"So don't you dare ask me to be grateful. Don't you dare act like you're some kind of hero. You're just a man who finally did the right thing after it was too late to matter."
He stares at me, his face pale, and I can see the impact of my words hitting him. I’m glad it hurts. I want him to feel even a fraction of what I've felt.
"I hope you have a nice life, Kazimir," I spit out. "I hope you and Ilya are very happy together. I hope you never have to think about me again."
I turn and walk away, and this time, he doesn't follow.
11
KAZIMIR
Iwatch her walk away after she tells me tohave a nice life.
She doesn't look back again. She just strides across the tarmac as if there’s a car waiting for her, that envelope shoved in her pocket now, her shoulders squared. I can see the limp in her step, and I know she’ll either have to walk to the city or catch a ride.
But it’s clear that she’d rather be mauled by a bear than let me take her anywhere.
The anger is still there, hot and sharp in my chest.Grateful.What the fuck was I thinking, saying that? Like she owed me something for cleaning up a mess I helped create in the first place.
But underneath the anger is something worse. There’s still that lingering desire as I watch her walk away, the kind that makes a man do stupid things.
I need to let her go, walk away, and forget this ever happened. She made it clear what she thinks of me, and she's not wrong. I abandoned her once. Saved her too late. Fucked her when she was vulnerable and traumatized.
I'm not the hero in this story.
But I can't stop watching her until she disappears, swallowed up by the curve of the hill leading to the road on the other side. Even then, I stand there for another minute, staring at the space where she was. I hate the thought of her there alone, asking some stranger who might take advantage of her for a ride. Going… somewhere that I can’t follow.
Whether she’s a princess in red silk or a damsel in distress, I want her just as badly. But she’s not mine, and she never will be.
I should count my blessings that, as of right now, it appears I fucked her and I’ll still get to keep breathing.
My phone buzzes with a text from Ilya:Call me when you land.I let out a sharp breath.
It jolts me back to reality. I head to the waiting car, giving Ilya a call as the driver takes me back to my apartment. I fill him in on the pieces I can. My story is carefully crafted to ensure that, if I play my cards right, he’ll never know how everything really went down.
I tell him that I discovered that Iosef is trafficking women, keeping them as sex slaves, and selling the ones he doesn’t want, torturing and imprisoning them when they misbehave. I tell him our visit was cut short when one of the women escaped. He wanted me to help track her down, and I declined, which led to a dissolving of good relations between us. He mistrusted my motives, tried to keep me locked in the house until he returned, and things got violent. I shot one of his men, called for an extraction, and returned.
It’s partially true and partially a lie, which is where I’ve found the best lies reside. Keep as close to the truth as you can, and only make up what you absolutely have to. The untruths are easier to keep track of that way.
If Iosef tries to tell Ilya now thatIreleased his prisoner and ran with her, Ilya will be more likely to believe my tale, and allI’ll have to say is that Iosef is smearing me. Who does Ilya want to believe—me, or a man who traffics in flesh?
The answer is easy.
I can tell he’s not pleased, but he doesn’t sound as angry as I’d feared. His wife, Mara, has been a softening influence on him since they’ve been together, and he’s easier to handle than he used to be.
I still fear him, though, as every man in his orbit should. And I have a healthy respect for how violent he can be.
The driver drops me off at my apartment, and I head inside, rubbing my temples as I grab a water from the fridge. I’ll need to replace some of the things that got left behind in Russia, but the first thing I want is a shower.
I’m no sooner under the hot spray than thoughts of Svetlana in the safe house bathroom last night come rushing in, hardening my cock instantly as I run shampoo through my hair.
I try to ignore it, but it feels impossible. I know that the only way to get over her, to get over thislustthat I’ve been harboring for her for years now, is to shut this kind of shit down. To not let her affect me physically. To not think of her when I wrap my hand around myself. Not her slim body or her perfect small breasts, the delicious curve of her ass or the way it pinkened under my hand, the way she squealed when I brought it down…
My hand is around my length before I realize what I’m doing, stroking fiercely as I close my eyes. I can practically smell her arousal again, almost taste her on my tongue. I can remember viscerally how it felt to have her clenched around me, the wet velvet of her pussy sliding along my length, the first woman I’ve ever fucked bare…
“Fuck—” I hiss the curse as I run my hand over my length, my thumb circling the head of my cock as I brace myself against the wall and give myself over to it. I can’t stop thinking about her. The way she whimpered when I rubbed her clit for the firsttime. The way she clenched my fingers and pulled them deeper like she wanted me to fuck her. The way I could have come just rubbing myself against her pussy… how wet she was, dripping all over my cock.
And how it felt to come inside of her.
