“What were you doing in Budapest?”
She shivers when I trace her clit with my tongue. “You know.”
“Tell me.”
“I went to see my grandmother.”
I suck a little harder. When she gasps, I let go. “Why?”
“I didn’t want to make her worry.”
“If you’d asked me, I would’ve taken you.”
“Would you?”
She says it like she doesn’t believe me, but she does. The truth is there in her eyes, in the quick way she blinks before schooling her features. She’s good at masking her emotions, but I’m better. I’m better at reading them.
She’s lying. She’s hiding something.
“Yes,” I say. “I would’ve liked to meet her.”
Her cheeks flash an angry pink. They’re like peaches on cream. Stunning. Beautiful. “You’re not going near her.”
I bite down softly, the warning subtle. I don’t want to lose my calm again. “I thought you understood who’s giving the orders.”
She sucks in a breath. “Please, Yan. I don’t want to frighten her. She’s fragile.”
This, I believe. I open her pussy between my thumbs and take a good, leisurely look. It’ll never be enough. I can’t grow tired of this, of her.
I lift my eyes to meet her gaze, dragging a thumb over her clit. “I told you it didn’t have to be like this, but you left me no choice.”
Her voice is tremulous. “Like what?”
I close my lips around her clit and draw circles with my tongue.
Delicious. She’s my peaches, my cream.
She lifts her hips and moans, but the caution in her eyes doesn’t diminish. “Like what, Yan? Are you going to hurt me?”
“I said I wouldn’t.”
“Then what? Keep me tied up? Locked up?”
I need her for the Dimitrov job as per her own clever design. Locking her up is no longer an option. We’ve already set the ball rolling with our meeting in Ostrava.
No, keeping her tied up is not how I’ll punish her.
“You’ll spank me?” she asks bitingly.
My smile matches her tone. “No, princess. The next time you run, I’ll slit Hanna’s throat.”
She blanches. Her shock is fleeting, though, drowned out by anger. “You son of a bitch.”
She tries to kick, but I easily grab her ankles. She tosses in the constraint of the towel, trying to move her hips from side to side to shake me off, but her struggles only spur me on. I push her ankles toward her body, bending her knees, and under her hateful glare, I go back to my feast. I trace her pussy lips with my tongue, wedging them apart to taste her clit. She fights, but I don’t stop. She’s not fighting the pleasure.
She’s fighting the threat on her grandmother’s life.
She’s fighting the surrender.
I don’t let her win. I make her need climb slowly. Taking my time to enjoy her womanly taste and the feel of her soft flesh under my teeth, I draw an orgasm from her that makes her tremble. She shakes with aftershocks, quivers with defeat as I give her what I withheld last night.
When her whole body sags, her teary eyes hazy and her battle lost, I untie the towel and lower her arms. I rub them to aid the blood flow and then carry her to the shower. Lowering her onto the chipped tile floor, I study her body to make sure I haven’t left new marks.
The setting is wrong. My pretty little flower—a deadly one, no less—doesn’t belong in a cracked cubicle with a moldy shower curtain. I turn on the water and wait for it to run warm before pushing her under the spray. I wash her body and hair with the white bar of hotel soap. I’m gentle, giving her comfort after dealing a heavy blow. She’d rather die than let her grandmother suffer. I know, because we’re the same. A great deal of what we do is for the only thing we have.
Family.
And now for me, there’s also her. Ilya is no longer all I have.
I turn off the water, towel her dry, and tell her to get ready.
While she dresses, I pull on my clothes, make a flight reservation via my phone, and email Anton the details. Afterward, we have breakfast at a street café, but she hardly touches her coffee or croissant. I use the time we have to wait at the airport to send an encrypted message to our government contact, informing him that I need the surveillance camera footage of the Újbuda Clinic. I don’t state a reason. He won’t ask questions.
All through this, Mina sits quietly. I keep an eye on her while I catch up with my messages, and the footage I’ve requested arrives in my inbox as we’re boarding the plane. I seat Mina by the window and fasten her seatbelt before seeing to mine. She turns her head away, staring out the window, and I tap on the link and start scrolling through the recording. I go fast, not expecting to see much. I’ll go through everything in Prague, or better yet, I’ll make Ilya go through it, frame by fucking frame.