Page 27

When I hesitate, he points a black-gloved finger at each pill. “High-grade opioid. Muscle relaxant. Take them. The alternative is Komarov holds you down, and you scream yourself hoarse as I snap that bone back into alignment. Makes no difference to me. The walls down here are soundproof, so you won’t disturb my kids upstairs.”

This man has children?

I shoot a desperate glance at Zevran, hoping he’ll step in and promise he won’t let anyone tie me down, but he just stands there with his arms folded across his broad chest, watching me expectantly.

I don’t have a choice. I swallow both pills dry, wincing as they scrape down my raw throat.

“What now?” I ask nervously.

Lorenzo completely ignores me, turning his back to prep his materials. Zevran joins him, and the two men begin conferring in low voices. I try to listen, wondering if they’re discussing me, but neither of them so much as glances in my direction.

Why would they? I’m just an inconvenient delay on Zevran’s itinerary.

A few minutes tick by, and as I’m staring aimlessly across the room, the light reflecting off the stainless-steel tables begins to glimmer, blurring into soft halos of gold and blue.

Whoa.

I blink slowly, looking around. The sharp edges of the room are melting. A lush, floating warmth blooms in the pit of my stomach, spreading up my chest until my head feels weightless, like a balloon tied to a string.

A sudden mental image of myself floating up to the concrete ceiling makes me giggle.

Zevran comes over, standing directly between my knees to study my face with a faint frown. Mistaking the hand I’ve clamped over my mouth as fear, he says, “You’re still worried.”

I try to focus on his face, but his features keep shifting in the warm light.

I open my mouth to inform him that I feel absolutely fantastic, but before I can get a word out, his hands move to his dark shirt, and he unbuttons it.

“Lorenzo knows what he’s doing,” Zevran tells me. “I’ll prove it.”

He pulls his shirt open, exposing a puckered silver scar running three inches along his ribs. He says something about Lorenzo re-inflating his collapsed lung and stitching him back together, but his deep voice sounds like it’s floating down from a cloud.

I’m transfixed by the sight of him.

This is the broad, sculpted chest I caught a glimpse of in the motel room before I forced myself to look away. I was so flustered then, my cheeks burning, staring rigidly at the wall to pretend I wasn’t affected by him. But now he’s standing right between my thighs, offering himself up to me, and my drug-softened brain can’t find a single logical reason why I shouldn’t drink my fill of him.

Zevran Komarov is beautiful in the way dangerous, lethal things are beautiful. All that warm, smooth skin, the dark Russian ink, and the terrifying, alluring aura of a man who fears nothing on earth.

My foolish, high-as-a-kite heart desperately wants to touch him.

So I do.

I reach out with my good hand, trailing my fingertips over the raised tissue of his scar, marveling at the hard ridge of bone beneath. Up close, his tattoos are mesmerizing. A serpent coiling up his ribs, geometric lines, and dense Cyrillic script. Two sharp, eight-point stars sit high on his chest, right below his collarbones. My fingers trace the serpent’s spine, gliding across his muscular chest to the dark ink rising up his throat.

I feel his heavy swallow against my fingers.

“Viktoriya?” his voice rumbles, suddenly tight.

My hand drifts downward, tracing the ink across his chest. I press my palm flat over his pectoral, feeling the hard muscle beneath. His chest expands and contracts beneath my hand in slow, heavy breaths. He’s not quite as controlled as he usually is.

I find his dark nipple and give it a light, curious tweak.

His sharp, ragged inhale is extraordinarily satisfying.

I keep going, running my fingertips down the hard plane of his stomach, watching each ridge of his abs flex and tighten under my touch. They’re incredible, carved through a lifetime of violence and survival. I trace every single ridge carefully, giving them the full appreciation they deserve.

He breathes roughly, the word torn from the back of his throat. “Viktoriya.”

My hand glides down to the waistband of his dark trousers, following the trail of ink as it disappears beneath his belt. And then, as my eyes follow my fingers, I notice something else entirely.