Laney stared at herself in the mirror and sighed in despair. She was unrecognizable. How had her life come to this? One moment she was a top Yakuza assassin being sent out on assignment, the next she was a… bridesmaid? And she had actual female friends, something she’d never been able to claim before coming to North America.
The door burst open and Laney automatically reached for her gun, only to realize it was not sheathed in its usual place at her back. Instead, she had it tucked into a holster between her thighs. Not a comfortable place, but there was no way she was walking down a freaking aisle without a weapon. And the rose-coloured, satin sheath she was wearing gave her few concealment options. Three women rushed through the door. Two dressed similarly to Laney and one dressed in a stunning white creation that cost more than the groom wanted to know.
“Holy shit, she’s actually wearing a dress!” Anya shouted. She wore a strapless, knee-length crinoline-skirted version of the rose-coloured satin dress that had Laney wondering how she ended up with a scoop-necked tight version that showed every damn curve. “You owe me fifty dollars, Addie!”
“Seriously?” Addison said, entering the room on Claudia’s arm. She looked stunning in her own version of the dress that bared one shoulder and draped classically down her tall, curvy body, kissing every inch lovingly. Claudia definitely had an eye for fashion and figures. “I guess I underestimated how much Laney loves Claudia.”
“I love my job. She threatened to fire me,” Laney grumbled, tugging on the skirt and hoping it didn’t look as figure-hugging as the mirror indicated.
Claudia put Addison’s hand on the back of a chair and reached out to run her fingers through Laney’s hair, smoothing the beautiful, straight black hair over the younger woman’s shoulders. She stepped in front of Laney and hugged the smaller, deadlier woman close. Laney usually had a pretty strict no-touching policy, unless it was ass-kicking lesson time, but she figured since it was Claudia’s wedding day she could relax her professional persona a touch.
“You look stunning,” Claudia whispered, pulling back, her green eyes sparkling with tears.
“Your make-up will run,” Laney said in as practical a voice as she could manage, her own eyes tearing. She blinked back the unfamiliar sensation and stepped back from the taller woman.
Having friends was so new to her that she often found herself navigating uncomfortable situations and sensations with these three women. She jerked her head around in annoyance at a clicking sound to find Anya taking pictures.
Anya grinned unrepentantly. “Blackmail material. I doubt you want pics of you in a dress and make-up hanging around for all eternity.”
“You have no filter, small purple-haired Russian brat!” Laney snapped, reaching under her dress, determined to once again shove a gun in Anya’s face, their usual method of communication.
Claudia laughed throatily. “We don’t have time for this. It’s aisle time ladies, and I assure you, if you think I've been a bridezilla up till now, you’ve seen nothing yet if anything fucks up my perfect wedding day.”
Anya stopped taking pictures and rolled her eyes. “Fine. I think I got one of her with her hand all up in her business anyway. Besides, you have the biggest hitters from the Russian and Italian mafia out there and your personal bodyguard is wearing Elie Saab with a gun strapped to the inside of her thigh. How exactly do you think your wedding day is going to go flawlessly?"
Laney growled at the pixie-like troublemaker.
Claudia grinned and hugged Anya. “You are a grade A pain in my ass and I still love you! Even after all that tequila at my bachelorette… and the penthouse pool full of strawberry Jell-O.”
“It didn’t work out the way I planned. It was more like Jell-O soup,” Anya complained thoughtfully while Addison giggled in the background. “Your pool it way too big, Clods. Next time I’ll have to bring more than 300 Jell-O packets.”
Laney wanted to laugh too, but she bit her lip. She’d never in her life done anything so outrageous or fun. She thought she was going to get fired when Daniel discovered them. He’d merely looked surprised, helped discreetly pull the naked, drunk and dyed pink women from the pool and had security take them home while he took care of his own woman. To be fair, it was Laney’s day off and Claudia told her she had a duty as a bridesmaid to attend the bachelorette party. She had discovered the next morning, during her very first hangover, exactly how much of a sacrifice that duty could be.
“You’ve been banned from my penthouse for the foreseeable future, according to my imminent husband,” Claudia announced. “As for the less savoury elements of my wedding guests, your brother is out there, Anastasia, and he’s the scariest of the bunch. As the adored younger sister of Vladimir Sitnikov, I expect you to pull out some serious pout action on behalf of your best friend if he decides to fuck up my wedding day.”
Anya stood up straight as her diminutive height would allow and gave Claudia a salute, “On it, bestie! Let’s get on with this bitch. There’s an open bar out there with my name on it!”
Addison made her way over to Laney and gently took her elbow. Leaning over, she whispered in Laney’s ear, “Don’t tell her she’s part of the wedding party and subject to pictures before she gets to hit up the reception.”
A small smile curved Laney’s lips. “I’m happy to keep her in order.”
“If only your methods weren’t so violent.”
“Violence makes me feel peaceful. I sleep better at night after a good ass-kicking,” Laney whispered back.
Addison laughed and squeezed Laney’s arm affectionately. “You are as much of a brat as Anya. You just hide it better.”
“Are we ready?” Claudia asked, adjusting her dress and turning her beautiful eyes toward her three friends. “I think I’ve left my groom sweating long enough.”
Tyson King was an orphan and had few close friends. The only person he wanted standing at his side was Daniel Mercer. As there was only one groomsman and three bridesmaids, one of which was blind, she decided to send the three women down the aisle together, side by side.
Addison stood tall between Laney and Anya, trusting her two smaller friends to get her to the front of the beautifully decorated ballroom at the Ritz-Carlton. They moved easily up the aisle between the chairs, confident with each other. As they neared the front, Laney felt the moment his eyes touched her. Though her feet, in strappy silver heels, continued gliding forward, in her mind, she stumbled. Recoiled.
Boris Grekov never failed to rattle her. It infuriated her. He was her prey. Not the other way around. She should be deadly cool in his presence. Stalking him, like the predator she was raised to be. Yet he rattled her composure, made her burn up inside in a way that she had never experienced. It was very annoying. Usually Laney killed things that annoyed her. It was a good thing Boris was her target. She only awaited the green light from the Master.
Laney swiftly brought her focus back to her current, and most difficult, task: walking in heels up an aisle with two other women. Not a direction she ever saw her life going in when she was a girl learning the difference between offensive and defensive weapons. But her mother had taught her to adapt and embrace change. To have a good heart, even if she had to hide it.
As if sensing her discomfort, Addison ran her fingers along Laney’s forearm in a soothing manner. Laney squeezed Addison’s elbow in acknowledgement and held her carefully between herself and Anya as they approached the flowered arch at the front of the aisle. She had been careful not to look over at the chairs and had no idea where Boris was sitting, though she could still feel his eyes on her. If lust were a physical presence, she would be in it’s embrace at that very moment. She could feel the heat rolling off of him from wherever he was sitting.
Laney blushed. She sincerely hoped it was her imagination and no one else could see how much the giant man wanted her. He made very little secret of his obsession for her. It was like his pride meant nothing in the face of his overwhelming need to possess her. Which was going to make things very awkward when she finally had to kill him.
Laney glanced up when the guests fell silent and turned in their seats to look toward the doors of the ballroom. Everyone stood as Claudia appeared. She was truly stunning in a Vera Wang wedding dress. It kissed every inch of her tall, curvy showgirl frame from the sweetheart neckline, across her full breasts and over her hips and thighs to her satin shoes. Her parents stood beaming proudly on either side of her.
They had flown in from Canada two days before and thrown themselves into the wedding planning, though they were clearly somewhat stunned by their soon-to-be son-in-law’s wealth. For almost a year they had believed their only child dead, a victim of the worst elements of a Las Vegas lifestyle. They’d been overjoyed to learn that Alicia, now named Claudia, had not only survived but was engaged to be married to a man that clearly worshipped the ground she walked on. It had taken a while for Claudia to explain why she needed to disappear from their lives and to convince them that she was truly happy, but her bond with her parents had finally won them over.
The look on Claudia’s face as she reached for Tyson at the front of the aisle told them everything they needed to know. Claudia and Tyson would never be separated.
Still, Laney could feel Boris’ unwavering stare on her alone.
***
“Laney!” Anya yelled breathlessly, running up behind her and shoving her headlong into the arms of a burly man before she could launch a protest with a bladed weapon. “You haven’t danced at all tonight and bridesmaids have to dance. It’s our sacred duty. Laney, meet Sergei. Sergei, meet Laney.”
Laney looked up into the bluest eyes she’d ever seen and a grinning face. One hand landed heavily on her waist and another on her wrist as though anticipating a protest. The man, clearly Russian based on his name and the tattoos littering the visible parts of his body, swept her onto the dance floor and began shuffling around the other couples with Laney held tightly in his arms. She thought about seriously maiming him and then remembered Claudia’s bridezilla threat.
He held her closely, intimately against his gym-hardened body. He oozed sexuality. She couldn’t stand him.
“I wanted to meet you,” he said with a heavy, guttural accent.
Glaring at him suspiciously, she said, “I don’t know you.”
“Do you know everyone here?” he asked.
“Of course. I had to help vet the guest list for security. You were not on it, Sergei,” she spat out his name as though it were an insult. His grin widened and he glanced at something over her shoulder.
“I believe Mr. King allowed my employer, Mr. Sitnikov, to bring three of his own security detail besides Boris Grekov, who is guest also. Is this not so?”
So, he was a Russian thug.
Laney ignored the question. Her sharp mind began to wonder why Anya would push her into dancing with this man when she felt a very large, very annoyed presence at her back. An answer to her question. The diminutive troublemaker knew that it would piss off Boris most to see Laney dancing with one of his own men. She was really going to shoot Anya this time. Maybe in the soft fleshy part of her arm so it would hurt a lot and bleed like a bitch, but she would survive. It wouldn’t do to actually murder the Sitnikov girl and piss off her cage fighter husband and mafia brother. Besides, Laney secretly liked the little brat despite her never-ending shenanigans. The grin slid from Sergei’s face and he stepped away from her, melting into the dancing crowd. Laney knew without turning exactly who stood behind her.
She quickly stepped away, intent on losing herself in the wedding revellers the way her less-than-brave dancing partner had. Hard hands fell on her, pinning her. He pulled her backward, into the heat of his large body. With her heels, she still barely reached his shoulder. He had to bend into her body to speak in her ear.
“You avoid me all day, but dance with another? Let him touch you when I cannot?” His voice was an incredulous growl. As though he was trying valiantly to tamp down on the fury rising up within him.
She tried to push away, but he turned her in his arms and pulled her against him. She gasped as every inch of her much smaller body moulded against him. Thick arms wrapped around her back and clamped her against the thick muscles of his chest. She moaned low in her throat and closed her eyes as he held her. It felt like heaven and hell all at once.
“Why would you make me watch another man touch you?” he asked angrily.
Laney was surprised. His feelings for her had grown and she didn’t know what to do. She’d done nothing to encourage him. She wanted to shout at him that he was stupid to feel this way, that she would only break his heart. Or put a bullet in it. Whichever came first. Yet her own body felt weak in his arms. She responded to him in a way she couldn’t explain.
“It was Anya,” she finally said. “She said I had to dance, she pushed me at him before I could say no. I didn’t want to ruin the wedding by stabbing a guest, so I danced.”
He nodded his head, his bruising hold loosening a little. He moved with her in a more natural way, though she could tell he didn’t really dance. “That woman is a menace,” he muttered.
Laney nodded feelingly. “The worst.”
He chuckled and his hands smoothed down her back to grasp her waist. She shivered in the circle of his arms. She knew, even in the midst of all those people, that there would be no escape if she chose to run. She was his captive in that moment. He splayed his fingers across her back and she shivered in his hold, both aroused and alarmed to notice that his long fingers touched every part of her back from her ass up. He pulled her in tight against him, pushing the side of her face against his chest.
“You feel this thunder of my heart, yes?” he bent to say in her ear, his deep voice even more thickly accented than usual. “It beats this way for you only.”
The breath caught in her throat. No one spoke to her this way. Not ever. She tried to shove him away, but he refused to let go. He ground his hips against her belly, forcing her once more to feel the power of his lust for her. His cock was like a hot, thick brand against her belly and there was nothing she could do to escape it.
“Let me go!” she growled breathlessly up at him.
“Not in this lifetime, kotenok.”
Laney glanced around desperately to see if anyone was witness to her distressing position on the dance floor. Other couples swayed closely together, creating a barrier between her and escape. She spied Jane and Vladimir Sitnikov and tried to catch Jane’s eye. Jane was pretty badass in her own right and wouldn’t hesitate to call off the Sitnikov guard dog if she thought he was causing trouble for Laney, but the feisty detective was being held prisoner in the arms of her mob boss husband who was not likely to allow her release.
A few couples away from Jane was her younger sister, Lucy Miller, who did not seem to be faring any better than Laney with her own partner, Mack Hudson. The vicious looking bond enforcement agent had a reckless look on his face. The possessive grip he had on the sweet, younger woman confirmed Laney’s earlier suspicion of the pair. Lucy looked worried and was trying to put some distance between herself and the big man, which he was steadily denying her.
Damn these alpha men! Now Laney was going to have to extricate herself from her current situation, go rescue Lucy Miller and try to find a way to leave this wedding reception because her weekly check-in with the Master was in less than fifteen minutes. In a move that took Boris by surprise, Laney slid her hands up his chest and twined her fingers around the back of his neck. He blinked down at her, hope and suspicion warring in his eyes. A smile curved her lips and she flashed him a little teeth before jabbing her thumb into the pressure point just behind his ear.
“Argh!” he grunted involuntarily and flinched, instantly loosening his hold on her, snarling, “Fuck!”
She winced a little, knowing exactly how much that move hurt, then whirled away from him, not wanting to lose her brief opportunity of freedom. He reached out for her and nearly succeeded in recapturing her with his long reach, but Laney was small and fast. She quickly lost herself in between the dancing couples, where his bulk was unable to navigate with such fluid ease.
Laney flew toward Jane, pleased to see that the woman’s sinister husband had left her side for the moment to speak with Italian mafia kingpin Niccolo DeLucca. This was the most mobbed up party Laney had ever attended, and she was Yakuza!
“Jane Sitnikov!” Laney said breathlessly, rushing toward the other woman.
Jane looked up sharply with a frown, sensing Laney’s discomposure. It took a lot to ruffle the normally calm young Asian woman.
“What’s wrong?” she asked shortly, not wasting time on pleasantries. Her hand fell to her hip where her weapon would normally be, then she sighed and rolled her eyes with impatience. Clearly a holster didn’t go with the Gucci dress. Laney sympathized. Dresses were terrible to fight in.
“Lucy Miller needs help.”
Jane’s golden eyes flared with protective fire and she glanced around. Her eyes fell on Mack and Lucy, who were on the edge of the dance floor, though they were no longer pretending to dance. He was pulling Lucy steadily toward an exit door while Lucy half-heartedly resisted him.
“That son-of-a-bitch is getting on my last nerve!” Jane snarled, stalking toward the struggling pair.
Laney followed Jane, glancing around for her own problem male. His massive height and shoulder breadth made him instantly recognizable in the crowd of people. She breathed a sigh of relief at seeing him make his way toward the bride and groom’s table, where Laney’s seat was. Exactly the opposite direction she was going in. Her much shorter height would give her a few extra minutes to disappear.
Without a second thought, Jane stepped between Lucy and Mack, breaking his hold on the young woman’s arm and sending her fist flying into his stomach. Though Jane was small, she was feisty. Her time as a city police detective gave her both guts and skills, which is how she’d met and eventually partnered with Mack Hudson. He barely flinched at her tap to the belly and merely smirked down at her as she took a protective stance in front of her sister.
“You’re a great partner, Hudson,” Jane snarled up at him with narrowed eyes, “but I swear to god, if you touch my baby sister one more time, I will let my husband dismember you. And you know he’s just itching to take you apart on the mere fact of you being male and hanging out with me on a regular basis.”
Laney glanced over at Lucy who looked visibly shaken and was rubbing her wrist where he’d been holding it. Laney knew little to nothing about comforting other people, but she reached out and touched Lucy’s shoulder. The Amish girl surprised her by stepping close to Laney and leaning in, almost as though they were loosely embracing. Laney stiffened and fought the urge to step away. How did she keep ending up in these situations where she was comforting women in trouble? That was how she’d met and befriended Addison Sterling. Perhaps it wasn’t so surprising, considering who her mother had been.
“Boris speaks very highly of you,” Lucy murmured into Laney’s ear while Jane continued to berate Mack.
Laney didn’t know what to say. She nodded and remained silent.
“He thinks you’re his forever,” the young woman continued. “I know you don’t like him as much, and that’s okay. I just wish… with Mack… that he would want me that way. Then maybe we could be together. Instead he’s all twisted. He just wants to use me, to make me dirty, like he is inside, and then… and then he pushes me away. It’s like he doesn’t want me, but he can’t stay away from me at the same time.”
Laney looked up at Lucy sharply. The lovely girl, her large sad eyes framed by wavy, brown curls, clenched her fists at her sides. Laney reached over and attempted to pat her arm soothingly. Lucy smiled sadly. Suddenly, her eyes looked much older than her twenty-one years.
“Is there a problem here?” a deep, accented voice asked from behind the women.
Despite years of combat training, a shiver of apprehension slithered through Laney. There was something utterly sinister about Vladimir Sitnikov that invited a person to run in the opposite direction if they had an ounce of self-preservation. She simply did not understand how Jane abided marriage to the man. Actually, she did. Jane Sitnikov was at least as insane as her frightening husband. Deciding there was more than enough batshit crazy people there to help sweet Lucy Miller with her man situation, Laney silently extricated herself and headed for the nearest exit. She had two minutes until check in.