The Devil's Beauty (Crime Lord Interconnected Standalone Book 2) (45 page)

“No sir, none that will affect my performance.”

Dimitri sighed. “I keep trying not to think what might have happened if you weren’t there. She may not have gotten off with just a few bruises. Thank you.”

Frank only inclined his head again, his expression unreadable.

“This situation with Elena is getting out of hand.” Dimitri moved several steps closer. “I need to find her. I need to know what you know about her. You said she killed someone you cared about, that means you would have information on her. I need to know what you know.”

Frank remained firmly unaffected for almost eight heartbeats. Dimitri wasn’t sure if he was trying to remember everything he knew or if he was deliberating the wisdom of sharing it. Just when it seemed clear he wouldn’t speak, his mouth opened.

“I believe she’s responsible for the death of Killian McClary.”

Frank was gone when Ava emerged from the bathroom, swaddled in a thick robe, her hair a damp tangle around her shoulders. She’d scrubbed off whatever little makeup had managed to cling on and felt oddly vulnerable without her mask. Not that it mattered. Dimitri had seen her without her war paint—as her mother calls it. He’d seen her in the morning, tussled and bedraggled with mascara smudged beneath her eyes and her mouth smelling stale. It had never stopped him from leaning in and kissing her anyway, despite her protest.

He stood at the terrace doors, back to the room, watching the sway of late afternoon creep over the city. The deep orange and red traced the straight lines of his shoulders and tinted the tips of his hair a light gold. She loved his hair. Loved how it hung around his face in soft, shiny waves and how he’d always shoved them back when he was frustrated and how that one coil always slipped right back, a rebel. When they’d been younger, him about eighteen, maybe nineteen, he’d wear it restrained in an elastic. It drove her mental. She hated seeing them contained, imprisoned. She’d tear the band out every chance she got, driving him to the point where he stopped wearing one.

It wasn’t as long as it once was. He stopped not cutting it. It still hung in his eyes, curled around his ears and tickled the collar of his top, but it wasn’t as wild anymore. But then, neither was he. He’d been much more reckless when they’d been younger. He’d come back with bruises and cuts and looking like he’d spent the day boxing with a gorilla. He’d tell her not to worry, but she did. She always worried. Even after. She was certain she always would.

He turned his head, startling her. She thought maybe she’d made a noise, but she realized, he wasn’t looking at her, but at something just out of Ava’s line of sight. She crept two steps lower and peered over to where the tiny blonde assistant stood, tapping away furiously at her phone screen.

Dimitri said something, too low to be heard and she—Penny—nodded, never once glancing up.

Unable to stand not knowing, feeling ridiculous for needing to know, Ava took the final steps and stopped at the bottom.

“Hey,” she said, hoping her voice was cheerful and not wary.

It was by far the most insane thing, this feeling of misplaced jealousy. He had never once been unfaithful to her. Before they were together, she knew he’d been with other girls. She’d never met them and he never mentioned them, but she knew and expected it. She’d always been too young for him and no one would have expected a twenty-year-old to wait for a gangly fourteen-year-old. What non-pervert would? Most men by that time were already in university and starting their first steps into adulthood. So, she never let him see how much she hated the idea of him with anyone else. None of them had ever been serious. He never once put them before her and actually made more time to see her than them. But the moment she’d put her claim on him the night of her eighteenth birthday, he’d been hers, all hers. He’d been loyal, generous, attentive, romantic. All the things any girl could possibly want. He’d been the exception, she realized later on when she’d started dating again. Other men weren’t nearly as dedicated or even as affectionate. He’d ruined her.

But they weren’t together now. A few kisses, a few promises, didn’t mean commitment. He was still single. He could still change his mind. He could still pick the tiny blonde with the big eyes.

Then his eyes lifted and met hers and the fears vanished. It was all there, as clear and beautiful as it had always been. She felt stupid for ever doubting him in the first place.

He was hers.

No matter what happened before, no matter the words that hadn’t been spoken, he was hers.

“How are you feeling?”

She wanted to run to him, to throw her arms around his neck like she used to and let him remind her just how incredible they were together. She had missed him, had missed his touch, the feel of his skin, the weight of his body, the length of him moving inside her. She missed the deep murmur of his voice in her ear, the low, guttural growl in his chest just before he came, the way he always waited until she was just about to fall asleep before whispering he loved her.

She’d asked him about that once, why he waited until that second when they spent nearly every hour together, and he told her,
“I want you to dream about me.”

As if she could possibly dream about anything else, but the thought had always stuck with her. It was hardest when he was gone and she kept waiting for those words to push her the rest of the way into slumber. When it didn’t come, she’d spend the night lying awake, trying to fit her heart back together.

“I’m all right.” She whispered. “I hardly feel anything. Those aspirins really did the trick.” She licked her lips and glanced at the woman. “I hope I’m not interrupting.”

Penny shook her head. “No ma’am, I was just finishing up.”

Ma’am. Jesus. They couldn’t have been more than a couple years apart.

“Would you like me to bring everything here, sir?” Penny turned back to Dimitri.

He nodded.

Penny tapped that into her phone, then pivoted on her heels. She started forward a few steps, head still bent, but stopped. She looked up and met Ava’s gaze.

“I’m sorry about your apartment,” she said, sincerely meaning it. “I couldn’t imagine…” she stopped to shake her head. “It’s terrible. I, uh…” She poked back her glasses to the bridge of her nose. “I hope you don’t think I’m being intrusive, but could I have your measurements, please?”

“My … measurements?” Ava glanced at Dimitri, then back at the woman. “Why…?”

“Clothes,” Penny said. “Mr. Tasarov thought you would need some.”

She did need some. She needed a lot of things, too many things to fit in a tiny phone. Her entire life had been in that apartment, memories she would never get back. A few clothes would not cover it.

“I can do it,” she murmured, fumbling with the balance of her emotions. “Thank you, Penny.”

Penny glanced at her phone quickly when a reminder blinked up on the screen. “Oh! I was just informed there’s a prescription from the hospital waiting for you.” She lifted her chin and blinked almost owl like at Ava. “Would you like me to fill it for you?”

Ava’s jaw unhinged. “How did you…?”

A sheepish little grin lifted Penny’s mouth. “It’s my job. So…?”

She started to shake her head, but Dimitri cut in.

“Yes, please, Penny, and bring a laptop with you when you return.”

Penny typed that into her phone, then nodded once before moving towards the door.

“Penny,” Dimitri called after her, stopping her with one hand on the knob. “Take one of the men with you.”

Penny visibly grimaced. “Oh, sir, really, that is not necessary.”

“I insist,” Dimitri prompted. “No one goes anywhere without an armed escort.”

Penny clutched her phone to her chest and stared across the expensive expanse, and Ava could see she was trying to think of a nice way to decline.

“I really wouldn’t know how to explain that to Daniel,” she said. “The change might upset him.” She forced a bright smile. “It’s fine, sir. We’ll be okay.”

“Penny, that isn’t a request.” The firmness in Dimitri’s voice was impenetrable. There was no room for disobedience. “Take one of the men with you. He doesn’t need to be inside your house, but he needs to be there.”

Penny’s lips pinched thin, but she gave a reluctant nod and left.

“That was nice of you,” Ava ventured, painfully conscious of the fact that they were alone in a hotel room designed for royalty. She couldn’t even imagine what the cost per night was. Well into the thousands no doubt and she remembered him booking it for two weeks. The math hurt her head. “She seems nice.”

She was rambling, trying to avoid the fact that the suite that could easily fit her entire apartment in the center of it was suddenly airless and tiny. The entire place smelled of him, hummed with his presence. She could feel the heat of him radiating along the floors beneath her feet. She could taste him, the hard, salty tang of him in the air. It was all a prodding reminder that she was completely naked under the robe. That her hardened nipples were rubbing against the soft fabric. She could almost imagine them being his hands, his thumbs teasing and rolling them just the way she liked. She had always loved having her breasts played with. Even a hint of contact and she was a writhing, begging mess.

But it wasn’t just her breasts. Her skin was tingling, hyper sensitive to every whisper of fabric brushing against her stomach, her sides, her back, gliding against her legs. It made her want to open them and let the material slip between and skim against the place no man had seen in longer than she could even remember. Not including that moment in the roach infested motel where Dimitri had briefly lost control.

God, she was turned on. The insanity of it made her want to laugh. The whole situation was borderline madness. After everything she’d been through, all that she’d lost, everything she still had to go through before it ended, and all she wanted was his hands fisted in her hair as he bent her over and fucked her senseless. All she wanted was to be bowed and molded into utter submission and let him break her again and again. The need was a palpable drive she could physically feel thrumming between her thighs, a phantom penetration that had her pussy gripping at nothing and weeping thick, sticky tears down the insides of her leg. She could feel the moisture, slippery and hot against her skin.

Fuck.

“Are you hungry?”

He was watching her, studying her the way only he knew how and she knew … she knew he knew. He always knew. Just looking at her and he could tell how badly she wanted him. He never told her how he knew. She’d tried to hide it, just to see if he could still tell and he always did.

He knew now. There was no way he couldn’t when the flush from her chest had spread up into her face and she could barely contain her panting.

“Yes,” she whispered, not sure what she was answering, maybe to the food, maybe confirming just how badly she needed him. Whatever the question—yes.

He was wearing a suit. She wasn’t sure she’d ever seen him in one before, but there he was, hair swept back, face cleanly shaven, body draped in a firm, form fitting suit of the deepest, richest black. It suited him. Everything did. He could wear a cardboard box and make it look good. But this wasn’t him. The lines of him were too rigid, too formal. He held himself a little too straight, like he couldn’t stand the feel of it against his skin. She wanted to liberate him of it. Wanted to strip him bare and drape him with herself.

“Fuck me.” The words were hers, unabashed and demanding, no room to be ignored. “I need you.” Her hands were at her waist, snapping apart the sash with hurried urgency. “I need to feel you inside me, harder, faster, deeper than we’ve ever done it before.” Her robe slithered off her shoulders and dropped to the floor in a white, abandoned puddle. She stood before him, flushed, painfully aroused, and unwilling to take no for an answer. “I need to feel something beyond everything that’s happened.”

His expression never altered. It remained frustratingly calm, focused, measuring. He was reading her, picking apart the fragileness of her and trying to determine just how much of what she was asking him was what she really wanted or what she felt she needed.

“Stop analyzing me,” she snapped. “I won’t break.”

“You’re hurt.”

She allowed herself a full second to assess her own injuries. She knew her ribs were tender from the kick on the boat and assault of having Frank shove her to the ground and his weight crushing her into the fluffy carpet. It hadn’t hurt then, her adrenaline had been too high. It hadn’t made itself known until the paramedics had forced her into their ambulance.

Her ribs had throbbed then, a merciless agitation that had made it impossible to breathe. Nothing was broken, so they told her, but the area was a dizzying mess of purple, red, black, and green with a jagged trim of yellow. They’d given her two aspirins, which must have been double extra strength or laced with crack, because she felt almost nothing, but a mild discomfort now. She knew it was there, but it wasn’t enough to sway her desires.

“I know what I can handle,” she told him.

His gaze lowered. He seemed lost in thought for several seconds before they lifted to hers again. Without a word, he stalked past her, his strides long and even all the way to the front doors. He opened one panel and poked his head out. She watched as he said something to someone she couldn’t see. Then he shut the door and turned to her, shrugging out of his blazer.

“Come here.”

She went. He met her in the center of the sitting area. His coat was tossed carelessly aside. He undid the buttons on his cuffs, his eyes never leaving her. He kept watching her even as one palm lifted and brushed the blossom of colors along her side. The contact sent a jolt through her, it elicited a gasp that made her breasts bounce slightly.

He didn’t notice that, or if he did, he didn’t react. His only focus was the gentle skim of his thumb along the curves of her ribs, tracing the different hues like he could just wipe them away.

“One word and it’s over, understand?” He lifted his gaze and locked them with hers. “I mean it. One tiny squeak, one flinch, and we stop.”

Ava nodded. “I know.”