By the time we arrived back at Vasiliy’s house, the blizzard had slowed traffic to a crawl and the guards outside were wrapped up in thick coats. There were more of them, standing at the gates and watching from balconies. They knew the threat to their masters was real, now. And they all knew it was somehow connected with me, that I’d betrayed Luka. I could feel their anger blasting down at me in hot waves as we walked the short distance from the car to the front door. Out of all of them, only Yuri didn’t seem to hate me.
Inside, Luka grabbed my forearm and pulled me upstairs to the room he was using. As soon as the heavy oak door was closed behind us, he shoved me away from him, making me stagger, as if he couldn’t bear to touch me anymore.
I looked at him. Swallowed. Opened my mouth to defend myself but couldn’t come up with the words.
“I should kill you,” said Luka, his voice shaking with anger. “Sooka.”
Which can mean traitor or bitch or whore. All of which were sort of accurate. Handy of the Russian language to combine all three in one word.
“You betrayed me,” he snapped. “You slept with me. You made me think—” He broke off and glared at me.
“What?” I asked, my voice weak. “What did I make you think?”
He shook his head and muttered Wed’ma under his breath. It meant witch. Crazy, because I’m the last person who’d ever be able to cast a spell on anyone.
“I’m sorry,” I said. I knew it wasn’t enough, but it was all I had. “I was wrong. I thought I could…” I closed my eyes. “...be with you and not feel it and—I couldn’t.” I shook my head.
He let out a disbelieving snort. “I think you good person,” he said, his rage making his English slip. “You seem like an innocent.”
“I am! I am an innocent. I’ve never done anything like this before! This is my first mission!” I opened my eyes and shook my head, blinking back tears. “I’m not even a real agent! I’m just a languages geek!”
He took a step towards me. “Then why would you agree to do this?”
I let out a long groan of self-hatred. “I thought I was working for the good guys.”
He shook his head, but gently, as if he understood. “There are no good guys, Arianna. Only different bad men.”
I nodded. I got that, now.
He stepped right up against me. That big, strong hand came up and settled on my throat. I knew he could throttle me without even breaking a sweat. “So tell me. Why did you spill his drink? Why did you change your mind?”
“Because I’m in love with you,” I whispered.
He stared into my eyes. I’ve never felt so connected with anyone my entire life. There were no secrets, no doubts. Everything I was, was exposed to him.
And he knew I was telling the truth.
Has hand stayed on my throat but his mouth came down on mine, tasting my lips, then devouring me completely, taking control of me.
I melted into him, clinging to his back. The heat was raging inside him, throbbing through his skin, that dangerous energy that had scared me so much, at first. Now, I gave myself up to it. I let it soak into me, right to my very soul, and thaw the parts of me that had been encased in ice for so long.
We kissed for a long time, exploring each other, turning slowly, our hearts thumping gradually faster and faster, in rhythm with one another. We twisted so that he was the one with his back to the wall, and it was almost as if we were a couple of normal, regular lovers. His hands traced down my back to my ass, pulling me in close, and I let out a long, slow breath at the touch of those big palms there.
Then he suddenly twisted us again and slammed me up against the wall. The mood shifted to a more primitive need.
We stared at each other, neither of us daring to move. His eyes, burning into me. Telling me what he wanted to do to me. Every filthy way he wanted to corrupt my innocence.
And me, for the first time, daring to meet his gaze full-on and telling him that I wanted it.
He grabbed my waist and lifted me straight up, my feet kicking in the air. He pinned me against the wall like that, my ass pushing against the cool plaster, my chest heaving with fear and heady arousal. Then he mashed his body against mine, pressing his legs between mine, holding me there with the pressure of his flat, taut stomach against my groin. I felt myself go squishy inside, my sensitive flesh rubbing over those firm ridges of muscle as I struggled.
Why am I struggling?
I flushed. Because it’s more fun.
His hands bunched in the neck of my dress. It was funny because I almost had a vision of him ripping the thing in two, but it was quite strong fabric and—
His muscles bunched and the material screamed and gave, seams popping and stitching wrenching loose. It ripped straight down the front, baring my bra-clad breasts. He got it all the way down to my navel and then, with three savage tugs, he ripped it right down to the hem and it fell apart. Air made furnace-hot by his presence wafted against my exposed stomach and thighs. I could feel myself throbbing—God, moistening under my panties.
He kissed me again, gripping my hips to lift me a little more, his mouth hungry and fierce at my lips. His tongue plunged deep, meeting mine. I was being plundered, ravished. Fantasies I hadn’t even known I had, fulfilled.
I could feel him panting through the kiss. His hands ran up and down my body in long strokes, lifting and fondling my breasts through my bra, then sliding down to the softness of my inner thighs, then back up in a rhythm that had me writhing.
He broke the kiss. “You understood all the things I said in Russian?” he asked in Russian.
I nodded. “Da.” Yes.
The tiniest hint of a blush as he remembered some of the things he’d said. But a deeper gleam of lust in his eyes as he realized that I’d understood them...and I’d come back for more. “All of them?” he asked.
“Even when you said you were going to make me beg you to stop,” I whispered. “And then make me beg you for more.”
He growled low in his throat. And then picked me up by the waist and threw me onto the bed.
The shreds of my dress flopped around me, half-hiding my body, but he was on me in a second, rolling me onto my face and stripping it off me. A second later, I was back on my back, drawing in shuddering gulps of air.
He looked down at my chest. Then he folded his thick fingers around the front of my bra and pulled, hard. It stretched away from my body for a second, the straps pulling painfully tight, and then they snapped and my breasts were naked beneath his eyes. He stared down at them for a second, feasting his eyes, and the feel of him looking at me sent a hot wave soaking through me. Then he lowered his head and began to lick in long strokes, covering all of my breast but each lick crossing my nipple. I moaned and kicked and writhed beneath him and reached for his head, intending to pull him down against me harder.
He grabbed my wrists in one big hand and pinned them to the bed above my head. A moment later, his other hand bunched in the thin fabric of my panties and ripped them away. I groaned and tossed my head, feeling the heat rising up inside me, filling me. It was too much. My legs opened and wound around him but, at the same time, I shook my head and said, “I don’t understand this.”
He froze and stared down at me. “What is there to understand?”
I flushed. “Us two, together. This. This...thing, this game—”
“Is not game,”
“That’s worse! Or better, I don’t know. Like, is it BDSM and should we have a safeword and is it wrong that I like it? I mean, I’m not sure why I like it and MMFF!”
The last was because he’d put his hand over my mouth.
“Shut the fuck up, Arianna,” he told me.
I went stiff and quiet.
“You Americans analyze every fucking thing,” he said mildly. “You like it—yes?”
I nodded.
“You know I would never, ever hurt you?”
I did, but hearing it lit a warm glow of reassurance inside me. I nodded again.
“Then that is all that matters. Now shut up and kiss me while I fuck you like dirty slut.”
My mind exploded as his lips replaced his hand and his tongue slid into my mouth. I wasn’t Arianna Scott or Arianna Ross anymore; I was just his. I wasn’t going to be judged for wanting him to be rough, for wanting to play at resisting him. I could just enjoy it.
I pressed up against his hand with my wrists but it felt like his hand had turned to rock. I was held there, helpless, until he damn well chose to let me free, and the thought made my groin roll and grind against him.
His free hand tangled in my hair as he kissed me, then stroked down my cheek. He lifted his lips from mine and stared at me with those icy-blue eyes. “Beautiful,” he said in English, and my heart soared. He kissed me softly on my neck. “Sooka,” he whispered and the heat tightened and twisted inside me. He kissed me again, this time on my collarbone. “Innocent,” he said. Another kiss, on the top of my breast. “Shalava,” he whispered.
He kept going, alternating between telling me how beautiful I was and what a dirty, filthy slut I was, with kisses for punctuation. By the time his mouth reached my groin, I was a hot, panting mess.
He put his mouth very close to me, until every hard-accented syllable was like a caress on my ready, throbbing sex. “You will tell me,” he said.
“What?” I was so turned on, I slurred it.
“You will tell me exactly what you want,” he said, his voice like cold steel.
My eyes widened. Every time we’d had sex, I’d basically let him do all the talking. His voice I got off on, but I couldn’t say that sort of stuff. “I can’t,” I said hopelessly.
He lifted his eyes to meet mine. “You will. Or I will stop.”
He licked me and my back arched like a bow, hot pleasure rippling up through my body to explode in my mind. What?! He wanted me to—My cheeks reddened. I couldn’t—
He stopped.
I instinctively humped my groin towards him, but I couldn’t quite reach that hot, expert tongue. “I can’t!” I insisted.
“Say it in Russian,” he told me.
Russian. Maybe that would make it easier.
And so I told him in awkward, halting phrases, how I wanted him to lick me. And as he did, the words came a little easier, the heat inside me melting away the barriers. My Russian came in little flurries of words and then in desperate, rushed sentences and then in a gasping litany that rose to the ceiling as I begged him not to stop, begged him to go deeper and faster and OH GOD harder. I wouldn’t have had a hope of knowing some of the words... if I hadn’t listened to his phone sex over and over again.
Wrestling against his hands was my safety valve, enabling the pleasure to go on and on without me exploding too soon. His shoulders held my thighs wide apart as his lips sucked on my aching clit and his tongue plunged deep. I could feel it building, building, the blood rushing in my ears, my breath coming in desperate pants. I was rolling my hips, bringing my body up to meet him. Just as I thought it couldn’t get any better, he slid two fingers into me. I felt myself shudder and go over the edge and then I was bucking and twisting, straining with my wrists against his hand. The pleasure rolled up my body in waves, stretching every muscle taut and then letting it dissolve into warm goo. I flopped onto the bed, spent.
When I looked up, he was unbuttoning his shirt. I started to sit up.
“Stay!” he commanded. A hot rush went through me. I stayed where I was.
He pulled off his pants and shorts and stood naked in front of me. My eyes locked on his cock, long and thick.
“Turn over,” he said. His voice was thick with lust and the thought that it was me doing that to him, that I was making this ice-cold man lose control, was electrifying.
I slowly turned over onto my hands and knees. But when he climbed onto the bed behind me, he gently took my wrists and drew them behind me. Wait, what was he—
I felt the touch of cold metal. Handcuffs.
He locked them on and something about the feel of it made my insides flip over and then melt, that familiar combination of fear and lust. My groin tightened and throbbed in a way it never had before. The fact we were together, now, with no secrets, took it to a new level—I felt connected to him as never before. I felt myself begin to pant. My shoulders sank to the bed and the position made it even better, my breasts helplessly pressed against the covers, my face turned to the side. I was helpless. He can do anything he wants to me.
The bed creaked as he shifted position and then rolled on a condom. My ass was high in the air, utterly exposed. He ran his palms over my cheeks and I shuddered. Then his thumb moved inward, between them—
Oh God! Is he thinking of—I panted, unsure whether to stop him or—
He chuckled. “Another time.”
And then I felt the satin-smooth hotness of him pressing into me, dividing my lips and pushing deep. Presented to him like that, I was utterly his for the taking and he sank into me all the way in one long thrust. He slowed at the end, coming to rest against me with his groin tight against my ass, the size of him making me gasp.
He moved his hands to my hips and began to fuck me.
I knew I wasn’t going to last long. I was still coming down from before and, in this bound position, I couldn’t do anything to control the pace or hold him back. Every silken stroke of him into me ratcheted the heat inside me higher and higher. Every hard thrust made my breasts rub against the covers until my nipples were achingly hard. I pulled and pulled at the cuffs, jerking my wrists as if I wanted to get free, but all I wanted was for it to continue. My climax was twisting and swelling inside me, ready to burst, leaving no room for conscious thought. I found myself pushing back and meeting each thrust, grinding and swirling my hips as I danced my ass against him. He drove himself into me faster and faster and the sound of our bodies slapping together filled the room. I could feel everything slipping away, teetering on the brink like a rollercoaster at the top of a hill.
Suddenly, his hands were scooping under my breasts, squeezing them, his thumbs rubbing my nipples. “Let it go,” he hissed in my ear. “Let it all go.”
And then he pinched my nipples between his powerful fingers and the exquisite mix of pain and pleasure sent me soaring past the point of no return. My eyes screwed shut, my head went back and I cried out his name, only to have it muffled as his lips found mine. I shuddered and quaked and panted out my orgasm as he filled me again and again, and then he, too, was grunting and gasping as he exploded inside me.
I felt his fingers undoing the cuffs and then, as soon as my hands were free, he rolled us gently onto our sides, my back against his chest. His arms wrapped around me protectively...and warningly.
“Arianna,” he said. “You are mine, now. No one else’s.”
And I knew he wasn’t talking about other men. He meant other loyalties.
I didn’t even have to think about it. I’d made up my mind hours ago, lying in the snow. “I’m yours,” I told him. “Always.”
He leaned down and kissed me. “Then let’s stop these sons-of-bitches.”
At that moment, there was a knock at the bedroom door. Luka went to open it, unashamedly naked. When he opened the door, I couldn’t see past his wide shoulders to see who was there.
“A message from your father,” said Yuri. “‘Which do you need: a sheet to wrap the body, or a wedding ring?’”
I gasped.
Yuri heard and took it completely in his stride. “I owe your father a bottle of whiskey,” he deadpanned. “He is downstairs when you’re ready.”
***
Given that my dress was in shreds, we had to borrow clothes from one of the maids. I struggled into a slightly tight sweater and jeans. “You can’t just keep ripping clothes off me,” I muttered.
“Yes I can,” he said immediately, and a wave of heat rolled through me.
Vasiliy watched the two of us walk down the stairs, his face carefully neutral. When we reached the bottom, I went over to him. I was squeezing Luka’s hand for strength. “I owe you an apology,” I said in Russian. “I tried to kill you.”
“But you saved me. You didn’t let me drink. Then you saved me again at the restaurant.” He sighed and shook his head. “I know who the real evil is, Arianna.’ He exchanged a look with Luka. “I hope you do, too.”
I nodded. “My boss’s name is Adam Kinlen.” I was breaking every oath I’d taken when I joined the CIA. But he’d betrayed me and the agency. “He’s right here in Moscow. I think he’s been helping Ralavich for years.”
I saw Luka’s massive body tense. “Bastard.” There was murder in his eyes. “We always thought Ralavich had US help.”
“What will they do, with you still alive?” I asked.
There was a shout from outside and then a gunshot.
“They’ll try again,” said Vasiliy grimly. “Get away from the windows! Get upstairs!”
More shouting from outside and more gunshots. Running footsteps as Vasiliy’s guards raced outside to defend the house.
“Here?!” Luka’s voice was disbelieving. “They’d attack us here?! This place is built like a fortress. The police will come.”
“Not if they’ve been ordered to stay out of it by the government,” said Vasiliy. He looked at me. “I bet they received a special request from a Mr. Kinlen at the CIA.”
I died inside. This was all my fault. By telling Adam all about Luka’s gun deal, I’d motivated him to destroy the family once and for all.
Yuri ran to join us, gun drawn. We backed up the stairs...but before we were halfway up, there was a massive crash as the front door was kicked down. Gunfire filled the air, horrifyingly loud. Ralavich’s men swarmed into the house, guns pointed right at us.
And behind them, swaggering into view, was Olaf, a flashy, chrome-covered handgun dangling from his meaty paw.
“Nice house,” he yelled in the silence that followed. “I’ll take it.”