Chapter Nine
By the time Maksim made it back to the house on the Intracoastal he was feeling crabby as hell. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust the men. His guys were efficient and worked well as a team. They also knew how to follow orders to the letter. He just wasn’t used to the idea of not being with them. It was a very disconcerting sensation. He didn’t necessarily like being the one who wound up making all the decisions, but he had enough of a control freak in him that he liked things done a certain way.
He left the SUV running and made his way up to the front door. It was sort of surprising that Nika hadn’t met him at the door. She’d known they were going to be leaving just as soon as he got back to the house.
Not only was she not waiting by the door. He didn’t see her anywhere when he walked inside. “Nika?”
“In the kitchen.”
Maksim strode through the house, expecting to see her stuff packed and ready to go. Instead he found Nika sitting in a barstool eating ice cream in a T-shirt with no shorts. She was leafing through a magazine.
“What are you doing?” he asked, deliberately keeping his voice calm.
She barely glanced up. “Eating a snack.”
“Where’s your stuff?” He couldn’t figure out if she was messing with him, or if she really hadn’t taken him at his word when he said they were leaving.
She gave an offhanded shrug, apparently engrossed in her magazine article. “I was hungry so I figured I’d just pack when you got here.”
“I told you we were going when I got here.”
Another shrug. This time Maksim’s temper boiled over. It was too much. His men were going on an operation without him and now Nika’s casual disregard for his request. Did nobody take him seriously anymore?
“Get your ass in the truck!” Maksim snarled. “Now.”
Her head jerked up, her blue eyes flashing. “Excuse me?”
“You heard me. I didn’t stutter. I said get your ass in the truck right now. I’m leaving in five minutes and if you’re not in there with me you can stay here by yourself.” He growled the last bit, nearly ready to pitch a tantrum of his own.
“What the hell crawled up your butt?” she demanded rudely.
Maksim watched her slide down from the barstool and mince her way back toward the bedroom. That wasn’t where he’d told her to go. Striding toward her, he snatched her up and threw her over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes.
“Hey!” she squealed. “What the hell are you doing?”
“Teaching you a lesson in manners.” He turned toward the front door.”
“What about my stuff?”
Maksim took perverse pleasure in this moment. “You don’t have stuff. You didn’t pack it so it isn’t coming with us.”
“What?” Her outrage nearly scorched his back with its righteous intensity. “You can’t do that!”
“The hell I can’t. If you can’t follow a simple order, you’re shit out of luck. Maybe you’ll pay attention when someone tells you do to something next time.” He slammed the front door behind them and stalked right toward the SUV.
Yanking open the passenger door, he tossed her onto the seat and slammed it shut once she scrambled inside. There was something intensely gratifying about the wide O of surprise on her face. At some point the woman was going to have to start listening to him. Hell. At some point everyone needed to start listening to him. If nothing else because he was sick and tired of feeling like he was being ignored.
Maksim exhaled to try and release some of the tension he was holding in his shoulders. Something just felt off, but he couldn’t say what. Maybe it was because he’d given in to temptation and slept with his charge. That sort of thing was bound to mess with a guy’s head.
Even now, trying to lower his level of anger at her, he couldn’t stop thinking about how beautiful she looked. The woman was wearing a T-shirt and a pair of panties. Her sweet, naked bottom had been right by his face while he carried her. Talk about tempting. Nika Sokolov was a beautiful woman. And even when she was being the most pigheaded person on the planet she managed to do so while being beautiful and sassy.
The passenger door opened and Nika hung her head out the door. “Are you going to get moving or are we just going to sit here? If we’re just sitting here I’m totally going back in for my stuff.”
And just like that Maksim’s temper was back to the boiling point. He placed one hand flat on the back hatch of the SUV and took deep breaths. He would not kill her. It wouldn’t even do any good. And really, was he even mad at Nika? She was infuriating. Yes. But there was so much crap going on right now it was difficult to tell what was up and what was down. Maybe he just needed to relax.
I need to get laid.
***
Nika was ready to beat Maksim over the head until she knocked some sense into him. She’d been getting a snack. It wasn’t like they were on some timetable or anything. They made their own schedule right? What did it matter if she was ready the second he got back from his meeting? It wasn’t like she had a bunch of stuff anyway. And she didn’t have a bag to pack. She had intended to ask him if she should just use a box, or if there were bags somewhere in the house.
Now it didn’t matter. She was sitting in an SUV next to the biggest asshole of a man on the planet. He was pouting so fiercely he wouldn’t even look at her. So Nika stared right out the window and kept silent the whole way back to the beach house.
They pulled up just as twilight was shading into night. The torches were lit and Nika couldn’t help but wonder if they were somehow automatic, or if there was a caretaker here as well. Nika tried not to be so excited, but she had never stayed in a house right on the beach before. She opened her door just as soon as Maksim had the SUV in park.
“Hey, where do you think you’re going?” he demanded.
She didn’t even look over her shoulder. “For a walk.”
“Stay by the house.”
Did he really think she was going to obey him just because of his high handed behavior? Not even bothering to glance back at him, Nika moved toward the pathway at the edge of the house that led to the shore.
The cool breeze ruffled the bottom of her long T-shirt. She probably should have put on pants, but thanks to Maksim she didn’t even own any. So she walked until the flagstones gave way to sand. Pausing, she dug her toes into the still warm stuff. It felt so good. Like something pure in this crazy world.
The sound of the waves crashing up onto the beach was soothing. Nika walked directly toward the water. The sand was cooler here and tightly packed where the tide had been. She threw her head back and looked at the sky. A million stars winked back. They were pale and vague right now, but she could still see them. Nearby the breeze ruffled through the vegetation before stirring the curls hanging loose down her back.
Right here and right now she felt more at peace than she ever had before. Glancing down she watched the water kiss her toes. She wiggled them farther into the sand and let the water cover them again. If she stayed here long enough, maybe her feet would be buried and she would never have to move again. She could become a statue on the beach. Katrina could visit whenever she and Ivan happened by.
The ridiculousness of her thoughts was interrupted by Maksim’s angry calls. She could hear him up closer to the house. But here his words were drowned out by the sound of the ocean calling.
“Nika!”
Damn. He was getting closer. She resisted the urge to call back. There was no need to draw him any closer than he was already getting.
“What the hell are you doing?”
One second her feet were grounded to the beach. The next she was flung—again—over Maksim’s broad shoulder.
“Honestly, you’d think you had no sense at all.” Now he was just being mean. “I asked you to stay up by the house. I haven’t even checked the beach to make sure it’s safe.”
“There’s nobody here, Maksim. Of course it’s safe,” she told him.
“You don’t know that,” he insisted.
Her head bobbed back and forth with the roll of his walk as they headed back toward the house. In fact he was making her a little seasick. “Either you put me down or I’m going to puke down your back.”
The noise he made told her in no uncertain terms that he was irritated. Well good. So was she. He flung her back over his shoulder and set her on her feet. Nika glared up at him. There was so much tangled emotion between them. Only hours earlier she had been making love to this man. Yes. It had been sex. But it had also been more. She’d wanted more. At least she did if she was honest with herself. There had been fantasies of snuggling under the covers and laughing and telling jokes. When Maksim wasn’t stressed or being an ass he was a really great guy.
“What?” he demanded.
She raised a brow.
“You’re looking at me like you want an answer, but you haven’t even asked a question.” He scratched the back of his neck, looking uncomfortable. That was when she realized that she hadn’t even gotten to see his tattoo earlier. What a waste.
Nika pointed at him. “I don’t know what’s wrong. Okay? Obviously you got some news that pissed you off. But you can’t just take it out on me and expect me to be fine. That’s not how this works.”
“One of our informants told us that the police were closing in on that safe house. That’s why we needed to get out fast.” His voice was quiet, almost final in nature.
“Then why didn’t you just say that?” she asked, dumbfounded. “I would have taken things a lot more seriously if you had just said that.”
“I guess I’m not used to explaining myself.” He looked uncomfortable with that admission.
Nika reached out slowly and placed her hand flat on his abdomen. She felt the strength there, the vitality of him in the beat of his heart. She didn’t want to fight with Maksim. Not really.
“Take off your shirt,” she told him.
“Why?”
“Please? Just do it?”
He gave a grunt that sounded less than cooperative, but he did pull his T-shirt over his head. In the torchlight his skin was burnished gold. She placed her palms on his chest and let them roam across the rippling muscles of his abdomen. She traced his ribs on the right side as she stepped around toward his back.
“What are you doing?” He sounded uncertain. Could he be self-conscious?
Nika nervously bit her lip. “I’ve spent years wondering what the ink on your back looks like. Now I want to know.”
He didn’t protest, but she could see the subtle tightening of his jaw. Whatever the tattoo was, it meant something to him. Then she took a step back and gazed at the word scripted across his shoulders. Oh yes. It was very personal.
“Absolution,” he whispered.
Her heart seized at the realization that this man carried a heavy burden she would never come close to understanding. “Is that what you think you need?”
“Don’t I?” He turned his head, catching her eye over his shoulder. “Look at the pain and suffering I brought to you and your father. You don’t think I need to beg absolution for that? What about the hundreds of other people that I intimidated or threatened? I’ve been doing this a long time, Nika.”
She knew that. Yet she also knew how it haunted him. Bad men weren’t haunted by the things that they did. Maksim Petrov wasn’t a bad man.
She took his hand in hers. “Let’s go to bed, Maksim.”