HER RUSSIAN SURRENDER (21 page)

That one detail alone made Nikolai realize…

He opened his eyes and found Samantha hovering above his prone body, her face pinched with worry.

“Are you okay?” she asked. “I’m sorry about slapping you. I tried everything else to wake you up, but—”

In one abrupt move, he sat up and hauled her into his arms. She was alive! The first light of morning had come through the bedroom’s arched bow windows, casting a yellow halo around her beautiful face. And she was here, in his bed with him. Still.

“It’s okay,” she said. “You had a nightmare. It was just a nightmare.”

Her arms came up around his shoulders and to his great embarrassment, an involuntary shudder went through his entire body. Then another. And another.

He’d thought she was dead. He’d thought his father had killed her. He was trembling now, he realized. Like the scared boy his father had accused him of being in the dream. The opposite of the man he wanted to be for his wife and Pavel.

“It’s okay,” she whispered into his ear. “Just hold on to me until it stops. I’m here for you. I’m here.”

As much as he wanted to end the hug, to pull away and show her he wasn’t some helpless boy, he couldn’t. Just couldn’t. In fact, he held on to her tighter, desperately grasping at every word she whispered into his ear until he stopped shaking. And even after that, he kept holding her as his heart rate slid back down and eventually he was able to breathe again, not suck in air like a cosmonaut with a broken helmet.

“It’s okay. It was just a nightmare, just a nightmare,” she said again when he’d finally calmed down all the way.

She leaned back from him and stroked the hair that was now damp with cold sweat away from his forehead. “Do you want to tell me about your nightmare? It might help to talk—”

He captured her lips, his desperate mouth licking into hers with an urgent need that couldn’t wait for permission. One hand anchored at the back of her neck, keeping her lips fused to his as the other hand grabbed on to her hips, tugging her left leg over his waist so that… yes, her hot center was now exactly where it needed to be.

A complete erection soon followed, so instantaneous, the pain of it sent him into auto-pilot. He flipped her over, putting her beneath him. She was alright. It had only been a nightmare. But he had to make sure. He needed to get inside her, to bury himself in her sweet warmth.

“Let me in,” he heard himself begging. “I need you. I need you,
zhena
.”

Her soft moan was all the permission he needed.

One moment there was still a pair of sweat pants between them and the next, they were no longer a concern, pushed down and yanked off. He disposed of his own briefs and then he was back on top of her, guiding himself into her slick, clenching wetness and taking what he needed to erase the nightmare.

Her hands gripped his side and her legs veed wide to let him in, accommodating him on top of her in a way he’d had no reason to hope for. Gratitude, piercing and unexpected, welled up inside him and he closed his eyes as he rolled into her tight sanctuary, reveling in her body.

And what had started with him getting what he needed from her suddenly did a 180. Nikolai fell over her, claiming her lips again as he slowed down his thrusts. He wanted to pay her back for the gift of her soft comfort. He wanted to make her feel good, better than good.

He was soon rewarded for his efforts when she groaned. “Oh, God, that’s so good. So good. Fuck me, fuck me. Please keep going. It’s so good…”

And though he’d been wild to have her just a few minutes before, to drive himself into her until he reached completion, he found he didn’t mind the slower pace at all. He relished her helpless cries and the way the heels of her feet dug into his buttocks as he forced the top she was wearing up and over her breasts.

She wasn’t wearing a bra underneath and Nikolai took a moment to admire the sight. One moment. Before devouring it. He inhaled one perfect globe into his mouth, biting down as he worked the hard bud with his tongue, all the while stroking into her, stroking into her until…

She came apart with a sharp gasp, her fingernails digging into his sides as she went rigid underneath him with her climax.

Maybe he would have been able to last longer if he hadn’t had the nightmare. If her cries of completion hadn’t been the proof he needed to fully believe she was truly there with him, alive and unharmed, maybe he could have gone on like that in her warmth just a little while longer.

But as it was, he didn’t want to be away from her. Not even in this. His head lifted from her chest and he erupted, once again filling her with his seed, so much so that he could feel the hot, slick action on his own shaft as he emptied out inside of her.

When he fell back on top of her, he was once again shuddering, but this time not because of any nightmare.

This time it was because of a dream come true.

“
Zhena
…” he said, kissing her neck. “
Moya zhena
…”

27

“J
enna,” Nikolai said against her neck. Sam stiffened, her eyes flying open. Who was Jenna? And why was he calling her by another woman’s name?

But then he kissed her neck. And said, “Moya Jenna.”

No, not a name, she realized. Russian, he was speaking to her in Russian.

She opened her mouth to ask him what “jenna” meant, only to have it seized again. But this time his kiss wasn’t desperate or harsh, like the one that had shocked the hell out of her earlier. This one was a soft exploration, almost as if he were trying to get to know her better through her lips.

The kiss made her feel like she was in high school again, tentatively leaning forward to surprise her AP Chemistry lab partner, Anthony Collison, with a kiss the bespectacled black nerd hadn’t been expecting. Nikolai’s kiss made her feel like she had back then, when she truly believed something beautiful might be waiting on the other of all the ugliness at home.

Hopeful. That’s how Nikolai’s kiss made her feel.

At least for a second or two. Then her stepfather’s slurred voice broke through her afterglow.
“You think that boy’s in love with you? Check your damn head, girl. He using you for that ass,”
he said when she announced she’d be moving in with Anthony
. “He want to put that ass on tap!”

Nikolai finished the kiss with a satisfied smile. There was no trace of the man who’d shaken in her arms, helpless shudders racking his entire body.

“Thank you,” he said, his voice low. “For helping me with nightmare.”

He sat up. “Pavel will be up soon, but after he goes to school…” He gave her knowing look. “We do this again,
da
?”

“You’re just a piece of ass, far as any of these boys concerned, and that’s all you ever going to be to them,”
her stepfather said inside her head. It had been the last thing he’d said to her before she moved out.

Shame, ugly and hot, rolled her stomach.

Nikolai frowned at her. “You have morning sickness again?”

“No,” she answered, rubbing a hand over her aching chest. “I… it’s just…” With shaking hands, she pulled her college sweatshirt back down over her breasts and climbed out of bed.

“You’re right,” she said, tugging on the sweatshirt and wishing it were a few inches longer so it could cover her naked bottom. “I- I should get up. G-get myself ready. M-make Pavel breakfast.”

Nikolai regarded her from underneath his hooded stare. “You have much trouble speaking sometimes after we kiss. You are like woman from kind of film—you know, kind of movie where woman falls in love with man and then trips and falls down many times. How do you say that kind of movie?”

“Romantic comedies,” she mumbled, pulling on the sweatpants she found discarded next to the bed as fast as she could. “Rom coms.”

“Yes,
rom coms
,” he said from the bed. “You have trouble with your words like those women. Why?”

“Probably because I haven’t had my coffee yet,” she answered, keeping her eyes down as she headed toward the bathroom.

“Or maybe it is because…
zhena
, turn around. Look at me.”

There was that name again. But this time she heard the nuance. A zh sound, not a J.
What did it mean?
she wondered as she turned to look back at him.

Which was a total mistake. All the breath left her body. There was sexy, and then there was Nikolai Rustanov sitting on top of that big bed of his. His hair tousled on top of his head, his chiseled chest on full display, his legs spread apart so you’d have to be blind as Beau not to notice the large erection in between his legs. Standing at attention, and still glistening from having been inside her.

Despite the pounding it had already received that morning, her sex throbbed in response to the sight of him. She refocused on his overly handsome, but not nearly as discomfiting, face and waited for him to say whatever he wanted to say.

But he didn’t speak for a few long seconds, just stared, his eyelids so heavy they verged on dangerous, even though he was technically smiling. Technically. The sides of his mouth were quirked up, so she guessed that counted.

“I make you nervous,” he finally finished, scanning her body with smirking assessment.

“Ya think?” she answered in her best Captain Obvious voice. “I mean, you’ve got the muscles, the looks, and the, you know…” she circled her hand around her face. “The whole dead-eyed stare thing going. I think you make a lot of people nervous. On purpose.”

His gaze shifted to the side as if he was giving her words careful consideration. “Yes, I often make women nervous.” His eyes came back to her. “But I do not want to make you nervous,
zhena
. That is not what I want to do with you.”

More staring.

And Sam’s heart actually skipped a few beats, her own gaze hopelessly locked onto his. To the point that it felt like he was letting her go when he finally broke the stare off with a stretch of his heavily muscled arms.

“I will take my exercise, and you can take shower.” He smirked at her. “But
zhena
, do not fall like woman in rom com. This could hurt our baby.”

“I’ll try to stay upright,” was the best she could come up with under the him-very-naked-on-the-bed circumstances.

She disappeared into the bathroom for a long shower and pondered his parting words, “Do not fall...” Sam was fairly certain he meant it literally. But she chose to read between the lines. Do not fall…
in love
. Especially not with him.

And as she washed him off her body, she was haunted once again by a remembered conversation, this one much more recent, having only taken place less than two months ago.

“Love. Love is a silly custom you don’t believe in? You seriously just said that? How can you not believe in love?”

“Trust me, you do not have to believe in silly custom to give woman much pleasure. Come upstairs. I will show you.”

And show her, he had. Twice.

LUCKILY THERE WAS NOTHING like a hectic morning of getting a little boy through his yoga practice and off to school, followed by an oh-so-sexy bout of depositing the rich food she’d eaten at her wedding dinner into one of the downstairs toilets, to clear her mind. By the time she got over the dry heaves enough to drive herself to work, she was more than ready to think about anything other than Nikolai Rustanov and the morning sickness-inducing baby he’d put inside of her, courtesy of the last time she’d let a kiss with him go too far.

However, her Don’t Think About Nikolai plan hit a bump soon after she arrived at Ruth’s House. An Asian man was waiting on the front steps, a very handsome Asian man in an expensive-looking suit.

Sam was perplexed. He looked way too wealthy to be a social worker and way too classy to be a lawyer. And she seriously doubted he was the abusive husband or boyfriend of one of the women at the shelter. Not that Asians were immune to abusive relationships, but in her many years of working with abused women, she’d discovered some cultures were simply more private about their relationship troubles than others and, as a result, a lot less likely to call attention to themselves when the shit hit the fan.

“Hello?” It came out more a question than a greeting.

“Hello,” he replied, coming down the steps to meet her on the sidewalk. Upon closer inspection, she was pretty sure his suit had been hand tailored to his body’s specifications. And he walked with a slight limp. An old injury, she guessed, one that for whatever reason hadn’t set right.

“I’m Suro Nakamura,” he said with a bow. Unlike Nikolai, he spoke perfect English with only the slightest accent to indicate he wasn’t from the States. He came to a stop a few feet beside her, turning his body sideways between the house and the road so she was forced to do the same if she wanted to address him.

“Okay, Mr. Nakamura,” she said, feeling all sorts of unsettled as she noticed how his eyes did a continuous slow back and forth between the house and road, like a tracking light scanning the perimeter. “What can I help you with?”

Suro arched an eyebrow at her. “This is actually about how I can help you. I’m here in regards to your security needs.”

“Oh,” she said, her mouth falling open with surprise. “You’re here about the security guard position?”

She could hear the skepticism in her voice and she didn’t want to be rude, but this guy looked nothing like the usual rent-a-cops she’d met before. He didn’t have the build of an ex-high school football player whose muscle had turned mostly to fat. And he was simply too young to be a retired police officer like Danny had been.

An aura of cool remove surrounded him, one that put her in mind of—well, of Nikolai. Nikolai at his worst, when he was doing his “no feelings, no feelings at all” thing.

“I thought the agency wouldn’t be sending anyone over until tomorrow,” she said.

“I’m not here with an agency, but as a favor to Nikolai Rustanov.”

She cocked her head to the side. “Nikolai sent you?”

“Yes, he’s asked me to assess your security needs, so I’ll need to take a look around your shelter.”