"When my men got there they found her place tossed, no woman and a dead man in the alley next to her building. Tell me you got to her before these guys did?"
There is something Roberts isn't telling me just yet. He dropped the whole 'dead body' issue too soon before moving on to whether or not I have the girl. "Yeah, I got her. What are you not telling me?"
I have never been one for tact. Why start now?
"These guys are fucking dark. I mean, yeah, they shot up an entire café but...they completely destroyed her apartment Dragomir and they killed a kid next door."
"A child?" my blood runs cold. One thing you do not do is go after children; it is like an unspoken rule of conduct or something. Only the lowest of the low do that. Something close to terror clouds Kat's eyes when I swing back around to look at her.
"No, he was nineteen. Everyone under thirty is a kid to me."
Jesus, I'm barely older than a kid in Roberts' mind. I shake my head to let her know it has nothing to do with a child. I can tell that would be too much for her to handle tonight.
"Nineteen-year-old living next door?" She needs to understand just how deadly these men are.
"Steward? What happened to Stew?" She takes my coat the rest of the way off and for an insane moment, I want to ask if he's who she was dressing up for.
"They found him dead tonight. They think the same men who came looking for you did it."
She sits down heavily on the edge of my bed. My apartment isn't very big and it's not like I entertain a lot so there's not a lot of places for her to sit but the fact that her ass is on my bed half-dressed is making it exceptionally hard to hide my stiff cock. I turn my back again. There is no way I am going to be alright with her crying over another man whom she was waiting around for.
"They just didn't kill him, Dragomir, they tortured him before they finished." Trying to get him to tell them where she was and who she was with. "It was vicious."
"Ivan," the alarm in her voice is so real that I can't stop myself from turning to her, "my family."
"Kat's worried about her family."
"Kat?" Roberts picks up on the nickname before I realize I might have given too much away. "She knows they have her purse which probably has things in it to link them back to her family." Better to ignore it and let it die. Insisting and making a fuss is only going to make people feel the opposite of what you are trying to convince them about.
"I'll alert the police department where they are. Is it the same address she gave us?"
I turn and get the information from her so I can give it to Roberts. Before I even get off the phone with Roberts I'm already on my laptop pulling in more favors than I have the right to. The police are not going to be able to keep Kat's family safe from people like the ones we are dealing with. But thankfully I have friends who can.
"Ivan," she really has to stop using my name when she talks to me. When I turn in my chair to face her, chocolate eyes are wavering with unshed tears. Any minute now they are going to spill over and run down her cheeks. I’ve never wanted to be tears before but taking that fall might just make me want to. "Am I the reason Stew is dead?"
"No, they are the reason Stew is dead. You have nothing to do with his death."
I try not to be too curt but I am dying inside to know if she was his. I hold my tongue and keep from asking for now by sheer force of will. I turn back to my computer. Out of the corner of my eye, I watch her walk around my place and feel the same kick I felt from having her sit on my bed. What the hell is wrong with me? Am I like thirteen again and nutting over having a girl in my room? I try to push it out of my mind when a soft thud hits the floor behind me sending me into action before I can think. I'm up on my feet and ready to fight my way out of whatever the situation calls for when I notice a pile of my books lying on the carpet and a guilty-looking Kat standing next to my bookcase.
"Sorry." She bends to pick them up and I'm treated to another view of the delicious spheres of her ass. By the time I catch myself my fucking head is actually tilted like I can look further up her shorts if I just think hard enough. I snort, more at myself than at her, and go back to my task.
I try to go back to what I was doing anyway. Now that I have the image of her sweet ass in my head it makes it hard to focus on anything but all the naughty, twisted things I could be doing to that ass now that it's in my home.
"All of your books are in Russian...oh," she stops herself but I can't help giving her a raised eyebrow. She has heard my accent, hasn't she?
"English books are on the bottom."
She flops down on the floor and sits with her legs crossed as she runs her fingers over the titles on my shelf. If that isn't a wet dream for a book nerd I don't know what is.
"I'm not, um, going to be a problem for you, am I?" now there is a loaded question if ever I heard one.
I wheel back around to meet her eyes. Since when is this woman not a problem for me?
"I just mean, um you know, a girlfriend. Because I can put the jacket back on if you were expecting someone..."
"Do you have a boyfriend?" Her head tilts to the side and her forehead crinkles in confusion at why I would ask. "You are wearing that, were you waiting on someone to come home?"
"What the hell does that mean? You think because I wear something nice I can't just be wearing it for me? I have to be putting a show on for someone?"
I am on her before she knows what is happening. My hand curls around her neck. "When a woman like you wears something like this," I run my fingers along the edge of the material where it nestles between her breasts, "men like me want to know who we have to kill to have you."
I look at her as she swallows and can feel the pounding of her pulse.
"I just didn't want to start trouble for you." She says it between clenched teeth. Her chest heavy with every breath she takes. She should be terrified, she's not.
"Kiska, you are trouble no matter how much you try not to be." I run my thumb over her bottom lip testing its softness.
"What is that word you keep saying? Are you calling me something bad?"
I throw my head back and laugh. I have a raging hard-on and she thinks I'm cussing her in another language.
"It means kitten in Russian. You are a kitten, aren't you?" looking into her innocent brown eyes I can almost make myself believe that she is as pure as I want her to be. "Do you have someone who sees you in tiny things like this?"
She shakes her head no vigorously, "I wanted to feel pretty and I like beautiful things."