Kissing My Killer (30 page)

Gabriella

Where is Alexei?
It felt like it had been hours since Konstantin took me downstairs. What if something had happened to him?

I lowered my chest onto the padded leather surface. My head projected off the end, my hair hanging down. I shifted uneasily, my knees pressing into their pads. The position of the pads meant that my legs had to be slightly parted. My naked ass seemed to throb as the air brushed against it. I’d never felt so...
displayed.

Then he started to buckle me in. First a wide strap across my back, holding me down to the leather. Then smaller straps just below my knees and across my ankles. I thought he was going to leave my arms free, but then he drew them gently up behind me and folded them back on themselves so that my forearms were together, and wrapped some sort of leather sleeve around them to hold them in pace. Now I was kneeling, a few feet off the ground...and I couldn’t move at all.

And then he was beside me, brushing aside my hair so that he could put his mouth to my ear. I knew he was going to tell me whatever depraved thing he planned to do to me and I braced myself.

“I can tell you are not one of Vadim’s girls,” he told me. “Now, you will tell me who you are.”

Alexei

I waited until the guy came right up behind me and reached around me to take my gun from its holster. Then I snapped my head back into his nose and felt it break. As he dropped his gun, I grabbed him and
pulled,
and we went rolling down the stairs together, landing in a heap. I got to my feet, threw open the door and—

Gabriella was naked and kneeling. Konstantin had her strapped to a bench and was just raising his hand to deliver a hard slap across her ass.

I thought I’d been angry before. Now, I completely lost control. I ran at Konstantin, head low and arms out, and slammed him to the ground. We rolled, trading punches.

“Stop!” yelled a voice behind me. The guard was staggering in, gun raised, blood pouring from his nose.

I slugged Konstantin across the face. He landed a good hit on my jaw and I reeled, but shook it off.

“
Stop!”
yelled Gabriella

The guard put his gun right to my temple. I growled, but I had no choice. I went limp.

Konstantin climbed off of me, adjusting his clothes. “Alexei Borinskov,” he spat. He looked at my dinner jacket, then turned to the guard. “You didn’t recognize him? You let him walk right into my party?”

The guard started to stammer an apology. Konstantin ignored him and turned to Gabriella. “And
you...
he hired you to get me down here? A call girl, just not from Vadim?”

I stood up, scowling at Konstantin. “She’s not a call girl,” I spat.

He blinked at me, then looked at Gabriella. He brushed the hair back from her face so that we could see her expression. She was pale with fear, but there was a defiant look in her eyes.

“I see,” said Konstantin. To my surprise, he began to unfasten the buckles holding Gabriella down. “The last thing I heard,” he said, “the notorious Alexei Borinskov had turned on his employers...because he’d fallen for some girl.” He undid the last buckle. Gabriella quickly got up off the bench, trying to cover her nakedness with her hands. “This, I take it, is the girl.”

I looked at Gabriella...and my heart swelled in my chest. I nodded.

Konstantin sighed. Then he surprised me again by slipping off his jacket and putting it around Gabriella’s shoulders, covering most of her. He left his hands on her shoulders when it was done. “You sent her right into my arms, just to get me alone? You’d use her like that?” His voice was cold with disgust. Protective of her.

“No!” said Gabriella quickly. She hung her head. “Alexei would never do that. It was my idea.”

Konstantin stared at me. Then one final surprise: he gave Gabriella a light push, sending her into my arms. She clung to me, her near-naked warmth throbbing through my shirt.

“Did he hurt you?” I asked, stroking her hair.

She shook her head, her face flushed.

“What was the plan?” asked Konstantin. “To kill me?”

I took a deep breath before answering, trying to reign in my anger. Now that Gabriella was safe, now that I knew he hadn’t...
done
anything to her, I was a little calmer. But just the fact he’d seen her naked made me want to kill him. “I needed to talk to you,” I said.

Konstantin threw out his arms to indicate the scene. “This is how you talk to me?”

“I knew you’d shoot me as soon as you recognized me.”

“Very astute. Nikolai called me. He’s
very
anxious to get hold of you. Dead or alive. Preferably dead.”

“Nikolai hired a man called Slava Federoff,” I told him. “People call him ‘Seventeen.’ He works for one of your men - Petrov Denakin. Nikolai’s planning something and it’s big, because he’s got the FSB helping him. Whatever it is, he wants you to get the blame.”

I watched Konstantin closely to see his reaction. After a long moment, he said, “That is an interesting story. A conspiracy, with Nikolai trying to frame me.” He paused. “I will…”—he glanced at Gabriella—“how do you Americans say it? I will
take it under advisement.”

Shit.

“But Nikolai wants you dead and he works for Luka. I’m not risking a war with Luka.” He sighed with regret and then looked at Gabriella. His voice softened a little. “You, I will allow to walk out of here.” He nodded towards the door, then looked at Alexei. “But you…” He nodded to the guard. “Kill him.”

Gabriella

It felt as if my heart stopped. “No!” I screamed. “Wait!”

Alexei looked down into my eyes. He swallowed. “Go,” he told me.

I flattened myself against his body. “No! I won’t let them!”

“
Go!”
His voice was low but firm.

I turned to Konstantin. “Please! He’s not your enemy! Nikolai is!”

Konstantin shook his head sadly. “Gabriella...you are very beautiful. And loyal. But you don’t understand how the Bratva operates. Go.”

Both he and Konstantin were staring down at me with very similar expressions. That was what made it so frustrating, that they both seemed to believe it was inevitable, that the Bratva rules of loyalty and discipline ran so deep that this was going to happen, even though neither of them wanted it to. Alexei had sealed his fate as soon as he’d refused to shoot me, and everything since then had just been stalling for time.

“No,” I said in a small voice.

The guard was getting nervous. He was a young guy and jumpy, and he’d already been reprimanded by Konstantin once. Any second, he was going to just go ahead and pull the trigger, whether I was there or not.

“You need to go,” said Alexei

I could feel tears brimming in my eyes.
It can’t end like this. It can’t!

“
Go!”
Alexei told me.

They were going to take my man away from me. This whole stupid, macho organization, bound by tradition and rules, they were going to take him away when all he’d done was to do the right thing, to protect me. The tears were spilling down my cheeks, now. They were going to take him away from me….

Well, I wasn’t going to let them.

I flung myself at Alexei, grabbing him around the waist and hugging him tight. I fell to my knees and let myself slide down his legs, my face pressed hard against him. I heard Konstantin give a low sigh of regret and step forward to pull me off of him.

I pulled Alexei’s pant cuff up and clawed the spare gun from his ankle holster. I whipped around, clicked the safety catch off, and pointed it right at Konstantin.

“Don’t you fucking dare,” I panted through my tears.

The room went absolutely silent.

Very slowly, I got to my feet. I tried not to think about the fact I was basically naked, Konstantin’s jacket flapping around me. I tried not to think about the guard’s gun, pointed at Alexei, or what would happen if the guy panicked.

My eyes never left Konstantin and his never left mine. I edged towards the door, grabbing Alexei’s arm as I passed him and pulling him with me. It seemed to take a thousand tiny, careful steps to get there. If I stumbled, if my gun wavered from Konstantin’s chest for a split-second….

We reached the door. Alexei bent and picked up his gun from the bottom of the stairs. He pointed it at the guard and the guard finally, reluctantly, lowered his own weapon.

I looked up the stairs, ready to ascend, but Alexei shook his head. “No. They’re waiting for us up there.”

“Where, then?”

He walked over to another door, much smaller than the one that led to the dungeon. This one was made of iron and secured with thick metal bolts. He slid them back and threw it open to reveal a tunnel.

“Konstantin’s escape route,” he said. “All the Bratva bosses have them.”

“How did
you
know about it?”

“I found the architect.” He looked momentarily guilty. “And broke his arm.” He pushed me into the tunnel.

“Gabriella?” Konstantin’s voice rang out from the dungeon. It was tight with anger, but there was just a touch of amusement and an edge of lust there, too. “I really hope we get the chance to meet again someday.”

I flushed, remembering how he’d made me feel, and said nothing.

“And Alexei?” Konstantin asked, “I hope you realize what a woman you’ve got there.”

Alexei glanced at me for a second and the look he gave me made my heart lift and soar.

He took my hand and we ran.

Gabriella

The only light came from some flickering overhead bulbs, barely enough to see by. The passage was lined with slabs of stone, rough under my fingertips as I skimmed them along it. Running in my heels was impossible, so I had to haul Alexei to a stop and pull them off my feet, then run with them dangling from my hand. From behind us, we could hear shouts—with their boss safe, the guards had given chase.

The tunnel seemed to come to a dead end. But then Alexei pointed to the rungs of a ladder, leading up into the darkness. He pushed me over to it and I discarded my shoes completely and started climbing. The iron rungs were like ice against my bare feet and hands.