She ached for him. She wanted to know what it would be like to have the strong, sure fingers that were kneading her breast inside her. What it would be like to have him inside her.
That she was dreaming of the Kiwi and could actually feel the weight of his leg atop her own made her sigh with contentment. She longed to know how it felt—the wondrous, intoxicating feeling of being taken—and it had been almost within her reach.
She came partially awake with the prod of her subconscious anger at Tatyana Sakova needling her but settled down with a sob of frustration.
Her dream of him continued but in a different location and on a different note.
He was chasing her and she was running as fast as she could down a long, dark corridor in an attempt to escape him. She kept whipping her head around to see how close he was. Even in the dim light the cruel intent on his face was clear. He meant to bring her to ground and she knew he would. It was only a matter of time before her legs gave out and she succumbed to the inevitability of being captured.
She felt a flare of hope as she neared a turn in the corridor. Reaching out, she grasped the edge of the wall and flung herself around it. She stumbled to a stop and groaned as she realized it was a dead end with no way out. The sound of his pounding footsteps came to a halt and she slowly turned to face him.
He was standing there blocking her escape with the light behind his powerful body. She could see nothing save his dark outline—arms curved menacing at his side, legs planted apart as though he expected her to throw herself at him.
“Please,” she whispered.
He took a step forward and she backed up.
“Come here,” he ordered, his voice thick and deep and pitched low.
She shook her head. “No, you’ll hurt me.”
“I’ll hurt you if you don’t,” he warned. He advanced another step.
She moved farther down the dead end until her back was pressed to the wall. She had nowhere to go, no way out. If she attempted to run past him, she knew he would throw out an arm to snag her around the waist. She moaned with hopelessness and gave in to the inevitable, her shoulders slumping.
He came slowly toward her like a panther stalking its prey. His hands were loose at his side. All she could see of him was his ebon shadow and that made her heart race with fear and her body clench with anticipation.
“You don’t learn, do you, wench?” he asked in that low, threatening voice.
He was only two feet away. She knew there was no way to stop him and when he lifted his hand, she turned her head away, squeezed her eyes shut, waiting for his slap.
But it wasn’t a slap that he placed against her cheek but the heat of his rough palm. He fanned his thumb along her cheekbone. Once. Twice, then lowered his fingertips to her mouth.
“I’ve plans for these sweet lips,” he said.
Her knees felt week and she pressed her hands against the wall to either side of her hips to keep standing. She was trembling for he was so close to her she could feel his warm breath on her face.
“Why do you run from me, Melina?” he whispered as he touched his lips to her forehead. “Why do you deny us both what we desire?”
He moved again and this time he pushed his body tight to hers and insinuated his knee between her legs.
“Would you like to ride this?” he asked. “Or…”
He reached for her left hand, turned it and laid it against the thick bulge between his thighs.
“This,” he finished. He rubbed her palm against him.
“Please,” she whimpered.
He moved his lips to her ear and his words were only a breath. “Please what?”
“Don’t do this,” she pleaded.
“Don’t take you?” he asked. “Don’t show you what it is to be wanted so badly by a man he would risk everything, pay any amount of money to have you?”
“You could have any woman,” she protested and thought she would sink to the floor as he flicked his tongue into her ear then swirled it along the arch and down to the lobe.
“I want you,” he whispered. “I need you.”
He released her hand and turned his, placed it to the juncture of her thighs and cupped her.
“I want this.”
She’d never had a man’s hand on her as intimately as she did his. In her dreams, in real life. Peripherally she was aware she was dreaming for she knew he wasn’t there. She knew where he was and the thought of him in that place made her moan.
“You want me,” he said. His whispers were barely audible. She heard them with her soul rather than her ears. “I know you want me. You know you want me. I want you. Why do you resist?”
He tugged the hem of her gown up inch by inch as he held her there against the wall with his mouth to her ear. She could feel a cool draught of air sliding over her bare leg as the fabric was elevated. The backs of his fingers were touching her flesh as he worked the hem upward.
“Don’t deny me, wench,” he said in a husky, demonic warning. “Never deny me. I can be a bastard when I’m denied what I want.”
She groaned as his fingertips grazed the crease of her thigh.
“Never defy me. Give yourself to me. Don’t make me overpower you. I would rather you came to me as a gift and not a trophy of this war between us.”
She felt her resolve weakening. She wanted to throw her arms around him, climb up his body and have his hard shaft impale her. She wanted to feel him inside her. She wanted to know him as a partner.
She wanted…
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
The phone jarred her awake with a start. Heart thudding, she reached for it, brought it to her ear with a trembling hand.
“Who the hell are you and how did you get my number?” the voice on the other end demanded.
It was Sakova, she thought. The thick Russian-sounding accent could belong to no one else. She tensed, quickly going over the carefully thought out and worded scenario she, Jono, Craig and Jake had devised. She’d placed the call to Sakova’s cell, hating the bitch for all she wasn’t worth. She took a deep breath to calm her nerves and strove to put normalcy in her tone.
“I still have friends at McGregor Industries,” she said.
“I don’t know what you are talking about. What is this McGregor Industries?” the woman asked.
“Don’t play games with me, Miss Pavlova. I know what you’re trying to do and without my help, it won’t be the slam dunk you anticipate.”
There was a long pause then a snort. “It is Sakova, not Pavlova. What is it you think you know, slut?”
“I know you may have some trouble getting Syn McGregor convicted without me.”
“Say nothing about the money she’s trying to get from him,” Jake had advised. “There’s no way you should know about it.”
“If what my friend at MI tells me is true, you have as much right to hate McGregor as I do. Maybe not as good a reason but that’s neither here nor there.”
“What are you talking about?” Tatyana demanded.
“He attacked you,” she replied. “Roughed you up?”
“That is a matter of public record.”
“True but he has a damn good legal team. They could make mincemeat of your story. It’s your word against his unless…”
“Unless what?”
“Unless you have me to testify.”
“Were you there?” came the sneer. “Did you see what happened?”
She didn’t answer, letting Tatyana smirk.
“I thought not,” Tatyana said.
“He raped me,” she said quickly, afraid the woman would hang up.
Another long pause, then, “Excuse me?”
The line had been thrown and the float was bobbing in the water. She had her sniffing the bait.
“Two years ago he got me alone in the executive bathroom, pushed me against the wall and raped me. For ten-thousand dollars I’ll give you the evidence I kept from that afternoon, get on the stand and put that fucking bastard away for life. Teach him a
lesson he so richly deserves.”
“What kind of evidence?” There was eagerness in the thickly accented voice.
“The torn panties I used to wipe off my blood and his semen.”
“Let’s talk,” Tatyana said, swallowing the hook. “Meet me at my—”
“No. I don’t trust you any more than you trust me. You could be Russian mob for all I know. Drecker’s Sub Shop,” she said. “Tomorrow at noon. I’ll be the one with the long brown braid.” She hung up.
Chapter Sixteen
Night Thirteen
He’d been expecting one of the prisoners to sidle up to him for something other than to exchange complaints about the conditions of the county jail. A couple had been eying him at breakfast that morning and another had made kissy faces at him on the way back. He didn’t think any of them was a real threat but he kept a surreptitious eye on all of them.
He’d learned to do so the hard way. You let down your guard in jail and bad things happened.
When the oily skinned, lank-haired and decayed-tooth meth head with the yellow tint to his eyeballs approached him in the shower, he tensed but he didn’t feel a threat. For one thing the young man—twenty-two if he was a day—had nothing in his hands or anywhere else for that matter. His pathetically thin, emaciated, drug-cooked body wouldn’t have posed a threat to the egotistical nerd kid on the TV series about twenty-something nerd kids much less a man who had probably a hundred pounds and years of brutal street fighting experience on him.
“Whatcha want, kid?” he asked the boy.
“Got a message for you,” the boy said. He had his trembling hands over his junk as he sidled closer as though he expected to be mauled.
He ran the soap under his arm pits and turned so he faced the kid over the half wall of the shower stall. “Then spit it out.”
“She said to tell you she has evidence that can convict you.” He shifted his eyes like the weasel he was. “And that the price done went up to one point five.”
“What kind of evidence?” he asked though he knew because it had been his mind wandering that had cooked it up.
“Didn’t say,” the boy replied and lifted an arm tattooed with old needle marks up to run under his dripping nose. “Just said to tell you she got it and the price went up.”
“Well,” he said as he put the soap back in its tray, rotated around to let the water sluice off the suds covering his chest the turned off the shower, “lemme ask you something.” He picked up his towel and began to wipe himself down. “What are you getting in exchange for delivering that message?”
The boy sniffed. “Pack of smokes,” the boy answered.
“What if I gave you a whole carton of those coffin nails?” he asked. “Would you give me the name of the person who told you to come to me?”
“Don’t know no name. Was one of the guards. Big fellow with the crooked nose and scar on his chin.”
“Albrecht,” he said, having made it a point of finding out the name of every guard and prisoner in the jail. It wasn’t the same guard who had delivered the original extortion gambit.
The meth head shrugged. “Don’t know.”
“What’s your name?”
“Otto.”
“Okay, Otto. I’ll see to it you get your ciggies.”
A deep frown marred the addict’s face. “My what?”
“Your smokes,” he said. “What brand would you like?”
“They contacted him this morning,” Jono told her.
She was on her way to Drecker’s, using the cell phone Jake had provided her with at the meeting the day before.
“Obviously she’s fairly confident I have what she needs if she threatened him with it already,” she said.
“Would seem that way.”
“Everything set up?”
“Bug went under that table in the corner as soon as we opened this morning,” Jono replied. “Jake and Craigie are already in the back and waiting. Lina?”
“Yeah?”
“Be careful. If something happened to you, he’d kill all three of us with his bare hands.” When she laughed he said, “I’m serious. He’s bad news when he’s mad. He takes no prisoners and doesn’t care how he settles things, either, if he gets what he wants.”
A shiver ran down her back. He didn’t sound as if he were kidding.
There were no cars at Drecker’s when she drove in so she pulled all the way over to the side of the building to park. It was early yet and the lunch crowd wouldn’t start coming in for another half hour. She had nearly an hour to wait for Tatyana to show up.
It wasn’t Jed behind the counter when she came in but Jono.
And a Jono she barely recognized. His long hair was stuffed under a Drecker’s baseball cap. His scruffy two-day beard was gone and he was wearing glasses.
He nodded politely and cut his eyes over to the dining section of the shop where a lone policeman was sitting, munching away on a BLT. She gave Jono a pleading look at this unfortunate development and he shrugged helplessly.
“The usual?” Jono asked her.
She knew he didn’t have a clue what she usually ordered. “Not today. I think I’ll have a hot ham and cheese on rye. Dill pickles and hot mustard.”
He handed her a small cup.
“Gonna have chips with that today, miss…? I’m sorry. What’s your name again?”
She was very impressed with his Southern accent and indicated as much with her eyebrows lifted. She realized he had asked just to let her know he could mimic her accent.
“It’s Chelsea and no, no chips today,” she said as she sauntered over to the drink dispenser. The cop looked at her and she smiled. He nodded but didn’t return the smile. He seemed preoccupied.
While Jono made her sandwich she moved over to the woman behind the register. It wasn’t the usual straw-haired blonde she was accustomed to seeing and wondered if she was one of Jono’s friends.
“That’ll be four forty-five,” the girl said.
She paid for her sandwich, took it from Jono and went to sit at the table in the corner. She felt the cop’s hard stare on her and realization came like a shove between the shoulders. He was part of the scheme to fleece the Kiwi and she wondered if Jono had made the connection as well. She slipped her shoulder bag strap over the back of her chair, sat down and picked up her drink to take a sip, looking at him over the rim of the cup.
Yes, she thought he was watching every move she made. His rigid attention was glued on her and when the front door opened, his gaze never wavered.
She knew the red-haired woman coming toward her was Tatyana. The con woman was early and from the look on her face and the slight shift of her eyes toward the cop, she knew Tatyana wasn’t pleased to see her there already. Behind her was a bulky man with arms the size of tree trunks. His deep scowl did nothing to improve the broken nose, dented cheekbones and scarred forehead of a man she suspected had been—or still was—a professional boxer.
“You the one who called me?” Tatyana asked. She didn’t take a seat.
“You the woman trying to send McGregor to prison?” she countered.
“Get up.”
She arched her eyebrows. “For what?”
“Get up or I’m leaving,” Tatyana snapped.
She slid out of the chair and the side of beef put his hands on her. If she hadn’t already known the cop was one of them she knew it the moment the oversized thug ran his hands expertly along her sides and hips and thighs, around and up her back then over her breasts. The cop sat where he was without so much as moving a muscle or questioning the odd behavior.
“She clean,” the brute said. He folded his arms and stepped back, his beady black eyes devoid of all emotion.
Tatyana sat down. “All right, let’s talk,” she said. “Where is the so-called evidence you say you have?”
“In my purse.”
“Let me see it.”
She pretended to be shocked. “Here?”
“Let me see it or I will leave.�
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She unhooked her shoulder bag and put it in her lap. She opened it, took out a clear plastic quart-size sandwich bag, and laid it on the table—her hand firmly atop it.
“Ten grand,” she said. “I ain’t handing it over until you cough up the dough.”
“How do I know this is the real thing?” Tatyana asked, eyeing the bag.
“You don’t but why the fuck would I lie?” she asked. She leaned forward. “Let me clue you in to what happened to me, lady, then you decide if I’m lying or not.”
Tatyana nodded. “I am listening.”
“That son of a bitch thinks all he needs to do is flash those baby blues at a woman and she’ll drop to her knees at his feet, drooling to have his dick in her mouth. I heard he has a girlfriend now to satisfy those perverted needs he has but back then, he was humping everything in sight.”
“Yes, he has that reputation,” Tatyana agreed. “Go on.”
“Well, he decided he wanted to fuck me but I wasn’t having none of that,” she said. “I was saving myself, you know?” She made tears form in her eyes. “I was a good girl. I was clean.”
Tatyana’s lips twitched with amusement. “You were a virgin,” she said. “How quaint.”
“I was and I was proud of it!” she said as though she hadn’t recognized the sarcasm for what it was. “I was saving myself!”
“Did he know this?” Tatyana asked.
She lowered her voice. “One day in the board room I was putting director packets on the table and he came up behind me. He ran his hands over my ass and I turned around, asked him not to do that.” A single tear slid down her cheek. “I told him I was a good Christian woman.”
“I am sure he stopped as soon as you told him this news,” Tatyana said.
“He laughed,” she said. “He laughed and told me I didn’t know what I was missing.” She hung her head. “I thought it was over until a few days later when he got me in the bathroom and…and…” She shook her head.
“He sexually assaulted you.”
“He shoved me against the wall and when I fought him, he backhanded me. I was afraid he’d really hurt me so I just stood there while he pulled up my skirt, ripped off my panties, unzipped his trousers and raped me, Miss Pavlova.”
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