Kissing My Killer (13 page)

I wasn’t capable of speech. It felt as if my heart had ballooned in my chest, blocking my voice. “
Mm-hmm
,” I managed.
Alexei!

“You need to be more careful,” he muttered. And with that he got into the car and slammed his door.

I quickly got in beside him. He pulled away immediately and I waited a few minutes for him to calm down before I asked, “Did you find out who
Seventeen
is?”

“No, but we’re going to see a man who will.” He was gradually relaxing and something else was replacing the anger. “He’ll see us, but….”

“What?”

He swallowed. “Something I need to tell you, about place we’re going....” He was looking very determinedly out of the windshield, avoiding my eyes. Was he...was Alexei
embarrassed?

“What?”

For just a second, he glanced at me. Yes, he was embarrassed and...something else. A hint of excitement he was trying hard to hide. “We won’t be able to wear any clothes.”

Alexei

Her first reaction was to grin. Then she realized I was serious. “No clothes?”

I nodded. And tried to keep looking at the road because I was worried she’d see how excited I was at the possibility of seeing her naked again.

Idiot!
All I was doing was torturing myself. I still couldn’t stop thinking about how she’d looked through the sniper scope. This would be up close and in person. Close enough to...touch.

Except I could never touch her. I could never even let her know how I felt about her. I couldn’t start something because, with this girl, once I started there was no way I’d be able to turn back. I wouldn’t be able to stop until I’d kissed every inch of her sweet flesh, until I’d plundered her body in every conceivable way. But the thought of her innocence, ruined by my sins, didn’t bear thinking about. I had to get her out of this thing, alive and unharmed, and give her back the life she should have had. Let her go back to that civilian world where things are safe and warm and comfortable.

A little voice inside me asked if that was true, if she’d ever really lived in that world...or if she’d been eking out an existence in a kind of limbo, holed up in that apartment with no contact with anyone. It asked me if maybe, she was just as lonely as me.

I crushed the voice down. Even no life was better than the one I could give her. She shouldn’t have the hands of a killer—

Running down her back, over her ass—

Cupping her breasts, thumbs stroking her nipples—

My hands tightened on the steering wheel.
Stop thinking like that!

The more I got angry with myself, the more I found myself back in the strip club.
Come on,
the drunk guy had said.
She belongs here.

Even as I’d tensed with rage, the second guy had joined in.
She’d look great up there.

I’d lost it. I
never
lost my temper and now I’d done it twice in as many days. I’d wanted to pound them both into the ground, render them just stains on the carpet for even daring to suggest that Gabriella belonged in that filthy, criminal place.

But not all of the anger had been directed outward. I’d been kicking myself for ever taking her there, and for leaving her alone, and for one more thing….

The image the men’s words had conjured up in my mind. The idea of the gorgeous, soft-skinned Gabriella up on a podium in
Soblazn
, her innocence the perfect counterpart to the seediness of the place. The men had been drunk idiots, but they were right about one thing: she had the perfect stripper body, with her full natural breasts and flaring hips. Thinking about her stripping, revealing that glorious body inch by inch...it was the definition of purity corrupted.

And it had me hard as a rock in my pants. Just like the thought of fucking her.

Her innocence was utterly captivating and it made me fiercely protective of her...but the dark parts of me wanted to see her spread and arching under me, hear her calling out my name as I buried myself in her. I wanted to knead those silky-soft breasts until she begged for my mouth and then stroke the hardened nipples against my lips. I wanted to take this angel and make her into my own, personal succubus.

And that’s exactly why I had to keep my distance. She was too fucking tempting for me to ever stop, once I got going, and I couldn’t drag her down to my level.

And that’s why the next half hour was going to be exquisite torture.

I pulled up outside the baths. “We’re here.”

You would never find the place if you didn’t have the address. There was no sign, just a plain wooden door in a nondescript stone building that must have been a hundred years old. I led Gabriella inside, through the maze of different businesses. She stared at them as she passed: dressmakers and cell phone repair companies and people riveting Gucci logos onto handbags.

We went down two flights of stone stairs, the street noise fading away and the air growing steadily warmer and moister. When I opened the next door, the temperature rose by a good ten degrees. An unsmiling woman with ferociously red hair looked us up and down from behind her desk.

“We’re here to see Vadim,” I told her. “Tell him it’s Alexei.”

The woman stomped off down a corridor and I heard her speak to someone in Russian—probably Vadim’s bodyguard. She returned a moment later and nodded. “You know the way?”

I nodded and led Gabriella by the hand. I’d noticed that I’d started to do that—take her hand whenever we were moving together, even when it wasn’t strictly necessary.

We went through a door and the temperature shot up again, to the point where clothes started to feel uncomfortable. We were in a small tiled room lined with big metal lockers—there couldn’t have been more than twelve in total. A basket of white towels sat in one corner.

I turned to Gabriella. “Okay,” I said. “Take off your clothes.”

Gabriella

I stared down at the tiles beneath my feet. They were a complex mosaic of black and white swirls and looked very, very old. “Um…”

“It is rules,” said Alexei. “Sorry.”

I wondered if he was really sorry. He looked sorry, but in the car I was sure I’d seen a hint of something else. A flash of raw lust at the thought of seeing me naked. All the moments we’d shared so far came back to me: his hand on my wrist, in the coffee shop; him on top of me, in my apartment; the way he’d been so protective of me, in the strip club.

He took his jacket off and I saw the holster he wore underneath. I gulped—I’d known it was there, but seeing it was still a shock. I’d never even seen a gun, in real life, until he’d pointed one at me, but Alexei just took the holster off and laid it in his locker like it was nothing at all. Then he rolled up his pants leg and there was another holster there, with another gun.
Jesus.
I just stood there staring like a moron. I could see faint hints of his Bratva tattoos through his shirt—and then, as he started to unbutton it, the harsh, black ink of them.
He’s so completely different to me. He lives in a whole different world.
I knew I was staring and I could feel he was aware of it, the tension building and building. I wanted to say something, but I had no idea how to even process something like this.

And then something happened that I
could
react to, a chance to delay things: he took out his phone.

“
That’s
your phone?” I blurted.

He turned and frowned. “What is wrong with phone?”

It was an ancient Nokia, a thick block of plastic with actual buttons you pushed and a one inch screen. “Please tell me it’s a retro-cool thing.” I stared at his uncomprehending face. “Oh God—it isn’t, is it?”

He shrugged. “It is simple. I like simple.”

I took my own phone out of my purse. “But new phones have cameras. And apps! And email and... I can even track this on my laptop, if it gets stolen, and find out where it is. What do you do if you lose
that?”

He looked blank. “Buy another one.” Then he nodded at my clothes. “You should get undressed.”

I swallowed. So much for delaying things.

The idea of him seeing me naked terrified me. I barely knew him! And yet, at the same time, it sent a scarlet ribbon of heat twisting down my body, finishing at my groin. I glanced around, but there were no cubicles, nowhere to hide.

I settled for turning my back. I opened a locker and concentrated
very very hard
on the empty interior as I began to take off my clothes. My sweater, first—that was easy enough. I mean, I wouldn’t even be wearing that if it wasn’t so damn cold outside. I stripped it off over my head and put it in the locker.

Next, my blouse. Well, he’d already seen me in my underwear, back at the motel. So I unfastened it all the way and took it off. Then my sneakers and socks. Then, with shaking hands, I unfastened my jeans and bent to push them down my legs. I folded everything up and put them in my locker, surprised to find I was a little light-headed.
I probably straightened up too quickly.

Now I was about to cross a line. This was the most of me he’d seen.

I reached back and felt for the clasp of my bra. Usually not a problem but—dammit, it was stuck—why wouldn’t it—

Warm hands suddenly took the straps from my fumbling fingers. My whole body went tense. The hands effortlessly unclipped the bra clasp and then retreated.

I swallowed. “Thank you,” I said in a strangled voice. Every beat of my heart seemed to reverberate throughout me, as if I’d turned into one giant kettle drum. The vibrations filled my ears and throat, shuddered outward through my breasts to ache and tingle at my nipples. They throbbed downward through my legs and back up to my groin, leaving me trembling.

I hooked one shoulder strap off me, then the other. I held onto the bra until the last possible moment and then tossed it into the locker along with everything else. And then I was standing there topless, my back to Alexei.
How much can he see?
I wasn’t certain. My breasts are on the large side so they weren’t hidden completely by my body. Even if I was
precisely
angled away from him, he could probably see some side boob.

I glanced down at my panties—simple black briefs. I hooked my thumbs into them and—

He’d stopped moving.

Sometimes, you aren’t aware of a noise until it stops. I realized now that I’d been hearing little movements and rustles of clothing behind me...but now they’d suddenly ended.

He was standing there, watching me.

You don’t know that.

Yes I do.

My heart seemed to speed up ten-fold. I was panting and I couldn’t pretend it was just due to the heat and humidity. I felt drunk on adrenaline, every square inch of revealed skin throbbing, so much more alive than ever before. I felt like—

I felt like one of the strippers, back in the strip club. Stripping off for men.

Stripping off for
my
man.