The Siren's Touch (23 page)

“Lay down, my sweet ghost.” He backed her toward the bed.

When she bumped against it, she cringed. “I forgot to tell you.”

“What?”

“The teapot exploded. There’s ceramic dust and sharp little pieces all over the room.”

Damn. That probably meant there was no way to move her from the hotel, ever. Plan B was in shards all over the room. No wonder she was frightened.

“Not to worry, sweetheart.” He reached behind her and flung the quilt off the bed, exposing the sheets they’d dirtied earlier. But at least there were no splinters of porcelain on them.

He lifted her onto the bed, and she slid back, making room for him between her legs.

“Not yet. Roll onto your belly.”

Prone, she turned her head to the side and watched him undress, holding his hand, or pressing hers to his abdomen when he needed to unbuckle his belt and unstrap his holster.

“I pray there is a day coming soon when you won’t wear that thing.”

“Already here, sweetheart.”

Her smile failed to hide her grief, and it was more than he could bear to see, so he climbed onto the bed and straddled her hips. Brushing aside her thick, damp hair, he kissed her neck, nibbling and teasing with his tongue. He was going to send her to her parents wearing a row of love bites, marking her with proof that, in some impossible way, she belonged to him. She wriggled underneath him, making all the gasps and groans that turned him on more than her freaky rusalka siren song ever had. He kissed her fingers and stroked the underside of her arms. He tongued down her delicate spine, all the way to her full, heart-shaped ass, where he teased the sensitive flesh at the top of her crevice. She raised her hips off the bed in invitation, parting her legs. But he used his thighs to press them together.

“Patience.”

“Since when is that your virtue?”

He could exercise patience when it was called for, but she’d only ever seen him in a hurry. “Is that a challenge? Because I can make you wait for me all night.”

Her lip trembled, but she managed a retort. “Are you offering me a choice between one long tease or multiple bouts of impatience? Because that’s a very difficult decision.”

The choice wasn’t his to offer. Based on what had happened last time, the moment Sonya let go of her control, that rusalka inside her would seize it. He would only have to give her the means to do what had to be done.

“No choices, sweetheart. You took the reins last time, now it’s my turn.”

She rotated her head, and her upturned cheek showed faint pink creases where it had been pressed to the bed. With his fingers, he combed her hair out of her eyes, revealing a hint of a pout.

He chuckled silently. His ghost had gotten used to controlling things very quickly.

She cleared her throat, and when she spoke, she had just enough rusalka in her voice to make him completely subservient. “Now lie down and let me touch you.”

* * * *

A little guilt tugged at Sonya for using the sexy voice on him, but she couldn’t resist touching and exploring him one last time before she said her good-bye. He took her hand and lay down next to her on his back. Drawing a circle in the air with her finger, she demanded he roll over onto his stomach. When he complied, she threw her leg over his waist and seated herself on the cushion of his firm buttocks.

Until that moment, she’d only noticed the scars on his face. But there on his back she found two long lines that could only have come from a belt, and a single cigarette burn in the back of his left triceps. Good Lord, his father had tried to turn him into a monster—but it hadn’t worked. When he’d boxed in the ring, had people noticed those faded signs of abuse? Or had they focused on the power of his broad shoulders, the strength of his thick arms? She traced the line of those lash marks with her lips, placed a single kiss on the burn mark, and then memorized the shape of every plane and curving muscle of his body.

He was so still and silent that she began to worry.

“Dmitri?”

“Hmmph,” he replied into the pillow.

Oh, no, was he falling asleep when she needed to say good-bye? “Is this okay?”

He nodded, and a tear pooled in the corner of his eyes. “Sweetheart, I have never enjoyed anything more in my life.”

She wiped the drop with her thumb and sucked it into her mouth, another taste of him to record. If ever she glimpsed this memory as a rusalka, she would savor it.

His salty tear dissolved on her tongue. Like a spark, it ignited the anger smoldering inside her.

The shrieking chant of her parents began again, and it clawed at her eardrums.

“Kill him. Him. Him. Kill him and be with us.”

She shuddered and Dmitri pushed himself up and twisted underneath her. Her glance bathed his face in green light. He sat upright and took hold of her shoulders, rolling her underneath him. All the while, her tremors shook the bed. Its square wooden headboard creaked, straining where the screws affixed it to the wall.

Gregor’s cab pulled up to Elena’s house and he paid the driver. His short little sister appeared at the top of her front steps with a man. Gregor opened the door to step out of the cab at the same time the man turned—his old enemy. Boris Makar, holding his sister’s elbow. He reached for his gun, but of course, it wasn’t there. He’d come on a commercial airplane. And he never used his gun anyway, that’s why he had Dmitri. Instead, he stood, dumbfounded, with one foot in the taxi, his cane and the other planted on the street.

As usual, Elena was the first to find her footing. “Get back in the taxi, we are coming with you. Dmitri needs our help.”

Boris gave Gregor a resigned shrug. His skin itched at the idea of being so near to this man, but none of them had ever been able to stand up to Elena face-to-face. He’d always had to manipulate from behind her back.

“The Hotel Omnus, please.” She slid gracefully across the bench. Her small body wasn’t much of a buffer between the two enemies, but the force of her will was effective. Although she sat still, her fists were clenched and her face pale.

Clearly, she’d discovered his deception, but she didn’t rail at him. The whites of her eyes shone bright with worry, not anger.

His mouth went dry as dust. “What’s the matter with Dmitri?”

“He’s gone off to sacrifice himself to Sonya Truss, to pay Ivan’s blood debt.”

So the woman in the photo really was the Truss girl, and he hadn’t lost his mind. Hell. Insanity was easier to swallow than this version of reality. “What the hell is a blood debt?”

“She is a rusalka.”

Gregor shook his head. “They only exist in fairytales.”

“Fine. Gregor. You can believe that. Meanwhile, our nephew is about to surrender his life to her so that she can go to the afterlife before she becomes a blood-thirsty water phantom.”

“What?”

Boris leaned forward to peer around Elena. “Ivan killed her. The debt transferred to his son. She has to kill him, or go insane trying.”

Gregor slumped into the seat. His bones ached from weariness, from cancer, and from sheer fear for his nephew. Ever since Dmitri had killed that girl, he’d been a live wire. But this was crazy, even for Dima.

Crossing his arms tight across his chest, Gregor shook his head. “No. The universe doesn’t work that way. Blood debts transferred from father to son. Ridiculous.”

Boris snorted. “Are you listening to yourself? You, who taught Dmitri to hate me, who sent him here to kill me? You have the nerve to say blood debts aren’t real?”

“That’s different. They’re the rules of our business, not the supernatural laws that govern ghosts. With his benders and his little crisis of conscience, Dmitri’s looking for a self-destruct button, just like his father.”

“He’s nothing like his father.” Boris and Elena spoke at the same time.

She turned and looked up at her former lover. Years vanished from both their faces, transforming them into the youngsters they’d once been. Well, hell. Gregor’s lies were about to bite him in the ass, the reasons for them so inconsequential fifty years later. His sister’s honor, the Lisko family name, his own pride—in the end they cost Ivan and Dima and even Elena too much.

The Lisko house of cards was about to collapse with him on top, the king of diamonds nothing but a paper shell. With his past sins exposed, Elena and Dmitri would abandon him in his last days, leaving him alone to die. The only endgame that had really mattered—ensuring the future of everything he’d built—now unwinnable. Just one more defeat to Boris Makar.

Without thinking, he lunged at the man, wrapping his hands tight around Makar’s throat, pressing on his windpipe with both thumbs. Elena swatted and slapped at Gregor, but he held tight. Boris gurgled and his eyes turned red. A stabbing pain pierced Gregor’s foot. He let up his chokehold as Elena ground the heel of her shoe into his instep.

“You selfish son of a bitch,” she cried. “Dmitri could be dead, and you’re here hashing out ancient grudges that are probably all your fault to begin with.” She squared off her shoulders, shielding the much larger Boris behind her. “You two can have it out later, but first we save my nephew.”

“From what? A ghost? What can she do to him anyway?”

Boris sucked in a breath. “According to the stories, she can rip him apart with her teeth and claws.”

“And if he puts his gun in her hand, she can do worse.” Elena leaned forward and scanned the street.

Ghost claws were one thing. Dmitri’s own gun was something else entirely.

Guns spilled blood, and Gregor had seen way too much of Dima’s the night he’d fallen in the ring. The pad of the ring had been covered in blue canvas advertising an insurance company, and the black-red pool had spread across nearly a quarter of the roped-off platform. Dmitri’s nose had been pushed so far into his head—and all Gregor could see behind his massive nephew’s battered face was a helpless kid, his face beat and bruised to the color of an eggplant after one of Ivan’s drunken rages.

Maybe Dmitri was Gregor’s muscle. But Gregor had always been Dmitri’s protector. Not a perfect one, but God knows, he’d tried. And he would not let the kid get himself killed by some crazy ghost because of Ivan.

“Do you have a plan?” he asked his sister.

She glanced to Boris and back. “Sort of.”

Not much time left.

Dmitri gripped her shoulders to still her.

Straddling his ass, she’d been moist and hot against his skin, but was she ready? He didn’t have time to find out. He parted her legs and thrust in hard, all the way. Surprise colored her cry, but not pain.

“Oh God, Dmitri.”

She shook, as he’d expected. The more pleasure stole her control, the more the rusalka would take hold.

“Sonya, concentrate on me. Don’t look away from my eyes.”

He took hold of her hips, raising them to just the right angle, and began a slow rhythm. Every stroke inside her soft heat made what he was about to do worth it. She’d made everything worth it—his father, his fighting, his work for Gregor—all of it had made him ready to do what needed to be done.

He slid in and out of her, his gaze locked on her mesmerizing green eyes. With some supernatural power, they commanded him to submit, to obey her. Wholly unnecessary. She’d earned his service honestly, no rusalka powers required.

He increased his pace, pistoning into her, taking her so much harder than he had before. Her ladylike gasps became animalistic grunts. Chestnut hair fanned around her head, messy, damp, and glorious. She lifted her hips to meet him, slamming their bodies together with blissful violence. It was a passion fueled by her hunger for vengeance, but she resisted it with strength, holding on to what made her Sonya and surrendering to his love instead of the rusalka. Each time he withdrew, she squeezed him like her body didn’t want to let go—clinging to her life and to him.

Impossibly.

Because it couldn’t last forever.

She reached up to grip the headboard. Her shallow pants came faster, and she tilted her chin, severing their eye contact to roll her head back and forth. Without breaking his rhythm, he reached for his gun where he’d left it, at arm’s reach on the nightstand.

He possessed all the focus of his best nights in the ring, his body a well-tuned engine, the crowd faded to a silent shadow, his thoughts crystal clear and reasonable, without a drop of fear. Fear was for people without choices. He’d made his and didn’t regret it.

With his other hand, he stroked her where their bodies joined, finding that spot that would tip her over the edge. Soon, her core convulsed around him and the room shook.

Damn. If he didn’t get this over with, she could bring down the whole building. The contractions inside her became a steady pulse, and he froze. She lowered her chin, leveling rusalka eyes at him and baring her teeth in a snarl.

His body ground to a halt. His cock, his balls, and his heart protested the abrupt stop.

But what all three wanted could not be. He held up the gun, letting it dangle from two of his fingers. She swiped for it but missed. Would she even know how to fire it?

Hell, it was a gun. At this range all she had to do was point and pull.

He lowered it a couple inches, and she caught it, pulling it into her grasp. Her mouth fell open and her eyes went wide, filling with tears.

“You promised,” his sweet ghost cried.

And then she was gone.

Finally. She had him.

The rusalka raged. His blood smelled like warm milk and honey—she would spill it and then lap it up like a kitten.

He wrapped her hand around the warm metal object and placed her finger carefully. She didn’t know what it was, but she understood his surrender, grasped that the pull of her finger would be his end and her satisfaction. Her powers had mastered him, and he offered her what she was due. The thing was heavy in her hand, as was his body, pressed between her hips, his thick erection filling her.

Now that his surrender was complete, she deigned to show him mercy. She would kill him at his moment of release.