Lie to Me (8 page)

The line clicked into silence.

It hit Alexei then, what Sasha had been trying to convey. Kadir knew her personally. Which made no sense. While whores were common enough, showing them off was unheard of. A man caught with a mistress risked disgrace on his entire family. So why would Saeed introduce Sasha to his peers?

Alexei didn’t like the immediate answer. Kadir knew Sasha because Saeed shared her body.

Something wholly unfamiliar reached up from his gut and tightened
a fist around his throat. He’d known she belonged to Saeed, had even delivered her to the life of private consort. Now, jealousy was another thing he could add onto his list of hatreds. In thirty-two years, he couldn’t say he’d ever felt it. But as it burned through his veins, there was no denying that the idea of Kadir fucking Sasha made Alexei want to put a bullet between his fellow operative’s eyes.

“Well that was brilliant,” Sasha muttered. “Why don’t you broadcast it over the news that I’m with you? Maybe then we can have all of the UAE chasing us.”

Alexei arched one golden eyebrow. “Thinking a little highly of yourself tonight?” He let out a dry chuckle. “Your precious little mouth might drop a man to his knees, but I doubt many would hunt you down.”

Anger turned Sasha’s pretty blue eyes into shards of glass. For a minute, Alexei thought she might reach across and give him the slap that insult deserved. Instead, she answered in a disturbingly level tone. “No. Just him.”

S
ounds to me like she knows our Kadir.” Grigoriy’s gaze caught Sasha’s, seeking confirmation.

She gave him an affirmative nod before fixing her scowl on Alexei once more. He was out of line, and she was sick and tired of his attitude.

The slight, momentary widening of his eyes gave her a measure of satisfaction. When he opened his mouth to speak, then quickly snapped it shut, she almost gloated. Would have, if the night hadn’t been such a crazy combination of topsy-turvy emotion.

Grigoriy voiced her satisfaction with a low rasp of laughter. “She’s full of surprises, Alexei. What did Kadir call her? A treasure? I’m thinking I agree.” He tossed Sasha a wink that made it difficult to retain her boiling anger.

The man could have been downright likeable if their circumstances were different. If he wasn’t carting her off to her father. If he weren’t paired up with the damnably sexy Alexei, who seemed to have earmarked the word
asshole
for his exclusive use.

So much for longing to see Alexei again. She’d be glad to get the hell away.

“Sasha, kitten, why don’t you tell us how you know Kadir?” Grigoriy suggested quietly.

She couldn’t hold back the sharp remark that had been budding since Alexei shot Saeed. “I thought Alexei had everything all figured out. Plan A. Plan B. Hail Mary.” A scoff slipped free. “Kill the sheikh.”

Warning flashed behind Alexei’s eyes, hard, cold, and dangerous.

She held his gaze, meeting him challenge for unspoken challenge. “If you’d done better research, you’d know Kadir bin Imran’s been playing both sides of your little game.”

Both men visibly tensed, their posture stiffening.
Damn it.
She hadn’t meant to let on that she understood what had happened with the human trafficking ring so intimately. Doing so risked revealing the years she’d spent employed by the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation. As a senior defensive weapons engineer, her job with the FSB hadn’t related to undercover operations—not technically, at least—but she’d been through enough training to understand the intricacies that were required to expose Amir’s human trafficking ring. Her familiarity with the
Bratva
and how deep the organization ran filled in the remaining holes.

All things she couldn’t risk revealing unless she wanted to spend the rest of her life in jail. If she even made it that far before her father and the
Bratva
found her.

“What do you know about Kadir?” Alexei asked with frightening calm.

Sasha winced as she tried to straighten her legs, only to have her swollen ankle protest the movement. She bent over to gingerly massage the rapidly purpling skin. “He’s been trying to buy me from Saeed for the last year and a half.”

She waited long enough for the meaning to sink in before she looked up at Alexei. He exchanged a wary glance with Grigoriy, then turned a narrowed frown on her. “That’s impossible. Six months ago he—”

“Was offering a million and a half.” Releasing her tender ankle, she leaned back against the leather seats.

When those damnable light green eyes slid back to Grigoriy’s and understanding registered in Alexei’s expression, Sasha knew she’d driven her point home. But the night had been too long, too full of jubilant highs and heartbreaking lows to let the remark stand alone. In
need of some way to deliver the cutting blows Alexei had meted out to her, she couldn’t resist one more barb. “Guess we’ll see what he’s willing to pay once I’m in his personal jet, won’t we?”

Alexei’s lips pursed into such a harsh line they went white.

Grigoriy silenced whatever retort brewed behind that tight mouth. “Don’t have much choice, kitten. We have to get out of the Arab world before word spreads about Saeed’s death. The only ride we’ve got is beyond those gates.” He nodded at the windshield.

Sasha’s gaze flicked to the heavy iron gates surrounding a tall clay wall less than five hundred yards away. Every instinct she possessed ordered her to run. But with these two men nearby, she didn’t dare be foolish enough to try. They’d catch her with very little effort, particularly given her injured ankle.

Suddenly very afraid of what might happen if she got on that waiting Gulfstream jet, she huddled into the seat, wishing, as she had the last time she’d been truly afraid, that Alexei would take her into his arms.

But the tender man who could take betrayal and turn it into forgiveness, the man who could make her melt with just a touch of his hand against her cheek, was lost to her now. For a moment, as his cock thrust deep inside her body and his gaze latched onto hers, she’d glimpsed that tenderness, had held the man who had lived in her dreams. For whatever reason, he disappeared mere seconds later, his flesh sliding from hers, his eyes shuttered against whatever brief emotion she might have witnessed.

She wanted it back, wanted him back, wanted Saeed back. Only this time, she didn’t want Saeed in her bed. Just Alexei and the amazing feel of his body against hers, his cock possessing her, taking her harder, deeper, slowly driving her insane with the need for more.

Teardrops pricked her eyes. She blinked them back. Nothing would make her cry in front of Alexei.

A
s the car pulled to a stop beside the Gulfstream’s lowered entrance door, Alexei let out a long, measured breath. He eyed the waiting crewman at the top of the stairs, then quickly took stock of their surroundings, searching for the out-of-place person, the not-quite-right shadow that would alert him to imminent danger. He saw nothing but the blinking lights on the jet’s wings and tail. No displaced automobile, no extra personnel milling about.

Nothing to indicate this might be one of Kadir’s carefully laid traps.

Still, he couldn’t shake a measure of unease. At the same time, something about Sasha’s story didn’t ring right. Sure, Opals had been known to play their covers to their advantage. Some had even crossed the line into almost criminal. But Kadir took pride in his reputation as the elite of the elite. He wouldn’t jeopardize everything he’d worked for over a bedroom toy. Not when his money and assumed identity made it possible for him to take his pick of the women he wanted.

No, she couldn’t be telling the truth.

Alexei opened his door, latched onto Sasha’s wrist, and tugged her out onto the tarmac alongside him. She took a wobbly step, then let out a muffled yelp. Holding her left foot off the ground, she leaned on his arm for support.

His gaze dropped down to her sandaled foot. Shit. He’d thought she was bruised—landed on a stone or something. But even the cloud cover that dimmed the pale yellow light of the moon couldn’t disguise the swelling on her left ankle.

Tonight kept getting better and better.

Muttering a stream of Russian curses, he bent and swept her into his arms. Mistake. As soon as she looped her arms around his neck to keep from slipping, her soft curves melted into his tight body. The light scent of the exotic oils on her skin wafted to his nose, filling his ears with the sounds of her needy whimpers. In less time than it took to blink, his cock was hard, his body hungry for hers. God, he’d fucked her a scant hour ago. That should have been enough to keep the sexual urge dormant. When that rare primal need hit, one good romp was
enough to tide him over for weeks at a time. But Sasha was doing it to him again, just like she had two years ago. She managed to tap into something inside him he’d thought was dead and awakened a relentless ache that refused to subside.

Sheer force of will allowed him to swallow down bubbling annoyance. He shifted her in his arms and glanced down at her upturned face. Blue eyes met his, their tormented light shining with the pain that crept through in her quiet yelp.

“You okay?” he asked, hating that he even cared.

She nodded, but her brief wince told the truth. Almost grateful, he accepted her lie. Right now he didn’t have it in him to find compassion. His emotions were all over the place, arousing feelings he didn’t know what to do with, and he didn’t feel like letting anger subside long enough to let those foreign sensations rise to his conscious awareness.

At a hurried pace, he carried her up the stairs, Grigoriy whistling at his heels like the whole night had been one monumental roller coaster and he couldn’t wait to get back on the train to take the upside-down loops again. Any other night, Alexei would have shared his partner’s sense of adventure. The thrills were part of what kept him in the Black Opals. Tonight, though, he’d like to backhand that whistle into silence.

Striding down the black wool carpet, he took Sasha to the divan and laid her in the seat. Her gaze caught his, troubled, full of all the strain she’d been put through tonight. He couldn’t deal with her upset on top of his own, so he turned away, nearly colliding into his partner’s chest.

Grigoriy’s jaunty tune faded on one long, drawn-out sound of appreciation. “That’s some bruise.” He bent down to run a lone finger over Sasha’s purple-streaked ankle. “You need ice.”

“Ice is in the rear galley, sir,” the crewmember stated. “Is there anything else you need? Or shall I instruct the pilot to depart?”

Leaving Grigoriy to play nursemaid, Alexei directed his attention to the short, uniformed man. “We’re ready to depart.”

“Very well then, sir. The intercom to your right links into the cockpit if you change your mind. I am to tell you to make yourselves comfortable, and we shall arrive in approximately four hours.” Backing down the aisle toward the cockpit, the man touched an overhead cargo bay. “Pillows and blankets are here, if you would like to rest. I assure you they are the finest quality.”

Looking around at the luxurious gray and black leather seats, the matching wool carpeting, and the deep cherry accent wood, Alexei didn’t doubt for a minute the bedding would be anything less than the finest. Kadir’s G2 broadcasted his amassed wealth like a flashing neon sign. Alexei nodded to the crewman, ignoring the way Grigoriy opened the cargo bay, pulled out a full-size pillow, and tucked it behind Sasha’s head.

Alexei settled into one of the armchairs facing the divan. At his elbow, a trim black LCD monitor rotated through a series of beach scenes. He glanced around for a keyboard, a mouse—anything that would operate the computer. Finding nothing, he touched the screen.

It lit up, revealing a series of icons that handled the cabin’s climate control, stereo, and lighting. Alexei shook his head. Some people just couldn’t find enough ways to waste money. If he had millions to burn, he wouldn’t spend it on a plane. He’d have his own damn private island.

Grigoriy finally stopped fussing over Sasha and sat across from Alexei. “You going to call this in to Clarke and Hughes or am I?”

Alexei grimaced. The one phone call he wanted to make even less than the call to Kadir was to Kevin Clarke, the Black Opals’ director, and Oliver Hughes, England’s MI6 director, who they were presently reporting to. Killing the sheikh Hughes had specifically intended to groom for further operations after this one was concluded wouldn’t go over well, to say the least. When Hughes heard Saeed was dead, he’d have Alexei’s ass for breakfast. When Clarke learned the news, he’d chew up whatever parts were left. Neither would particularly believe Alexei hadn’t had a choice. Not when his body count had recently climbed so high.

One more to add to the ever-growing list.
He glanced at Sasha. At least the prize was on its way home. The two directors couldn’t say he’d failed in his mission objective.

Letting out a grunt, Alexei fished his phone out of his pocket. “I’ll call.”

“You seem…distracted.” Grigoriy’s gaze pointedly slanted to Sasha. “Usually you’d have dialed by now.”