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“What the fuck are you thinking?”
“Handcuffs.”
Nikolai doesn’t pretend not to know what I’m fantasizing about; he just starts laughing. “Seriously, I should lock you away.”
The laughter fades, and my heart beats hard and fast. “Niko…”
“Fuck, Rose, when you look at me like that…” He kisses me hard, then rolls onto his back.
I’m not ready to let him go, so I roll into the crook of his arm. “Niko.”
“Garcia says you’re a pain in his ass.”
“He did not.”
“Sentiment was exactly that, Rose. You going to tell me about your little business venture?”
That’s another thing: Nikolai’s perfectly happy, it seems, to let me go off and do what I want, as long as I have protection out the wazoo. “It’s just a bar.”
He slides a hand down the small of my back to cup my ass. What Nikolai doesn’t do is forbid me, talk me out of it, or talk down to me. “Don’t fucking lie to me, Rose.”
“I’m not.”
Nikolai Wilder bites my neck and mutters, “Liar.”
Then, he’s up. He crosses the room to his closet that’s so neat and organized, full of clothes that all look exactly the same, and starts selecting outfits.
“I just want a place where the girls Finnegan and Vitale abused and used can work legitimately. I think there are a few who view it like dancing on his grave.”
Nikolai looks at me, holding two shirts that look so close to replicas of each other, I want to smile. “Rose, your bleeding heart might get you in trouble.”
“It got me you.”
He nods. “Trouble.”
I glance at one of the shirts, and he puts the other back. “Are we taking the private plane?” I ask.
“Wondering how you’ll get past regular security naked?”
“I’m not—”
He interrupts me. “You haven’t packed, Rose. I figured you were planning on going naked.”
Heat bursts across my cheeks. “I thought you might. Pack for me, I mean.”
He puts the shirt down and kisses me. “If I do that, where’s the fun seeing if I have to punish you?” His eyes harden. “Go fucking pack, Rose. We leave in twenty.”
* * *
It’s not that far to New York, and the plane ride takes almost no time, so there’s a reason we’re doing this. Nikolai likes fine things. He likes class and luxury, but he’s not crass, and he doesn’t flaunt for the sake of it. There’s always a reason.
Usually something deadly at its heart.
For me, this is one of a handful of times I’ve been on a plane, and I can count private ones on two fingers.
Nikolai’s stretched out, frowning, reading something on his tablet. I haven’t explored the entire plane, but this is luxury personified, in Nikolai’s understated way. The bathroom is big, but there are other bathrooms on the plane, and there’s something nagging at me, something Genius told me when I’d mentioned Nikolai’s private planes.
“Have you joined the mile high club?” I ask him, cutting through the silence.
