Kissing My Killer (28 page)

“You look...very beautiful, when you dance,” growled Alexei.

I flushed and smiled. I seemed to get lighter on my feet, the music carrying me. Soon, I was barely treading on his toes at all.

The music ended and the couples gently slowed to a halt. I was grinning and surprisingly out of breath—I hadn’t realized how tiring dancing was. I panted up at him and then, suddenly, he was kissing me. A soft, tender kiss on the lips that made me want to rise up on my tiptoes, it felt so good. We held the contact for a long time before finally breaking apart. And as we did, I caught Alexei smiling. Only for a second, before he remembered himself. But it happened.

He was changing. And he was doing it for me.

I really had fallen for this man. It felt so good it almost hurt. No way was I letting him run straight into that poker room and risk getting killed. No way.

“Let me find a bathroom,” I told him, “And then we can think again. Promise me you won’t do anything stupid until I come back?”

Alexei nodded reluctantly. I hurried out of the main room and through the ground floor, searching for a bathroom. When I eventually found one, there were smudges of white powder on the marble countertop. As I was washing my hands, my foot nudged something that had been left on the floor just beneath the counter—a black g-string. Alexei’s comment earlier about finding a bathroom had been dead-on: this was how these people partied.

I walked out of the bathroom and headed back to the party. I was just nearing the door when a group of guards appeared, two in front of their charge and two behind him.

I stumbled to a stop.

The man they were guarding was as big as Alexei, but his opposite in a thousand subtle ways. Where Alexei’s gorgeous looks came from brutish, brooding peasant stock, this man looked like a Roman emperor, with an elegant nose and soft, curling black hair. Where Alexei’s body was all about brute strength, this man’s was all about lean, coiled power. And where Alexei’s magnetism was in that combination of cold, remorseless purpose and the burning fire that lay beneath, this guy was all about leadership. You could almost see it emanating from him like an aura—people fell aside to make room for him and every head turned as he passed.

He was hot as all hell. I was already Alexei’s—that wasn’t even a question. But if I’d been any other woman...wow.

I suddenly realized I’d been standing there staring for way too long and the group had almost reached me. I stepped left, but the guard on that side was still heading for me. I stepped right and now I was in the way of
that
guard. And then it was too late, because the whole group stopped just a few feet from me.

The guy they were guarding tilted his head infinitesimally to one side, judging me. It wasn’t like the brutish stares the men had given me in the strip club, or on the ship. This was more like a connoisseur judging a fine wine. It was subtle at first, almost romantic, a look that took in my hair, my eyes, my mouth. And then, abruptly, it was so scorchingly sexual that it felt as though my dress had vanished. I swear his eyes never flicked down below my neck, but it felt as if he’d seen every part of me.

And approved.

I swallowed and actually swayed a little in my heels, a wave of heat washing down my body and ending in an ache between my thighs. I was horrified to feel I was getting wet, just from that look.
That did
not
happen,
I told myself firmly.

“Who are you?” His Russian accent was as strong as Alexei’s, but very different. Instead of steel and rock, this reminded me of a flashing, lightning-fast knife carving the syllables into shape. The edges could be satin-smooth...or dangerously sharp.

“Jessica.” Using my real name seemed like a bad idea and
Jessica
was the first thing I thought of.

He moved an inch closer. The air seemed to compress between us, growing thicker and hotter, until I could feel every inch of exposed skin throbbing. “Well, Jessica,” he said. “I am Konstantin Gulyev. And while it’s lovely to meet you…”—this time his eyes
did
skim down my body in a way that sent a fresh wave of heat rocketing down to my groin—”you should probably get back to your date.”

I realized I’d known who he was, on some level, before he even said it. With his presence, he couldn’t have been anyone else.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Alexei in the main party room, watching me with an expression between dread and fury. He was making
get out of there
gestures.

I thought of him storming into the poker room, when Konstantin came back. Of him being shot by the guards before he even got a chance to tell our story.

I swallowed.

“I don’t have a date,” I said. “Vadim Andreyev sent me.”

Gabriella

For a second, I thought he didn’t believe me. But then a strange smile touched his lips and he said, “Interesting.” He only had to glance at the four men around him and they dispersed instantly. I evidently presented no threat.

My heart started to thump against my ribcage as he walked closer. I could still see Alexei out of the corner of my eye, looking horrified, but I tried not to look in that direction because I didn’t want Konstantin to notice him.

Konstantin drew close enough to touch me. He reached out and took hold of the fabric of my dress, close to my hip, rubbing it between his finger and thumb as if testing its quality. “And what instructions did Vadim give you?” he asked. His voice had dropped to a low growl, almost a purr.

I tried to think of how a call girl at the classy end of the scale would phrase it. “That I was to do whatever it took to please you,” I said. I went for
confident
but my voice didn’t obey, coming out as a strained, tight whisper.

That didn’t seem to bother him. Maybe he liked it, which scared me even more.

“Will you?” he asked, his voice teasing. He bent down and put his mouth right to my ear. “Will you do
anything
I ask?”

There was something about the way he said it that made a chill go through me—but the fear was mixed with unexpected excitement, heat rising to flush my face and sinking to pool in my groin. I shifted my feet, my heels clacking against the hallway’s tiles. And nodded.

“Well,” Konstantin said. “I was about to take a break anyway.” He opened his jacket and showed me a bulging wad of cash—his poker winnings. “I think I need to give the other players a chance to recover. Why don’t we go downstairs?”

Downstairs.
Why
did
he have a bedroom downstairs? Just so that he could take a woman to bed without bothering to walk upstairs? Was it really any quicker? The thought of what would happen down there sent cold currents of fear spiraling up from the pit of my stomach. What would he expect me to do?

I forced myself to stay calm. What he expected was irrelevant. Alexei would be down there waiting for us, so nothing would happen. All I had to do was walk slowly and—

And then it all went wrong.

Konstantin nodded to a door at the end of the hall—not as grand as any of the huge oak doors that led to the main rooms. The door to a set of stairs.

We were already closer to it than Alexei. We were going to get there first.

I suddenly realized that I’d missed a crucial part of Alexei’s plan—the woman had to intercept Konstantin well away from that door, so that Alexei had time to beat them to it.

Konstantin put a hand on the small of my back and turned me, gently but firmly, towards the door. He started walking and I found myself pushed along—it wasn’t that he was forcing me, but I couldn’t resist without making a scene.

Maybe I should make a scene. Maybe it was better to tell the truth now.

But the four guards, while they seemed happy to let us go downstairs on our own, were still hanging around in the hallway. If Alexei tried to get to Konstantin now, he’d likely get shot.

I’d just have to go down there with Konstantin and then stall until Alexei got there.
I can do that. I can get him talking. It’s just...feminine wiles.

Except I don’t
have
any feminine wiles.

We were at the door, now. Konstantin pulled it open, revealing a set of steps.

Not the polished wooden steps I’d envisaged. Cold stone ones.
That’s just because it’s an old house. He’s just keeping it authentic.
But I was starting to get a bad feeling.

I risked a glance over my shoulder as I stepped through the doorway. I could just see Alexei, still in the main party room, blocked from approaching by the four guards. He still looked angry at me, but the anger was subsumed by the fear, now.

Alexei was frightened for me.

Konstantin closed the door behind us and I was alone with him. He led me down the stone steps and I saw that they were lit not by electric lights but by candles on the walls. We seemed to descend forever.

At the bottom of the stairs were several doors, all ajar. These were as grand as the ones upstairs, but in a different way—dark oak banded with iron. They were built for strength. He opened one and gestured me inside.

The breath died in my chest.

It wasn’t a bedroom.

Gabriella

My mind rebelled against the word, because places like that didn’t really exist. But it was the only word that fitted.

Dungeon.
I was in a dungeon.

The floor was formed by ancient gray flagstones. The walls were bare rock, the whole room hewn from the bones of the earth. I remembered how long we’d taken to descend, and looked up at the bare stone ceiling.

“We are twenty feet beneath the mansion,” Konstantin said. “Rock is a very,
very
good soundproofer.”

There was a creak and I turned to see him closing the door. I could see now how thick it was, almost a foot of wood and steel. It slammed shut and the whisper of noise from the party above was instantly cut off.

Alexei is coming,
I told myself.
Alexei is coming.

I turned back to the room. I recognized some things: the bed—an ancient wooden four-poster in the center of the room, complete with scarlet drapes. A wood-burning stove for warmth, crackling and throwing out an amber glow. Even an old wooden dresser with drawers and a mirror. Those parts almost
did
make it look like a bedroom.

But there, the similarities ended.

There were oak beams overhead, ancient and black, with gleaming steel rings onto which things could be attached. There were a lot of those rings all over the room: some screwed into the walls, some bolted into the floor. Even, I noticed some attached to the bed and lacquered black to better match the wood.

Dangling from a beam a little above head height were things I recognized: black strips of padded leather with buckles. Manacles.

There were padded benches of different heights and angles and something that almost resembled...they couldn’t really be stocks, could they? There was a polished wooden rack, of the sort some rich hunter would use to display his prize shotguns. But displayed here were paddles and crops, canes and—my insides turned to liquid—whips.