by Selena Scott
She had better things to think about. Tonight she was going back to the animal testing site she'd found. She'd gotten scared away by whatever animal had been in the woods. And tonight was finally the night she was able to go back. She'd been staking out a package sorting facility almost every night for two weeks. But at this point, she knew their schedule. They wouldn't be receiving anything. So she had the all-clear to go back and explore to her heart's content.
She was glad for it. She'd gathered a lot of information on her stake-outs. But there was too much time with her thoughts for her liking. Which ultimately meant too much time with Danil. She was sick of thinking of him.
As long as he gave her a little breathing room to do her job, she didn't care.
Couldn't care. About anything but what she'd come to Spokane to find out.
CHAPTER THREE
"Chrystos," Danil cursed in Belarusian as he watched Dora Katsaros stroll out of his favorite coffee shop with a to-go cup in her hand. She scrolled through something on her phone and he sucked in a breath as she stepped off the curb without looking. A biker swerved around her, shouting.
Danil bounded forward, but before his very eyes, her smile and a few quick words had the biker blushing and smiling right back. And, Jesus, apologizing to HER. Even though she’d been the careless one.
Danil gave in and pinched the bridge of his nose against the headache that was quickly forming there. This woman had the world wrapped around her finger. He refused to be a part of it.
Unfortunately, she very clearly was a part of his world. As she was everywhere around town. He'd seen her almost once a day for two weeks. Mostly at the precinct. He'd been there taking care of his clients, and she'd been there for God knows what. Either because she'd been dragged in on more charges, or more likely, because she was using all that charm to make nice with a few cops she'd like to have in her pocket.
Either way, Danil had steered clear of her as best as he could. She was a complication that his family did not need. Hell, she was a complication he didn't need either. He scowled at her as she flirted with the biker.
He'd seen her in the supermarket the other day. She'd been buying apples. Turning them over in her hands to check for bruises. He hadn't liked how it had made him feel. Seeing her doing something like that. He preferred to think of her as Dora Katsaros, professional snoop. Not Dora Katsaros, human being. Very pretty human being. Very pretty human being with an ass that made a man want to beg for mercy.
Dora looked up from the biker, her eyes drawn by Danil's intense stare. Her body tensed when she recognized him. Good. So she wasn't immune. He considered turning and heading to the meeting he was already late for. But there she was, staring him down as if she owned the sidewalk she was currently standing on, one hip out and a little smirk on her face. Without considering any further, Danil tucked his hands in the pockets of his well-cut suit and strolled over to her.
He completely ignored the douche in the bike shorts whose eyes were glued to her chest.
"Ms. Katsaros."
"Mr. Malashovik."
"Goodbye," Danil said to the biker. The man's face recoiled at the tone, but he took the hint, pushing away on his bike with one last wistful look at Dora.
"That was rude," Dora said, hiding her smile behind her to-go coffee cup.
"You've been rude," Danil responded. "You've made me late for my meeting."
"And exactly how did I do that?"
"You almost got yourself run over in the street and made me come over to see if you were alright. And now I'm late for my meeting and don't have time for coffee."
"I wasn't in any danger from Henry," Dora nodded at the biker's departing back. "He had my best interests at heart."
"Henry?" Danil scoffed. "Did you get his telephone number as well?"
Dora hid her smile again. "We didn't have the chance to exchange information as we were interrupted by a very rude man."
Danil opened his mouth to quip back but she beat him to it.
"How do you take your coffee?" she asked, swallowing some of her own.
"Black."
She took one more swig of her coffee before she shoved the half empty cup into his hand. “It’s the least I can do, Mr. Malashovik," she said, striding away from him down the street, a slight smile on her face like she knew she'd won that round.
Twice in less than ten minutes, Danil found himself standing on the street and scowling at her back. He took a swig of her coffee and scowled even further. It was black, the way he liked it. But he'd be damned if it didn't taste like her.
***
Dora parked her car in the same place she had last time, about a mile or so through the woods from the testing site. Far from the motion sensor lights or the cameras. She tracked soundlessly through the woods.
She wasn’t scared of what was in the woods with her this time. Not like the last time she was there. There were no tripping skitters up her spine this time. And besides, she was better armed. She held her bear mace in one hand and a small Taser in the other. In the pocket of her bomber jacket was her good camera and some rubber gloves.
She was leaving that site with evidence if it was the last thing she did on this earth.
She found the same place where she’d scaled the fence before and went easily over. Cursing as she tore her jeans at the exact same spot as before. “Come on, Katsaros!”
She could practically hear her father’s voice in her ear. Never make the same mistake twice. It was something he’d said to her a hundred times if he’d said it once.
Shaking it off, Dora landed like a cat and immediately trotted in the direction of the abandoned outhouse. She could see it in the distance, her mind’s eye already filling in the contents. It spurred her on and she picked up her pace.
“You there!” a voice yelled from her left.
Dora damn near jumped out of her boots. A small, panicked scream ripped out of her before she got a hold of herself. A bright light flashed in her eyes and by the time Dora could see again, she recognized the cop who was pacing toward her.
Well, it was time to pay the piper, Dora figured as she heard the familiar sound of handcuffs being removed from a belt. You sneak around enough, you get caught. She’d certainly been caught enough in the last few weeks to have her reconsidering a career in cat burglary. But she tried not to feel more than a mild disappointment. It was only setting her back a night. She’d come back and explore more a second time.
“You there!” the cop said again. “Put your hands in the air.”
Dora did as he asked. “Officer Crowley, it’s Dora Katsaros. We met last week when you, uh, arrested me? I’m so glad you’re here. I’ve been terribly lost for hours. Can you help me find my way home?”
When the cop called for backup from his partner, and slapped the cuffs on her wrists, Dora took it philosophically. There were only so many arrests a girl could talk herself out of in one month. Besides. If she couldn’t talk herself out of the precinct on this one, she knew somebody who she was pretty sure would bail her out.
***
Danil was running through the woods with his brothers. The weak spring sun was like lemon on the air. He could taste it. His excellent vision narrowed in on a glossy, wet spider web in the distance, but they tumbled on, the four of them. He heard a bird somewhere over his shoulder and jumped. It was a loud-ass bird. And it would not stop ringing. Wait. Birds didn’t ring.
Shit.
Danil scrabbled for his cell phone on the nightstand. He didn’t even bother opening his eyes. He knew by the scent in his room that it was still the middle of the night. Which meant that some prick was causing a ruckus in some precinct and the cops had had enough. They called in the lawyers when they needed the rowdy ones to calm the hell down and get the picture. It was just his bad luck that he’d apparently been assigned this case.
“Malashovik,” he growled into the phone.
“Hey there, Dan. This is Bill Mumford over at the Southern precinct in Cheney.”
>
Danil said nothing. He needed Mumford to get to the heart of the matter before the sun came up.
Apparently Mumford got the picture. “We picked up a woman over here who’s requesting your services.”
“I’m a public defender, Mumford. She can’t just pick my name out of the phonebook like I’m an ambulance chaser.”
“She’s not looking for a lawyer, she’s looking for bail money.”
And now Danil was wide awake, sitting up fast so that the sheets pooled around his hips.
He didn’t have to ask, he already knew exactly who it was.
“It’s a lady by the name of-”
“Dora Katsaros,” Danil interrupted. “I’ll be at the precinct in 40 minutes.”
CHAPTER FOUR
“Man, thanks again,” Dora said as she stood outside the passenger side of Danil’s car. “I’ll pay you back right now, my checkbook is in my car.”
Danil said nothing. He just surveyed her over the hood of his car. His face lined and sooty in the morning light. He had an overnight beard and bedhead. Dora’s mouth absolutely watered. She knew that she probably looked terrible. She didn’t have bedhead, she had jail head. Which basically consisted of thirty minutes of scattered shut-eye leaned up against the wall of a holding cell.
She could’ve kissed the cop who’d known Danil’s phone number when she’d mentioned his name. She had no idea who else she could’ve called at that point.
Still, Danil said nothing. Dora found herself talking to fill the silence.
“Like I said, I’m really grateful. I told them they didn’t have to call you in the middle of the night. I was happy to wait until morning. And I didn’t expect you to come all the way out here so early, you know?”
He looked at her as if he were carved out of stone.
Okay. He was a real tough cookie apparently. Although cookie was the wrong word. There was nothing sugary about this man. He was more like granite. Or a thick strip of leather. Well, she must really be sleep-deprived because even her thoughts were rambling.
“Why are you standing at my car?” he finally said, biting off the words as if they tasted bad.
“Oh,” Dora laughed quickly, realizing that she hadn’t been clear. “I need a ride to my car.”
Danil muttered something in what Dora assumed was Belarusian, as he cast his eyes toward the sky. She pursed her lips. She didn’t want to grin and press her luck here, but the whole angry Belarusian thing was really frickin’ cute. Especially when he was in a rumpled t-shirt and jeans. He was even more attractive all casual than he had been in his suit.
He didn’t say anything more, simply unlocked his car and got in. Dora dove in as well, thinking that if she didn’t move fast enough, he might damn well leave without her.
She told him where her car was and he slanted a strange look at her. They were silent for most of the drive, his hands tight on the wheel. He shifted in the seat, apparently unable to keep silent.
“You are journalist,” he said, his accent thicker than she’d heard from him before. He cleared his throat. “You are a journalist,” he corrected himself.
Dora said nothing, just raised an eyebrow at him. He didn’t seem to notice. Or care. He tumbled on. “But you’re not affiliated with any paper right now. You’re famous for investigating. For uncovering corruption. You were the one who exposed the CEOs who were extorting their undocumented household workers. But you haven’t written anything in a few years. Your real name is Pandora. Like the box. The curious woman who opened the box.”
Dora ignored the pinch in her gut. She hadn’t written anything in four years. Since her dad died. She swallowed against the sharp pain that those thoughts always rode in on.
She put a smile on her face. One that she knew softened men right up. “Well, somebody had themselves a little party on Google last night.”
Apparently Danil Malashovik was immune to the smile. He stared blandly back at her.
“So. You’re investigating something now. In Spokane.” It wasn’t a question. He pulled up behind her rental car which she’d parked in a stand of trees off a lonely highway about a mile from the site she’d investigated last night.
Dora shrugged, nonchalant. “Like I said. I just moved here. I’m just getting the lay of the land. I like to get to know my neighborhood.”
“You’ve been arrested for trespassing three times in two days,” he said blandly. “You’re terrible at exploring your neighborhood.”
Dora pursed her lips again. “Must be.” She unbuckled her seatbelt. “Anyways, thanks for everything. The bail and the ride. Let me just grab my checkbook and we’ll be even-steven.”
She had her hand on the door handle when she felt his on her shoulder. His palm was warm and unexpectedly calloused for a lawyer. She had her suspicions that he wasn’t just a lawyer, though she wasn’t thinking about that now. She was thinking about his warm, gold-brown eyes that were currently lit sideways by the rising sun. His face, harsh and handsome, was more serious than she’d ever seen it.
“Pandora, why was I your phone call?”
Huh. The real question was why didn’t she want to answer that question? She cleared her throat, shot for an easy-breezy voice. “You’re the only person I know in Spokane.”
It was the truth, of course. But there was a touch more vulnerability in her voice than Dora would have liked to hear from herself. She wasn’t lonely. She liked her lone wolf life. But as she sat across from this man, his morning pine scent filling the car, something was creeping in at the edges that she hadn’t even known was there.
Her words had him narrowing his eyes. Dora guessed that he was probably weighing the truth in what she said, whether or not he could trust it. And then he was speaking in Belarusian. Cursing from the sound of it. He blew out a long breath. Suddenly, Dora was very aware of just how much of the car he took up. Damn near three quarters. Was it just her or was there suddenly less air in the world than there had been ten minutes ago?
“Ah,” he ripped a frustrated hand through his hair, his eyes still on hers. “My samotna ptuška.”
“What?” she asked, instantly curious at what he’d called her. But for the first time in her life, her curiosity was narrowed down to the size of the head of a pin. Because suddenly his eyes were burning.
She wasn’t sure how, but his large hand was sliding over the top of her hair, tangling in the silky strands, to land at her neck.
He tugged her forward, none too gently, and Dora gasped, leaning over the console.
“Samotna ptuška,” he whispered again, almost against her lips.
For all his dignified presence, the suit, the lawyerly exterior, his calm, icy politeness, Danil was not polite or dignified now. He simply smashed their mouths together.
Dora found herself caught halfway between pushing him away and pulling him closer. The result was a battle-like embrace, her wire-strong arms banding around him as her fingers dug into his back. She opened her mouth and received him. Not in submission, but in a wild, pulling absorption of him. He was anchoring her to him like the string to a kite and she held on. She felt the wild need to both swallow him whole and lay herself over him, touch every inch.
It was like kissing lightning, Danil thought, as he absorbed her extending, flashing energy. She was whip strong and demanding, twining the two of them together like they were two strands of the same rope. But she tasted surprisingly light. A delicate flavor that grabbed him by the throat. The juxtaposition of her strength and her flavor had his mind spinning; he didn’t, couldn’t understand how one woman could be both.
Urgently, as if the second their lips had touched for the first time, someone had started some cosmic countdown, he dragged his hands over every inch of her. But the world, the console, the two seats, her fucking leather jacket, all of it kept getting in the way of what his hands really wanted to touch. Needed to touch. Were born to touch.
With a frustrated huff, Danil pulled back from her and Dora felt as if she were resurf
acing from the bottom of the ocean. The light of the sunrise was suddenly so watery, so blurry, her pulse raced in her ears as she dragged her tongue over her bottom lip, catching his flavor. Dimly she felt Danil tugging at her coat, sliding it off her shoulders.
She sat in his front seat, her shoulders and neck creamily exposed in her deep green satin camisole.
Danil gripped her by the shoulders, his thumbs rubbing underneath the thin straps of her shirt.
“This is all you wear for shirt?” he asked, his Slavic accent taking over his speech. “Just this silky underwear?”
“I like how it feels on my skin,” she replied, foggily fighting to pull the words up from her depths.
Danil’s eyes were heated, heavy with touching her, and for some reason her answer to his question seemed to enrage him. Because he was scooping her up around the waist and shoving her back into the back seat.
Dora’s mind tried to kick back into high gear. But it was in a low gear and cruising uphill fast. She revved but wasn’t going far. She wasn’t used to this feeling. To the complete shutdown of her faculties. But here she was, unable to string two words together while an enormous man wedged himself into the back seat of the car.
It was only when Danil’s weight landed on top of her, when his mouth instantly fell on her neck like an animal that hadn’t eaten for weeks, when his hands somehow found their way under the silky slide of her camisole that Dora’s words came back.
“Wait, wait,” she murmured. But nothing came next. And with the curious interest of someone who studies life, Dora was amazed at the crushing disappointment that raced through her when Danil’s hands stopped their journey across her stomach. “I need…”
“Tell me what you need, samotna ptuška,” Danil said, his voice stretched thin with impatience.
But the problem was that she didn’t know what she needed. She knew what she wanted, which was to fuck, wildly, this half-stranger who’d just bailed her out of jail. She had no problems with that. But the other part of her, the part that wasn’t touching a stranger, was touching Danil. Danil whom she somehow already knew. Danil who had come when she’d called him for help. Danil whose hands were on her like they belonged there. That part of Dora was screaming for her to slow down. That part of her knew that this was about to get messy for her.