My back smarting from rug burn, I lie panting and shaking with my arms and legs wrapped around him, his body buried inside mine.
When his breathing finally slows, he lifts his head and gazes into my eyes.
He lets me see everything.
The darkness. The wreckage. The longing. The need. The loneliness that matches mine exactly.
The confusion that we are what we are, but what we should be is enemies.
I whisper, “I know. We don’t have to figure it all out right now.”
His lids flutter closed. He exhales heavily. Then he kisses me again, this time tenderly.
He withdraws from me, presses a soft kiss to each of my breasts, then picks me up in his arms and carries me into the bathroom.
Setting me on my feet, he makes sure I’m steady before he turns on the shower. Then he undresses, takes my hand, and leads me under the warm spray.
He cleans my face with soap and a washcloth. He rinses bear blood from my hair. He washes my body with such care and attention, it seems like someone paid him a great deal of money to do it.
He washes himself as an afterthought, turns off the water and dries us both off with the same towel, then carries me to bed.
“I’ll forget how to walk,” I murmur, my head resting against his strong shoulder.
“If you don’t want to, you’ll never have to walk anywhere again.”
My chest expands. My insides turn squishy.
He means I wouldn’t have to walk because he’d gladly carry me.
He settles me on my back in bed, crawls in beside me, and pulls the covers over us. He slides his arm beneath my neck and flattens a hand over my belly in the same spot he always does, directly over my scar.
Then he puts his nose into my damp hair and inhales.
When he exhales, it sounds like decades of misery have been relieved, like maybe he was just released from prison.
We lie like that for a long time, holding each other, just breathing.
I know I’ll remember this moment for the rest of my life.
When he finally speaks, his voice is soft and drowsy. “When I first saw you, I thought you were homeless.”
Too blissed out to be offended, I laugh instead. “Such a sweet talker.”
“You were so unkempt. Small, gray, and rumpled, like a tissue someone had kept in their pocket too long.”
My eyes widen. “Good god. You might want to consider shutting the hell up, lover boy, or you’ll never get lucky again.”
He squeezes my hip, snuggling me closer. “You made me want to rescue you. To take care of you. I had no idea you were a dragon in disguise, like that tattoo hidden under your hair on the nape of your neck.”
I say grumpily, “Keep talking. You have a lot to make up for.”
His voice drops to a murmur. “A tiny, fire-breathing dragon, who can cut a man down to size with only a few words from her beautiful mouth.”
I ponder that, unsure if it was an insult or a compliment.
“What did you think when you first saw me?”
“That I was about to be featured on an episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.”
After a short pause, he starts to laugh. It’s a purely masculine sound, belly deep and genuine.
I love it.
“I’m surprised you know that reference, considering your hatred of TVs.”
“I never said I hated television. I just don’t have one here.”
“Do you have one at your place in Moscow?”
“Yes.”
“Oh. Why not here?”
He slides his hand from my belly to my breast, cupping it gently and thumbing over my nipple until it hardens. His voice drops.
“Because this is my sanctuary. The only things I keep here are ones I can’t be without.”
I close my eyes, turn my face to his neck, and wait until my heart has resumed beating to say, “So you watch American crime shows, huh?”
“They’re very entertaining. Your criminals are the stupidest in the world.”
“They’re not my criminals.”
He cups my jaw and kisses my forehead. “No. You only have one of those.”
I roll onto my side and cuddle up against him. He gives me a big squeeze. A few minutes of comfortable silence pass, then I whisper, “I almost got eaten by a bear, Mal.”
“Bears don’t eat people. They just slash them to pieces.”
“That’s great,” I say drily. “Thank you.”
“Do you want me to put its stuffed head on the wall where the elk’s used to be?”
“So I can be retraumatized every time I look at it? Pass.”
“You don’t seem traumatized.”
I smile into his chest. “Maybe an orgasm is the cure for PTSD.”
“Or maybe the little boss bitch Khaleesi’s got nothing on my waif.”
“Waif?”
“That’s what I call you in my head sometimes. The demon waif.” After a beat, he says, “Is that bad?”
“Let me overthink it for a minute.”
“Because I don’t want you to be offended.”
“Oh, sure. Who would be offended by being described as a skinny stray from hell?”
“It’s interesting how you made that sound like a death threat.”
“I’m multitalented. Wait until you see me juggle chainsaws while aiming a flamethrower at your head.”
He laughs again. Because I’m pressed against his chest, I feel the rumble of it beneath my cheek and can’t help but smile.
He cups my jaw in his hand, turns my face up to his, and tenderly kisses me.
“Tell me I didn’t hurt you. I’ll never forgive myself if I did.”
I know he isn’t talking about his hideous nickname for me. I gaze into his beautiful eyes, smiling. “Only in the best way.”
When he cocks a brow, I clarify. “I’ll probably be sore. A lot sore. You’re not exactly…let’s just say your dragon isn’t tiny like me.”
He rolls to his back, taking me with him, and laughs and laughs as I lie on his chest and gaze down at him, amazed.
Who is this happy assassin? Where did my growling, scowling Malek go?
“You’re very giggly all of a sudden.”
He stops laughing and looks at me. “Giggly?” he repeats, insulted.
“Sorry. You’re right, manly men like you don’t giggle.”
“Exactly.”
He tries to scowl but fails miserably. His lips curve up into a smile instead.
I reach up and trace the outline of his mouth, finding it impossible not to smile back at him. “I’m curious. How does someone born and raised in Russia speak English without an accent?”
He passes his hand through my hair, watching with heavy-lidded eyes as the strands flow through his fingers.
“Because when that someone travels the world using different passports and identities, it’s helpful not to sound Russian. My size makes me stand out enough as it is. I practiced for a long time to sound like I came from nowhere in particular.”
The man with no past and no future who comes from nowhere and lights a girl’s heart on fire with only the force of his pale green eyes.
What a fascinating mystery he is.
I fold my hands over his chest and prop my chin on top. When I stare at him for too long, he says, “What?”
“How old are you?”
That amuses him. His smile deepens, and his eyes dance with laughter. “Why do I get the feeling this is just the beginning of a long and arduous interrogation?”
“It’s called conversation. I ask questions, and you answer them.”
“No, that’s interrogation. In a conversation, the questions go back and forth.”
“You’ll get your chance. I’m going first.”
“That’s what I was afraid of.”
I reach up and touch his beard. It’s soft and springy under my fingertips, delightfully crisp. If he ever shaves it off, I’ll kill him.
“Why are you smiling?”
“Never mind. Back to my question about your age.”
“I’m thirty-three.” After a pause, he adds, “Your eyes just got big.”
“You’re nine years older than me.”
“Really? You look younger than that by years.”
“It’s all the preservatives in the candy. What’s your favorite color?”
“Black.”
“Shoulda guessed. What do you do in your free time besides watch American crime dramas?”
“Come here as often as I can. Hunt. Read. Hike. Watch the stars. When I’m in the city, I don’t do much except handle work.”
“Work.”
He nods. I get that he won’t describe the nitty-gritty.
“And how did you get into your line of work?”
He inhales deeply and looks at the ceiling. After he exhales, he’s quiet for a while. “By accident.”
“Meaning?”
He closes his eyes. A muscle slides in his jaw. “I killed a man in a bar fight when I was seventeen.”
He’s silent again. Lost in memory. I can tell whatever he’s remembering is painful for him and wait quietly for him to continue as I stroke his beard.
“He was harassing my brother. Mikhail wasn’t a big guy. And he was quiet. Smart and quiet. The kind of kid bullies gravitate to. We were on a family trip with our parents, visiting our aunt in Moscow. Mik and I went to a bar after our parents went to bed. I came out of the restroom and found this asshole talking shit to Mik. I told him to fuck off. He didn’t like that. Threw a punch that missed. I threw one back that connected. Next thing I know he’s on the floor, face covered in blood, not moving. He never got up.”
Drawing a slow breath, he opens his eyes and looks at me. “He was Bratva. First cousin of Pakhan, just my fucking luck.”
“Pakhan?”
“It’s an honorific title. Means the big boss. King. Everyone in the bar knew the guy I hit was connected. Before the police could get there, Pakhan rolled up with a dozen of his soldiers. Said me and my whole family could eat bullets to pay my debt, or Mik and I could go to work for him. Obviously, he didn’t like his cousin much, or we would’ve been dead on the spot.
“Pakhan put Mik in a street crew working as a lookout on jobs. It’s the lowest position in the Bratva, but within a year he was leading his own crew. Like I said, he was smart. Knew how to navigate tricky situations. Made himself valuable. Kept moving up.”
“And you?”
“I made myself valuable, too. Only there was no upward mobility in my position. I stayed right where I started out, because nobody could do for Pakhan what I could.”
His voice drops. “I proved to be extremely talented at making his enemies vanish.”
He’s silent for a long while, lost somewhere in his head. Then he draws a slow breath and continues.
“Pakhan liked Mik. Trusted him. Knew the death of his cousin was really my fault, not Mik’s, so when Mik eventually asked permission to go to America, he got it.”
“Why did he want to go to America?”
“Same reason everybody does: opportunity. Pakhan knew Mik was ambitious. Knew he’d eventually outgrow his position here. Knew that a lot of his soldiers would defect if Mik made a move to take over. And I think he genuinely liked Mik. He didn’t want to have to kill him if it came to that, so he sent him off with his blessing. Told him his debt was paid.
“Mine, however, would never be paid. I was the one who took his cousin’s life. My debt wouldn’t be paid until I drew my last breath, one way or the other.”
I rest my cheek on his chest. He cradles my head in one hand and rubs the other slowly up and down my spine.
“Our parents were dead by the time Mik went to America. Killed in an avalanche, if you can fucking believe that. The aunt we stayed with in Moscow died of cancer. Her husband had a heart attack. That was our entire family, so Mik and I were the only Antonovs left.”
He swallows. “Then Mik was killed.”
His voice is rough with emotion. Under my ear, his heart beats strong and fast.
I close my eyes and squeeze him. For the first time since all this started, I’m furious with Declan.
But this is their life, Declan’s and Malek’s both.
Kill or be killed. There’s no other option.
It’s a terrible Catch-22, because revenge starts the cycle all over again. You killed my cousin, now your life and the lives of everyone you love belong to me. You killed my brother, now I have to kill you.
And maybe also take a family member hostage for good measure.
And because you did that, now I have to retaliate, and on and on and on.
There’s no end to it. It’s probably been going on like this for centuries. War, blood, death, vengeance, start from the beginning and do it all over again.
I whisper, “What if there was another way?”
“Another way for what?”
“To get closure. What if you could do it without violence?”
His hand falls still on my back. When he speaks, his voice is surprisingly hard.
“Closure is an American idea. A fantasy. There’s no such thing. When someone you love is murdered, that scar never heals.”
I lift my head and gaze into his eyes. “So then revenge doesn’t really help.”
“It’s not about help. It’s about restitution. Balancing the scales.”
“So you believe that if you kill Declan in retaliation for Mikhail, the scales will be balanced?”
“Yes.”
My reply is as soft as his is forceful. “Except you’re wrong. The scales won’t be balanced. Because you’ll have hurt my sister.”
“I don’t care about your sister.”
“But you care about me. And I care about her. You can’t drop a stone in the water without causing ripples. Everything you do has an effect on something else. Someone else.”
Angry, he glares at me. I’m know I’m stepping out onto dangerously thin ice, but this needs to be said.
“What do you think will happen the day I find out you killed Declan? Do you think we’ll be lying here like this after that? Do you think nothing between us will change?”
He says flatly, “Now you’re blackmailing me.”
“I’m asking you to consider if there isn’t some other way.”
“Of course there’s no other way!”
“Yes, there is.”
“Like what?”
“Forgiveness.”
He stares at me with blazing eyes and a jaw turned to stone, his entire demeanor enraged. But he keeps his voice controlled when he says, “Don’t be naïve.”
“Don’t be condescending.”
“Riley.”
The way he says my name feels like a slap. My cheeks burn with heat, but I don’t back down.
“You said you wanted him to suffer. I can tell you for sure that he is, because I was shot. Because you kidnapped me. Because my sister, despite her shortcomings, will blame herself for all this, which in turn will make Declan miserable. Way more miserable than if you shot him dead, because then he’d be released from his guilt and her pain.”
He sits with that silently, staring at me for so long, I think I might have made a dent.
But then the assassin takes deadly aim and pulls the trigger.
“Except there’s nowhere else on earth you’d rather be than here, remember? Which means my kidnapping you hasn’t been punishment for anyone.”
“They don’t know that.”
“But I do.”
Is he deliberately trying to humiliate me? My throat gets tight. My eyes fill with water. I whisper, “Mal.”
Ignoring my distress, he says, “I know that if Declan O’Donnell could see you now, he wouldn’t be worried. Neither would your sister. They wouldn’t like the situation, obviously, because of who I am. But they’d know you were safe. They’d know you were happy, wouldn’t they, Riley?”
His tone drips acid. He wants it to burn, and holy hell, it does.
Leave it to a man to take something beautiful and crush it in his fist.
I roll off his chest, muttering, “Fuck you.”
Before I can rise from bed, he captures me and presses me down against the mattress, flattening me with his weight, pinning my arms over my head. He stares down into my eyes, all fire and fury, his tone as sharp as the edge of a knife.
“You can keep your fantasies and your forgiveness. I live in the real world. A world where actions have consequences. And don’t forget that I’m not the one who started this.”
“You could be the one who ends it.”
“He murdered my brother!”
“And I took a bullet for you. I could’ve died.”
“You didn’t.”
“No, because you saved me. Do you know why?”
He growls, “Don’t fucking say it.”
“Because you’re good. Deep down inside, you’re a good man.”
He’s got that wild look in his eyes again, the unhinged one I saw earlier. Only this time it’s less panic and more rage.
It doesn’t deter me.
“Glare at me all you want, I know it’s the truth. You stuck up for your brother when he was getting harassed. You didn’t mean to kill that guy in the bar. It was an accident. Since then, you’ve been working off a debt that will never be paid, just so your family would be safe. You’ve been doing what you’ve been doing all this time for other people.”
Through gritted teeth, he says “Stop. Talking.”
“You didn’t kill Spider. You didn’t kill me. I’m starting to think you don’t really want to kill anyone, you’re just used to following orders.”
“You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.”
“You could walk away now, couldn’t you, Mal? Now that everyone you love is gone, you don’t have a reason to keep doing what you do for Pakhan anymore.”
He shouts, “No, I don’t—but I want to!”
We lie nose to nose, breathing hard and staring at each other, until he gets his temper under control. Then his voice comes low and hard.
“This is my life. This is who I am. Don’t go making up pretty lies to tell yourself. To make yourself feel better that you fucked a killer.”
“I hate you right now.”
“You should hate me. I’m not good. I’ll never be good. I told you once that I’m the worst man you’ll ever meet, and that was the truth, malyutka. Like it or not, it was the truth.”
He releases me, rising from the bed to stalk naked into the closet. He disappears inside it, reemerging quickly, fully dressed. He’s holding a black bag in one hand and carrying his overcoat.
Without another word or a glance in my direction, he’s gone.
