13. Sloane
SLOANE
His mouth is on mine before the car door has fully closed.
One second I’m sliding across the back seat, trying not to jostle the fresh dressing at his side, and the next Vadim’s hand is around the back of my neck and he’s pulling me toward him with the same controlled certainty he seems to apply to everything else.
I make a surprised sound against his mouth.
He takes advantage of it immediately. His tongue slides over mine, slow and deep, and the heat that had only barely settled in the hospital flares back to life so fast that I forget where we are.
My hand lands on his chest. He’s no longer bare, and I hate I can’t run my fingers over his tattoo. He has changed into another dark shirt, open at the collar because apparently buttons are optional when you’re a billionaire who gets shot often enough to keep spare clothes in multiple locations.
I grip the fabric anyway.
His mouth leaves mine and moves along my jaw.
“Vadim.”
It’s supposed to be a warning, but it doesn’t sound like one.
He kisses the side of my neck, then drags his tongue slowly over the place beneath my ear that he has already discovered makes my knees weak.
A soft moan slips out of me, and his hand tightens at my waist.
“Again.”
I pull back just enough to look at him. “What?”
“That sound.”
Heat rushes into my face. “I didn’t make a sound.”
His pale eyes hold mine. “You did.”
“You imagined it.”
“I don’t have to imagine much with you.”
I should have something clever to say to that, but I don’t.
He kisses me again before I can recover, one hand sliding under the edge of my coat and across my waist until his palm spans my side. His thumb moves upward over the stiff fabric of my blouse, grazing the underside of my breast.
My breath catches, and his hand comes higher. The moment his palm closes over my breast, my entire body responds.
I hate how quickly he has learned me.
His thumb brushes over my nipple through my bra and blouse, and I arch toward him before I can stop myself. “Fuck.”
The word comes out under my breath.
Vadim’s mouth curves against mine. “Very composed and demure, this one.”
I groan. “Shut up.”
“I thought flight attendants were trained not to speak to passengers that way,” he teases.
I hold his gaze. He’s so close that I can see the pools of amber in his eyes. “Only to the insolent ones.”
His hand squeezes my breast.
I gasp. “That was rude.”
“You deserved it.”
“Probably.”
His mouth moves back to my neck, and the argument dissolves almost immediately. He kisses slowly this time, not rushing, lips warm against my skin while his hand continues working over my breast in steady, deliberate strokes.
My head falls back against the leather seat.
The car is moving smoothly through the city, but I barely register it. Everything has narrowed down to his mouth, his hand, and the hard line of his thigh pressed against mine.
He licks along my throat.
I shiver.
His teeth catch lightly at the skin just below my jaw.
Another moan escapes me. This one is louder.
Vadim makes a low sound against my neck that I feel more than hear. His other hand slides around my back and pulls me closer. I shift without thinking, half turning toward him so one knee comes up against the seat between us.
His palm leaves my breast and travels down my side, over my hip, then back up again.
He seems incapable of touching only one part of me.
His hands move as though he’s learning the shape of my body by force of repetition.
I’m beginning to suspect this man could undress someone without actually removing a single piece of clothing.
His thumb circles my nipple once more, and my fingers tighten against his shoulders.
“Vadim.”
“Mm.”
“You are injured.”
“So you keep telling me.”
“You have stitches.”
“I remember.”
“You should not be doing this.”
His mouth presses to the base of my throat. “Neither should you.”
I turn my head to kiss him again. The moment our mouths meet, he shifts closer and his hand slips inside the opening of my coat, cupping my breast more firmly.
My breath stutters.
He kisses me harder. I can feel the strength in him even when he’s careful.
That’s the problem. Vadim is so much bigger than I am that almost every movement reminds me of it.
His shoulders fill the dark suit jacket he wore over the fresh shirt, though the jacket is now open and pushed back.
His chest is broad, his arms thick with muscle beneath expensive fabric, and the silver hair that first made him look older now only makes everything else about him seem more striking.
He must be in his late forties. Maybe older. I still don’t know his exact age. Whatever it is, it should probably make this feel more inappropriate than it does. Instead, he’s one of the most attractive men I have ever seen, but there’s nothing pretty or polished about him.
There’s too much severity in his face for that.
His nose has been broken at least once. There’s a faint scar near his jaw, another at the edge of one eyebrow, and lines around his eyes that make him look as though he has spent years glaring at people until they disappointed him correctly.
The silver hair should soften him. It does the opposite. It makes his pale eyes look colder and his dark clothes more severe. He looks like a man who has been dangerous for a very long time and has become comfortable with it.
I shouldn’t find that appealing.
Apparently, I do.
My hand rises into his hair. It’s softer than I expect. He exhales against my mouth when my fingers curl into it.
Something about that response makes a different question surface.
Does he do this all the time?
Of course women want him. He’s rich enough to buy buildings for fun, powerful enough that armed men appear when he calls, and attractive enough that I made out with him in an airplane restroom after knowing him for several hours.
He also kisses like he has had a great deal of practice.
The thought bothers me immediately.
I pull back.
Vadim follows for half a second before stopping. “What?”
“Nothing.”
“That was not nothing.”
“I was thinking.”
“That tends to cause trouble.”
I glare at him.
Then the car turns, my shoulder brushes the window, and for the first time since we got inside, I properly register the outside world.
The partition between the front and back seats is not closed.
Marek is driving.
Marek.
Who can absolutely hear us, our moans, every shared breath. Every embarrassing little sound I have made while Vadim has been mauling my neck like he has a personal grudge against it.
I go completely still.
Vadim notices immediately. “What now?”
I stare past him toward the front. Marek’s hands are on the steering wheel. His head is facing forward. That doesn’t mean anything, but it still causes tiny little itches all over my body.
I pull back further, and Vadim lets me, though his hand remains at my waist.
“What are you doing?”
“He can hear us.”
Vadim glances toward the front. “Marek?”
“Yes, Marek.”
“So?”
I stare at him. “So?”
“Yes.”
“You can’t be serious.”
“He’s driving.”
“That’s precisely the problem.”
Vadim looks genuinely confused. “He has heard worse.”
“I don’t want to know what that means.”
“It means you are unnecessarily embarrassed.”
“I was moaning.”
“Yes.”
My face burns. He looks far too pleased by that.
“Don’t say it like that,” I tell him.
“Like what?”
“Like you’re proud of yourself.”
“I am.”
I cover my face with both hands. From the front, Marek says, perfectly calmly, “For what it is worth, I’m concentrating on the road.”
I want to die.
“Marek,” Vadim says.
“I said nothing.”
“You just spoke.”
“I was attempting to reassure Miss Mercer.”
“You made it worse.”
“I suspected I might.”
I sink lower into the seat. “This is humiliating.”
Vadim takes one of my wrists and pulls my hand away from my face. “You are too easily embarrassed.”
“You don’t embarrass easily enough.”
“That may also be true.”
The ridiculousness of the exchange almost makes me laugh.
Almost.
Then the events of the last several hours begin catching up with me again.
I glance out the window. Bucharest moves past us beneath a dark sky, streetlights flowing across the glass in long bands of gold. It still feels impossible that I’m here.
The hospital discharged Vadim less than an hour ago after the doctor repeated approximately fifteen times that the wound was superficial but needed monitoring.
I had assumed I would go wherever the flight crew was supposed to stay.
Except the crew hotel arrangement seems to have disintegrated somewhere between the captain attempting to assault me and dying on the runway.
Camille left separately with ground staff to give a statement and arrange alternate crew accommodations. I should have asked for her number.
Why didn’t I ask for her number?
I know nobody here. Not one person. And my return flight isn’t until tomorrow. When Vadim told me I was coming back to his hotel with him, I argued for approximately ninety seconds before recognizing that I had no better plan.
So now I’m in the back seat of his car, in a city where I don’t speak the language, going to a hotel I have never seen with a man who admitted less than two hours ago that he is not merely a businessman.
Very sensible, Sloane.
I look at him. “What happened to Hale?”
Vadim’s expression changes immediately. The warmth disappears.
“Why?”
“I was just wondering.”
“You don’t need to worry about him.”
“He died.”
“Yes.”
The blunt answer sits between us.
I look down at my hands. “I saw.”
Vadim watches me. “He deserved what he got.”
There’s no sympathy in his voice. I understand why, and part of me agrees. Another part still can’t reconcile the man who cornered me with the body I watched collapse beneath the floodlights.
“I know what he did,” I say. “I’m not defending him.”
“Then don’t give him space in your head.”
“That’s easier said than done.”
His jaw tightens. “He chose what happened to him.”
I don’t answer.
He reaches for my hand, his fingers closing around mine. The gesture is unexpectedly gentle.
I look at him.
He doesn’t say anything else.