St. Petersburg, Russia, Present Day
The woman was a killer. If you drank from the cup of wrath she carried inside her soul she would go down like milk mixed with honey, sweet and smooth, putting you to bed with a smile on her face and death in her eyes.
Taut, slim muscles rolled beneath the silky sand of her skin. Everything in his body squeezed tight as the colors of the strobe lights above them danced over her body, slicking over supple skin and sexy hollows. She walked with a grace not many women could match—fluid, even, nothing spared in the stride. Her back was straight, but the generous curve of her hips swayed just enough to definitively belie her intentions.
Dmitry didn’t understand the pull he felt toward her but realized there was no way to control it. It was what it was, no matter how bitter the taste in his mouth.
Her attire consisted of a bra-like contraption and a thong. Attached to the bra and thong were long silken skeins of light pink and blue material that fell to the floor in a halo of sorts. There were swift, tantalizing glimpses of her skin which only served to frustrate. His fisted a hand around his snifter of vodka, cursing softly.
Her only other adornment was the glitter covering her from head to toe. The frail material parted as she walked offering glimpses of the firm, round globes of her ass. The light danced off her body and returned before shying away once again as though fearful of what it would reveal.
Dmitry knew that fear. He’d been luckier than most, he surmised. After their few meetings he’d been left alive, though she never failed to leave a wide aching chasm inside him.
Her steps were swift but unhurried, her face blank but her eyes always moving. Bone was definitely hunting.
Nothing good would come of this. He tracked her movements, unable to tear his gaze away. He wanted to head her off, find out what the hell she was doing there. Instead he watched, transfixed by an assassin.
She was a highlighted shadow, holding your eye even as she hid from you. She was a velvet promise that you reached for with eager hands, the stroke of her presence in your life soft but brutal. And tonight she was so much more—a sultan’s wet dream; a genie’s creation—and everyone, man and woman, stopped what they were doing to watch her glide across the floor.
She wasn’t there to dance or fuck. The woman with hammered gold eyes splintered by jade had come to kill.
Her target was anyone’s guess, hell it could be Dmitry though he speculated it was Anatoly Yesipov. He was the youngest son of Boris Yesipov, who was the underboss and favored brother to the leader of the Russian Mafia. Boris was known as the killer of innocents and twister of souls. Anatoly hadn’t fallen far from the tree, though was an easy mark. The son was one Dmitry thought beneath her. Apparently her lust for killing knew no bounds.
She’d been taking the Yesipov criminal organization down one man at a time for nearly a year, picking them apart like the layers of an onion. Dmitry had not attributed the increasing death toll to her at first. The Russian Mafia was self-limiting. Hell, they killed their own so often it was hard to keep track of the hierarchy. But his reticence to lay the deaths at her door had been his mistake. He’d have been able to catch up to her earlier had the killings been more her style. Yet wasn’t her style a mixture of everything?
Kostolomochka. Little Bone Breaker. Out of all of the killers of First Team, Bone was the one who utilized almost everything at her disposal to send people to the afterlife. Body, gun, knife, her opponent—hell, nothing was off limits, though she killed the very best with her hands.
A psychiatrist would have a field day with her because that need to eliminate with her hands indicated a much darker, deep-seated desire to kill intimately. The woman was…off.
It was abhorrent to him that brittle edge she walked between life and death. Using her body to kill, coming into such close contact with her prey, left her vulnerable. Why it should bother him eluded Dmitry. Everything jumbled inside him when he thought of her. Seeing her now when he was unprepared had lightning tracking down his spine and tentacles of flame scorching his gut.
He both hated and burned for her, the truest of all dichotomies. Yet she had information he needed and had pursued for years now. She was the reason he’d signed on with Trident Corporation five years ago. When Dmitry discovered Rand Beckett and Ken Nodachi were seeking information on The Collective, he’d left behind his assignments with the Russian Secret Service and signed on with them. Anything to get closer to the one called Bone. One of four broken women who could lead him to the truth of what happened to his sisters.