But it wasn’t his body that had caught my attention. It was what he was doing.
He was staring at me. He was sitting there watching me sleeping. Why would he do that? In his phone calls, he’d always seemed like a guy who could barely spare the time to talk to his girlfriends, even when they looked like supermodels. Clearly, I’d slept in—the sun seemed to be high in the sky. Had there been a clock anywhere in view? I searched through the remembered image. Shit! 9:47. What the hell was he doing, still watching me slumber in his bed?
I kept my eyes closed and let out what I hoped was a good fake yawn, flopping over on my back and stretching my arms above my head. Possibly, I overdid it a little because the covers rode down and my boobs popped into view. I’d forgotten I was naked.
I opened my eyes. Luka was up out of his chair and gazing nonchalantly out of the window as if he’d never been looking at me at all. “Good morning,” I said, quickly covering myself.
He turned. His face was back to its icy mask. “I made you coffee,” he said. Then, “It’s good that you’re up. You should go. I have a meeting.”
I nodded, confused, then pretended to see the time on the clock and made a big show of looking surprised that I’d slept so late. I glugged some coffee and ran off to the shower.
Standing under the spray again, I tried to figure things out. He was coming across as indifferent—cold, even. He was giving the impression that it had just been a one-night stand and that now he wanted me out. I would have bought the act completely if I hadn’t seen him watching me so intently as I slept. And why had he asked me to stay the night, only to kick me out in the morning?
The callousness made sense—I knew what sort of man he was. But what he was hiding underneath...that didn’t make sense at all.
Outside the bathroom door, I found my clothes, freshly laundered and neatly folded. He really had got someone to clean them at three in the morning. I dressed and went to find him.
He was standing behind the kitchen counter, reading the newspaper that was spread out across it. That meant that approaching him was awkward. The closer I got, the more the counter seemed like a barrier between us. “Um. I’ll be going, then, I guess.” Was he going to kiss me? Talk about the night before?
I knew I should be thinking of the whole thing as a spy. Analyzing, probing for weaknesses. That’s what Nancy or one of the other professionals would have done. I just wondered, heart aching, if he was even going to look up.
Then he did and I saw that pain in his eyes again, the blue ice burning for a second. “I called you a taxi,” he said. “It’s downstairs. It’ll take you back to your hotel. I already paid for it.”
“Thank you.” Now what? Kiss him? Ask him what’s next? Maybe I’d been wrong, before. Maybe he really was just kicking me out and that’s all there was to it. I was to be just another one-night stand in a long line of them. I hesitated for another second and then stepped towards the door.
I had my hand on the doorknob when he said, “Arianna.”
I turned back.
He stared at me for another beat, his eyes searching my face. In that second, despite his size, he looked...helpless. Then he was storming out from behind the counter, his open shirt flapping with the movement. He covered the distance between us in a few short strides and the sight of him, all muscle and tattoos and those intense blue eyes, made me tense as he drew near. Luka could loom like no man I’d ever met.
I raised my eyes to look up at him just as he brushed my hair back from my face. That conflict in his eyes again. Confusion, as if he didn’t understand his own feelings. I opened my mouth to ask what the hell was going on and—
And he was kissing me, his hand coming up to hold my cheek and then caress it, his tongue pushing my lips apart. His thumb rubbed in slow circles on my cheekbone and I could feel that massive chest moving against me as he panted like some barely-restrained beast. The contact was like an electrical surge ripping through my body. I felt as if I could lift my feet off the floor and I’d float there in mid air. He lifted his mouth and kissed my lower lip, biting it lightly between his teeth, and I went heady.
When we finally parted, we stood there with lips almost touching, as if neither of us wanted to back off. We were so close that I couldn’t see his eyes. “I want you again,” I heard him say.
I caught my breath at the thick lust that had entered his voice. I remembered what he’d said when his head was between my thighs, those words in Russian I wasn’t meant to understand. That he was going to end my innocence, in every conceivable way. I remembered how it had been: brutal and hard, pinned to the bed...and feeling alive, for just a few minutes.
I was meant to be getting involved with him. I was meant to be becoming his girlfriend. But this thing that I’d inadvertently unlocked between us, this darkness in him I was drawn to and the innocence he was drawn to in me...that was something altogether more dangerous. I couldn’t.
He gripped my arm, hard. “I have to have you,” he said.
I felt my legs weaken under me. I swallowed and then, in a voice that didn’t sound like my own, I whispered, “Yes.”
He moved back far enough that I could see his face. “I have to go on a trip for a few days,” he said. “You’ll come.” Not do you want to come? You’ll come.
“A trip?” I asked uncertainly.
“It’s on a yacht,” he told me. He grinned, getting a little of his confident charm back. “We will be away for a few days. I will have to go to a meeting, but the rest of the time….” He kissed me again, slowly but with no less heat than before.
I had no idea what to do. Go away with him?! Where? That wasn’t even vaguely within the scope of the mission. But I was meant to be getting close to him...and the idea of more time with him sent thick, dark tendrils of heat straight down to my groin. “Okay,” I said.
For just a second, he smiled like a child at Christmas.
I stepped back from him and opened the door, thinking fast. I had to somehow find out where we were going, so I could tell Adam. “I’ll have to get something to wear,” I said. “Where are we going? Will it be hot? Cold?”
He smirked. “Cold,” he said. Damn! I needed a location—at least a damn country! But I couldn’t push it too hard or it might look suspicious.
He picked up a pad of Post-It notes from the counter, wrote on the top one and gave it to me. “Tell the taxi to take you there. Tell them I sent you.”
I looked at the note. The name of a store and an address. Luka’s handwriting was all bold strokes and sharp angles, powerful but precise. “Okay,” I said doubtfully.
I backed out of the door. As I reached the threshold, he suddenly reached out and grabbed the collar of my dress, preventing me from moving further. Then he dragged me back inside and kissed me again, hot and long and slow, his lips owning me totally.
“I will collect you from your hotel at three,” he said.
And he gently closed the door.
The cab was waiting for me, just as he’d said. And the driver took the Post-It note and drove me there without complaint, even though he’d only been paid to take me to my hotel. Did Luka have some sort of bottomless credit line with these guys, or were they just too scared of him to complain?
The thick Plexiglas partition between the driver and me helped cement it in my mind as cab and not car and that crucial pathway in my broken brain didn’t light up. No flashbacks. But the fact that it could happen so easily, as it had in the car with Luka, was terrifying.
I hunkered down in the back, arms folded across my chest, and tried to process. Was it just about sex, with Luka? That certainly made sense, given that we’d barely spoken from the moment we got to his apartment to the time he—I flushed. And that morning, he’d seemed ready to hurry me out. And yet he’d sat there watching me, when he thought I was asleep. And even during the sex, I’d seen that flicker in his eyes, gotten that feeling that, however much he treated me like something to simply be fucked, there was a lot more going on in
side.
And what about this trip on the yacht? I kept Adam informed of where I was. In theory, if I got into trouble, he could get me out. But that didn’t apply if I was off in the middle of the ocean. I didn’t even know which country we were going to.
I tried to focus on the mission, but I couldn’t help wondering what it meant, that Luka wanted to take me away with him. Did I qualify as a girlfriend, now? My last relationship had been in college and had followed the same pattern as the ones in my teens: flirting and kissing and dating and then, eventually, something more physical. This was completely different. Was I a lover, now? That sounded like something out of a 70s French movie. Was this how grown-up relationships were—you fucked the guy and then you hoped that you started to mean something to him?
I went around and around thinking about it, getting more and more worked up. Just when I was about to wind down the cab’s window and scream to vent some stress, my phone rang. I presumed it was Adam and grabbed it. “Hello?”
“Arianna. Thank God. What in the name of fucking fuck do you think you’re doing?”
Nancy.
And suddenly, everything was okay. At last, I had someone I could talk to. Someone who’d understand what it was like to be undercover.
Of course, we’d have to talk in code. Our calls were probably being intercepted by the Russian authorities and there’d be hell to pay if they thought the CIA was running an op in their country. We had to sound like a couple of typical twenty-somethings. “I thought you were on that business trip,” I said.
“I got back last night and found you gone. Your...dad told me about your vacation in Moscow.” She sounded casual and cheery, while letting just enough of a hint of fear bubble through that I understood her real message.
“Yeah, well...I figured it was time I saw the world. You know I’ve been wanting to do that for a long time.” I’d moaned plenty of times to Nancy about wanting to try field work.
“Sure, sure. But Moscow? I didn’t think the travel company you use even did that sort of trip.”
I frowned. The Company was slang for the CIA. She was hinting that the op didn’t make sense. Roberta had said something similar. Why was the CIA—and Adam—so interested in Luka? And why had he sent me, not someone experienced, like Nancy?
I pushed the disquiet down inside me. This was my one chance. I wasn’t going to start second-guessing my new boss. Maybe she was just jealous, although that wasn’t like her at all.
“Don’t you think you might have rushed into things a little?” Nancy asked. “Your dad says you’ve already fallen for some guy out there. I don’t want to see you get your heart broken, Arianna. And this guy sounds like a real heartbreaker.”
“I’ll be fine,” I said with a confidence I didn’t feel. She wasn’t talking romance. She was talking about my body being found floating in a Moscow river.
“You don’t know what these Russian men can be like,” she said. “A lot of them have big families. Lots of brothers.” She was talking about the brotherhood, the Russian mafia. “It makes it difficult for them to form attachments with women. In fact, they don’t get on with women at all. Do you remember I told you about my old boyfriend, Dmitri? He was Russian.”
I felt sick. I remembered Dmitri. She’d told me, one night after too much wine, about how one of her first missions had required her to steal documents from his office. He’d caught her, beaten her and tried to rape her. “I remember,” I said in a small voice. “But Luka isn’t like that.”
“I really think you should come home,” said Nancy. “I know your dad thinks it’s good for you to be out there, seeing the world, but I’m really worried you’re going to get your heart broken. Just come home, Arianna.”
“I’m fine,” I said again. The car was slowing. “I have to go. Take care.” And I ended the call before she could argue.
I wanted nothing more than to speak to her. Hearing her voice after so long with nothing familiar around me was like coming home. But if I kept talking to her, she was going to persuade me to bail. God, she didn’t even know about the trip on the yacht, yet. If she knew I was planning to do that, she’d freak out completely. And the scary thing was that she was absolutely right—I was way out of my depth.
The cab pulled up outside a boutique that was all soft lighting and artfully displayed mannequins, a world away from the places I normally shopped at back home. My stomach tensed. In theory, I had the new Arianna Ross credit card Adam had given me, but my instincts took over. Shit! I couldn’t afford this!
As soon as I took a step inside, a woman in an immaculate black designer dress stepped from behind the counter. Her blonde pixie cut was so precise I suspected it was styled with a laser. Something about my clothes clearly marked me as a tourist, and not a rich one. “Can I help you?” she asked in English.
There’s a certain way that store assistants can say Can I help you so that it sounds like Please get out of my store.
“Um,” I said. “I think I need some clothes. Quite a lot of clothes. I’m not sure exactly what.” We stared at one another. Well done, Arianna. Very decisive. I looked around. “I’m not sure I can afford this place…”
The store assistant gave me a smile so incredibly patronizing, it felt as if she’d kicked me in the chest. “There are some cheaper stores a few streets down,” she said sweetly. And she picked up the coffee she’d been drinking and leaned against the counter, smirking. Even her coffee mug was designer, with some achingly cool clothes company’s logo on the side.
A hot flush rose in my cheeks. She made me feel as if I was something she’d scraped off her shoe. I turned to slink out and then remembered something. “Luka Malakov sent me,” I mumbled.
There was a crash as the designer coffee mug hit the floor.
I thought I’d offended her. I thought maybe his name was so despised that she’d thrown the mug down in anger. I headed for the door.
She ran in front of me, slipping and almost falling on the marble floor, and blocked my path. And now I saw how the color was draining from her face. She babbled at me in Russian for a few seconds, begging forgiveness, before she remembered I was just a dumb American tourist. “I’m sorry!” she said in English. “I didn’t know! Alina! Alina!”
I’d seen people go pale, but I’d never seen anyone go white before. She looked as if she was about to throw up.
A slightly older woman with dark hair came running in from the back. At first, she frowned at the commotion, especially when she saw the coffee all over the floor. Then the blonde woman hissed in Russian, “She’s from Luka Malakov!”
Alina stopped dead in her tracks and then swallowed as if she was trying to choke down a football. Her hand played nervously with the necklace at her throat. “You work for Mr. Malakov?” she asked in Russian.
“She’s American!” the younger one said in a terse whisper, still in Russian. Holy shit, there were tears in her eyes. “I think she’s his….” She looked up at her boss with huge, scared eyes. “I was rude to her!”
Alina stared at her and then at me. I actually saw her knees weaken. She spoke in English for the first time. “You are Mr. Malakov’s…” She swallowed again. “You are with Mr. Malakov?”
I nodded, growing more freaked out by the minute.
Alina glanced at her assistant and then at the spilled coffee and smashed mug. She spoke in English, so I knew she wanted me to understand. “Clean this up,” she snapped at the store assistant. “Then collect your things. You’re fired.” She looked back at me, eyes wide with concern, clearly hoping this would appease me.
I was too shocked to react. The scariest thing was that the store assistant didn’t even argue. She just nodded, head down, and ran to fetch cleaning things.
“Please allow me to help you,” said Alina. She stressed the allow me, as if nothing could be a greater honor.
“I—” I was completely freaked out, now. All I wanted to do was run. “I’m not sure I can afford this place.”
Ali
na reacted as if I’d said I was thinking of drinking bleach. “There’s no charge!” she said, aghast. “We would never charge you!”
For the next hour, Alina showed me dresses and jeans, jackets and shoes. She picked out long woolen coats for above deck and figure-hugging dresses for below deck. I soon had more clothes than in my closet back home. And then we started on the shoes—towering heels I could barely walk in, but that did wonderful things to my legs and ass.
“And will you be needing...underneath?” asked Alina, her English failing her. She yanked her dress away from her chest and pointed to her bra.
“Um…” I flushed. I hadn’t even thought about lingerie. In my suitcase back at the hotel, I had the same plain briefs and bras I always wore. Would those do? “I don’t know.”
Alina flushed too. “For Mr. Malakov,” she whispered, “I think you need—” She gestured at her breasts and groin in a va-va-voom sort of a way. “Upstairs,” she said.
She led me up to the next floor and shooed away the sales clerk there. She started to bring out artful constructions of lace and satin, mainly in black, purple or red. I didn’t doubt that one of Luka’s blondes would have looked fantastic in them. Was this what Nancy did on assignment: pick out underwear to seduce her target? Or did she have a secret closet full of it in Virginia that she packed into her suitcase along with her guns? I am so out of my depth.
I tried to imagine myself in one of the lingerie sets and couldn’t. Then I remembered what Luka had said. “Do you have anything more...innocent?” I asked, red-faced. “White?”
She blinked at me. “Like bride on night of wedding?”
“Exactly like that. Innocent but good quality and”—am I really having this conversation?— “sexy.”
She nodded quickly, but gave me a look that was almost pitying. Aghast, maybe, at the idea of an innocent in Luka’s hands. She brought out white bras and panties, hold-ups and suspender belts and even a corset. They were all strokably soft and gorgeously made. I told her I’d take them, along with some of the tamer black sets.
Conflicted (Undercover #2) Page 3