew where the girls were and had the means to stop the Bratva. He didn’t understand why the clock had stopped ticking on this mission, but now at the worst possible time, they were pulling the girls out of Ruby’s Place?
Shadow stepped out of the concealment of darkness, just as his name implied. He paused at Gasper’s expression. “What the hell happened?”
“We can’t take any more girls. It’s putting Ruby in too much danger.”
Penn faced him. “Fill us in.”
“That fucking bouncer hit her because a girl went missing.”
“Fuck,” Penn bit out.
Gasper’s fists clenched involuntarily at the thought of that asshole laying hands on her again. Even if she was angry with Elias—or never wanted to see him again—she still had his protection.
“Our plan to get the girls out safe before shit really goes down isn’t the plan anymore,” he said.
“You’re right. If we get anyone out, it has to be that big dude Mikhail.”
Several of the team nodded at Penn’s statement.
Shadow brought his hand down on Gasper’s shoulder and squeezed. “This is my doing. If I hadn’t seen that girl out walking and convinced her to leave Ruby’s Place, this wouldn’t have happened.”
Gasper bowed his head. “You did what you believed to be correct in the moment. She is better off protected by us than prostituting herself until she’s sold to a ‘husband’ later.”
Penn glanced at the phone in his hand and then brought it to his ear. “Captain Sullivan.”
He listened for a moment, his jaw tightening. He turned to stare toward the road leading to the few buildings that made up White Fog. “Hell,” he grated out. “We’ll be there in five.”
Every man went on high alert, prepared to grab weapons and dig in for war.
Penn swept his gaze over the group. “The guy who runs the B&B was just found dead.”
“Jesus Christ. And the first girl Ruby kicked out—Jenicka? Is she still there?”
“That’s undetermined.”
“If the Bratva showed up there to take her, and the B&B owner got in the way…” Shadow drifted off, but he didn’t need to continue. They all knew what he was thinking, and he was probably correct.
Gasper checked his sidearm. “Ready to roll, Captain.”
Penn shot him an odd look before he gave a nod. That look left Gasper wondering what he wanted to say to him but held back. After their disagreement, they needed to clear the air. There wasn’t time now.
A minute later, they were speeding toward the bed and breakfast. On the short drive, Penn shared the details. The state police received a call from an anonymous woman saying the owner was dead on the floor in the kitchen.
“Could that anonymous woman be Jenicka?” Gasper asked.
“Unlikely—she doesn’t speak English, right? She didn’t say the cause of death, but we’re about to find out.” Penn parked and the team didn’t bother hiding who they were to any nosy people of White Fog as they piled out and rushed the building.
Gasper, Shadow and Winston took the back. Gasper glanced at the muddy spots of the garden for footprints as he closed in. Seeing nothing more than a few canine paw prints and a crushed flower or two, he reached the house with Shadow in the lead.
“Don’t touch anything,” Penn’s voice projected into everyone’s comms devices.
Gasper’s team made certain the place was clear of danger before they reached the kitchen and found the dead man. Sure enough, he was sprawled there, facedown.
“Looks like he was making an escape,” Gasper commented.
Winston crouched beside the body. A small pool of blood seeped from beneath him. “Shot in the back.”
Calls of “clear” and “all clear” filled Gasper’s ear, and then Penn and Lipton appeared while the rest of the team checked on the people staying upstairs. One of them would get Jenicka out and question her about the matter.
Gasper directed his stare from the body. “Goddammit. My guess is the Bratva knows that the girl’s been staying here and came after him.”
“Lip, increase the security around the other girls we took just in case,” Penn said.
“What about Ruby?” Gasper blurted out.
Penn met his stare when he gave Lipton the command, “Get some eyes on Ruby’s Place too. As usual, we’re spread too thin, even in a town this small.”
Again, Gasper got the feeling Penn wasn’t stating everything he wanted to.
“You might as well say whatever it is you’re holding back.”
All the men looked up at him.
Penn never threw punches without landing on his target, and he didn’t now. “All right. I wanted to get you alone, but we’ll do this now. You’re too close on this mission, Jack. We need you to take about ten steps away from your feelings for Ruby, or step down from it altogether.”
“Step down from it altogether,” he repeated dully. His chest burned. “My feelings aren’t in play here. I’m protecting our informant!”
“Yes, and you’re correct. But you can’t stand there and tell me that if Ruby’s life was at risk that you wouldn’t put your teammates in danger to save her.”
Gasper went dead and cold inside. He loved his brothers. Would do anything to save them, including taking a bullet for them. But he’d do the same for Ruby, which put them on an even playing field.
He sliced his fingers through his hair. “You’re right. But you’re wrong too. I would never put my team in danger. But I won’t put Ruby in danger either. So make the call—am I in or out on this?”
Penn held Gasper’s stare for a long heartbeat. He didn’t want to be sidelined, and he’d catch hell about it from his other superiors in Operation Freedom Flag who believed in him, but he always followed an order and wouldn’t stop doing that now.
After a moment, Penn said, “You’re needed here, Jack.”
He wasn’t prepared for the flood of relief that pumped through his body, leaving him feeling like he’d just gained some ground in his fight.
A fight to keep doing the job he loved…while winning the woman who held his heart.
A deathly silence fell over Ruby’s Place, so deep and impenetrable that her restaurant and bar might as well be the first funeral home in White Fog.
Things went on as normal—the girls did their assigned duties. Chores were completed. Ruby taped the menu in the right side to indicate she wasn’t taking any shipments today.
But other things were very, very different. Ruby sported a bruise on her cheek that extended to her eye—that shiner Elias had mentioned. The girls whispered about who gave her the bruise and about the dead owner of the bed and breakfast down the street.
She tried to stay busy, but she was just waiting for the other bomb to drop.
Then Big Mike circled the ba
r and joined her behind the counter. When he grasped her arm hard enough to bruise, she choked down a cry. She wouldn’t give the man the satisfaction of seeing he could hurt her, and she raised her head high to glare at him.
“What do you want?”
“This.” He thrust out his phone.
She really didn’t want to see, but her eyes flashed to the device anyway. Her insides filled with dread as she saw her father. Thinner, balder, his eyes two hollows of despair. A trickle of blood ran from his mouth.
Tearing her eyes free, she focused on the big Russian. “What do you want from me?”
“The girls. Jenicka, Polina and Marta.”
“I sent Jenicka away for drugs. You know that’s my rule, and even your bosses know as much. If they want her, they can go find her.”
“Oh, they already know where she is.”
“I don’t care about her anymore.” She hated herself even as she said it. Except she couldn’t care about every single person who had ever walked into her life—her soul wasn’t big enough to hold them all. She wanted to, but it simply wasn’t possible.
Then again, if Jenicka stole into Ruby’s Place to ask her for help, she’d do whatever it took in a heartbeat. Without hesitation. Maybe her soul wasn’t so iced over after all.
“Marta and Polina ran off with one of their lovers if I have to guess. A couple of the truck drivers who pass through,” she told Big Mike.
He narrowed his eyes on her. “We’ll see, won’t we?”
“I don’t lock my girls in. If they choose to leave, I can’t stop them.”
He raised his hand sharply, and she flinched, preparing for the blow that never came. When she opened her eyes, she found him sneering at her. “Remember who you belong to.”
She stared at the man until he circled the bar and returned to his position in front of the restaurant. Then she sagged against the bar, heart pounding with terror she didn’t want to feel anymore.
Where could she go? Who could she set free before she took off? The girls—or most of them—and she was pretty sure she could get out of White Fog unnoticed. But that left her father in the lurch.
