I ran my hands down over his back, tracing his muscles, marveling at the size of him. I half-opened my eyes and saw movement above him and had to do a double-take. I realized I was looking at our reflection. I’d forgotten about the mirror on the ceiling. Before, it had seemed tacky, like something you’d find in a Vegas hotel room. But now, looking at his muscled form, his hard, tanned ass rising and falling as he fucked the woman on the bed, I felt myself getting hotter and hotter. The sight of it—the reality of what I was doing—fought with everything I knew about myself. I can’t be doing this, I thought. This is not me. I’m not like this.
And then I looked up into those icy eyes and saw the raw lust in them, and I didn’t care anymore. I flexed my pelvis, pushing it up to meet him and cried out his name as the heat consumed me completely. I felt myself clutching at him, shuddering around him….
And then I heard him call out my name as he came, too.
***
Afterwards, as we lay side-by-side on the bed, he gazed at me, pushing the sweat-damp hair back off my forehead strand by strand. I could see the worry in his eyes. “What?” I asked.
“Tomorrow morning, you’ll meet my father.” He paused. “And there’ll be...business. My meeting.”
“So?”
He stared at me. “You’ll come with me. It’s safer than leaving you here alone.”
I had to pretend I had no clue about the deal. “Safer?”
He sighed and rubbed his eyes. Then he got up off the bed, pulled up his pants and poured vodka into a glass, handing me one, too. I took it, propping myself up on one elbow. I was ready for him to spin me some story about how he was a legitimate businessman, but sometimes he had to do business with shady types. I was ready for him to say that everything he did was legal, but had to be done on the quiet to avoid paying taxes.
I was ready for the lies because it was obvious from his calls with Elena and Natalia and Svetlana that none of them had had any clue what he really did.
I was ready for anything except what he said next.
“Arianna,” he said. “I sell guns.”
It should have been hard. I had to pretend to be stunned, when I’d known what he did all along.
But the weird thing was, it was a shock. Firstly, because he’d told me. The one thing I’d never considered was that this man who lived his life behind a veil of lies and secrecy would open up to me.
Secondly, I didn’t want to believe it. I had his file memorized. I’d seen his tattoos. I knew what he was on an intellectual level...but on a deeper level, on the level that lived in my chest, I hadn’t believed it. I’d had some stupid, childish dream that maybe it was all a mistake. Maybe he’d been set up. It didn’t make any sense, but I’d stuck to it anyway. It was a jolt, now, to realize I’d been thinking that...and to have it so suddenly ripped away.
So when I stared at him and said “What?!” it sounded absolutely real. I sat up fully, my vodka sloshing in the glass and nearly spilling on the bed. My soaked panties pulled tight against my lips, still swollen with arousal, a reminder of what we’d just done. Moments ago, I’d had sex with Luka: my boyfriend, my lover. My biggest problem had been my guilt over doing it when I knew it was just a short-term fling for him. Now he was back to being Malakov, the arms dealer and I felt like a fool for ever forgetting it.
He slowly unbuttoned his shirt and showed me his tattoos. “Do you know what these mean?” he asked. To my surprise, his voice was thick with emotion. “Do you know what this means?” He pointed to the rose.
I swallowed. I had to pretend to be innocent...but not stupid. “It means...you belong to something?”
“It means I belong to a brotherhood. The strongest brotherhood there is. My father, too.” He sat down gently on the edge of the bed. “We make order where, otherwise, there’d be chaos.”
I nodded slowly.
“What I do...part of what I do...is guns.”
I didn’t know how to react. This was not something I’d ever discussed, when I’d talked with Adam. I wasn’t ever meant to know that he was an arms dealer. Should I lie and say I understood? Would he buy that?
In the end, I went with what I really thought. “You sell...death,” I said, my voice cold. “To who? To armies? To street gangs?”
“To anyone with money,” he said.
I shook my head in disgust.
“I arm people. I don’t make them fight.”
“You make it so they can fight. If they were punching each other, they’d do a lot less damage. Bystanders wouldn’t get shot.”
He sighed. “If I didn’t do it—”
“Oh, someone else would?!” I shook my head.
He went quiet. I could sense the anger building inside him, now, could see it in the set of his shoulders, the white of his knuckles as he clenched his fists. Sooner, not later, he was going to lose it. And the thought of a man as big as him, as violent as him, getting out of control was terrifying.
I tried to calm things down by going quiet myself, but that only seemed to add to his frustration. “Say something,” he said, his voice almost a growl.
“Why are you telling me?” I said. “What do you expect me to say?”
“You had to know. You’ll be at the meeting tomorrow.”
“But why—”
“I already told you: it’s safer than leaving you here alone.”
I shook my head. “But why bring me on the trip at all? Why not just leave me in Moscow, oblivious?”
He lowered his head, brooding. He reminded me of an animal, when he did that—a huge bear, solemn and deadly. When he raised his head again, he stared straight into my eyes. “Because I can’t be without you.”
I believed it. Not just because I could see the need in his eyes, but because I was feeling that tug, too. But I knew it wasn’t the whole story. “You could have waited one night. Why did you really bring me?”
I saw it, then, that vulnerability I’d glimpsed before. A need, deep within him, that went beyond simple lust and maybe even beyond love. Something soul-deep. I stared back at him, willing him to open up just a little more.
But he jumped to his feet and yelled his frustration instead, hurling his glass across the room. It shattered into a million shining fragments against the wall and I recoiled at the sound. He stood there for a moment, panting. The muscles in his back and shoulders were so hard with tension, they stood out even through his shirt. Part of me expected him to grab me and hurl me against the wall.
But, somehow, I knew he’d never do that.
He suddenly stalked across the room and hurled the door open so hard it banged against the wall. Then he was gone down the companionway and I was left sitting there in shock.
I knew I couldn’t just leave him like that. Somewhere out there, Luka was hurting. Angry, sure. Dangerous, definitely. But I’d caught a glimpse of the parts of him he hid from the world. There was some sort of battle going on inside him, and it was driving him crazy.
I wasn’t the same woman who’d left Langley to go to that party in New York. Meeting him had changed me forever, given me a glimpse of a happiness I used to have. And however fucked up it was that a man who sold death had brought me back to life, I owed him for that.
I’d done this to him. I’d brought this vulnerability to the surface. He’d given me the hope that maybe I wasn’t beyond repair; I had to see if, somehow, I could fix him, too.
I found a pair of sneakers in my luggage that looked ridiculous with the stockings and dress, but it was quicker than running back to the stairs to retrieve my heels. I picked my way carefully past the glass on the floor and looked up and down the empty companionway. It was late at night, now, and the yacht was silent apart from the throb of the engines. Where would he go, if he wanted to be alone?
I headed upstairs and out onto the deck.
Immediately, I knew I’d made a mistake. The cold was like a physical thing, as if someone was jamming knives into my exposed arms and face. I gasped and saw my breath as a
rising cloud. I was going to freeze out there in just a few minutes. But I could at least have a look for him before heading back inside.
The yacht was moving fast across ocean that looked as still as black glass. The moon was out and there was no land in sight. I felt my insides shrink down to nothing at the thought of how alone I was out here. No backup. No police. No one who could help me.
I saw him standing at the rail, right at the prow of the yacht. What if I was wrong about him? What if he was still mad and he just tossed me over the side in his rage?
I remembered how I’d felt, after the accident. How I’d shut down and closed everyone out. I’d functioned, but not lived. Luka seemed to be the opposite: he lived like a king, went to clubs, had a string of girlfriends...and yet, when I looked in his eyes, he didn’t look happy. He looked trapped.
I took a deep breath...and moved towards him.
When I was still ten feet away, and with him still staring out to sea, he suddenly snapped, “What are you doing out here?”
I caught my breath and stopped where I was. “I just came to talk.”
He shook his head, still not turning around. “Go to bed.”
I took a tentative step towards him. “Luka—”
“Got to bed!” he roared.
I stood stock still in the middle of the freezing deck. He was pushing me away, closing me out. Just as he’d shut out Elena and Natalia and Svetlana, I realized.
I’d thought the same as his guards: that he was a callous womanizer, using them and dumping them. What he’d actually done was break up with them before they could get too close.
This is perfect, a little voice inside me thought. I know about the crates, now. I have the batch numbers. I’ll find out more at the meeting, tomorrow. He’ll dump me when we get back to Moscow, I report to Adam and I can go home. Everything will go back to normal.
All I had to do was turn around and walk back to the stateroom. Mission accomplished.
I stood there for long seconds. And then I said, “No.”
He turned to face me. “What?”
“No.”
He stared at me, his eyes narrowed in anger. I could see the years of rage that had been building up inside him, slowly poisoning him. “Arianna,” he grated. “Go to bed.”
“No.” I walked over to him before he could stop me. He had time for a single angry yell before I threw my arms around him and pressed my face to his chest.
This is it, I thought. If I’m wrong about him, this is where he smashes my head against the rail and throws my body over.
I could feel his chest moving in big, powerful heaves as he fought with his anger. I squeezed him, willing him to pour some of the anger into me, to let me soothe him.
After long seconds, his breathing slowed. “What are you doing?” he asked.
“Trying to calm you down,” I said into his chest.
He took a long, strangled breath. “Why?!”
I gently moved back so that I could look up into those big, beautiful, pain-filled eyes. “Because I like you,” I told him. And the knowledge that it was true was like a bomb going off in my chest.
“You know what I am, now,” he said. “I told you at the party that I’m a monster. Now you know what sort.”
I took a deep breath. “You told me the truth for a reason,” I said slowly.
He broke away from me and twisted, staring out to sea. Those massive shoulders were like a wall between us, but I kept talking. “You could have left me in Moscow and I’d never have known. You wanted to tell me what you were.”
His shoulders set even tighter, even harder. He gripped the rail so hard his knuckles went white.
“At dinner...you said I was your spaseniye,” I said. “What does that mean?”
I knew damn well what it meant, but I couldn’t tell him that. And part of me needed to hear him say it.
He shook his head. “I was being weak.”
I pressed close to him and slid my arms around his waist from behind. I could feel the tension in his body again. I molded myself to him, my breasts crushed against his back. “Tell me.”
He let out a long sigh. “Salvation,” he said. “It means salvation.”
I didn’t say anything; I just stood there holding him. When he spoke, his voice was bitter. “When I saw you in New York, so innocent…” He let out a long sigh, his big hands squeezing and releasing the rail. “I am not good with words like you.”
I just waited and let him speak.
“I thought...I thought that maybe you could save me,” he said. And then he snarled and kicked a folding chair someone had left on the deck. It flew thirty feet and splashed into the ocean.
“Maybe I can,” I said softly.
He shook his head and it reminded me of a bull, about to charge. “Eblan!” he cursed savagely. “Eblan Mudak!” Dumbass bastard, he was calling himself. “Stupid!” he snarled in English.
“No,” I said. “Brave, to say what you feel!” His anger scared me, but I stepped closer. “I like you, Luka.”
“Even now you know?” he muttered.
I stepped right up close to him. “Even now I know.”
He gradually calmed and became still. I leaned forward and we touched foreheads. He had to lean down to me to do it, hulking over me like a monster.
“You should not get involved with me,” he said at last. “This is not wise, Arianna.”
“I know,” I whispered. “But I don’t think I can be apart from you.”
He cursed in Russian and then said, “I hurt many people.”
The hairs on the back of my neck were standing up. “Would you hurt me?” I asked.
“No.” And he said it with such stony certainty that I believed it. “But I might get you hurt.”
Cold fear welled up inside me, ice water that merged with the ice that was already there. He wasn’t a bad boy as in he might cheat on me or break my heart. He lived in a whole different world to me, one where people who got in the way just disappeared and loved ones were nothing more than leverage.
I felt sick. Another reason he’d always kept his relationships short-term. Being with him would be dangerous as hell, even if I wasn’t secretly spying on him.
The smart thing to do would be to walk away.
Yet I was getting closer and closer to him and the most worrying thing wasn’t that I was doing it, it was that it felt so right. Every time he touched me, every time he kissed me, it felt as if the ice inside me cracked just a little. It was a slender thread, a stupid, childish wish that I could be fixed. But it was one that I didn’t want to give up on.
“I’m not scared,” I said.
A tiny smile touched his lips. “You said that before. And you still are.”
I still was. But I wanted him anyway. I tilted my face up and reached for him, pulling him down to me. We kissed and it was soft and slow, his size only making his gentleness more shocking. A slow-motion bomb went off in my chest. In the warm glow that followed, it felt as if each of us was drawing life from the other. I was filling in the missing parts in him, and he in me.
We’d taken a step. He was opening up to me in a way he hadn’t with any of his other girlfriends. This wasn’t a fling, anymore.
His hand came down to brush my cheek and suddenly he recoiled. “You’re freezing!” he said. He shook his head at his own stupidity. “You’re out here in a dress!”
I’d been so focused on helping him, I hadn’t noticed the cold creeping in. I realized my arms and legs were growing numb. As soon as I thought about it, I gave a violent shiver.
“We need to get you inside and warmed up,” he told me.
“We—” I shivered again. Now that I’d started, I couldn’t stop. “We need to t—talk about this.”
He shook his head. “Later.” And he scooped me up in his arms, cradled me to his chest and carried me below deck.
***
The stateroom had an attached bathroom and there was a huge corner bath. Luka started it running
and then undressed me. I was shivering too much to do anything but stand there as he peeled my clothes off. It was very different to how he’d ripped and yanked at things before, in order to fuck me. This was like watching a giant undress a china doll.
When I was naked, he lifted me and slid me gently into the tub. I gasped as the water covered me, numb skin prickling painfully. But it worked—I could feel the cold receding and I stopped shivering.
We sat there looking at each other and the weirdness of the scene, of him sitting there watching me naked in the bath, made both of us smile.
I glanced down at myself—at my hair, bedraggled and damp from the sex and the sea air and now the bath; at my imperfect body; at all the broken parts he couldn’t see, the nightmares and the fears and the insecurities. What the hell does he see in me? I wondered. And yet I’d glimpsed that need in him and now he’d admitted it. This wasn’t just about sex, anymore. This was definitely turning into something deeper. Maybe, in time—
I suddenly caught myself. I’d completely forgotten who I was and why I was there. The moment we’d had out on the deck had let me get lost in a cozy little fantasy where I was a genuine girlfriend, and not doing all this in order to stab him in the back.
Luka frowned, concerned. “Are you okay? You look worried.”
It felt as if my heart was being wrenched out. The one guy I’d connected with, the one guy who’d made me feel alive again, and I was going to have to betray him.
“Fine,” I said with a smile. “I’m fine.”
I woke to the sound of a hard, heavy thumping that I couldn’t identify.
As I sat up groggily, I saw that I was in the bed in the stateroom. I blushed as I realized I was totally naked. Things were hazy after the bath, but I dimly remembered crawling between the sheets, exhausted.
Conflicted (Undercover #2) Page 6