Chapter 3

"I didn't know." Elena's voice shook but she held his eyes. "I swear on everything I have left…I didn't know. He told me you were the only one. He told me if I went quietly you'd spare him."

Dimitri watched her for a long, airless minute. Then he set the gun down.

"If you're lying," he said, "I'll know soon enough."

By the third full day the cabin smelled like sex and woodsmoke and the soap he used on her body when he decided she was filthy with him. Dimitri worked at the laptop by the window between using her.

Calls in Russian and Italian with Maps and numbers.

Guns cleaned on the kitchen table until they shone.

Elena scrubbed floors naked because he'd told her to, ass still striped pink from his belt when she slowed, cunt tender from how many times he'd taken her without asking.

That afternoon he bent her over the table mid-call, one hand covering her mouth, and thrust into her from behind while someone on speaker discussed shipments and body counts. She bit his palm when the orgasm ripped through her against her will. He bit her shoulder harder and finished inside her without breaking the conversation, voice steady while his cock pulsed deep.

After he hung up he turned her around, thumbs under her jaw, forcing her to look at him.

"You hate me."

"Yes."

"But you came on my cock while I talked about killing men in Naples." His thumb dragged her lower lip, pressing until she tasted copper. "Say it out loud."

"I came," she whispered, furious with wet eyes. "I came and I hated every second of needing it."

Something almost like amusement touched his mouth. He kissed her—for the first time—slow and claiming, tongue sweeping deep until she made a broken noise into him and her hands, traitorously, fisted in his shirt instead of pushing him away. When he pulled back his eyes were darker, almost human.

"Hate me louder next time," he said. "It makes your cunt tighter."

He let her wear the shirt to sleep. In the night she woke to him already inside her, moving slow in the dark, one hand gentle on her throat—not squeezing, just holding.

She came with a quiet sob. He followed with her name under his breath like he hadn't meant to say it.

Near dawn, while she dozed against his chest, his phone vibrated again.

Dimitri eased out from under her, stepped onto the porch barefoot, and spoke in a voice she'd never heard—low, stripped of the controlled boredom he used with her.

When he came back inside his expression had gone to stone.

"Get up," he said. "Now! Someone leaked the cabin coordinates. We have six hours before this place is burned to the ground with us in it—or worse, before they take you to leverage me."

He threw clothes at her. Real clothes with boots.

"And Elena?" He chambered a round without looking. "If you slow me down, I will leave you. If you run, I will hunt you. And if I find out you signaled anyone…"

He finally looked at her, and for the first time she saw something like fear under the violence—not for himself.

"...I will make what I did to you on that bed feel like a wedding night. Move."