His rifle in one hand, he calmly tapped on the touchscreen, and I saw the gate open on the video feed.
His intense gaze never left mine, and I realized his eyes weren’t brown. They were the color of the storm raging outside. Forest green, charcoal gray and deep woods brown, the colors swirled together and confused me.
“You don’t need his money.” His deep voice wasn’t just quieter than Viktor’s, it was frighteningly more commanding.
“You don’t know what I need. Viktor does.” The lie didn’t just taste like a bitter mistake, it filled my mouth and spread through my veins like poison.
He scanned my face. “No, he doesn’t.”
I watched with sick dread as the small security panel on the wall switched camera angles every few seconds, showing the big black SUV as Peter drove it up the driveway. “I need to get my suitcase.” I turned.
He was so quick, I didn’t expect it. With silent precision, he’d stepped in front of me and his gunshot arm rose as he gripped the side of my face. “Do you want to be his slave?”
Chills ran up my back and spread at the sound of his voice and the commanding precision of his touch.
I shuddered.
Not wife. Not submissive. Not property.
Slave.
Five letters. One syllable. One definition.
He knew.
This man had spent only minutes in my company, but he knew.
No one knew.
Not Peter, not my mother, not any of the other bodyguards. They took me shopping, they drove me to Alex’s, they watched what Viktor did to me, but they saw a woman who appeared to be free to come and go. They didn’t know. They didn’t know the first month of my marriage was spent in a single room. They knew nothing except what Viktor told them, and he said I was his wife.
But this wounded marine knew.
I wanted to hate his touch, but oh God, I didn’t. “Who shot you?”
As if he knew we were beyond lies, he answered truthfully. “A mark.”
I knew Viktor wasn’t only into real estate. I saw guns around the house. I knew women were sometimes kept in the carriage house for the bodyguards. I ignored all of it. But I wasn’t going to ignore what this stranger who touched me with more gentleness than anyone else in five years was telling me.
“You’re a hit man or an escort?” Because he’d given me more than one piece of information.
“I make people’s problems go away. For a price.”
“Because you like to kill?” I wasn’t stupid. I knew why he was telling me this, and I knew the consequences of ever uttering a word about it to anyone. I would find myself on the other end of his rifle. Stupidly, that wasn’t what alarmed me.
He kept up the honesty. “Because I have a skill set not many people have.”
“And not fucking for free?” That’s what alarmed me. Not what he did with his rifle, but my reaction the second he’d said he charged money for sex. I never got jealous. There was nothing in my life worth being jealous over. But the thought of him doing to other women what Alex had done for me made tight spasms churn in my gut.
“My release.”
Two words and I wanted to clutch my arms against the riot in my stomach. “Release.” I drew the ugly word out because releases in my world didn’t come without strings.
His stormy gaze studied me like he could see every demented thought in my head, but he called me on none of it. “I charge women for sex, but I’m not Vega. I don’t do repeat clients.”
I didn’t know which hurt worse, the thought of him with other women or that he would never be with me more than once. Not that either was based in reality, because I wasn’t going to ever feel this man above me and I had no right to be jealous. Viktor was coming.
I glanced over his shoulder at the video feed on the wall as the black SUV pulled up in front of his house. I didn’t remember Viktor having that vehicle, but the weather alone probably made him buy one.
I sucked in a breath and pulled away from the man who’d offered me more in an hour than my husband of five years had. “He is here.”
Dane let me retreat. “You have a choice.”
Choice wasn’t in my vocabulary. “Do you know what happens when you hit bottom?”
“You taste defeat and lose all desire for hope.”
I blinked. It wasn’t his reply that scared me, it was the zero hesitation in answering. And I couldn’t top that with anything except affirmation. “Yes.”
“Bottom isn’t an ex-Force Recon Marine standing in front of you offering a way out.”
The dog jumped up with a growl and rushed to the front door a second before someone pounded on it.
“Hunter.” Dane snapped his fingers without taking his gaze off mine.
The dog quietly whined but sat.
“You’re too late,” I admitted. “I hit bottom four years ago.” I opened the door.
Peter stood in the doorway, soaking wet. “Let’s go,” he barked, his voice carrying over the roar of the storm. “I’m done cleaning up Viktor’s messes, you stupid bitch. Get in the fucking car. You’re going to regret you ever—” He stopped midsentence as his gaze cut to a growling Hunter then traveled over my head. He reached for his gun.
“Irina.”
Hearing Dane say my name for the first time made my heart jump. I turned, but I wasn’t quick enough.
A thick arm went around my neck and Peter jammed his pistol into my temple. Pulling me back to his chest, he used me as a human shield.
Dane stood motionless with his rifle aimed at Peter’s head. “Let her go.”
Peter tightened his grip on my throat. “Who the fuck are you?”
Dane’s lethal glare didn’t waver from Peter’s. “The last person you’ll ever see if you don’t let her go.”
Hunter growled ferociously but stayed by Dane’s side.
“You think I’m stupid?” Peter spit out.
“Where’s Viktor?” I squeaked.
They both ignored me.
“I don’t think,” Dane quipped. “I know.”
Peter scoffed. “You won’t risk shooting her.”
“You don’t know me very well,” Dane countered.
“She’s Viktor Fedorov’s wife.”
“I know who she is.” Calm, controlled, Dane said the words with absolute authority.
I sucked in a breath past Peter’s punishing grip and tried to yell, “Where is Viktor?”
Peter’s gun jammed harder into my skull as his arm crushed my neck. “You’re stupider than you look if you thought he was going to play fetch.”
I gasped for breath.
“Release her,” Dane demanded.
“No.” Peter smirked. “She’s not your property.”
“You think she’s yours?”
“She’s Fedorov’s, and he’ll kill you if you harm her.”
My lungs fought for air, my vision tunneled and I clawed at Peter’s arm.
For a split second, Dane’s glare cut to Peter’s arm. “I’m not the one choking her out.”
Peter loosened his hold only marginally. “We’re leaving. You shoot me, I shoot her.”
“I’m not going to shoot you.” Dane’s aim and lethally calm tone never wavered.
I saw the look in his eyes and I heard the threat in his voice. It made me suck in as much air as I could and force words past my crushed throat. “Dane, stop. Not worth it.”
Peter snickered. “Maybe you should listen to the little slut.”
“I’m not going to shoot you.” Eerily quiet, Dane’s voice carried across his entryway and canceled out the storm. “I’m going to kill you.”
Everything went slow motion.
Dane’s nostrils flared. Hunter lunged. The gun against my temple shifted. Air whipped past my cheek.
Then hot spray covered my face.
The scent of copper filled my lungs. The gun against my temple dropped, and I was falling backward.
My ears rang, my heart pounded, and the muffled thud of a body hitting wood sounded right before I landed on top of Peter as his back hit the porch.
Stinging rain pelted my face and I turned my head.
Oh.
My God.
A bullet hole between his eyes, Peter’s dead gaze sightlessly stared at me.
Dry heaving, I scrambled.
“Stay down,” a voice barked out.
Oh my God.
Heavy boot steps and clicking of dog nails rushed across the porch. Car doors opened then slammed shut. The porch vibrated with footsteps again. “Clear. Get up.”
I shook. My hands, my arms, my legs, everything shook. Driving rain simultaneously spread and washed away Peter’s blood, and I shook harder. My knees spasming in time to the bile trying to leave my body, I couldn’t stand.
He shot him.
I couldn’t breathe.
He shot Peter.
Oh my fucking God.
An arm curled around my waist and lifted.
Panic set in and I kicked out. “Get off me!”
The dog gave a low, warning growl.
“Hunter, stand down.” His voice softened. “I’m not on you. You’re okay, sweetheart.”
“Get off, get off, get off!”
A hand grabbed my chin and forced my face up. Stormy eyes zeroed in on me, and a killer did the one thing I understood. He issued a command. “Take a breath, right now.”
Dominance blanketed my panic and I inhaled.
Dane gripped my chin tight. “Another.”
My body listened and air filled my lungs.
Then he made a crucial mistake. He released me. “Go inside.”
My tether broke.
Anger and fear rushed at me like water from a broken dam. I wasn’t freefalling, I was spiraling. And that spiral landed on a dead Russian bodyguard at my feet.
A bodyguard who’d called me a slut.
Five years of abuse culminated into one single driving force, and I growled with rage at a corpse. “You called me a slut?”
I kicked a dead man.
“I’m a fucking slut?” I kicked again. “You watched me every second of my life for five years and you’re CALLING ME A SLUT?” My heel drove into his stomach. “You know how many dicks I’ve come in contact with?” I stomped on his chest. “One, you motherfucker!” I stomped harder. “One goddamn dick because I’m not a slut. You are!” I kicked and kicked and stomped and stomped until I slipped in blood and fell to my knees.
My hands landed on still warm flesh, then my fists closed and I started pounding.
“You asshole!” Inhuman screams of anger and humiliation cut through hurricane-force winds and carried out into the night as I pummeled a dead body in rage. “I hate you! I hate you I hate you I hate you!”
Strong arms wrapped around me and lifted.
Rain hit my arms like needles and my bare feet slipped through hot, sticky blood. “No.” I wanted to kill Peter.
“Calm down, you’re getting blood everywhere.” Dane set me down and shoved my back against the house.
With the same force I’d used to hit Peter, I hit him. “No! You killed him. You did this! You shot him.” Both of my fists landed against his hard chest.
His fierce storm-colored gaze leveled me with a look, but he didn’t touch me. “Irina.”
The accusations started. “You could’ve killed me! He could’ve shot me! You didn’t care what happened. You didn’t care if he blew my brains out!”
The dog rushed at me with a snarling growl.
His impenetrable mask of control dropped and he roared out a command. “On your knees!”
The anger, the rage, the fear, it all instantly froze as if he’d pushed the pause button for my life. Stunned, I dropped to the porch.
“Stay.”
The dog sat.
My head down, my arms at my sides, I kneeled in utter confusion as Dane searched Peter’s pockets and came away with keys. Using the key fob, he opened the back door to the SUV, then he bent and lifted Peter’s body with the strength and grace of a warrior.
As if he didn’t have four staples in his side or a gunshot wound on his arm, he carried Peter over his shoulder to the SUV and threw him in. Locking the vehicle, he climbed the steps with his automatic rifle strapped to his back. Without breaking stride, he scooped me up like a child and strode into the house.
My shaking turned to shivering and my teeth started to chatter. Both of us soaked, Dane paused only long enough to kick the door shut, lock it, and swipe his finger across the security panel. Then we were moving again.
With the sound of canine steps following us, Dane walked down the hall.
I knew where he was going. I’d searched every inch of his house before he’d gotten here, and there wasn’t anything at the end of the hallway except the master suite.
With a dead man’s blood on my feet and the killer holding me in his arms, my mind bent. “He-he-he’s going to kill me.” Dane would fuck me and Viktor would kill me. “He’ll f-f-find you and he’ll k-k-kill you.”
Dane said nothing.
I tried to force my chattering jaw to still. “I’m dead. You’re d-d-dead.” Everyone was dead.
He walked through his bedroom and into the master bathroom. He didn’t pause, he didn’t speak. He walked into a shower bigger than a closet.
“St-st-stop.”
He didn’t listen.
One swipe of his hand, and water was cascading down on us from two sides and the ceiling. His huge hand gripped a handful of my hair and he set me on my feet as he put my face under the spray.
Forced to hold my breath or drown, I closed my eyes, but my hands went to cover my face.
“Stop,” he commanded. “Wash his blood off.”
Blood. The single word made my eyes open, and the realization of what the hot splatter on face was sank in. Red-tinted water ran off my hands and down my arms as revulsion mixed with horror. My stomach lurched. Black spots crowded my vision, and ringing filled my ears.
Oh God.
My knees buckled.
Grabbing me around the waist, Dane shoved my head between my legs and barked out an order. “Breathe.”
My stomach pressed against my thighs, I dry heaved as my lungs fought for air. “Blood,” I cried. “Everywhere.” My legs, my arms, dripping down my hair, pooling at my feet. So much blood. I clawed at my stained dress. “Get it off!”
Impossibly warm hands whipped my dress up my back and over my bent body, yanking it off. A boot, then a pant-covered knee, then storm-colored eyes came into view. Water cascading down his face, my silk dress bunched in his hand like a rag, Dane gently brushed the material over my face. “We’re washing it off.”
I shook. “Pl-pl-please hurry.”
“Sh,” he murmured, wiping across my mouth, my cheeks. “You’re okay.”
“S-s-soap.”
Dropping my dress, he reached behind him without taking his eyes off mine and grabbed a bar, but he didn’t give it to me. “I’ll clean you up in a minute. Take a deep breath. I don’t want you to faint.”
“N-n-not….” I fought to steady the chatter in my jaw. “Not going to pass out.”
He searched my face, then finally nodded. With utter control and grace, he rose and took me with him. “Slow, deep breaths.”
I panted shallowly, but the warm water pounding down on us eased the chattering. I didn’t care that I was naked in front of him. I wanted Peter’s blood off my body and the bitter taste of copper in my mouth to be gone. “Give me the soap.”
His gaze never leaving mine, he didn’t give it to me. He lathered his hands and issued another command. “Close your eyes.”
I never considered not obeying. I closed my eyes, and rough, calloused hands soaped my face. His thumbs traced my cheekbones and his fingers gently scrubbed my forehead. The heat of his touch soaked into my bones as he scrubbed the blood away.
Tilting my head, he gave me a warning. “Rinsing.”
Water cascaded down my face, but this time I embraced it. Angling my face into the direct spray, I held my breath until large hands gently turned me away.
Afraid to touch my dirty hands to my face, I blinked through the water on my eyelashes and looked up. The hard angles of his face morphed from killer into man, and his stare cut through five years of tempered emotion.
I swallowed. “Your gun.”
Without a word, he slipped the strap over his head and set the riffle in the corner behind him. Reaching for a bottle on a shelf, he continued to stare at me as he poured shampoo into his palm. Slow, as if I would flinch, he raised his hands and spread the earthy-scented shampoo that smelled like him through my hair.
Hands that had pulled a trigger to take a man’s life mere minutes ago massaged soap into my hair. Fingers that shouldn’t feel good ran through my blood-soaked locks, and I closed my eyes. I wanted to feel his hands on me forever.
“He wasn’t here for a retrieval.” His deep voice broke the cocoon of avoidance I was floating in. “He was going to dispose of you.”
“Viktor wouldn’t let anything happen to me.” The response was automatic. Viktor had fed me the lie for so many years, I was reciting it like a puppet even though his bodyguard had held me at gunpoint.
Dane picked up on the obvious. “Did Fedorov or any of his men ever pull a gun on you?”
“No.”
At Dane’s silence, I opened my eyes.
His stormy gaze didn’t waver. “The guard was going to kill you.”
Every minute of the past five years ran through my mind, painting a glaring picture, but I still stupidly questioned it. “You don’t know that.”
“He was a guard.”
“So?” I knew what Peter had been.
“He left his charge.” Dane paused for effect. “In a hurricane.”
Peter had left Viktor’s side many times over the years… hadn’t he? “He’s not with Viktor twenty-four seven.”
“When he’s not with him, he’s not with you.”
Despite the mounting evidence, my mind tried to deny the twisted sentence. “That doesn’t mean anything.” It meant everything. Peter had no loyalty to me.
“What does he usually drive?”
He always drove Viktor’s Maserati sedan. “I don’t know what kind of car he has.”
Dane tilted my head under the water to rinse the shampoo. “When he’s working, what does he drive?”
“Viktor’s car.”
“Which isn’t a stolen SUV.”
Stolen? “How do you know it was stolen?”
“Out-of-state plates, a tourist keychain and a stroller in the back.”
“Maybe he borrowed it.” He didn’t. Peter didn’t know anyone with small children. He knew Viktor and the other bodyguards.
Dane’s hands slid down my hair like he was my lover. “You’re not going back to him.”
I knew I couldn’t. Not now. Viktor would blame me for Peter’s death, and I didn’t want to know what that punishment would entail. “He will come for me.” The mounting evidence, what I knew about Viktor, it should’ve terrified me. But with Dane’s hands in my hair, I stupidly allowed the false sense of security he was offering to wrap around me like a blanket.
“Yes, he will.”
I looked up at the marine who’d already saved my life once today. “What then?”
He didn’t hesitate. “I’ll kill him.”