Devil's Lair (Molotov Obsession #1) - Anna Zaires Page 0,77
ran out of money.”
“Which is when you came across my ad.”
“Yes.” I swallow thickly. “I’m sorry, Nikolai. I really am. I wasn’t thinking straight when I applied for the position. I was down to a few dollars, and I was terrified because they’d just found me again, and they were getting bolder, shooting at me in broad daylight. I’ll leave, I swear I will. You don’t even need to pay me for the week. I’ll find another job and—”
“What the fuck are you talking about?” Jerking up to his feet, he props his fists on the table and leans in. His voice is harsh. “I told you, you’re not going anywhere.”
I scramble to my feet and back away. “Nikolai, please. I really am sorry. I didn’t mean to endanger your family. I’ll go today. Right now. Before they figure out I’m here and…” My heart climbs into my throat as he advances on me, eyes like fire and brimstone. “Please. I swear I—”
His hands close around my upper arms in an iron grip. “You’re not leaving,” he growls, and yanking me toward him, he crushes his lips to mine.
43
Nikolai
I devour her mouth with all the fury and fear inside me, all the hunger I’ve been holding back. So much makes sense now: her starved appearance and her lumberjack appetite, the puncture wounds on her arm and the nightmares that assault her every night. For weeks, they’ve hunted her, seeking to exterminate her, snuff her out of existence, and on that day in Boise, they nearly succeeded.
A couple of inches to the right, and the bullet would’ve torn through her skull.
The entire flight home, I shook with rage, and that was before I knew the rest of it. Before I knew how many times she came close to dying. If she hadn’t woken up to hear the locks getting picked, or jumped out of the way of that pickup truck… Fuck, if she’d just so much as breathed louder in that coat closet, she wouldn’t be here today.
I wouldn’t be holding her, tasting her.
I wouldn’t know what it’s like to have found the other half of my soul.
Her head falls back under the brutal pressure of my lips, her hands clutching desperately at my arms, and I know I should slow down, be gentle, but I can’t. Whatever restraint I’d possessed is gone, burned to ash in the fires of my fury, decimated by my fear for her.
There was so little of what she told me in Konstantin’s report, so many suspicious blanks in the police files he’d pulled for me. No mention of the two masked men in her mother’s apartment, nothing about the attempted hit-and-runs. Even her emails to the journalists, the ones Konstantin’s hackers found in her sent folder, don’t appear to have reached their destination, as if someone has had her messages blocked or marked as spam. And then there are all the erased and damaged tapes, likely those that would’ve served as proof of the other attempts on her life.
Someone went to enormous trouble to kill her mother and cover their tracks, someone with massive resources, and the fact that I don’t know who it is eats at me like acid.
Breathing hard, I wrench my mouth away from hers and meet her dazed gaze. “You’re not leaving.”
I wasn’t going to let her go before, but now that I know she’s in mortal danger, I will do whatever it takes to keep her here. I will literally chain her to me if I have to.
She blinks up at me, her kiss-swollen lips parting. “But—”
“But nothing. I don’t want to hear it again. You’re mine now, understand?” My voice is harsh, guttural. I’m frightening her, I can see it, but I can’t stop myself, can’t place the beast back on its leash.
She opens her mouth to respond, but I don’t let her. Roughly, I slide my hand into her hair and grip a fistful, holding her still as I swoop in for another deep, marauding kiss. There’s something dark and twisted in the way I need her, in this compulsion I feel to claim her. My hunger for her emanates from the deepest, most savage part of me, one that I’ve done my best to hide from her and from the world at large… one that my sister saw that awful winter night, much to her detriment.