“You’re wound up so tight,” I say softly. I lean toward him, dusting the rapidly-melting snow from one shoulder of his coat. “Maxim. You have me captured. You have me cooperating. You have your man captured and a lead being investigated. Come—no more work needs to be done tonight.” My fingers find one of his lovely dark curls, snow-damp against his sharp cheekbone. “Let me help you relax.”
“Don’t,” Maxim growls, standing. He throws back the rest of his vodka and slams the glass down on the table, just a little too hard. “I’ve given you what you’ve asked for. I’ve treated you like a guest, not a prisoner. Don’t make me take away what I have gifted you.”
Gifted.A little prick of annoyance goes through me, but I don’t let it show.
“Consider it…a token of my allegiance,” I say, standing. Slowly, overtly, I slide the black silk robe from my shoulders. Maxim’s eyes go over my body, and I know I don’t imagine the brief look of lust that crosses his face. “Do you like it? I ordered it for you.”
He inhales sharply, hungry eyes taking in the black lace lingerie I ordered the moment I was given a catalogue for the highest-end shops in Moscow today.
“Annika,” he warns.
“I put it on so you could take it off.” False, rehearsed words. Words that have worked on many men. Will they work on Maxim?
Let’s find out.I pad toward him, gazing up into his face. All at once it strikes me that I’m not entirely playing: I don’t have toactattracted to him. I don’t have to pretend I want him to fuck me.
Somehow, despite everything, beneath the game-playing and manipulation—I actually do.
Don’t you dare let your history cloud your judgment, I order myself.You are still a prisoner here. You still have to escape. You still have to play this game.
Maxim looks down on me with cold, wary eyes. His jaw is clenched so tightly I can see every muscle, could trace them with a fingertip.
Instead, I place my hands on his chest. A flood of desire immediately lashes through me, hot and surprising. This body—I know it. I’ve felt it before. I’vehadit before. “Maxim,” I purr, sure I don’t imagine the way his heart is racing beneath my palm. “Would you like that?”
“When I fucked you all those years ago,” he growls, “I didn’t know who you were.”
“It doesn’t matter. I was the same then as I am now.”
He looks away, face set. “That’s not entirely true, is it?”
“Nothing has changed.”
“Everythinghas changed,” he shouts. I flinch, and Maxim turns suddenly away from me, running a gruff hand over his face. “My brother is going to die, if he ever even wakes up. Even in the best case, he’ll never walk again. He’ll never be who he was again. And I want to knowwhy. Why did he follow your father? What did he see? What did he think he knew?”
This isn’t just about revenge, I realize, watching him as he paces back and forth. It’s about hope.He hopes, against everything in him, against everything he knows about this brutal, bloody life, against everything that he’s experienced—that Alexei will live. And he resents himself for it. He’s angry. With my father. With himself.
With me.
I know that feeling so well it guts me.
“Take it out on me,” I say on an exhale, barely thinking. “Whatever you’re feeling. Take it out on me.”
He looks at me over one shoulder, black eyes narrowed and burning. He looks so beautiful, so tortured and broken and human that it takes my breath away.
“You’re fucking with me,” he murmurs.
I almost deny it—but why bother? In a way, I was a different woman three years ago, when he didn’t know my name and I didn’t know his. I was free then.
Now I am the opposite of free. “Yes,” I finally say.
Maxim crosses to me, halting only when we’re toe to toe. I crane my neck to look up into his eyes. After a moment of silence, my heart racing, he kneels and retrieves my robe. Without a word, he wraps it around my shoulders.
His hands linger there, scorching hot through the silk. I feel my breath hitch, and suddenly, the courage to look into his eyes flees me. I look down sheepishly, suddenly wishing he’d go—I know right now I look weak. I can’taffordto look weak.
“Not tonight,” Maxim finally says, voice crushed velvet. His fingers stroke my jaw to my chin. He tips my face upward and meets my eyes. “Volchitsa.”She-wolf.
I feel the faintest of smiles rise to my lips.Young wolf, I’d called him.
To my utter shock, Maxim bends toward me, feather-light breath stirring against my ear. “Do not fail me,volchitsa,” he growls.
