My hands slide up her back, fingers spreading wide as if I can somehow absorb her into my skin. Keep her safe inside my ribcage, where nothing can touch her.
She makes a sound against my mouth. Soft. Needy.
I want her to have no doubt. The words press against my teeth, trapped behind the kiss. No doubt about what I feel. What I want. What I'll do to keep her.
The fucking phone won't stop.
I pull back slightly, breathing hard. Her lips are red, pupils blown wide.
The phone vibrates again. Insistent.
"I should probably answer that."
My forehead drops to hers, but I don't step back from between her legs. One arm remains wrapped around her waist, keeping her body pressed against mine. I close my eyes, breathing her in. That sweet wine-and-flower scent, mixing with something sweeter.
I pull the phone from my pocket with my free hand, maintaining our connection, her warmth against my chest. Yuri's name lights the screen.
"Da."
"Found what was bothering me." Yuri's voice carries that edge it gets when pieces click into place. "Remember our first major hit working for the Basovs? Seven years ago?"
"Yeah, the gang trying to steal the shipment at the docks. Wouldn't back down, no matter how many warnings the Basovs sent."
"One of the soldiers had that sword tattooed on his skin. Dimitri also found that some hits have been ordered by a group called the Volgograd Brotherhood. He said they coordinate directly with clients who're willing to pay premium rates for international operations. They're ghosts. Move between countries with legitimate business covers. No digital footprints, no traceable communications. Just rumors."
Professional. Expensive. Untouchable.
"Someone connected to that job survived that night. If the Volgograd Brotherhood is involved, the game just stepped up," I say.
This isn't about Fee or the Quinns. This is about me. Someone's hunting me. And they're using her to draw me out. My arm tightens around her instinctively, my body tensing as the protective rage builds behind my ribs. Whoever is behind this has made a fatal mistake. They think targeting Fee is my weakness. They don't understand they've just signed their own death warrant.
Chapter 15
Blood Pressure
The Forger:
Fee would be impressed by the scope of what I've built around her, if she weren't so busy living inside it.
Killing people is easy, really. Point, shoot, dispose. Any idiot with steady hands can end a life. The art form lies in creating narratives, constructing entire worlds, weaving realities so convincing that brilliant minds accept them without question.
That's the puzzle worth solving. Fee would understand that. She appreciates elegant solutions to impossible problems. The methodical approach she took to Morrison's files... She thinks like I do.
Fee's altered me, forced me to recalculate the endgame. But seven years of preparation don't evaporate because of unexpected interests. Anton's death remains essential.
I study the screen showing Morrison's financial records, the same files she dissected. Watching her work through my digital traps proved more arousing than any sexual encounter I've ever had.
The way her brain processes information, compartmentalizes emotion from logic, maintains laser focus despite chaos surrounding her...makes my cock hard.
Women bore me. Pretty faces attached to warm holes, useful for physical relief but intellectually barren. They giggle, they pretend, they perform. They are a temporary distraction, nothing more.
Not Fiona Quinn.
She makes my pulse race without touching me. It makes me recalculate variables I thought fixed. Makes me consider possibilities I'd dismissed as strategically irrelevant.
She has my whole and undivided interest. My complete attention in ways no one has ever managed before.
She analyzes instead of performing. While other women dissipate energy through emotional reactions, Fee directs every ounce of her considerable intellect toward dismantling the puzzle before her.
