Chapter 20
ZINAIDA
It’s breaking dawn when we enter the outskirts of London.
I’m almost sorry to leave the nowhere space of the long ride down. So long as the surroundings were strange and the night was rushing past me, I could press myself against the heat of Luke’s rock-solid bulk and try to forget the shitstorm that just went down.
A shitstorm for which I have nobody but myself to blame, and which only Luke’s unexpected arrival saved from being a complete and unmitigated disaster.
Not to mention the earth-shattering, mindless sexual aftermath, which I can’t allow myself to dwell on.
Particularly not while I’m clinging to him doing seventy miles down the motorway with the vibration of the Ducati between my legs a constant reminder of the terrifying hunger I still feel for him.
He could have died tonight.
Luke slows the bike at a set of lights and straightens up, lowering his feet to stabilize it.
One gloved hand comes down from the handlebars and rests on my leg.
It’s a brief touch, gone as soon as the lights change and we roar down the street, but it’s enough to leave me simultaneously weak with relief and filled with terror.
It is deeply unsettling to realize that after a night of horrors, the one that has loomed largest is the prospect of losing Luke.
He was contracted to help protect my life. Instead he nearly lost his own.
Because of me. Because I didn’t trust him enough to bring him in.
Or is it just that you don’t trust yourself, Zinaida?
I don’t need anyone explaining to me that without Luke’s devastating skill, everything I’ve ever worked for would have died tonight, and me with it.
And I’m still trying to process what I actually saw.
Trying to fit together the two almost unimaginably different men Luke seems to contain in his huge form.
Not only contains, but somehow seamlessly blends.
Even in the midst of the most ruthless killing I’ve ever seen one man unleash, his control was absolute, even down to his low-voiced, firm but kind manner with Sally. Not once did he hesitate, nor show even the slightest hint of emotion at what the night demanded of him.
Except when it came to me.
Then his fury was dark as the fucking storm, and twice as savage.
And there was no control in the way he took me up against the wall of that shipping container. Then again, there was absolutely nothing controlled about the way I wanted him either.
I’ve never felt that before.
The utter abandon, the complete loss of myself in another. For the duration of the time Luke took me, the world disappeared. A dozen men could have stormed that door, and I wonder if I’d even have noticed them.
But did he take you, Zin, or did you take him?
The truth is that I don’t even know how it started or when that switch was flipped. Maybe the end was inevitable the moment I saw him leap from that container rooftop and knew, with an overwhelming flood of relief, that somehow everything would be alright.
Maybe it was when I saw him move with lightning swiftness, the hard mask of his face as he dispatched one man after another.
Or maybe that switch was flipped the moment you saw him watching you, that first night back in the Quartier.
I rest my head against his back, cherishing these last moments of silent communion before what no doubt is going to be a devastating postmortem back in London.
And not just from Luke.
Sally and Ana warned me we weren’t set up for open combat.
They both intimated, if I didn’t already know it in my heart, that I’ve been pushing them past their comfort zone for a while now.
I know they’re both highly trained. Sally was a reservist Commando in the Royal Marines, one of the first women to achieve that status.
Ana grew up in some of the hardest back streets of Albania and was trafficked as a teenager herself.
She’s worked the doors of London’s roughest clubs for twenty years and put knives through men that would make most criminals shudder with fear.
Together, they’ve worked to train my female security force. And until tonight, I’d have considered that force one of the deadliest in London.
But not even their combined skill sets were a match for overwhelming firepower.
And the horrible reality is that Sally was right, back on that container roof, when she said she wants us all to be around to save more than one shipment of girls.
She’s been right to be concerned.
The truth is that I let my ego game with Luke endanger the people I treasure the most.
And instead of protecting them, my hubris nearly got them killed.
In the basement of Lowndes Square, Luke still doesn’t speak, just lifts me off the bike and leads me into the elevator. We stand on opposite sides of it, and I avoid his eyes.
What happens when the elevator doors open?
I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what he wants.
I don’t even know if he still wants this contract—or, more importantly, what I’ll do if he doesn’t.
The doors open, and I bolt like they’re starting gates at the races. It’s only when I’m standing in my corridor that I realize Luke hasn’t followed me.
I turn to find him studying me, his expression impossible to read.
“You’re coming in, right?” I mean it to sound careless. I’m all too conscious that it really doesn’t.
“Not tonight.” He glances at his phone. “Or rather, not this morning.” He yawns widely, not bothering to cover his mouth. “I’m going to Sophie’s House to check on the team. Then I’m going home. Where I plan to have a shower, a very large Scotch, and at least eight hours of sleep.”
I stare at him in astonishment.
That’s it? No lecture about secrets? No threat to quit? No hard lines or ultimatums?
No bedroom marathon?
His lips twist into a dark smile that does dangerous things to my insides. “And of course, it goes without saying that if you ever pull another stunt like tonight, I’ll put a fucking bullet through you myself. Clear enough?”
I bite my lip on a slightly hysterical urge to laugh. “Crystal.”
“Good.” He touches my cheek, a fleeting caress that nonetheless makes every part of me melt. “Then we’ll talk tomorrow.”
The elevator doors close, and he’s gone.
As it turns out, we’re both so busy following the Avonmouth rescue that whatever discussion we might have had gets postponed, and for several days I have little more than a cursory few moments with Luke. Long enough to drive me a little crazy. And leave me more than a little nervous.
There are almost fifty women to debrief and settle into Sophie’s House, as well as wounded members of my own team who need care.
Niamh and her team are, thankfully, all safe and recovering in hospital.
Beyond the fallout from Avonmouth, my clubs are hectic in the lead-up to Christmas and our Winter Ball.
I’m grateful for the frenzied pace, not least because every time my world slows down, all I can see, or feel, is Luke’s naked body hard up against my own.
It was just sex, for Chrissakes.
Except it was anything but just sex, and I know it.
For me, of all people, sex should be fucking straightforward.
But it isn’t. It’s the least straightforward thing I’ve ever considered.
Particularly because every time I start considering it, all I can think about is how insanely good it was. And insane is the only way to describe the almost animal need that had me tearing at Luke in that container. I can’t so much as think of that complete loss of control without blushing.
Actually fucking blushing, like some idiotic schoolgirl. I’ve caught myself in the mirror more than once and been damned grateful nobody was around to witness it, because if they had, and guessed at the reason, my ice queen reputation would have been shot to hell.
I’ve never had sex like that before.
Raw. Utterly instinctive. No games, no underlying motive, and not a whip or costume in sight.
But if I’m honest, what do I have to compare it to?
I walk restlessly across the Mayfair penthouse.
It’s just after breakfast on a wintry Wednesday morning, and I’ve already done an extremely hard workout and two hours’ work.
I have a midmorning meeting scheduled with the home secretary, and one with Luke after that.
The truth is that I’m aching to see him as much as I’m dreading it.
The fact that it took three outfit changes before I finally settled on a fitted black dress, with my trademark slit up the side and Louboutin heels, is a good indication of my inner turmoil.
I’m horribly aware that I have no idea how to play this one.
And that my customary detachment is long fucking gone.
The truth is that I’ve never really had a genuine relationship at all.
And by genuine, I mean one where the decision to sleep together wasn’t in some way business based. Either mutually beneficial business interests, selfish business interests, or—when I was still young and stupid—being naive enough to be used by others for their selfish business interests.
Those last experiences taught me that whether I’m stuck in a cage or ruling an empire from a penthouse office, my relationships will always be defined by the struggle for power, money, or both.
Whatever shred of belief in the fairytale of romance, family, and children might have survived the corruption of my childhood was lost in the early days of building my business.
I’m not entirely a cynic. I still hold a certain fondness for the fairy tale—when it comes to other people living it.
But nor am I a hypocrite. And I have zero ability to lie to myself.
If this was Cinderella, I wouldn’t be the innocent girl waiting for the prince to fit a shoe to my foot. I’d be the fairy godmother who granted her wish to go to the ball and was then never seen again.
Women like me don’t have relationships that are about anything other than power. The giving of it or the taking away.
So am I using Luke, or is he using me?
And how the hell are we supposed to carry on like all this is just business as usual?