That clicking makes me sit up a little taller as I turn to face him.
Lev walks back toward me, setting the bags on a chair and the keys on the table. His eyes move over the trinket box as he unzips his jacket and takes it off, then sets his gun on the table.
His is bigger than the one he gave me. It’s the one he used to kill Andrei, and he’s very well equipped to handle it.
“Where’s the pistol I gave you?” he asks, stepping closer.
I reach behind me to take it out of the waistband of my jeans and hand it to him.
He puts it beside his on the table, and all I can think is we’re quite the couple. Bonnie and Clyde.
“We should hide those. What if Josh—”
“Josh is asleep. I asked you a question.”
I look at the papers on the floor. “I have a right to know what’s going on.” I stand, then step to him to face-off. “I have a right to know what you’re doing with a file on my mother.”
He studies me, cocks his head to the side, and steps toward me, closing those last few feet of space.
“It’s my responsibility to keep you and our son safe. I will make the call on what you see when. I decide what information you need, when you need it.”
“I’m not the little woman you keep barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen, Lev. I won’t ever be that. What are you doing with this? Why do you have it? And what does my mother have to do with any of this?”
“We’ll discuss it later. When you’re ready.”
“You don’t get to decide when I’m ready. My mother—”
“We will discuss it later when we can talk.” He rubs my arms, his touch not quite as gentle as he can be. “Our son is sleeping in the next room.”
“Our son that I’ve been raising on my own for three years. That I’ve kept safe for three years.”
“What are you saying?” He drops his arms.
“Nothing.” I shift my gaze.
“You think you were safe?” he asks.
“Well…” I falter.
When he takes another step, I match his, going backward. But I should know better because one more, and my back is to the wall. It’s exactly where he wants me because in the next instant, he has my arms stretched over my head and my wrists pinned to the wall.
“Lev—”
“You weren’t safe, Katerina. You were never safe. You hid well, I’ll give you that, but I found you and Vasily’s men followed the day we left. I’ve told you more than once that I will keep you safe. I’ve asked you to trust me, and I think my actions have proven that I have yours and Josh’s best interests at heart.”
“But—”
“You need to trust that I will tell you what I can when I can.”
“My mother—”
“You want me to tell you about your mother?”
Something in his eyes tells me I don’t want to know, but the thing is, I need to know. No matter how terrible it is, and it is terrible because there’s no other reason he’d have a file on my mother. I need to know.
“That accident that killed her, Kat, it doesn’t appear to have been an accident at all.”
“What?”
“Not what you expected or hoped to hear?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Someone wanted her dead, and the fact that she was on Vasily’s list tells me it was him.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Fuck.”
He lets go of my wrists and walks away, running a hand through his hair.
“What does my mother have to do with Vasily or any of this?”
He turns back to me, looking me over. He comes toward me, and he’s so close I have to crane my neck to look up at him.
“I care about you, Kat. Do you know that?”
“Tell me.”
“I don’t have anything to tell you that won’t upset you. That’s why I haven’t said anything.”
“You can’t decide that for me.”
He steps backward and sits on the sofa, hands on his knees. “This is a goddamn shitshow.”
I move toward him, kneel between his legs, and put my hands on his thighs. I make him look at me.
“You said your mother was killed. Who killed her?” I suspect, but I guess a part of me can’t believe blood would do that to blood. But that’s stupid, isn’t it? I mean, I saw what Lev did to Andrei. What Andrei was willing to do to Lev.
He sits back, one hand rubbing the back of his neck. He won’t look at me.
“Lev?”
He turns to me, and there’s such a deep sadness in his eyes that I feel it inside me. He scrubs his face, shaking his head.
“I don’t know, Kat. It’s just...it’s fucked up. She didn’t deserve what happened to her. She was a good woman. You would have liked her. And she would have liked you.”
I lean up, take his face into my hands, and I kiss him. He doesn’t respond at first, but he doesn’t pull back either.
“I care about you too, you know?” I say.
He looks at me for a long minute, then pulls me to him and kisses me back. I slide my hands to the buckle of his belt and undo it. I unzip his jeans and slide my hand inside to grip his cock, stroking it, feeling it grow rigid in my hand as I watch his pupils dilate and his eyes darken.
His breathing becomes shorter, and I feel my own need. But then he closes his hand over mine to pull me off. “Katya, now isn’t the time.”
“Now is the time. We need this. Both of us.”
He loosens his hold on me.
Leaning forward, I first lick my lips then the glistening head of his cock before taking him into my mouth. I keep my eyes on him, and he watches me as I take him.
He closes his hand over the back of my head and pulls me to him.
“Fuck, Katya.” He draws me closer, fisting my hair as he drags me over him, pushing deeper until I can’t take anymore, then easing back, drawing me far enough back to look at me, then repeating, going deeper.
Abruptly, he pulls me off him and reaches to undo my jeans. Pushing them and my panties roughly off, he draws me onto his lap.
I straddle him, closing my eyes as I take his length inside me. He kisses me, and with his hands on my hips, he moves me over him. One hand cups the back of my head, fingers digging into my scalp as the other closes over my shoulder, gripping hard as he pushes deeper. He kisses me all the while, mouth to my mouth, tongue on my tongue as we make love like this, him bare inside me, him thickening inside me as his thrusts grow more hurried. He lifts me, flipping us over so I’m on the couch and he’s between my legs, buried inside me.
I cry out when I come, and he closes his mouth over mine, swallowing my cry as he moans with his final thrust. When he stills, I feel him come, feel the pulsing throbbing of his cock as he empties inside me, and when he’s finished, when we’re spent, he drops his head to my neck, forehead sweaty with the effort as I cling to him and listen to our matching breaths as they slowly return to normal.
He turns his face to watch me and brushes the hair that’s sticking to my forehead back.
I told him I care about him. He told me the same. But it’s so much more than that. God. So much more.
“We’ll talk, okay? I’ll tell you what I can, but just trust me to do it on my own time.”