He felt her loss before he opened his eyes. It was like a missing piece of his soul. He’d felt it the day his mother died. He felt it each time Katerina did her dark little dance out of his life. He felt it now. She may still be close, but he’d been steadily losing her over the last few days. It was why he’d implanted her with a tracking chip. Because he knew his little escape artist. Knew that she plotted and planned. Yet he’d fallen for her cheap trick because his concern for her welfare combined with his desperate need to believe he could trust her had caused him to make a mistake. One that he was going to bitterly regret.
Flinging the blankets off his naked chest, he rolled from the empty bed and searched the darkness, a hunter attempting to track his prey. The master bedroom door that he had locked securely before bed was now standing open. Roman pulled on a pair of worn jeans and rushed into the hallway bellowing, “Katie!”
He knew she wouldn’t respond. She had either found a way out of his fortified compound or she was hiding from his wrath. But his shout did bring Miguel and one other guard running to his side. He instructed them to wake everyone and search the property. Roman went immediately to check on Woman with Folded Arms. Katie was unlikely to leave without her precious painting unless she had no other choice. He was relieved to find the gallery room and painting untouched.
His next stop was the laptop in his office. He wasted no time in activating the signal in her implant. His heart leapt in relief and some of his panic eased when he realized she was still in the house. From what he could tell, she was on the top floor, in the tower. No… she was on the roof.
He texted Miguel to meet him on the roof, but not to approach her unless she was easy to reach. He knew Katie, knew her penchant for high places. He didn’t want her feeling trapped. She might do something stupid.
Roman took the steps two and three at a time until he was at the top. Miguel was standing by the door that led to the roof. “Jorje is keeping an eye on her,” he muttered, nodding toward the ledge just before a steep drop off, more than thirty feet off the ground.
Roman tensed as he headed out onto the ledge. Jorje took his arm and helped him ease past. Katie stood on a ledge, at the corner of the house where the South and West walls came together. It was pretty much the worst place for her to stand. There were too many trees and fences on the ground for his security to get a good view. Plus, she had chosen a spot with at least two obstacles – a balcony and a window hanging – on the way down. He shuddered as he cataloged the possible injuries she could sustain if she fell.
“Stop thinking that way, Roman,” her quiet voice reached him, sweet and clear in the night. “You’ll drive yourself crazy, mi amor.”
She turned her pale face toward him. She looked completely otherworldly standing there in the dark night in nothing but her blue satin sleep pants and sleeveless cotton shirt. Her blond wavy hair, which had grown past her shoulder blades now, was blowing slightly in the breeze. Strands were floating across her face, obscuring her beautiful eyes where they watched his every move.
“You call me love, Katerina, yet you stab me in the heart by putting yourself at risk,” he growled, prowling closer.
She laughed sharply, bitterly, and shook her head. “I’m stabbing you in the heart? You’ve locked me up and threatened my freedom at every conceivable turn. You haven't even considered discussing the easement of my restrictions. You’ve taken my career away from me and you dare to talk to me about what I’m doing to your heart?” She glared at him and turned swiftly, ripping a growl of warning from his throat. “Stop moving or I will jump, Roman.”
Roman rubbed a frustrated hand over his head and unshaven jaw, wanting with every fibre of his being to stalk over to his woman and yank her off the ledge before tearing her flimsy pants from her body and fucking her raw right there on that roof for daring to play games with him. Instead, he was forced to stand still and listen to her. Give credence to her words so she wouldn’t jump and end both of their lives in one reckless move. It made his blood boil that he couldn't control this situation, control his woman.
“Please, just come to me, Katie love,” Roman said in as even a voice as he could manage. “We’ll talk about it when you’re safe, baby. Can’t talk like this when I’m worried about you falling.”
She laughed, her beautiful voice like a sad, husky chime in the wind. “As soon as you get your hands on me, you’d lock me up so tight we both know I’d never see the light of day again. Not unless I was chained to your side, barefoot and pregnant with even fewer choices than I have now.”
They stared at each other, his dark eyes clashing with her blue ones. Every muscle in his body strained with the effort it took not to lunge across the several feet separating them and drag her back from her ledge. He read something in her eyes that shook him deeply. She was dead serious. She wasn’t playing a game with him. Katie meant every word.
“Deny it, why don't you!” she yelled at him, her body shaking with anger as she balled her hands into elegant fists. He growled, hating the way she swayed with emotion, both toward and away from the ledge, heedless of the precariousness of her position.
Fury coursed through him, prickling the back of his neck. He gripped the ledge next to him to hold himself back and answered her truthfully. She knew anyway. “I’d imprison you in my fucking basement. Build a cage that puts your current bedroom to shame and hold you in it until the end of time or until I was sure,” he snarled, stabbing a finger at her, “you had nowhere left to run. I would hunt down and kill everything you loved until there was nothing but ashes for you to run to. Is that what you want to hear, Katie?”
“At least it’s the truth!” she yelled back at him, azure blues blazing fury. She’d never looked more beautiful or crazy to him than in that moment.
Unable to hold himself back from reclaiming his wife, Roman took a lunging step toward her reaching out to snatch her from the ledge. Katie danced backward with breathtaking swiftness, tearing a shout of anger from Roman. A similar shout of warning echoed from Jorje who stood behind Roman watching the strange marital tableau playing out on their rooftop.
Katie teetered precariously on the ledge as though she were about to go over the side. Roman watched in horror as she easily righted herself with a careless laugh and then brought her leg up with knee bent then straightened it out to the side with toe pointed. Then, just as quickly, she dipped into a ballerina pose with her leg curved gracefully over her back and her body low to the ledge. She grabbed the ledge with both hands, but kept her eyes on him the entire time to make sure he wouldn't try to grab her again.
“Oh, is this another thing you didn't know about me, Roman?” she asked innocently, batting her long lashes deviously.
He wanted to wrap his hands around her long, graceful neck more than he wanted his next breath. “Knew you fucking danced when you were a kid,” he snapped impatiently.
She laughed and straightened. Then she stretched completely backward, bending her body in half and gripping the ledge behind her head. He began sweating and paced backward then forward again, knowing exactly what she was about to do and knowing there wasn't a goddamned thing he could do to stop her unless he wanted to either knock her off the ledge himself or give her a reason to jump. She kicked her legs up in the air, nearly giving him a heart attack, and brought them gracefully down onto the ledge of the South wall behind her, standing up as though she didn’t have a care in the world.
“I continued with dance and also gymnastics,” she said with a teasing grin, twirling easily on the ledge before coming to a stop on one foot with the other one curved up next to her inner thigh.
If he didn’t want to spank her ass into the next century, he would have admired her skill and grace as well as her insane bravery. Now he knew where she was getting her adrenaline fixes in between jobs. She was dancing on rooftops. She stretched her long leg behind her and reached back to grasp it in one hand, tilting forward. She teetered a tiny bit before finding the correct balance.
“I was very good at ballet, you know,” she said almost absently as he took another shuffling step forward when her eyes flicked off him for a split second. “Only I’m too tall, so I couldn’t dance professionally. Can you imagine, Roman? A few inches shorter and my entire life would have gone in a completely different direction. I could have been a dancer instead of an art thief.”
She laughed wildly and he couldn’t help but crack a tiny smile at her audacious humour while taking her life into her hands on the edge of an almost four-storey drop. Fuck, she held his life in her small hands, too. If she fell, so did he.
“It doesn’t matter what direction your life had gone, mi esposa, you are still a little psycho,” Roman said affectionately, despite the rage and fear still pumping through his veins.
She laughed and nodded in agreement, dropping her leg and stretching into some kind of bowing finish with her arms held high over her head. Her blazing blue eyes locked on his. His heart sped up, knowing she was headed toward some kind of grand finale. And not the kind that ended with him handcuffed to a hospital bed and her gone from his life. Fuck, he thought she’d ripped his heart out of his chest a year ago when she’d done that to him. Now, he realized, at least he knew she was safe and sound wherever she had gone. Faced with this situation, he would a thousand times prefer to have her run from him than put herself in danger.
“There is something else I studied over the years besides ballet and gymnastics. Something that fed the dark adrenaline junkie in me. Something you never could have found out about. I didn't practice this past year, because I knew you had me followed all over the world, you stalker. I hope I’m not too out of practice or this is going to hurt.”
“I don't care, Katie,” he growled and then softened his tone until he was pleading, sensing that she was getting closer and closer to her point. He desperately wanted to stall. “Just please, come down. I’ll give you anything you want. We’ll negotiate if that’s what you want. Please, don't do this, please don't do whatever you’re thinking of doing, mi mujer, mi esposa.”
“You won’t,” she said sadly, straightening and dropping her arms, all pretence at play gone. She stood on the ledge, looking down at him like she was his queen, her eyes cutting straight through him as she spoke. “You’ll take me and lock me back up. Just like you said. We’re caught in a broken love story, Roman. You want me desperately and you’re terrified I’ll disappear from your life. For my part, I’ve messed up by pushing you away because I never thought I was good enough for you. And now that I know I am good enough to be your equal, you don't think I’m strong enough to stand by your side.”
“What do you want from me, Katerina?” he asked, his voice rough with anguish. He dropped to his knees and slapped a hand over her name on his bare chest, knowing that there was nothing more he could do. He’d begged, he’d threatened. Nothing moved her.
Finally, he saw it. A flicker of truth in her eyes, something other than the perpetual guarded pain that was her entire existence. It was the blazing love she felt only for him. The love she so rarely let free. She smiled slightly.
“Now that is the question I’ve been waiting eighteen years for you to ask, mi amor,” she whispered on the wind. “Come find me and I will tell you.”
She looked away from him and jumped off the roof.