196

Nadia
I pace in the parking lot of Rue’s. I took an Uber here. It’s funny how helpless I was a month ago, and now I’m suddenly capable of anything. Leaving the apartment alone. Getting an Uber.
Even murder.
I have on my warm woolen jacket with the gun tucked in a pocket.
I would go inside, but I don’t know how to explain to Danica that I’m here but not to perform. I also don’t want to do the murdering inside Rue’s. The parking lot is far more ideal, not that I have any experience with these things.
I did choose Adrian’s gun with a silencer attached. I don’t want to call any attention to my crime.
Of course, I don’t even know if the guy will return this week.
I am sure it was him, though. One hundred percent sure.
It’s freezing outtechnically below freezingbut I don’t mind the cold. I actually welcome the bite of wind across my cheeks.
A couple walks through the parking lot to the front of the building. Then a car pulls into the parking lot, and I watch to see who gets out.
My stomach drops. Gospodi, it’s him.
He came back. He’s here.
I grip the gun tightly in my pocket and stride forward, right up to him. He lifts his head to see who’s coming.
I don’t know why I’m pissed that he doesn’t recognize me.
I hold out the gun with my arm straight out in front of me and point it at his head. “Open your fucking mouth.”
I already hear the clang of chains. The banging of metal cots against the walls. I catch his nasty cigar scent. A panic attack is coming on, but I can get through this. I can shoot him before it hits. All I have to do is pull the trigger.
And then he smiles.
I hadn’t remembered that smile until this moment. It’s pure evil. It was his expression of delight in delivering pain. He’s happy to see me now, even at the business end of a pistol.
“Nadia.” He sounds delighted. Like we’re old friends meeting on the sidewalk.
That voice! That fucking voice.
I blink hard, but I’m blacking out. I’m going to fall to the ground. Am I already falling?
Is the ground tilting up to catch me?
I can’t move. Every part of my body feels leaden.
I try to pull the trigger, but nothing happens. Vaguely, some part of my brain registers that there was a safety, and I didn’t remove it first. But it’s too late because the mudak snatches the pistol from my frozen fingers and uses it to clap me in the temple.
That’s when I understand I hadn’t fallen before. I couldn’t have. Because the ground rushes up now to meet my face with such intensity that I’m sure I break my nose.
I can’t breathe. Not even the tiniest bit. I can’t scream. I can’t fight back as I’m dragged behind the mudak’s car and then lifted into the trunk.
And then I see something that flips a switch. Brings me back to life like smelling salts. Or defibrillator paddles.
It’s Flynn.
He’s running up behind cigar man.
I kick, and the heel of my boot hits cigar man square in the chest. It’s not enough to do any damage, but it prevents him from shutting the trunk door on me and gives Flynn time to attack.
Flynn tackles him to the ground, punching his face repeatedly.
Unintelligible zombie sounds come from my lips, but at least I’m breathing. At least I can move. My temple throbs as I climb out of the trunk. The road rash on my face smarts and burns like hell.
Cigar man reaches in his pocket and produces Adrian’s gun. Flynn doesn’t see it.
“Nyet!” I lunge across his chest to stomp on his wrist.
Flynn wrestles the pistol out of his closed fingers, while cigar man tries to take the safety off.
“Give it to me.” My voice shakes with rage.
Flynn hands me the pistol and punches the guy’s bloodied face again. His jowls jiggle with the impact. Blood seeps from the corners of his mouth.
I figure out how to take the safety off and put my finger on the trigger. I point the gun right in the middle of the guy’s forehead.
But I can’t breathe. I can’t move. Another attack has me firmly in its jaws.
Doesn’t my body know that this will set me free? It should be helping me, not hindering.
Flynn looks over his shoulder when he hears me sucking air.
With that same remarkable calm he always brings, Flynn stands.
Cigar man immediately tries to scramble up but Flynn stomps his heavy boot down in the middle of cigar man’s chest. I hear ribs crack on the impact.
The sound of a vehicle tearing into the parking lot makes me wrestle for fresh breath. We’re caught. It’s over now. I missed my chance.
“Come here.” Flynn’s voice is as soft and non-threatening as ever. He gently maneuvers me in front of him and wraps his arms around me from behind, molding his hand over mine to cover my trigger finger.
The car pulls up right beside us. I can’t look at it. I can’t look away from cigar man’s face. That horrible sneering loathed face.
“Together?” Flynn asks. He doesn’t seem to care about the car that just arrived.
I nod.
He adjusts the aim back to the middle of cigar man’s forehead and pulls the trigger. The gun kicks, but it’s quiet.
I let out a sob. I would fall to my knees, but Flynn is holding me up. Someone takes the gun from our hands.
It’s Adrian. “I got this. Get her out of herenow.”
Flynn scoops me up into his arms and carries me to the van. The beautiful, old trusty white Ford van. No vehicle has ever looked so friendly to me in my life.
He sets me down long enough to open the passenger door then helps me in, buckles me in and slams it shut.
He moves with speed and precision but also total ease. His face is relaxed and impassive.
This is the guy you want with you in an emergency. In a crisis. In a fight. But also for fun. In life.
This is a guy I was stupid to push away.
“Flynn,” I choke when he climbs behind the wheel.
“I love you, Nadia.”
That’s what he says when he gets in the van. I love you, Nadia.
“You’re not a project for me. Or someone I think I have to save. You have it backward. You’re the one who rescued me.”
He pulls away from the scene of our crime talking about love.
About loving me.
About me rescuing him.
“I love you, Flynn.” I’m still weepy. Kind of a mess. I swipe the back of my hand over my eyes. “I love you so much, and this last week has been so hard.”
He looks over at menow the meaning burns in his gaze. “So fucking hard.” He scrubs a hand across his trimmed beard. “Cadence isn’t pregnant. That was a stupid ploy for my attention. I’m really sorry.”
“What are you sorry for?” I’m still crying. “You didn’t do anything. She’s the nutjob.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner. What you mean to me. I just…I was afraid to fuck things up. Everything was so good with you, and I didn’t want to scare you off by getting too intense.”
“Too intense.” I give a watery laugh. “I’m always too intense. That’s why I didn’t say anything to you.”
He looks over at me again. “I want intense. I want that with you. You make me want to try hard in life instead of just hanging back on the sidelines. You make me want to live.”
He parks in front of his apartment and throws open the door to come around to my side.
I fall into his arms when he opens my door. “You make me want to live, too,” I tell him. My sobs have subsided. All I feel now are bubbles of hope. Glimmers of joy.
I wrap my legs around his waist, and he carries me to the door. “I love you,” I say. “YA tebya lyublyu.”
“What does that mean?” he asks.
I smile. “It means I love you.”
He throws his head back. “Aw, fuck.”
“What?”
“You were telling me that all along. I should’ve said it first.”
I laugh because it’s a silly thing to lament.
He unlocks the front door, and we take the steps up to his apartment. “Are we back together?” he asks.
“Da. Definitely. I mean, I want to be.”
He stops at his door and catches my face in his hands. “I want to be, too.” He kisses me like I’m his bride, and it’s our wedding daya kiss full of promise, loaded with love.
The kind I never, ever want to recover from.
Then he pushes open the door, pulling out his phone as we walk in. “I’m texting your brother to tell him where we are and not to bother us,” he says.
“Good plan,” I say.
I see the smile slip a bit from his face, probably as he remembers what we just did.
“I’m sorry you had to help me.”
“I’m not,” he says fiercely. “I’m not sorry at all.”
“Adrian is a cleaner. That’s what he does for the bratva. He’ll take care of everything.”
Flynn draws a breath and lets it out. “That’s good. I’d go to prison for you, but I’d rather not.”
“Yeah, I’d rather not, too.”
He tips his head toward the bedroom. “Can I show you how I’d prefer to impress you?”
I laugh and pretend-race to the bedroom. “I’m already impressed.”
When we reach the bed, he catches my hands and pulls them both to his mouth to kiss. “I’m the one who’s impressed. Nadiayou’re free now. You’re standing on your own. I’m just here to admire you.”
I reach up to kiss him. “You’re the one who got me here.”
“No.” He stops my lips. “You got yourself here. It’s all you, Peaches.”
I unbutton his jeans. “No, you.”
He laughs and divests me of my jacket. “No, you.”
“You.”
“You.”
Piece by piece, we strip each other of clothing, and Flynn maneuvers me to sit on the bed and pushes my knees wide, dropping to the floor between them. He licks into me, parting my flesh with the tip of his tongue, circling my most sensitive parts.
I manage to stay present, not allowing my mind to associate anything from my past with this moment now. Not allowing the ugliness back in the parking lot to crowd in this room.
This is a space for Flynn and me. Just the two of us. And right now he’s showing me just how capable he is at bringing my body to life. Heat rushes between my legs. My internal muscles squeeze and lift. He penetrates me with his tongue, uses the tip of his nose against my clit.
I catch the back of his head and urge him to my clit, and he sucks there as he slides two fingers inside me. I come almost immediately, but I want more. I want the real thing.
“Flynn.” I push him away and crawl back on the bed. “Please.”
He climbs over me with a condom in hand, his brown eyes dark with desire. “Fuck, I missed you, Nadia.” He drops kisses across my collar bone and into the hollow of my throat. He kisses down between my breasts, then latches on to one nipple, sucking hard enough to wring another mini orgasm out of me.
Then he’s inside me, moving with a rhythm we find together. The kind of motion where I can’t tell where his body stops and mine starts. We’re one unit, riding into the sunset together.
It’s perfection.
Glory.
It’s power and love.
When it becomes too much for mewhen I need to have it all wholly and completely, I wrap my ankles behind his back and pull him in harder.
He braces on one hand and shoves in with force, sinking deep into me with each thrust.
“Da…da!” I scream and come.
Flynn picks up his rhythm and pumps another dozen times to find his own happy ending.
When he blankets my body with his, his panted breath mingling with my own, we nuzzle into each other. He slows his rhythm to an unambitious rock, and we melt into the mattress. Into the covers. Into each other.
“I love you,” he murmurs, brushing my cheek with the back of his fingers.
“I love you so much, Flynn Taylor. You’re everything.”
“No, you,” he murmurs, kissing along my cheekbone.