Stripped (2 page)

He dropped his hands to her waist and leaned back to look at her. His soft brown eyes sparkled with genuine affection. If Dmitri Gavrikov, merciless leader of the
Solntsevskaya Bratva
, had ever cared for anything, or anyone, it most assuredly was her.

He pushed her hair away from her face. “Did you miss me?”

“Yes.” She wriggled closer. “It’s miserable when you go away.”

“It was necessary.” He brushed his mouth against the top of her head as he caught her by the hand.

It always was. Someone needed to learn a lesson. A buyer demanded his time. A seller offered the right price on black-market arms. Dmitri always had a necessary reason for leaving. And in his wake, would always be a body. No one would ever find it, but someone forfeited their life when Dmitri’s meetings required more than an hour or two to complete.

This time he’d been gone almost a week. Tomorrow, she’d get a full report from her partner, Sergei. Maybe he’d had luck. Maybe he’d finally made the connection that would allow them to shut this whole ring down. The drugs, the arms…

Natalya glanced over her shoulder as Dmitri pulled the door shut on Tatiana’s unconscious form.

The human trafficking.

“I bring news,
czarina
.”

“Oh?” Natalya followed at his side while he led her down the hall
to their bedroom. Inside, she set the chocolates on a marble-topped table.

“We’re going to marry in America. Las Vegas.” He released her hand and moved to the brass-embellished liquor cabinet. Glass tinkled as he pulled down two snifters along with his favorite Armagnac. Though his hands poured steadily, fury gave his voice a sharp edge. “The idiots who work for me can’t seem to keep from killing our precious American cargo. I need you to handle the girls—you do such a wonderful job here. The trail of bodies is causing Yakov problems.”

Natalya’s heart skipped a beat.
Yakov.
One of the contacts in America she couldn’t identify. His codename symbolized his duty—the one who took Dmitri’s place. He worked with Iskatel´, codename for
the finder
. Like she did with the girls in Moscow, Yakov and Iskatel´ hand-selected the best strippers Vegas had to offer and shipped them overseas to satisfy the appetites of powerful men hungry for a bit of classy, American pussy—or what they could delude themselves into believing was classy. Now Dmitri intended to send her right into Yakov’s nest? She stifled a smile.

“Must I leave?” Dipping her chin, she looked up through her eyelashes. “You’ve just returned.”

Dmitri turned with her glass extended in offering. His gaze roved appreciatively over her body. Desire sparked in his eyes. Dark and intense, his was a look meant to leave her wet and wanting. On any other woman it might have worked.

Boldly holding his gaze, Natalya accepted the oaken-flavored drink. “I hate the idea of another night alone.”

“Ah,
czarina
, I do not deserve you.” His hand settled on her hip, his thumb stroking the flesh beneath her sweater’s short hem. He lowered his voice to an intimate whisper. “Forgive me.” A sultry smile crossed his mouth. “Tonight I’ll make up for the time away. In two weeks, I’ll give you all I possess when I give you my name.” He tugged at her waist, urging her hips into his. Firm, hard arousal pressed against her abdomen. “You
will
forgive me, won’t you?”

Natalya teased with a slow roll of her hips. “It might take some convincing.”

Chuckling, Dmitri released her. He nodded at her dresser. “Wear the green for me tonight?”

She hated the green. Maybe because he liked it too much. Maybe because it made her eyes stand out unnaturally and that drove Dmitri to abandon. Whatever the case, she hated the green. But for him, for her
duty
to her country and the hope that somehow, by sacrificing every last damn moral she possessed, those women would find freedom, she’d not refuse.

Leaning forward, she dusted her lips over his. “Tell me more while I undress.” Before his hand could catch and hold her close, she twisted out of his reach and went to the small table that held her jewelry box. She plucked off one gold hoop earring. “I’m to do the same things I do here? Befriend them and lead them to… ?”
Who, Dmitri?

“To Yakov, yes.” The bed creaked as he reclined against the pillows.

Through the mirror, she watched as he stretched out his muscular legs and braced his arms behind his head. Damn. Yakov again. What the hell was the man’s name?

“Iskatel´ has already chosen the next girl.”

“Oh?” Natalya took off the matching earring and dropped both into the case. Reaching behind her, she pulled her pistol from the waist of her fitted skirt and laid it on the tabletop.

“Yes. You’ll be working at Fantasia, next door to the St. Petersburg casino. My contacts there are creating a position for you as we speak. Your first project is Katerina Slater.”

Natalya’s hand froze over the Sig’s matte black barrel. Her throat inched closed. She’d misheard him. Kate wasn’t stripping. She had a little boy to raise. She wouldn’t expose him to that kind of lifestyle.

Aware Dmitri watched through the mirror, Natalya forced a casual smile. “I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you, love.”

“Katerina Slater. I hear she’s commanding Fantasia’s stage.” His low chuckle rasped through the room. “You should bond easily. She’s
an Ivanov, of all ironies. Born in an Old Believer Russian village in Alaska. Her parents immigrated from St. Petersburg. You can tell her about Mother Russia.”

Kate! By God, she hadn’t heard him wrong.

It took every bit of Natalya’s willpower to pull her hand away from the Sig and reach behind her neck to unfasten her pearl necklace. As she laid it in the jewelry box, she willed her hands not to shake. Though they cooperated, her stomach rebelled with a vicious upside-down-sideways twist.

There were only so many wrongs she could commit in the name of US Intelligence. Turning her fraternal twin into a rich bastard’s heroin-addicted whore wasn’t one of them. She’d put a bullet between Dmitri’s eyes and willfully blow her cover before she’d risk a single hair on Kate’s head.

With a sugary-sweet smile, Natalia pulled her sweater over her head and caught Dmitri’s smoldering gaze. “When do I leave, darling?”

A

s Natalya approached the bed, the sway of her full pert breasts obliterated all thoughts of whether she wore green or blue or even purple. Need launched through Dmitri. All he could think about was how good she would feel around him. How nothing in this world compared to how she felt in his arms. He rose to his knees, interrupting her path to her dresser for the negligee he’d requested. One hand latched on to her narrow wrist. One tug brought her to her knees on the bed.

“Tomorrow. You leave tomorrow.” He caught her hair in his hand, tugged her mouth to his, and drank from the softness of her full lips. The slide of her tongue against his was enough to strip a man to the bone. A shudder rolled through his body, the week he’d spent away from her a torture unto itself.

The sudden violent need to possess her completely had him dragging her closer. With his free hand he cupped her bottom, urged her
hips hard against his erection, and let out a hoarse groan. What he would give to indulge in all the things he
really
wanted to do to her—his belt would serve nicely tonight. Latch it around her wrists, fasten those delightful hands to the headboard, and take her from behind—ride her hard into oblivion. Thrust inside her glorious ass where she would be even tighter.
Ah, fucking heaven.

But Natalya didn’t know the meaning of submit, and Dmitri had witnessed her expertise with her gun one too many times to push. Though he trusted her implicitly, a tiny, almost insignificant part of his soul feared what might happen if his beautiful fiancée lost control.

Instead of following through with his fantasies, he tore his mouth from hers to stare into her eyes. “Tonight, though, I will make sure you cannot help but miss me.”

Indeed, he would take her so many times that when she boarded the plane tomorrow, she could still smell him on her skin.

Her shiver unraveled him. Unable to form any conscious thought beyond how desperately he needed the feel of her, how he yearned for this closeness they alone shared, he withdrew and kicked free of his trousers. Her soft laughter danced over his skin, pleasantly scraping raw nerve endings as she aided in the removal of his shirt.

He gave in to a smile. How he had missed fucking her. Missed the love that radiated through the pressure of her hands. “Tell me what you want,
czarina
.”

“You,” she murmured.

For this he could deal with the idiots who failed him. For this he would tolerate the fact her duties required her to flirt a line of seduction to make the contacts she would require in America.

This singular moment, where the two of them knew no greater paradise than the pleasure of their bodies, was more priceless to Dmitri than any wealth, any power. Struck by momentary tenderness, he lifted up to brush his lips against hers.
“Moya lyubov´,”
he whispered.

Yes, love her—the only woman he had ever loved. For that matter, the only
thing
. What he would do without her, he didn’t know. She
made the duties he must carry out possible, and the next few days apart, after so many already past, would be impossible. Yet it was necessary. She alone could teach Iskatel´ how to smoothly make the women subservient. But if Iskatel´ didn’t cooperate with Natalya, or Iskatel´’s ineptitude put her in harm’s way, Iskatel´ would join the murdered women in the grave.

For Natalya, Dmitri would kill even his own
Bratva
family.

He sealed his lips to hers and reclined into the pillows, taking her with him.

Two

LAS VEGAS, NEVADA

T

hree brand-new, state-of-the-art, boxed cell phones toppled onto the bar, along with three Bluetooth earpieces and a trio of identical black protective cases. Lieutenant Brandon Moretti pushed the jumbled stack across the polished oak and grinned at his gathered team. “I don’t want to hear anymore bitching about outdated technology.”

Two pairs of hands shot forward to snatch up the high-tech toys. Cardboard ripped open, instructions fluttered to the floor, and the dim light brightened as LCD touch screens lit up.

Brandon avoided looking at the untouched packages. A pair of feminine hands should be digging in as well. The fact they weren’t stirred twelve years of undercover instincts and made his gut shift with unease.

“Shit, Moretti, what the hell am I going to do with this?” Aaron Mayer dangled the earpiece between his thumb and forefinger.

Brandon gave him a one-shoulder shrug. “You wanted the damned things, you figure it out.” He’d been lucky enough to figure out how to turn his on. A plain-Jane flip phone suited his needs perfectly. But the team had a point—they couldn’t integrate with their new upscale clientele without upgrading. Fantasia was a far cry from Sadie’s, where they’d been for the last year.

And their new assignment, stopping a serial killer, was a far cry from busting drug rings. The phones weren’t all that needed upgrading—the whole team had adjustments to make.

He glanced back at the untouched boxes. Where the hell was
Rachel? He’d even stopped by her house, only to find it as cluttered as it had been two nights before when they’d all celebrated his acceptance as Fantasia’s manager with too much beer and bad pizza.

Looking up, Brandon caught Rory Neal’s unblinking stare. Behind a day’s worth of dark stubble, a muscle in Rory’s jaw ticked. Gray eyes hardened, then dropped to the untouched phone and accessories. Scarred knuckles drummed on the bar’s mirror-smooth top.

Brandon expelled a harsh breath. They all worried. No one would mention it, least of all Rory, but the question loomed in all their minds:
What had happened to her?
Ten years of exemplary service. Eight spent with the team. And out of the blue she’d failed to show last night, their first night on the job in their new club. With a serial killer on the loose, targeting women who matched Rachel’s blonde hair and china-fair skin, the warnings screamed like sirens.

“Well.” Brandon pushed away from the bar.
Focus them on work.
Keep their minds from drifting to the possibilities.
“Let’s go over this again. Mayer, what’s the pattern?”

Aaron hands stilled over his cell phone’s display. “Every two weeks. Cyclical through the clubs. Unless he changes up, Fantasia’s next, and he’ll hit on the twenty-fourth. Always a Friday. Always a blonde. Always the best dancer of the bunch.”

“Christ,” Rory muttered.

Brandon’s gaze slanted to where the lanky detective sat. Worried fingers shoved through cropped hair, then grazed down his forgotten whiskers.

He needed to say something. That’s what friends did—looked to the positive even when all factors pointed to disaster. Brandon pulled in a deep breath. Beyond friendship, he was their lieutenant, and he had to keep his team focused. “Rachel didn’t dance. She doesn’t match the profile.”

Which made her unexplained disappearance more odd. If Brandon’s suspicions were correct, her boyfriend was sitting at the bar in front of him right now. Her family lived in Vegas—if there’d been
an emergency she’d have let her team know. Rachel wouldn’t just bail on a murderer
she’d
linked to the drug ring they’d been investigating for two years.

Rory answered with a jerk of his head that could almost be considered a nod.

Keep ’em focused.

Brandon cleared his throat. “Rory, I want you behind the bar. You’ve got four guys who’ve been slinging drinks here for over a year. Use them. Get a feel for the regulars.” He shifted his attention to Mayer. “You’ve got security. No one goes in or out of the VIP rooms without you knowing.” He rounded the bar to retreat into the quiet of his office. At the corner, the frown he’d been fighting all morning wrinkled his brow. He turned it on Mayer. “Stick to Kate Slater like her fucking shadow. She’s got a kid. I’m not letting that bastard touch her.”