Every stroke became savage, pushing her boundaries with my need and forcefulness.
Still she fought for control, her long nails scratching my back the way I’d hoped.
Every thought about her was more possessive than before, consuming in a way nothing had prepared me for. All I could think about was she belonged to me.
All mine.
Mine in a way to protect and care for, to keep from harm’s way at all costs.
The thought alone kept my stamina intact, the brutality of our coupling more passionate than anything I’d ever experienced. When I sensed a climax crushing down on her as my weight was doing, I didn’t slow, didn’t dare stop. I fucked her with everything I had.
In those few precious seconds, her eyes remained locked onto mine as the wave of ecstasy tore through her.
“Montgomery!” The single word, the exclamation of my name solidified my earlier decision.
As I released, erupting deep inside of her, I made a promise to her and to myself.
Nothing would ever come between us.
CHAPTER 17
Montgomery
Claiming ownership was an unusual practice for me, at least regarding a woman. And especially since I was a long way from home and my jurisdiction where I could make good on my promise.
Fleur studied me as she shimmied into her dress. The silence since I’d collapsed over her, taking a few minutes to calm my breathing was unnerving. Whereas she hadn’t seemed embarrassed before, I sensed she was experiencing awkwardness. Her inability to say anything to me was quite unusual.
“Perhaps you should go,” she finally said. Her timidness was also unexpected.
If she thought she could shut me down, she was wrong.
However, I’d heed her need to be alone for now.
I needed additional time to determine who she was.
What little I’d found in the time allotted had been centered on her shop opening, a local newspaper writing an article on the uniqueness of the items in her store. Granted, I hadn’t connected to the secure server the family used in discovering aspects about our enemies, but normally, there was at least a limited internet trail.
She had none.
That concerned me more than I’d wanted to admit. My training and experience in the mafia lifestyle would indicate my next course of action was to first stop thinking with my dick. Doing so would only create moments of having me blindsided. She should be interrogated. Certainly not in the way I did with my enemies, yet thoroughly until I was satisfied there was nothing hiding in her background or her life now intentionally determined to harm me.
Why was I even thinking in such a way after our intense round of passion? It was not only because she remained a mystery, but also that I’d learned more about how much the townspeople admired my father, and now, my entire family.
That shouldn’t mean anything, but with the Russians being eager to strike me dead, they’d assume I’d prefer hiding in plain sight in a community who’d rally around me.
I knew of no other such place with the number of properties we owned.
I also didn’t put my full fate in the security of our information. With the pilot being required to file a flight plan, even with our options of shielding the information from the public, as soon as Alexander had initiated the flight, a small percentage of people could have discovered the location.
That still didn’t sit right with me.
After ruling out family as well as Gio, that left a handful of people, including those on the ground in Vermont. While every employee and affiliate was vetted to the point we knew their damn shoe size, that didn’t mean there couldn’t be a deep infiltrator, a mole positioned for a lengthy period. It was classic spy game material.
The biggest onset of questions remained with why she’d almost been run down. Was she seen as my weakness, her death making me more vulnerable? The oldest sadistic trick in the book. Mind games.
Add it all up and whoever was responsible could be using the assassination ploy as a filler, pulling our time and energy off the actual chess game. What that might be was the final and most important question.
“Why are you looking at me that way?” she asked just before snatching her ruined panties from the rug.
