2. Cara
CARA
Aman like Dmitri Antonov shouldn’t be delayed by a woman he met an hour ago at my brother’s criminal cocktail party. It’d be more fitting for him to be delayed by bullets, border issues, or whatever men like him call a Tuesday.
I climb into his car.
Dmitri slides in beside me. The driver pulls out of the garage without asking for directions, which tells me he’s already received the memo. “So,” I say, settling back against the leather seat, “do all your excellent mistakes come with drivers?”
I hear what could be something between a snort and a grunt before he shakes his head. “No.”
At the hotel, he doesn’t touch me in the lobby.
He walks beside me, close enough that every nerve in my body starts filing incident reports.
The clerk takes one look at him and forgets how to blink.
Dmitri gives a name that isn’t his, pays in cash, and says very little.
I add identity fraud to the evening’s list and decide I’ll be morally outraged tomorrow.
In the elevator, I check the mirrored wall, the buttons, the emergency panel. Dmitri notices. “Clocking the exits, are we?”
I bare my teeth. “Habit.”
The elevator opens before he can come up with something clever. I make it three steps inside the suite before the silence gets honest. Dmitri closes the door, locks it, and stays there, waiting. That does more damage than grabbing me would have.
I turn slowly. “You’re being very polite for a man who brought me to a hotel.”
His gaze drops to my mouth. “Come here, Cara.”
The walk across the plush carpet feels like wading through deep water. I stop inches from him—close enough to feel the heat coming off his chest.
“I don’t usually take orders,” I say, my voice a notch lower than it was in the car. “Even from men with very nice suits.”
Dmitri reaches out and tucks a stray lock of hair behind my ear, his knuckles grazing the sensitive skin of my temple. His hand is massive, callused, and steady as a rock.
“Is that what this is? An order?” His thumb traces the line of my jaw, dragging slowly until it rests at the corner of my mouth, pressing against my lower lip until it parts. “I thought it was an invitation.”
“You’re very confident for someone who hasn’t even asked my middle name.”
“I don’t need your middle name to know how you breathe when I look at you,” he murmurs. He leans down, his mouth hovering just over the shell of my ear, his lips brushing the sensitive skin.
“Your heart is hitting your ribs like it’s trying to escape. Are you going to let it out, or should I come in and get it?”
A shiver, violent and unbidden, racks my shoulders. “You’re a predator, Dmitri. It's a very cliché look on you.”
“And you’re a liar,” he counters, his breath hot against my neck as his mouth slides down to the pulsing vein there. “You’ve been dissecting me since the moment you saw me near those windows. You didn’t come here to be safe. You came here to see if I’m as bad as Patrick says I am.”
He shifts, his body finally making full contact with mine. His weight is just shy of overwhelming—solid, uncompromising, and heavy with a blunt, hard intent that presses firmly against my lower stomach.
There isn’t a single soft thing about him.
My hands find his chest, intended to push him back, but they betray me, gripping the expensive fabric of his lapels instead.
“And?” I whisper, looking up at him, my hips twitching slightly against the solid ridge of him. “Are you?”
Dmitri’s eyes darken, the blue turning to the color of the Atlantic in a storm. “I’m worse. Patrick is a boy playing with matches. I’m the fire he’s afraid will catch.”
He moves then, his hand sliding from my jaw to the back of my neck, his fingers tangling roughly in my hair. He pulls my head back just enough to fully expose the line of my throat. He stares at my mouth, his own lips inches away, his thumb sliding inside my lower lip, brushing against my teeth.
“You talk so much, Cara,” he says, his voice a gravelly friction. “All those sharp words to keep people at a distance. What happens when I take them away? When I take everything else away?”
“I’ll think of new ones,” I breathe, though my lungs are starting to fail me as his free hand slides down, tracing the curve of my waist before gripping my hip, digging in deep.
“No. I think you'll just make noise.”
His teeth graze the pulse point in my neck, a sharp, sudden nip that makes my knees buckle.
I let out a soft, involuntary gasp. He catches me around the waist, hoisting me up until my toes are barely touching the carpet, dragging my center flush against his hardness.
He walks me backward until my spine hits the heavy wood of the door. The thud echoes in the quiet room.
“Dmitri,” I pant, my hands sliding up to his shoulders, feeling the thick tension in his muscles.
“Tell me to stop,” he says, his face buried in the crook of my neck, his tongue tasting the hot skin right behind my ear. “Tell me you want to go back to your nice, safe apartment and your nice, safe life, and I’ll open this door right now.”
I can almost hear the ghost of my common sense screaming for a taxi.
But his hands are sliding down my back, mapping the curve of my spine through my shirt, and his thigh wedges itself directly between my legs, pressing up into my crotch with a slow, heavy pressure that makes a tight, aching heat bloom between my thighs.
“I’m not going anywhere,” I say, and for once, the sarcasm is gone.
He pulls back, his eyes searching mine, searching for a flicker of hesitation. He finds the same raw, aching hunger that’s written across his own face.
“Good,” he growls.
He kisses me then, the way a man kisses a woman when he’s been waiting a lifetime to dismantle her. I melt into him, my fingers digging into his hair, pulling him closer, needing to erase every millimeter of air between us.
His tongue slides against mine, a ruthless invasion that tells me what’s to come, making me moan loudly into his mouth. He tastes the sound, swallowing it whole, his hands moving to my hips, his thumbs hooking into the belt loops of my black denim, pulling me up and harder against him.
“God,” I whisper against his lips when he finally pulls back for air, my chest heaving against his. "You're a problem."
“I’m a catastrophe,” he corrects, his voice thick and rough. He lifts one hand, his fingers ripping at the buttons of my shirt. “And you’re about to be right in the middle of it.”
He doesn’t gently undo them. He pops them open, his movements efficient and aggressive, despite the way his eyes burn. “You have too many clothes on, Cara. It’s inefficient.”
“I’m a fan of layers,” I manage, though my brain is rapidly turning to mush as the cool air hits my skin, immediately followed by the searing heat of his hands sliding inside the fabric, gripping my bare waist. “Security through obscurity.”
“I’m a specialist in decryption,” he murmurs, his palms sliding up over my ribs, his thumbs tracing the lower edge of my underwire.
He pushes the shirt off my shoulders, letting it fall to the floor.
“I’m going to see every bit of you. And then I’m going to touch every bit of you until you forget how to say your own name, let alone a witty comeback. ”
He cups my breasts through the lace of my bra, his large, warm hands squeezing, his thumbs flicking over my nipples until they harden into tight peaks beneath the fabric.
I arch my back into his hands, a low whimper catching in my throat.
Dmitri takes his time, his eyes traveling over my skin like he’s reading a map, watching my reaction to every touch.
“Beautiful,” he says, the word heavy and sincere. He steps closer, his thigh pressing higher, harder into my center, grinding slowly against me. “Do you have any idea how much I wanted to do this at that party? While your brother was talking about freight and looking for someone to impress?”
“You were thinking about me?”
“I was thinking about how your skin would feel under my hands. I was thinking about how loud you’d be if I pressed you against that window, pulled these jeans down, and showed everyone exactly who you belonged to.”
The sheer possessiveness in his voice makes my blood sing. I reach for his tie, my fingers clumsy as I jerk the silk loose, tossing it aside. I want him out of this suit. I want to see the man underneath the Volkov reputation.
I rip open the top three buttons of his shirt, my nails scratching against the dark hair on his chest.
“Show me,” I challenge, my voice trembling, my hips shifting against his thigh in a rhythm that’s becoming desperate.
Dmitri’s mouth twists into a dark smile.
He sheds his jacket in one fluid motion, then his shirt, tossing them to the floor.
He watches me while he stands before me, bare-chested, thick-shouldered, and completely dominant.
He grabs my hands and places them on his chest, right over his heart, before sliding them down to his belt.
“You think you're the only one affected by this?” he asks, his voice low.
“I’ve been a professional my entire life, Cara.
I don't get distracted. I don't lose focus. And then I walked into a room and saw a girl in black denim who looked like she wanted to set the world on fire just to see the colors.”
I slide my hands over his skin, feeling the hard planes of his chest, the faint ridges of scars that tell stories I’m not sure I’m ready to hear.
He’s a map of violence and discipline, and I want to explore every inch of it.
I unbuckle his belt, my fingers brushing against the heavy, hot length of him strained against his zipper.
A deep, guttural groan sounds from the back of his throat.
“I don’t want to set the world on fire,” I whisper, my hands moving down to slide inside his waistband, feeling the smooth, hot skin of his lower stomach. “Just you.”