Chapter 11
SIENNA
It’s quiet in that strange way old houses get at night, when every sound feels too loud and too far away at the same time. The lights are low. The windows are black with rain. Viktor is ahead of me, walking fast, one hand to his phone, his voice clipped and cold in a language I don’t understand.
I’m trying to keep up.
“Viktor,” I say.
He doesn’t turn.
Something feels wrong. I don’t know why at first. Then I hear footsteps behind us. More than one set. Quick. Closing in.
Viktor stops. Turns.
A man comes out of the dark at the end of the corridor. Then another. One of them raises something in his hand and for a second my stupid sleeping brain thinks it’s only a shadow, only some harmless object catching the light.
Then the first shot goes off, and the sound tears through the corridor.
Viktor jerks.
Not like in movies. Just a violent hitch of his body, like something invisible slammed into him hard enough to throw him back a step. His phone hits the floor. I stare at him, not understanding, until I see the blood blooming through his shirt.
Then I understand all at once.
“No.”
He grabs the nearest man by the throat and drives him into the wall so hard a painting crashes down beside them.
Another shot. Another burst of sound. I scream his name, but he doesn’t seem to hear me.
He’s all motion now, brutal and fast and terrifying, even hurt, even bleeding, his whole body still built to destroy.
Then the second man comes at him from the side. Viktor turns too late, and the knife goes in low.
I see it. See the body of it disappear into him. See his face change, not with fear, not even with pain exactly, but with that awful blank shock the body has before the mind catches up.
He kills the man anyway. He kills both of them and then takes one step toward me.
Just one. Then another.
His hand presses hard to his side. Blood runs through his fingers. His white shirt is almost red now, sticking to him. He looks bigger and stranger somehow, too much blood for a body like his, too much damage for a man who seems made to never fail.
“Viktor.” My voice is shaking so hard I barely recognize it.
He reaches for me.
Then his knees give out. He goes down heavily, one shoulder hitting the carpet first, then the rest of him, and the sound of it is so real and ugly it rips something out of me.
I’m on the floor beside him in an instant, my hands everywhere at once, his face, his chest, the wound, trying to stop blood that won’t stop, trying to hold him together with sheer panic.
“No, no, no, stay with me, stay with me—”
His eyes find mine.
That’s the worst part. His eyes are not empty. Not gone. Just fading. Still him, still trying to hold on, and I can see the effort of it. I can see him losing.
“I’m here,” I tell him, sobbing now. “I’m right here.”
His mouth moves, but I can’t hear the words over the ringing in my head. My hands are slippery. My whole body is shaking. Blood is everywhere. It’s on my dress, my arms, my knees, and still it keeps coming.
Then his head turns slightly under my hand.
That’s when I wake up screaming.
For one awful second, I don’t know where I am. My heart is slamming, my nightclothes twisted around my legs, the dream still clinging to me so hard I can almost smell blood.
Then I see him.
Viktor is sitting in the chair by the window, one ankle crossed over the other, jacket gone, shirt open at the throat, the room gone dim around him with evening gathered at the glass. He looks up the second I bolt upright.
“How long was I out?” I ask, my voice wrecked.
He gets to his feet at once and comes toward the bed. “Long enough.”
That’s not an answer, but I’m too shaken to argue. I wipe at my face, angry at the tears and even angrier that he’s seeing them.
“Did you have a bad dream?” he asks.
I laugh once, shakily. “You think?”
He sits on the edge of the bed without hesitation, close enough for me to feel the warmth coming off him. “Tell me.”
I shake my head. “No.”
His hand comes up and brushes a tear from my cheek with the back of his knuckles. “All right.”
The sane thing would be to put some distance between us.
Instead, I throw myself at him.
It isn’t graceful. It isn’t thought through.
I just lean in and wrap my arms around him and hold on as if the last few seconds of the dream are still happening and I can stop them from coming true by keeping him here.
He catches me immediately, one arm around my back, the other sliding up between my shoulder blades.
He’s solid. Warm. Alive.
I bury my face against his neck and breathe him in.
He strokes my back slowly, once, twice, his big hand moving in a steady rhythm that should calm me down and does not. Or maybe it does, just not in the way it should. Because under the fear, under the relief, my body starts answering him.
Traitorous thing.
My nipples tighten against my thin top. My thighs press together under the sheet. His heart is beating faster now too. I can feel it through his chest, heavier and harder than before.
He notices the change in me almost at once.
His hand stills on my back for one suspended moment. Then it slides lower. Not hurried. Not tentative. Just certain. He cups the curve of my ass through the fabric and pulls me closer into his lap, and the friction between my legs sends a helpless sound out of me.
He goes still, and then one hand moves between us.
He looks at me once, just once, and whatever he sees in my face must be enough, because the next second his palm settles over my cunt through my underwear and he exhales hard against my temple. “Christ,” he whispers. “You’re wet.”
I whimper and clutch at him harder, my hips moving before I can stop them, chasing the pressure of his hand. It’s humiliating and desperate and I can’t make myself care. Not with him here. Not with his hand there. Not after waking up certain I’d lost him.
His fingers press in more firmly and I gasp into his neck.
“That’s it,” he murmurs, voice low and ruined. “Show me.”
I rock against his palm in short, needy movements, and the friction is already enough to make my whole body throb. He lets me use him for a few seconds, just feeling how badly I need it, then his hand slides under the waistband of my underwear.
I freeze.
Not because I want him to stop, but because I want him so much it frightens me.
His fingers find me hot and slick and swollen, and he lets out a rough sound that goes straight through me. “Soaked,” he says, almost to himself.
Then he strokes me.
Slow and firm. Exactly where I need him.
I cry out and grab his shoulders.
He does it again, dragging two fingers through my wetness and circling my clit with his thumb, and my whole body jolts. I’m so sensitive already from the dream, from the panic, from the way he held me. Everything feels too bright, too raw.
“Viktor,” I gasp.
He lifts his head from my neck and looks at me. His eyes are dark, fixed on my face, watching every twitch and breath. “Do you want this?”
“Yes.”
He kisses me then, hard and deep, while his hand keeps moving between my thighs.
His thumb works my clit in slow, unbearable circles while his fingers slip lower, gathering more wetness, learning me all over again.
I kiss him back helplessly, open-mouthed and greedy, my body rocking into his hand with no shame left in it.
He breaks the kiss only to drag his mouth down my throat and say against my skin, “Good.” Then he pushes one finger inside me.
I moan so loudly it embarrasses me even as I do it.
He stills for a fraction of a second, feeling the way I clamp around him, then slides deeper. His thumb never stops. The stretch of him and the steady pressure on my clit hit together in a way that makes my head fall back.
“Oh God.”
His mouth brushes my jaw. “No. Me.”
The filthy confidence of it should make me laugh.
Instead, I come closer.
He adds a second finger slowly, watching my face the whole time, and I break apart all over again, whimpering and arching against him while he keeps me exactly where he wants me.
The room narrows to his hand, his mouth, the sound of my own breathing going frantic.
I can feel how hard he is under me now, hot and thick beneath his trousers, and that only makes it worse.
I grind down into his palm and his lap at the same time, desperate for everything at once.
“That’s it,” he says, voice rougher now. “Take what you need.”
I’m too far gone to be embarrassed by how wanton that makes me.
I ride his hand shamelessly, every movement slippery and hot, his fingers pumping slow and deep while his thumb presses just right.
He knows exactly how to touch a woman through the edge of panic and into pleasure.
He knows when to slow, when to deepen it, when to make it unbearable.
My body goes tight, and he feels it immediately.
“There,” he says. “Come for me.”
The words snap something loose in me. I come with a broken cry, my whole body shaking in his arms, cunt clenching hard around his fingers while his thumb keeps working me through every pulse of it.
I can’t stop moving. Can’t stop clutching at him.
I’m half sobbing, half moaning, and he just holds me and takes it, his mouth at my throat, his hand relentless until I’m oversensitive and shaking too hard to keep going.
Only then does he slow.
His fingers slide out of me, wet and glistening in the dim room, and he brings them to his mouth without taking his eyes off mine. He sucks them clean, and the sight of it sends a fresh throb through me.
I’m still panting when I realize what just happened. That I woke from a nightmare crying and ended up coming in his lap like I have no self-control, no fear, no sense at all.
He brushes his thumb over my bottom lip. “Better?” he asks.
I stare at him, wrecked and trembling and very possibly still in love with the worst possible man. And because lying now would be absurd, I whisper, “No.”