Kissing My Killer (19 page)

“He’s killed seventeen people,” Alexei guessed. He sounded unimpressed at that number.

“He killed ten,” said Petrov. “
By the time he was seventeen.”
He let that sink in. “It’s not just work, to him. There’s something wrong with him.”

I felt the hairs on the back of my neck prickle, as if someone was standing right behind me.

“Seventeen will kill you,” Petrov told us. “Or the rest of the Bratva will find you first. They’ll hunt you down and shoot you. And
she’ll
end up on her back, with her legs—”

Alexei hit him with the gun again, this time hard enough to knock him out. He finally turned to me, the first time he’d been able to look at me since he’d put me on Petrov’s desk. His hand slid across my cheek, his fingertips burying themselves in my hair. “You okay?” he asked again. I could hear the pain in his voice, the fear that he’d hurt me.

I nodded. I was so overcome with relief, I thought my legs were going to collapse and dump me on the floor. And with the release of all the tension, something else came back to me—all those rogue thoughts I’d had about being his sex slave. I flushed. “Now what?” I asked.

“We walk out of here. But you need to look—” He stopped, embarrassed.

“Yes?”

“Like you’ve been...fucked.” He was trying to keep his voice neutral, but I didn’t miss the note of lust on that last word.

I looked down at myself. “How do we—”

He grabbed the front of my blouse with both hands and ripped it savagely apart. The sides gaped open almost to the waist, exposing my bra. But that wasn’t enough: he shoved the blouse and my bra strap down off one shoulder.

“Take off your jeans,” he said. His voice had grown thick and heavy, almost a growl.

I quickly stripped off my jeans. He took them from my hand and carried them, along with my sneakers. The hem of my blouse barely covered my panties.

“Now...” he said, and stepped closer. He put one hand behind my head to stop me moving. Then he rubbed his thumb roughly across my lips, smearing my lipstick. Despite everything, the feel of him doing it made me close my eyes. My groin tightened and my toes dug into the floor. I wanted so badly for him to just lean his face down to me and—

“There,” he said, stepping back.

I opened my eyes and my gaze locked with his.

“Now you look like you’ve been fucked,” he said. There was no mistaking the fire in his eyes and I remembered the feel of him, hard against me, as he’d pulled me onto the ship. This had all been an act, but part of him wanted it to be real. Part of him wanted me to be his plaything.

And part of me did, too.

He grabbed me by the wrist. “Act like you’re hurt,” he said, his mouth twisting a little in disgust at the idea. “Make me drag you. But hurry.”

He opened the door and walked out, pulling me behind him. I stumbled along, giving him what I hoped were sullen, hate-filled glares.

Men were lining the hallway, laughing and jeering. I felt their eyes on my bare shoulder, on the exposed skin of my upper breasts and on my legs. A lot of them made comments in Russian and I was glad I couldn’t understand them.

“Where’s Petrov?” asked one man.

“Recovering,” said Alexei. “He wore himself out.”

The men thought that was hilarious. A few of them started reaching for my blouse, trying to pluck it from me, and I pressed myself closer to Alexei. As if I had Stockholm Syndrome, as if this man who’d abducted me and made me his sex slave had become my protector. They thought that was even funnier.

Only I knew the truth. I pressed myself up against Alexei’s muscled body and I knew he’d get me out of there. I knew he’d never hurt me and I knew he’d die to protect me. The feel of him, the scent of him, was the only thing that let me make it through that hallway without breaking down completely.

I felt air on my face and then we were through the final door and making our way down the gangplank. The car was thirty feet away.

A shout went up from inside the ship.

“They found Petrov,” snapped Alexei. “Run!”

We sprinted for the car, but we had to keep slowing to pick our way around crates, ropes and other obstacles in the gloom. Twenty feet. I tripped on a chain and nearly went down. We could hear boots clattering on metal inside the ship and there were shouts all around us in the darkness. The guards on the dockside had been alerted.

Ten feet to the car. Five. The first gunshots rang out. Alexei got the door open and almost threw me into the passenger seat, then ran for the driver’s side. He was getting in when there was an echoing sound like the crack of a whip. A hole appeared in the driver-side window.

“Jesus!” I ducked down, trying to get my head below the level of the windows.

Alexei just sat there.

“Go!” I was panting with fear. “Drive!”

He looked down at himself, frowning. He put a hand to his chest and it came away dripping. Then a flashlight beam lit up the inside of the car and I saw the spreading red stain on his shirt.

Gabriella

We looked at each other. I opened my mouth—to scream, I think—but he cut me off, grabbing my arm. “Are you hit?”

I just stared at his chest.

He shook me. “
Are you hit?”

He’d been shot and he was thinking of me. I shook my head dumbly.

Footsteps were approaching the car and more flashlights were lighting up the interior. Alexei pulled out his gun and fired through the driver-side window, shooting blindly towards the lights. The recoil of each shot made him grit his teeth, his other hand pressed to his chest. The rest of the glass shattered and fell and someone outside screamed. The footsteps stopped but more shots rang out. Holes appeared in the hood and in the windshield and I screamed and ducked down. They were going to make sure we were both dead before they came any closer.

Alexei lifted his hands to the wheel but winced and dropped them again, panting. Firing the gun had taken the last of his strength. “You have to drive,” he told me.

Oh shit. Not that.
“I can’t!”

“Lean across. Take...wheel.” The red stain covered the whole front of his shirt, now, and his words were growing hoarse. “I’ll do pedals.”

He doesn’t understand!
But I leaned over like he said. My nostrils filled with that Fourth of July smell: cordite, from the gunfire. I tried not to look at his chest. I gripped the wheel...but nothing happened.

“Put it...in ‘drive’,” panted Alexei. His eyes were half-closed.

I looked around at the levers sticking out of the steering wheel, even the buttons on the dash. I finally found the gear lever and just stared at it. “I don’t know how to drive! I never learned!”
Oh Jesus Gabriella you fucking
moron! There were tears in my eyes. More bullets hit the car and I heard one slam into the seat just above my head.

Alexei started to say something but then the pain overcame him and he closed his eyes completely. He reached out one hand towards me, pleading.

It’s just like figuring out a video game.
I stared at the gear stick through a haze of tears.
D. D for drive.
I tugged it into position just as the rear window exploded and showered us with glass. Alexei stamped on the gas and we shot forward—

Straight for a shipping container.

I was almost hysterical, now, tears streaming down my face. The only thing that kept me going was the knowledge that he’d die, if I didn’t figure out how to do this. I turned the wheel hard and the car slewed wildly to one side. We missed the shipping container but now we were heading for the water.

I spun the wheel the other way and we swung back. Alexei kept his foot on the gas and I aimed for where I thought the ramp up to the street was, the car fishtailing wildly. We crashed through some piles of crates and at one point we came within an inch of hitting a concrete post, but then we were on the ramp.

As the gunfire fell away behind us, Alexei grunted, “Smaller movements.”

I tried moving the wheel less and that helped. My arms were aching from gripping the wheel so hard.

Alexei groaned, showing his teeth as he arched his back in pain. “How do you not know how to drive?” I got the impression he was trying to distract himself.

“It isn’t a skill you pick up in an apartment!” I stopped to concentrate as we went around a corner. Luckily, there was nothing coming the other way.

Alexei had both hands pressed to his chest, now, but I could see blood oozing between his fingers. “What about school? Driver-Z?”

I knew he was just talking to take his mind off the pain, but the questions were driving me crazy. “They home schooled me, after it happened!” I snapped.

And then realized I’d said too much.

“We have to get you to a hospital,” I said.

He shook his head. “No hospital. First place they’ll check.”

“You’ll die if we don’t!”

He started to say something, but then his head lolled and his body went limp.

I felt the Dread start to build. I’d been okay as long as he was by my side but now it was back. It was on every side of me, seeping into the car from the darkness outside, where anything could be lurking. Rushing towards me from the vanishing points—the distant road junction ahead, the streets stretching off to the sides. Everything was too big and safety was much too far away.

It was the most total fear I’d known since leaving my apartment. I’d been lulled into a false sense of security by having Alexei as my own mobile safe place. I’d thought the Dread had gone, but it had been hiding inside me, biding its time.

Alexei’s foot had slipped off the gas. The car rolled to a stop and I sat there, in the middle of the street, paralyzed with fear. I was on my own, in the middle of a strange area of the city, and no one was going to save me.

I felt myself
slide.
I could feel myself getting smaller and smaller in my seat, until it felt like I was going to shrink right down into it.

No one was going to save me. No one was going to save me and he was going to come. He was going to come and take me and—

A horn blared behind me. I was blocking the street.

I knew what would happen now. I could see it unfolding in my head like a movie. Another few seconds and the driver behind me would get impatient and stomp around to my window to see what the hell I was doing. They’d see an unconscious man bleeding in the driver’s seat and a near-catatonic woman beside him and they’d call the police. And somewhere between the emergency room and prison, Alexei’s people would find him and kill him.

He was going to die unless I did something
right now.

The Dread screamed at me, telling me how tiny and insignificant I was. But the fear of losing Alexei was even stronger.

I took three more panicked breaths and then climbed out of my seat and slid onto Alexei’s lap. I gripped the steering wheel, found the gas pedal with my foot and stamped on it.

I knew what I had to do.

Alexei