The heat in my cheeks intensifies when he finally drops his gaze, looking at the triangle between my legs as if it’s his right. It’s nothing he hasn’t seen before, but this is different. I’m bound and naked, exposed with my hands tied and my jeans around my knees. Whereas he’s cool, collected, and fully clothed. As he stares at me, a heavy assault of vulnerability hits me in the gut. It’s humiliating, and judging by his relentless smile, humiliation is what he’s aiming for.
Angry punishment. Cold-hearted revenge.
Despite it all, the underlying current of danger sends a spark of exhilaration to my belly. I can help it as little as I can help my attraction to this dangerous man. My body craves his touch. Just one more time to remember how good it was. A taste to remind me how it feels to be alive. He has an effect on me like no other. Before him, I thought I’d never be able to tolerate a man’s touch again without the accompanying repulsion.
But there it is. An untimely, yet undeniable reaction. My core heats. My sex swells. The bundle of nerves between my folds tingles. It takes all the self-control I possess not to tilt my hips toward the cradle of his thighs. I’m lucid enough to admit it’s more than physical, that there’s a psychological element to my desire to feel his arms around me. I’m not stupid. I know I’m not walking away from here alive, though I do intend to try. Either way, I suddenly crave the soothing security I found in his embrace in Budapest. I don’t care that it will be a lie. I just want to feel it one more time, and I refuse to judge myself for that.
It’s only natural. Nobody wants to die alone.
I focus on where his hands are resting lightly on my naked hips, those incredibly male hands with long, masculine fingers and perfectly manicured nails. Hands that can inflict pain in a myriad of ways. I pull in a ragged breath, on the verge of begging him to make the end sweet and quick when he steps away and turns his back on me.
“Get a move on.” His voice is even, emotionless. “You have ten seconds.”
I crouch down and quickly do my business. Having lived in close quarters with men in all kinds of tactical situations, I don’t suffer from stage fright.
I count in my head. He gives me exactly ten seconds before he turns. I’m up already. He makes quick work of dragging my underwear and jeans over my hips and fastening the zipper and button. He’s rushed all of a sudden.
Grabbing my arm, he manhandles me back to the shed and forces me into a chair that stands in the middle of the room—for interrogation purposes, no doubt. My insides go cold at the implication of what’s in store for me. Yan lifts my bound arms over the chair back so I’m not crushing them with the weight of my body, a strange reprieve when an interrogation is a foregone conclusion and torture a most likely possibility. Then he gets more rope, spreads my legs, and ties my ankles to the feet of the chair.
And that’s how he leaves me, tied up in the dark.
* * *
I’ve been trained to endure discomfort and pain. I slip into a space in my mind where the sensory impressions of hunger, thirst, and aching limbs are nothing but signals to my brain. It’s called a mental override. If not for this technique, I’d go crazy.
It doesn’t take long before the door opens once more, and a tall, powerfully built man enters. With the sunlight at his back, he’s mostly a silhouette. I don’t need to be a clairvoyant to know this man’s aura drips with the same kind of danger as Yan’s.
Two men step in behind him. The twins. Their faces are in the shadows, but I’d recognize Ilya’s bulky shape and Yan’s distinct, panther-like stride anywhere.
A light flicks on, a naked bulb casting a circle of light around me.
“We’ve just gotten the files on the men whose names she gave us,” Ilya says in Russian, holding out his phone. “Our doppelgängers have quite a resume. All four are former Delta Force, same unit.”
Their doppelgängers? What the hell?
Ilya glances at me. “They and a few of their buddies got court-martialed fifteen years ago for gang-raping a sixteen-year-old girl in Pakistan.”
What? Every hair on my body bristles at the information. I was right to have had a bad feeling about them. Does Gergo know? No, impossible. Considering my history, he wouldn’t have worked with them. I’m glad I gave up their names. I hope the Russians catch them. I hope they make them suffer.
“Six of them got arrested,” Ilya continues, “but the others broke them out and they all went on the lam. Since then, they’ve been doing random jobs here and there, everything from minor assassinations to planting bombs for terrorist organizations.”
The man takes the phone as Ilya speaks, his thumb sliding over the screen, presumably checking photos of the men in question, men I recommended to Henderson. A rivulet of sweat runs down my back. Then the newcomer turns, holding the phone at such an angle that I can clearly see the faces as he flicks back and forth, and I go stone cold.
Holy mother of all clusterfucks.
On the phone are the familiar faces of the Delta Force men, but underneath, matched to each one, are grainy images that must’ve come from a security camera, photos that show different men entirely. One of them looks like the man holding the phone in front of me, while another is a tough-looking guy with a dark beard. But it’s the last two that
