Nash Security Solutions

by Lola Silverman

  “You’re going?” Shit. Had he actually said that out loud? Ralston prepared for the backlash.

  For a moment, he thought Analise was going to blow a gasket. She straightened up, stared straight at him, and took a deep breath as though she were going to unleash a tirade. Then it all seemed to fold in on itself. He saw her nostrils flare delicately as she exhaled.

  “Obviously.” She gestured to her things. “I’m leaving the city to go home. It would be impractical to leave all of my clothes behind.”

  “Right,” he murmured. “I wish you wouldn’t go.” Okay, that was an ill-advised comment as well. What was wrong with him? It was as if he were determined to put his foot in his mouth at every possible moment.

  She spun around and glared at him. “You look a little mussed, Ralston. Did I catch you right in the middle of your post-fucking glow of satisfaction?”

  “I didn’t fuck her,” he growled. “I wouldn’t do that.”

  “Really?” Analise curled her lip and leveled a look of such disdain at him that, for a moment, Ralston had no doubt that she hated him as much as she had ever liked him. “I think I would have a hard time believing that you didn’t fuck her.”

  “I don’t want Chelsea,” Ralston quietly insisted. “I want you. Chelsea is a means to an end.”

  “Then you are one of those guys, and I pity you and her both.” She zipped up the bag and started walking toward the stairs. “And to think I came here to give you information about your father’s supposed nemesis. I cannot believe I was still thinking that I should give a shit about your situation.”

  He could not let her leave. He had screwed up everything, but he could not commit that lasting mistake. He had to find a way to make her see, even if he made her unspeakably angry in the process.

  ANALISE STRODE TOWARD the stairs. This was it. She was going to leave, and she would never see Ralston again. It was a good decision, so why did she feel so uncertain about it? This disgusting wishy-washy emotional crap was annoying as hell.

  Then Ralston grabbed her arm. He spun her around so hard that she lost her grip on her rucksack. It thudded to the ground, but she wasn’t paying any attention to that. She was too busy trying to process that fact that she suddenly found herself in Ralston’s arms. He was holding her so close to his body that the heat of him seared her skin.

  Before she could protest, he slammed his mouth down against hers. The contact was almost brutal in intensity. She made a high-pitched noise of mingled protest and surprise. With her hands flat against his chest, she tried to push him away but wound up pulling him closer instead.

  He tasted so good. Why did he have to taste so good? She was mad at him. She didn’t even know if he had fucked Chelsea Ettinger or not. Where was her self-respect? And yet when his tongue pushed into her mouth, she could do nothing but moan and squirm as her pussy grew instantly hot and wet. Her body didn’t want to be angry with him. It just wanted Ralston any way that she could get him.

  He grabbed the hem of her shirt and dragged it over her head. Slipping his hands over her back, he skillfully popped the clasp of her bra and freed her breasts. His hands were everywhere. With his lips on her jawline and neck and his hands kneading her breasts, she could not think straight. She put her hands in his soft blond hair and pulled him closer. She needed this so badly, no matter the consequences.

  Analise wanted to feel his skin next to hers. She started pulling at his shirt as well. She tugged it off and moaned as her palms skated over all of that warm male flesh. She traced the contour of his ribs and then let her hands slide down his belly toward his cock. She dipped below his waistband and finally picked apart the button and zipper so that she could hold the hot length of him in her hands.

  He groaned as she gave his shaft a squeeze. The desire she felt from him was incredible. He was so hard! And when she brushed her fingers over the sensitive tip, he trembled against her.

  “I need you,” Ralston muttered. “I need to be inside you. Now.”

  Yes. That was what she wanted too.

  RALSTON KNEW THIS was probably a bad idea. He just couldn’t seem to make himself care. He toed off his shoes and pushed his pants down his legs. Analise was doing the same. Her boots made a thud as they hit the wood floor. Then she was naked, and his brain stopped thinking beyond that fact.

  He swept her into his arms. The bed was too far. He needed her now. He needed her rough and hard, and he wanted to fill her so full of his cum that she would never think he had been with anyone else.

  The couch was closest. Ralston set Analise on her feet and spun her around so that she faced the back of the couch. Putting his hand on her back, he caressed the delicate skin between her shoulder blades and then bent her over. Her legs spread automatically and she arched her back. The position gave him free and instant access to her hot pussy.

  He palmed his cock and dragged the head through her soaking wet slit. The swollen flesh felt exquisite against his erection. The friction was delicious enough to make him want to come then and there. Instead, he ground his teeth together and forced himself to wait. He needed her to come. He needed her to enjoy herself as much as he was.

  Fitting his cock to her opening, he pushed hard inside her body. Analise gasped and moaned as she pushed back against him. He could see her hands clutching at the couch until her knuckles turned white. Ralston grabbed her hips and began thrusting in and out of her pussy in long, hard strokes that helped him bury himself as deep inside her welcoming body as he could.

  The climax came fast for both of them. Ralston lost track of anything but the feel of her pussy gripping his cock in a tight embrace. She trembled and finally cried out as she melted around him. Her skin flushed a becoming shade of pink as her orgasm made every muscle in her body tighten. The resulting friction was more than Ralston could withstand. He shouted and thrust hard. Straining against her body, he held onto her hips and pulled her back to meet him as his cock spewed every bit of what he had into her hot depths.

  Still breathing hard and heavy, Ralston took a step back. He grabbed hold of his shaft and dragged it free of her slick pussy. A thick helping of cum spilled from her opening. The satisfaction he felt at that sight was almost frightening in intensity.

  “There,” he panted. “If I had been with someone else, I would have never been able to give that to you.”

  In his mind, the words should have made things better. Unfortunately, he wasn’t a woman nor did he particularly understand how a woman’s thought process worked. So, when Analise made a sound of utter outrage and whirled on him, he was more than a little surprised.

  “Give that to me?” she snarled. “Seriously? That’s what you have to say? I’m supposed to feel better because you gave me a whopping huge cream pie?”

  Her use of the lewd term would have been funny under any other circumstances. Right now, Ralston had a bad feeling that he had just made things much worse. Analise was busy hopping and squirming back into her clothing. She shoved her feet back into her boots and stomped over to her rucksack.

  “Just about the time I think I’ve got you figured out, you do something completely off the wall that makes zero fucking sense.” She shook her head in what appeared to be disappointment. “Bye, Ralston. I’m sure you’ll find whatever it is you’re looking for. And I truly wish you and Chelsea the happiest of futures together. You guys really deserve each other.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  All of that and she hadn’t even gotten around to telling the idiot about the empty Sokolov house. Analise was disgusted with herself in so many ways that she couldn’t even think straight. Of course, part of that could have been the fact that her underwear was soaking wet with the combined fluids of her and her idiot lover. She had felt sated and mellow for all of two seconds before Ralston had opened his big, stupid mouth about proving he hadn’t screwed Chelsea.

  Really? That was how he thought he could prove to her that he hadn’t fucked Chelsea Ettinger? He screwed her too? Was she supposed to me
asure the stuff or something? Was there a key somewhere that explained how many ounces the typical man had to offer per day? No. There was no such fucking thing! He was just being a dumbass.

  For some reason, Analise found herself on the MBTA train heading toward Ava’s home in the South End. She didn’t know what to do. There was no protocol for this mess, and no matter where she turned, it felt like she was making bad decision upon bad decision.

  It was nearly two in the morning when Analise trudged up to Ava’s front porch and banged on the door. Analise waited, and she waited, and finally after what felt like a million years, the porch light went on. She heard the deadbolts being unlocked, and then the door swung open.

  Ava was peering through the cracked opening with a look of confusion on her face. “Analise? I could hardly believe that was you I saw on the camera. What are you doing here?”

  “I don’t have anywhere else to go.” Analise felt ten kinds of pathetic saying that, but it was true. “Can I please just crash on your couch for a few hours until I can get a flight out of Boston?”

  “Of course. Come in.” Ava stepped back to let Analise inside. “Nash is out in the truck. I’ll send him a quick message to let him know it’s you and not some assailant bent on murdering me in my bed.”

  Analise did not say what she was thinking, which was that she was rather surprised Nash wasn’t the one in Ava’s bed to begin with. That wouldn’t have been productive.

  Ava ushered Analise into the kitchen. The light over the island was on. It created a warm little circle of light on the top of the island. The food had been cleared away, but Ava gestured to the refrigerator and then to Analise.

  “Do you need something to eat?”

  She realized that she hadn’t had lunch or dinner. In fact, she was famished. Analise felt shameful saying this after everything. “Yes. I could eat something. Anything is fine. You don’t have to go to any trouble.”

  Ava’s gaze narrowed, and Analise realized that the very observant woman was very much taking it all in. “How about some eggs?”

  Analise’s belly growled in response. She gave a rueful smile. “I think that sounds great.”

  “Why don’t you sit and tell me what happened?” Ava waved to the barstools. “I’ll get you some tea.”

  In minutes, there was a steaming cup of peppermint tea in front of Analise and Ava was stirring a batch of scrambled eggs with cheese, bits of diced ham, and some fresh vegetables. Analise wondered if Ralston realized how good he had it in the mom department. Her mother would have sent her to bed hungry after giving her an earful about how her behavior was unladylike and even more unacceptable and shameful to the family.

  “So?” Ava prompted gently.

  “I don’t want to talk about Ralston.”

  Ava shrugged while she gently stirred the eggs and got ready to put them on a plate. “So talk about something else.”

  “I went to the Sokolov estate in Cambridge tonight,” Analise said haltingly. “I managed to get inside through a balcony. The place is covered in guards.”

  Ava swung around and gave Analise a look of alarm. “Were you seen? That seems awfully dangerous.” Ava put the eggs onto a plate and set the pile in front of Analise with a fork. “Although I would suspect that going by yourself would draw a lot less attention than taking someone like Wrath or Carson with you.”

  Analise appreciated Ava’s insight. She picked up the fork and took a bite. “This is really good, thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.” Ava pressed her lips together and took a sip of her own hot tea. “So, what did you find? I assume you found something of interest or you wouldn’t have brought it up.”

  “That’s the thing,” Analise murmured. “I found nothing.”

  “Nothing?”

  Analise waited until she had managed to swallow the mouthful of food she’d just shoveled in. “I found the master suite upstairs, but it looks completely unoccupied.”

  “Maybe Sokolov doesn’t live there,” Ava suggested. “Maybe it’s sort of a decoy or something?”

  “I thought the same thing until I heard a couple of the guards talking about how they didn’t have to take a tray up to the boss’s office because he was working and Anton said not to.”

  “Was Anton there?” Ava’s expression grew concerned. “There seem to have been plenty of other men there, right?”

  “Anton was out somewhere. The guards all looked very young,” Analise speculated. “You know, like they were sort of getting their feet wet or something.”

  “And did you make it to the study?” Ava was leaning forward over the island. It was obvious that she wanted very badly to know what Analise had found.

  Analise swallowed another bite of the delicious food. “The study was deserted, Ava. There wasn’t anyone in there, and the dust was about an inch thick on the desk. I saw a few first editions of books, a collection of those Russian samovar things, and some other knickknack stuff. I’m telling you. Anton has those men guarding air, and they don’t even realize it.”

  “But why?” Ava wondered out loud. “What purpose would that serve?”

  Analise shrugged. “I don’t know, but I feel like when we get the answer to that we’ll know exactly what Stedman has been up to.”

  *

  Ralston sat in the dark with a tumbler full of scotch dangling from his hand. He had not meant to screw things up even more with Analise. Until her, he had never had difficulty saying the right thing with women. In fact, women were easy. You paid them the necessary compliments, bought them a few trinkets, and pretended to hang on their every word. That seemed to keep them happy.

  Of course, that hadn’t worked at all for his parents. His father had attempted pretty regularly to buy his mother enough baubles to make her happy, but Ava had wanted something his father wasn’t capable of giving—fidelity. Ava had wanted a faithful husband who she actually enjoyed spending time with. Apparently, that wasn’t for sale because Stedman could not buy it in any way that had made Ava want to hang around.

  Perhaps Ralston was doomed to have the same problems that his father had. Maybe Ralston should just accept that marriage to Chelsea Ettinger was his fate. He could accept that fate and then try to find solace in work—except he really didn’t care to be a workaholic. So maybe he could try something else. A hobby?

  Ralston pinched the bridge of his nose and tried to imagine what he might do for a hobby if he had the time. Sailing? Golf? Polo? All of those seemed interesting and yet boring if he was doing them all by himself. At least with something like polo he would be part of a team. Right? That involved being around other people, although it had very little to do with the sort of companionship that he had been enjoying with Analise.

  Heaving himself up from his chair, Ralston looked at the time. It was two in the morning. There was zero chance right now that he was going to be able to sleep. It just wasn’t going to happen. So he might as well do something productive. Right?

  Downing the rest of his scotch, Ralston headed up to the top floor to content himself with the soothing and familiar puzzle of using computer equipment to explore data. He sat down, pulled up a search screen, and went to work on the stuff he had gotten from his father’s files at the bank. Or rather he had gotten information on his father from Nigel’s files.

  At first he could not believe the amount of encrypted material coming through via the virus he had implanted on Nigel’s computer, and the secondary virus that had been uploaded onto one of his father’s computers after the fake carjacking incident. Then he realized that the data was the same. It was all synced together in some strange way. Everything that Nigel did, Stedman knew about. Apparently, his father had been rather naughty in stealing a coworker’s password or other personal information and then cloning the machine.

  Of course none of this was a surprise. Not until Ralston got down to the emails and realized that his father was regularly emailing not Sokolov, but Anton about day-to-day operations in the Bratva organization. Wha
t. The. Hell?

  Ralston punched another button and wiped at his bleary eyes. It couldn’t be the scotch. He was totally seeing what he was seeing and reading it too. Stedman Hyde-Pierson was the man calling the shots for Sokolov. Why? Stedman wasn’t Russian. He had no real interest in the Bratva organization beyond that of a secondary source of extra income. And yet Ralston was reading an email that seemed to detail someone’s promotion to the ranks and the possibility of finding a few more low-level men to use as guards.

  There were also vague references to something that the men were guarding in the Sokolov estate. Anton made veiled comments regarding “our friend,” and Stedman would return those comments by assuring Anton that “their friend” was healthy and very much capable of handling the regular duties of the Pekhan.

  “Is Sokolov sick or something?” Ralston reread the emails and realized that it very much sounded as though Sokolov himself was not a well man. Were Anton and Stedman caring for this man as though he were some kind of invalid? Was that the secret? “It still doesn’t account for all of the financial bullshit,” Ralston muttered.

  Just then, Ralston’s phone rang. He glanced down at the smartphone and realized that it wasn’t an incoming call. It was a security warning. His system was being hacked!

  Adrenaline surged through his bloodstream. Ralston went into immediate defensive mode. He slammed up his firewalls and started pounding the keyboard to turn out code that would bolster the defenses. He was more awake this moment than he had been in months. Hacking? Someone was trying to backtrack one of his viruses? That suggested a sophistication of technology that Ralston had not expected!

  A shrill beep indicated that the source had been identified. Ralston pounded out a sequence of code to isolate the threat. He did not repel it. He encouraged it. Leaving a little hole, Ralston waited with bated breath for the hacker to take the bait. For just a moment, he thought his ruse would work. And then just as suddenly as the attack had come, the online presence dissipated and was gone.