Her Russian Brute: 50 Loving States, Idaho (7 page)

I
van found
her in the solarium, just as Gregory had said. Since this room received the most sun in the house, he’d expected to find her curled up in a seat. Reading, or playing a game on her phone. The house didn’t having any televisions…the reception was non-existent up here in the mountains. Same for Wi-Fi. So reading, exercising, and playing games were pretty much the only available activities unless you had a job to keep you occupied.

No wonder Thompson Wolfson had opted out of spending his winters here, choosing instead to gamble away the months in places like Vegas.

But Sola wasn’t up to anything nearly so quiet. When he walked in the room, Ivan was hit by a wall of sound. Opera, he realized, after the singer belted out a few bars. But it definitely wasn’t the kind of opera he’d had to struggle to stay awake through in the past. This music was backed by synthesizers that sounded like sci-fi laser guns blasting in the background.

If that wasn’t strange enough, Sola was in the middle of the large room, moving from place to place with each bar sung. Turning this way and that while lip-synching, as if testing out the various positions.

He watched her bemusedly for a few seconds until she turned and spotted him standing in the doorway. She yelped and then her mouth moved with words he couldn’t hear. He tilted his head to the side and shook his head, mouthing, “Too loud!”

She scurried over to the sound system he’d never bothered to use and switched the music off.

But it was still ringing in his ears when she asked, “Hey, what’s up? What are you doing here?”

All of the bruising had faded from her face now, and even though she wasn’t wearing any make-up, he was struck by her prettiness. It was like she was lit up from the inside with a kind of light he’d never known.

He folded his arms across his massive chest, to keep himself from following through on the compulsion to reach out and remove her glasses. “The question is, what are you doing here?” he returned, voice terse with restraint.

“What?! Oh wait, hold on…” She reached up and pulled two orange foam earplugs from her ears. “Forgot I had these in.”

He lifted his good eyebrow. She’d come here from California with just the clothes on her back and, apparently, a pair of earplugs. He was beginning to realize this woman had very strange priorities.

“What exactly were you doing?” he asked again.

“Oh, I’m…practicing, I guess you’d say. I’m a directing grad when I’m not serving time as a prisoner by proxy. I’m trying to figure out as much blocking for my thesis production as I can, so I can hit the ground running when I go back to school in the spring.”

An unfamiliar sensation assailed him. The thought of her not being able to complete her studies because of the bargain they’d struck didn’t sit well with him. And he shifted from foot to foot, feeling the oddest compulsion to apologize.

“So you’re here, because…?” she prompted.

She didn’t meet his eyes as she asked this question, he noticed. Instead, she looked around the room, as if trying to find something to get her out of even this small conversation with him.

But he wanted her direct gaze. The one she’d given him that first night when she looked at his face and into his eyes without flinching. So he tried again.

“You are directing opera in the spring?” he asked in his best, most clear English. “Is it a new work? I’ve never heard this before.”

That did it. Her face lit up and she gave him her full attention.

“Yes! It’s a new work. Set in space. So, I guess you could say it’s literally a space opera. One of the writing grads in the playwriting program wrote the script, and it’s brilliant. I already know exactly who to cast in it, and I’ve been working with a production designer on the set. Hopefully if I do enough groundwork, I won’t be too far behind when I return to school.”

He wondered if she had any idea how cute she looked when she did that. Thought aloud, with her whole face scrunched up, her eyes widening and narrowing with excitement.

“Are you an opera fan?” she asked.

“No,” he answered, before remembering his old rules about telling women exactly what they wanted to hear in order to get them into bed. Before he could keep the light from dying on her face.

“Oh.”

“It’s just that I’ve seen too much of it. My family had a box at our local opera house in St. Petersburg, and I was made to attend every production from the age of six.”

“Well, that sounds really messed up,” she said with a teasing lift of her dark eyebrows. “I can tell you had a really hard childhood. Box seats at the opera, wow…”

A hot fizz of anger bubbled in his head. He didn’t like being dismissed by her. Or being made to feel like a spoiled brat.

Even if it was true.

“I think rich and poor alike can agree opera is sometimes boring.”

“Not the way I’m going to stage it,” she answered with a grin. “My thesis is all about making opera accessible and interesting. And finding ways to keep production costs down, so regular people can attend. Maybe even with children.”

He shook his head, having never met a woman so passionate about her future plans. “Why does bringing opera to the common people excite you so much?” he asked, truly wanting to know.

In his experience, opera attendance was often used to further set the rich apart from the poor. Box seats and season tickets were a luxury only the wealthiest could afford in Russia, and he assumed it was the same here in America. He recalled seeing a few scruffy-looking individuals in the standing-room only section from his box seat vantage point, but the majority of opera attendees in Russia were from the same social strata as him.

She started to reply but stopped.

“Like you really care,” she muttered, dropping her gaze away from him.

“But—”

“Did you come in here for a reason or what? I’m kind of in the middle of something…”

Hostile words, but then her gaze drifted slowly down his body. And Ivan found himself responding to the heat that flared in her eyes before she quickly looked away.

He stepped closer. Liking the way it felt to have a woman look at him again with raw interest. Especially since he was interested in her. Very, very interested.

“I came here to tell you something, Sola,” he said, his voice sounding hoarse even to his own ears. He cleared his throat and retried, threading his voice with a little more authority as he informed her, “Hannah and Gregory have the night off for the full moon holiday. You will eat the dinner Hannah has made for us with me in the kitchen.”

“Ah…” He watched her throat work up and down as she swallowed. “No, thank you.”

“It is not a request,” he informed her.

“Well, it should have been. So, no. I won’t.”

She carefully stepped away from him.

And he very intentionally stepped closer to her, invading her personal space the way he used to when he was in the habit of challenging and fighting grown men.

Of course he’d never put his hands on Sola. At least not with the intention of hurting her.

But he had the same feeling he used to get when he threw the first punch in the ring, when he said, “You have been watching me. Every day you watch me swim, but yet you refuse to have dinner with me.”

Sola’s face fell, and she suddenly looked very flustered.

“Yes…I mean, no…I mean, I haven’t been…” She took a deep steadying breath. “Look, Hannah and Gregory have the night off and you’re telling me to have dinner with you and I’m saying no. Because I don’t want to. Not with you.”

“Because of my face,” he sneered. “You are attracted to my body, but my face repels you…”

“No,” she replied, her tone tight as a drawn string. “Your face has nothing to do with it. It’s still your attitude. Because guess what, I’ve been attending a really expensive art school in California for the last four and a half years, and I’ve had enough of spoiled trust fund babies to last me a lifetime.”

“You think me spoiled and petty?” he said angrily. Then he did the opposite of what one should do when an opponent lands a good, solid blow: Ivan panicked and swung wildly.

“Well, you are judgmental and bitchy. And the kitchen will be closed to you unless you agree to eat with me. I will lock it.”

“Okay, cool,” she answered with a disgusted shake of her head. “Well, I guess you just proved my point.”

Frustration cut a bitter path across his chest, tugging his lips up into yet another sneer. He had no idea how to handle a woman like this. It should have been relatively easy. Clearly she liked his body, and he was dying to find out what was hidden beneath that oversized tweed jacket she always wore and those glasses. They’d be stuck together in this house all winter. He wanted her. And she wanted him. He could tell. As it stood, they should have been fucking like bunnies for the last few days, at least.

Yet she couldn’t even bring herself to share a meal with him.

“You are here in this house, and not in a cell, because I allow it,” he said. “You will eat when I say you will eat. And I say you will eat dinner with me at six o’clock, like early-eating Americans.”

He realized immediately after he spoke that he must have been be truly angry. Not only because of the nastiness of his tone, but also because he was dropping articles and betraying his impeccable English education. He sounded like nothing more than a caricature of a Russian immigrant speaking heavily accented, broken English.

“Oh I see. And if I refuse, do you want me to go back to the cell?” she asked, her tone sounding quite serious. “Can I at least get my coat first, or are you taking that away, too?”

He stared down at her for a few long moments. Seething.

Then with a noise somewhere between a yell and a growl, he turned away, no longer able to trust himself to stay in this room with her for a second longer. Lest he say something else, something she’d use to further prove her point about him being like the spoiled rich kids she went to school with. One who didn’t deserve to have dinner with her, let alone touch her.

Ivan had conquered men. Both inside the ring and out. Countless men had resorted to begging beneath his unrelenting fists. Yet he was unable to handle one woman...a girl, really.

So he left. All the while wondering what disturbed him more. That he couldn’t figure out how to get Sola into his bed…

…or that every word she’d said about him was 100% true.

S
ola fumed long
after Ivan left her alone in the solarium. Mainly because he’d been right. She
had
been watching him swim. But only for a little while, just a few furtive moments, when she thought he couldn’t see her. But obviously he had seen her.

After today’s little peep show, she hadn’t expected him to show up in the solarium—where she’d been trying desperately to distract herself from thoughts of her sexy captor.

And seriously, could he have looked any sexier?
she wondered, with an inner groan. She’d thought he’d been something to watch when he was swimming, muscles rippling as his strong body sliced through the water like a knife through butter. But up close and personal? In an open robe and in tight black swim trunks, water dripping down his torso toward his heavily yoked waist…

She’d barely been able to hide her reaction to him. Prattling on about opera, afraid to meet his gaze, lest hers accidentally stray down that magnificent body.

A magnificent body she definitely should NOT want.
You know, because of the whole he locked your mentor, an elderly man with a sick husband, in a jail cell and then basically forced you to stay here against your will thing
? she reminded herself snidely.

What had Brian called him? A brute—yes, he was a brute, she reminded herself as she stomped up the stairs to her room. She’d meant every word she’d said about him being a spoiled brat…and she had no idea why she couldn’t stop thinking about him.

With a frustrated huff, she grabbed her coat off the bed and headed back downstairs. So determined was she to show him he wasn’t the boss of her, she had her coat zipped up and the Thermalite gloves she’d stored in its pockets on her hands before she even reached the front door.

Stupid Russian brute
, she thought, marching angrily down the hill. Trying to call her out for ogling him. Trying to use food as a way to get her into his bed. Well, she’d show him. Hannah’s food was great, but she’d been meaning to try that lamb stew at The Thirsty Wolf all week, anyway.

Yet when Sola walked through the bar’s main entrance, she found Lorraine there, alone.

That’s odd,
she thought to herself, frowning. Even stranger, Lorraine was placing what appeared to be a large iron door against the wall where the bottles were shelved. At least the large rectangle with hinges looked like it was made of iron. But it couldn’t possibly be because as tough as Lorraine was, she would never have had the strength to lift something that heavy at her age. However it sure looked like that was exactly what she was doing.

Suddenly, the older woman stopped her work and sniffed the air. Then she quickly turned, her eyes widening when she saw Sola standing just inside the door.

“Sola? What are you doing here?!”

“Um, I was hoping to get a bowl of lamb stew,” Sola answered as her eyes continued to scan the rest of the room. Not only was the main bar empty—and it was
never
empty, at least not that she’d ever seen—but all the metal chairs in the dining area had been placed upside down on the round, wooden tables. Even weirder, the chairs were strung through with what looked like some sort of very thin, silver chain. It was as if someone had taken a delicate silver necklace and threaded it through the backs of each chair. But why? Sola wondered.

“We’re closed on full moon nights, Sola. Everything is,” Lorraine’s voice rang out across the bar, interrupting her confused observations.

“Oh yeah…” She’d completely forgotten about the full moon night rule, despite Ivan reminding her about it earlier in the solarium.

Sola once again cursed her Russian captor. There was no way she would have forgotten about the curfew if he hadn’t made her so angry.

“Hannah didn’t make you dinner tonight?” Lorraine asked, her tone agitated, bordering on bewildered.

“She did,” Sola quickly assured the perturbed bar keep. “But...”

She trailed off, not quite knowing how to explain that thanks to an argument with her captor, she’d been shut out of the house’s kitchen.

Lorraine didn’t seem all that interested in her explanations. “It’s after five o’clock, Sola! Far as I can tell, there is no reason for you to be wandering around town after curfew.” Her arms were crossed in front of her chest, her expression stern and almost parental.

“I’m sorry, Lorraine. I know I shouldn’t be out, but…” Sola trailed off again because truth be told, she hadn’t really thought it would be a big deal if she bent the rules a little. Gregory and Hannah had been rather vague when she asked for more details about the full moon nights. Just a bunch of stuff about traditions and the original tribe who settled here hundreds of years ago.

But again, Lorraine didn’t give Sola time to ruminate further.

“Look, the full moon could rise any minute now,” she told Sola, with something that sounded an awful lot like panic wobbling her normally strong voice. “I’ve got to get down to the basement. I could—” she cleared her throat. “I could get in trouble for harboring someone after curfew.”

She could get in trouble? What?

“Lorraine,” she started.

But the older woman was already backing away toward the iron door.

“I’ve got to go,” she said, again. “But I’ll call Hannah and Gregory first thing in the morning. You stay here—do not leave—until they come to get you. Help yourself to anything in the kitchen. I think I have a few blankets in the office for you to sleep on. But do
not
open this door. And do
not
open the front door, either. Keep it locked. No matter what you hear. Remember, Hannah or Gregory will come round to get you first thing in the morning.”

“First thing in the morning?!? Wait, what?!?! I don’t understand. Lorraine, wait!”

But it was too late. The older woman had disappeared through the heavy metal door with an echoing slam. The next thing Sola heard was the clicking and sliding sounds of locks engaging.

“Lorraine?” she called out. “Lorraine?!”

No answer, just the fading thumps of feet descending the basement stairs, faster than she would have thought a woman Lorraine’s age could move.

What the…?

Seriously confused, Sola stood in the now silent bar, trying to decide what to do. Lorraine had been adamant that she not leave the premises until the next morning. But Sola honestly had no idea why Lorraine expected her to wait here all night for someone to pick her up when she’d been walking herself home for a week now with no problem whatsoever. And there was no way she was going to spend all night at The Thirsty Wolf, waiting for someone from the house to get her the next day.

Mind made up, Sola opened the main door and walked out into the cold evening. She slowly began to head back up the town’s main road, then up the hill towards the manor. The return walk was a lot slower going. Not only because it was uphill, but because the wind was blowing directly in her face. Filling her eyes with tears and pushing her back, almost as if it didn’t want her to reach the house.

Or maybe the weather was just a reflection of her mood. She didn’t much feel like going back to the house. It was nearly six o’clock and her stomach was grumbling loudly. She could just picture Ivan in the kitchen. Eating the delicious meal Hannah had prepared. Gloating, because she’d be going to bed hungry.

Plus, she wouldn’t be able to have her usual nightcap, which in her state, might bring on all kinds of troubles after she went to bed.

God, she hated whining. She’d learned a long time ago to accept that the world wasn’t fair. But she’d never come as close to feeling sorry for herself as she did right now, fighting the bitterly cold wind in an attempt to return to the manor-shaped jail cell—

A low growl interrupted her troubled thoughts, and she snapped her head around. Was that a dog? She peered carefully into the surrounding trees until she spotted a large shape just a few feet away from where she stood.

No, not a dog. This animal was way bigger. Maybe a wolf? It had a pair of green eyes that seemed to glow under the light of the full moon. For some reason that she could only chalk up to fear-based delusions, the eyes put her in mind of Gregory. But these eyes definitely weren’t kind like Gregory’s. Especially considering they were paired with a fierce, growling muzzle.

Sola tried backing away slowly. The house was only a few meters from where she stood. Close, but in the deep snow, so far away…

Did she dare risk making a run for it?

She didn’t have time to ponder her predicament for very long. The wolf suddenly advanced towards her, it’s teeth bared threateningly.

And Sola made up her mind in less than a split second: she screamed and ran. As fast as her snow boots could carry her. Faster than she’d ever run before, thanks, in part, to the massive boost of fear-based adrenaline that shot through her nervous system.

Not fast enough though. She could feel the wolf at her back. Closing the distance between them a heck of a lot faster than she was closing the distance between herself and the door.

But then the manor’s front door suddenly flung open, bathing the dark scene in light as a massive figure sprinted toward her.

“No, no!” she screamed, when she realized what Ivan planned to do.

But it was too late. The wolf was in mid-air, leaping toward her, but instead of sinking it’s teeth into her back, it collided with Ivan.

Sola watched in wide-eyed horror as the Russian caught the wolf by the throat mid-leap, and punched it. Yes, punched it. Once. Twice. Then a third time.

What. The. Good. Jesus.
Her brain was still having a hard time computing what she just saw, even as she watched the gray wolf fall to the ground, knocked out cold.

Then Ivan was grabbing her by the arm. “Come, Sola!” he yelled, yanking her back toward the house.

Somewhere in the distance, another wolf growled. And beyond that, multiple wolves began howling repeatedly. Their eerie cries intermingling and sending twin jolts of fear and awe up her spine.

I’m coming, Russian dude. You don’t have to ask me twice
!

Sola was, for once, incredibly happy to follow wherever the Russian brute led.