WILD MEN OF ALASKA

chapter THIRTEEN

Sergei basked in the rightness of Kate cuddled within his embrace. What they’d just done solidified everything that he’d put in place to bring her to The Edge.

“Let me up.” Kate struggled with his arms, pushing at his shoulders, kicking out at him, connecting painfully with his shins.

“Vhat?” Had he hurt her? He’d been rough, consumed with her, but she hadn’t objected. If anything she’d spurred him on, wanting him hard and fast, not gentle and slow like he’d tried to temper.

“Let me go!” Her voice broke on the last word, and he released her. She scrambled to her feet, grabbing the quilt thrown over the end of the couch.

“Katja?” Alarmed, he hurried to his feet.

“Stay away from me.” Her words held no threat. Emotion clouded their meaning, making the words more of a plea. She ran for the bathroom that was located on the first floor. He rushed to follow. The door slammed in his face. Looked as though she’d been free for some time. Time enough to know the layout of the lodge.

How had she freed herself? No one he knew could have gotten loose of those knots without help.

He went to bust through the door, but then he heard a strangled sob. His heart thudded in his chest.

Bozhe moi. What had he done?

He braced his hands on the doorframe and leaned his head onto the wood. “Talk to me, Katja.” He had to fix this. Making love with her had been wondrous. Better than before. Right. So very right. She was his mate. His equal. His everything. But had he somehow ruined things, making them worse than he had before? “Open this door.”

“Go away.”

“Either talk to me or I’m coming in.”

“I need a minute.” The toilet flushed.

He wasn’t buying it. “Katja.” He growled.

“I need a few goddamn minutes, okay?”

Hearing the anger back in her voice reassured him, and he straightened back from the door. “That’s all you vill get.”

“Go to hell.”

“Vith bags packed. As long as you follow,” he added.

He was infuriating.

Kate splashed cold water on her face. What was she going to do? That had been too intense. She’d lost valuable ground having sex with him again. Somehow he knew she cared. He’d known before she’d known. How? Was the man some kind of sightseer? There had been whispers about him. He sensed things before others, which is why he’d been impossible to kill. They needed someone like her to have him lower his guard. But he’d bested her at every turn.

Two years ago, she’d been told to sleep with him and then kill him. But she couldn’t then, and she couldn’t now. Though she didn’t seem to have a problem with the sleeping part. So what did she do?

Follow her heart or her head?

Quit her job and disappear? She’d have to disappear as in “die” for others not to come after her. Could she chuck everything and finally do what she wanted? Wouldn’t that be a treat? She couldn’t remember the last time she’d actually done something because she wanted to. That wasn’t true. Last time she’d slept with Sergei it had been what she’d wanted. Ordered to or not. She’d never wanted a man like she had wanted him.

And here she was, hiding in the bathroom like some simpering female.

Didn’t that bite?

Pull it together, Kate. The longer she stayed in here the weaker she looked. She never ran. The fact that she needed a few minutes after he destroyed her to put herself back together was forgivable. For a bit. Quickly, she cleaned up, shaped up, squared her shoulders, and wiped her expression clean of the turmoil she felt inside.

Sergei was waiting for her as she exited the bathroom. Leaning against the wall in the hallway, he’d dressed in his jeans, and button-torn flannel shirt, leaving his feet bare. His gaze swept her from her bare feet to her body covered in the quilt.

“Are you okay?” he asked. “Did I hurt you?” There was command and concern in his voice that tugged at her heart.

“No, you didn’t hurt me.” But she couldn’t tell him she was okay. She wasn’t, and it was about time she quit lying to herself. And him. “We need to talk.”

“Dah, ve do.”

“First, I’d like to get dressed.”

“I like you the vay you are.” His voice went smoky and dark, stoking sparks to fire inside her again.

“We have to take sex out of this.”

“Never.” His nostrils flared. “You vant me. I vant you...” He stopped, but it seemed as though there was more that he wanted to say.

“That may be, but it’s getting in the way.”

He smiled, his eyes softening when she didn’t disagree with him this time. “No, Katja, everything else is in our vay. Ve need to, how you Americans say, ‘clean house’?” He held up the knife she’d stashed under the couch. He must have seen it when he picked up his clothes. She hadn’t noticed he’d been hiding it behind his back. “Who are you arming against?” he asked. “Me...or is there someone else you are expecting?”

She swallowed. At least he’d only found the one knife. Good thing she hadn’t stayed longer in the bathroom, he would have most likely sniffed out the other four.

“How did you get free? Who else is here, Katja?”

She smirked. “I didn’t need help getting free.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“You will,” she threw at him.

“Show me.”

“It will be my pleasure.” As soon as she said the words, realizing she was flirting, she regretted them. So much for taking sex out of it.

“After you then.” He gestured toward the stairs.

She didn’t want to be in a bedroom with him. But then that hadn’t stopped her from having the hottest sex of her life with him on a bear rug in front of the fireplace in the great room of this lodge.

Hell, the bedroom would actually be safer. She’d broken the bed.

“How am I to explain this?” Sergei regarded the splintered logs of the canopy bed. This was a lot bigger than a shredded sweater. Did the woman have superpowers? He looked at the bed, and then at Kate, then back to the bed. He ventured closer to investigate. She’d reduced the canopy to firewood. Gathering up the broken, splintered pieces, he stacked them along the wall. The four-poster bed could be saved with some woodworking, but the canopy was shot. He wasn’t up to counting the casualties of his books.

The strength and determination Kate had to free herself was fantastic.

“Impressive,” he said.

“Thank you.” She attempted to bite back a smile without succeeding. The woman was enjoying this.

So was he.

“You’re very provocative, Katja,” he said, his voice huskier. His eyes traveled over her down to her long legs peeking out from the folds of the quilt. While she’d gathered up her clothes on their way upstairs, there hadn’t been time for her to dress.

He needed to figure out how to keep her naked.

A blush bloomed on her cheeks, and she shuffled on her feet. She held up the clothes in her hand and indicated the bathroom. “I should—”

“No, you shouldn’t.”

She paused in backing up toward the bathroom.

“Ve vill make love again tonight, Katja. Getting dressed is vaste of time.”

“That’s presumptuous of you to say.”

“Is truth.” He turned more fully toward her, ready in case she bolted or attacked. “No more pissy-stepping around.”

“You mean p-ssy-footing.”

“Means same, no?”

She shrugged. “I suppose so. Doesn’t change the fact that it’s pretty arrogant of you to assume I’ll meekly fall into bed with you again.”

“There is nothing meek about you. I’d never make that mistake. I don’t trust you not to ruin another bed if I have to tie you to it in order to get some rest myself. And it’s not possible for me to share a bed vith you and not make love to you.”

His words lay between them like the challenge they were. He couldn’t wait to see what she’d do.

The bundle of clothes wavered in her hand as though they held the weight of her decision. Then she dropped them to the floor. “Fine. But you need to answer some questions for me first.”

His heart stuttered.

She’d actually discarded her clothes. Willingly agreed that they were making love again. Tonight.

“Fine,” he returned though it was an effort to get words past the hope blooming in his chest and the blood in his body heading south. “I have questions also.”

“Why would Perry want you to kill me?”

While she asked the question impersonally, he saw the pain in her eyes, in the way she held her body, so straight as to break if touched.

“The arms deal,” he said. “You knew too much. Soon you vould have figured out that he vas double-dealing. You are smart voman, Katja, and asked all the right questions. Therefore you had become liability.”

“How were you told to do it? Kill me?”

“It vas supposed to look like you had been raped, strangled, and then left for buzzards. Another unfortunate statistic for vomen traveling abroad alone, unprotected.”

She swallowed hard, and her eyes flickered before meeting his again. “When did you decide not to kill me?”

“Killing you vas never in my plans. I needed to use you to trap Perry...but I planned to bed you the moment I met you.”

“Bed me?” Her eyes went granite.

“Maybe I messed up translation. English not my first language, you understand.”

“Not buying it, Sergei.”

It was time to put her on the defensive. “How did you acquire one of Ivan’s kerambits?” Ivan had been his comrade, his partner, and had helped set up Perry.

“He personally made it for me.”

“And obviously taught you how to use it. Vhy is he helping you?”

“You defected. Turns out he’s a bit angry about that.”

“So he sought you out?” He didn’t wait for an answer before continuing, “And you didn’t think it vas coincidental that ve had vorked together and now he vas vorking vith you?”

“All I cared about was getting to you.”

“Is Ivan the one coming for you, Katja?”

“Yes, to make sure I do the job.”

“And to exterminate you if you haven’t.”

She nodded. “That seems to be the way these contracts work. Really motivates a person to get the job done.”

“Vhen?”

She looked out the window at the storm and then back to him. “Not tonight.”

She dropped the quilt.