by Sybil Bartel
Luna snorted. “Not a bad idea. In the meantime, I’ll work it from my end and see if I can get into his system and wipe it.”
Which wouldn’t do me any good if he’d made a copy of the information. “It could already be too late.”
“True, but that doesn’t mean I’m not going to enjoy the fuck outta trying.” Luna chuckled. “Besides, I have friends on the force, and trust me, they and the Feds would love to bury Fedorov. They’ve been after him for years.”
I scrubbed my hand over my face. “Anything you can do about my security system? I want to catch a few hours sleep.”
“Yeah, you’re all set for now. I fixed the breach and remotely powered you back up. I rerouted your feeds so I can see what you see, and I’m filtering you through my system to prevent any other hacker attempts. Get some sleep. We’ll monitor it here and I’ll alert you on this line if anything comes up.”
“Thanks.”
“De nada. Hey, how’d you wind up with his wife?”
“She was Vega’s client.”
Luna burst out laughing. “You have got to be shitting me.”
I didn’t respond.
“All right, all right, I get it. So what, you, Vega and Brandt trade off clients?”
“Now you’re pissing me off.”
He chuckled. “Come on, I’m only kidding. Okay, half kidding.”
Tired as fuck, I exhaled. “Vega didn’t have a clue who she was, and no, we don’t switch clients. Vega asked for a favor. Said he had a former client who needed a place to land. I wasn’t home at the time. I let him use the house.”
“Bro,” he drew the word out. “That’s rule number one. Never let anyone fuck with your home.”
I know. “That was my first mistake.”
“Cristo. And your second?”
I sighed. “She looks like my ex-wife.” Except she was a hundred times more beautiful and a thousand times more dangerous.
Luna laughed his ass off. “Oh how the mighty have fallen.”
I refrained from telling him to fuck off. “Don’t wear your company logo shirt tomorrow.”
He laughed harder. “That’s all you got?”
“Be on time and watch your back tomorrow.”
Luna sobered. “Copy that. I always make sure me and the guys—”
No way. “I don’t want anyone else on this,” I warned. I wasn’t going to be responsible for any of his men if this thing went south.
Luna exhaled. “Listen, I know you work alone, but I don’t. I trust my men. Most of them you know from when we were downrange. The others go through a six-month vetting process. I trust all of them with my life and they trust me.”
“That’s not the issue.”
“I’m not going to assign anyone to this if that’s what you’re worried about. I’ll ask them.”
Asking would require background or an explanation. “This doesn’t go beyond you and me.”
Silence.
“You and me, or I go solo.” The second you had to give someone an ultimatum, you’d lost control of the situation. But there was no way I was letting anyone else get involved in this. I knew my best resource for tomorrow would’ve been Jared Brandt. When Vega and I had served with him, he was a fucking ghost. He could get in or out of any situation without being seen and his aim was almost as accurate as Luna’s. But I wasn’t getting him involved either. If I hadn’t had my security hacked, I wouldn’t even be talking to Luna right now.
“All right, I hear you. But this is a mistake. Fedorov will have his bodyguards with him and who knows how spread out they’ll be.”
If Fedorov was smart, he’d have his guards spread over a two-block radius and he’d take me out before I got to the restaurant. But gunrunners weren’t usually that smart. They favored standoffs because they thought their weapons made them invincible. “Just make sure you have a clean exit before you go in.”
“I know what I’m doing, amigo.”
“Good.”
“Hey, I’m serious about his wife. Don’t leave her at your house. He’ll send men there. It’s what I’d do.”
I decided to tell him. If something happened to me, he could look out for her. “I’ll take her to the penthouse.”
“Bring her to Luna and Associates. The men here will keep an eye on her.”
That was exactly what I didn’t want. “I got it covered. See you tomorrow.” I hung up.
I held the gun because the weight in my hands gave me a false sense of security. I knew I would never shoot Viktor, not even if he came crashing through the front door and dragged me out by my hair.
A four-year-old memory surfaced and I shivered. I’d told Viktor one night I was too tired to play. At first, he’d just smiled at me and I’d stupidly thought I was off the hook. Night after night of being assaulted with sex toys for hours on end, I’d wanted a night off. It wasn’t as if I was turning him down for sex, because Viktor had never had actual sex with me. I’d never even seen his cock. He’d told me on our first date that he didn’t fuck. He’d said he’d had an injury and he played games instead. I was young and naïve, and I never could’ve imagined the depths of his depravity at eighteen.
But the night I’d said no, I got a lesson in it. He’d dragged me naked through four downstairs rooms by my hair then tied me to the front staircase by his office door for six hours where all his guards could walk by and see my shame. The next night, he’d played his games for twice as long, twice as hard. I’d never told him no again.
The door from the garage burst open with a gust of wind and Dane’s height crowded the frame before he walked in soaking wet.
His eyes trained on me, he strode across his hardwood floors. “You okay?”
The entire space changed in a nanosecond and my cheeks burned with the memory of his tongue on me. “Yeah.”
“Then why are you pointing your gun at me?”
I looked down. “It’s not mine. It’s yours.” I lowered the small 9mm and set it on the coffee table.
“Keep it.”
“I don’t want it.” I tried to tell myself I didn’t want anything from him.
Water dripped off his close-cropped hair and landed on his huge shoulders. “You need it.”
“A gun isn’t the answer to my problems.” With his hair wet, he looked even more austere.
“No, but a hired gun is.”
“I don’t have any money to pay you.” He knew I didn’t, but I wasn’t saying it just to remind him.
“I don’t want you to pay me.”
No, he wanted something more than money. Much more. “Then you aren’t a hired gun.”
“I’m many things you wish me not to be.” He held his hand out. “Come on.”
My heart raced and the whisper of his scent through the rainwater drenching his body filled my head. I ached to touch him. “Where?”
“To bed.”
The convoluted thoughts that had been circling through my screwed-up head spilled out of my mouth. “I’m not a cheater, you know.”
“You already left him, and I never thought you were.”
“I can’t… with you.” I had reasons, but I was rapidly forgetting them.
His hand never wavered. “I need sleep. You need sleep. I’ll rest better if I know where you are. Come.”
Of everything Viktor had ever done to me, including tying me to the front stairs naked, none of it had made me feel as vulnerable as I felt right this second. I reached for an excuse, but what I wanted more than anything was to lie in the arms that had wrapped around me in comfort earlier. “You said no repeats.”
“We already discussed this. Give me your hand, Irina.”
Knowing I shouldn’t, knowing I was crossing an invisible line I would never return from, I gave him my hand.
He didn’t hesitate. He pulled me to my feet and took a step.
I panicked. “Wait.” Oh God, don’t say it, don’t say it. “I can’t do this. This will mean something to me that it doesn’t to you.”
Cool gray-brown eyes stared down at me without mercy. “Do not speak for me.”
“I just meant—”
“I know what you meant.”
I gave him the truth because it was all I had left. “You’re taking what I don’t have to give.”
His shoulders dropped, his frame leaned toward me, and he lowered his voice to a barely audible whisper. “Trust me.” Rain dripped from his cheek and landed on my arm. “This is what I ask of you, only this. Nothing else.”
If you could fall in love in a single moment with a perfect stranger, I fell in love. “You will break me, Dane Marek,” I whispered.
“You are already broken, Irina Tsarko.”
Her vulnerability caught in her throat. “Then what are you doing with me?”
“Solving your problems.” I tightened my hold on her. “One by one.”
“Dane—”
“Come with me. If you need to talk, do it in bed.” I was done talking, and she didn’t need to hear any words from me. She needed actions. I led her into the bedroom and dropped her hand only long enough to set my cell and 9mm on the nightstand, then strip out of my soaked clothes.
As if she were too afraid to look up at my eyes or down at my dick, she stared religiously at the scars on my chest. “What are you doing?”
I heard the anxiety in her voice, I saw the tension in her expression, but I ignored them and grabbed the hem of her shirt. “Undressing. Same as you.”
“I wasn’t undressing.” She lifted her arms.
“Now you are.” No bra, her nipples hard as fuck, she sucked in a breath as I pulled the shirt over her head. Fuck, she was gorgeous. I reached for her jeans.
Her hand shot to mine.
My dick pulsed, but I stilled. I could’ve given her words. I didn’t. I leaned down and kissed her forehead once. It said more than anything I could’ve told her.
Her breathing sped up, but she dropped her hand.
My gaze locked on hers, I dropped to a squat and dragged her jeans down her legs. She gracefully pointed her toes and stepped out of them. Resisting the urge to touch every inch of her naked body as I stood back up, I allowed myself one indulgence. I took her chin. “Were you a dancer?”
Heat hit her cheeks. “I practiced ballet when I was younger.”
I searched her face for any other goddamn triggers that asshole had given her, but it was her posture that was telling. Her back straight, she didn’t lean toward me. “I’m not going to fuck you.”
She exhaled.
“Unless you want me to.”
She pulled away from my grip and dropped her gaze. “I know what you’re doing.”
It was what I wasn’t doing that she should’ve taken notice of. Not taking her nipples in my mouth, not shoving my dick in her tight cunt, not claiming her moans with my mouth. My dick hard as fuck for her, she had no clue what I wasn’t doing. “No, you really don’t.” Impatient, tired, fuck—testing her, I put force into my tone. “Get in bed.”
She flinched, but then she scrambled on the bed and got under the comforter. “Just because you know what my triggers are doesn’t mean you get to use that against me.”
I lost patience. Yanking the covers back, I crawled on top of her. My hands on either side of her head, my knees straddling her hips, I hovered above her sweet body and forced her truth on her. “Why do you think he chose you?”
She turned her head and crossed her arms.
Quick, precise, I grabbed her wrists and held them over her head. “He chose you because you were naturally submissive.”
She bucked, but she didn’t even attempt to pull her wrists out of my loose grasp. “I was not.”
Smelling her desire, seeing her hard nipples, I knew she was fucking turned on. “You like this.” Calculated and slow, I brushed the head of my cock across her thigh.
Her knees fell open and her voice dropped to a whisper. “No, I don’t.”
My dick settled against her pussy. “You like a man telling you what to do. Your cunt’s wet. Your legs are spread. You want me to fucking take you.” I lowered my voice and fought to keep from thrusting into her. “You’re a submissive, sweetheart. He did not give that to you.”
She pretended to struggle against my hold. “Yes, he did.”
“No,” I corrected. “He didn’t.”
“Get off me.” There was zero force in her tone.
“Say it like you mean it and I will.”
She stopped struggling and looked up at me with the burden of his abuse etched across her face. “You don’t know what he did.”
I switched her wrists to one hand and cupped her face. “I don’t need to.” It would fucking enrage me. “You were a natural submissive, and he preyed on you. That wasn’t your fault.”
“You think I’m weak.”
“No. I don’t.” The fucking opposite.
“You’re lying.”
“Watch it,” I warned.
“Or what? You’ll hit me?”
Flippant and offhand, I knew it was a knee-jerk response. I knew what abuse did to a person, but I answered her anyway. “I will never hit you.”
“No, you’ll just pin me down.”
“Ask.” She needed to fucking ask. She needed to know I would stop if she said the word, but she also needed to know I liked her submission. I fucking wanted it. I was going to push her and dominate her and take her every damn way I wanted, but we needed her boundaries out in the open. I’d respect her fucking triggers, but not if she wasn’t honest with me.
“You think that makes you a man? Holding a woman down?”
Ignoring the venom in her tone, I answered her calmly. “You’re not asking to be let go. Know why?”
Her chest heaving, looking like she was going to spit in my face, she didn’t say shit.
I answered the question for her. “Because you don’t want that power exchange. You want me in charge. You want me making the decision.” I leaned closer and drove it home. “You wanted him making the decisions.”
She crushed her thighs against my ribs and bucked against my hold. “He did this! He turned me into this! He made me into a freak who begs for it!”
My stab wound ripped with pain and my nostrils flared. “Spread your goddamn legs.”
She tried to head-butt me.
“Right fucking now,” I yelled.
Her thighs eased off my waist and she fell back to pillow to glare at me. “Go ahead,” she taunted. “Fuck me.”
I breathed past the fucking burn in my side and leveled her with a look. “You want to beg, you fucking beg. You want me to let go, ask. You want to walk out that door, then walk. But if you want to be fucked like the submissive you are, know your triggers and set your fucking boundaries. I will respect every goddamn one. But know this—when you’re in my bed? There is no ambiguity. I call the goddamn shots because that’s how I fucking like it.”
“You’re not calling any shots. You’re yelling at me. You can kill a man, but you can’t fuck a woman?”
“Ask.” I wasn’t fucking yelling, and I wasn’t playing her goddamn game.
“With a pretty please and sugar on top?” she mocked. “You’re naked and on top of me with a hard-on. Don’t you know how to use it?”
I didn’t fucking work to get a woman. I didn’t put up with bullshit, and I sure as fuck didn’t play immature games. I lowered my voice to a deadly calm and gave her one last chance. “You want to fuck, you ask. You want to be dead to me? Mouth off one more time.” I let go of her and sat up.
Her arms above her head, her chest heaving, she didn’t move.
Not one inch.
Then slow and deliberate, her knees fell open, exposing her wet pussy.
It was all the invitation I needed.
I grabbed her waist and shoved into her tight cunt. Sinking to the hilt, my cock hit her fucking cervix and she gasped.
“Take a breath,” I commanded.
Her eyes wide, she drew in air as her small hands grasped at my forearm
s.
Goddamn, she was tight. Unbelievably, lose-my-fucking-mind tight. “You need me to pull out?”
Soft and breathless and pure submission, she whispered, “No, please.”
My cock throbbing, I almost lost it. “You know what you’re gonna give me?”
She bit her bottom lip. “Trust?”
Jesus, she was fucking with my head. “An orgasm.” My thumb on her clit, my palm pressing into her lower abdomen, I thrust into her. Tight and slow, I ground my hips against hers, and fought to keep from shooting my load.
Her back arched and her fingernails dug into my arms. “Oh my God, what are you doing?”
“Making you come.” I gave her another slow grind.
Her inner muscles clenched around my dick. “This… oh God. I’ve never felt….”
I pulled halfway out and fisted myself. Pressing my cock up as my other hand pressed down on her abdomen, I shoved halfway in and stroked her G-spot. “Felt what?” I watched as my dick sank into her small body.
“Oh God,” she moaned, moving her hips with mine. “No condom.”
My gaze shot to hers. “You on the pill?”
Her chest rose and fell, and guilt spread across her face. “Please, don’t stop.”
Goddamn it. “Answer me.”
“No,” she whispered.
My dick pulsed, my chest rose with an inhale and I cataloged. Seven knife wounds, five gunshot wounds, two IED explosions, three concussions, four bounties on my head, two hundred and thirty-seven confirmed kills, and at least a dozen other assholes who wanted me dead.
That wasn’t father material. No attachments, no family. That’s how this worked. I didn’t get to take advantage of her. I didn’t get to think about a future.
I stared at her then I told her the truth. “I could be dead tomorrow.” I never told anyone the truth.
She didn’t blink. “So could I.”
“I won’t let that happen.” I hadn’t fucked without a condom since my ex-wife.
Her hands moved up my arms. “You can’t control everything.”
I wanted to fucking claim her. I hadn’t wanted to claim anyone since I was eighteen. Slow and measured, I eased out then rocked back into her. “I’m going to control your orgasms.”