by Lauren Smith
“I did, didn’t I? All right. Turn around, babe.” He twirled a finger in the air, and she obeyed, letting the water hit her skin before she dipped her hair beneath the spray. Once her hair was wet, she let him massage her scalp with shampoo. It felt like heaven having his strong hands rub her head. Lord, she would’ve done anything he wanted as long as he kept doing that.
“Better than sex,” she moaned in delight as he finally let her rinse.
His low, rough chuckle made her shiver. “I’ll have to do better next time I’m inside you. Can’t let a little scalp massage show me up.”
Kenzie grinned at him as she reached for the shower gel. She was too short to wash his hair, but she could still wash everything else. She put a dollop of gel in her palm and touched his chest, rubbing him in slow, steady caresses. She took her time, learning every slope, indent, and bulge of his muscled body. He became silent as she worked on cleaning him. She came across a small scar on his left arm, and she traced the ridge of it, raising questioning eyes to him.
“Motorcycle wreck,” he said, watching her with dark, hot eyes.
She found another scar. “And this?”
“This?” He touched the mark on his rib. “Free-climbing a mountain. And this”—he lifted his arm and showed her a jagged scar on his lower torso—“tangled with a smuggler in China. The guy caught me with a knife.”
“Jesus, you have a death wish,” she joked, but he didn’t laugh. “Royce.” She spoke his name soberly, worried she might have upset him.
“You’re not far off, Little Mac. For a long time, I had this need to risk everything.”
She rinsed her hands and pressed herself against him, needing to hold him. He hugged her back, his voice becoming a whisper.
“I needed to feel something, something to pull me out of the grief I felt. For a long time I felt so fucked up, so dark in my head all the time. Doing stupid stuff somehow reminded me I was still here, that I hadn’t lost myself.”
She squeezed him tight, wishing she could banish the ghosts of his past and free him from the chains of his loss. “I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t be,” he said. Her gaze met his, and she saw the real Royce. The young man who’d been forced to grow up far too soon into the man she had—
Kenzie blocked out the dangerous train of thought before it could fully manifest.
“Sometimes a man discovers who he really is when his soul is tested. Trials of fire, you might say. I’ve been tested many times, and it has made me one tough bastard.”
She understood. She remembered Royce pinning down the man who’d dared to hurt her. A gun shoved in the man’s face. The knowledge that he could have shot the man should have terrified her, but it didn’t. He was Royce, and he was her safe harbor, always had been, even before she’d known she would someday need one.
She bit her lip and frowned. “I haven’t been tested, not like you.” Her calm, safe life hadn’t given her anything. She wasn’t tough, and she wasn’t brave. How had she ever been foolish enough to think coming along as some kind of silly sidekick on this adventure was a good idea?
“Babe, I’m glad you had a happy life. Someone deserves it. But this?” He waved around them. “This situation is my fault. I nearly got you killed just because you were in my office when they came looking for me. And we’re not even out of the woods yet. God, I wish none of this ever happened.” He closed his eyes, and the momentary show of weakness was so unlike like him that she shuddered.
“We shouldn’t be here, facing a fucking nightmare,” Royce said. “The last thing I ever wanted to do was to put you in danger.” He brushed a lock of wet hair back from her face and lowered his head to kiss her.
It was the kind of kiss she would never forget, the kind that seemed to shake her to her soul with the force of an earthquake. It was a life-changing kiss, one that was both tender and hungry, one that made her feel safe yet in danger of falling in love.
And that was what scared her like nothing else. She’d never been in love, and she knew that if she fell in love with Royce Devereaux she would never love anyone else. Some first loves are simply that, your first. But Royce? He was a man who would be the love of her life, the one that no other would ever compare to. There was no way she could love anyone else like this.
He’s got my heart in his hands, and he doesn’t even know it. She cleared her throat and mumbled something about needing to shave. They switched places as he washed his hair, and she used her razor to quickly take care of her legs and under her arms, trying not to let him see.
She hadn’t thought any of this through when she’d snuck into the bathroom with just her bedsheet. She finished shaving and turned to see him watching her.
“Nice view.” He nodded at her and at her half-bent position.
Oh God, how mortifying.
“Never be ashamed to show me your ass, Little Mac.” He chuckled and picked up his own razor and rubbed shaving cream over his face. She watched him shave, seeing his strong arms carefully move as he dragged the razor over his skin. Then he buried his face in the hot spray, and they both got one final rinse before Royce cranked the knob to the right, killing the water. He retrieved two towels, giving her one.
Hans’s voice boomed from outside the bathroom door. “You two about ready to go? I want breakfast.”
“Oh my God,” Kenzie hissed. “He knows we—”
“Of course he knows. The man is a bodyguard. His job is to guard our bodies. I’m afraid that means he will know more than you want him to.” Royce rubbed aftershave into his face and grinned before he swatted her ass through her towel. She squeaked and punched him in the arm.
He grabbed his arm, still smiling. “Yikes. Who taught you to hit like that?”
“My brothers. I have two of them, remember?”
“Right.” He was still laughing. “Next time, I’ll spank your ass when you’re tied down. Then you can’t punch me back.”
“As if I’d let you.” She returned his grin.
“Babe, I’m figuring out what makes you burn inside in the best way. In time, I’ll get the chance to do all sorts of things to you. I promise you’ll be thanking me long before I’m through.”
She knew he was right, and damned if she didn’t like the idea of all those things he would do to her.
“Hurry up, Little Mac. We’re gonna meet an old friend of mine.”
12
Vadym Andreikiv sat in his leather chair in his office, glaring at Jov Tomenko.
“You said they were in Moscow, but you lost track of them at the airport.”
Jov was a burly brute born in Siberia. He was a man of few words, and he kept secrets well, but if he didn’t start talking, then Vadym would replace him—permanently.
“They hired a private car service. Our hacker team checked all the major databases and the taxicabs. Electronic receipts are easy to track these days, but we couldn’t get a lock on their location.”
Vadym pulled a cigar cutter from his desk and stared at Jov as he sliced off the tip of the cigar with a menacing sound.
“Think carefully about your next words, Jov. You don’t want to displease me.”
Jov audibly swallowed.
“I’ll find them. Or…”
“Or?”
“Well, you could lure him to you, couldn’t you? Put the word out where you can be found. Make Devereaux come to us. Then I can deal with him.” Jov clenched his hands together, his knuckles cracking.
Vadym considered the idea. That was certainly an option. Bring Devereaux to him, and then he would have that fucking American under his power, and the man would have to do what he wanted. Normally he’d bribe a man like Devereaux, but he knew enough to know Devereaux wouldn’t take money and he wouldn’t willingly lie about the origins of fossils. His reputation was beyond reproach. It was also what made him perfect for Vadym’s plans.
“Put the word out, as you put it, that I’ll be at the club tonight. He can come and meet my friends.”
; Jov grinned darkly. “And what about Dr. Abramov?”
“Tie up the loose ends.”
Jov nodded and left Vadym’s office. Vadym picked up his cell phone and dialed a number.
“Yes?” a gruff voice answered.
“Have the plane ready to fly to Kyakhta tomorrow. We will have guests.”
“Of course.”
He hung up and spun in his chair to stare up at the map of Russia and Mongolia that was pinned to the wall. He would make Dr. Devereaux accompany him to Ulaanbaatar, where his most recent acquisition of a complete velociraptor skeleton was being held securely. If he could get Dr. Devereaux to sign off on the papers and say the fossils came from just outside of Kyakhta, a Russian city on the edge of the Russian-Mongolian border, then he could sell the fossils to an American or European natural history museum for a few million dollars. Devereaux was an expert, one of the world’s best on velociraptors. If any other museum claimed it, he would have been called in to verify the origins of the fossils, which mean Vadym had to have him and no other paleontologist sign off on the documents.
Vadym picked up a long, curved claw from a velociraptor and dragged its lethal tip along his palm, leaving a red mark. For so many years he’d never felt pain, never understood what made others feel anything. He’d scraped his way to power in Russia, to the point where even government officials tread lightly in his presence. They recognized that something was broken in him, something that made him dangerous. He would feed his own mother to stray dogs if he saw an advantage in it.
Devereaux had already robbed him of the sale of a complete nest of oviraptor eggs, which would have brought him millions. One more reason why Royce Devereaux had to be made to come to heel, and made to betray his principles. Vadym could not have someone like Devereaux stopping him from selling his fossils. Fossils were money, and money was power. Power was control. Vadym cared about nothing except the control of his own destiny.
It was harder and messier to trade in humans, and drugs were for fools. Weapons deals had no finesse. Fossils were a much better way to amass wealth. He ruled the sex trade because it amused him to see women and even some men lose their souls, die inside, and still be shells that breathed. That power over people, the ones he sold and the ones who came to him, desperate to buy—they were all under his control. But the sex trade needed funding, bribes for officials and law enforcement to keep quiet. It was costly, and Interpol had been breathing down his neck lately, looking for a way to bust him on charges, but so far he’d managed to hide his tracks and destroy all evidence when necessary. That meant Vadym needed to keep the fossil trade successful in order to afford his little hobby.
A hunger to hurt something rose up in him, and he stood and walked over to a bookshelf full of priceless Western literature first editions. Most were irreplaceable. He’d bought them because he loved to know he could destroy them at his leisure. He pulled one back halfway from its companions. There was a soft click as the shelf separated from the wall. Vadym pulled the bookshelf away from the wall, revealing a padlocked door. He removed a key from his pocket and unlocked it. When he opened it, the light from his office illuminated the dark confined space and the pathetic half-naked figure chained to a spike on the floor.
“Good afternoon, Elena,” he said in English. The figure whimpered as he lifted a long black whip off the wall and flexed it in his hands. Her lovely green eyes were wide with terror. He felt it, that surge of something inside his empty chest. A flutter of joy? Pleasure? It was as close as he could get.
Such a sweet little creature, Elena. An American college student studying abroad in Moscow who had made the mistake of visiting the club with her friends. He’d had her abducted in the bathroom and taken to his private rooms. After he’d taken her, he’d basked in her screams and tears and decided he would keep her until she broke completely. Then he would toss her to his men. How long she would last after that, who was to say? His men were rough brutes, after all.
“Do you wish to play a game, Elena?” He caressed her name and she shuddered, but for a brief instant he saw a flash of fire in her eyes. It was that fire he had to destroy. He twisted the whip around his fists and reached her chain. She screamed, and Vadym laughed.
Yes, he would enjoy breaking this little bitch, and then he could relax. Jov would set the trap for Devereaux, and he would tie up all the loose ends. It was all coming together. His lips twisted in a cruel smile as he raised the whip.
Royce faced Moscow State University’s vast central building located on Sparrow Hills in the southwest part of the city. The building had been designed by Lev Vladimirovich Rudnev and was the tallest of Moscow’s Seven Sisters, the high-rises built by Stalin’s labor force. It was both grim and beautiful at the same time.
“Holy cow.” Kenzie tilted her head back to look up at the center spire that reached toward the cloudless winter sky.
“One of the tallest buildings in the world, aside from the Sears Tower, until 1990,” Hans said as he joined them. Royce and Kenzie both turned to stare at him.
“What?” He shrugged. “You guys didn’t grab a brochure from the hotel lobby before we left?” He waved a small pamphlet.
Royce sighed and rubbed his eyes with his thumb and forefinger. He needed another hit of coffee. “This isn’t a vacation, Hans.”
“You say super-secret mission to stop a Russian mobster, I say vacation. To-ma-to, to-mah-toe.” Kenzie giggled as Hans waggled his eyebrows teasingly.
“Let’s just get inside. We need to find Dr. Abramov.” He led the way. It was close to Christmas break here in Moscow, just like in the States, and the building was mostly deserted. There was a listing of professors, and Royce scanned the symbols, his familiarity with the Cyrillic alphabet strong enough to recognize Lev’s name.
“Tenth floor.” He nodded toward a set of gold elevator doors. “Let’s go.”
The tenth floor contained the offices for anthropology, geology, archaeology, and paleontology. Nearly all of the offices were closed, however, and the hall was dark except for the translucent glass of the windows on the professors’ doors.
Lev’s light was on, and his door was unlocked. Royce didn’t bother knocking. He had known Lev since he was a grad student. They’d gone on groundbreaking digs in China, Mongolia, and the American Badlands. Lev was like an uncle to him—if that uncle had been a skinny old vodka-drinking Russian.
“Lev?” As they entered the office, Royce’s feet trod upon broken glass. “What the—?”
He heard a soft gasp. Kenzie was covering her mouth with one hand and pointing at something behind the desk. He walked around the desk and froze. Lev Abramov was lying on the ground, his eyes open and blinking slowly, blood pooling beneath his lower back. A knife was shoved through the gray sweater he wore. His body drew in rapid breaths.
“Shit,” Hans growled. “Knife’s still in him. Royce, we interrupted the person who did this. He could still be here. You treat the wound, and I’ll clear the halls.” He rushed from the room, but all Royce saw was the blood and the wounds on his friend. The world spun a little, and he had to shake the fog out of his mind and regain control.
“Oh my God!” Kenzie gasped and rushed to Royce’s side, gripping his arm.
“Stay back,” he said as he checked on his friend. It looked bad. “Fuck.” His heart sank as he knelt by Lev. There was too much blood. He knew that if he pulled the knife out the bleeding would only be faster. This wasn’t a wound that could be treated.
“Royce…” The older man hissed out his name. His old friend’s eyes were starting to turn glassy.
“What can I do?” Kenzie knelt by him, her face white as alabaster.
“Nothing, Little Mac, he’s too far gone.”
Lev lifted one hand, gripping Royce’s arm. His brown eyes grew intense, as though what little life he had left was burning up fast. “Royce…”
“Lev, I’m sorry,” Royce whispered.
The older man shook his head. “It is I…who am sorry.” Th
e man looked between Royce and Kenzie.
“Sorry? For what?”
“I betrayed you…to Vadym’s men. They needed to fake fossil documents. They threatened my family.”
“What?” Royce stared down at Lev, stunned.
“The oviraptor nest last year, the one you proved came from Mongolia—it was his. He was angry, and I told him where to find you.” The sorrow and the pain in Lev’s eyes made a lead knot form in Royce’s stomach.
So that was how this bastard had found him. He’d kept his address and his information through the university concealed—even his picture wasn’t available.
“Sorry, old friend.” Lev’s hand on his arm weakened.
“They did this? Vadym’s men?” Royce asked, his voice breaking as he tried not to face the fact that his friend and mentor was bleeding out and there was nothing he could do to save him.
“Yes…wanted to—silence me. He knows you’re here,” Lev warned, but Royce already knew that.
The question was, did Vadym have a way of tracking or predicting his moves? He’d used independent cabs, paid with cash, and booked their rooms with fake identities. Even Kenzie had a fake passport. Hans’s connection on Long Island had been thorough.
Royce stared at the man who’d been like family to him. “Lev…”
“Be brave…dig deep.” The old paleontologist’s eyes closed, and he exhaled one last time.
“Dig deep.” Royce’s chest tightened as he touched Lev’s lifeless hand. He had lost yet another person in his life. He dropped his head, closing his eyes as he tried not to let panic race through him.
“Royce.” Kenzie grabbed his other arm and pulled him up so he was standing. “Royce, I’m so sorry.”
Royce nodded stiffly. The pain was locked inside his chest, like a demon trapped in an iron cage. It rattled and quaked, but the lock held it—for now.
“The police are coming. I called them, but we can’t be seen here.” Hans looked down at the body behind the desk.