BEND ME: A Dark Romance

by Leah Wilde

  “Okay. I like the sound of that.” His eyes narrowed as if he was trying to get a read on me.

  “I told you my name when I came in, right? Dr. Julia Danvers at the University of Chicago. I’m a research fellow and the history department chair. My specialty is Russian history and culture. I’ve made a career out of it, so instead of sitting here running over the same old drills, I figured maybe we could actually talk a little,” I explained myself.

  Dimitri nodded. “What can I teach you about Russian history and culture that you don’t already know?” he asked.

  “Organized crime.”

  His blue eyes focused on me suddenly.

  “Don’t worry, I’m not trying to get anyone in trouble or anything like that,” I assured him. “I just got to thinking last night, I don’t know a whole lot about the Russian underworld, and you can probably help me out.”

  “Can I refuse to answer?” he asked cautiously.

  “Sure, if we run across something you don’t want to discuss, we don’t have to talk about it. You can pass,” I agreed, establishing the boundaries of our conversation.

  “I’m ready to start whenever you are,” he said.

  I took a deep breath. This was a different approach, and I just hoped I didn’t give myself away too easily. “Alright. First, how long have you been working for Ivan?”

  “I’ve only been working for Ivan for a couple of years, as long as I’ve been in the States.”

  “How did you get connected to someone in the States?” I asked him.

  “It’s not that different from the way it works here,” he told me. “Ivan has connections back home, and he told a guy who knew a guy who knew me that he needed some muscle, so someone reached out to me, and here I am. Networking is networking, whether it’s in America or Russia. Or, in Ivan’s case, in both places.” He smiled, pleased with himself.

  “I guess it really wouldn’t be different, would it?” I asked.

  “Oh, it’s different,” he added. “The networking is the same, but back home we have more power than we do here. Here we have to be careful a lot of times when we wouldn’t have to be back home.”

  “Really. I guess I shouldn’t be shocked, with all the changes that have occurred over the last few decades.”

  “Exactly. See, you already know.” He seemed amused at my questions, and maybe they were a little naïve, but in all of my time studying Russia, I had never really paid attention to the criminal element, especially in regards to organized crime.

  I added the Russian mafia to my bucket list of things to study.

  “So, that’s all I’ve got,” I told him. Hopefully, I thought, it would be enough to get him to talk a little more to me.

  “Well, I’ve got something for you,” he said. “Something you need to know.”

  “Okay.” I wondered what he possibly could have told me that I just needed to know.

  “I know why you seem a little more confident today,” he started.

  I sat back and crossed my arms. “Why’s that?”

  “You went home with Gage last night, didn’t you?”

  “I’m sorry?” I knew my face must have given me away.

  “Maybe you didn’t sleep together, but it seems like you guys are circling each other right now, maybe flirting a little, trying to figure out how to court each other,” Dimitri taunted me.

  “How do you know all of this?” I ask him, incredulous.

  “I’ve seen it all before,” he said distractedly.

  “What are you talking about? You’ve seen what before?”

  “Nothing in particular.” He tilted his head back and looked into the darkness above the light hanging over us. “He’s using us both, you know. Well, you should know, but maybe you’re a little blind right now because your hormones are firing off here and there, and you think you might be falling for this big alpha male street thug.”

  “Come on, now. Stop dancing around it, Dimitri. Tell me what you’re really trying to say.”

  He looked at me again. “It’s easy. He’s got you thinking you’re helping him out with me, and he’s got you thinking he might like you, making it easier to get you to come down here and ask me questions, trying to find out where Ivan is or what he’s up to. I think you even believed at one point that he was going to let both of us go home when all of this is over.”

  I had believed that at first, before conversations with both Dimitri and Gage made me realize he probably wasn’t leaving the interrogation room in the basement of the Kings of Hell HQ. I didn’t want to admit to Dimitri that I had changed my mind.

  “The truth is, doll, he’s not letting either one of us go. Once he’s done with me, he’s going to finish you off. And honestly, things will probably get a little stranger and more intense for you before that happens.”

  I thought about how Gage had passed up the perfect opportunity to take advantage of me the night before; he’d had a couple of opportunities, and he passed them all up. But if Dimitri was right, then all of it was just his way of disarming me so that I would continue to work for him without any fuss.

  “Neither one of us is going to get out of her alive, Dr. Danvers, unless you help me. I can free us both.”

  Then again, it was entirely possible that Dimitri was doing the same thing he accused Gage of doing—filling my head full of distractions to get me to help him when all he planned on doing was double crossing me in the end.

  I began to feel the drain of talking to Dimitri again. The confusion he worked so diligently to foster in me sapped me of all of my energy. I didn’t want to put up with it again.

  “Dimitri, I’m not going to help you. I’m going to take my chances with Gage,” I told him.

  “You’ll be sorry,” he told me. “Gage is not who you think he is. He’s putting on his charm so you won’t see how ruthless he is. Why do you think Ivan needed me to come all the way from Moscow to work for him? Gage is ruthless and brutal. He will leave us both dead. You already know the Kings’ reputation.”

  Again, Dimitri was right. The Kings of Hell did have a pretty nasty reputation as a brutal motorcycle gang. They definitely weren’t anything like the MCs that had been springing up over the last few decades, the groups who tried to help their communities by getting kids off the streets and giving them something to do.

  From what I’d seen prior to meeting Gage, the Kings had more in common with the motorcycle gangs of the 1970s and earlier. They had developed a strong prison network through a regular revolving door of members getting sentenced and let out.

  I shook my head. “I’m sorry, Dimitri, but I can’t let you do this to me again tonight. I can’t let you confuse me again like you did before.”

  I pushed my chair back and stood up to leave.

  “Listen, just watch your back,” he added with what looked like genuine concern in his eyes, but I was pretty sure guys like him were good actors when they needed to be.

  “Thanks for the advice, but our conversation here is done.” I turned and walked back to the door, unlocking it on my own. Gage had given me the key for it when we came in that morning. He told me I could come and go as I pleased to talk with Dimitri.

  He was still sitting in a chair waiting for me when I walked out.

  “Anything yet?” he asked me.

  I shook my head. “Nothing yet.” I didn’t want to tell him what Dimitri had told me this time.

  “You look troubled,” he said. “What did he say?”

  “Nothing. He’s just trying to confuse me,” I said.

  “How so?”

  “Nothing, alright?” I snapped at him, storming away through the pit, heading for the stairs. “I need some fresh air.”

  For all I knew they were both trying to manipulate me for their own selfish needs in this. Once again, I found myself trying to figure out who was the actual good guy in this story. It was very possible, I realized, that neither one of them was the hero. That would make me the heroine. I wasn’t entirely comfortable with th
at idea either.

  I didn’t go back downstairs all day. I didn’t want to talk to Dimitri again. It was beginning to seem like a hopeless pursuit to try to get information from him. He just wanted to get out, and he was pretty determined to get me to help him. My loyalty was already paid for. My allegiance in this was no secret.

  That being said, I also avoided Gage the rest of the day. Every time I saw him, all I could think of was Dimitri telling me that I was essentially a prisoner, just like he was, and my fate was going to be the same as his once Gage tired of his little game.

  Gage had told me only to pack about a week’s worth of clothes and that ideally I wouldn’t be returning to my apartment until all of this was over. He’d also told me to let the department know that I was chasing a research lead on the Russian underworld.

  Was he going to kill both of us and make it look like I’d been shot by someone who’d been tracking Dimitri? And wouldn’t his criminal connections be what got me shot anyway? If Gage did it, wouldn’t it be the same as if someone random had done it?

  By the end of the day, my head was spinning with so many conspiracies, suspicions, and doubts.

  Gage found me sitting in a metal chair in the garage at the end of the day, my head in my hands, trying to stop the spinning and contain the noise.

  His large hand rested gently on my shoulder. “Are you ready to call it a night?” he asked in a tender, caring tone.

  I touched his hand, expecting my confusion and suspicions to subside, but they did not. I was in too deep to turn from him, though. I couldn’t run at this point. I was stuck playing the part I’d been paid to play.

  “I think I called it a night before lunch,” I told him, managing to force a light little laugh out for him.

  “Come on, then,” he said, stepping around me and taking me by both hands. He walked me outside to the street and climbed onto his old Harley Davidson. It was one of the older, longer models, with the front wheel sticking way out in front and the longer handlebars that always made the driver look like he was sitting back, taking it easy.

  “We’re taking your bike?” I asked, surprised.

  “Hop on,” he said flatly.

  I climbed onto the motorcycle behind him and put my arms around his waist, leaning into his back as fired up the engine. The motorcycle roared to life, startling me. The noise of the engine rumbling beneath us was deafening. It was my first time on a motorcycle, so I clung to Gage for dear life.

  I felt my body start to tense up with fear and apprehension as he walked us out of our parking spot. Then, the bike started moving, and I knew for sure I was going to fall off the back. I clenched my arms around his waist and closed my eyes. As excited as I had been at the prospect of riding with Gage, the openness of the motorcycle terrified me.

  It was too much freedom. Too much open road.

  Chapter 11

  Gage

  I was beginning to grow weary of Julia’s lack of progress with Dimitri. After letting her go off to bed, I sat down at my desk in the corner of the living room and started digging through my names and notes to see what other options I had to try to extract information from the stubborn ass Russian.

  I knew we could torture him for information. Even if it didn’t work, it would have at least been satisfying; but even if it did work, we wouldn’t know because no one knew how to speak Russian. Except for good-girl Julia.

  I was beginning to think she’d been right to begin with, that I should have found someone else in the city to help us translate what we got out of Dimitri. I certainly could have found someone else with more flexible morals who wouldn’t balk at more aggressive tactics like torture.

  I smiled at the thought of finding a more open minded translator and relieving Julia of her responsibilities to the MC. That would give me the opportunity to actually pursue her. For now, I was stuck having to wait until we were finished with Dimitri to see if I still felt like trying to seduce her. I really didn’t know how much longer I could hold myself back from her.

  Even knowing that she was sleeping in my bed while I was sitting out at my desk was stirring my desire for her. Even as I looked over the other names I’d gathered and my other contacts, I couldn’t shake the image of her petite, curvy body lying supine on my bed with the thin sheets draped over her, falling along the lines of her delicious curves.

  She waited for me to come seduce her, to take her forcefully on my soft, clean sheets. I’d seen it in her eyes. She wasn’t letting on, but I could see the desire growing deep in her eyes like a fire. She lay on my bed alone with that desire, and I was sitting at my desk trying to find a way to relieve her of her duty so I could have her with no worries, no conflict of interest.

  I stood and crumpled the piece of paper in my hand, dropping onto the floor and leaning against my desk. My desire for her was becoming unbearable. Every time I saw her, it grew. Every time I thought about her beautiful golden brown hair or her lively, inquisitive green eyes, my desire flared up within me.

  I had to have her, I decided.

  I turned away from my desk, ready to go into my room and take the beautiful, mousy professor lying in my bed, when I saw her standing in the hallway looking at me.

  Her golden brown hair was down, hanging around her shoulders, and she wore a nightgown sheer enough that I could see she wore nothing underneath it. My desire sprang to life immediately, growing harder by the second for her, hungrier for her. I needed her body in my arms, underneath me, letting me penetrate deep inside her.

  “Are you okay?” she asked, and in the stillness of my apartment her voice sounded like it was right in my ear.

  I didn’t answer. I couldn’t answer. If I said anything, I would tell her how much I wanted her. I would tell her that I wanted to please her and show her what she’d been missing all these years by burying herself in her work.

  Now still didn’t seem like the right time.

  She stepped towards me, almost floating across the living room like a ghost or an angel with her sheer nightgown flowing all around her. She suddenly stood in front of me, our bodies mere inches apart. My breath caught in my chest as my desire choked me.

  “What are you doing?” she asked with such sweet curiosity that her voice only added to the unreal sense of what was happening.

  “I’m, um, I’m working,” I told her, reaching behind my back and pushing the papers back into the corner of my desk.

  She tried to glance around me to the desk.

  “What are all those names?” she asked.

  I really didn’t want to talk about work right now, or Dimitri. I wanted to talk about her, about Julia, and that divine body begging for my hands and lips to touch it through her nightgown.

  “Are you trying to replace me?” She stepped back and it was over. The moment was gone.

  My desire-tense body relaxed. I ran my hands over my face. There was no denying it now. I’d been caught red-handed. “Yes,” I admitted. “I’m looking for someone else who can help me get some information out of Dimitri.”

  “Let me guess. You want someone more aggressive,” she accused me, hitting the nail right on the head.

  “I don’t know if that’s necessarily what I want,” I lied to her. “But I feel like you’re hiding things from me,” I finally admitted to her, getting it off my chest. “I feel like there are things you don’t share.”

  “You fucking bastard,” she hissed, still stepping away from me. The betrayal written all over her face was painful to see, more painful to know I was the one betraying her. The last thing I wanted to do was hurt her. “Dimitri was right about you,” she yelled.

  “Whoa, what?” I held up my hands, completely blindsided by her comment.

  “He tried to tell me you were just using me, but I didn’t want to believe him.” Tears streamed down her face. She gripped her nightgown as she sobbed and cried out to me.

  I wanted to grab her and pull her against me. I wished I could soothe her heartache. I was supposed to be the one tryi
ng to seduce her, not trying to stab her in the back, which was exactly what I was doing. There was no denying it.

  “I told him he was wrong,” she continued. “I told him he didn’t know what he was talking about. I told myself he was just trying to confuse me. But no. I see now that he was right about you. You’re a monster!”

  Her voice started cracking and growing louder. Soon, the neighbors would hear her screaming at me. I didn’t want that. In my line of business, drawing attention of any sort was usually a bad thing, and I didn’t need cops knocking on my door in the middle of the night to figure out the details of a domestic abuse accusation.