Oh, god.
Sasha moaned against the wild sensations, the wickedness of this glorious possession. Her body moved of its own accord, accepting both men, inviting all the pleasure their skillful loving offered.
As she rocked between them, Saeed and Vasily alternated their thrusts in perfect counter motion. There was no relief to be found. Each thrust pushed her higher. Edged her closer to what she knew would be cataclysmic release.
Sasha writhed against the intense pleasure. Eyes shut tight, she tossed her head side to side, arched and bucked. Visions from the past swamped her, Vasily’s slow, deliberate thrusts a surreal mirror to the night she had never forgotten, the last night with Alexei. She allowed Alexei’s memory to grow, to deepen until it swallowed her whole, and the ecstasy brimming in her veins came not from two men, but from one she couldn’t tear out of her heart, no matter how he’d betrayed her.
On the verge of fragmenting, her nails dug into Vasily’s forearms, and her native Russian tumbled off her lips, not the English she’d become used to speaking in Dubai. “Please, sweet heaven…Please…”
T
here was only one voice in the world that held such beautiful music. Alexei’s head snapped up. He knew, even before his eyes blinked open, what he would see. When they did, one wave of pleasure after another tripped down his spine until he felt the burn in his balls. In Sasha’s frantic tossing and turning, the damn blindfold had come untied.
It draped uselessly alongside her delicate neck, freeing her long, blonde hair. Silken strands clung to her perspiration-dampened face, across her shoulder and between the cleft of her breasts. Rapture softened a face he had never forgotten.
Irina.
Her name tore through him, flaying him into tattered pieces. He bit down on his tongue to stop the entreaty from slipping free and stared at the woman who haunted his dreams, dimly aware of Saeed’s husky groan of release.
He couldn’t move. Fought for the ability to breathe. He had prayed she survived the hell he put her in. Had dared to dream she might have been one of the lucky ones. Yet duty forbade him the ability to seek her out personally, and for two and a half years, he had lived in unknowing torment. Now she was here, lying beneath him as he had craved in the darkest corners of his heart. Holding on to him as her pussy clamped around his throbbing cock.
She was the only woman he had ever connected with in bed. And right now, he felt her so deeply, he would swear they were one being.
Her scream filled his ears, grinding his body into a tight knot. He had never failed to lose complete control. Never once lost himself so deeply inside a woman that he feared he might not surface. And yet, as that high-pitched keening sound trailed off into a strangled moan, he feared just that. Long, thick, strawberry lashes lifted. Sky-blue eyes connected with his. Distant at first, then clearing as recognition registered.
“Alexei,” she breathed.
His breath caught, and then his body convulsed. Climax tore through him with a cyclone’s force. He couldn’t have stopped it even if he wanted to—she stripped him of every last ounce of control he’d ever possessed. His body pumped into hers, the clench of her womb milking him dry.
Stunned to the bottom of his soul, he collapsed against her, robbed of the ability to function. Irina. Here. In his arms. Her fingers sliding
through his hair, across his unshaven cheek. The sound of her heartbeat drumming steadily beneath his ear.
Through his haze, he became aware of the way her hands framed his face, the soft kiss she pressed to his forehead. Even more slowly, the full measure of what had just happened seeped into his awareness. Saeed eased from beneath Irina’s limp body, the tension in his jaw unmistakable. But Alexei realized that line of fury had little to do with breaking Saeed’s rule of not coming inside the girl, even if he was wearing a condom.
No. Bigger things were at stake here. Irina had just blown Alexei’s cover into bits. Everyone in Dubai knew the name Alexei. Knew the destruction he’d brought to the ring of human trafficking.
Well, everyone who’d ever had a financial stake in it at least. The power players, men like Saeed and his father.
Yet judging from the tears in Irina’s eyes, he very much doubted she knew the good he’d done. How he had torn apart his soul to stop the trafficking. How when Natalya exposed Dmitri Gavrikov’s role, Alexei had personally disposed of every despicable bastard he could until the Opals called him back and reigned him in. How he’d coordinated the return of nearly all the enslaved women. Irina wouldn’t understand those things.
Sasha, not Irina, he amended. She had a grief-stricken father to prove the name she’d given him in Moscow was false.
A
lexei.
The tears brimming in Sasha’s eyes spilled down her cheeks. She’d never thought she would see him again, and yet, by some miracle, he was here. His palms sliding down her ribs, his ragged breath falling across her breasts. She fit her hands against his firm, narrow hips, attempting to wrap her arms around him, momentarily oblivious to Saeed’s presence in the room.
Before she could hold his warm, perspiration-slicked body close, Alexei eased himself from within her, his expression tight, his sensual mouth a hard, cruel line. He didn’t look at her as he climbed off the bed and stripped off the condom. He tied it quickly, then dropped it in the nearby trash container.
Disoriented and confused, dazed by the powerful climax both men had brought her to, Sasha could barely put two thoughts into a cohesive pattern. All she wanted to do was stop the racket in her head, curl up on her side, and pass out. Sort everything through in the morning when her body didn’t feel like liquid and her brain didn’t resemble burnt toast.
She hadn’t said his name, had she? She’d swear it only ricocheted through her mind. She wouldn’t be that foolish. Alexei was a dead man here.
The thick tension that had descended over the room set off great big gongs of alarm. She lifted to her elbows, watching the way Alexei casually made his way toward his pile of clothes.
Saeed already wore his pants, and he eased into a shirt. But as his
head popped through, his stare tracked Alexei. Predatory hunger glinted in those usually warm dark eyes.
Just like that, she knew. She hadn’t merely called out to Alexei in her head. She’d said his name. And Saeed had heard.
Shit!
Sasha scrambled to her knees, modesty kicking in and forcing her to clutch the sheets to her breasts. Alexei’s sharp gaze cut to her. The directive was clear:
Not another fucking word.
Shit, shit, shit!
He’d come back to her, and she’d issued an order for execution.
“Sasha, go into your bathroom. Fill the tub. I will join you in a moment.” Saeed never took his eyes off Alexei. “
Vasily
is leaving now.”
In all the time she’d spent with Saeed, not once had she heard such malice in his voice. Low and deadly, it blanketed the room. Alexei sensed it too. Halfway to his pile of clothing, he froze, shoulders at attention, spine stiff. Alert.
He hesitated only a second, before he slowly turned around. Light green eyes skimmed over Saeed, landed on her, then locked back on the other man’s malevolent glare. “
Sasha
will stay put.”
This was going from bad to worse by the second. Like two lions facing off over territorial rights, Saeed and Alexei stared at each other. Waiting for one to move, so the other could counter. Neither particularly interested in what, specifically, she did, but both attuned to her presence.
She had to do something before one of them made a foolish mistake. What though? The only guns around here were on Saeed’s security. She certainly didn’t own one. Even if she did, who exactly would she turn it on? Saeed, who would destroy Alexei in a heartbeat, or Alexei, who was here…
Why the hell was he here?
She shook off her hesitation and squinted at Alexei. But as she opened her mouth to voice the obvious question, the room erupted in chaos.
Saeed lunged for the telephone on the long table near the door. Alexei dove over a silk-covered divan, clearing the rest of the short distance to his clothes. As he thumped against the ground, Saeed barked into the phone.
“Hanif, send—”
Like dynamite going off in a cave, a gunshot echoed through the room. The sound ripped through Sasha, tearing a scream from her lungs. She doubled over, waiting for the burn, waiting for physical pain to connect with her subconscious reasoning. She’d been shot. The
Bratva
finally found her and she was at last paying the price.
But nothing happened. No fire invaded her veins, no warm languor threatened to pull her under into the realm of the dead. She lifted her head as Saeed sagged down the wall to the marble floor, leaving a wide streak of crimson against the peach-colored paint.
“Saeed!” His name exploded off her lips, and she bolted from the bed, nearly tripping in the tangle of covers. “Saeed!”
No, no, this wasn’t happening. Not Saeed. Not the man who’d given her life.
She hit her knees at his side and gathered his head in her lap. Dark eyes that had always held so much pleasure in the world around him stared up lifelessly. Empty. No longer able to laugh at her foolish worries or calm her fears.
“Oh, Saeed,” she whispered, cradling his heavy shoulders in her shaking arms.
F
uck.
Alexei yanked on his pants. He really hadn’t wanted to kill the guy. It would have been nice to beat him for all the things he’d forced Sasha to do, pulverize his face a little, but he sincerely hadn’t wanted to kill Saeed. He was damn tired of pulling triggers and taking lives.
They could have handled this simply, with Saeed sitting in the chair and Alexei tying him up until his moronic security guards realized
their sheikh was missing. Alexei didn’t give a damn about the blown cover—he didn’t need it anymore and word would spread that the real Vasily had been caught before the name would be of use to anyone else. But no. Saeed failed to understand a Black Opal never failed at a mission. It just didn’t fucking happen. Alexei had come here to get Sasha, and he damn well wasn’t leaving without her.
He tugged on his shirt and sport coat. The way he figured it, he had about five minutes, max, before whoever Hanif was connected the shot with Sasha’s grieving, and Saeed’s entire security detail came blasting through that door. Alexei glanced out the window. Lights came on near the small building beside the palace entrance, and a dozen men poured out, heading for the main doors.
Between two Rolls SUVs, the black Mercedes’s lights flipped on. Grigoriy must have heard the shot. Alexei holstered his gun, let out a sigh, and braved the grieving Sasha. “You should get dressed.”
She pulled back from Saeed’s lifeless body, her face a mask of horrified shock. “You’re out of your mind! What the hell is going on?”
Alexei blocked the notes of pain that clung to her voice. They didn’t have time to breach that dam. He purposefully crossed the room and pried her away from Saeed, easing her back on her unsteady legs. He’d almost rather she faint. That way he could cart her out of here without any further hassle.
To his dismay, her wobbling stopped, and she gave his chest a hard shove that launched her backward out of his grasp. “Get the hell away from me, Alexei. Haven’t you caused enough damage?”
Enough he’d rot in hell eternally. But that was another conversation they didn’t have time for.
Footsteps echoed behind the door.
Alexei gestured at a pair of closed, louvered doors, which he assumed was a closet. “Get dressed. We’re leaving.”
“I’m not leaving!” She dropped onto the edge of the bed, seemingly oblivious to her current state of nakedness. “You just killed someone I cared about. I want answers. Why the
hell
did you come back here?”
“To get
you
out. Only I didn’t know it was you.” Doing her work for her, he grabbed a light blue blouse from the back of a nearby chair and threw it into her lap. “Get dressed. You’ve got three minutes before all hell breaks loose.”
She glared at him, a stubborn set to her jaw.
He leaned a hip against the chair’s back and folded his arms across his chest. Two could play this game, and Alexei would guarantee he won. She might not be the skinny, vulnerable waif she once was, but he could still carry her easily. And he’d toss her stubborn butt out that window if he had to. He’d much rather her come to the decision on her own, however. He didn’t want to answer to why she had broken bones.
He waited until the doorknob rattled and fists shook the heavy wood. Then, he lifted an eyebrow.
Sasha shook her head more slowly. Her protest came out soft, lacking her earlier defiance. “I’m not going anywhere. This is my home, Alexei.”
Her home? For God’s sake, she was a slave. If tonight didn’t make that perfectly clear, he’d be more than happy to remind her of the other escapades Saeed had put her through. Possessions didn’t stick around. They got passed on. Handed down to the next interested person.
“Let me put it to you this way, bright eyes.” He pointed at Saeed’s bleeding form. “He’s gone. You will now belong to one of his brothers. Seeing how Kaliq prefers men, I doubt it will be him. Which leaves Mohammad. And the way I hear it, he’s got a finger fetish of the pickled and jarred kind.”
The banging on the door intensified, more fists adding to the racket, shouts escalating into an angry roar.
Alexei glanced at the disturbance, then looked back at Sasha’s ghost-white face. “If you aren’t attached to your hand, you can stay put in your pretty little bed. Or, you can go out this window with me.”
Her scowl narrowed, but she didn’t so much as flinch in the direction of the closet.
Damn, she’d never been so aggravatingly stubborn before. He would have sworn she had sense. Then again, she’d been strong when she discovered what he intended to do with her. That strength, that nerve, was part of what made her so unforgettable.
A metallic
ping
resonated from the tiles near the door as one of the pins on the hinges gave way.