by Lora Leigh
“True, it is,” he finally answered. “I promise to make certain I wake you next time.”
He couldn’t blame Sawyer for the quick, surprised look on his face.
“I hate liars,” she sighed, then turned back to the sheriff. “The next time you’re in my home in the middle of the night, I’m telling Ronan. Maybe he can convince you to be polite.”
Ilya glanced over at the almost desperate look the sheriff sent him.
“Come on, EJ,” he wheedled. “I’m sure my agreement with him isn’t so different from yours. I’m obligated till death or I agree to give up my firstborn.” He gave Ilya look of mocking confusion. “I’m still not certain which one I signed away.”
“Your firstborn would hold no appeal for me.” Ilya shrugged. “I’m certain it would be impossible to control.”
He and Eric had actually known each other for a decade or so. Their friendship was steady and went far beyond the sheriff’s contract with Brute Force.
“And you think I wouldn’t be?” Emma Jane’s lazy tone belied the trap she laid with that particular question.
“Well, you’d be more reasonable.” It was then he glimpsed the small handgun she gripped at her thigh. “Perhaps.”
“You wish,” Eric muttered behind him before placing a cup of coffee in front of him, then Sawyer, before turning to Emma Jane. “Coffee, EJ?”
Her lips thinned in obvious displeasure. “You make yourself at home when you’re here far too often, Eric.”
Ilya watched the easy, familiar smile the sheriff shot her before he placed a cup of coffee for her in front of the empty chair.
“That’s your fault, sis,” the other man pointed out affectionately. “Treat a man like a brother long enough and he’ll start acting like one.”
“Enough,” Ilya stated softly when he glimpsed not just the anger but also the fear in Emma Jane’s expression before she hid it. “Join us if you wish, Emma Jane. Not that there’s much information to be found. The Crime Scene Unit is still processing whatever they collected after the attack, though we know there were no fingerprints or DNA.”
She eased toward the table, pausing only long enough to lay the weapon carefully on the center island as she passed it.
As she neared the table he stood and pulled her chair out for her, waiting patiently until she was taking her seat to ease it closer to the table. He ignored the look of distrust she gave him as he did so.
“Stop or she’ll expect me and Ronan to find our manners as well.” Eric chuckled, his affection for her readily apparent.
“You’d have to learn some first,” she reminded him quietly as Ilya returned to his seat and the coffee.
She sat stiff, uncertain. The violence she’d experienced had changed her world far too much. She was off balance, and Ilya guessed it would take her a while to find her balance once again.
“Keeping you safe is our only objective as we attempt to learn who tried to harm you,” he assured her as he laid his arms on the table and watched her closely, the darkness shadowing her features. “You’re not alone, Emma Jane. Nor will you be undefended, I promise you this.”
“This had nothing to do with Brute Force…” she began, still holding to the thought that she was somehow the target rather than him.
“I keep my promises,” he told her firmly. “No matter the reason, no matter the enemy. I will not leave you undefended.”
He caught Sawyer’s surprised look before he could cover it, as well as the sheriff’s suspicion. He couldn’t blame Sawyer’s surprise, simply because Sawyer knew him. But there was something about the sheriff’s expression as his gaze lingered on Emma Jane’s sudden stillness that had Ilya wondering what she was revealing to the other man.
If it weren’t for the fact he knew the sheriff saw her as no more than a sister of sorts, then he’d be planning ways to ensure the other man was completely out of her life. Ilya had never been given a chance to pretend he was anything other than what he was: a cold, hard, killer. And from the moment he’d first lain eyes on Emma Jane, he’d recognized her for the weakness she could be where he was concerned.
Unfortunately, she was a weakness he hadn’t been able to walk away from completely.
He didn’t bother to hide any part of the conversation from her. It was information he would have given her later in the morning anyway. Unfortunately, there just weren’t enough answers as of yet.
* * *
“Why would anyone want to kill me?” she asked, nearly an hour later, looking to the sheriff rather than to him, and that just pissed him off, Ilya admitted.
“That’s what I’m here to learn.” Ilya rose to his feet, a silent signal to Sawyer and to Quade that this meeting was over. “Until then, I’m here to ensure you stay alive.” He turned his gaze back to the sheriff. “Until we have more, we will concentrate on ensuring they have no opportunity to attack you again.”
The two men wasted little time leaving, but as he activated the security system once more he noticed Emma Jane remained in her chair, silently watching him.
“You should try to rest,” he told her as he returned to the table and gathered the coffee cups together. “I promise not to disturb you further.”
She needed to sleep. He had seen the strain on her face earlier from the lack of rest and cursed himself for that meeting. He should have known his Emma Jane was one of those rare women who could detect even the slightest change in her home.
He’d heard his grandmother was such a woman.
Still was perhaps.
“I wasn’t sleeping anyway.” He caught the shake of her head in the dim light of the moon as it spilled through the partially opened shades that covered the windows.
Rinsing the coffee cups, he placed them in the dishwasher, aware she was watching him closely.
Closing the appliance door, he stepped back to her and held out a hand.
“Come. I’ll walk you up. Sawyer and Eric are watching the house from two different locations and I’ve adjusted your security system to ensure it can’t be breached without setting off an alarm guaranteed to wake everyone within a mile of the house. You’re safe tonight, Emma Jane,” he promised her. “And come tomorrow night, you’ll be even safer.”
“That doesn’t tell me why.” The quiet uncertainty and fear in her voice as she took his hand caused his chest to clench with regret and anger.
She should never feel so uncertain, so frightened of the dark and what the shadowed places in her own home might hold.
Closing his fingers around her much more delicate ones, he drew her from her chair.
“We’ll learn why. It’s just a matter of time.” Staring into her face, he saw her lips tremble for a moment only before she breathed in heavily before tightening them.
She handled the fear with a strength he wouldn’t have expected from her but found himself unsurprised by. He’d learned the year before during the negotiations she’d hammered out with him that she had a steel spine. Not many could stare Ilya down and demand, rather than plead for, what she required in the agreement.
“Until we learn why, anyone around me is at risk,” she stated, pulling her hand from his, her tone showing little of the fear he’d glimpsed for a second in her expression.
Steel spine.
Son of a bitch, he had the hard-on from hell.
“I’d worry about them more than anyone else at the moment,” he assured her with a mocking little snort. “Trust me when I say, they have no idea who they threaten if they make the mistake of coming against me.”
He’d been honed in the fires of hell and beneath the demonic hand of an uncle who should have been drowned at birth. For far too many years he’d endured hell, and he’d learned how to survive. Not just to survive but also to meet hell with a fire of his own.
“You’re one man…”
He laid a finger against those pretty, soft lips.
“One man who knows what the hell he’s doing. And trust me, they have no idea who they’re facing no
w. They may think they do. They may want to believe they do, but in the end, they’ll learn the error of it.” God, her lips were soft, warm. For one insane moment he wanted nothing more than to immerse himself in her kiss again.
He let his thumb caress the soft, pouty curve, watched as her lips parted, her gaze softening, and arousal replaced fear.
He couldn’t get the taste of her, the feel of her, out of his head, and he knew if he dared to take more, he’d never be able to stop as he had the last time.
“You should run, pretty girl,” he whispered. “The big bad wolf will get a taste of you otherwise.”
“He’ll get indigestion,” she teased, but he saw that she thought she could hide from him. Her desire for more and her battle against it.
“It’s not indigestion the wolf fears,” he assured her. “I believe he fears addiction far more. But the lure of the sweetest honey, the tastiest flesh, will prove to be his downfall I fear.”
Her breathing was harder, harsher, much the same as his, but she stood still beneath the touch to her lips, parting them as he exerted just enough pressure, then allowed his thumb to press inside, closing on it with heated moisture.
“Do you know, I dream of fucking those lips?” He kept his voice low, gentle, watching the effect of his words on her as her eyes darkened further. “There could be few things more erotic than watching you take me with your mouth.”
Her expression softened, became drugged with the sweet fever he knew was rushing through her.
“Would you take me, my Emma Jane?” he asked, barely holding back a groan as her tongue swiped over the end of his thumb. “Let me watch your pretty lips suckle me?”
He pressed his thumb against her tongue and a second later his cock nearly burst through the zipper of his jeans as she began to suckle him.
“Bad girl,” he whispered, the rasp of his voice impossible to control as hunger began to fray at his control. “Should I spank you for teasing me in the dark, Emma Jane?”
She jerked back, but not before he watched her face flush with such need it was all he could do to let her go.
“This is crazy,” she gasped, looking everywhere but at him. “You have to stop this, Ilya.”
His brow arched. “I? Sweet, I’m man enough to know your pussy is as slick and wet as I am hard. If that wasn’t true, we wouldn’t have near the problem, now would we?”
She shook her head.
“Don’t lie to me, Emma Jane.” He jerked her to him, arching her hips, lifting her until she couldn’t help but feel the rigid proof of his erection against the soft swell of her lower belly. “Lie to me, and I’ll strip you here and show you exactly what you’re fighting to deny yourself.”
Her nails dug into his forearms, a gasping little groan falling from her lips.
Just as quickly, he released her. He’d be damned if he’d take her like that, like an animal intent only on his own release.
“Go to bed, Emma Jane,” he ordered, desperate to escape the hunger he glimpsed in her eyes. “We’ll talk when daylight adds a bit of sanity to my hunger,”
“I’m going back to work.” The words tumbled from her lips, causing him to stop in the act of turning from her to watch her closely, his gaze narrowed on her flushed face.
“When?” He kept his voice quiet, controlled.
“Day after tomorrow.” She watched him closely, and she would do well to be very, very wary, Ilya thought. “I’m just vegetating here. Nothing else has happened and you haven’t found any evidence to support a threat. I have to get back to work.”
She had to run away. She was running scared, and that was his fault.
“I called Nik earlier,” she revealed.
“Very well,” he agreed, never letting her see the anger or the need to convince her otherwise.
He and Nik should be able to keep her safe. He’d let her run, at least for a few more days. Until his hunger refused to allow her to run further. Then, he’d show her the difference between a man, and the little boy her husband had been.
“Good night, Emma Jane,” he told her softly. “Sleep well.”
She didn’t answer, likely because she knew the same thing he did. Neither of them would get much sleep that night.
chapter seven
Returning to work two days later wasn’t easy, but being replaced wasn’t something Emma wanted either. Though she was certain when she showed up, her cousin’s husband, Nik Steele, would let her go anyway. He wasn’t a man who tolerated problems in his life. Her cousin Mikayla had told her how the tall, blond motorcycle-riding Nik had ridden into town, taken one look at her, and set about eliminating the danger in her life.
At the time, Emma had thought how romantic that must be and how certain she would be that such a man would make her insane. She was even more certain of it after she’d gotten to know Nik.
But Mikayla’s assessment had been right. Nik eliminated problems in his and his family’s lives. And now she would no doubt be deemed a problem. She was just a cousin, not a sister, and only in the past year had she really spent any time around him.
The tall, blond owner of the electronic security firm she worked at as a receptionist had been quiet when she’d explained the situation over the phone to him the morning after the attack and asked for a few days off. He’d given her a week
She couldn’t afford a week off, but her nerves and her senses had been too off balance to sit still and do her job and she’d known it. Not that she was much better after arriving at the office that morning, but at least she’d managed some sleep.
Ilya didn’t make rest easy though. He was a prowler, Emma had decided. He moved through the house silent as a breath of air, and that very silence seemed to have the ability to bring her awake.
Either he hadn’t prowled the night before or she’d been just too tired to care. He’d promised he’d wake her no matter what if he even thought trouble was coming. Not that she thought he’d actually keep that promise, but somehow she knew he wouldn’t allow her to sleep if he thought she’d be in danger. How she knew that she didn’t question too deeply. But as she’d stared into his green eyes as he made the promise, the overriding fear had eased marginally.
If she wasn’t careful, Ilya Dragonovich would end up messing her hormones up bad. He possessed an intensity that drew her, and a certain sexual aura of knowledge that made a woman’s heart race and her body strain to be closer. And that tattoo he carried had been created to move with his facial muscles or something, because sometimes it was just funny as hell.
And Emma wasn’t immune to Ilya, especially after the other night. Her response to him still had the power to have her shying away from him in wariness. He did things to her that she couldn’t explain, made her want things she’d only read about. Things she knew weren’t normal, weren’t acceptable.
At least her parents and her brother had finally stopped objecting to him being in the house with her. They’d prefer she come home, her father had told her, but at least he knew she wasn’t undefended.
Knowing her normally suspicious family was swallowing his explanation of a relationship fully had her questioning their suspicious natures. Her family had known her ex-husband, Matt Lauren, for most of his life, and they still hadn’t trusted him when she married him.
Of course, Matt had been an unapologetic bastard. She just hadn’t been smart enough to heed the disquiet she’d felt even before their marriage. Now she was on the lookout for it.
Working steadily on the files her boss had stacked in several piles on her desk over the past days, she grimly promised herself she’d never make the mistake her marriage had been again. She’d let her youth and her need for her own family convince her that she loved Matt. She’d known before the second year was out what a mistake she’d made, but she’d taken the vows. She’d given her word. And that hadn’t been easy to walk away from.
But it was fear that held her there in the last year of the marriage she’d had such hopes for. Fear and the growing hatred fo
r a man she’d once loved as a friend and wanted to love as a husband.
Hindsight, she thought as she closed the file cabinet drawer she’d placed the last of the last of the files in. Staring out the window beside it, she watched as traffic and pedestrians moved slowly outside and let a sigh past her lips.
She should have listened to her father when he’d warned her that he felt she and Matt might not be suited for marriage. Her mother and her brother had made similar arguments at the time, and she hadn’t listened to them either.
Now, two years after she’d walked away from her husband, she found that the anger and feelings of betrayal were no longer the cold knot of bitterness they’d been even before she’d left Matt. And if any anger was left, it was at herself rather than him.
Or maybe it had just been pushed back by the sound of gunfire and the taste of her own terror filling her senses.
“Emma.” The smooth, cool tone of her boss had her turning to him, nervousness now overriding the memories and the fear.
She couldn’t afford to lose this job, but she couldn’t blame Nik for firing her either or, at the very least, letting her go until whatever reason she’d been attacked was taken care of. Maybe she shouldn’t have been so eager to return. Distance could have changed Nik’s mind if she’d waited.
“Yes?” She clasped her hands in front of her and restrained the need to take a deep, fortifying breath.
“Come into my office.” He moved back from the doorway, waiting, his gaze as cool as his tone.
Well, hell. This was going to suck.
She’d barely worked there for a year, and she liked this job. She liked this job much better than the one she’d had when she left Matt. The one he’d ensured she’d lost.
Resigning herself to the inevitable, she moved across the reception area and into the office. Standing next to the heavy leather chairs, she waited until Nik passed her and stepped behind his desk.
“Nik, I’m certain there will be no repercussions toward you because of my employment here.” She kept the statement calm, steady. “I really don’t believe anyone would try to attack me here.”