TWO
CURSING, BLAZE RUSHED up the stairs, automatic cradled in her arms. She raced through the apartment for the fire escape. Slinging the weapon across her back, she climbed fast and made it to the roof before the SUV with the Hallahans in it was all the way down the street. It was moving fast, but still, as she leaned out over the thick cement wall that formed the railing, she counted all four of them inside the vehicle.
She closed her eyes briefly. She was going to have to take the fight to them, on their turf. Never a good idea. In the meantime, she couldn’t leave her bar rigged with explosives. If somehow, someone innocently found an entry point, it could be very bad. She sagged against the low wall and slowly pulled the gun from around her neck.
All that preparation and now she would have to start all over. She knew where the Hallahans holed up. They owned a strip joint just a few blocks over. Well, they didn’t own it. Their boss owned it. The faceless man who called himself Reginald Coonan. There were no pictures of Coonan. None at all. He owned a significant amount of property in her neighborhood as well as a few buildings between her neighborhood and the one where the strip club was located.
There were no properties in residential areas listed as belonging to either the Hallahans or Reginald Coonan, which meant she was going to have to work a lot harder to get to them. She’d start with the club Coonan owned, but she had no idea where they actually lived. She bit out a few more curses and kept staring down the empty street. Nothing moved. “Damn it,” she said aloud as she turned back toward the fire escape to climb back down to her apartment entrance. “Just damn it.”
Going to the mobsters’ lair would be really dangerous and would call for completely different tactics. She didn’t want anyone innocent to get hurt, especially the dancers and employees at the club. She couldn’t imagine that the Hallahans treated the strippers with respect and would mind if the dancers were caught in a cross fire.
She removed the magazine from her weapon and tossed it on the kitchen table. She had the blueprints for the club. It hadn’t even been that difficult to get them. There was an apartment over it, like she had over the bar, but they didn’t stay there. They only used it to take their women. So where did the Hallahans actually reside? She would have to do a little surveillance and follow them, find a way to take the war to them without endangering innocents.
With resignation, Blaze started down the stairs to the bar. She had a lot of work to do to remove all the traps and explosives she had rigged. She gathered up the weapons she had placed on the curved stairway and made her way to the bar. She’d taken two steps in when arms came around her, large male hands removing the guns.
Blaze whirled around, hands up, ready to defend herself, heart beating wildly, shocked that anyone could have penetrated the bar without blowing themselves up. Shocked that she hadn’t heard a sound, or sensed a presence. The man facing her was already a distance away, and she hadn’t seen or heard him move. He was utterly still, his arms relaxed at his sides, the guns loosely in his hands.
She drew in a breath, knowing, without him speaking, exactly who he was. This man had to be Tariq Asenguard’s silent partner. She’d never seen a more handsome man, not in the traditional sense of handsome. He was too rough for that. But he was undoubtedly sexy and all masculine. His shoulders were set wide. His hair was as black as night and long. He had it pulled back and secured behind his head. That wasn’t why she took a step back. Away from him. She wasn’t a coward. She really wasn’t. But this man wasn’t just dangerous. He was terrifying. His eyes were absolutely the blackest—and the coldest—eyes she’d ever seen in her life. There was no expression on his face at all. He was remote. Removed. Ice-cold.
His gaze moved over her and left behind a chill. He didn’t miss anything. He took his time, still, not moving a muscle, yet conveying a readiness to deal with anything. All with no expression.
She knew he wasn’t in the least bit like the Hallahans. They enjoyed violence. This man didn’t enjoy anything at all. He was too removed from it. Too removed from humanity. He didn’t seem capable of emotions. He would explode into violence, but he would do it all without even the slightest hint of feeling.
Time slowed down. Tunneled. Blaze couldn’t breathe for a moment, taking another step back—toward the bar. She let her gaze shift, just for a moment, to the room. The grid was gone. Something that would take her an hour or so to unravel, this man had done in minutes. How he had gotten in, she had no idea.
She had made a terrible mistake choosing Maksim Volkov and Tariq Asenguard to be allies. She’d told them about the envelope giving them the property when she died. The Hallahans had turned and gone away without so much as pulling a gun. Were the two factions of mobsters really allies, working the neighborhood?
She knew his partner was close, right there in the room. She could feel him, but he was somewhere behind her. She hoped not close. The gun was taped under the edge of the bar. She just had to get to it. They couldn’t have cleared out every weapon, not when they had to dismantle the explosives she’d rigged throughout the room.
“Do not try it,” he said softly just as she moved.
She ignored the compulsion to allow his words to rule her, already, thankfully in motion, diving over the bar in an aikido roll, tearing the gun from the tape beneath the edge of the bar. She felt the solid slap of the stock in her palm; her fingers closed around it, and then her wrist was caught in a fist so tight she couldn’t release the weapon, but she couldn’t use it, either. He pinned her arm across his chest, the barrel of the gun directed away from him.
She smelled him. All man. He smelled good. Too good. He felt like a rock, hard and unyielding, as if instead of skin he wore armor. Instinctively she held her breath, afraid to take anything of him into her body.
“I do not want to hurt you, Blaze,” he said, his mouth against her ear. “You clearly know what you are doing and I cannot take any chances. Release the weapon to me.”
There it was again—that need to obey him. She barely obeyed her own father. Why she felt such a need to do what this man told her—simply from the low, very soft sound of his voice, she didn’t know, but she couldn’t let him stop her. If she stopped, even for a moment, she’d have to face the sight of her father’s body, bloody and broken, thrown out of a moving car to roll onto the sidewalk and come to rest there beside the door of the bar, right at her feet.
Reflexively her fingers tightened on the stock, and she tried to shift her body weight in order to use his weight against him. There was no getting him off-center. He didn’t shift, not even when she did. His fingers didn’t move. Didn’t waver. He didn’t seem to even take a breath. She wasn’t altogether certain he was human. He was too still. Too confident. Too easily anticipating her every move, and she was very well trained.
“Blaze.”
A million butterflies took wing in her stomach. That had never happened to her before. Never. She didn’t have butterflies. She didn’t react physically to men. She especially didn’t react when the man was an enemy and her father’s body had barely been put in the ground. Still, she nodded slowly because she had no other choice. One arm, feeling like an iron bar, was around her belly, and he held her there, immobile.
She nodded again. Swallowing. Trying to get her brain to think past feeling like a captive, an immobile one, and come up with a plan of action. Trying not to feel what his body felt like against hers. Not to be aware of herself as a woman—and him as a man.
“Let go of me,” she hissed. She kept her voice low as well, but it didn’t come out commanding the way his did. She sounded shaky. She felt shaky.
“Release the weapon to me and I will step back. I am not going to harm you. Neither is Tariq. We came to help you. You asked us, remember?”
She relaxed her fingers, allowing him to take the gun from her hand. The iron bar disappeared from around her belly and he was gone, moving so silently she didn’t hear him, but she knew he was no longer pressed up against her. He’d taken all the warmth with him.
“I don’t remember asking you to come here until after,” she reminded. She turned, allowing her gaze to sweep the bar. She caught sight of the other one. Tariq Asenguard. Her heart accelerated even more, if that was at all possible. He looked as remote as his partner. She thought a nightclub owner would be all about fun and passion. These two men were ice-cold. “In fact, I’ve totally changed my mind and would like both of you to leave.”
“I am Tariq Asenguard,” the one to her left introduced himself. He waved a hand toward the other one—the one with the mesmerizing voice. “This is Maksim Volkov. We were very sorry to hear about your father. He was a good man.”
She winced. She couldn’t talk about her father. She couldn’t think about him. If she did, she would totally go to pieces, and the men who had murdered him would get away with it, just like they got away with murdering others.
“Mr.—er—Asenguard—I appreciate you both getting here so fast, but the Hallahans turned tail and ran. Now I’m going to have to take the fight to them . . .”
Maksim shifted his position, and her gaze jumped to his face. His expression hadn’t changed, but emotion flared in his eyes. Something dangerous moved there and was gone. He was back to ice-cold. No, glacier-cold. But his shift, as minute as it was, had moved him closer to her.
She could feel his heat again. Not in a good way. He was absolutely expressionless, but she felt fury radiating off of him. It sucked the air from the room and replaced it with something heavy and oppressive. She took a step back and bumped the bar. He took a step toward her and his step was a lot longer than hers. He was in her space. Both arms extended so that he gripped the bar on either side of her, effectively caging her in.
“Are you trying to get yourself killed? Is that your ultimate goal here?”
He bit the words out between very white teeth. Very white. She found herself staring at his mouth. At those teeth. Strong. Straight. But not perfect, not when two of them came almost to a point and looked—sharp. Her heart jumped at the sight of his mouth. Sensual. Hot. Defined lips. Straight nose. Aristocratic. Still, those eyes, so cold. So black. A dense glacier that had never been touched.
“Of course not.” She managed not to stammer, but he was too close. His body heat seeped into her pores. His scent swirled in her lungs. She held her breath, desperately trying to keep from inhaling him. He was invading. Taking her over.
“You. Are.” He bit the words out around his beautiful, clenched teeth.
She opened her mouth to protest and then closed it. Light dawning. Was she? She felt guilt that she hadn’t been home. She felt guilt that her father had signed the properties over to her. Her name had been on the deeds ever since she was born, but he’d quitclaimed them on her twenty-first birthday.
“I was out that night. It was my shift, but there was a class I wanted to take on bar tricks. Jimmy Mason was teaching the class and he’s the acknowledged master. I thought it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity . . .” She trailed off, realizing she was blurting out private information to total strangers. Worse, something inside her was shifting. Breaking apart. She couldn’t let that happen.
She couldn’t think about the terrible night of waiting. Of knowing. Of trying to hope. Of utter despair. She’d been so desperate, she’d driven to the strip club, but the Hallahans weren’t there. Or if they were, no one was saying.
“Inimămea,” Maksim said softly. His hand came up to slide along her cheek. “I am sorry about your father. He was a good man. We were out of town. The moment you called, we were on the move.” The pads of his fingers, whisper soft, traced over her high cheekbone and then swept down to the curve of her jaw as if he was memorizing her. “These men will be taken down. But not by you. Let us handle this.”
His voice slipped inside her mind. So gently. So softly. Almost not there, but still she felt it—the compulsion to obey him. To give him what he wanted. Still, she shook her head resolutely.
“It’s too late for that. They murdered him and then they threw him out of a moving car like so much garbage right at my feet. I have to do this. You don’t have to understand. I don’t expect you to understand.” Nice girls didn’t plot revenge. They didn’t rig a bar full of explosives and hide weapons from one end of the bar to the next. Nice girls did what they were told. She hadn’t been born nice. She hadn’t been raised nice. She didn’t feel nice.
Blaze didn’t like the fact that she was showing this beautiful man just who she was inside. She knew he saw—saw the need for vengeance and her resolve that she would bring the fight to the Hallahans. She closed down all reaction to this man. She wouldn’t think about him or dream about him or fantasize. She didn’t care if he thought her the worst person on the face of the earth. And she didn’t care if he didn’t understand. It only mattered that she did.
“Then we do it together. You cannot take them down alone, and I think you know that.” The pad of his thumb moved to her lower lip. “We do it smart and we do it right. Blowing up your bar is not the right way to go about it, Blaze.”
If she wasn’t going to survive, it was. But living . . . that meant she kept the bar and her home. That meant she faced the fact that her father was dead and she was guilty because she’d insisted on going to take Jimmy Mason’s “cool” class on doing tricks while fixing drinks. Her father was old-fashioned, but he’d gone along with her learning because she’d had fun flipping the bottles in the air and juggling them back and forth with him. He’d done that—for her. He’d taken her shift—for her.
“Blaze.”
There it was again. Only her name. But the way he said it, as if he knew what she was thinking and he was comforting her.
“You have to know they would have found a way to take your father regardless of where or when they did it. The attack was not in any way random.”
She couldn’t think about that yet. His broken, bloody body. She turned her head away from his cold, black eyes. Eyes so black she felt she could see all the way into the very depths, and she didn’t dare look. She didn’t understand why she was so drawn to him. The man or the voice. Especially now.
“I know. They want the property, but I don’t understand why. They shut down the businesses the moment they acquire the buildings. What’s the point? They aren’t making any money from the businesses,” Blaze said.
Tariq moved closer and when he did, Maksim dropped his hands to his sides, but he didn’t get out of Blaze’s space. If anything, he took a step closer so that his body brushed hers, turning as he did so to face his partner. Blaze thought it might be the opportune time to try to slide away from him and the bar, but he wrapped an arm around her belly and tucked her front against his side.
Possessively. Protectively. There was no mistaking the gesture. Not even for her when she knew nothing about men. He was claiming her. No man had ever done that before. No man had dared to. She didn’t put up with it. She didn’t respond to it. At least not until she’d heard his voice on the phone. Not until he was so close to her that with every breath she drew, she pulled him deep into her lungs.
Not only was she aware of Maksim Volkov as all male, but she was suddenly aware of herself as a female. Her body, instead of being the body she’d trained for combat from her second birthday, was soft and pliant. Needy. Hungry. Aching. Her breasts hurt. There was a throbbing between her legs, and she felt every single pulse beat in her most sensitive core. Right there.
“I am going to do another sweep of the bar,” Tariq said, ignoring Maksim’s body language. “Get her upstairs and settled. We still have to track the Hallahans tonight.”
She sent the man a scowl. “I’m going after them, not you. No one else is taking out the men who killed my father. Not unless I’m dead. That was the point of the phone call, to tell you about the deeds, so hopefully if I fail you would take over.”
“Your plans are going to have to change, Blaze.”
It was Maksim who answered, not Tariq, and his voice was that soft command she recognized from her phone call. There was no doubt it had been Maksim who answered the phone. She found herself shivering, icy fingers traveling down her spine. He was not a man to cross. She got that. She got that neither of them wanted her to kill the Hallahans. She straightened her shoulders and lifted her gaze to Maksim’s. Forced herself to stare into the twin glaciers.
“Is there a reason you don’t want me to kill them? Are you allies or something in this takeover of the neighborhood?” She didn’t care if she sounded melodramatic or like she was quoting a line from a bad mobster movie. She needed to know.
Tariq ignored her. He turned his back to her and began a slow perusal of the bar. She had the feeling he’d lost interest in her and the conversation. He was wholly focused on what he was doing—and she couldn’t see that he was doing much.
Maksim’s fingers settled around her biceps. Gentle. Barely there. Still, she felt shackled, and the wild part of her wanted to fight.
“Do not,” he said softly. “If you fight me, you will not win and then you will be afraid of me.” He tugged gently and took a step toward the stairs.
“Do you read minds?” She was joking, of course. Clearly she didn’t have a poker face, and he could read everything she was thinking. She went with him because it was the least line of resistance. If he thought she was cooperating with him, then he’d go away and she could do whatever she wanted to do.
“Yes.”
She glanced at him as they moved up the staircase toward the apartment. His expression hadn’t changed, not even when he joked. She didn’t think he was human enough to joke and that surprised her. He still looked as remote and as cold as he had when she’d first laid eyes on him.
“I bet you can play poker,” she muttered, annoyed.
“I enjoy the game once in a while.”
“Do you win?” Distracting him.
She bent to retrieve a gun she’d slipped between the ornate dowels of the railing. The moment her fingers closed over the stock, his hand wrapped tightly around hers. His body covered hers, pressed her down so she couldn’t straighten.
She hadn’t realized he was a big man. He was so well proportioned, she hadn’t been able to tell he was so tall, or that he was so enormously strong. Wrapped around her like he was, she felt the muscles in his body. The sensation was like being enveloped in steel. There was no budging him.
“Relax,” she said, forcing the tension from her body. “I was just getting the gun so it wasn’t lying out in the open.”
His arm locked around her belly like a vise. He dragged her upright as he removed the gun from her hand. “Not only do I read minds, I hear lies. You do not know me yet, so there is no trust between us, but know I do not like lies. Especially coming from you.”
He was telling her something important, but she wasn’t certain what it was. His statement wasn’t just about lying. She let her breath out and tried not to feel his body. Willed herself not to react. She didn’t understand why her body had chosen him. Why her muscles went soft and her blood went hot when she was so close to him.
“I can hear your heartbeat,” he said softly. “I can see it, right here.” He touched her pulse on the side of her neck.
It was all Blaze could do not to jerk away from his touch. The pad of his thumb felt like a brand against her skin. She was aware that her heart pounded, raced even. Her breath felt ragged and labored, caught in her lungs in spite of her determination to remain impassive to him.
She went very still. “Please don’t touch me.”
“I am not hurting you.”
She steadfastly refused to look at him. She didn’t want to be alone with him in her apartment. “I know.”
“I will not hurt you. I give you my word that I will protect you with my life.”
She closed her eyes briefly; her heart jerked hard in her chest. Her stomach performed a slow roll, and deep inside where she shouldn’t even acknowledge him, she felt him and there was a reaction, a hot seep of liquid, a clenching that reminded her she was a woman and he was a very, very attractive man.
He meant that promise. She tried to tell herself this stranger was playing her for some agenda of his own, but she knew better. She didn’t understand what was happening, or why she was so drawn to him, but she had the terrible urge to turn her body fully into his and wrap her arms around him.
Intellectually, she knew the situation was intense. She had expected to die. She’d planned to die. She’d just buried her father. Only a few days before, his broken, dead body had been tossed at her feet. She could understand why she would be feeling raw and vulnerable—even needy, when she wasn’t a needy person.
Maksim’s hand transferred to the small of her back and he urged her to continue climbing the stairs to the apartment. “I realize that it’s difficult to wait, inimămea. The Hallahans have a master. One who sends them on his errands and decides who will live and who will die. And how. They are his puppets. We have to find the man behind them.”
She stumbled at the doorway, and his hands steadied her. “I have to go after them.” She sounded as desperate as she felt. She knew she did. But if she stopped, if she had time to sit down and process, she’d have to face her father’s death. She couldn’t do that. She just couldn’t.
Maksim reached around her and opened the door for her, waving her into the apartment. “We will get them. We will. But you need to be on your game, not grieving and ready to die. Willing to die.” He pulled the door shut behind them, closing them together inside her home. It felt—intimate.
The moment the door closed, Maksim shifted position. He glided. Or the floor moved. However it was done, she didn’t actually see him move. Suddenly he was standing in front of her. Close. The fingers of his hand curled around the nape of her neck and he leaned even closer.
“You are not going to die, Blaze. I will see to that. If you intend to be a part of this hunt, make up your mind to that. Because. You. Are. Not. Going. To. Die.”