Page 146 of Nemesis

“Vasiliy,” she gasps out. “I love you so much, sometimes I can’t breathe around the force of it.”

Warm, wet lips clash with my own. Her kiss is brutal. Desperate. I return it tenfold, throwing every fraction of pain into the connection between us. I’m more than happy to kiss her to sleep, but her hand snakes between us, resting on my hardening cock with an intentional squeeze.

“I need,” she gasps into my mouth between sweet kisses. “I want to forget. Just for the night, and then we’ll go back to mopping up the blood left behind.”

I’m nodding before she even finishes the sentiment, tugging her pants down with a desperate jerk. Only days apart, and yet I’ve barely functioned without her touch. Her tongue finds my ear, trailing a hot path down my neck. That singular contact sears through my senses. I would get it tattooed if I could.

“Fuck, you’re so wet for me, baby.” I rub my fingers against the silky smooth lips of her pussy. She bucks, immediately freeing my cock from my pants and grinding down on it. She doesn’t want foreplay, right now, and I don’t either. After so long apart, after so much death, we need something hard and fast and real.

She lowers down, coating my length in sweet, sticky arousal with the sway of her hips, arms moving to wrap around my neck. It takes every last dreg of concentration not to blow my load right there, before I even have the chance to feel her clenching around me. I’m never leaving ever again, I vow, notching my head inside her hot entrance.

I enter in one thrust, pushing balls deep into heaven with a pitchy groan. One of my hands threads through her hair, wrenching back her head. She wraps her arms tighter around me, squeezing so close I don’t know where my body stops, and hers starts. All I hear are the soft, needy moans as she starts to ride me in earnest, clenching like she never wants to pull away. I can feel the moment she falls off the cliff, spurred on by the thumb I have wedged against her clit. I immediately follow, coming so hard that my vision darkens at the edges.

Something is wrong.

The sinking feeling has been swimming around in my stomach ever since I woke to an empty pillow beside me and a haphazard note scribbled on the back of a torn sheet.

Have to run an errand. I’ll meet you at the tarmac.

Love, O

I have no idea how she snuck out of the room without waking me. I haven’t slept well since I left Chicago, so I must’ve been out for the count when she slipped away. Now that I’m standing in the shadow of the boarding plane, wind whipping into my face, the feeling has solidified. A deep-seated concern shines through my mind, illuminating all my worst fears.

What if she changed her mind about me?

Has she realized that I’m just a fuck-up after all?

Is she in trouble somewhere?

A steady hand settles on my shoulder, nearly making me jump. Alex hovers by my side.

“I wouldn’t worry, son. She knows the cost. She’ll be here.”

I grunt, already missing the squealing chaos of my sister. We agreed to leave Anya with Cass and Mikhail for the duration of the ordeal. It was an easy decision, given Anya’s affinity for their daughter and the security at their disposal. Still, I feel stripped and vulnerable without either of my girls by my side.

By the time all of the Solokov and Morozov soldiers have boarded the Chicago-bound jets, concern has shifted into cool, clammy despair. I’m about two seconds from commandeering a vehicle and setting off to look for her myself when a black SUV comes barreling down the tarmac.

Rubber burns as the car brakes hard, leaving thick, black tracks on the road.

Then the door swings open.

“Hi, baby!” Octavia calls out as she climbs from the back seat, a gun pressed against the spine of a shivering man in bright religious robes. She shoves her captive towards our small group at the foot of the plane’s steps. “Sorry, I’m late. Traffic was a nightmare.”

My jaw. Fucking. Drops.

What the hell?

An irritating cackle keels through the air behind me. I already regret bringing Mikhail’s Second along, even if it was part of Octavia’s deal. As the odd duo approaches us, Ivan only laughs harder, burying his hands in his dirty-blond hair. Alex stands on my left, expression mirroring my own as his mouth opens and closes like a guppy out of water.

The captive’s traditional kamilavka hangs crooked on his head as he shuffles forward, urged on by the barrel of my girl’s gun. Jesus, he looks terrified. We’re supposed to be wheels-up in ten minutes, not committing federal crimes on the tarmac.

I pull a hand over my face. “Zlaya.”

Her green eyes sparkle beneath the storm clouds. How can someone be this beautiful? Nah-uh. Stay focused, Vasiliy.

“Yeah?”

“Why did you kidnap a Russian Orthodox priest?” I ask, as nonjudgmentally as I can manage, given the circumstances. I’ve done some crazy shit. We both know I don’t have a leg to stand on here.