So that means no fantasizing about Dimitri.
Lightning cracks in the distance and I gasp, a scuttle behind me making me fall backwards onto my ass.
Real smooth, I think to myself as I push myself up from the dirty floor. I'm going to need a shower after this.
A few moments later and thunder booms.
Oh shit, I think, I can't get stuck in a downpour. I'm six blocks from work and I didn't bring my umbrella.
But to my disappointment, the heavens don't listen to my protests and instead open up, heavy, hard rain splattering on the pavement. It's only a second later that I see the door open.
I raise my camera back to my face, snapping as quickly as I can, hoping to get a picture of the person Dimitri was meeting with, but he stays hidden in the dark recesses of the store. Dimitri hails a cab almost instantly, and leaves me behind in the rain tortured streets.
I lean forward and let out a sigh. Another bust.
I don't have cash for a cab, but I have to get back soon. My lunch break is almost over.
Glancing down at the streets, looking over the people as they hurry out of the torrential downfall, I lament my luck. Splatters of rain come in through the cracked window, sprinkling my face and cheeks in its warm wetness.
I'm just about to stand up and leave, resign myself to getting soaking wet, when a man catches my eye. He looks familiar. His hat covers most of his face, his jacket pulled up over his head, but I bring my camera back up and zoom in.
My fingers go cold, my body beginning to tremble, but I still hit the shutter button on my camera a dozen times before the man enters the same building my brother just left.
Slava.
If there was any doubt in my mind before now, it's completely erased now.
Chapter 9.
I shut the door to my office, my blouse and skirt clinging to my body from the wetness. I feel - and look - like a drowned dog, and I probably smell just as bad.
I debated even coming back. If Slava and Dimitri are visiting the same abandoned store, there's definitely something going on between them. Something big.
I just don't know what it is.
Leaning against my desk, I try to catch my breath and make sense of my jumbled thoughts, but it's useless. What can I make sense of? Once you get in with the Mafia, there's no getting out, is there? I had hoped that Dimitri's brief brush with criminality was a phase, something he would grow out of.
The scope of what he was involved in started to dawn on me, though, and all those little things he's said to me, all the things I've seen, all started to slide into place.
It's too much to deal with and I grab my camera and purse, heading for my door when the door from Dimitri's office suddenly slides open.
"Sarah, I-"
He stops talking as he looks over my soaking body, amusement sparkling in his eyes. He doesn't look any different, any more changed. Same old Dimitri, unable to take anything serious.
"Well, looks like you took a swim on your lunch break."
My heart protests, pounding against my chest.
He's your stepbrother, but he's dangerous, I tell myself, but seeing that wicked glint to his eyes, my body feels the magnetic pull to him once more.
What's wrong with me?
"Yea, I got caught in the rain," I say, my breath so high in my chest, my fingers trembling as I clutch my camera. His gaze drops to my purse, then my camera, tilting his head to the side.
"Taking pictures in the rain?" Suspicion runs in his voice and I curse myself for being so careless. I shouldn't have been taking off in the middle of the day anyways, but I just can't breathe in here. I can't make sense of it.
"Something like that," I say, shrugging my purse higher up my shoulder. "I'm not feeling well, so I was going to take off early."
"Were you?" he asks, daring me to repeat myself, and I shrink like a scolded child. He's only a bit older than me, but he seems so much larger than life.
He takes a step closer to me when I don't answer, placing a file on the corner of my desk. It's the closest he's been since that night in his apartment, and my body is craving his. My skin ignites when he brushes his fingers along my cheek, my eyes fluttering as I lean into it despite it all.
Why am I so pulled towards his darkness?
"You feel chilly," he says, suddenly seeming concerned, and he takes my camera from my hand, setting it on the desk. "Are you sure it's just the rain?"
Can he see that something's wrong? Can he read me so easily?
I shake my head, and his presence is suffocating me. I'm drowning in him, and the worst part is how little I want to fight it. When I'm away from him, I can think clearly. I know what a bad idea this all is.
But the second he returns to my side, I turn to putty.
His fingers lace into my hair, pulling back the wet strands, his eyes looking at me intently.
"You can't lie to me, Sarah. You never have. So tell me what's really wrong. Is it the thing at the condo still?"
I shake my head, feeling the little tug against my scalp.
He smiles, a moment of triumph passing over his face.
"Well, then tell me," he says, his lips lingering closer to mine. He's so much taller than I am, yet somehow he feels so near, like if I just leaned up on my toes a little, I could turn off my mind again. Lose myself in his body, if only for a second.
"I saw you," I say with a little whisper, my brows knit in the center. "I know you're into something, Dimitri. Something bad."
He raises his brows but I'm not sure I surprised him. His free hand finds my hip.
"Where did you see me, Sarah?" he asks, and his tone is darker than I've ever heard it. Gone is the teasing, the lightness. Instead, he's simply the cold devil I only ever saw that once, in the parking lot so many years ago.
"In the cafe," I murmur, and I can't look at him anymore. I don't know if it's shame or what, but I feel like I'm the one that's been disobedient.
His fingers tighten in my hair and he makes me meet his gaze. "You saw me... walk into a building?"
I nod.
"And where were you?"
"Across the street."
"And you took pictures of me in the building?"
I nod again.
He curses under his breath, and glares down at me.
"Didn't you learn what happens to you when you take pictures of me when I don't know you're there?" he says, and the edge of warning to his voice sends icy-hot chills down my spine.
He's scaring me.
He's turning me on.
I swallow, and I know I have to choose my words carefully. Though I don't know what to say, especially not something that's going to get me out of hot water with him. I bite in on my lower lip, watching as the anger boils behind his dark eyes.
"Sarah," he says through clenched teeth, and I cringe.
His hand squeezes my hips, his other moving from the nape of my neck to the hollow of my throat, his thumb pressing against it in warning, and even though I know he wouldn't kill me, I still feel a rush of fear.
"I'm sorry," I say, louder than I anticipated. "I'm worried for you."
His expression is at war, and he pulls back a half-inch.
"You should be worried for you," he says, his jaw clenched. "You don't have a clue what trouble you could've gotten into today, Sarah. No fucking idea. If they knew you were spying, you'd be gone in a second. Not even a chance to regret your boneheaded actions." He releases me, backing up and throwing his hands up in exasperation. "I should've known you wouldn't be able to leave well enough alone."
I take a step back, my shoulders pressed into the wall and he comes towards me again, all fire and brimstone. I cringe away, but then his lips crash against mine as if he owned them, his tongue probing my mouth. I'm in shock, and a rush of excitement goes through me. My door is unlocked, anyone could simply barge in.
So why does that make it hotter rather than scarier?
"You should've stayed away from me," he says, his eyes smoldering beneath his dark lashes as he cups my jaw. He's stolen my breath, and there's something in his expression that chills me to the bone.
I suck in air, but then I capture his mouth with mine again, and we're a tangled mess of limbs. He doesn't seem to care that I'm still soaking wet and ruining his perfect suit, especially not as he lifts my thighs, pressing my back into the wall. He has me pinned, my arms tossed around his neck, and I'm not sure if it's passion or fear that's binding us together at this point in time.
It's wrong, but it feels so right, and for once, I succumb. I let my mind simply drift, losing myself in the pleasure of his hard body tensing against mine.
"You never should've tempted me," he growls darkly. "You are sweet." He pulls back glancing at my face, "You're still pure, da?" he asks, and when I nod my head, he lunges for my throat, his tongue exploring the delicate bones. There's nothing in the world better than that sensation, and I have to hold in a sigh of pleasure.
"We were both safer before you came back," he says, his teeth nipping my collarbone, half possessive, half teasing. "We were better off."
"I wasn't," I protest, my fingers running into his hair, my back arching towards him, my nipples stiffened beneath my bra. "Every day I missed you."
"This is about more than you and me," he says, even as his fingers move up my thighs, digging into my ass, groping me with wild abandon in my office. "If you want this, it's all or nothing."
And I want it.
"All or nothing," I say out loud, finishing my silent thought. I grind against him, and he reaches for his belt.
"There's no going back. After this, you're mine," he says, and the word burns in my belly, my stomach suddenly filled with potent fireworks exploding in time to his heartbeat.
My lips press against his once more as I moan against him, feeling his belt slip open, the jingled sound delighting all of my senses.
In his office there's a vibration, his phone purring on his desk, but he ignores it as he hikes up my skirt.
"This what you want, Sarah?" he asks, his voice heavy with lust, taking on such a rich, enticing tone, and I nod like a schoolgirl afraid of speaking. He reaches up beneath my skirt, grabbing the edge of my panties and beginning to tug them downwards.
"Dimitri," I moan, my head tilting back, my body aching and throbbing with desire. "I've thought about this for so long."
"Since you ran from me?"
"I wish I hadn't," I admit, and my body warms with the thought of him taking me back then. Claiming me for his own years ago. How different things could have been.
His mouth sucks on my throat, and I know I'm going to have a bruise there, but it feels so damn good I don't care. I just want more. His hand tugs down my panties, unleashing my heat, and his fingers find the warm silk there and presses in.
I gasp, my eyes rolling back in my head at the unexpected pleasure. All the anxiety and fear that has welled up inside of me seems to be focused in that one bundle of nerves. He strokes it so expertly, drawing out more and more of my juices until I'm thoroughly coated and then reaches for his cock, pressing the crown against me. He teases me with that flared head, and I know it's wrong how much I want it. I know it's sinful how good he feels, but all I can manage is a moan of pure delight.
Knock-knock-knock-knock.
The sound is urgent, and for a second, I wonder if it's in my head. Only now do I realize the sound of an incessant phone ringing has been going on for some time from his office. When Dimitri drops me to the ground, though, quickly stuffing his swollen cock back in his pants and moves towards his own office, I know it's not a hallucination.
He closes the door to my office, and I can make out mumbled sounds of him talking to someone in his office.
When he returns, his face is somber, no longer holding the heat it had just a moment ago.
"Someone... Someone's killed mom."
Chapter 10.
There's a buzzing in my ear and I can't fully make sense of the words coming out of the detective's mouth.
Dimitri is at my side, his arm draped around me, my eyes puffed up and swollen. Everything that'd happened between us in the office had been instantly forgotten in a mess of tears and frantic sobbing. Dimitri hasn't cried, though. If anything he's become harder, as if in the span of the last few hours, he's grown a decade.
"We deserve to know," he's saying, his hand clutching my arm. "We're her kids."
"It's a delicate situation. We don't have all the information yet, so we need to ask a few more questions. The better you can help us, the faster we can resolve this."