“I’ll journal the rest of the day and tomorrow until you arrive, Dad. I’ll just stay here.”
“The nurses should be switching now,” Pietr announced, his internal clock freakishly accurate.
“You’d better go, Dad. You,” I said to Pietr, “under the bed in case they peek in the window.”
He did as I suggested and I arranged the sheets so he was completely hidden. For once my sloppy housekeeping skills would pay off as the accepted routine.
I hugged Dad and walked him to the door, pressing the button. The door buzzed and with a click the lock released. “It’ll be fine,” I assured. “I’m the safest I’ve been in days.”
He shot a look at the shadowy space beneath my bed.
“If he tries…”
“Dad. Pietr’s a puppy dog,” I whispered, though I knew werewolf ears would hear.
The door shut behind him, and my back against it, I let out a sigh.
“Were you ever frightened growing up?” Pietr asked.
“Of what?”
“The monster under your bed?”
“You’re no monster, Pietr,” I admonished, crossing the room to get my journal and do my best to appear normal. Bored.
He sighed and shifted in the darkness, waiting for me to tell him when the coast was clear. “Things change, Jess. People change.”
The silence that followed his words was heavier than it had ever been.
Jessie
“It’s been ten minutes,” I whispered.
“Thirteen. But who’s counting?” Pietr responded dryly.
“They would have checked by now if they were going to.”
“So I’m allowed out?”
I flipped back the sheets. “Come out.”
He slid out from under my bed, staying toward the wall farthest from the window’s view. He stretched, joints popping.
“A little cramped down there?”
His lips curled in a teasing grin. “We wind up in the nicest places.”
“At least you can’t complain about the company.” I jabbed his ribs and raised my face for a kiss.
“Nyet. No complaints there.” Eyes glowing, he leaned down to kiss me.
The knock on the door startled us both, and Pietr slid with an accuracy a baseball pro would envy, right under the bed again. I tugged at the sheets and crossed the room.
Christian.
I buzzed the door open.
Christian wheeled in the laundry cart and clipboard. “Sorry this is so late. I just found out I’ve been sentenced to laundry duty. Rumor has it you’re on your way out.”
I grinned. “Finally a rumor with truth behind it!”
He looked me up and down. “That’s too bad. I was really hoping to get to know you. I guess I should’ve taken a chance earlier on.” The smile he showed me was far more wicked than anything that had ever twisted Pietr’s lips. “Ah well, there’s no time like the present—” He grabbed my face and kissed me.
I yanked back with a squeak. “That wasn’t a good idea. Go. Now.” I stepped back, closer to the bed, and felt the heat rolling off of Pietr as he held his animal instincts back. This was bad. “I’m telling you. Go now.”
“Fine.” He grinned. He put up his hands and backed toward the door. “Can’t blame a guy for trying.”
“Yes, I can.”
He scowled. “Will I see you at dinner?”
“No. I’ve totally lost my appetite.”
As soon as the door closed behind him I rushed to the bathroom—past Pietr, who was out from under the bed and bristling in the corner—to grab my toothbrush.
He glared after me the whole way as I stepped into the tiny bathroom and loaded my toothbrush with toothpaste and scrubbed the flavor of Christian’s mouth away from mine.
“I see you’ve made new friends,” he said, slinking in and filling the bathroom’s other side. He cast a menacing shadow.
“Not. Friends. Obviously.” I spewed foam into the sink. “Grrr!”
In the mirror I saw him startle.
“Don’t glare at me.” I spewed more foam as I shook my toothbrush in the mirror at him. “God!” I spit. Rinsed. Brushed some more. “This is your fault.”
His eyes widened at the accusation and the rage fell away from his face. “How is it my fault?”
“Until you started showing an interest in me there were very few guys trying to ram their tongues down my throat. I was fine like that,” I pointed out, bending to spit again. “Now it seems I’m getting some funky oral exam by every guy I meet. Gross!”
Pietr chuckled, gently prying both the cup and toothbrush from my trembling hands to set them on the sink. He turned me to face him. “Why can’t you accept that guys wanting you is because of you? Not me. You’re beautiful, Jess.”
I snorted.
“Even when you do that,” he whispered, pulling me close to nuzzle his face into my hair. He sucked my scent into his lungs with a rattling breath and my knees trembled.
“Stop,” I whispered, breathless.
“What?” He glanced at his hands and, closing his eyes, ran his fingers lightly down my back. Pausing at my waist he fumbled and pulled me closer.
The raw power of his body heated the length of mine. I shook my head to clear it and although I didn’t want to, I said, “Stop,” and pulled back to look up at him.
His eyes opened, now a shade of near violet, the red and the blue warring passionately. He touched my cheek with a trembling hand and I clutched his wrist, grabbing his attention.
“We promised my dad he had nothing to worry about leaving us here together.”
His hand pulled free of mine and moved down the side of my face, along my neck, his eyes following its path. Both his hand and his gaze paused at the same spot, just above my left breast. He looked up at me. “Does this worry you?” he whispered, his voice husky.
I smacked his hand away and watched his eyes flare. “Yes. You and I made a promise. A promise, Pietr.”
He groaned, a sound halfway between pain and pleasure. His eyes half-lidded, he reached for me again. “Jess.”
I stepped away, backing into the sink.
“People break promises every day.”
“No,” I insisted. “Not you, Pietr.”
He took a single step forward.
I’d never realized how big he could seem, how powerful and imposing. I stepped back, but had no place to go.
His hand rested heavily again on the same spot, below my collarbone but above my breast. He froze a minute, mesmerized, one finger following the raised outline of my bra strap just beneath my top.
“How could you forget?” he wondered, his hand retracing its agonizingly slow path to my face just before he tenderly pushed a strand of hair back from my eyes, tucking it behind my ear. “I promised I wouldn’t let them take you. That afternoon at the barn,” he clarified, as if I didn’t know. “But they did. I’ve broken promises. Even to you.”
“They would have killed you. You didn’t let them take me—you were standing up to go another round. I let them take me. I negated your promise.”
He blinked at me.
“Do you understand? You didn’t break the promise, Pietr. You’ve never broken a promise that I know of.” I moved closer to him and this time I was the one to reach out. “Although I get the feeling a lot of people have broken promises to you.”
He looked down. “Jess, I—”
“Stop torturing yourself. You’re a good guy.” Grabbing his shoulders I gave him a little shake. “You’ve always done everything right by me. You’ve done everything I ask, even when I asked for stupid, stupid things.”
“I have,” he agreed. “And you did.”
I ignored how willingly he agreed and went on. “So relax. You don’t need to push. I love you.”
His eyes squeezed shut at the words. “I don’t know if you should say that.…”
“What?” My hands on either side of his face, I turned him to look at me. “I love you. You wanted to he
ar it. Now listen to it, because I’ve never meant anything as much as I mean this. I love you, Pietr Rusakova.”
I waited, watching him watching me, his eyes flashing through the color spectrum as if his brain was trying to make sense of the words I’d spliced together. And I held my breath.
“It’s your turn,” I finally sputtered. “Unless you don’t…” My throat tightened.
His eyes widened. “I do. I do love you, Jess. Why would you even wonder?” he marveled, reaching out and gathering me to him. “I don’t take a breath without thinking of you. I can’t sleep. I barely eat.… I do more stupid, reckless things than ever. If that’s not love…” He stroked my head. “I love you, Jess. And,” he pushed me back suddenly, “you’re making me crazy.”
He ran his hand through his hair, muttering something in Russian. “I’m seventeen in human years and older as an oborot. I’m in my prime and…” He muttered something else and although I didn’t understand the words, I recognized the frustration.
Very clearly.
“I’m sorry, Jess.” He shrugged like that would soften the reality. “I want you. Like…”
“You think I don’t want you?”
His lips tightened into a thin, pale line.
“I do. Ugh. Boy, do I. But not here. Not in this place. We deserve the right place. The right time. Don’t you agree?”
“I don’t know if I’m so picky.” He laughed, rubbing at his forehead.
I tilted my head and looked at him.
“But for you, Jess—anything.”
“Pietr. We’re here. Together. Safe. We love each other. That’s so much already. A little more time. I know what it means to ask that.”
He nodded and the end of his lips twisted up into a slow smile. “Okay,” he agreed. But I noticed a strain shadowing his normally bright eyes. He sighed, straightened, and stretched, brushing past me to reach for the shower’s faucet.
“Shower?” I asked.
He nodded, mute. He swung his head to the side, looked at me darkly, and cranked the faucet as far as it’d go to the right.
Cold.
“A little more time,” he said with a sigh.
Laughing, I left the bathroom, leaving Pietr to his privacy.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Jessie
It wasn’t long before Pietr was out of the shower, back in his shirt, socks, and jeans and sitting cross-legged at the foot of my bed, hair damp and spiked in all directions in a wild tousle. I loved the soft wild pine forest scent that naturally marked Pietr, but I realized I loved him even more fresh from the shower. I’d probably be turning the faucet to cold at this rate, too.
“Feeling better?” I asked.
“Da.” He shook his head, spraying water at me, a devilish look lighting his eyes.
I smacked him playfully and suddenly found myself pinned to the bed, Pietr’s wet head mopping across my face. “Hey!” I yelped, struggling and giggling until I finally held his face in my hands.
He grinned wickedly at me as he rested just above me, propped on his elbows and knees.
“You pain,” I muttered, kissing him once before shoving him away. Something I couldn’t have done if he hadn’t let me.
He fell beside me on the narrow bed, bouncing my heart into my throat, and curling one of his lean and powerful arms under his head so he could peer at me more easily. “Talk to me, Jess.”
I rolled to face him. “Whatcha’ wanna talk about?”
His eyes ran the length of my body and I blushed.
“Expectations.”
“Oh. Like…” I was suddenly an absolute idiot. “Oh. You want to talk about sex?” I squeaked out the last word.
“I don’t ever want to disappoint you, Jess.”
“You won’t,” I assured him.
“Uh, statistically speaking…”
“Down, boy. What were you doing while I wasn’t around?”
He sputtered. “I read some statistics.…” He covered his eyes with his other arm and peeked out at me.
I laughed. “What did the statistics say?”
“Chances are … you’ll be disappointed,” he confessed, flopping onto his stomach on the bed.
I snorted. My alpha. “And you didn’t read anything that said it’ll be perfect?”
He turned his head to look at me and blinked. Pietr, with his defenses down, just tore at my heart.
I pointed to my face. “Well, read this, Pietr Andreiovich Rusakova. It will be perfect because it will be us. You. Me. Because we love each other and are being smart.”
“Da?”
“Da,” I assured. “Because I believe in us more than I believe in anything. Go to sleep. We’re getting out of here as soon as Dad picks up the lawyer.”
Pietr shifted beside me.
“Where are you going?”
“To bed,” he said, confused.
I pushed on his shoulder. “You’re already there. Sleep. Nobody ever bothers to check on us until breakfast,” I yawned. “I’m off to take a shower,” I said, carefully picking my way over him and off the bed.
I felt his eyes on me the whole way to the bathroom, curious and hungry.
Jessie
In the middle of the night I curled in the bed, resting my head on Pietr’s warm chest. He stiffened beneath my touch, his breath catching, and suddenly I heard his heart race forward, beating frantically. “Shhh,” I soothed, snuggling closer with a sigh.
He put a tentative arm around me. “Jess,” he murmured sleepily.
“Mmhmm.”
His heart rate slowed and his arm became a warm weight across my shoulders.
I drifted off.
I started awake to the sensation of eyes on me. “Oh,” I whispered. “Pietr.”
His eyes, bright and red as warning, blinked at me in the thin light radiating from two beams that cut the room in two, the scant moonlight meeting the light from the small window in the hall and leaving a strange splotch of white, like spilled milk, on the concrete floor.
His breathing hitched at the sound of his name.
“Jess,” he whispered. He grabbed my hand and ran it down his shirt, groaning at my hesitant touch. When my hand paused at the top of his jeans his grip on me tightened, his hand trembling around mine. His eyes slitted so I only glimpsed the thinnest glare of red, he mumbled, “I need…”
“What, Pietr?” But I knew, my body responding with a heat of my own even with the cool night air like a narrow wall between us.
He sat bolt upright, dropping my hand. “I need to sleep on the floor,” he snapped, dragging in a breath. “Sorry,” he muttered as he clambered off the bed, the mattress squeaking in protest. “Mad at myself. Not you.”
I stayed perfectly still until I heard him settle onto the cold concrete slab with a rumbling sigh of self-loathing. My body electrified by his proximity, and at war with the promise we’d made, I pulled the pillow from beneath my head, pressed it tightly to my face, and screamed.
Pietr didn’t say a word.
He understood.
Jessie
“Mmm.” Pietr adjusted his position, balanced on the edge of my bed, careful to keep a distance between us, though he’d crawled up onto the bed at some point in the night while I dozed.
“Tomorrow you’re getting out of here, one way or the other. And when we’re ready to leave, if things go badly, you need to trust I can handle the guards.” He must have seen my eyes fill with panic because he reached out and took my hand, carefully spreading my fingers and examining each one. “Trust me, Jess.”
“Pietr,” I protested, wrapping my fingers around his. “Things are—wrong—here.”
“You’re getting out tomorrow,” Pietr said. “Unless they’re making werewolves in the cellar or storing bodies in the basement, I don’t care about anything else going on here—other than you getting out.”
Very slowly I touched my finger to the tip of my nose and tapped it twice. “Almost. They’re trying to cure werewolves.”
&
nbsp; He blinked, realizing what my signal implied. “Werewolves? Bodies in the…? Crrrap, Jess! What sort of town do you live in?”
“A typical hot dog- and hamburger-eating, football- and baseball-loving, werewolf-wanting small-town American sorta town.” I took a breath. “Where everyone thinks they know everything about everyone else. So, just as typically, no one knows anything about what’s really going on.”
“It doesn’t matter,” he insisted. “You can tell me all about it later. We have a schedule to keep. Things are happening. Fast. Everything’s finally lining up.” He sighed. “Tomorrow you’re out of here. Trust me.”
“I can’t stop thinking about that day.…” My voice faded into a whine and he looked down, a muscle in his jaw jumping.
“Things will be different this time,” he assured me. “I know what they are—monsters.” He nodded bleakly. “Something that shouldn’t exist. Like me.”
I squeezed his hand. “If I had a gun … I want to be able to take care of myself. I used to handle things pretty well.”
“Even if you had a gun—and you’re an amazing shot—” he added, “it would barely matter to your guards.”
“So you’ll kill Fred and Jeremy…?”
“Nyet. They aren’t technically alive.”
“Right. Zombies.”
He shrugged at the word. “That research was also done during the Cold War.”
I leaned toward him. “People researched how to make zombies during the Cold War? Weren’t there enough problems without making new ones?”
He snorted. “Alexi says they researched reanimation of dead tissue as early as the forties. Rat brains reacted like they were still alive for eight minutes after true death,” he explained. “That was done with simple electronics and a clumsy understanding of the brain.” He held my gaze.
“Imagine what’s being done now. Oh. Wait, I don’t have to,” I said grimly. “So their tattoos mean…”
“Life. In Hebrew. Someone had a sense of humor designing the electronics that keep them moving. Here.” He tugged me close, bold again. “Think of the tattoos as key parts of tiny circuit boards. The circuitry runs through most of their bodies at a subdermal level, deep enough to trigger muscle control and some sense of coordination. They don’t feel anything, so they don’t get hurt.”
Bargains and Betrayals Page 14