There are three men on this side of the cottage, and each of them is holding a semiautomatic weapon. I’m guessing there’ll be more on the other side.
“Motherfuckers,” I snap. “How did they find us?”
I grab Dakota by the arm and drag her to the stairs, leading her up and guiding her into the master bedroom, and then into the ensuite. Sparky knows enough to follow me when I move with such deadly purpose, padding at my feet with his tail perked completely straight up, erect and ready for whatever’s going to happen.
“Stay here,” I say. “Sparky, stay.”
Dakota looks around the bathroom, blinking as though slowly waking from a dream. Then she levels her gaze at me.
“I want to help,” she says.
“Help by staying here,” I growl. “I can’t do my work if I’m distracted if I’m worried about you … God, I can’t let anything happen to you. Keep Sparky safe, alright?”
“What are you going to do?” she whimpers.
“To the men who are going to try and kill me and take you to Andrei?” I growl. “What else? I’m going to execute them, Dakota.”
She nods shortly, accepting this fact. “I don’t know how they found us.”
“Neither do I,” I say. “I’ve gone to a hell of a lot of effort over the years to keep this place hidden. But … Oh, motherfuck.”
“What?” she says.
“I’ll tell you after,” I growl. “I need to get moving.”
I close the door behind me, and then lock the door to the master bedroom and stalk across the hallway to where I stowed the duffel bag.
I reach inside and take a gun with a silencer, making sure it’s loaded, and then return to the top of the stairs, aiming to the bottom and breathing slowly, calmly, focusing everything I have on the job at hand.
A memory stings me as I lie there, my mind drifting momentarily back to when I lay here as a child, a water pistol in my hand instead of a real one. I was waiting for Uncle Felix to come around the corner, and when he did I sprayed him real damn good.
Laughter sings out in my mind and I push it away, making myself cold and unfeeling.
Glass smashes downstairs and somebody growls something in Russian.
I watch and wait, and the moment a man’s hand comes into view, I fire with pinpoint accuracy.
“Ah,” the man cries, jumping out of view and letting out another scream.
His gun lies on the floor, dappled with blood from the wound.
“Bastard,” the man growls in Russian.
“Leave this place,” I snap in my best Russian. “Or you’re all going to die.”
“Idiot, there are five of us and—”
Another voice pitched low and urgent. “Don’t tell him how many of us there are, fool.”
I breathe steadily, inching back so that only my eyes and the barrel of the gun is poking over the edge of the stairs. My body aches with contorting into this shape in the narrow hallway, but I’ve been in much worse positions.
“We want the girl,” a man says, the same one who called the other one a fool. He sounds like he’s the leader. “We have money. Five hundred thousand American dollars.”
“You could have five hundred million and it wouldn’t make a difference,” I snarl. “You’re never getting your goddamn hands on her.”
“What is she to you?” the man hisses.
“What is she to you?” I counter.
“Me? Nothing.”
“Your boss, then.”
“Oh … I do not know. It is not my place to question.”
“I’m going to kill you all if you try and come up these stairs,” I snarl. “And if I think you’re calling for backup or trying anything else, I’m going to kill you all. In fact, unless you all get the hell off my property you’re all going to die here today. Do you understand me? Do you know who the fuck I am?”
“Yes,” the man says, a quiver in his voice. At least he’s not an idiot. “But you know who our employer is, too. What are we to do? Just give us the girl and we can avoid blood.”
“I’m not giving you Dakota,” I snarl. “Do you have any fucking clue what that motherfucker will do to her?”
“Yes,” the man sighs. “But it is not for us to question.”
“Then you’re all going to die,” I snarl. “There’s no way around it.”
I wait, filtering out the rest of their conversation with each other, listening only for any sign of what their plan is. I hear two of the men walking away.
A dark feeling moving over me, my instincts pricking, something telling me they’re either going for backup or more heavy weaponry.
I have to act.
Now.
I stalk quietly to the duffel bag and take out a concussive flash-bang grenade, and then move silently back to the top of the stairs.
I draw the pin and then wait, head cocked, hyper-aware of every tiny movement downstairs.
I listen to the floorboards creaking as the men begin to sneak closer to the bottom of the stairs, no doubt looking for some angle.
I throw the grenade and turn away.
Bang.
I sprint down the stairs, the three men reeling back, their hands over their eyes.
I leap at them, moving in a flurry of muscle memory and savage violence, smashing them across the jaw and stomach and in the back of their knees, causing them to stumble and then fall.
With them still disoriented, it’s an easy thing for the predator in me to grab their guns and beat them over their heads with them, smash, smash, smash, knocking them out one by one so that they sag like sacks of shit on the floor.
Blood pools from the back of one man’s head, but I don’t have time to think about that.
At least I didn’t just shoot them, which I could’ve easily done.
I run to the window and toss their guns out into the snow, and then quickly search them for more weapons.
One of the men moans groggily and I smack him with the butt of my gun, knocking him out for good.
I throw their knives out into the snow and then run upstairs, into the bedroom, finding Dakota cradling Sparky close to her chest as she sits in the bathroom.
“Poor little man,” I whisper, seeing him shaking and shivering.
“We heard a bang,” Dakota says, her voice just as shaky as Sparky.
“It was me. Don’t worry. We’re safe. For now. But you need to get changed. Every item of clothing you’re wearing. Anything you took from Dobry’s estate, it needs to stay here.”
Her eyes widen. “You think …”
“They tracked us, yeah,” I snarl. “My guess is it’s in your shoe, but we need to be safe. Be quick, Dakota.”
I grab the duffel bag and carry it downstairs, and then quickly grab some zip-ties and tie the Bratva men’s arms behind their backs, leaving them face first on the blood dappled floor.
Two of them are groaning now, and the third – the one with the blood seeping from his skull – lies still.
I feel a pang of something in my chest staring down at the man.
He’s the first man I’ve ever killed without research beforehand.
But he was going to take Dakota, I assure myself grimly.
He was going to take her to Andrei, and then Andrei, the sick fuck, was going to abuse her in the most evil ways.
“I gave you a chance,” I snarl. “You should have taken it.”
I walk into the living room and grab Dakota’s heels, snapping one in half and then the other. Just as I suspected, the second heel has a small tracking chip inside.
I curse under my breath.
I should have thought of this earlier. It’s not the first time the Bratva has been known to implant tracking chips in items.
But I never thought they’d find a servant important enough for that.
Then again, Andrei, the Wolf wants Dakota …
Why? a voice roars in my mind.
And then another voice, She’s mine.
I move to the window, looking out at the fores
t.
The two men are lumbering toward the house, carrying a large crate between them, both of them bent sideways at the hip as they strain under the effort.
A bomb? A heavy machine gun?
I’m guessing the latter.
With heavy weaponry like that pitched up outside, they’ll be able to keep us pinned down here long enough for more Bratva men to arrive, soldiers ready to charge in here and take Dakota.
They drop the case at the tree line and whack the top of it, causing the walls to fall away and reveal a big hunk of metal with countless golden glinting bullets coming out of the top.
I turn, heart thudding with deathly insistence.
That gun will tear this house to paper petals in ten seconds flat if they start firing.
“Dakota,” I roar, running to the bottom of the stairs. “We need to go. Now.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Dakota
I run down the stairs in the baggy jeans and the even baggier shirt, the clothes hanging off me and the belt barely keeping the pants up. The sneakers fit a little snugly, but everything else is comfortable enough.
Sparky trails after me, and then sniffs across the room, toward the three men who lie flat on their faces.
“Come here, boy,” I say, clicking my tongue.
He turns to me, disappointment in his innocent eyes.
I want to sniff the blood, he silently wills.
“Here,” I say firmly.
He trots over to my side and together we join Damian at the window. He moves aside, lifting his arm to guide me so that I’m standing behind him. I peer around and see that two men are arranging some kind of metal apparatus, grunting with the effort.
“Come on,” he growls.
“Is that what I think it is?” I say, voice shaking.
Be brave, my womb screams at me from deep inside. We need to survive this. Both of you. You need to bring children into this world. That’s all that matters now.
Damian grabs my hand and shoulders the duffel bag, leading me to the other side of the house and then out into the snow. Sparky walks beside us, stopping every so often to glance back before trotting at our feet.
“Where are we going?” I whisper.
“Transport,” Damian snarls. “As long as the shoe is in the house, they’ll think we’re still in there. We need to move.”
“Damian, what are we going to do?” I say, struggling to keep my voice from becoming damsel-ish.
Whatever I am, I’m not a freaking damsel, I tell myself. I’m the woman who slashed Dobry with a letter opener. Heck, I sang in front of Damian. If I can do that, I can do anything.
“Run, Popstar,” Damian sighs. “After that, honestly, I have no fucking clue.”
I follow Damian through the trees, moving far easier in the sneakers than I ever could’ve dreamed of in the heels.
As we move, I can’t help but wonder why Dobry or Andrei or the Bratva, in general, would find me so important that they’d put a freaking tracker in my shoe. Maybe they do it with all their servants, but wouldn’t that be expensive?
I almost laugh at myself.
Dobry lives in a gold-plated mansion. As if the expense is any concern for him.
Lived, I correct. Dobry lived in a gold-plated mansion.
We come upon a squat metal building. It looks like a bomb shelter, coated in a heavy layer of snow. Damian drops the duffel bag and jogs over to it sweeping aside some snow to reveal a metal keypad, and then hurriedly types something in.
“Inside,” he growls, when a rust-flecked metal door swings open with a whining noise.
I jog forward, breathing hard, sweat coating me despite the cold. I walk into the building to find a one-room garage with a sleek black sedan sitting in the middle, windows tinted, looking identical to Damian’s other car.
“How many of these do you have?” I laugh drily.
“Four,” Damian says. “But this one’s special.”
“How so?”
He grabs a key from a workbench and clicks a button, the car beeping as it unlocks.
“Get inside,” he growls firmly.
I lean down and scoop Sparky into my arms and then climb into the car, cradling him in my lap, stroking my hands through his fur to comfort both of us. I remember how he started to shake when the bang went off downstairs, and I lean down to let him lick at my face.
“It’s okay, boy,” I murmur as he licks my cheek over and over. “I promise everything’s going to be okay. One day there won’t be any guns or bad men. One day it’ll just be long walks and treats and toys, okay? Okay, little guy?”
Damian stows the duffel in the back and then climbs into the driver’s side, pausing for a moment to stare at me, his jaws tight.
“What is it?” I ask.
“It’s just …” He trails off, smirking despite the mayhem. “You look so much like a mother right now.”
My smile spreads ridiculously, considering the circumstances. But I can’t help it when his eyes are filled with so much sincere warmth, pouring over me, lighting up my hope and my heart and everything else inside of me.
“One day I won’t just look like a mother,” I whisper.
“I can’t believe I ever thought you’d laugh in my face when I told you you’re mine,” he growls. “Goddamn, time moves differently with you, Dakota. An hour feels like a year.” He smirks again, laughing grimly. “But then again, time isn’t moving differently for them. Let’s get moving.”
He starts the engine and inches the car forward, opening his window so that he can lean out and touch a few buttons on the wall. A big door starts to lift, painfully slowly it seems to me as I sit there, holding Sparky still in my lap.
I scream when I see them, two men standing right outside the door, their breath fogging in the air, clearly having just run through the forest after us.
They raise their guns and I duck, turning my body so that Sparky is against the seat, with me as his human shield.
Whatever happens, we can’t let them hurt an innocent dog who’s never done anything to anybody his whole freaking life.
“Damian,” I cry.
“I know,” he snarls. “But remember? This one’s special. Brace, Dakota.”
Brace?
The car surges forward and the men unload their weapons, ear-splitting bang noises rising into the air as bullets slam over and over into the car.
But the glass doesn’t shatter.
No bullets thump into my body.
“Bulletproof glass,” I whisper in wonder, sitting up just in time to see the men leap aside, their guns flying from their grips and landing in the snow.
“No, Dakota,” Damian says, grinning like a mad alpha wolf. “Bulletproof everything.”
I let out a long shaky breath as we drive through the forest, finally joining the road and screeching away.
I glance at the clock, laughing in disbelief, my chest feeling hollow and my general being swathed in a sense of the surreal.
“Damian, it’s only been two hours since we arrived at the cottage.”
“I know,” Damian murmurs, glancing at me with twin volcanoes for eyes, erupting, always. “Like I said, Popstar, time moves damn differently with you.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Damian
“I’m not making that mistake again,” I tell Dakota as we drive down the highway, the night sky telling me that, goddamn yes, it’s only been one day since I met this woman.
One day and yet I feel like a new-made man.
One day and yet my world will never be the same.
“What do you mean?” she asks, smiling down at Sparky sleeping in her lap.
“Staying out in the middle of nowhere,” I say. “It just lets them roll up and make a whole lot of noise and fuss. I’m taking you to the finest hotel in Indianapolis and we’re staying on the top floor.”
“Won’t that put other people in danger?” she says quietly.
“No,” I tell her. “The Bratva are savages, but they
’re not completely unhinged. They understand that there’s a difference between fighting in the forest and in rundown neighborhoods then fighting where rich people live and eat. The second they do that, Uncle Sam gets involved, and their whole operation comes under fire. But …”
“It’s just a temporary thing,” Dakota murmurs. “We can’t stay in hotels forever.”
I nod reaching over and giving her thigh a squeeze, feeling the sinful neediness of her flesh beneath the jeans.
“Yeah, screw sharing walls and floors and ceilings with other people. I need a good detached property in the middle of nowhere so that you can really scream.”
She shivers, pressing down on my hand, as though wanting there to be as little space between my hand and her skin as possible.
“You’re an animal,” she whispers. “And thank you, Damian.”
“For what?”
“For what?” she laughs. “How about for saving my life a second time? How about for not laughing at me when I sang for you? How about for everything?”
“Don’t worry,” I smirk. “You’ll find a way to repay me.”
I pause and then add, “Not that you need to repay me. I’d never let anything happen to you.”
I pause again—and then add, again, “But you are going repay me.”
She giggles. “Somebody can’t make their mind up. That’s weird. You’re normally so decisive.”
“I can make my damn mind up about you,” I snarl, “that’s for sure.”
“So what is the fanciest hotel in Indianapolis?” she says, a slight teasing note in her voice.
I glance across at her, my lips twitching as though I’m going to flat-out smile, not smirk. And I never smile.
“You know what, Popstar? I’ve got no idea. But I’m excited to find out … with you.”
My seed burns inside of me, roaring that soon I won’t be able to wait any longer. I’ll need to tear off those imprisoning clothes and ride her until she’s raw and her flesh is lust-red all over, and my seed is gushing like a waterfall out of her gaping pink claimed hole.
My seed, the savage part of me, the beast, the hunter, the killer, all of it roars that she’s rightfully mine and I should take her like a fucking monster.
I have to beat it down and listen hard to the civilized side of me – if there’s such a thing – and remind myself that what she wants matters just as much.
Her Hitman: An Instalove Possessive Older Man Younger Woman Romance Page 8