Russian Heat (2 page)

Yuri braked at the front of an apartment block and Slava motioned for Jane to stay put, ensured Vlad was paying attention instead of flirting, and got out of the car. The instant burn in his eyes told him they were downwind from the chemical factory. Pretending to fuss with his jacket and hair, he quickly scanned the block.

Normal street
activity, not too many people, not too few. No one paying too much attention and no military-aged men just standing around holding their dicks and waiting for trouble. He searched the rooftops. Nothing there.

He went over to the apartment and buzzed unit number eighteen. While he waited, he noted the missing fire extinguishers and empty light fittings sprouting wires.

“Anna zdyes.” The woman’s voice crackled through the intercom.

“You have two rooms for three people?” he asked in Russian. Yuri slept with the car and the rifles; otherwise, there would be no car and rifles in the morning.

“One room with one bed.”  

Ah, fuck.

He looked over at the car.

~* * *~

Slava
and Vlad, weapons concealed in their packs, both headed for the stairwell and stared at her when she pointed out the lift.

“Deathtrap,” Vlad said.

Of course. Feeling an idiot, she trailed them up the steps. Vlad took the stairs two at a time, easier for his long legs than trying to mince up each one. Indoors she was conscious of the ripe odour of wool grease on her jeans and pullover. Yuri’s cigarettes cancelled out her stink in the car but now she reeked worse than a yak-herder. A change of clothing was imperative. She knew better than to expect a shower, running water or reliable electricity here, though. This was her least favourite time of day, when Vlad and Slava dragged her to some appalling new hole for the night, she did her best to look unfazed and they abandoned her to take up guard duty in the next room.

Despite her aching fatigue, sometimes it took hours to fall asleep in the unfamiliar bed, irrational dread and loneliness curdling in her stomach and amplifying unfamiliar noises and smells. Tonight would be no different.

Slava
found number eighteen on the third floor and knocked. She looked up and down the landing. It wasn’t dirty and there was no smell of urine or cooked cabbage, no syringes or rubbish. Someone was working hard to keep it clean. A couple doors down, a door opened a crack and Slava snaked his head around to stare at it until it eased shut. Captain Friendly, winning hearts and minds wherever he goes.

A middle-aged woman opened the door, a scarf over her raven hair. Craning her neck to look at Slava, her brown eyes widened and she took an involuntary step backwards. Slava got that a lot. Jane stepped forward.

“Dobre
Dyen,” she said smiling and the woman gave her a tight smile, eyes darting warily at Slava.

“May we come in?” she asked in Russian.

The woman hesitated and Jane could tell she didn’t want to let them in. She pictured the three of them through the woman’s eyes: a short woman in dirty clothes with two tall men built for menace wearing army fatigues. Vlad’s broken slab of a nose hinted at his taste for trouble and the scar on Slava’s cheek could edge brutishly handsome into just plain frightening unless you knew him. Most people saw low, dark brows slung over a flat hazel stare that promised violence. But Jane had seen the serial-killer eyes spark with humour and, on occasion, a heat that curled her toes.

Reluctantly the woman allowed them in. As they pulled their dirt-impregnated boots off at the door, Jane looked around. There wasn’t much to the apartment; it was cold and bare, the tile floor of the lounge picnic blanket-sized. A few sticks of scarred furniture collecting dust. The woman was telling her something in rapid-fire Russian but Jane couldn’t decipher the
Caucasus
dialect and let Vlad answer. After a brief exchange, Vlad handed over some money and the woman left. A grin stretched itself across Vlad’s handsome face.

Jane raised a brow at him. “What was that about?”

Slava
opened his mouth to speak but Vlad got in first. “She’s gone to sleep with relatives so we can use her room.”

“Oh.” Now she felt as rancid as she smelled for booting the poor woman out of her own home.

As the Russians executed a secret-service style sweep of the apartment looking for who-knew-what, she wondered how many family members the woman had lost. The war here had endured long enough to claim both the best people and the worst people and everyone in between.

She went to the back room to inspect her bed for the night and froze. Instead of two makeshift rooms divided by furniture, or three cots separated by screens, was one room with a single, purple king-sized bed. The memory of Vlad’s grinning face swam by like a shark.

“Vlad!”

~* * *~

Vlad
grinned at Slava. Unlike his stern friend, he loved trouble, and there was no better kind of trouble than the type that involved a petite blonde with a lovely ass, sky-blue eyes and the nerves to keep a steady hand on a hypodermic while serenaded by mortars. Besides, the fantasy of unpeeling Jane Ransom’s winter layers down to her bare, rosy skin had plagued him with a hard-on for the past month. Wasn’t it time to share some of that pain?

There was no doubt in his mind she wanted what they wanted. Sweaty and stripped down to a tee after wrestling sheep, the nipples of her firm little breasts pebbled each time she sat in the car, sooner if he teased her before they got in.

And each time they left the car, he scented the sweet perfume of arousal wafting from her, a perfume sadly obscured during the drive by Yuri’s cigarettes. Judging by some of her jokes, she had a delightfully earthy outlook on sex which he hoped extended to practice as well as theory. Most of all, he hoped she was as game in the bedroom as she was on the mountainside, willing to try new things, such as taking on two men at once.

His mouth watered at the thought of testing her boundaries. One fantasy in particular plagued him night and day. Jane, naked on her hands and knees on the leather backseat of the Zhiguli, Vlad buried to the hilt in her pussy, his hands forcing her thighs wider as she sucked Slava’s cock through the open window. Unlikely to ever happen, but a soldier could dream...

He saw hesitation in Slava’s eyes. The man worried too much. After watching Jane wrestle a ram with a vacutainer between her teeth, Vlad had no doubts she could take on two mean ex-soldiers, even if their play tended to skew towards the rough and dark.

She stormed into the room. “One bedroom, one bed.” She held up a single finger to emphasise her point. “Just to be clear, I’ll use military speak. Who’s going to unfuck this situation?”

God, he loved it when she talked nasty. It was like watching a nun pole dance. Every time she opened her sweet little mouth to drop a filthy cuss word or obscene joke, he wanted to jump her bones on the spot. He waited to see if she’d come out with any similar pearls, disappointed when she settled for folding her arms over her chest and glaring.

“Don’t worry, we’ll sort something out, won’t we, Slava?” He slid his friend a sideways look. In truth, they already had.

Slava
nodded.

“Now, don’t you want to try the portable hot-water shower?” he asked.

Jane blinked. “The what?” Her voice squeaked and Vlad knew he had her.

“You heard me—shower. We paid extra for it.”

She gave him a look of wonder usually reserved for three-legged chickens and he had to laugh. “Come on, stinky, let me show you how it works.”

Her answering smile tickled him. She had a wide heart, forgetting her anger to enjoy what the moment had to offer. He appreciated a woman who, like him, didn’t hold a grudge.

She followed but Slava stood rigid with disbelief, stunned stock-still by the concept of Jane one room away, wrestling with a shower hose, body gleaming and wet. Vlad braked and grinned. Slava had trouble believing in good luck but Vlad had no such problems, and the month-long torment had only whetted his appetite for “good luck.” Jane was going to be wrestling more than one hose in that shower.

“Slava, give me a hand. Setting up this thing is a two-man job.”

Slava
snapped to and Vlad could see he was back on board, ready to think on his feet. Just as well, nothing but a dedicated onslaught would breach Jane’s formidable defences, her entrenched denial of what her body so obviously craved.

He eased the bathroom door open and the three of them stared at the miraculous contraption set up on a plastic table next to the shower stall. A square steel cube, a battery-operated pump, a hose connected to the cold water supply and a clip-on shower hose with a shower head. Vlad hoped like hell the water supply was running, otherwise they’d all being going to bed tired, dirty and mighty frustrated.

Jane squinted at the set-up and he could see the cogs turning in her sharp brain. He had to act quick or she would throw them both out and work the damn thing herself.

“Slava, check the gas cartridge to make sure it looks safe to use.” That was a real concern. He definitely didn’t want their fun spoiled by exploding gas. He stripped off his t-shirt, enjoying the way the little vet’s eyes bulged. Cold air, almost as sharp as that on the snow-flecked mountains kissed his skin but he welcomed the chill. He always ran hot.

~* * *~

“What are you doing?”

Stupid question, it was pretty damn clear what Vlad was up to and she knew she should stop staring and get out of arm’s reach immediately, but holy fucksnacks what a body! Somewhere between cage fighter and Calvin Klein.

Vlad
dragged the rattling shower curtain across its rusty rail, powerful back muscles twitching and sliding over his frame and delivering a hefty clout to her resolve to leave. Her palms pleaded to slather themselves over the godlike expanse of his back and feel the play of muscle there, while the rest of her yearned to buff his steel torso with her breasts.

She yanked her hungry gaze away. Vlad’s campaign of dropping “dirty bombs” in her ear at every opportunity had finally paid off. Most of his innuendos made her laugh, but now it hit its target, his target, the aching core between her thighs.

Vlad
faced her, the fierce contours of his torso anchoring her feet to the bathroom tiles and abrading her self-control. A teasing cleft of muscle darted from between the hills of his pecs to skim down his centre and cleave a panel of obscenely defined abs that leered at her to inspect below. Slung low over each hip, a handlebar of muscle tapered inward, the V-shape disappearing beneath the low ride of his stiff camouflage pants, begging her to slide the fabric down over his hips and explore further.

She curled her restless fingers into fists. An evil grin spread over Vlad’s face at her struggle and, under her gaze, a bulge warped the drill fabric of his fatigue pants, driving heat into her cheeks and a pulse of warning through her sex. Who’s going to protect me from my hired protection?

She took a step back as he hitched his thumb over his waistband, tugging drab fabric down to reveal another inch of sculpted abs, and the rigid Adonis belt bracketing his hips. “See something you like, Jane?”

I bloody well do now.

It wasn’t every day that two hot security escorts wanted to seduce her, a literal plain Jane, the short vet with no frills or makeup, shod in muddy farm boots more often than heels, her “signature look” dirt-smudged jeans. Their unsubtle interest was both flattering and frightening, and her willingness to be with them both at the same time gave her pause; a threesome was not something she’d considered before.

The hired Russian bruisers, however, had her gagging for it, their rough talk, big hearts and special force bodies reducing her to something uncomfortably akin to a bitch in heat. But that wasn’t really her, logic asserted--the real Jane made all decisions based on rational thought.

Ready to make tracks, she found her way barred by Slava’s naked torso. Legs straddled, arms akimbo, his shoulders filled the doorway. “Where do you think you’re going?”

The dark hair sprinkling the prow of his pecs was a stark contrast to Vlad’s gleaming smoothness, as was his roadmap of old scars. They sat like razor wire over the hills of his massive chest and shoulders and below the deepest gouge pitting his pec, the word Трудноубиваемый was stamped in black Cyrillic. Hard to kill. Crazy Russians, they wore their dark humour like a badge of honour. Under his scars, Slava’s body twitched with taut definition, and the urge to kiss, lick, stroke and suck each arc and cleft of flesh submerged her in lust.

Her gaze slid between each man. The harsh fluorescent light raked their bare skin, pitiless in exposing every battle scar to her scrutiny. But perfection was perfection, and nothing could diminish the glory of the brawn flanking her, the powerful bodies wiring her blood with the promise of both protection and danger, the resulting tingle both a warm lick and a warning slap.

She eyed Slava’s hard face, taut with longing and doubt that mirrored her own. What did she really know about these men? Mother Russia, fucking and fighting figured large in their talk, but she had little sense of their moral compass, and who was to say whether they found her desirable or merely conveniently at hand?

Vlad
rooted his bulk behind her, his warmth invading her skin, her pullover no match for the furnace of his hard chest. Lust and fear hammered her as his proximity threatened to overwhelm her rational resistance. “Guys, this is so not a good idea.”

Her sodden panties said her pussy disagreed, but she’d never been one to allow her body to make decisions for her, even when her ovaries screamed she had no reproductive clue.

“You don’t like us?” Vlad asked.

That was the problem--she liked them too much and didn’t want to be left crying in her vodka when they took off.

Vlad
rested his platter-like hands on her shoulders, the heavy gesture reassuring, restraining her in a way she had no business enjoying. “You’re the boss, Jane. We follow your orders.”

Hardly true, but some of the tension trickled out of her spine at the words and his hands on her, their warmth easing neck muscles she hadn’t even realised were coiled rigid. She looked to Slava, who nodded.