Lying and Kissing (30 page)

I nodded slowly.

“This is not a game. This is not
exciting
or
dangerous
or
just like in the movies.
This is real. If you stay with my son, I worry that you will be killed. And that you will get him killed.”

I opened my mouth to tell him that I would never hurt Luka. And then realized that that would be a lie. I was going to hurt him in the worst way possible.

“If I have learned anything, since his mother died,” said Vasiliy, “it is that trying to get Luka to do something is impossible.” He gave me a look that was almost friendly. “Boy has head like a bull.”

“Just like his dad,” I said softly.

He smiled at me. “As you say. So. You will have to be the smart one. You will have to break up with him.”

The sick feeling I got in the pit of my stomach wasn’t horror at what he was saying. It was the creeping knowledge that he was right. I wasn’t cut out for this life. Even if I could survive it, I couldn’t be sure I could change Luka and save him from the darkness that had made his father into this coldly calculating machine. And even if there could in theory be some happy ending for the two of us, the whole thing was impossible. In days—maybe as soon as tomorrow—I’d betray him.

I nodded my assent to Vasiliy. He refilled my glass for a sad farewell toast.

“What did he want?” asked Luka as soon as we were back in the car.

“Nothing.”

Luka looked at me skeptically. “It’s never
nothing.”

What would sound convincing?
“He asked me about myself. Lots of questions.”

“Oh.” He nodded slowly to himself. “Okay. That makes sense.”

I pretended to be oblivious. “Why?”

Luka sighed. “He was checking you out. Making sure you weren’t a spy.”

“A
spy?!”
Sounding incredulous wasn’t too hard. I still felt so unlike a proper agent that it sounded ridiculous. “For one of the other gangs?”

“Or for the CIA. You
are
an American.”

“I thought the CIA were all...assassinations and politics.”

Luka shook his head. “Drugs and guns. They’re meant to stop it, but really they control it. They’re corrupt.”

I blinked. His dad had said the same thing. It was weird, seeing how we were viewed from the other side, hearing the ridiculous propaganda they believed.

I nestled into his side. His dad’s words were going round and round in my head. I was going to have to break up with Luka. I’d known it all along—it was the only possible outcome, ever since I’d agreed to take the mission. But back then, sitting in Adam’s office at Langley, I hadn’t figured on feeling this way about him.

How
did
I feel about him, exactly? Aside from the obvious lust, there was definitely something deeper. I could feel it tugging at me, whenever we were apart. I felt the sick fear when I thought he might be in danger, like when he’d run into the brothel. And, when we were together, I felt...complete. Like there’d been something missing, before. Was that love? I didn’t have much to compare it to. The few relationships I’d had before the crash had been teenage fumblings and then college awkwardness. No one had ever made me feel the way Luka had. But it had only been a handful of days. Way too soon to call it
love.

“What’s the matter?” asked Luka. “Cold?”

I’d been staring determinedly out of the window. Now I looked round at him in surprise. “What?”

He glanced down at my chest. I realized I’d wrapped my arms around myself.

“You always do that in cars,” he said. “Unless I’m holding you.”

I stared at him. I hadn’t realized I’d been doing it...but just as importantly, I hadn’t realized he’d been noticing little things like that. I knew he’d been looking at my body, stripping me with his eyes. But I didn’t know he’d been studying me like that, discovering all my little quirks.

“Are you going to tell me what it is?” he asked. That accent of his made the words like huge, stone slabs, ones that could shatter my fragile defenses if he wanted to. But he didn’t use them in that way. He spoke gently, nudging at my layers of ice instead. It was like having a massive, powerful bear nuzzling your ear.

I might not be having flashbacks anymore, but the memories were still there, affecting me on an instinctual level. Of course I couldn’t tell him about the crash. Thinking about it meant reliving it, every little detail preserved by my goddamn photographic memory. The only way to survive was to push it way down inside and cover it with enough layers of ice that the pain was muted...and everything was frozen.

Funny how that didn’t seem to be working so well, anymore.

But, even if I could tell him, and if that could somehow help me...did I deserve that? I was about to betray him in the worst way possible.

“Soon,” I said. “For now....” I nestled into him and he folded his strong arms around me, wrapping me in warmth and security.

***

By the time we reached his apartment block, I’d unwound. Luka’s arms around me started to have a different effect. I began to notice the press of his forearms against the undersides of my breasts and the feel of his muscles against my back. My whole body began to come to life, woken by his closeness.

I knew it was wrong. I knew it would soon be over between us and he’d hate me forever. But however much I told myself that, my body didn’t listen. I kept looking into the rear view mirror and catching glimpses of us, his big body wrapped around my much smaller one, and the combination of his gentleness and his immense power, of how I was both protected and somehow captured by him, sent a slow, deep throb echoing through me.

In the elevator on the way up I twisted around in his arms and kissed him, soft and slow at first and then with quickly rising ferocity. By the time the doors opened, I had his shirt unfastened and my hands inside, sliding over the smooth slabs of his pecs. He gave a low growl and swept me up, one arm under my ass, and carried me inside. Then I was dumped back onto my feet on the polished wood floor and, as I stumbled in my heels—

My dress came up over my head, blocking my vision and trapping my arms for a second. Then it was gone and I was gasping and panting...and virtually naked. I’d gone for black underwear, this time, a half cup bra and a thong, both of them secured with thin ribbons. The
va-va-voom
option, not the sweet virginal option.
Appropriate,
I thought bitterly, given that I was going to behave like a real femme fatale and stab him in the back.

But my guilt didn’t do anything to slow the building heat inside me. I saw him rake his eyes down and then up my body, taking in my heels and stockings and the skimpy, glossy underwear. “Different,” he rumbled after a second. “Not you. Someone else.”

I nodded. I did kind of feel like someone else. Someone evil.

He stepped closer to me and put his fingers under my chin, lifting my head so that I met his eyes. “I know game we can play,” he growled, his English fracturing in his eagerness. His hand cupped my breast, almost covering it completely. “Do you want to play game, Arianna?” he hissed.

This was new—he was turned on in a different, darker way than I’d seen him before. But I was panting, now, actually rubbing my thighs together to get friction. I wanted his hands all over me. I wanted his cock inside me. “Yes,” I whispered.

He grabbed me and pulled me close, one hand squeezing my ass and one fondling my breast. I moaned.

Luka put his mouth close to my ear and whispered, “
I know you’re CIA.”

It was like falling into water that was colder than any ice, a chill that soaked straight through skin and flesh to freeze your bones. I became a lifeless doll in his arms, limp and staring.

He scooped me up and started to carry me towards the bedroom.

I wasted precious seconds thinking
this is not happening, this can’t be happening.
When I finally started to kick and struggle, we were almost at the door. I flung myself sideways, trying to launch myself from his grip, legs kicking and arms grabbing for the door frame.

He laughed.

I twisted around and tried to claw for his face and he trapped my wrists easily, pulling my arms behind my back until my shoulders burned. Then we were through the door and he threw me on the bed.

I didn’t have time to get my arms in front of me to break my fall, so I landed with my hair in my face and the air knocked out of me. I twisted over onto my side, groaning, watching him approach. I saw his eyes track over my nearly-naked body. I was disgusted to find that there was still a dark tendril of excitement wrapped around my rising fear.

Then he was on me, using his weight to pin my legs and his hands to pin my shoulders, pushing me over onto my back. I began to fight again, thrashing and bucking under him, and that only made him grin. He reached into a drawer beside the bed and brought out something that made me freeze. A pair of shining steel handcuffs.

He wrestled my arms above my head and snapped the cuffs onto my wrists with practiced ease, hooking them around the iron bestead. A horrible, sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach as I realized
I really couldn’t get free.
I heaved with my arms, using all my strength, but the handcuff chain just clinked and jingled against the iron. It was like a parody of all the times I’d pushed against his hands during sex, wanting to feel
helpless.
Except now I actually was. And my body, my traitorous fucking body, refused to acknowledge the difference. Seeing him hulking over me, still fully dressed, feeling myself bound and powerless beneath him in skimpy underwear, it responded. I could feel myself getting wet.

Enraged with myself, with him, with Adam for sending me on the mission in the first place, I lost it. I kicked him as hard as I could, but this wasn’t like the woman at the club. My heel hit him in the stomach but it just glanced off the hard muscle there and he caught my ankle easily and pressed it to the bed. Then he did the same with my other leg and used his weight to pin them. Now I was held fast, stretched out on the bed with my arms above my head.

I stared up at him, my breath coming in panting heaves.

“Did you think I wouldn’t guess?” he asked, his voice low and dangerous. “An American, all pretty and sweet, suddenly in my life. She acts innocent, so I’m tempted to corrupt her. But really, she’s the one who’s dark inside.”

“I—I’m not CIA,” I panted. “I swear, Luka.” It didn’t sound convincing even to me.

He suddenly lunged down and kissed me, forcing his tongue into my mouth. It was so unexpected I didn’t have time to close my lips. His tongue brutally sought mine out and danced with it and, though I tried to twist my head away, I could feel the hot throb of pleasure go straight down to my groin. What was wrong with me?! Even now, I couldn’t resist him.

He lifted his head and stared down at me. His words were like carefully sculpted weapons. “Don’t lie to me, Arianna. I know you are.”

My heart plummeted down through the bed.
When?
Had I not fooled his dad after all—had he tipped Luka off? Had it been on the yacht, when I’d mentioned Natalia’s name? Or was it back at the party, when he saw me near his laptop? Had he known right from the start?