In For the Kill (16 page)

She sucked in air. “What are you doing?” she asked inanely.

“Washing your pussy.” His voice was silky. “You're full of my come. It's the least I can do. Mistress.”

She laughed, and he scooped his arm behind her shoulder and jerked her into a fierce kiss, accompanied by a huge slosh of soapy water. His tongue plunged, his hand thrust deeply, hitting spots inside her that made a little sun come out in her body. Shining so bright.

“Would the sex-slave scenario work better if I cleaned you with my tongue?” he asked. “Because I'm all over that idea.”

The words alone detonated her.

The marvelous ripples pulsed and throbbed through her inner universe, dissolving her into liquid light. She clung to the ineffable sweetness, but she felt it start to fade before she opened her eyes. A sad, empty pull, deep inside. As if something was draining away.

Sam looked at her keenly and frowned. “Did that feel good?”

“You know it did,” she said.

“Then why the look?”

He had no right to read her mind so easily. “What look?”

“The look that says something sucks.”

She shook her head. No point in lying. He'd see right through it.

“I don't feel strong, when we make lo—have sex,” she amended. “It makes me feel . . . soft. Melted out of shape. Scared. And . . . sad.”

He looked perplexed. “So? Scared and sad, those we'll work on. But melted, soft? Since when are those bad things to feel?”

“It's dangerous,” she said. “It makes me feel weak. Powerless.”

He was silent for a moment. He drew his hand slowly out of her body and stood up, dripping hot, sudsy water down his jeans.

“I didn't mean to insult you,” she said miserably. God, this was a minefield, and she couldn't even lie her way out of it. Not with him.

“I'm not insulted. I'm confused,” he said. “Sex games are for making you hot, making you wet. What the fuck's wrong with that?”

“Nothing, I guess,” she whispered.

Except that her subconscious mind would punish her for giving in to it by lobbing grenades at her. How to explain something so weird?

“I think you're incredible,” he said. “I still can't believe you let me get this close to you. All I want is to please you. Where in all this did I make you feel powerless? Because I am seriously missing something.”

It sucked, hurting him because of that sick feeling in her belly that she could neither control nor hide. “I'm sorry,” she whispered.

“Feeling soft or melted is not bad,” Sam said. “That's how it feels when the sex is good. You know how good it is by the extent to which it destroys you. Look at me, Sveti. Behold, a broken man.”

“I never said that the feelings were bad,” she hedged. “Just that they were . . . dangerous. For me, at least.”

“They wouldn't be if you trusted me,” he said. “I'll give you some space. Sounds like you need it.” He walked out and shut the door.

Sveti lay in the tub and listened to the hollow plop of water dripping from the faucet.

The sound was lonesome and desolate to her ears.

 

Sam stretched out on the couch, watching the sunset. It was the only spot in the room out of sight of the bed nook. Sveti needed to be alone, but he was not willing to go downstairs to be verbally tased by Tam Steele. Nor was he leaving this house without Sveti. The minute he turned his back, she'd bolt. He was sure of it.

He amused himself by poring over the poetry written on her mother's photo. They'd had a bad moment when he'd insisted on taking the picture out of its frame again. She had a right to be twitchy, after seeing him take kitchen shears to the picture of her dad.

He'd won that fight, at some cost, and Sveti was pissed with him now. She'd made up the bed and dozed off in it, with her back to him.

He combed through the fragments, using Sveti's tablet to research each one. First Peter Rodionov,
“Darkness from that ragged hole/pulls like a prisoner's shackling chain/drawing me into Hell's blind realm.”
Then Ruslan Lebedev,
“Oh Orpheus, do not turn your head/Love follows only the flame of utter faith.”
Then Jean-Michel Laurent,
“I am swathed in the breathless hush of night/caressed by fluttering wings of ragged and disreputable bats.”
Then Esther Rafael,
“Bear witness to this bowl of bones, this yellowed snarl of sticks and twigs.”
And finally, Vladimir Lukyenov,
“Come, shuffling souls, in rank and file/through the tall, implacable door/to the echoing vault where Death awaits.”

Spooky, doleful, miserable shit, and it meant absolutely nothing, in regard to Sveti. Neither did the whole poems, when he read them through. It pissed him off that Sveti had been jerked around like that, and by her own mother, too. Crazy. But not surprising, considering that the woman subsequently threw herself off a bridge.

Or not. He would revise all his judgments about Sonia Ardova if she'd been forcibly thrown off that bridge. But that was another whole writhing snake pit of speculation. One thing at a time, for God's sake.

A knock sounded on the door. Sam opened it and found Rachel, with a dinner tray. The girl carried it in, along with the stern message that the food was for Sveti, and Sveti only.

“It seemed kind of mean,” Rachel said apologetically. “I wanted to bring you some, too, but Mama said you could come and get something out of the fridge yourself, if you're hungry. Sorry about that.”

Sam laid the tray on a table. “It's fine. I'll get something later.”

After midnight, maybe. Like a slinking thief, rummaging shifty-eyed through the congealed leftovers in the fridge. God, what he was reduced to. Like Sveti's mom had said: Love made you stupid.

Rachel drifted over toward Sveti's bed. “She'll probably have nightmares tonight,” she said knowledgeably. “So watch out. She gets the really bad ones when she's worried about stuff.”

“Nightmares?” he asked. “What kind of nightmares?”

“You know. About when we were locked up. She gets 'em bad.”

Sam looked at Rachel's remote, abstracted expression. “You remember that? Weren't you just a baby?”

“I remember it just fine,” Rachel said. “They don't know how old I was when they got me, I was so shriveled. Failure to thrive, they called it. Plus, my eyes got screwed up, because I never got a chance to focus on anything farther than a few feet away from me while my eyes were developing. And the food was pus. The doctors told Mama I'd be retarded, from malnutrition. But I'm not.”

“You most certainly are not,” Sam agreed readily.

Rachel folded her skinny little arms over her narrow torso. “Sveti saved me,” she said. “She gave us all her fresh food. The milk, the bread, the fruit. She just starved. She was so skinny when they saved her. I'd be dead if it weren't for her.”

They looked quietly at Sveti's slender form for a moment.

“Sveti thinks everyone's special enough to save,” Rachel said softly. “Even the broken, messed-up ones that get put in the garbage.”

He nodded. His throat was too tight to speak.

“It's stupid, for her to go to London now.” Rachel's voice was rebellious. “She should stay here, where my mom and dad and the rest of them can protect her! She's crazy to leave now!”

“Couldn't agree with you more,” Sam said promptly.

“She doesn't listen to you?” Rachel's tone was disapproving.

Sam shook his head.

The little girl harrumphed. “So what good are you?”

Sam choked on his laughter. “Whoa. Harsh.”

Rachel sniffed. “You think that's harsh?”

Sam gazed at the young girl, who tapped her foot, looking over the tops of her thick glasses. Tam's daughter for sure, with that attitude.

Rachel blew the mop that fringed her forehead upward with a puff of breath. “So you're going to Italy with her? And then to London?”

He nodded. “That's the plan.”

“You're going to be with her all the time? Every minute?”

“Like glue,” he promised.

She crossed her arms, chin out. “Do you have a gun?”

“I can't take one to Europe, because of their laws, but I'll figure something out when I'm there,” he said. “On my honor.”

Her head tilted to the side. “You love her, right?”

The matter-of-fact question took him by surprise. When he could inhale again, the answer flew right out, as if released from a cage. “Yes,” he said.

“Good,” she said coolly. “That way you'll be more motivated.”

Calculating, for one so young. “I wish she thought so,” he said.

“Just know this.” Rachel's girlish voice was hard. “You keep her safe, or it won't be just Mama and Daddy coming after you. I will, too. And I'll make them look like a couple of kittens rolling on the rug.”

Sam clamped down on the urge to laugh. Rachel reminded him of exactly that. A fierce little kitten, hissing. But kittens grew. Rachel was a panther in the making. “I don't respond well to threats,” he told her.

Rachel sniffed. “It's not a threat,” she said. “I'm just saying.”

“Thank you.” He kept his mouth from twitching. “I'd put my life on the line for her. I already did, yesterday. So you know I mean it.”

Rachel looked back at Sveti. “Careful if you wake her up from a nightmare,” she advised. “She hits. She gave Mama a black eye once.”

“Yikes,” he said.

“Oh, Mama didn't care,” Rachel said. “Mama's tough. That was the last time Sveti had a bad one. At least while she was here.”

“Was it after her mom died?”

“When her mom was killed, you mean,” Rachel corrected. “But, no, I was talking about last year, when you were in the hospital.”

Sam's jaw sagged. “Huh?”

“She practically lived at Legacy Emanuel when you were in the ICU,” Rachel informed him. “Mama drove down to Portland to get her when you got put into a normal room. They wouldn't let me sleep in here with her, like usual. Mama did, because of her nightmares.”

His mouth was dry. “Nobody told me Sveti came to the hospital.”

Rachel shrugged. “Your family didn't see her. They wouldn't have recognized her if they had. Sveti's friends with a nurse who works in the ICU. She let Sveti sit with you whenever your family wasn't there.”

Sam's mouth opened and closed. Nothing came out.

“You get shot a lot, don't you?” Rachel's voice was disapproving. “Mama says it's a bad habit. The worst habit a boyfriend can have. Worse than smoking.”

Hysterical laughter burst out his nose. “You could say that.”

“You're no good to Sveti if you get shot. Learn to duck, okay?”

“That's the plan,” he assured her.

“Okay, then. My work here is done.” Rachel flounced toward the door, then turned. “Don't touch her dinner, or I'll tell Mama.”

Air whooshed out of him when the door shut. He thudded down onto the couch. She'd sneaked in and sat with him in the ICU when he was unconscious? God, what a waste. If only he'd woken up in time and busted her. What he could have accomplished, with months to ruthlessly play the convalescing invalid pity card. He would've had her nailed to the wall by now. He'd have closed the deal long before this seductive Illuxit bullshit ever came onto the horizon.

But what-ifs were a waste of time.

He stripped off his shirt and climbed into the bed wearing just his jeans, curling his body around hers. Her heartbeat felt rapid and hectic, as if she were dreaming. God knows about what. Something scary.

He wished he could crawl into her dreams and do battle with the monsters there. She deserved a champion, even inside her mind. Hell, especially inside her mind. She'd stood guard while he was in extremity. He could do the same. He lay wide-eyed in the darkness. Battle ready.

It happened a couple hours into his watch. Sveti exploded into movement, wailing something in Ukrainian. Good thing Rachel had given him a heads-up, because it would have scared the living shit out of him otherwise. He parried her blows and carefully rolled on top of her, containing her body without crushing it. She thrashed and yelled.

“Sveti, Sveti, Sveti,” he crooned, batting her clawed fingers away from his eyes. “Sveti, it's me. It's Sam.”

Slowly, her flailing ceased, easing down to a violent tremor. “Sam?”

“Yeah, it's me.” He dared, finally, to lift himself, reach to flip on a lamp. “You're safe, baby.”

“Sam? Oh, God, I'm so sorry. Did I hit you?”

“Nah,” he lied. “Not very much. Little kitten paws.” Actually, his face smarted from the blows that had landed, but even a whack on the face from Sveti was sexually stimulating. He was really that fucked up.

He pulled her close, but she wrenched away and huddled herself into a knot. Hugging her knees, hiding her face. He'd gotten familiar with that pose by now. “Nightmare?” he asked gently. “Tell me about it.”

“You don't want to know.”

“Yes, actually, I do,” he said. “Come on. Tell me.”

He waited, stroking her back. Minutes went by. Her heart rate had eased off. He lifted her hair, exposing her face. “Tell me,” he urged.

She sighed, surrendering. “From when I was taken, years ago. One of our guards, Yuri. He was foul. He stank, and he was cruel, and violent, and he . . . well. Anyway . . .” Her voice trailed off.

Sam finally prompted her. “He sexually abused you?”