Lethal Nights (Brute Force)

by Lora Leigh

  Her ex-husband, Matt, was splayed out in the floor, blood welling from his busted lips, one eye already swelling shut. Ilya was crouched over him, powerful legs bent and resting on Matt’s arms as one hand gripped his neck; the other pressed the barrel of his handgun to Matt’s temple.

  Tears welled from Matt’s eyes and the plea to save him was clear in his expression.

  “Are you going to kill him?” she asked softly, gazing back at Ilya as her heart prepared itself to break into so many pieces it would never be the same again.

  How had she grown to care about this man to the point that the realization that he wasn’t who, what, she believed he was could hurt so bad?

  “Do you want him to live so bad?” The Russian accent was thicker, his voice harder than she’d ever heard it.

  Her eyes narrowed on him and anger began to churn inside her.

  “Do you really want to disappoint me in such a way?” she asked him softly instead. “Really, Ilya? Because you won’t like how I deal with it. Not at all. Do it if that’s your intent though. Don’t hide it from me.”

  She could hear the sirens in the distance and knew without a doubt that along with Eric, her family, and probably her boss as well were only seconds away.

  His expression tightened for a moment before he suddenly released Matt and launched to his feet. In the same movement he shoved his weapon in the back of his black slacks and turned to Sawyer.

  “Get him out of here…” he began to order.

  “I don’t think so.” Emma stepped closer, aware of the explosive tension radiating in the room as Sawyer helped Matt to his feet. “Put him in a chair. Now!” she snapped when the other man didn’t move fast enough to suit her.

  Men.

  Had there ever been a day where they weren’t making a woman completely crazy?

  Thankfully, Sawyer didn’t argue or test her precarious temper.

  “EJ, I need a doctor,” Matt whined. “He broke my nose, EJ.”

  He slumped in the chair Sawyer all but threw him into. “EJ, I need…”

  “You need to shut the hell up, Matt,” she ordered, laying her own weapon carefully on the kitchen island before pushing her fingers through her hair and glaring at Ilya. “Please deal with Eric and…”

  “Sawyer!” he snapped, jerking his head to the lights and vehicles that could be seen pulling into her drive from the window on the far side of the room.

  Sawyer didn’t argue but hurried for the front door, and once again Emma turned her attention to Matt.

  Childish, entitled. She hadn’t realized how shallow and immature he was when she married him. Or how immature she had been herself. She’d learned how to grow up though. Life and Matt had left her little choice.

  Breathing out heavily, she shook her head as she watched him, realizing how little Matt had changed over the years. With his classic blond good looks and bright blue eyes, he drew attention when he wasn’t whining and bleeding all over himself.

  “Why are you here, Matt?” A little boy in a grown man’s body. It was such a shame.

  “EJ, I just wanted to check on you,” Matt mumbled as he laid his head on the table. Blood was dripping to her floor. “I was just worried.” He sobbed. “Oh God, what are you doing with him? He’s a killer, EJ. Did you get so desperate for the pain that you had to take a killer?—”

  “Shut up, Matt.” But she had a feeling it was too late.

  So desperate for the pain.

  It had a been a steady accusation after he’d found the books she’d tried to keep hidden from him. The romances, so filled with lust, with pleasure, with women’s journeys into something more than a missionary position.

  “God, EJ, what’s wrong with you? It’s just sick … I wanted to love you, not hurt you…” Matt’s whine reminded her of a spoiled teenager. One whose cruelties and pettiness were out of control. But still, just a teenager. One who wanted only to hurt others.

  And he was destroying her, because Ilya and Eric heard every word. The humiliation was decimating.

  “Emma Jane, go to the front room and Eric and I will deal with this.” Ilya stood, demanded, cool and in complete control of himself.

  Except for his eyes. The pale green seemed to glow with rage. He’d kill Matt and she knew it. And that was something she did not want on her conscience.

  The difference between the two men couldn’t be more striking than it was at that moment. And she couldn’t imagine being more angry at both of them as well as herself.

  Compressing her lips, she glared back at him, receiving that cool stare in return.

  Not taking her eyes off Ilya, she moved to the sink, jerked a dish towel from beside it, and turned on the cold water before breaking the stare.

  “Shut up before I kill you myself, Matt.” She’d sign the house over to Resnova before she’d have Matt’s death on her conscience. Or before she’d suffer further humiliation. Matt could run his mouth to his cronies all he wanted, they didn’t know her, not like Eric did and possibly Ilya.

  “Emma Jane, get away from him,” Ilya all but growled, and though she knew he wasn’t in the least possessive of her, his tone, the tension in his body, both screamed possession.

  She shook her head at the order.

  “I suggest you give your employer your report before I make my call to him,” she stated, hating the knowledge that once again her life was out of her control. “But whether you do or not, it won’t matter. This won’t happen again.”

  Wringing out the towel, she moved to where Matt sat. Thankfully, she glimpsed an ambulance pulling in the drive, right behind her brother’s truck. She wondered who called them, then pushed the thought away as she pressed the damp towel into Matt’s hands.

  “EJ…” Sincere blue eyes stared up at her in appeal. “He’s crazy. You see that, don’t you? You have to make him go … I’ll forgive you…”

  “I still have a gun,” Ilya growled, suddenly behind her as Matt’s gaze jerked to him in fear. “And it’s still loaded.”

  What little color was left in Matt’s gaze bled away. At the same time, men began pouring into her kitchen.

  The shouted questions, amazement, anger, and her family’s fear rushed around her like a tidal wave that threated to drown her beneath their concern.

  “Enough.” It was her brother Ronan’s voice that cut through the shouted questions and press of bodies surrounding her.

  The room silenced immediately, and all eyes turned to him.

  “Emma Jane should join Mikayla and her mother in the front room,” Ilya took over seamlessly as Ronan pressed her gently away from Matt and his muttered accusations.

  Accusations her brother heard.

  Not that any of it could be hidden now. Ilya had heard it all …

  She should pity Matt, she thought.

  Ronan and Eric might well kill him after this. Matt knew better than to attempt to break into her house again just to begin with. She’d warned him the year before that she had a security system in place, yet he’d done just that, and now he was destroying her.

  Emma let her brother ease her into the front room though, simply because she wanted to go, not because it was what he wanted. She’d had enough for the time being.

  * * *

  Ilya remained silent as Nik Steele sidled over to him, his expression bland. Pausing next to him, the other man watched, as Ilya did, as the paramedics worked to take stock of Matt Lauren’s injuries.

  Thankfully, the bastard had stopped running his mouth when Emma Jane left the room. But not before everyone there had heard him accuse Emma Jane of having “deviant desires.”

  If he were in a better mood, Ilya might have helped and given the paramedics a list of damages.

  The bastard had a broken nose, a cracked rib, and several bruised ones. And it was possible his arm was fractured. Not probable, merely possible.

  “He’s crazy,” Matt whimpered as Ronan moved in behind the paramedics. “I just wanted to talk to EJ, Ronan. She’s letting him h
urt her when he gets in her bed…”

  “One more word and you’re going to be missing a tongue, you little bastard,” Ilya bit out furiously, aware of Emma Jane’s brother as he moved to block the sight of them from where his sister now stood with their mother. “What made you believe you could slip into her home without notice? You knew I was here with her.”

  Matt swallowed tightly. “Someone got in before without the alarm going off. I just figured something was wrong with it. I was just going to talk to her.”

  Talk to her? In the middle of the night?

  “Do you take me for a fucking fool?” Ilya didn’t bother to attempt to hide his sneer or the cold, murderous fury brewing in him.

  Emma Jane’s ex-husband missed none of the threat Ilya posed.

  “I swear…”

  “That’s enough, Matt.” Emma Jane chose that moment to step into the room once again as Ilya’s and Ronan’s attention was focused on her ex-husband. “Get him out of here, Ronan, while you still can.” She turned to her brother, her expression once more calm, though in her gaze he could see the shame burning inside her.

  Ronan seemed to shrug at her look. “He’s lucky to be alive. Something me or Dad, either one, would have taken care of if we were here.”

  The disgust in Ronan’s voice drew Ilya’s attention. The younger man’s expression was tight with anger and fear for his sister.

  “You and Dad might believe you had reason. Ilya can’t make that claim,” she stated, pride tightening her expression.

  And for some insane reason, that look made his dick so damned hard it was agony.

  Thankfully, his shirt had come untucked in the tussle with her ex-husband. Ilya had merely finished pulling it free rather than taking time to fix it.

  “Stop harassing him, Ronan, and let the paramedics get him out of here,” Emma Jane ordered her brother with the ease and comfort of a woman used to being heard. “Mom’s not going to leave as long as he’s here, and I’d like at least a few hours’ sleep tonight.”

  She turned her back on them and moved to her parents once again. Ilya was aware of her father drawing her farther into the living room, as though in hopes of keeping her attention from Ilya and her brother.

  “Want some advice?” Nik asked softly from his side.

  “Not particularly,” Ilya answered, his tone just as low.

  He’d be damned if he needed anyone to tell him how to handle his woman.

  “Convince her that you wouldn’t have killed in cold blood before making the decision I can see brewing in your expression. Don’t destroy her trust completely, Ilya, or she’ll make you regret it.” And with that, Nik walked to the front room where his delicate little blond wife awaited him.

  They left moments later, right behind the paramedics and the stretcher they had that son of a bitch ex-husband on.

  Ilya remained in the kitchen, keeping an eye on Sawyer as he adjusted the security system on the panel next to the door.

  He didn’t like this attempt Matt Lauren had made to get to Emma Jane. It smacked of an attack to gauge the security rather than an attempt to discuss anything else with Emma Jane.

  Had Emma Jane waited just upstairs as she was told to do, the bastard would have a bullet in his brain now rather than telling Emma Jane’s secrets.

  Goddammit.

  Pushing his fingers through his hair, he breathed out roughly at the confrontation that was no doubt coming. His self-control was already shot. He was harder than hell and far past just the simple need to fuck.

  At this point, the thought of touching her, of having her, was becoming an obsession.

  chapter ten

  She knew there was no avoiding Ilya once everyone had left, so she didn’t even try. She gave Eric’s deputy her statement, filed charges against Matt for breaking and entering, and gave an affidavit that Ilya was there as a friend and heard the alarm as she had before rushing downstairs.

  There was no hiding the fact that Ilya was living with her now. Ilya, Ronan, and Eric had managed to keep Sawyer’s name out of the reports, though she assumed it was deliberate. Wouldn’t do for the killers to know someone was watching, waiting. Someone other than the dragon suspected to be her lover.

  A man who knew how to hurt her, as her ex-husband had claimed. Because obviously only the most dangerous sort of man could satisfy her deviant desires.

  God. This was a fiasco.

  Even in her wildest nightmares she couldn’t have imagined this happening. Matt knew better than to attempt to break into her home again. Even Ronan had threatened dire consequences should he try. Her father had outright promised to kill him.

  Pushing her hands through her hair, she wondered how she could possibly salvage the situation, even though she knew it wasn’t possible. There wasn’t a single omission or lie that could cover this one.

  Not that she did good with out-and-out lies.

  The problem was, she’d seen the look Ilya had shot her way when Matt had been throwing her secrets out to the room. The lust, pure and white hot, that flared in his eyes had mixed with intent.

  It wasn’t curiosity or suspicion, it was pure knowledge. As though he well understood her desires and knew exactly how to sate them. And perhaps that was the part that truly terrified her. Because that part of her nature had always confused her.

  She hadn’t wanted to delve into that side of her nature. That was why she’d fought Matt at every turn after he’d found the explicit romances she’d been reading the summer of their third anniversary. Missionary position with her husband suited her fine. By then, she wouldn’t have dared allowed him to know where her fantasies veered. Because those fantasies had never included him.

  Until she’d met Ilya, they’d stayed confined to the heroes of those books.

  But now those fantasies had a face, a name, a man she craved. And there was no convincing the need rising inside her that dragons were dangerous and shouldn’t be played with.

  A firm knock at the door had her flinching before she turned to face it, just in time to watch Ilya step into the room. The door snapped closed behind him, and if ever a man had a predatory look on his face, then it was her dragon. Even his dragon looked sexually intent.

  He leaned back against the door, his gaze narrowed on her, his expression inscrutable. She had no idea what he was thinking, and that fact made her nervous.

  “You know.” He crossed his arms over his chest, his head tilting a bit thoughtfully as he watched her. “I had a rather intensive background check done on you, as well as your ex. And not so much as a whisper of deviant behavior could be found.” His head straightened and she was certain there was a glimmer of amusement in his pale green eyes. “Why is that do you think?”

  He found this amusing?

  Her ex-husband had sat in her kitchen and accused her of begging him to spank her while he fucked her and Ilya found it amusing?

  “I guess you neglected to ask the ex-husband.” She couldn’t hold back the twinge of hurt that he was laughing at her. “He just proved he’s more than willing to run his mouth.”

  Just what she hadn’t envisioned in her darkest fantasies.

  “Ex-husbands aren’t normally so reliable.” That hint of an accent in his voice had heat curling through her despite her complete mortification. “I rather doubt Mathew Lauren kept his mouth shut where his accusations are concerned. What he likely didn’t take into account was the honor of the woman he was maligning and the fact that her friends so wisely kept their mouths shut about his accusations.” His look became more somber. “No matter his attempts to shame you, he couldn’t succeed. You value yourself far too well to allow others to have the opportunity to gossip about you.”

  She hadn’t dared. She couldn’t have borne the shame of her brother having to fight because she’d made the wrong choice. Or her parents enduring such shameful gossip. They were a close family, not just with one another but with their aunts, uncles, and cousins as well.

  “Even the lovers you’ve take
n after your marriage never spoke of it or admitted to a relationship with you,” he continued. “A rare circumstance indeed.”

  “What lovers?” she muttered, still staring at him resentfully.

  She hated that he’d heard Matt’s filth.

  He blinked back at her before pinning her with his gaze.

  “Emma Jane, surely you have had other lovers.” He said it as though she’d broken some law.

  “Ilya, you were here a year ago and I refused you because my divorce wasn’t final. The ink is barely dry on the papers now,” she reminded him. “Sorry, no other lovers. And not in a million years would I have begged Matt for anything.”

  That would have been sheer idiocy.

  He just stared at her.

  Ilya had refused to believe there had been no other lovers. No woman he knew went a year without a lover. Women were delicate, meant to be touched, to be pleasured. Especially one such as his Emma Jane.

  “A year is a long time,” he pointed out, watching her expression carefully.

  There was shame, resentment, and beneath that a woman’s hunger, her needs.

  “It didn’t matter.” She shrugged, breaking eye contact and staring at the floor for a moment. “I’m not very good at the whole sex thing anyway. Just ask Matt,” she all but sneered.

  Some men should not be allowed to live for what they did to an innocent woman’s dreams and her budding sexuality.

  Emma Jane had barely been twenty when she’d married and, from what he learned, still yet a virgin. Five years later, the innocent heart had been scarred, her once-natural needs hidden, frightened of exposure.

  “Do you believe a woman’s need for more sensation, for adventure and the ultimate pleasure in her sexuality is somehow wrong, Emma Jane?” he asked her softly, and in her quick look saw her desperation and her fears. “That you wanted to feel your lover deeper, more dominantly is somehow wrong? Do you believe that your lover’s need to watch your pretty ass blush for him could be so unusual? Or that screaming in pleasure as he works his cock up your ass is so deviant? Do you believe women read such material because that isn’t what they want?”