15. Sloane
SLOANE
I know something is wrong before he says a word.
Vadim doesn’t move for several seconds after Anton speaks through the phone. He simply stands there beside the bed with the towel still wrapped low around his hips, one hand holding the phone against his ear while every trace of irritation drains from his face.
Something colder takes its place.
I have seen him angry. I saw him beat Hale until two men had to drag him back. I saw the way he looked across the tarmac while bullets were still being fired at us, blood running through his shirt, every line of his body sharpened by violence.
This is different. This is controlled. Whatever Anton has just told him does not make Vadim explode. It shuts something down.
His eyes move toward me once.
That’s the part that unsettles me.
There’s no softness in them anymore. No heat. No trace of the man who had his mouth between my legs five minutes ago.
He turns away. “What else?” he asks.
I can’t hear Anton’s answer.
Vadim listens without interrupting, his shoulders completely still.
Then he says, “Inform me first if there’s any further development.”
The call ends. I wait for him to turn around.
He doesn’t.
“Vadim?”
Nothing.
He picks up his trousers from the floor, then seems to change his mind and leaves them where they are. He walks out of the bedroom still wearing only the towel.
I sit there for several seconds, the sheet gathered around my chest. The silence he leaves behind feels heavier than the room did when he was in it.
I look toward the open doorway. “What the hell?”
No answer.
I stay where I am at first. I tell myself he has gone to make another call. That whatever Anton said has nothing to do with me. That Vadim is simply doing whatever dangerous-billionaire-criminal thing occupies the rest of his life when he’s not ruining mine.
Then another minute passes.
And another.
He doesn’t come back.
Eventually, irritation wins over embarrassment. I slide out of bed and grab the hotel robe from the chair, pulling it around myself before stepping into the suite.
“Vadim?”
The sitting room is empty. The bathroom is empty.
I see light spilling through the glass doors at the far end of the room.
The balcony.
I cross the suite. The city beyond the windows glows beneath me, Bucharest spread out in gold and white against the dark, traffic moving in long streams far below.
Vadim stands outside.
Barefoot.
Bare-chested.
The towel is gone.
For one second, I stop.
He’s completely naked. Apparently whatever Anton said was urgent enough that modesty became optional. His back is to me, one hand braced against the stone railing while he looks out over the city. The sight of him should not affect me after everything that has happened, but it does.
His shoulders are broad enough to block part of the view. Muscle shifts beneath his back when he adjusts his stance, and the fresh dressing at his side looks almost obscene against the rest of him.
I open the door. Cold air slips into the room.
“Vadim?”
He doesn’t turn. “Who sent you?”
The question is so unexpected that I almost laugh.
“What?”
“Who made sure you were on my flight? Who made sure I met you?”
I stare at the back of his head. “What are you talking about?”
He remains facing the city. “You have one chance to tell me the truth.”
My confusion deepens. “The truth about what?”
He turns. The cold night air should make the sight of him less indecent.
It doesn’t.
His cock is still hard. The same cock that was pressed against me minutes ago, thick and flushed, the evidence of everything we were about to do still obvious despite the rage now written across his face.
The contrast is disturbing enough that my body reacts before my mind does. Heat flickers low in my stomach.
I hate that.
I hate him for making it possible.
Vadim steps toward me. “Who contacted you?”
“No one.”
“Before the first flight.”
“No one.”
“Who gave you the assignment?”
“The agency.”
“Which person?”
“I don’t remember her full name.”
His expression darkens. “You don’t remember.”
“It was a last-minute staffing call. I was barely awake.”
He closes the remaining distance. I step back automatically, but his hand catches my waist.
My breath catches. “Vadim.”
“Who knew you were assigned to my aircraft?”
“The agency, Camille, the crew, presumably whoever handles scheduling—”
“Outside them.”
“I don’t know.”
“Did you tell anyone where you were going?”
“No.”
“Anyone ask?”
“No.”
He pulls me closer, and my robe shifts open slightly between us. His body is hot despite the night air. His cock brushes against the inside of my thigh, and I freeze.
He feels it too. I know because his jaw tightens.
“Who sent you?”
My heart stutters. “What the hell are you accusing me of?”
His hand moves up my back. I can tell he’s fighting whatever he feels for me. His fingers spread against me as though he can’t decide whether to interrogate me or drag me into him. The tip of his cock brushes against my pussy through the narrow opening of the robe, and I gasp.
He’s throbbing. I can feel it.
The sensation is so intimate that it turns the entire situation unreal.
He’s furious with me. And hard.
I’m terrified of what he thinks. And still wet enough that my body notices every movement.
“Answer me.”
“I am answering you.”
“You thought you were subtle with the tracker sewed into the lining of your bag,” he murmurs.
“My what?”
“You didn’t plan on us finding about it so soon,” he says. “You thought I would be distracted. But you thought wrong.”
I look at him. “You think I put it there.”
“I think someone did.”
“And you think that someone was me.”
He says nothing. That silence is worse than an accusation.
I stare at him. The realization spreads slowly and horribly.
“You think I’m a spy.”
His mouth hardens. “I think you appeared on my aircraft at the exact moment someone wanted to know where I was going.”
My stomach drops. “I was filling in.”
“You were fired two days before we met for the first time.”
“So?”
“You needed money.”
The words land like a slap. I jerk against his hold. “Let go of me.”
He doesn’t.
“I said let go.”
His hand slides from my waist to my hip. His touch should feel wrong now, but it sends a pulse straight through me. He’s furious, but he keeps touching me. As though anger is not enough to kill whatever is happening between us.
As though that makes it worse.
“You expect me to believe you never noticed a tracker in your bag?” he asks.
“Yes, because I didn’t.”
His eyes search my face. I can see him looking for something.
A lie.
A hesitation.
Fear.
“Were you told to get close to me?”
My mouth falls open. “What?”
“Was this part of it?”
His hand moves higher. My breast presses against his chest through the robe. His cock drags against me again. This time there is no mistaking where it touches. Right over my clit.
My body jolts, and his eyes darken.
“Vadim.”
“Was it?”
“No.”
“Did you kiss me because someone told you to?”
“No.”
His fingers dig into my side. “Did you let me touch you because it gave you access?”
“Fuck you.” The words come out shaking.
Something flashes in his face. Then he kisses me.
There’s nothing gentle about it. His mouth crashes into mine, hard enough that I stumble backward until my spine hits the stone wall beside the balcony door.
I should push him away.
I don’t.
I hate myself for that almost as much as I hate him.
His hand cups the back of my neck, holding me where he wants me while he kisses me with all the anger he refused to show in his voice. It feels like punishment.
It feels like hunger.
It feels like both of us are trying to prove something neither of us understands.
I bite his lower lip. Hard.
He growls into my mouth, and his hand slides inside the robe. My nipple tightens beneath his palm. I gasp as he kneads my breast roughly, thumb dragging over the hard peak while his mouth moves down my jaw.
“You should be disgusted with me,” he says against my throat.
“I am.”
His teeth scrape the skin beneath my ear.
My knees weaken.
He knows. The bastard knows.
His hand moves lower, over my stomach, down between my thighs.
I catch his wrist. “No.”
He stops. Immediately.
That surprises me.
His face is inches from mine, breathing hard, still furious and aroused. His cock presses against my hip. For several seconds, neither of us moves.
Then his eyes drop to where my hand is gripping his wrist.
Something changes.
He pulls his hand away. I hate the loss of it instantly. My pussy throbs with the sudden absence as he steps back. Cold air rushes between us, and I tighten the robe around myself.
“You think I tried to get you killed.”
He says nothing. That’s answer enough.
Something inside me twists. I look at him, at the man who held me after Hale, who carried me to bed, who told me about his childhood, who kissed me like I was the only thing in the room worth touching.
And now he’s looking at me as though I may have been lying the entire time.
“You don’t know me at all.”
His expression flickers. For the first time since he walked out of the bedroom, something almost like guilt appears. Then it’s gone.
“I know enough to ask questions,” he says.
“Then keep asking them somewhere else.”
He watches me. I can see the battle in him—the desire, the suspicion, and the fury at both. His hand flexes once at his side, like he wants to touch me again.
He doesn’t. Instead, he turns and walks back into the suite. Still hard and naked. Leaving me standing against the balcony wall with my robe half-open and my entire body aching for the man who just accused me of trying to have him killed.
I stay there after he disappears.
My breathing is uneven.
My lips hurt from his mouth.
My nipples are still hard.
And between my thighs, my pussy pulses with a humiliating need that has no business surviving what just happened.
I close my eyes. This is fucked up.
And the worst part is that some broken, reckless part of me still wants him to come back.