Chapter 9 - Alik #2
My thoughts become a little less feral, more focused.
Keeping as close to the building as possible, I move around the clusters of furniture.
Drops of blood, bright red, still fresh, mark the ground every few feet.
At this height the noise of the city is a din, enough that I should be able to pick out the sounds of a struggle, but there’s nothing.
No noise. No hint that some idiot with a death wish is waiting to spring at me from behind a chaise.
I don’t see anything at all until I clear the corner and spot a swath of bare skin half buried in shadows.
Naked legs. Bloody feet.
Shit! Marya. A quick scan of the rest of the balcony confirms there’s no one else here. She’s alone, injured.
“Marya. Marya, can you hear me?” Gun holstered, I find one wrist and feel for a pulse, the sense of déjà vu making me unexpectedly ill. We’ve already been here, done this. We aren’t supposed to be doing it again. She’s supposed to be safe here.
I choke back all the recriminating curses running through my head and focus on getting her off the ground.
She’s breathing, cradled in my arms, her heartbeat strong enough that my own slows to a vaguely normal pace.
But she’s cold. Practically naked. Her hands and wrists are smeared with blood, so are her legs.
“What the fuck happened, moya voitelnitsa?!” Back inside, I lay her on a sofa, brush her tangled hair off her face, feel her scalp. No sign of head injury.
That confirmed, I flick on the light next to the sofa and check her hands next.
There’s a series of long cuts on the tops of both hands and upper wrists.
For one horrible second, I have to wonder if she was trying to slit them open, but the injuries are on the wrong side.
The undersides of her wrists still show wear and tear from when she was shackled in the cell, but there are no new marks.
Her pulse is a steady beat beneath the fragile skin.
A few of the cuts on the top are still bleeding sluggishly, but most have clotted already.
The biggest gash is on one of her legs. There’s a six-inch slice on the back of her right calf, blood still flowing, thick lines trailing down to her foot. It’s a clean cut but deep. Most likely made by the knife I found on the ground.
Another quick scan of her body tells me the injury on her leg is the most likely source of the blood stains in the apartment.
Grabbing my triage kit from the kitchen, I set to work cleaning and bandaging her wounds. Marya stays motionless while I do her wrists, but moans, body jerking when I tackle her leg.
“Shhhhh, moya voitelnitsa. Almost done.” I’m on my knees next to the sofa, eye-level with my work.
After the cleaning spray and ointment, it takes several butterfly bandages to seal the cut sufficiently.
I’m almost done wrapping a protective gauze around her lower leg when her entire body goes stiff.
The muscles of her legs flex against my grip and, driven by impulse alone, I hold tighter.
“Wha—what are you doing?”
Marya’s voice drags my attention upward, across the thin fabric of the t-shirt that’s doing nothing to conceal the fact she’s naked underneath.
It takes me longer than it should to make eye contact, my focus snagging on the stiff peaks of her nipples before I can finally lock eyes with her.
Once I do the green is sharp, accusatory.
“What happened?” she asks.
“That’s a question I should be asking you.”
Her response is a hard blank stare.
“I came back and found you outside and bleeding. My first thought was someone broke in and attacked you, but now… Now I don’t know.”
I drag a hand to her good leg, engulfing her ankle in my grip, registering somewhere in my brain that she’s stronger than when she arrived. “Did someone come here and hurt you, Marya? Is there someone I need to hunt down and kill for daring to touch you?”
I don’t know what she sees in my eyes, but whatever it is makes hers widen, her lips parting on a quick breath. Her chest, so tantalizing behind the thin veil of clothing, catching as her breathing goes shallow. “Why would you—?” She shakes her head. “Never mind. No. I, um… No. No one was here.”
My throat tightens around a cocktail of curiosity and dread. “Then who did this to you, moya voitelnitsa. Who hurt you like this?”
I watch, transfixed, as she reaches for the hand I have wrapped around her ankle, my own lungs kicking into overdrive when, instead of pushing me away, she draws my fingers up her leg.
Over the smooth plane of her shin, to the hollow beneath her knee, to the lean muscle of her thigh. Her skin is like silk and far warmer than it was a few minutes ago. Not just warm, hot. By the time we reach the hem of her t-shirt it feels like I’m touching living fire.
If we don’t stop, that fire will be molten when we sink into the valley between her legs. A land of promise and temptation that’s just out of my grasp. I flex my grip against her flesh, barbarically fixated on the sight of my brutal hand against such delicate skin.
Marya shivers as I pull my gaze from the juncture of her thighs, across her stomach, to where her breasts are pressed against her clothes, the tips so taunting it takes all my self-restraint to not lean in and lick them.
The idea makes my mouth water, pulls a sound from my chest that I’ve never made before.
I’m barely touching this woman yet my brain is rapidly shutting down, my cock hardening to the point of being painful, all because of six inches of skin-on-skin contact and the shadow of some nipple.
Fucking hell.
I really must be going insane. Or it’s been too long since I’ve fucked anyone.
Or a combination of both, because when Marya grips my shoulder and tugs me closer, I don’t stop her.
Don’t stop her from snaking her fingers into the back of my hair or dragging me down until our chests are touching and our lips are so close I can practically taste her.
Am suddenly desperate with the need to taste her.
She has me so ensnared, so fucking curious about what she’d do if I licked that luscious mouth, that I don’t realize she’s reached behind my back, under my jacket, and to my holster.
Don’t realize what she’s doing until I feel the cold press of metal against my temple and hear the cock of the gun reverberate in my skull.