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“Then I’ll leave.” Gunner stood, tucking the bottle of vodka in the crook of his arm. He swayed just slightly, but caught himself and backed away before she could touch him.
“No,” she said again.
He slammed the bottle back on the table and grasped her neck, this time from the back.
“You saved my life,” she whispered.
“You would’ve lived.”
If Gunner moved any closer, their lips would touch. Instead of waiting for him to do it, Raketa brushed his mouth with hers.
“Fuck,” he groaned as he wound his arm around her waist, pulled her body flush with his, and slid his tongue between her lips.
When she slipped her arms around his neck and pressed her breasts against his chest, Gunner put his knee between her legs.
“Take what you need, Rocket Girl,” he taunted when she straddled his powerful thigh.
“Not here,” she said as he moved his leg, backed her up against the wall, and put his hands beneath her bottom.
“Put your legs around me,” he demanded.
When she did, he ground himself against her.
“Is this what you want?” he asked before bringing his lips to hers and kissing her in a way that no man ever had or ever would again.
2
When she’d gone looking for him, it had been to thank him. Being with him, close enough to touch, had left her as breathless as it did thoughtless.
He’d ravaged her body most of the night, but in the morning, she’d left without as much as a goodbye when he went to take a shower. Part of her wished she’d stayed to see how he’d handle the morning after, but at the time, she hadn’t been brave enough to do so.
What if he remembered the first time they’d met after he’d sobered up? Worse, what if he didn’t?
Gunner Godet had haunted her since her early twenties. When they first came face-to-face, she should’ve killed him and the American spy the KGB had tasked her with assassinating. She couldn’t, though. Her eyes met Gunner’s, and it was as though a bolt of lightning had struck her motionless. She’d lowered her gun and let the two men escape. If any of her comrades had witnessed what she’d done, she would’ve been executed on the spot.
She told herself that wanting to defect and leave the employ of United Russia had nothing to do with Gunner, but when she decided to finally do it, he’d been the one she’d contacted for help.
She’d had to bargain for his assistance, and even then, he’d reminded her over and over again that he couldn’t guarantee her safety.
Whether he could keep her safe or not, there wasn’t another team in the world who could help her make the break like K19 could. Since they’d formed a tentative alliance with the current president of Russia’s political party and intelligence organization, Raketa had hoped K19 and UR might be able to make a deal to secure her defection.
But Petrov had stripped away her hope for freedom. In fact, now it was worse. While she may not be his hired gun, she was his prisoner.
Gunner would come for Petrov; his intention had always been to assassinate him, but that didn’t mean he’d come for her.
—:—
Gunner had been out of communication with the rest of the team searching for Makar Petrov for almost forty-eight hours, mainly because they weren’t searching for the same person. His priority was finding Raketa Ivashov, and while he knew they were aware of it, it wasn’t something he and the teams on the ground—Onyx and Alegria from K19, Striker, whoever the hell he was with currently, or the MI6 team, headed up by Shiv—ever discussed.
No one knew what he had planned, and he intended to keep it that way. Since even he didn’t understand his connection to the Russian assassin, Gunner couldn’t very well explain it to his teammates.
Maybe it had been seeing her lying in a pool of blood and believing she was dead, or seeing a brief glimpse of her vulnerability when she came to him, asking for help, that hit him hard enough that he’d opened the doors of his heart the thinnest of cracks.
It took balls of steel for someone to even think they could walk away from an organization like United Russia. Doing it was a death wish. He’d admired the tenacity she’d exhibited when he’d told her as much.
He often wondered if Raketa remembered the first time they saw each other. They’d been on opposite sides of an op involving a CIA agent who was on the verge of being burned if Gunner’s team didn’t cross over the border from Kazakhstan into Russia to extract him.
Gunner had been in his mid-twenties, and while he now knew she was only two years younger than him, then, she’d looked barely eighteen.
