The old woman rose from her chair and half the men at the table rose with her. Vadik jumped to his feet, but the grey-haired grandmother waved them all back to their seats.
“Keep eating,” she said. “Girls, come with me.”
Another of Tomek’s daughters-in-law rose, as did Niko’s other sister. The wives stayed, gripping their husbands’ hands. It was time to have it all out. The whole table had been holding something back.
Janosz set down his spoon with more force than the act required, and half the table froze at the act. He cleared his throat. “Niko, what’s this I hear from the Texas alpha about your mission failing?”
Niko’s gaze flickered around the group, landing on Luther, Maggie, Dani, and Andrea in turn, then raising to his uncle. “Our mission didn’t fail.”
“That’s not what Aaron VonBrandt tells me,” Janosz said with a frown. “He’s convinced that the enforcers have gone off-book. And after all this talk about the incinerator, I’m starting to listen.”
“It didn’t fail, Uncle. I promise you.” Niko set down his own spoon and it clinked against his plate. “We had to adapt the mission. That’s all.”
“You’ve been doing an awful lot of adapting in the recent weeks.” Janosz held up one finger to halt what appeared to be interference by one of his brothers. “Now, Aaron tells me that you’ve killed a man. That, coupled with losing the girl on the island, and then this other death that we have to help you clean up.” He wiped his mouth. “This is bordering on danger, exposing us to the humans.”
“But Uncle J,” Niko said, employing his best petulant teenager tone. “We couldn’t control either of those accidental deaths.”
“The point isn’t that you’re at fault.” Janosz glared at Niko’s dad when he tried to open his mouth. “The point is that you’re out of your depth.”
Andrea’s offended sigh cut the air like a machete and everyone’s attention flew to her. “My brother is jumping to conclusions,” she said. “Don’t let his protectiveness inhibit Niko from participating in the mission.”
Vadik’s fingers flexed into a tight ball when Janosz’s gaze fixed on Andrea. He was half a table away from the old man, but he could jump that far if he had to. If the old man raised his voice or his hand, he figured he could be across the distance in about two seconds.
He was coiled and ready and on the balls of his toes, when the old man laughed and waved her off. “Oh, my dear, you don’t understand, do you?”
Vadik’s jaw tensed, keeping his oar out of the water.
“This isn’t about Niko,” the grey-haired Pole said. “This is about your mission. You’ve all failed.”
Andrea jumped to her feet and Vadik felt his whole body corkscrew into a ready position. She threw her napkin onto the table and stalked out of the room, her boots making hard thunks on the old wood floor.
Maggie was halfway out of her seat when Vadik shook his head. He followed Andrea’s footsteps, not entirely certain he could stop himself if he’d wanted to.
Did he want to?
He turned the corner into the kitchen, but was greeted with unfamiliar faces and silence. Natalja emerged from behind the refrigerator door and let it swing closed. She pointed down a hallway and Vadik ran in the indicated direction.
A big wooden door slammed in his face. He placed his hand on one panel and sighed.
Andrea. Oh, Andrea.
“I can feel you out there.” Her voice was hollow, and it made him want to break the damn door down.
“I won’t come in if you don’t want me to.” He tried to breathe through those words. He didn’t mean them, but she didn’t need to know that.
“I need to be alone.”
“Fine.” He ground his teeth. But it wasn’t fine… it was anything but fine.
Several seconds passed with no sound. She hadn’t moved since he touched the cold wood that separated them.
What was she doing in there?
“I said, I need to be alone.”
“I know.” The muscles in his arms tensed. He tried to push off the door, but couldn’t. He wanted to want to let her be in there on her own. He also couldn’t ignore the need to be close to her.
“You can leave.” Her voice was quieter, almost a whisper.
Vadik bounced on his toes, but he still couldn’t put more distance between them. “I’ll just… I’ll be here.”
The handle turned and he stumbled forward when the door opened, catching him off-balance. Andrea’s hands steadied him, and he found himself staring into her reddened eyes.
They were so close, he could feel her hot breath on his lips, her breasts pressed against his chest. He backed up half a step and held her at arm’s length. “I really just wanted to make sure you were okay.”
“After the tongue-lashing I got from Niko’s alpha?” She laughed and crossed her arms. “Or after this morning?” One of her eyebrows rounded. “My bed was a little cold this morning.”
“You said you only wanted the night.” He regretted the words as soon as they left his lips. “I thought you’d want me to leave.”
“You couldn’t have woken me to ask?” Andrea tilted her head to one side. “Instead, I wake up alone and…fucking cold.”
He reached for her, and for just a moment, she pulled away. But her allowance of his hand on her shoulder was more than reluctance. She was conflicted, too. He could practically feel it.
“I’m sorry.” Vadik stroked her skin. “I know how you hate to be cold.”
She bit her lip and gazed up at him through thick eyelashes. “I do hate to be cold.” The tiniest of steps toward him. “You know me so well.”
He could feel himself falling into her orbit and he locked his elbow to keep her at arm’s length. “I really just came here to make sure you were alright.”
“I’m not all right, Vadik. And I’m never not all right.” Her attention fluttered from his lips to his eyes and back. “I haven’t been able to think about anything but you, all morning. I thought last night was enough, but then I woke up this morning and you were gone, and I wanted you to be there. And I never, ever, want that anymore.” She shook her head slowly, punctuating each shake with a hyperbole.
“I—Andrea…I…” His lips grasped for words that wouldn’t come.
How to tell her? How to admit?
“I had to pretend to trust you, as Sasha, but when I fell and thought I would keep falling, and you caught me…” Her hand traveled to his cheek. “I knew, I really trusted you. It wasn’t about Sasha and Ilya. And I can’t explain it.”
“There’s—”
“No, let me finish.” Andrea’s chest rose and fell. “There was a man once, a long time ago, who loved me, and I loved him, but I never felt this…I want to tell you everything. And I hold back from everyone. Even my brother. I don’t know what it is, and I can’t explain it, and it doesn’t make sense—”
“I can’t explain it, either.” He gripped her hand, still on his cheek, and warmth coursed through him. “As Babushka would say, when love whispers, reason is silent.”
Her smile was immediate and bright and filled his whole world with the hope of tomorrow. She gathered her lips to one side and laughed. “I’ve never fallen in love this fast. Is that what it is?”
“I don’t know anymore.” His words rushed out of him, like they came from some dark place beyond feeling. “I’ve been trying to deny it, and then trying to hold it back, and trying not to admit it, but I don’t know what else it could be.” He gripped her face in his hands and his breath came faster, almost in pants. “I don’t do this. I don’t get caught up in emotion. I don’t… it’s not about the sex. It’s you.”
He drew her face toward his and his mouth devoured hers.
I can’t get enough of you.
Those were the words, but he couldn’t speak them. Vadik just wanted to kiss her, to hold her, be inside her and outside her and around her and with her.
He wanted to be her world, the way she had, inexplicably, be
come his.
Vadik walked her back against the closet, toeing the door closed behind him. He lifted her onto his hips and could feel his cock already straining to get to her. She ground down against him and he groaned into her mouth.
Fucking pants.
He set her down and they fumbled with each other’s zippers. He gasped when she slid her cold hand onto his hot erection. He was getting harder each moment her skin was in contact with his.
Her pants fell down her hips and he plunged his fingers between her folds, stroking her until she sighed and sagged against him. He wanted her to be perfectly, totally wet, because he meant to fuck her right there in Niko’s Babushka’s bedroom or guestroom or wherever the hell they’d ended up.
“Oh, Vadik. Oh, fuck, Vadik,” she whispered in his ear, panting his name like his fingers controlled her breath.
He stroked her harder and her hand finally fell away from his cock, gripping his neck hard and moaning against him. He pushed her pants down her hips and she stepped out of them, then climbed back onto his hips.
Vadik pushed the closet door open and stepped inside, walking her all the way to the back and pressing her back against the much more sturdy wall. He went to his knees in front of her and lifted one of her legs so his tongue could easily find her clit.
The whoosh of air that followed drove him harder and faster, stroking her with his tongue, filling her with his fingers, searching for her release.
She hooked her leg over his shoulder and arched her hips into his mouth, repeating his name again and again until he heard the cascade of her pleasure take her, and it drove him to his feet.
Andrea reached a hand down and guided him into her. He choked out her name when he slid to the hilt and pounded her back against the wall.
The rhythm of his hips was fast and hard and his mind was awash in her scent and her breath and her pleasure. He kept driving until he collapsed against her, groaning his orgasm into her mouth as she sighed and laughed.
Their breaths mingled and tangled as they panted against each other in the back of the closet. Every few moments, she would let out another laugh, and he dropped his lips to hers, teasing her mouth open, so she could fill him with her laughter.
He needed her constant, insatiable laughter.
“Well…” she giggled. “That was unexpected.”
Vadik settled her body against his and held her tight. He couldn’t speak. Everything in him wanted to say again what he’d said before. Love. And being inside her hadn’t abated the yawning hole inside his chest. If anything, it’d made the need more pointed, more urgent. He held his breath.
“You have a way of saying everything without saying anything.” Andrea placed her hand on his chest and gazed into his eyes. “I…” Her mouth settled into a tight line, and she released a puff of air through her nose. “I needed that. Thank you.”
He took her face in his hands and stared at her, almost falling straight in to those blue, fathomless eyes. “Thank you.”
She bent down and grabbed his pants from where he’d stepped out of them. “Look. I know this is complicated.” She handed over his clothing. “How about this deal?” Andrea offered her now-empty hand. “No talking about anything until we make it off the island alive.”
Vadik raised an eyebrow and considered. Not talking was his favorite option, when it came to relationships. But this wasn’t like his other relationships.
There was something happening here he couldn’t explain, and he couldn’t name. He’d tried on love, and that hadn’t quite fit, either. It was something else.
But here she was, offering him every guy’s wet dream. Sex with a hot woman he cared about, and no messy talking.
Why don’t I jump at this opportunity?
He took her hand in his. “How about this deal. instead? We put our pants on, we go back out and finish dinner, and we kick this bad guy’s ass.”
One of her half-dimples peeked out of her smile and she shook his hand. “Deal.”
Andrea bent over to grab her pants and he realized for the first time, she hadn’t been wearing underwear.
Had she expected him to fuck her? Or does she not wear panties as a rule?
Either way, she was one unpredictable, fucking hot blonde bombshell, even under all that black hair and submissive acting. He couldn’t help smiling.
But as Babushka would say… he was in deep, deep shit.
Chapter Nine
Vadik sat on the tufted gold velvet couch in Natalja’s apartment and rubbed his fingers across the material.
Andrea’s leg was close enough; he could’ve grabbed and held it. That was what he wanted to do.
But Natalja stood over them, caressing a red flogger with leather knots at the end of each strand, and pursing her lips at them. She’d been visibly unhappy since she’d discreetly dragged them away from the continuing Sunday meal.
“I can see you haven’t been practicing.” She smacked the head of the flogger into her palm and the heavy tendrils swirled angrily, thudding against the front of the corset top she wore.
“In our defense, we haven’t had much time,” Andrea said.
“There was enough time for fucking.” Natalja held out the f sound and landed hard on the g, staring at them both as though she awaited an explanation.
Vadik’s jaw dropped. “How did you—”
But she flicked the flogger at him, missing his face by perhaps an inch. “Wolf hearing. Plus, I’m not an idiot. You follow her out of a room. Fifteen minutes later, you come back smiling like a fool.”
Andrea snorted a laugh and covered her mouth with her hand. Natalja raised an eyebrow menacingly.
Vadik’s fingers somehow found their way on to her thigh and he scooted a bit closer to her, a protective streak flaring up in him. “You were the one who told us to deal with the…the thing.” He stroked Andrea’s leg through the heavy fabric of her jeans.
Less than an hour previous, that leg had been naked and hooked over his shoulder, and his face had been buried in her pussy. And he just wanted to do it again.
“I told you to face your emotions. Not fuck like bunnies.” She snapped the flogger out to one side and Vadik’s spine snapped with it. “You’re headed in to an acting job tomorrow that many pros couldn’t pull off. You have to be convincing enough as these people that a bunch of criminals will give you access to parts of the island that your friends couldn’t get to before.”
Vadik nodded, squeezing Andrea’s knee and scooting back to his position. He sat back against the couch and focused forward. She was right. You can’t jump above your own head.
Natalja quirked her mouth to one side. “That’s better. That’s more Ilya.” She touched the side of Andrea’s face with the flogger, a gentle motion. “And you, my dear. You have to stop making eye contact with everyone.”
A laugh started low in his belly. He was coming to understand very quickly that Andrea wasn’t the type of person to look away from anyone.
“Think of it like acting,” Natalja continued. “Your motivation is, you want to save these girls, right?”
Andrea nodded, keeping her head down.
“Then your motivation for not being yourself is to save lives. Any time you need a reminder to be Sasha, you think of those girls.” She settled the head of the flogger onto Vadik’s leg. “And you, why are you doing this?”
The question stopped his breath. His mouth opened to answer, but no words came.
Luther was a friend, and Vadik owed Luther his life.
But every passing moment he spent with Andrea, he found himself wanting to be on this mission for her. He wanted to succeed for her. He wanted to be strong for her.
He shook his head. “The same reason.”
Natalja’s eyebrow shot toward the heavens. “You want to save wolves from being tortured by a madman?”
“Yes.”
Her lips drew together and she considered him, leaning back, but pressing the flogger harder on his leg.
“Don’t
lie to me.” She whacked him with the flogger and Vadik’s pulse raced.
“Well, it wasn’t about that at first, but I want to help.”
“What was it about at first?”
The flogger dug in to his flesh, bringing a sharp pain coursing through him. Flashes of the drug bust in Mexico City came, unbidden, behind closed eyes. Pictures of Luther’s face, hovering over him while his chest exploded in pain. They seemed far away.
Vadik swallowed. “Luther saved my life.”
Andrea’s inhale of breath was sharp and her fingers on his arm woke him from the memories.
He opened his eyes to see her worried expression, creasing lines on her face as she kept her head down and her gaze on some point on the floor in front of her. But her hand gripped him.
“I came because I owe Luther my life, but I’m staying because…” His tongue slid out to wet his lips. “Because I know I can help.”
Natalja withdrew the flogger and shifted her weight from side to side. “Look, this isn’t a test to see if you have the right motivation. Whatever drives you has to come from deep inside.” She pressed a closed fist to her rib cage. “It fuels you, like gasoline, and when you’re running low, it fills you up again. You’re going to need to know that when you’re on the island and the world is on fire.”
Andrea’s hand dropped from his wrist to slide into his hand, palm to palm, fingers wrapped around each other. She didn’t move her posture, but she held on to him like they were fused together.
He squeezed back.
“When you are Ilya and you’re Sasha, you have to think as well about why they do what they do. It’ll help you modify your behavior when appropriate.” Natalja took a few steps backward and sat on the plush paisley chair against the other wall of the narrow room. “Tell me, what is Ilya’s motivation?”
“He’s a psychopath,” Vadik said quickly.
Natalja’s head leaned to one side. “I don’t doubt that. But what makes him want to control Sasha?”
“You mean, own her, right?” Andrea’s voice was very much hers, not the acting voice she would have used as Sasha. “You don’t mean control. You mean own.”
Broken Wolf: Moonbound Series, Book Seven Page 8