Infernal: Bite The Bullet (26 page)

He smoothed the paper out on the table in front of
me.

I didn’t get beyond the top line that read
‘Deportation Order’ in bold font, before my vision began to swim. I wasn’t
ready to say goodbye. “I’m sorry,” I murmured, dropping my glass onto the
table. Champagne soaked the tablecloth as I pushed up from the chair. “I really
need some air.”

“Neva?”

Salt tears stung my eyes as I fumbled the sliding
door open and rushed out into the bracing chill of the balcony. I
white-knuckled the railing and sucked in a shuddering breath, willing the tide
of emotion to recede. I didn’t want him to see me like this. I didn’t want him
to remember me as some weak, snivelling girl.

His hands wrapped warm around my goose-fleshed
upper arms. “He’s gone Neva. You’re safe. He can’t touch you anymore. No more
looking over your shoulder. I know it’s not the way you wanted it, but –”

“You think I’m upset about Dante?” Was he really
that blind to how I felt about him? I shook my head viciously, strands of my
hair falling loose as I swiped tears from my cheeks.

His hands tightened. “What else am I supposed to
think, when I show you his deportation order and you freak out on me?”

“
His
deportation order?” I spun around to
the confusion etched on his stupidly gorgeous features.

“Yes,” he said, frowning. “Dante was put on a
morning flight, with a medical team and an armed escort. He’s never coming
back. I thought you’d be pleased.”

“You thought I’d be
pleased
?” Hysteria
edged my voice and I hated that I was losing control.

The fear I saw in his face almost made me want to
laugh. How could he not see?

“Neva, please. Tell me what’s wrong?”

“What’s wrong is that you’re leaving too, you
cruel, insensitive bastard. I know!”

He looked like I’d just slapped his face.

“What is it you think you know?” he demanded.

I tipped up my chin and focussed my gaze on some
distant point inside the apartment. I couldn’t look at him, and my words came
out tight with restraint. “I know you’ve been ordered to leave the country.
Admit it. That’s why you really brought me here. To tell me you’re going home.”
I bit down on my lower lip. “And I know it’s not your fault, and I’m not
allowed to blame you, but goddammit, I do. I do blame you, because you seem to
be doing everything in your power to make me fall irrevocably in love with you,
and that’s just cruel. I already lived through the nightmare of losing my brother.
I can’t lose you too. It’s not bloody fair.”

There. It was out. Not the poignant, tearful
goodbye I’d pictured, but then life didn’t play out like the movies. Life was
messy, with snot and ugly crying and streaks of mascara that trickled all the
way to your lips. I wrapped my arms around my chest, and a shudder wracked
through me.

“Neva,” Konstantyn growled.

I pressed my lips together and steadfastly refused
to take my eyes off the fascinating view over his shoulder, not even when his
strong hands framed my face, and his thumbs brushed the tears from my cheeks.

“Neva, look at me,” he coaxed.

Biting the inside of my cheek, I forced myself to
obey. God those eyes, with their fiery green passion. I thought I’d been lost in
Dante’s dungeons, but when I looked in those eyes, I was utterly done for.

“I told you I had some things to tell you. Dante’s
deportation was one. But there is more.”

“Yeah,” I agreed, swiping at my tears. I’d had my
rant, he deserved his say, even if it could be nothing good.

He tucked a stray lock of hair behind my ear.
“You’re right. I was served with a Removal Order by the British Government.
They had no choice.” His shoulders lifted in a shrug. “I entered this country
on a falsified visa, using a fake passport. I have no right to stay. We sat
down to talk. I explained that I was AWOL from military service, and why. Even
blind and bed-ridden, Dante has enough choke chains on the senior military and
politicians in my country that as soon as I set foot on Ukrainian soil, they
will be baying for my blood.”

“They’ll lock you up?” I stammered. Or worse,
Dante would give the order from his death bed to have him killed. In my selfish
wallowing, I’d only considered the consequences of his leaving from my own blinkered
perspective. It hadn’t even occurred to me his life would be in danger. “I’m so
sorry.”

“It’s okay,” he said, and he managed a smile. “You
see, they gave me another option.”

I looked at him through my tears with glum
expectation.

“It seems the British Government has a use for a
man with my specialist training.”

“They want you to defect?” I asked, wide-eyed.

He chuckled at that. “It’s not like the old days
of the Cold War. I’m not selling out my country’s secrets. But they appreciate
the part I played in uncovering Dante’s set-up, and in return for my full
cooperation, they’ve offered me asylum, a new job, and a new identity.”

Concern drew my brows together. “Is it dangerous?”

“No more dangerous than what I did before.”

“Does this mean you’re staying?” I asked, not
daring to believe.

He nodded and a wicked smile spread his lips.

“There is a God,” I laughed, even as fresh tears
streamed down my face. I threw my arms around him and kissed that wicked smile
until my lungs burned and my heart threatened to burst out of my chest.
Breathing was so overrated.

The food went uneaten. My champagne dripped onto
his polished floor. His kiss was my air, my nourishment, and the drug that made
me soar.

His fingertips eased the straps from my bare
shoulders and the dress slithered down my body, grazing my breasts, falling to
a red silky puddle at my feet.

The chill air caressed my naked skin and kissed my
nipples to tight, aching peaks, but I couldn’t feel the cold. Not when
Konstantyn’s mouth was so hot on my skin, biting passion to the line of my jaw
as his hands sculpted my exposed curves in heated caresses that stoked my blood
to boiling and flushed my skin to a soft pink.

My head fell back on a moan as his tongue laved a
wet velvet drag down the sensitive column of my throat. He kissed lower and my
spine arched in offering, bowing to give him all the access he could want. I
craved him with an intensity that only came out of me when I danced, or fought
for my life. Exposed to the vast sprawl of the city lights, draped across his
balcony wearing nothing but his scent and killer heels, it was an incredible
exhilaration. I felt lit-up from the inside out with a wanton abandon that
didn’t care who could witness this. Konstantyn had his hands on me, and I knew
I was safe. This man wasn’t going to let me go, and in capturing me, he was setting
me free.

His fingertips caressed my nape as he pulled the
pins from my hair and I tossed the dark waves loose into the wind, half hanging
over the railing in my bid to get more of him on more of me.

Konstantyn didn’t take the bait though. He mapped
my curves with those strong hands, his lips lingering on the delicate skin
inside my elbows and over my ribs, secret places that sparked to his lightest
touch, and ignited wildfires beneath my skin. The man discovered erogenous
zones I hadn’t known existed.

He laced his fingers in mine and drew my arms up
high above my head, elongating my body for the silken path of his kisses. I
murmured his name and he grazed his teeth over my hip, jolting me into the
touch and almost tipping me over the edge. At my cry of surprise he held me
tighter.

“I will never let you fall,” he promised, trailing
his lips down my stomach.

“Konstantyn, you’re torturing me,” I moaned,
feeling his hot breath tease lower.

There would be time enough for slow and sensual,
right now I needed him inside me, and his cruel laughter incited me to action.

Hitching my thigh to his hip, I reached for him,
curled a fist around his tie, and hauled myself up until our lips were fused
and my hips locked with his. His laughter thrummed on my mouth and he deepened
the kiss on a harsh moan that drenched the flesh between my thighs. My legs
tightened around him in a cage and my free hand reached down to find his
straining erection. I stroked him through the silky fabric of his suit,
wringing a hoarse moan from deep in his throat. He needed this just as much as
I did.

That knowledge made me bold. Ripping out his shirt
and popping the button on his pants, I hunted his hot, naked flesh. Victorious,
my hand emerged, pumping his thick, pulsing shaft, and it was only a matter of
tilting my pelvis to get him where my body wept so desperately for him to be.

The noise he made as he thrust inside me was pure,
unrestrained male, and I cried out, exulting as he crammed himself into the
tight sheath of my sex in a hilt-deep penetration.

His hands spanned my waist and I arched back for
him once more, locking both my heels into his ass and surrendering to the
confidence of his hold. His muscles bunched and my arms outstretched, giving
myself over to the beautiful power of him. With the wind ruffling my hair, I
felt like I was flying, every thrust of Konstantyn’s hips pushing me towards
the stars. His rhythm climbed and my passion mounted with it, my cries spilling
free when he rammed between my thighs and pleasure melted me around his cock.

Again and again, he surged inside me, deeper,
wilder, his tempo gaining momentum until I was gripping the balcony with
sweat-slicked fingers and spurring my heels into his clenching muscle, urging
him to take me with everything he had.

He was magnificent, a powerhouse of tireless,
perfectly honed masculinity, and his face, God those green-flecked eyes
devoured me. Glazed with lust, they were a mirror to my own emotion, and I
locked onto them, even as starbursts of pleasure winked across my vision.
Kicking impossibly deeper, the head of his cock kissed a place inside of me
that had me screaming his name out to the city lights. Low in my belly, the
tight-coiled knot detonated into a million sparks of ecstasy that danced across
my skin and curled my toes and fingers into claws of grasping passion. I came
in vicious, rhythmic waves that clenched around Konstantyn’s thick shaft, milking
him, demanding he fall as I was falling. My cry was lost as he let go on a
roar, his own release coming hard on my spurring heels, and I luxuriated in the
sound of my name from his lips, contracting around him in ripples as his palms
bruised into my sweat-sheened skin. I relished the powerful slap of his thighs
against my ass, imprinting the surging hot pulses of his ecstasy inside me.

Breathing ragged, thighs trembling, we clung to
each other as we rode out the storm, and I held onto the one thing that felt
real, when my life had come so close to being over.

I’m not entirely sure how we got back inside. Once
our legs got moving again, I couldn’t stop kissing him, and that led to his
shirt being left on the balcony, those beautiful suit trousers flung over it.
My knees had wood burn and I was painted in bruises, but draped across his
stomach on the bed, I was in a lazy, mussed haze of satiation and love. It was
a contentment I hadn’t felt in a long time. I thumbed through the newspaper as
Konstantyn ran his hand along my thigh, and my skin warmed.

“How do you afford a place like this?” It came out
random, but I’d been thinking about it, right at the back of my head.

“It’s a rental.” Konstantyn replied, and his voice
was sex-sleepy and satisfied, rumbling beneath me.

“Yeah, but…” I crooked him a dubious eyebrow raise
and he laughed. I guess my tone told him I was playfully imagining nefarious
dealings with men under bridges.

He pinched my inner thigh, rubbing the sting when
I squirmed. “Remember I told you my grandpa was a musician?”

I nodded. “The one who gave you the bullet?”

“Yes, that one. He left me his cello when he died.
 I inherited it when I turned twenty-one. Turns out it was a
Stradivarius.” He let that hang as my brows crawled into my hairline. Yeah,
alright. He could afford it. Those things sold for millions.

I turned the page and Dante’s name jumped out at
me from amongst a hundred different sentences. He’d been deported, and it was
all over the news.

“Hmmm.”

“Hmmm?” Konstantyn repeated. I could hear his
smile.

“I just can’t stop thinking about it all.” I let
the pages flutter shut as Konstantyn’s abs crunched beneath me and his voice
growled a throaty, accented purr to my ear.

“Let me distract you.” He bit a kiss to my bare
shoulder, and ran his hand over my ass, and the tattoo that was starkly
emblazoned on it.

His fingertip traced the serpent, and I shivered
at the sensation.

“You can have it removed,” he said.

He must have mistaken the tremor. I shook my head
and parted my thighs slightly to alleviate the fire he was stoking between them
with his absent caresses. “I’m thinking about keeping it.”

“Yeah?” The surprise in his voice made me smile.

“Yeah. Seeing as it was you that branded me. And
now we have matching ink.”

He laughed, then his lips touched my shoulder
again and I ran my hand back over the short bristles of his hair.

Konstantyn was still technically AWOL, but now I
knew the UK wasn’t in any hurry to extradite the hero who’d rescued twelve
victims from a sex ring, it just left me with one question: What would he do
now?

“There’s more to tell you.” He said softly into
the silence surrounding my thoughts.

“There is?”

“Umhmm. You didn’t give me a chance to finish
earlier.”

“Oh I don’t know. I’d say you finished like a
champion.” I purred.

His grin was smug, appreciative. “Who says I’m
done with you?” His fingers slipped up my inner thigh and my head fell back,
opening up the line of my throat to his kisses.