He listened for signs from the bathroom. Still nothing. He should cut her some slack. After all she’d been through, she still had to deal with his smart remarks and his perpetual boner. Being put in his place just made it stiffer, which was borderline kinky, but hey. Just the fact that the elusive, mysterious Sveti was letting him into her glorious orbit was miracle enough. Let her scold and rant and bitch.
He’d stay put, panting and hopeful. Tongue at the ready.
He stretched out driving-stiffened muscles, and the sting in his hip reminded him of the bandage. He shrugged off the shirt and dug out the bag of stuff from the pharmacy.
He positioned himself in front of the mirror on the bathroom door. Tricky spot to reach. Twisting made the scab stretch and pull. Ouch.
The door opened. Sveti stepped out. “I’ll do that,” she said.
“Don’t worry about it,” he said. “I’ll get Dolores to help.”
“Hell with that,” Sveti said softly. “This one’s mine.”
He liked the sound of that. He felt claimed. At least his wound.
She’d taken off her sweater and wore a close-fitting button-down brown blouse in some clingy knit. Her low-rise jeans showed a teasing strip of taut belly. As she bent over him, the shirt dangled, opening a window to the shadowy wonders within: a flash of cleavage, a cream-colored lace bra strap, a whiff of mouth-watering scent. The mirror also offered the back view, which was dazzling in its own right.
It had been too long since they’d had sex. Twenty-four hours, and a lot of those hours had been spent holding her body in his arms with his neglected stiffie throbbing away, unappeased.
Her hair brushed over his shoulder like a flow of warm water.
Then she kissed him. A brief, butterfly touch of her lips on his cheek that left him openmouthed and stammering. “Wha . . . huh?”
“Sorry about my tantrum,” she said. “You didn’t deserve it.”
He stared, jaw slack. He’d been braced for a scold, and was totally unbraced for a kiss. Her hair did another soft, liquid swish. Then she started peeling off the bandage, and he started hissing obscenities.
“It’s messy, but it doesn’t look infected,” she commented.
He twisted to take a look at the oozing slash. “There’s cotton and gauze and antibiotic ointment in the bag.”
She cleaned it, patted it dry, dabbed antibiotics down its length. This activity gave him an excellent view into the secret wonderland inside her shirt. He wanted to crawl in there and just stay.
He hooked his finger into her belt. Pulled her upright.
“Sam,” she murmured. “Let me finish. I have to tape you up.”
“Go ahead.” He pressed his nose against the vee of petal-smooth skin above her shirt, savored the springy heft of her luscious breasts with his lips. Her nipples tightened to sharp points. Oh, yeah.
He cupped her ass, dragged her closer with a hungry growl.
Sveti reached down and stubbornly continued taping down the gauze, but he could feel that high-frequency thrum of bright energy building in her body, sparkling against his face, buzzing beneath his greedy, stroking hands.
She fumbled to finish, her fingers caressing the tape flat. Every stroke a tingling promise. Mmm. He liked the ministering angel routine.
The tube of antibiotic gel thudded onto the bed. Her hands rested on his bare shoulders. Her nails bit in. Fingers shaking.
He dragged in her scent the way a guy about to go underwater would drag in air. “I like that bra,” he said. “Open your shirt. Show me.”
A swift jerk would have done it, but he wanted those doors to open from within, flung wide and willing. Sweet surrender. That hot blush, that dazzled look. He wanted her soft and sopping wet. So he petted, stroked, nuzzled. And waited. Time measured by heartbeats.
She put her hands to the buttons. Fumbling, clumsy and shy.
The bravery and trust of that gesture humbled him, knowing what he knew about her. The hell she’d been through. She still trusted him.
It made him feel thick and stupid. Tearful, even. Ready to fling himself at her feet, make some grand, stupid-ass gesture to move her, charm her, win her. Of course, nothing so clever came to him. All he could do was press his face against her chest. Fighting for control.
When the hot fog had receded, he tugged the stretchy lace down, tucking it under the curve of her tits until they jutted proudly from a lacy harness. So sweet and full, those tips pert and inviting, the pearly undercurve flushed pink. He slid his hand up between her legs, petting her hot core through her jeans. She moaned as he tongued her nipple, sucking it slowly into his mouth. He lashed it, delicately. His tongue was a fine-tipped paintbrush, and he was painting a holy masterpiece that would endure for all time on the canvas of her sweet, perfect body.
She shivered, clutching his shoulders, then his hip. Her hand skittered nervously away from the bandage, with an incoherent apology.
“It’s okay,” he muttered. “Oh, God, Sveti. Lose the jeans. Please.”
Her hands went to her belt—and a knock sounded. Rat-tat-tat.
They leaped apart. Sveti frantically rearranged her bra, buttoned her shirt. Tat-tat-tat again. Hard, rapid, imperious. The staff would not knock like that. In fact, the staff would not knock at all. He grabbed his gun, though anyone he would need to use it against would probably not be the knocking type. “Who’s there?”
“Your father,” said a chill, disapproving voice.
Sam froze. His gun hand dropped. No way. He’d called Martin, the head of security, last night. His father was in Hong Kong for the rest of the week.
Well, fuck it. He got up and opened the door.
Richard Petrie stood there, arms folded. Tall, silver-haired, distinguished. His sealed mouth and pinched nostrils said what he was too restrained to voice about his rebellious son, but he’d verbalize it soon enough. It always sneaked out somehow.
“Hey, Dad,” Sam said, resigned. “I thought you were in Hong Kong.”
“Counting on it, I expect?”
Sam stoically ignored that. “They said you’d be back next week.”
His father’s eyes flicked over Sam’s chest. “Why are you half naked?” His gaze fell on the Glock, and his lip curled. “Sam. Must you?”
“This?” Sam held up the gun. “Yeah, as a matter of fact, I must.”
His father leaned forward and caught sight of Sveti. He scowled. “Was I interrupting something?”
“Nothing we can’t get back to later. Why are you back early?”
“Put that thing down. It’s not necessary to play cops and robbers here.” His father’s gaze fastened on Sveti. She was as composed as ever, though he could sense the subtle get-me-the-fuck-out-of-here vibes coming off her, thick and fast. His father’s gaze flicked away from her.
“What’s wrong with your hip?” he asked abruptly.
Sam braced himself. “You know me. Accident prone.”
His father made a disgusted sound. “Put on a shirt, for the love of God. You look like a car wreck. A fresh wound, to add to your collection. My compliments, Sam. Well done.”
“He got that wound saving my life,” Sveti said.
His father looked at her, startled. Sveti gazed right back, her big golden brown eyes bright and very direct. “And you are?” he asked.
“Dad, this is Svetlana Ardova, a friend of mine,” Sam said. “Sveti, this is my father, Richard Petrie.”
Sveti did not mouth pleasantries. His dad met her glare for glare.
“I was not speaking to you,” he informed her, icily.
Her chin went up. “I speak when it pleases me.”
This was going south at warp speed. He hastened to intervene. “So, uh, Dad. What brought you back so early?”
Sveti crossed her arms over her tits, zapping Richard Petrie with a death-ray look, as if she wasn’t facing down a billionaire financier whose ass was kissed by everyone. Except for his wayward son.
“You’re the reason I’m back earl
y,” his father said. “I learned you’d been in another deadly shootout involving the Chinese mob and a half-drowned prostitute.”
Sveti’s eyes narrowed. “What half-drowned prostitute is that?”
“The one from the escort service you called. My investigator took pictures.” He clicked on his phone and handed it to Sam.
It was a shot of Sveti in the evening gown, tottering up his steps. Lit up in the porch-light’s glare, she looked so exotic and out of context, he could see why she’d be mistaken for a call girl. Sveti glanced at the picture and maintained a sphinxlike silence. Taking the high road.
“You’ve got it wrong,” Sam said. “An investigator? Seriously?”
His father grunted. “We booked a flight immediately when we heard. Your grandmother as well. Dinner will be served in half an hour. Your companion can stay up here. Your sister and your aging grandmother do not need to meet her. Dolores can bring up a tray.”
“Sveti’s been a friend of mine for years, Dad,” he said. “Her life is in danger. I brought her here for the night because I trust your team. I thought we’d be no trouble, because you were out of town.”
“Protection from whom? Her pimp?”
“She’s not a call girl, Dad,” Sam said through his teeth. “Don’t say that again. I’ll come down to dinner, but Sveti comes with me.”
His father looked like something had curdled in his mouth. “Bring her, if you must. Explain her to your grandmother, who turned eighty-seven last week, by the way. She could have used a phone call. You’ve been sulking for months, and she misses you. Don’t be late, please.”
His father marched out, closing the door smartly.
Sam listened to footsteps recede, trying to breathe. Everything just got way more complicated than he’d bargained for. “Sorry,” he said.
“It’s not your fault,” she said. “But is it true, about not having seen your eighty-seven-year-old grandmother in months?”
He gave her a narrow look. “Don’t you dare judge me right now.”
“I’m not judging,” she said. “But I have a lot of bitter experience with this. Death comes without warning. And it’s very final.”
“I lost my mother when I was fifteen,” he said. “I know about the finality of death.”
She was quiet for a few moments, eyes downcast. “I’m so sorry,” she murmured. “You go on down to dinner. I’ll stay here. I’m not hungry anyway. Being taken for a sex worker killed my appetite.”
“No way. You’re coming with me. He has to get used to this.”
“Used to what?”
“Us,” he said bluntly.
Sveti had that terrified look in her eyes again, the one that always came over her when he dared to invoke a possible future with her.
Too fucking bad. He was sick of backing down, pussyfooting around it. There was no way this woman was getting away from him. The sooner she understood that, the better for everyone concerned.
“Sam . . . I don’t think you should . . . now is not the time to—”
“Now is the only time,” he said, grim and relentless. “Start learning to tolerate my family. You’re going to need the practice.”
CHAPTER 13
“Hollandaise sauce, Svetlana?”
Sam’s older sister Connie’s voice was artificially bright and sweet as she held up the sauce boat. She was a pretty woman, tall and statuesque, with long, gleaming chestnut hair.
Svetlana murmured her thanks and held up her plate to have buttery sauce drizzled over her blanched asparagus. Sam and his father glared stonily at each other, over an abyss of silence. All attempts to break the silence sounded weak. Baby birds, cheeping in the void.
Connie gamely tried again. “So, Svetlana. Do you, ah, have a green card?”
Sveti smiled behind her napkin as she dabbed at her lips. “No,” she said. “I have a passport. I’ve been an American citizen for years. I went to high school in Washington, on the coast, where my adoptive family lives. After that, I went to the University of Washington.”
“An American success story!” Sam’s grandmother, Moira, seized eagerly upon the new topic. “Like us! Augustus Petrie crossed the Atlantic in seventeen-ninety in search of opportunity. And he found it.”
“Have you found yours, Svetlana?” Sam’s father asked. “Or are you still looking?”
The question felt like a trap, so she chose her words carefully. “Yes, certainly. I’ve been very fortunate in the friends I’ve made here.”
“It must have broken your parents’ hearts to have you go so far away, though,” Moira said. “What does your father do, dear?”
“He was a police investigator,” she said. “He’s been gone for many years now. He died in the line of duty.”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Moira said, blinking rapidly. “And your mother?”
“I lost her, too, six years ago,” Sveti said.
“Tragedy at every turn.” Richard forked up a bite of salmon.
“Watch it, Dad,” Sam said.
“A tale of woe calculated to bring out your pathological hero complex,” his father said. “Orphaned by a bullet, eh? Classic.”
“He was disemboweled, actually,” Sveti said.
Connie’s fork clattered on her plate. They stared at the fish, which had been opened, filleted, and sprinkled with herbs and almonds.
Constance’s chair screeched as she shoved it back. She scurried out of the room with her hand on her mouth.
Sam’s father swallowed his mouthful with an audible gulp, and coughed. “I beg your pardon?”
“He was undercover, investigating a mafiya boss,” Sveti explained. “He was betrayed. It ended badly.”
Sam’s father wiped his mouth. “Dramatic.”
“Yes, it was.” Sveti was unfazed by his tone. He thought she was making this up. If only. What she wouldn’t give to have it be untrue.
“I’m surprised after such trauma that you would want anything to do with someone in police work,” Richard Petrie said.
She glanced at Sam. “I’m surprised, too,” she admitted.
“Not that I’m in police work,” Sam said. “You’ve killed that.”
The senior Petrie did not deny it. “No one could blame a father from trying to keep his son from destroying himself!”
“I’m blaming you anyway,” Sam said.
“Calm down,” Moira soothed. “Sam, have some more potatoes.”
“Do you care to explain what you were doing on the six o’clock news? Putting fresh cadavers in the morgue?” Richard demanded.
“They were torturing her.” He indicated Sveti. “I objected. That was how they came to be cadavers.”
Connie came back and sat down carefully at the table, still very pale, and with a shiny forehead.
Richard turned to Sveti. “Why did these people attack you, if I may ask?”
Sveti took a sip of wine. “I’m not exactly sure.”
Petrie, Sr. looked down his nose at her. “Oh, really.”
It took talent, to load just three syllables with such a quantity of contempt and disbelief. Sveti reminded herself that this man’s opinion meant nothing, changed nothing. “Really,” she affirmed. “My prime theory is that they want information my mother was gathering when she was murdered. I don’t have it, but they think I do.”
“Dear God.” Moira put down her fork and pressed her napkin to her mouth. “Your mother, too? Spare us the details this time, dear.”
“They could also be a local gang who traffic people from China for slave labor,” Sveti said. “I inconvenienced some of them last year. They weren’t pleased.” She shrugged. “Who knows.”
“Ah.” Richard turned to Sam. “I see that your choice in lady friends is as colorful and haphazard as your other life choices.”
“I try, Dad,” Sam said. “Always.”
“So, Sam, dear,” Moira interjected, with false cheerfulness. “Let’s look to the future, shall we? Do you have any plans?”
“Yes, I’m
going to the airport tomorrow,” he replied. “I’m starting my new career. In Italy. With Sveti.”
His father blinked. “Excuse me? Italy? What new career?”
“I’m going as her bodyguard.” Sam stuck a forkful of salmon in his mouth as that grenade bounced and rolled into the enemy camp.
“But . . . but that’s insane!” his father said. “Bodyguarding?”
“Her life is in danger,” Sam said. “She needs protection. And my career prospects are ever narrowing, thanks to you. Bodyguarding is more interesting than private investigating. Following cheating spouses and wayward sons around. Big yawn. I’d be good at forensic accounting, but it would bore me into an early grave. I could join the military, I guess, if they’d have me. As beat-up and long in the tooth as I am.”
His father’s mouth was white. There were dents beside his nostrils. “You’d truly go to such lengths just to spite me?”
Sam shook his head. “No, I’m going to Italy because I want to. But I would prefer it if you kept your tentacles out of my professional life.”
“What will you be doing in Italy, Svetlana?” Connie broke in.
Sveti briefly explained about the conference in San Anselmo, the award ceremony, and the London job.
“Martin,” the senior Petrie called. “Bring me my tablet, please.”
The uniformed server passed it to him. The older man poised the little pen over the keyboard. “The name of the organization? I’d love to see the announcement for this award. Congratulations, by the way.”
Sveti gazed at him. “Are you trying to catch me in a lie?”
Petrie blinked innocently behind his glasses. “If the shoe fits.”
“It doesn’t,” she said. “Look up the Tran-Global Business Organization against Human Trafficking, and this year’s Solkin Prize.”
“Better yet.” Sam plucked the tablet and pen out of his father’s hands, tapped the flat-screen keyboard. “Watch the reason she’s getting this prize. It’s because she has a set of solid brass balls. She busted a sweatshop slavery ring single-handedly, right here in Portland.”
“Good Lord.” The elder Petrie scowled at the tablet with distaste.
“Oh, Sam,” Sveti murmured, alarmed. “Really? Now? At dinner?”
In For the Kill Page 19