Pocketing her phone, I offer her a hand. “I’ll take you on a tour of the apartment.” Or rather, the small part she hasn’t seen yet. She’s going to live here now, after all.
I show her the room and en-suite bathroom Ilya and Anton are sharing. The space isn’t big, but it’s ample by Prague’s standards.
“I’m sure you have enough money to afford a mansion,” she says when the quick tour is over.
“I’m sure you do, too.”
She avoids my eyes. “What’s the point? I’m not home—wasn’t home—very often.”
“Neither am I.”
She’s hiding something. My well-developed sixth sense is never wrong.
On the way downstairs, I text our hackers and instruct them to get information on Mina Belan, a.k.a. Mink.
We get into a car Anton rented for the duration of our stay in Prague and drive to a boutique that stocks the kind of clothing Mina fancies, at least from what I’ve seen at the bar. Sure enough, she goes straight for the ripped jeans and badass T-shirts. While she’s trying on a pair of combat boots, I flip through a rack of dresses. I take out a crocheted one. It’s nude-pink. Cute.
I throw it in her lap. “Go try that on.”
She stills in the middle of pulling off one of the boots, and looks at the heap of fabric in her lap before gaping at me. “Are you kidding?”
I raise a brow. Do I ever? Arms crossed, I wait.
Sparks detonate in her eyes. My little assassin doesn’t like to be told what to do, or what to wear, for that matter. I grin at her, which only makes the anger in her pretty eyes burn hotter.
She grabs the dress and checks the label. “It’ll fit.”
“If you say so.”
The shop assistant comes over. “Can I help you with anything?”
I motion at the dress in Mina’s hand. “We need shoes to go with that.”
“Of course,” the lady says. “Size?”
“Thirty-six,” Mina answers, her spitfire eyes still trained on me.
“What about a bag to round off the outfit?” the woman asks.
“Sure,” I say.
When the woman walks away, Mina says bitingly, “That’s not Petrova’s style.”
Leaning over her, I place my hands on either side of her body, caging her in on the pouf. I bring my lips to her ear, over the delicate shell with the multiple piercings that are simultaneously rebellious and hot, strangely feminine. “This isn’t about a disguise.” I rub my lips over her skin. “Far from it.”
She leans so far back to escape my touch her abdominal muscles must be straining. “No? What is it about?”
I give her a slow smile. “Me.”
A woman clears her throat. I straighten. The shop assistant stands there with a pair of nude-pink heels and a matching bag.
“How about these shoes, ma’am? Would you like to try them on?”
“No,” Mina says like a defiant child.
“It’s her size,” I remark dryly, taking the items from the woman to go pay.
Armed with five shopping bags, we get into the rental and drive to the address Mina gives me. Simon operates from an antique store in the old town. He seems legit. I had him checked out.
When we arrive, he puts a closed sign on the door and guides us to the back of the shop. Unlocking another door, he takes us into a vault room. I keep a hand on the gun in the back of my waistband under my jacket. The guy is eighty years old, but you never know. Mina hates me enough to set a trap. Caged beings never stop fighting for freedom. I can never let my guard down around her.
The old man shows me to a sofa. While he and Mina go through an arsenal of disguises, pulling items off shelves, I check my email for a message from our hackers, and keep one eye on Mina and Simon as I scan through the information.
Mina was born in the Czech Republic. Shortly after, her parents moved to Budapest, Hungary, where her grandmother is originally from. The grandmother, Hanna, raised her after her parents’ murder. Even as a child, Mina showed exceptional endurance, excellent sports skills, and an aptitude for languages, along with above-average intelligence. Psychological reports state a lack of empathy. The speculated reason is the trauma from the murders. Treatment was interrupted after a few years of unsuccessful results. The diagnosis is incomplete. The Hungarian Special Forces recruited her in her final year of school.
I lower the phone to stare at her, this beautiful, strange, gifted girl with the complex history. Of course the Special Forces snapped her up. She makes the perfect soldier. And paired with that body and face, an even better spy. Who wouldn’t fall for her in a wink? I realized how dangerous she was, but I haven’t appreciated the full force of it until now. Yet there’s something vulnerable about her too, something that awakens my protective side. I can’t put my finger on it. I only know that it makes me want to lock her up in a glass cage in a very high tower, out of reach of everyone but me.
My stomach tightens when I think about how she may have used her skills in the line of duty. Not the fighting kind of skills, but the pretty little flower between her legs, the perfectly rounded breasts.
But no. Since we captured her, she hasn’t used her body to manipulate me. When we fuck, it’s raw. Pure. That kind of honesty can’t be faked.
Irrational jealousy somewhat abated, I return my attention to the report. She stayed with the Special Forces for six years and took up a job as a waitress when she resigned at the age of twenty-four. For the past five years, she’s been working on and off at several bars in Budapest. The part-time bar gigs obviously offered flexibility, as well as a means of staying legal. During that
