by Cindy Dees
“Yes, she’s doing fine,” Ashe answered easily. He looked over at her, letting his gaze roam boldly up and down her body. Heat burst through her. Even her face grew hot. Great! How in the heck was she supposed to convince Vitaly she had no interest in Ashe if he made her freaking blush?
She headed toward the bar and was alarmed when Vitaly followed, crowding her against the wood and brass counter. He leaned in close and muttered, “Forget what you saw, Hank. You’re a good kid, understand? You don’t want any part of what goes on up there. The clients would mistake you for someone you’re not.”
Once again, he sounded genuinely concerned for her. She half turned to look him in the eye. “Thanks for looking out for me, Vitaly. I appreciate it.”
He nodded tersely and headed into his office. Son of a gun. Who’d have thunk the SOB would look out for her like that? Or was he just trying to get on her good side to prevent her from telling anyone about Sveta? Man, she sucked at all this undercover stuff. She was by nature a straightforward person, and subterfuge of any kind messed with her head. Although her family hadn’t been exactly the most forthcoming bunch to grow up around. Maybe her honesty was a twisted form of youthful rebellion.
Or maybe she was just overthinking Vitaly’s motives. Maybe he really did want to protect her. Cripes, this place was making a cynic out of her. But then, she got to see the worst humanity had to offer in this den of iniquity.
The next two weeks couldn’t pass fast enough for her. When they talked later, she would ask Ashe to move up the timetable of the FBI raid...or whatever it was he’d arranged with his girlfriend on the phone last night.
She’d been startled by the surge of jealousy that had swept through her when she’d realized that was a woman he’d been flirting with so comfortably on the phone. She’d give anything to have a man like him flirt with her like that. Maybe someday when this nightmare passed.
Assuming she survived it.
The bartender plunked a glass down in front of her and poured a sloppy shot of vodka into it. “For your boyfriend,” he announced.
She snapped back, “He’s not my boyfriend.”
“He’s watching you like he is. Guy’s warning off every dude in the room with his glare.”
Was that why no one had been groping or swatting her tonight? Except, of course, Vitaly. Crud. Ashe wasn’t helping matters by protecting her. He had to ignore her...or at least just treat her like one of the other girls. He mustn’t give any sign that she was anything special to him. Vitaly saw everything that went on around here. The man was like a spider sitting in his web.
The other waitresses whispered that Vitaly had secret cameras in the club and spied on them. Hank had even seen him sitting at his desk from time to time, studying his computer screen intently. But any time she’d had an excuse to go into his office, he’d turned off his monitor before she could glimpse whatever had been on it.
Hence her need for caution now. She ignored Ashe’s whiskey on the bar and instead delivered a tray of drinks to a table full of regulars. They were Russians, but just customers who came in for the good vodka Vitaly stocked.
“Hey, Hank,” Vitaly called from the doorway of his office. “Your boyfriend is waiting for his drink. Go serve him...and be nice to him.”
She winced. Drat. He’d seen her skip giving Ashe his drink. She’d hoped another one of the waitresses would want to flirt with the hunk in the corner and take his vodka to him in her place. No such luck.
She nodded in Vitaly’s direction without making eye contact with her boss and swerved toward Ashe’s table. He took the shot glass directly out of her hand. Their fingertips brushed, and she gasped as her pulse jumped. Lord, he had a crazy effect on her.
“Can I get you another drink?” she asked him mechanically as he handed the empty shot glass back to her.
“Do you carry Kauffman Vintage Vodka?”
She stared at him in surprise. “You know premium vodkas?”
“I like to think so.”
“I don’t know if we carry that. I’ll ask the bartender.”
“If not, I’ll take a shot of Russian Standard or the best the house has got.”
She headed for the bar and got raised eyebrows from the bartender at the request for Kauffman. He commented, “That stuff runs over two hundred bucks a bottle. Maybe Vitaly has some in his special stock. You’ll have to ask him.”
Hank poked her head into her boss’s office. “The guy from last night is asking for some vodka called Kauffman. The bartender told me to come ask you for it.”
“Kauffman, eh? Perhaps I should meet your boyfriend.”
“He’s not my boyfriend,” she retorted in exasperation she didn’t have to fake.
“You a lesbian or something?” Vitaly asked.
She bit back a snappy reply and merely mumbled, “Nah. He’s just not my boyfriend.” Sometimes it was a struggle to keep up her charade of not being the brightest bulb in the box.
Vitaly got up from his desk and moved to a tall locked wooden cabinet in the corner. She moved a little to have a sight line into the cabinet and was stunned to see several big honking weapons standing in the case. They looked like machine guns. Holy cow—
“Here we go.” Vitaly pulled out a fat spherical bottle with a big silver cap that reminded her of a parrot’s beak. Clear liquid filled the round belly of the bottle. She shifted back to her original position and pasted a look of dull disinterest on her face as he locked the case and turned to face her.
“Bring us two of the good vodka shot glasses in a bowl of ice,” he ordered as he herded her out of the office and headed for Ashe’s table. Planning on checking out the new patron personally, was he? Sheesh, Vitaly was paranoid.
She dutifully brought the men a deep bowl with two crystal shot glasses nestled in crushed ice. She set the bowl on the table and Vitaly ordered her brusquely, “Go away. My new friend and I want private conversation.”
Every now and then, Vitaly’s flawless American accent slipped a little and took on a faint Russian tinge like it just had. But that usually happened only when he was furious or under stress. Alarmed, she glanced between the two men. Dammit, there was no way to warn Ashe that Vitaly was on high alert.
She made brief eye contact with Ashe, who merely looked vaguely irritated that she was still hanging around. Frustrated, she retreated to the bar. “What’s Kauffman, anyway?” she asked the barkeep, even though she knew full well what it was. Her brother used to drink it from time to time.
“One of the best Russian vodkas on earth. They only make it in years when the wheat crop is of especially high quality.”
She sniffed. “Sounds snooty to me.”
“It’s not the stuff regular guys order, that’s for sure. Who’s that dude Vitaly’s sitting with?”
“No idea. Just some customer.”
“Isn’t he the one who broke up the fight last night?”
Crap, crap, crap. Ashe had called attention to himself—and now to her—by coming back tonight. “I dunno. I guess so.”
“Looks like he and the boss are hitting it off.”
Great. Ashe was horning in on her investigation. She’d kill him if he messed it all up. What could Ashe and Vitaly be talking about so intently anyway?
“He hot for you or something?” The bartender’s blunt question quickly derailed her curiosity.
She rolled her eyes at the bartender. “As if I’d date any of the slimeballs who come in here.”
The guy guffawed and poured her a plain soda with a twist of lemon, the way she liked it. She sipped at the drink for a few seconds, her back pointedly turned to Ashe and Vitaly and whatever bromance the two of them were having.
She moved around the club, serving patrons and enduring their lewd comments. Just another night in downtown hell. Except that it wasn’t. She couldn’t shake her hyperawareness of Ashe sitting in the corner with her boss. Her dangerous mobster boss. Their heads were close together, and they laughed uproariously now and then lik
e they were trading war stories.
Vitaly called for a refill of crushed ice, and when she approached the table, she was stunned to hear them conversing in Russian. Ashe was freaking fluent? Bastard. Unreasonable jealousy surged through her that he was getting further with her boss in one lousy hour than she had in months.
It wasn’t fair. She was a no-account female, and Vitaly ignored her existence for the most part. But Ashe could stroll in here and order some hoity-toity vodka, and just like that, Vitaly was hanging on his every word.
The level of vodka in the parrot-beak bottle dropped steadily over the next hour, and Vitaly demanded yet another refill on the ice. But this time, when she approached the table, her boss grabbed her rear end under her short skirt and gave it a humiliatingly familiar squeeze through her panties.
It was all she could do not to pull away from his hard fingers digging into her tender flesh. “Evgeniya the Ice Queen,” he drawled in Russian. “Needs a man to screw her lights out. I tell her the pay is much better in the lap dance lounge, but always she refuses.”
“Maybe a real man hasn’t offered to do the job right,” Ashe replied drily in the same language.
It was all she could do not to stick her tongue out at him. To date, Vitaly thought she understood only a few words of the simplest Russian, and she needed to keep it that way. She’d been able to eavesdrop on countless conversations between him and his associates because of it.
“You think you’re man enough?” Vitaly hooted. “I’ll give you a bottle of this vodka on the house if you convince her to do it. Make a lap dancer of her if you can. I’ll earn a fortune on her in the lap dance lounge if I can get her back there. Get a load of those legs. And just feel this ass...”
Ashe glanced up at her for just a moment, his eyes mirroring regret for just an instant. But it was enough for her to know he was not enjoying this any more than she was. “Come over here,” he drawled in English. “Vitaly says you have a great ass. I want to check it out.”
Was he kidding? Apparently not, for he stared at her expectantly. Silently livid at her boss, she stepped away from his invasive grip and moved to Ashe’s side, standing so close that her knees rubbed his thigh. “Go ahead, buddy. It’s not like you’ll ever get more than a handful of this action.”
Vitaly hooted with laughter. He sounded more drunk than not, but she never could tell with him. He held vodka like nobody’s business.
Ashe’s palm cupped the back of her knee, sliding up the back of her thigh with maddening slowness. With light pressure, he pushed her leg until she took a step to the side, turning so her back was to the room. What? He didn’t want the other patrons to see him checking out her posterior regions? If the man weren’t feeling her up, she might actually think his action was chivalrous. But as it was, his hand headed inexorably toward her rear end.
His fingertips traced the seam of her stockings up under her miniskirt, up to the swell of her backside, paused, and then continued higher until her entire cheek was cupped in his big, warm hand. Her glute muscles clenched involuntarily.
His hand kneaded her gently and he murmured cajolingly, “Relax, baby. I’m not gonna hurt you.”
No, but he was embarrassing her to death. It was one thing to have random drunk strangers grab her as she passed by them. But he was no stranger, and this was no random grope. It was a full-scale invasion. His fingers dipped into the tight crevasse between her cheeks, in the same place Vitaly’s had, but where her boss’s grasp had been rough and impersonal, Ashe’s fingers were beguiling. Intent on winning her acceptance. They stroked and probed gently, asking and waiting for her to relax and give him access to her most secret places. Something hot and liquid erupted low in her belly, startling the hell out of her and momentarily distracting her long enough that she did relax her tush.
Ashe’s hand dipped deep between her legs immediately, and she tensed up once more. But the damage was done. His hand cupped her lady parts with shocking intimacy, and any move she made would rub said parts against said hand. She froze, staring down at him in shock. It was one thing to go along with Vitaly’s misogyny for the sake of gaining the guy’s trust. It was another thing entirely to embarrass her in public. Although, truth be told, the worst of her embarrassment stemmed from the fact that she was a little turned on by Ashe’s hand cupping her like she already belonged to him.
“Trust me, Vitaly,” he declared in Russian. “She’s no ice queen. She’s all woman. And hot for me.”
She didn’t stop to think about it. She went with her reflex reaction and slapped Ashe’s cheek with all her might.
Vitaly surged halfway to his feet, swearing and apologizing as words tumbled out of his mouth in a garbled jumble. But it was Ashe’s reaction that shocked her. He stared up at her in stunned disbelief for a heartbeat and then threw his head back and laughed. Heartily.
“Sit, sit, Vitaly,” he chortled in Russian. “I like my women a little wild. It’s more fun that way to tame them.”
Her gaze narrowed. As if he would ever tame her. Hah!
Vitaly sank back into his chair, but he was looked genuinely angry and glared at her with a grim promise of serious retribution when Ashe left this place. So much for looking out for her best interests. Heck, for all she knew, her boss might drag her upstairs by the hair and let the clients do their worst to her. Her insides turned to jelly and her entire being quailed at the thought of what could happen to her up there. They could shoot her up with heroin until she was hooked, lock her into a room in the brothel...
Who would come looking for her? There was no one to rescue her from the hellhole Vitaly could throw her into. She would be lost. And now that Max was gone, not a living soul would care.
“...don’t let women slap me without punishment,” Ashe was saying in Russian. He leaned back in his chair, tossed back a shot of the expensive vodka and grinned at Vitaly. “How do you propose I do that, my friend?”
Vitaly scowled. “I’d beat her until she couldn’t sit for a week.”
Ashe tilted his head to one side and studied her while she defiantly glared back at him. “Nah. She’s got fair skin. She would bruise like mad. Someone would call the cops on you.”
Vitaly jerked his chin at her. “What would you do to punish her?”
A slow smile unfolded on Ashe’s face. “You want her to work in the lap dance lounge, yes?”
Aghast, she stared at him. He was not actually going to throw her to the wolves like this, was he? Ashe was supposed to be one of the good guys! Worse, she wasn’t supposed to know Russian, so she couldn’t respond in any way to this little exchange between the men.
“Yes, of course,” Vitally answered a little too eagerly. Apparently he wasn’t so drunk that he’d missed where Ashe was going with his line of reasoning, either. Dammit.
Ashe asked in English, “How about I teach her how to do a decent lap dance?”
It was Vitaly’s turn to throw back his head and laugh. “Done.”
“No way—” she began.
Vitaly surged to his feet and grabbed a fistful of her hair at the back of her neck, yanking her head violently and forcing her to endure his fetid breath in her face. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Ashe tense. “You make my friend happy, or I will take you upstairs and put you to work up there. Understood?”
She tried to nod, but even the smallest movement of her head caused her hair to pull painfully against his fist. He leaned in closer to growl, “Do what this man says or I’ll make you pay.”
Terror roared through her. It was her worst nightmare. She was going to get sucked into the abyss and never escape Vitaly’s clutches. And it was all Ashe’s fault, damn him. Why, oh, why did he have to show up here and mess up everything?
Ashe surged out of his chair, his big fist suddenly encompassing Vitaly’s at her neck. “Let the lady go.” His voice was low and cold and dripped with violence.
Vitaly shoved her at Ashe. “Be a good girl and show the nice man how very sorry you are.”
>
Ashe caught her as she half fell against him. He set her gently back on her feet and loomed close beside her, never releasing her arm just above the elbow. “Come along, naughty little girl.” His words might be what Vitaly wanted to hear, but his tone was soothing.
Without further ado, he led her over to the lap dance lounge’s entrance. The bouncer opened it, grinning, and Ashe ushered her into what surely was a special corner of hell.
What little lighting there was in the lounge came from red bulbs shrouded in colored scarves that hung from the ceiling and fat black candles dripping in sconces around the walls. Necklaces of bones, snakeskins, animal skulls and braids of herbs decorated the kidney-colored walls. The place reeked of incense and pot and sweat, and maybe a hint of blood. A rooster even clucked quietly in a small cage on a table off to one side of the room. More drippy candles, dried chicken feet and knives lay on the table beside the live chicken. Small curtained alcoves lined the room, and a row of chairs filled its center.
Ashe led her to an alcove with the curtain pulled back and ushered her inside. He yanked the cloth shut behind them. A low armless chair stood against the wall, and he smirked at her before turning her arm loose and plunking down on it.
She whispered furiously, “You don’t seriously expect me to do this, do you?”
He murmured back sotto voce, “I seriously expect that there are cameras in here, and that your boss will be watching. I’m not exactly thrilled about the position you’ve put me in, either. You really shouldn’t have slapped me. At least not in front of a misogynistic chauvinist like your boss.”
“What did you expect me to do?” she said with a hiss. “Let him manhandle me like that and treat me like a piece of meat he can give to whomever he wants?”
“I expected you to trust me. I’d have seen to it the bastard gets what’s coming to him and I’d have gotten you out of there without this little detour.”
She swore under her breath. He was, of course, right. It was her own impulsive nature and stupid temper that had put her in this pickle.