Chapter 25
ROLAN
“You wanted to see me?”
Dmitri appears in the doorway of the office.
“Come in,” I say. “Close it.”
He does, coming to stand in front of my desk, hands loose at his sides.
I open the bottom drawer. The folder is thin — two weeks of work from Alexei’s contact in Logan Square, a background that used to take months and now takes a competent analyst less than forty-eight hours. I slide it across the desk.
He picks it up and opens it.
“The woman is Maren Lavelle,” I say. “Twenty-seven. Pediatrician at Northwestern, lives in Logan Square. She’s Elizabeth’s closest friend.” I pause. “Landon Webb has been unable to reach Elizabeth since she moved into the estate. He’s redirected his attention.”
Dmitri looks up from the folder. “What do you need?”
“Surveillance. Close protection. She doesn’t know she needs it, which means she can’t know it’s happening.” I lean back. “Keep her safe. Keep Landon away from her. Don’t let her see you. ”
“You want me to babysit her,” he says, studying me.
“I want you to interpret it however you like.”
He looks back at the folder.
I’m aware that this assignment is not purely strategic.
Maren Lavelle needs protection. That part is real, straightforward.
I told Elizabeth I would handle this, and I intend to.
But there are other men I could send. There are three in this house right now who have the skillset and the temperament for close surveillance work.
I chose Dmitri because I’m a territorial son of a bitch.
He didn’t do anything wrong. He’s disciplined enough to know that involving himself with household staff is a line he doesn’t cross, and he didn’t cross it. She initiated the conversation, not him. It meant nothing.
None of that matters. He needed to be elsewhere.
But Dmitri isn’t a clean choice, and I know it.
He came to me eight years ago. And what made him exceptional in the field is the same thing that eventually made the field too risky for him.
He commits. Fully, totally, with an obsessive, primal focus.
When Dmitri is assigned a target, the target becomes the center of his world.
And he keeps sinking deeper until all boundaries start to dissolve.
In controlled doses, this makes him the most effective man I have.
Without limits, it makes him a liability.
I pulled him after an incident in Detroit that nearly became catastrophic. I reassigned him to driving. A vehicle is a controlled environment: clear parameters, defined routes.
Now I’m sending him to shadow a woman. To watch her movements, learn her schedule, occupy her periphery for weeks, possibly months.
“Consider it done,” he says, closing the folder, tucking it under his arm, and turning to leave.
“Dmitri.”
He stops .
“She doesn’t see you,” I say. “Under any circumstances.”
Without turning, he nods once and leaves.
I work until eleven.
There’s a shipment review that Alexei flagged three days ago that I’ve been moving to the bottom of the stack. The review takes forty minutes. I sign off on two supplier agreements and decline a third.
I read the latest intelligence summary on Dushku’s movements. He’s been quiet this week. Not a positive sign. Dushku’s silences are not rest but preparation.
I should not be thinking about going to my room, but I am. Thoughts of her consume me.
I close the last folder and get up.
She’s in bed, sitting up against the headboard with a book open across her lap and the duvet pulled to her waist. She looks up when I come in, and her face brightens with a shy smile.
I stand in the doorway for a moment longer than necessary.
“Everything alright?” she asks.
“Yes.”
“Maren—”
“The situation is being handled.” I enter the room and sit on the edge of the bed to remove my shoes. “Don’t worry about it.”
“Okay,” she says, watching me as if she’s not entirely convinced, but accepting.
I go to the bathroom. The shower itself takes four minutes, but I’m standing under the water thinking about the Dushku intelligence summary when I hear the soft click of the door.
She comes into view.
“Get in here.”
“I already showered. ”
“I know.”
“So I don’t need to?—”
“You’re not getting in to shower,” I explain, holding her gaze. “Get in, Elizabeth. Before I come out and drag you in.”
She bites her lip, hesitating for a split second before pulling the hem of her sleepshirt over her head.
The sight of her is overwhelming. I have not adjusted to it. I don’t think I ever will.
She steps in.
I pull her forward, one hand at her waist, drawing her against my chest. She takes a sharp breath at the contact, her skin on mine, the water moving over both of us.
I kiss her slowly.
I want to take my time with her mouth.
Her hands find my chest. She doesn’t push. She holds.
The kiss changes.
A whimper leaves her, and I press her closer, my hands moving to her thighs, lifting until her legs wrap around me. I turn. Her back meets the tile.
My hand slides between us.
She’s wet for me.
“Why,” I growl against her jaw, “are you already like this?”
“It’s the water.”
I position myself. “I don’t think so.”
I slide in slowly, watching her face — the inhale, the way her lips part.
Her legs tighten around me. “Rolan?—”
“I know,” I say.
The rhythm builds. Her nails find my back, dragging down. The sensation moves through me.
I pick up my pace, and she arches against the tile.
“Oh my?—”
“My name,” I say, low, in her ear. “That’s the only name you can call while I’m inside of you. ”
“Rolan.” It’s not delivered in a gasp. It’s deliberate. She says it on purpose, looking at me, and the combination of my name on her lips and the eye contact removes the last of my control.
I follow her over with an orgasm.
I wash her after.
My hands find the soap before I’ve decided to reach for it. She goes still when I start, surprised but not protesting, and I run my hands over her shoulders, her back, the curve of her waist and breasts, learning her body with my palms. Her skin rises in goosebumps despite the shower’s heat.
She doesn’t speak. Neither do I.
We dry off, and she reaches for her pajamas.
“No,” I say.
She glances at me.
“The shirt.” I indicate mine, hung on the back of the door.
She looks at it. Then at me. “Why?”
I think about this question. The honest answer is that I want to see her in my clothes. That I want her to carry the smell of me through the night, to turn over in the dark and breathe it in, to have some part of her tethered to me even in sleep.
“Because I told you to.”
She considers this explanation, and for now, accepts it, slipping on the shirt.
Morning comes fast. It always does since she started sleeping here.
I’m awake before five, as I’m used to. I lie still for a few minutes first, which is new. The stillness has a reason.
She’s on my chest.
At some point in the night, she migrated and curled against me, her face against my chest, one hand open on my sternum. Her hair is loose and dark against the pillow. Her breathing is the slow, complete breathing of someone entirely at rest.
She looks peaceful. The anxiety she carries in her face during waking hours, the vigilance she maintains even when she’s laughing, even when she’s at the breakfast table or in the sunroom with Anya, is gone. Whatever she puts down when she sleeps, she’s put it down completely.
I want to tell her she’s safe.
The impulse is strong, and I stay with it, my hand moving through her hair.
I want to say, Nothing will reach you here. I will make sure of it.
I don’t.
Because I know what I am, and I know what this is. I know the world outside this room.
I get up carefully. I’ve learned how to move around her, the places where the mattress gives, the angle that avoids disturbing her, so she doesn’t stir.
She never does. She sleeps like she trusts the world, which she shouldn’t, and which I’m choosing to interpret as trust in me specifically, and I probably shouldn’t.
After changing, I go to the door and look back.
She’s shifted slightly into the space I’ve left, still asleep. Her hand is open on the sheets where my chest was.