Hers To Keep: THE QUINTESSENCE COLLECTION I

by Akeroyd, Serena

  “And how did you know that?” Andrei asked her.

  She shrugged. “My arm was itching.”

  “Your arm was itching?”

  Sascha snorted at his bewilderment. “Have you never broken anything before?”

  Andrei shook his head, Devon too. Then, he remembered. “A finger, maybe. My nose definitely.”

  “Ah, well, you don’t need casts for them. After a while, they itch like crazy and nothing helps.”

  “How are you finding sleeping with Sean?” he asked out of curiosity.

  “He’s a bed hog.”

  “Janna always used to complain about that,” Devon said, and Andrei wanted the floor to open up and swallow them both.

  “Jesus, Devon. Really?”

  Devon shot him a perplexed look. “What?”

  Sascha’s lips twitched. “It’s okay.”

  “No,” he corrected. “It’s not.” To Devon, he growled, “It’s bad etiquette to talk about an ex with your girlfriend.”

  “Sascha’s not our girlfriend though,” Devon pointed out with a logic of his own that Andrei understood, but knew Sascha wouldn’t.

  He shot her a look, saw the stunned shock on her face before she turned back to the bowl of fruit in her hand and began dishing it out onto a plate for him.

  While her back was turned, he knocked Devon with his knee, and jerked his chin at him.

  “What?” Devon asked. “I love Sascha. I never loved Janna. Although, she was very good in bed.” He pursed his lips. “Gave very good head if I recall. She did this thing with her tongue.” He made a move with said appendage. “Remind me to tell you about it sometime, Sascha.”

  Andrei closed his eyes and wanted another sinkhole to suddenly appear before him.

  “God help us, you need a keeper,” he bit off.

  “I have one. He’s called Sawyer.”

  Sascha turned around to stare at Devon. She narrowed her eyes at him. “You do realize that’s like the first proper time you’ve said you love me? And that you said it at the same time as complimenting another woman’s blowjob techniques?”

  Devon shrugged. “Don’t have to tell you to feel it.”

  Yet more illogical logic.

  Sascha rolled her eyes. “I’d like to hear it from time to time.”

  “Why?” Dev asked. “Why do you need to know how I feel?”

  She rolled her lips inward and Andrei, thanking God, realized she was hiding a smile. “Because I like to know how you feel. And, we’re supposed to be honest with one another, aren’t we?”

  “True,” Devon conceded. “I don’t want to know if you love me, though.”

  She scowled at him. “Why the hell not?”

  “Just because you say it, doesn’t mean you feel it. I prefer you to show me.”

  She stared at him in confusion, but slowly admitted, “I guess that makes sense.”

  “My dad used to tell my mother he loved her as he beat the shit out of her. I don’t trust the words ‘I love you’,” Dev said softly as he placed his knife and fork together on his emptied plate. “May I have some fruit, please?”

  Sascha gulped. “Sure.”

  She passed Andrei his breakfast, then went about portioning out some for Devon.

  As she placed the dish before him too, she took a seat opposite them, poured herself some coffee then took a sip.

  “What constitutes showing you I love you?” she asked quietly.

  He paused. “I don’t really know. I’ll think about it.”

  Her lips twitched. “Do that.” To Andrei, she asked, “And you, Andrei? How do I go about showing you I love you?”

  He cleared his throat. “Do you?”

  She nodded. Slowly. Her eyes on his. “I do. I love you all. It feels like it’s come out of nowhere, but I can’t help it. Maybe it’s fast, or maybe it’s exactly right for us. I don’t know.”

  “How does it make you feel? Insecure?”

  She blinked. “No. Of course not.”

  “Does it make you feel happy?”

  Her nod came quicker this time. “Sure, it does.”

  “Well, then. Doesn’t matter how fast it is, how deeply we’ve fallen.” Andrei shrugged. “It just matters that that’s how we feel. It’s what works for us, Sascha.”

  She smiled a little. “If you say so.”

  “I do. And I’m very grateful for the fact you feel so much for us. I know it’s quick, and I know that might be difficult for you, because there are more of us…”

  She reached over to grab his hand. She placed hers over his knuckles and squeezed. “No. You’re easy to love. All of you. It’s like you were made for me. The different parts of you fit the different parts of me.”

  He smiled. “I’m glad.”

  “Let me just clarify, we’re not talking about dicks and pussies here, are we?”

  Andrei dropped his head and groaned at Devon. “Devon. Would you fuck off upstairs and quit ruining our moments?”

  “What?” he demanded. “’Different parts of you and different parts of me’? How is that not sex related?”

  Sascha chuckled. “You’re a nut, Devon.”

  He shook his head. “Three separate psychologists have classified me as sane.”

  Her mouth dropped open. “Do I even want to know?” she asked warily.

  “Probably not,” Andrei countered with a snort. Shaking his head, he grumbled, “You know how to ruin the mood.”

  “I wouldn’t worry about it. Sascha likes my irreverence. She’ll forgive me,” Devon murmured, his faith in her unshakeable.

  Sascha groused, “Don’t get used to it, Devon. For your worst verbal sins, there’s always the threat of saliva in your soup.”

  It was his turn for his mouth to fall open. He eyed her, snapped his lips shut, then hugged his plate to him.

  She winked at Andrei, and not for the first time, he marveled at how goddamn perfect she was.

  Twenty-Nine

  “Any information on Elizabeth Jacobie, Sean?”

  Sean took a second to answer as he saved a document on his computer. “Where’s Sascha?”

  “At the clinic with Devon.”

  “Getting the note?” Sean sheepishly rubbed his chin. “She suggested it actually. I think I made my point though.”

  Andrei snickered. “I’m surprised she went through with it.”

  “I’m surprised she took Devon!”

  “True. She must be very horny,” he teased, and Sean laughed.

  “She isn’t the only one. It wasn’t easy a floor away. But sharing a damn bed every night?” He groaned like he was in pain.

  “I feel for you,” Andrei mocked. “Having those curves wrapped around you while you rest… you’re an unfortunate man.”

  Sean grumbled, “I feel your sympathy all the way over here.”

  “Good. How about this? Recognize this?” Andrei flipped him the bird before he took a seat in his usual armchair. To his right, Kurt’s laptop was on the floor, which meant he was working in here. “Where’s Kurt?”

  “Went for coffee. If you want some, call him.”

  Andrei nodded, got back on his feet and headed for the intercom. “Kurt? Can you bring me up a mug of coffee too?”

  “What am I? A barista?” came the complaint a second later.

  “No. Sascha does a better job of it than you. She fills out a skirt nicer.”

  Kurt huffed. “Fuck off.”

  “I’m fucking off to my armchair.”

  Sean shook his head at him. “Ever heard of the phrase, ‘you catch more bees with honey than vinegar.’”

  “You know you love my acerbic wit,” Andrei retorted, completely secure in his place in the world. “Wait until Kurt gets back if you have news on Elizabeth Jacobie.”

  Sean nodded, but said, “I don’t have much.”

  “Something is better than nothing. Which is what we had before.”

  “True. It would help if Sascha spoke to her father about her past. But she won’t.”


  “You can’t blame her,” Andrei countered. “Would you want that particular conversation with your father?” He paused. “Actually, yes. I’d like to know that the bastard and I didn’t share DNA.”

  Sean wrinkled his nose. “You’re different. Devon too.”

  “I think Sawyer’s the only one who really gets on with his parents.”

  Sean sighed. “Probably. At least mine are vaguely normal. I can deal with their being homophobes as long as they leave me alone.”

  “As long as who leaves who alone?” Kurt asked, coming into the room with a tray in his hands.

  “All you need is an apron and you’d make a perfect waiter, Kurt,” Andrei remarked drily.

  “Do you want hot coffee tossed over you? It can be arranged.”

  “Someone’s been taking advice from Sascha. She’s rather a fan of guerrilla warfare, isn’t she?”

  Kurt just grunted but didn’t deny it. The amused sparkle in his eye told Andrei exactly what Kurt thought of Sascha’s antics... “So, who do we want to leave us alone?”

  “Our parents. Well, my grandfather.” Andrei rubbed his chin. He guessed he really should go sooner rather than later to Moscow.

  He loved the old bastard to death, but at eighty-nine, only God knew how long Vasily had left on this earth.

  A notion that had his chest pinching a little.

  “I like my mother when she isn’t interfering. Father is… well, mostly in a world of his own. I barely know him. I can’t complain though. I’d prefer an overprotective mother hen and disinterested father to what you and Devon had to put up with,” Kurt said simply, pouring out three mugs of coffee, which he handed out to Andrei and Sean before he took a seat with his own mug in hand.

  Andrei sighed. “He told her yesterday about what happened, you know?”

  Kurt swore under his breath as he spilled coffee on his lap.

  “You deserved that for threatening me with it,” Andrei teased, but Kurt ignored him.

  “Devon told Sascha about his father?”

  Andrei stared into the pool of black liquid as though it had all the answers. “Some of what happened. Told her he loved her too.”

  Sean cleared his throat. “Is anyone else stunned shitless that he did all that without Sawyer being there? I’ll assume he wasn’t?”

  “No. It was just the three of us. He said that he didn’t want her to tell him she loved him. Said he didn’t believe in the words because his father would tell his mother that as he beat her.”

  Sean let out a hiss. “Anybody else glad that bastard’s dead?”

  Andrei nodded grimly. Devon was decidedly odd, but he was odder still because of his past.

  Andrei too.

  They were products of their environment. They’d become more than their pasts, granted. Their intelligence taking them onto a whole other sphere, but when it boiled down to it, they were who they were because of what they’d seen.

  Devon’s mother had killed herself rather than endure her husband’s wrath anymore. Andrei’s mother had been murdered before his eyes. Sean had viewed endless crime scenes. Kurt knew way too much about Stasi torture techniques. And Sawyer? Well, hell, he was the most normal of the lot of them.

  “It’s a wonder we aren’t more fucked up than we are.” Andrei’s sigh was bone deep.

  Kurt snorted. “We’ll be the judges of that.”

  “Ha. Ha,” he mocked, but he hid a smirk. “Anyway, less of that. Elizabeth Jacobie.”

  Sean nodded, apparently comfortable with the change in topic. “Well, aside from the fact she’s Jacobie’s mother, that’s all we have on her officially. She doesn’t have a record, and there are no ties between her and Sascha. When I said we have less than nothing, I meant it.”

  “So why did Vasily say she paid the driver to mow Sascha down?” Andrei questioned, doubt in his voice. “He wouldn’t be wrong about that. You know how Vasily works. People don’t lie to him when he wants answers.”

  Sean held up a hand. “I don’t want to know.”

  Andrei grunted. Neither did he, truth be told. “Be grateful he’s on our side not against us.”

  “I am. Every damn day.”

  Kurt broke in and asked, “Every time we’ve mentioned the Jacobies, Sascha has never seemed like she knows them. Intimately, I mean.”

  “That’s because she doesn’t. Jacobie’s famous. Why wouldn’t she know his name? But they don’t run in the same circles, do they? I’ll assume she’s never worked for him?” Andrei asked, directing the question at Sean.

  He shook his head. “I thought of that. But no, she’s worked for three families since her move to the UK. A diplomat’s family who was transferred to the Middle East—we know them, Andrew Kent and his brats, plus that psycho he calls a wife. Remember how she used to stalk Devon at Oxford?” When they just grimaced, remembering the small entourage Devon had back in college, Sean carried on, “Then there’s a Marchioness, and the other, a businesswoman in Mayfair.”

  “Could the Jacobies have crossed paths with the Marchioness? They’re both families of the nobility, after all.”

  Kurt thought about that a second. “Maybe, but that doesn’t mean she’d cross paths with Edward’s mother, for God’s sake. Sascha told me once that with her other employers, they pretty much wanted her not to be seen or heard.”

  “Yeah, I remember her saying how she was pleased we didn’t want her to be über formal.” Sean rapped his knuckles against his desk. “Vasily’s intel has definitely raised more questions than it’s answered.”

  Andrei grimaced. “She needs to talk to her father.”

  Sean nodded. “I know.”

  “We should discuss it with her.”

  Kurt took a sip of coffee. “No. You have to leave it to her to decide.”

  “She’s in danger, Kurt,” Andrei argued.

  “You think I don’t know that?”

  “She has to get this dealt with before the shitstorm resurfaces. I’m not willing to lose her to some crazy bitch.”

  Kurt sat forward. “I know. But pushing Sascha won’t do any good. Surely you can see that? She’ll only be pressed so far before she snaps. Do you really want that?”

  Andrei shook his head. “Of course not, but at the same time…” He sighed. “Look, I know you want to tread carefully around her, Kurt. It’s natural. We don’t want to lose her. But there are times when she’s going to push our buttons and we’re going to push hers. It’s life. We can’t avoid those scenarios for fear she’ll walk out.”

  “He’s right, Kurt,” Sean said softly.

  “I know he is, dammit, but are you willing to lose her over this?”

  “We’ll lose her anyway if that nutcase gets her hands on Sascha,” Andrei said grimly.

  Kurt flinched, then pursed his lips. “There’s an alternative.”

  “There is?” Andrei asked.

  “We speak to Henry. Now. He’s upstairs.”

  Andrei scowled at him. “In what world is that a better idea than Sascha talking to her father herself?”

  “She obviously isn’t going to do it,” Kurt argued.

  “How do you know?” Andrei demanded. “That isn’t how we told her we’d work. We never said if she wasn’t quick enough, we’d do shit behind her back.” His scowl hardened. “Henry isn’t going anywhere for at least five more days. Give her the time, and show her the fucking respect to let her handle this shit herself.”

  Silence fell at his words, and Andrei was surprised at the vehemence within them too. He caught Sean’s glance, saw the other man was eying him like he was a different person, and hell, maybe he was.

  Maybe she’d made him different.

  Better.

  “You’re the one who normally pushes for action,” Sean said softly.

  And that was true. Andrei was a product of his past, of the environment in which he’d been raised.

  Things happened quickly in the mafia. It was part and parcel of the territory. If they hung around, deals went a
wry or broke up, disintegrating like they’d never existed in the first place. If an informant wasn’t handled immediately, then the repercussions could be dire. For the informant, and the man’s family.

  Sex was on tap. Drugs too, if that was a man’s poison of choice. If not, vodka and caviar were on hand. It was a ‘live hard and die fast’ culture. One he’d had no choice but to absorb as he’d been raised around that lifestyle. His grandmother had been a more grounding influence. She wasn’t suited to the life of being a Pakhan’s wife, and tended to live out of the city, about half an hour away.

  Andrei had lived with her unless his grandfather had sent for him, which he’d done often. Especially when he’d realized Andrei’s intelligence. The brains that had bypassed Vasily’s son, had been given in double doses to his grandchild. When he’d known that, Andrei had visited more and more often. Not so Vasily could integrate him into the Bratva lifestyle but, Andrei knew, because Vasily enjoyed dealing with an equal. A bizarre concept but even at eleven, Andrei had beaten his grandfather at chess.

  A miracle in itself.

  Vasily, though untested, had the chess smarts of a Grandmaster.

  He ran his hands through his hair, and murmured, “She deserves us to be at our best. For us to be on our A game. Not running around behind her back.”

  “Even if it’s for her own good?” Kurt asked, somewhat askance.

  “Even then. I’d prefer to tell her we were considering going behind her back first, then letting that be the trigger. I don’t want to fuck this up, guys. And she’s by no means a sure deal. I fucking love her. If she leaves…”

  “You don’t think I feel the same?” Sean spat, for the first time losing his cool as he sat forward in his seat, tension throbbing through him. “You think she hasn’t tossed my world on its head and made me question every fucking thing I know about myself?” He gritted his jaw. “I thought I was falling for the others, but I didn’t realize until her that I’ve never known what it is to feel this way before.

  “The shitty fact is, she’s in danger. This fucking woman, who seems to be a stranger, has put some kind of goddamn hit out on her. I’d prefer to lose her than for her to die because we didn’t act.”

  Kurt’s voice was soft. “We need to talk to her.”