Weather the Storm (Security Specialists International #3)

by Monette Michaels

  “Yes.” God, her throat had threatened to close off as she spoke the word. Panic fluttered in her stomach. She’d just given control over her body to this man for the foreseeable future—and somehow it felt right. Was she nuts?

  No. You’re healing—finally. Learning to trust again.

  Maybe, but she wasn’t convinced her usual good sense hadn’t temporarily gone offline. Later, when she wasn’t so dizzy and in pain and could think clearly again, she’d have to examine why this man affected her in ways she’d never experienced before.

  “Good.” Vanko turned his attention to her wound and prodded gently around it with gloved fingers.

  Angling her head, Elana took in the raw, bleeding flesh. She groaned and closed her eyes as her stomach roiled. Once again she forced back the sickness threatening to come up. She hated being sick and refused to lose any more control over her body than she already had. She concentrated on taking shallow breaths and finally conquered the nausea.

  “I hurt you.” He touched his forehead to hers and whispered, his lips a mere breath away from hers. “Sorry, zaychik moy. The pain medication should take effect soon.”

  “It’s fine.” She spoke through clenched teeth. He was too close.

  He grunted and straightened. His lips firmed. “Don’t lie.”

  “Okay, it hurts like a bastard.” She snapped out.

  Don’t take your messed up emotions out on Vanko. He’s helping you.

  Elana consciously forced her voice into a less bitchy tone. “I can handle the pain. Just do what you need to do. The sooner it’s done, the better.” She touched his forearm and rubbed it in an unspoken apology. The touch also served to anchor her in the here and now and not in the past, recent or distant. She needed to keep reminding herself―Vanko was not her enemy.

  Vanko inhaled sharply and stared at her hand. His muscles hardened under her fingers. His eyes dilated until all she saw was a thin line of gray-green around the pupils. When his nostrils flared as if he scented something he liked, she pulled her hand away. She opened her mouth to apologize, but stopped at the fire in his eyes.

  His smoky gaze traveled over her torso, lingering briefly on her sheerly covered breasts. She blushed at the intensity of his regard. Her nipples budded to the point of pain and practically begged to be noticed. The little hussies.

  She chanced a look down his body. Oh my God! He was aroused…hugely so. Her face burned, and she turned her head away unable to look him in the eye. She’d only touched his arm, for chrissakes.

  “Look at me, Elana.” His tone was iron swathed in velvet.

  She turned and met his all-encompassing assessment.

  “Don’t be embarrassed. You’re beautiful.”

  “It’s not that—” she fumbled for words that wouldn’t make her sound stupid or worse…naive.

  “Then what is it?” Vanko’s tone said he wouldn’t accept silence or obfuscation.

  “You’re…um, erect,” she whispered. “I touched your arm. You looked at me and got hard.”

  “That happens when I see a beautiful woman.” His lips twisted slightly.

  “I’m not beautiful,” Elana stammered.

  “To me you are. Besides your quiet beauty, you’re intelligent, brave, and have a sense of humor, all attributes I like in a woman. So, I’ll be hard a lot around you. But, zaychik moy, I won’t act on the attraction now for two reasons. One, you’re injured. And two, a man from your past hurt you and you’re scared.”

  He said he wouldn’t act on it now. Did that mean he’d act on it later? Did she want him to?

  Hell, yes. Her inner self knew what it wanted, but the part of her formed by life experiences was far more cautious.

  “You think I’m brave?” she whispered.

  “Yes.” A firm, unequivocal response from a man who knew and spoke his mind.

  Elana couldn’t wrap her head around his admissions, so she didn’t try. Instead, they stared at each other for several seconds, the quiet filled with so much sexual tension Elana was ready to scream. Finally, Vanko’s heated expression ebbed and grew cooler, and the bulge behind his jeans’ placket subsided.

  She let out a raspy breath. Jesus H. Christ, the man had control. He’d promised to protect her, and that seemed to include from himself.

  Vanko coughed and caught her attention. She looked up and found a slight smile in the depth of his eyes even though the rest of his demeanor appeared grave. He brushed a finger over her burning cheek as if to apologize for making her blush. “I received the impression earlier you’re more afraid of a third party finding you than the traitor’s hired killers. Is this other man the one from your past?”

  He turned away and removed some items from the medical kit, then began to lay them out on the bed on the other side of her legs. “I can find out about your past through SSI’s researchers, but I’d rather you tell me.”

  Vanko was once again all business. And it was business she really wished they didn’t have to discuss. But her past was dangerous and could bite them both on their asses if he wasn’t alerted to it.

  She sighed. “My full name is Elana Chernov Fabrizzio.” She waited for the name to sink in. It didn’t take long.

  Vanko sucked in a breath and then let it out. “Ahh, I see—that Fabrizzio.”

  A myriad of emotions swept over his handsome face, too many to classify. But one thing she was sure of—he’d placed her and the event that had changed her life. He would’ve been, she guessed, in his early twenties when her abduction from a busy Moscow street had occurred. He might not have all the details, but he’d know enough to understand why she’d moved away from Russia and lived under an assumed name.

  The story of her abduction and murder of her parents by a mafiya kingpin had been all over the news. So had the story of her “death” from unnamed injuries suffered during her rescue.

  “I know of your uncles.” He unwrapped a prepackaged syringe of what was labeled as a local anesthetic. “I’m happy to see the news of your death was erroneous.”

  “My uncles wanted to protect me.”

  Vanko nodded and grunted. “As they should.”

  “They made it their goal to take down the man who’d kidnapped me and killed my mother, their baby sister. Unfortunately, he is still at-large, so I am not safe.”

  “Your uncles will come to the U.S. once they see the news, yes?” Vanko spread a towel on the bed and tucked it gently under her wounded side, the covered it with a sterile drape from the kit.

  “They’re probably over the Atlantic now.” She spoke in a tone filled with love for her uncles. “We need to find a way to get them a message I’m safe, or they’ll tear D.C. apart looking for me.”

  Through slitted lids, she watched every sure and graceful move Vanko made as he cared for her wound. The man could’ve been a ballet dancer, but she bet his supple grace came from a lifetime of martial arts.

  “We’ll track them down when I have you in a more secure place.” Vanko looked her in the eyes. His were filled with concern for her and a fierce protectiveness that warmed her and chased away the frigidity that had encased her for so long. “Okay?”

  “Sounds good.” She couldn’t help herself; she touched his arm again, now bared because he’d rolled up his sleeves. His ropy muscles contracted under her fingertips. His tanned skin was hot and the smattering of pale blond hair felt like raw silk. The contact sent a frisson of awareness through her fingers and up her arm.

  A muscle in Vanko’s jaw clenched and unclenched. His earlier reaction to her touch wasn’t a fluke. She really did excite him. She pulled her fingers away as if burned. She’d never played with fire before—never wanted to—but now she wanted to learn…but only with this man.

  Vanko let out a long soughing breath and closed his eyes. He swallowed hard, his jaw tight with restraint. It was as if he struggled with his reaction to her.

  To end the pregnant silence between them she blurted out, “I never thanked you for rescuing me. So…um, thank you.
”

  Vanko shook his head, his mouth twisted into a slight smile. “You’re welcome. Now, be brave for me, milaya, several more sticks coming.”

  He numbed the area surrounding the long wound opening with multiple pricks of the needle. It hurt a bit, but was bearable. To distract herself from what came next and because she was curious about Vanko’s background, she asked, “Where did you get your field medic training? The military?”

  “No. I was never military. I went from university straight into Interpol—first in drug enforcement and later in sex trafficking.”

  A dark look crossed his face, and she realized Vanko had seen some really bad things and hadn’t forgotten any of them.

  “SSI has all its operatives obtain military training in basic field medicine.” As he spoke, he plucked large pieces of bloody detritus from the wound with tweezers and deposited them in the basin he’d placed next to her thigh.

  Queasy from pain and stress, she took several slow, shallow breaths and then resumed talking. “Like my uncles, you and your SSI teammates are protectors, not just hunters and soldiers. I’ve read some things about SSI—” She gasped and swore under her breath as he flushed the wound with some liquid that hurt like hell. “—online. Um, you do facility…Jesus, that hurts…um, and personal security for other governments and large corporations.”

  Elana was babbling and cursing, but even with the pain meds and local anesthetic, the pain was overwhelming.

  Better to babble like an idiot than scream.

  “It’s okay, Elana. Let it out. I’m sorry I have to cause you more pain.” Vanko removed a glove and stroked along her arm and then up over her shoulder with soft, soothing sweeps of his fingers. “No more stinging fluids, I promise. Such a brave zaychik.”

  Finally, when she was sure she wouldn’t scream or hurl, she opened her eyes and found his somber gaze on her. “We still have a ways to go,” he said. “You okay for me to finish? I can call 911 this minute and have you taken to an emergency room.”

  “No 911. I can handle it.” She was more afraid of the Boss and Demidas than any pain Vanko would have her endure.

  “Yes, you can.” There was a look of respect and admiration in his crystalline gaze. Then he frowned. “This next part won’t be nice. You might not want to look. I have to probe. While the wound isn’t too deep, I can’t chance leaving any cloth fragments in the opening.”

  “Do your worst. I’ll deal.” She picked a spot over his shoulder and stared at a particularly ugly painting. It looked like something a three-year-old would do with finger paints.

  “Let me know if you need more pain meds. No need to hurt more than necessary.”

  “I’m fine. The pain from the liquid was unexpected.” She licked her dry lips and attempted to smile, but must have failed abysmally, because a deep furrow formed on Vanko’s forehead. Yeah, he read her far too easily.

  He let out a huff. “I won’t be happy if you suffer in silence, goluba moy.”

  “Just do it. I’ve been through this before.” A long, long time ago.

  He hissed out a particularly foul string of Russian swear words. “Was this when you were rescued and supposedly killed?”

  “Yes.” She swallowed past the lump the size of a boulder in her throat. “I have a scar on the back of my shoulder. My uncle had to dig a bullet out. We couldn’t chance a hospital then either. My kidnapper had to believe I was dead.”

  And she had almost died—from an infection. She couldn’t even remember much about the time she convalesced. Her uncles had finally found a doctor in Switzerland, a relative of her Italian father, who treated her in his home for the infection and the other injuries she’d suffered during her captivity.

  Vanko scowled as he regloved and tore open the sterile packaging from his next instrument of torture. “The papers and news broadcasts never gave many details of the abduction, not even the name of the man who’d taken you and killed—”

  His words trailed off. He probably thought to spare her the recollection. But he couldn’t do that, no one could. She still had nightmares of her parents being killed in front of her and of the time in her captor’s hands.

  “Tell me. How were you wounded?” Vanko fixed his steely gaze on her face.

  She inhaled his scent and met his fierce-looking eyes; it gave her strength knowing he would catch her if she fell. It was a good feeling.

  “That is…if you wish to…” He was angry—on her behalf—and worried, sensitive to her pain, not only the current physical pain, but the emotional pain from her past trauma. “Elana?” He stripped off the glove he’d just put on to cup the nape of her neck and massage the knotted muscles at the top of her spine. “Fuck me. You’re crying. Forget—”

  “No. You need to know.” She grabbed his too distracting hand and rubbed it over her cheek before releasing it. “You know I was taken off the streets of Moscow, and my parents were—”

  “I know the details of your abduction and what happened to your parents. You don’t need to relive that particular horror for me.” His tone was gentle, despite the grimness of his sculpted features. He regloved, and his hands were steady as he delicately tweezed the wound of fibers.

  Ignoring the sensation of the tweezers probing the gash above her hip, Elana licked her lips and resumed staring at the ugly painting. “Um, I guess the whole world knew the beginning…and the manufactured ending.”

  She’d spoken to counselors ad nauseam about what had happened during the three days of her captivity. She couldn’t give Vanko the details now, maybe not ever. It was all she could do not to scream in rage and pain at even revisiting the edge of the memories she’d buried in the deepest corners of her mind.

  “Um, to make a long story short”—she coughed as her throat threatened to close off—“after I escaped, one of my captor’s men recaptured me just as my uncles arrived on the scene. The man used me as cover. I was shot in the back during the crossfire.”

  She sucked in a breath and let it hiss out between her teeth as the tweezers slipped a bit. Vanko muttered a foul curse, whether at himself or the man who’d used her as a shield, she couldn’t tell.

  “I’m sorry, dushka. I’ll be more careful.” Vanko returned to his task, and his absorption seemed complete.

  His touch, but for that one slip, was light and caused her only the occasional sharp pain. His use of the Russian word for “sweetie” gave her butterflies in her stomach.

  “Your uncles…” Vanko grunted. “They’ll kill me for seeing you in your bra, you know.”

  He was trying to distract her from what he was doing to her wound. It didn’t work, but she appreciated the effort. And he was correct—her uncles were extremely overprotective, after all they’d claimed she was “dead” and then hidden her in the United States. But she had a sneaking suspicion they’d like Vanko, since he was a lot like them…a good man fighting evil in the world.

  “We won’t tell them,” she whispered. “They like to forget I’m a grown woman.”

  Vanko grumbled under his breath as he probed her wound track. “Your uncles are good men. I never worked with them, but have heard of them as I moved up the ranks at Interpol. I recall you were a dancer at the time of the abduction, yes?”

  Another change of subject. She bit her lip as he dug deeper than previously.

  “Yes,” she gasped, “a ballerina with the Russian Ballet, the same as my mother had been. Sergei…” The man’s name seemed to stick in her throat. She coughed, jarring her wound, and then whimpered.

  Vanko stopped probing until she regained control. “Sergei who?”

  “Demidas. He saw me dance and decided he wanted to possess me.”

  “Sergei Demidas is the one who took you?”

  “Yes.”

  Vanko’s whole demeanor changed. Where before he’d been calm and under control, now it was as if some inner beast fought with the civilized Vanko for control. His eyes darkened. His hands fisted. Every muscle in his body was taut. He looked like a man
preparing to kill.

  She shrank into the bedding, frightened by the swift change which had overtaken him.

  “He’s a sick fuck. A diseased animal who should’ve been put down years ago.” He snarled and swore virulently under his breath. But when he tipped up her chin, he did so with gentle fingers belying his obvious rage. “I know this bastard well. I worked undercover at Interpol. You were lucky you were rescued.”

  Yes, she was. Demidas had shown her what he’d done to his other women to get her cooperation. He’d wanted her cooperation. She’d refused to give it, and so the torture had begun…no, she wouldn’t think of it. It was in the past. She’d survived.

  Vanko shook his head as if he attempted to rid himself of his anger and his own bad memories. Once again in control, he leaned closer and brushed a sweet, but all-too-brief, kiss over her lips. “He’ll never get to you again. I vow this on my soul.”

  Elana licked her lips and tasted him. He was all spice and heat. His taste, like his scent, was…right. She shivered and forced her reaction to his mouth touching hers to the back of her mind to be examined in depth later…much later.

  She continued with her story. “There was no luck in the rescue itself. I escaped on my own. Then I called one of my uncles, who in turn called his brothers. They and other Interpol agents came to get me. Demidas escaped in the chaotic aftermath.”

  “And now you’re afraid Demidas will see the news video and send someone for you.”

  “No. I’m terrified he’ll come for me himself. He told me as much when he was, um…” She couldn’t relive that experience, not when she was in pain and exhausted.

  “He…um…told me he’d find me…even after death. He was obsessed…crazy.” She shuddered. “I’ll never be safe until Demidas is dead.”

  “I’ll kill him for you.” Vanko spoke the words as if it would be as simple as going to the corner store to pick up a quart of milk. “If I don’t succeed, SSI will follow through. Sergei Demidas is an abomination. The world will be better off without him.” A muscle in Vanko’s jaw clenched and unclenched. She could almost hear his teeth grind.