Body Checked (Center Ice Book 1) (12 page)

I wait for him to elaborate, but he doesn’t. I’m done pushing. I’m tired, so tired of letting this case, this situation, this
whatever
it is play tug-of-war with my heart. I take a deep breath and muster up the strength to make one more plea. “What can you do, then? To stop him?” I brace myself—now or never. “Maybe if you reached out to the authorities, or—” 

“
No.
” Sergei grips my wrist, then lets go as soon as he realizes how hard he’s grabbed me. He runs his fingers through his hair, letting the dark locks scatter across his forehead. “I’m sorry. I just—You don’t understand. He’s
killed
people, Jael. Good cops, crooked cops. Entire families. One time he killed a man who tried to leave his service—and every single person he’d ever been close to—in the time it took the guy to walk into a police station and ask for witness protection. The guy came home to collect his family and they were already dead in their beds. The assassin waiting for him in his recliner.” 

“Well, that’s on the police,” I say hotly. “That doesn’t mean you couldn’t—” 

“I can’t. Not if I want to keep you safe.” 

His gaze is so dark, so cold. It aches inside my chest to see him looking this way. 

“I’ll do whatever it takes to keep you safe. But you have to trust me when I say you can’t go to the authorities.” Sergei cups my cheeks, softly turning my expression toward his. “Please, Jael, promise me.” 

My stomach feels heavy as lead. “I promise.” 

But my mind rings over and over with the lie. 

Sergei carries me to bed and nestles against me, snug as spoons. Golden light from the street lamps spill across the ceiling of his bedroom. Every now and then, tree branches blot out the light as the wind rustles them, and I stare at the shadows as they stretch toward us, ominous. I’m too exhausted to do anything productive—like studying for my translation midterm—but too stressed to fall asleep. 

Behind me, Sergei’s having a similar problem, first slinging one arm around me, then the other, then rolling around to his other side. I lie still, and eventually he slips out of bed and heads for the basement to work out. When he returns, I hear the shower turn on, and bite my lower lip, imagining the suds gliding through the crevices of his muscles. Okay, so maybe I’m not
that
tired. 

He saunters back into the bedroom, silhouette gilded in the gold light, and towels his hair dry. “Can’t sleep either?” he asks me with a sly grin. 

I shake my head, curls spilling around my face. 

Sergei tosses the towel aside and crawls up toward me from the foot of the bed on his hands and knees. “I think I know just the thing to help you.” 

I make a half-hearted attempt to swat at him. “Come on, it’s too late for that—Oh.” 

I’m wearing one of his team t-shirts, so I’m basically swimming in it, and he takes full advantage of that fact to stick his head underneath the fabric and kiss his way up my stomach. His mouth leaves a burning trail up my abdomen. I arch my back, gasping in anticipation, and he doesn’t disappoint. He slides his mouth around one nipple and teases it between his teeth. 

“You’re rotten.” I rake my fingers through his still-damp hair, massaging his scalp while his tongue draws a lazy spiral on my breast. 

Sergei pauses; one deep blue eye peers up at me from the gaping neck of the t-shirt. “Not bad,” he drawls in English. “Accent just makes me sound that way.” 

Maybe it’s the Slavic Studies perv in me, but it’s all I can do not to shove his face between my legs right then and there. I settle for dragging my nails down his scalp and neck and sinking them into the taut cords of his shoulder blades instead. He laughs and kisses his way back down my stomach, igniting a fresh crackle of lust in me. 

“Looks like you’re feeling better.” Sergei grips the waistband of my panties in his teeth and slowly, painstakingly tugs them down. 

“Starting to.” I raise my hips to help him peel the panties away. 

Sergei prods my thighs apart and slips his tongue right between my lips. He’s so warm and wet against my bare skin that I cry out. He laps right up to my clit and circles it while he presses two fingers deep inside me. I rock my hips against him, savoring the phosphorus white burn of his tongue grinding against me. Squeezing myself around his fingers. Digging my nails in his hair once more. 

The cool blue look he gives me from between my legs is pure torture, and I’m about to break. “Don’t stop.” I clench my fists in his hair and arch my back. “Don’t stop. Almost—” 

A convoluted twist of English, Brazilian, and Russian pours out of me as my orgasm splits me right through. I’m gasping for air, sucking at nothingness, throbbing with distilled bliss. 

“One of my favorite sounds,” Sergei murmurs, carefully easing his fingers out of my still-convulsing folds. He sticks his fingers in his mouth and sucks them clean. “Mm. And one of my favorite tastes.” 

I’m still panting, but I flail and try to tug at him to pull him on top of me. “Come here. It’s your turn.” 

“Shh. Not tonight. Just try to get your rest.” He kisses my stomach again, just below my navel, then flops onto the mattress beside me. 

Finally I can feel my eyelids starting to sag; I nestle in beside him. 

“I’ll be right here,” Sergei whispers as he strokes my arm. “Watching over you. Keeping you safe.” 

As I start drift away, I almost believe him. 

Frederica arranges for me to meet with her and Chief Ha in one of the FBI’s unmarked offices near Capitol Hill. It looks like a dentist’s office, but after I sign in with the front desk receptionist, I notice she’s packing heat. Great. Is everyone in this stupid town armed but me? 

“Back this way.” Frederica appears in the lobby to usher me down a bland corridor. “You weren’t followed, were you?” 

“Not as far as I could tell, though I’m not so sure these days how good of a judge I am of that sort of thing—” 

“Just do the best you can,” she says.  

Sounds like the perfect epitaph for me, after a bunch of Russian goons put me six feet under.
She did the best she could.
 

“The chief is very pleased with the information you elicited from Mister Drakonov the other night,” Frederica continues, her sensible loafers clopping against the linoleum flooring. “And not a moment too soon. There are a great deal of people at the Bureau who are unhappy with the way this case is playing out.” 

Join the club,
I think. 

“They’re advocating for a more aggressive approach,” Frederica says. 

“What the hell could be more aggressive than what we’re already doing?” I cry. “You’ve got me pushing him way past what he’s comfortable with, and sooner or later, it’s going to make him suspicious.” 

“Now, Miss Pereira, I think you might be surprised how oblivious the average civilian is—” 

“Sure, American, maybe. But Russians are a very different matter. I don’t know how many Russians you’ve met—I’m guessing not many—but they’re not exactly known for their trusting, open nature.” 

Frederica presses her lips into a smile so thin it could give you a papercut. “I think it’s best if I let Chief Ha explain.” 

Explain what?
I think. The dread grows heavier as we wind our way down the hall. 

Chief Ha is waiting for us in a cramped, windowless office, his long legs squashed up around him as he hunches over a too-low keyboard. Well, at least I’m not the only person deeply uncomfortable here. He stretches and holds out his hand for a firm, entirely cold and impersonal shake. “Jael. So good of you to join us.” 

Please. As if I really have a choice. Again Todd’s offer dances at the back of my mind—a chance to make use of my skills outside of the FBI. But it’s too late for me. I’m in too deep. 

I plop down on the uncomfortable wooden chairs, vaguely cube-shaped, that look like they were plucked from a yard sale during the burst of the
first
dot-com bubble. “Chief Ha—” 

“Call me Roger.” He narrows his eyes. 

“Roger.” Ugh. “I want to assure you that I’m doing the best I can, and if you think I’m being too cautious, it’s only because . . .” 

“Because you don’t want to push Sergei Drakonov away from you. I understand.” Roger forces a brief flicker of a smile to his face. Like he can’t possibly ever understand such foolish human emotions. 

“I was going to say, because I understand how he works, how he thinks, and that if I try too hard, it’s only going to backfire. For
all
of us.” I toss a pointed glance toward Frederica. 

“I promise, Jael, I haven’t been locked in my corner office so long that I’ve forgotten how it works out in the field.” Roger’s expression softens; he stares somewhere over my head. “I realize the dangers inherent in being an informant, or an undercover officer. In fact, I think you’re right—that it’s high time we take some of the heat off of you.” 

I slump forward, like a twenty-pound weight sitting on my chest has finally been lifted. “Thank you.” My eyes start to water, I’m so relieved. “Thank you so much, Roger. I’m not sure how much more I can—” 

But Roger holds up one hand. “Because we’re going to start sending in our teams.” 

A lump forms in my throat. “Excuse me?” 

Roger grins. This time, he looks like he means it. “The information you elicited from Mister Drakonov regarding his brother is giving us just the pretext we need. We’re going to arrange for a digital tap of his cellular phone, and based on what we hear there, we expect that we’ll obtain ample evidence to get a warrant for the Eagles team plane. It seems like the most likely avenue for these ‘shipments’ the Drakonovs have been talking about, don’t you think?” 

Tapping his phone, searching the team plane . . . I prop my chin in my hands to keep my head from spinning. This is not at all how I wanted this to go. “No. I can get you hard evidence. You don’t need to—it isn’t right to . . .” 

“Invade his privacy? Oh, Jael, you realize that what you’ve done is exactly that, don’t you? Recording his most intimate moments.” Roger chuckles to himself. “I think the poor boy might actually be in love with you.” 

I narrow my eyes at him, wishing I could burn a hole straight through his smug face. 

“Please. I need more time. Let me get him to talk, slowly, and I can convince him. I can—change his mind about going to the authorities, maybe.” And then, piece by piece, I can let him know what I’ve been doing all along. Who I’ve been working for. If I break it gently, over time, it won’t be so bad. “Prove to him that they really can help if he just gives them all the information they need.” 

“Drakonov’s Bratva has been mobilizing in force,” Roger says. “They’re moving more drugs than ever before. Their products are showing up in all new markets, almost certainly thanks to Sergei’s help. And Vladimir has been purging the ranks. Two homicides in Arlington in the past week, both of them with ties to the Russian expat community here in DC.” He folds his hands before him. “Time isn’t on our side.” 

No. Sergei would never help him. Not without a fight. 

Unless—unless they threatened him. The bloody lip they gave him could have been a warning shot. A warning that if he didn’t comply, the next thing they broke would be a lot more valuable to his skating career. 

And then they started threatening me, too. 

“Keep doing what you’re doing,” Roger tells me. “Just think of it as added support. Now, if we get our taps in place, if we get our warrants, some of the pressure is off of you, but anything you can do to coerce Sergei to open up will only help us that much more.” 

He says it like I have a choice. But there’s no choice at all. I’m caught between the career I always thought I’d wanted and the goons hunting for the man I never thought I’d want. And if I make one wrong move, I could lose it all.