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“You’re correct, this is my hotel room. As for how I know your name and why you’re here, we’ll get to those in due time. And regarding your apartment—” He takes a deep breath. “You won’t be going back to your apartment for a little while, Lidiya. Not until I know for sure I can trust you.”
My mouth drops open. I can’t help it. I stare at him mutely, unable to think of anything to say for several minutes as we watch each other, me from the far side of the bed, him from where he’s standing opposite it.
“I think I heard you wrong,” I finally croak out. “Or else you have the wrong girl. I won’t be going back to my apartment? Until you know you cantrustme? I don’t even know who you are—”
“No, you heard me correctly.” He huffs out another sigh, and for some reason from the tone of his voice and the look on his face, I’d almost think that he doesn’t want to be saying these things to me. That he doesn’tlikeit. But that doesn’t make any sense either, because if he doesn’t want to keep me here or say these things to me, then why do it at all?
“I’m just a grad student,” I argue. “In thearchaeologydepartment. I’m not even in like—cybersecurity or anything. What are you going to trust my word about, the intricacies of Roman architecture? You must have the wrong girl.”
“Are you Lidiya Petrovna?”
“Well yes, but—”
“Were you previously dating Grisha Fedorov until this morning?”
Oh fuck.My teeth clench. If Grisha has gotten me mixed up in some shit without my knowledge—well, I already kind of wanted to kill him for being a lying asshole, but now—
“Yes, but—”
“Then you’re exactly who I was looking for.” The man runs his hand through his short dark hair, looking at me with an almost tired expression. “Look, Lidiya, we can do this the easy way, or—”
Oh no, I know he’s not using that line.Headache forgotten, I scramble from the bed with full intent to run straight for the door. My bare feet smack against the carpet, and my clothes and boots are in a pile too close to him for me to grab them, but I don’t care. I’ll risk frostbite on my toes in the freezing Moscow cold over spending another second in a hotel room with a strange man who says things likewe can do this the easy way or the hard way.
If Grisha has gotten me tangled up in some bad shit, I’m really going to kill him myself.
I dart around the bed towards the door, and despite how badly literally everything hurts, I almost make it there. He looks like a man who’s used to moving quickly, but I think I caught him off guard trying to run.
My hand gets as far as closing around the knob before I feel his arms around my waist pulling me backwards. The door is locked, and I don’t have a chance to turn the lock before he’s dragging me back towards the bed.
“Oh no you don’t!” I scream out loud, kicking and wriggling against him, twisting every possible way that I can in his arms. I try to stomp on his foot, but he seems impervious to that, his strong, muscled arms holding me so tightly that I know it’s useless. I’m not going to actually stop fighting though, which he seems to realize, because he tosses me onto the bed, staring down at me threateningly.
“We don’t have to make this difficult, Lidiya.” He’s not even breathing hard, and I’m panting, trying to catch my breath as I fight past the headache to glare up at him.
I guess I really should be doing more cardio.
“Then let me leave.” The words sound strangled in my throat, and he looks almost sympathetic as he shakes his head. It really does seem like he’s not happy about this, but that doesn’t make me feel any better. If anything. it makes me feelworse, because if he isn’t the mastermind behind this then someone else is calling the shots. Which means this guy is probably just going to do what he’s been told, up to and including—
“Don’t you dare touch me,” I manage to growl. “I swear to God, if you try to touch me again—”
When he takes another step towards the bed, letting out a long-suffering sigh, I don’t wait to see what he’s going to do next. I lunge forward, reaching right between his legs to where I know his balls must be in those fitted jeans, and squeeze.
Hard.
“Bladya!” The man curses aloud, bending forward as he jerks himself out of my grasp, but it’s the opening I was looking for. I leap off of the bed again, going straight for the door a second time, this time fumbling for the lock as I yank at it—
--only to feel those hard hands on my upper arms, turning me around and slamming me up against the door, harder than he’s handled me before.
For some strange reason, it sends a rush through me. My heart is racing in my chest, my pulse lodged somewhere in my throat, and I look up to see those piercing blue eyes glaring down at me as he holds me tightly against the door.
For the first time, I become truly aware of just how physically large he is—not just in terms of his height and muscles, but also his presence. This might be a man with a boss, but he’s also a man who I imagine other men don’t often try to fuck with. There’s something terrifying and intimidating about him so close, those broad, long-fingered hands wrapped tightly enough around my arms that I’m sure there will be marks. There’s a hint of anger rising in his eyes, heating up his gaze, and it sends a shiver down my spine.
He moves closer to me, close enough that he’s almost touching me, and I smell the scent of lavender soap—probably the hotel’s—and underneath that the warm, masculine musk of his skin. He’s breathing slightly heavily too, and when I try to squirm away from him, arching forward in an ineffectual effort to get free that I just can’t help trying, I feel something else that startles me into going absolutely still.
He’shard. Rock-hard, in fact, pressing against my thigh through those fitted jeans when I press myself against him. It wasn’t an effort to seduce, just to push him backwards enough to squirm away from him and the door, but clearly throwing me up against the door had some kind of effect on him.
“I’m not going to hurt you, Lidiya,” he says, his voice rough-sounding but not angry. “Just stop trying to run, okay? I don’t want to have to tie you up.”
His words are saying one thing, but the way I feel that hardness in his jeans lurch at the mention of tying me up says something else.
