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There’s something that keeps trying to come to the surface, but it evades me.
“Princess, I need to go to Italy, and I want you to go with me.” She just looks up at me with sleepy eyes, smiles, and nods her head, nuzzling deeper into my chest. Her immediate agreement to come to Italy with me is a surprise. I thought I was going to have to convince her, but she feels this insane attraction that we seem to have, too, and I don’t think she wants to see it end anymore than I do. In a matter of moments she’s dozing again, on and off, lying in the curve of my arm. I push her hair to one side so I can watch her and stroke a finger across the sleekness of her shoulder blades and down her spine. Her body responds, curling into me, and I caress her some more, enjoying the change in her breathing. Even in her sleep, she responds to my touch and that is an intoxicating feeling.
Jay’s message to me comes across. “I’m bringing Sasha with me to Italy. She’s not safe in Chicago with us in Italy. How’s her sister doing?”
Everything finally clicks into fucking place. The intel I retrieved on Bernatelli, Sasha’s father: Marenah’s her sister. Their father is one and the same. I remember uploading the transcript I came across, lifting off the audio line that I sent to the intel site when I was undercover trying to get anything on Bernatelli that could give us some leverage to get Jenny Torzial off their wanted list. I remember exactly what that conversation was.“The documents need to disappear, or they do. If anyone ever finds out what happened years ago, it will be the collision between two of the largest crime families on earth. We don’t need the Russian Mafia crawling up our ass. Deal with it!”Fuck, that means that whatever Sasha is dealing with, my Princess is, too, and given her reaction last night, it must have something to do with her grandfather.
I send another message to the intel team to hurry the fuck up with the report that I asked for. They send me back a message to cool my fucking jets. They’re close and will get it to me as soon as they can, and some of the tension I feel dissipates, knowing they’re working as hard as they can to pull any and all information I need together.
I spend the next few minutes stroking my princess as she continues to drift, caught up in my thoughts about what’s happening. A sharp three-knocked rap on the door let’s me know that Nate is here with our rolls and coffee. I probably should’ve ordered lunch fare, but my princess seemed to love these so much that it’s what we’re having for lunch. I kiss her on the forehead, and she stretches, sliding her legs down the length of my own, curling tighter around me, wrapping me with her body. Fuck, now I just want Nate to go the fuck away, but when I don’t answer the door he sends me a text.
I’m outside the door. It’s been over an hour. Couldn’t you get it up?
I laugh out loud reading his message, and Marenah stirs on my chest and finally opens her eyes, trying to focus. I stroke her cheek and run my fingers carefully over her lips, still plump from the abuse she took at the hands of her captors. I would say good morning, but it’s already tipped into afternoon. We must have needed our sleep. “Nate’s at the door. He brought pierogi. Jump in the shower while I talk with him,” I say.
She squints and smiles up at me. “Pierogi? Yum, I’m starving,” she says. She stretches, and the lines of her sleek back arch, rubbing against me as she does, and that movement alone is enough to harden my dick. Damn this woman turns me on.
I kiss her lips. “Go shower. Otherwise, I’m going to send Nate away and fuck you until dinner time.”
Her cheeks flush and she looks up at me.
“Go shower, Marenah,” I say, reaching down to give her ass a playful swat.
She feigns indignation, but I see the desire flash across her bright blue eyes.
“We’ll experiment like that another time. If I don’t answer the door soon, Nate’s going to have a team of men invade this place, and I promise you those asses will eat every single one of the pierogi that I’ve ordered,” I say, gesturing for her to go to the bathroom with a nod of my head.
She opens her mouth as in shock. “No, they wouldn’t. I would seriously defend my beloved rolls. Heathens,” Marenah says, mocking me.
“Oh, they would, now get going,” I say, swatting her ass again, this time a little harder.
She yelps. “I’m going,” she says, but I don’t miss the glazy look in her eyes as she grabs the sheet and pulls it from the bed, wrapping it around her as she walks to the bathroom.
She’ll learn soon enough not to cover herself from me, but today I find it incredibly interesting. She’s not trying to use her body to seduce me, although she clearly could. Instead, she’s covering herself from me, and while it has the reverse effect on me, she wouldn’t know that. She could have just let us walk into the shit with her grandfather last night, but she didn’t. I told her to get the hell out of that bar, but she stayed back, ensuring I wasn’t outnumbered and could handle the oncoming men before she did as I told her and left the bar. Whatever she’s got herself into, she’s not trying to pull me into it, but instead, trying to keep me distanced from it, as evidenced by her reaction last night to me pulling up at her grandfather’s restaurant.
I hear the shower start up, slip out of bed, and slide into my pants and pull my t-shirt over my head. When I reach the door, Nate is smiling at me. “What, bring that shit in here and help us eat it,” I say, knowing that if he’s gone to the bakery, he’s also bought something sweet for himself, because he can’t pass a damn candy machine without throwing his money down.
He perches himself on the stool by the breakfast table and opens the white paper wrapped bag. “What do we have here?” Nate says, pulling out one after another of the pierogis that my princess loves so much, and then pulls out a couple of different rolls and places them in front of him and takes a big bite of the open-faced pastry with berries on top.
“What is that?” I ask Nate as he hands me a pastry with what looks like cream cheese and red berries on top.
“It’svatrushka. Goat cheese and berries,” Marenah says, walking into the kitchen, looking refreshed and ready for the day, as Nate nods his head and murmurs his appreciation for the sweet dessert. She settles herself onto the barstool and reaches for a pierogi—when my cell phone and Nate’s light up with incoming warnings, and the overhead security alarm lights start flashing.
11
MARENAH
The silent alarmsare set to only go off when someone has reached the stairwell two floors below me. The elevator is impenetrable, watched by an on-duty guard, but also by the feature on my phone that is changed often to ensure no one can possibly retrieve it. At least, that’s what I’ve been led to believe.
“Come, they’re heading up the stairs. Let’s move,” I say, swiping the bag of pierogi and danish, along with my purse from the counter which holds everything I need to get from country to country as I march toward the elevator.
I don’t think they’re going to follow me until Matt and Nate glance down at their phones, almost at the same time. They nod to each other, and I shake my head at their big brother shit. Right now we need to get the hell out of here, because someone, and I have a pretty good idea of who, is heading up that stairwell.
“They’re in the stairwell, we have to go,” I say, but if I thought I was in charge of this operation, I have another think coming.
Nate takes up the front, pulling his weapon, and Matt pushes me into the elevator. “We’re going down. They expect with this set up that you’ll take the stairs. We have about four minutes on these fuckers,” Matt says, swiping his phone against the electronic eye of my private pad. I reach into my pants pocket to pull my cell phone out but stop when the elevator engages and begins the long descent down to the lobby, the one that I thought only I had the access code to.
As the elevator dings, it opens into the private cove of the exclusive skyrise’s lobby. We walk out with Matt urging me to go faster toward the black Lincoln. Matt almost pushes me in, and Nate jumps into the front seat and tells the driver to go.
