“I’ll do it,” I said quietly. “I’ll go with him.”
I’d seen luxury yachts in movies. That didn’t prepare me for this.
The thing was the size of a house, all smooth white lines and smoked glass. The sort of yacht a movie star charters when they want to party away from prying eyes. I’d put on some of the new clothes from the store: a short gray jersey dress with a scoop neck teamed with thick black stockings so that my legs didn’t get frostbitten; a pair of shining, four-inch pumps with scarlet soles that were very hard to walk in and a long black woolen coat that managed to be fashionable and warm. But, even in the expensive outfit, I felt out of place. This was millionaire—maybe billionaire—territory.#p#分页标题#e#
It had taken us all afternoon to get there. First a drive to the airport, then a first-class flight to St. Petersburg, where the yacht was moored. Luka had already disappeared inside, talking to the captain about getting underway.
I climbed carefully up the gangway and then stopped, eying the polished teak decking. I clung to the rail and balanced there unsteadily, trying to take my heels off without falling over.
“What are you doing?” asked Yuri from behind me. The bodyguard was looking his usual gruff self—scar, somber suit and the bulge under his jacket that I was sure was a handgun. The only thing that spoiled the effect was the six shopping bags he was carrying.
“Taking off my shoes. Aren’t you meant to do that? So you don’t scratch the deck?” I was sure I’d heard that somewhere.
Yuri pushed me forward onto the yacht. “Who gives a fuck about the deck?” he muttered.
It was a wake-up call. The next one was the crew. I was expecting smiling guys with tans and polo shirts. Instead, the deck was patrolled by men with crew cuts and muscles, all dressed in black combat fatigues. And of course the sundeck was covered in an inch of snow.
This was not a holiday. This was a luxury yacht pressed into service as transport and carrying something that had to be very well protected. I wasn’t there for some romantic getaway. I was—I tensed—I was Luka’s entertainment, a distraction from something very serious indeed.
Inside the yacht, it was more like what I’d expected. The freezing weather couldn’t spoil the luxury of the stateroom Yuri showed me to—bigger than most hotel rooms and with a huge, circular bed and—
And with a mirror on the ceiling. In fact, the decor of the whole yacht was pretty bling.
“It belonged to a German,” said Luka, walking in. “A businessman who liked to party.” He slid his arms around my waist from behind.
“Really?” I asked. “What was his business?” I had to remember to play dumb.
“Chemicals,” said Luka.
I had a pretty good idea what sort of chemicals. “And what happened to him?”
Luka exchanged a look with Yuri. “He tried to expand into Russia. And found that he’d overreached.”
He hadn’t even chartered this thing. He’d taken it as a trophy after—I shuddered as I thought of what must have happened to the German drug dealer.
Luka wrapped his arms around me a little tighter. “You’re cold,” he said, his face so close to my neck that I could feel each word. “Let me warm you up.”
“I’ll get the rest of the bags,” muttered Yuri, and left, leaving the door open.
Luka’s hand stroked down over my stomach, the heat of his palm soaking through the fabric of my coat. He started working at the buttons, popping them one by one. At the same time, he started to lay kisses on the nape of my neck, his stubble rasping gently against me.
At the first touch of his lips, I felt the room spin. I tried to cling onto the memory of what I’d just felt, the cold fear and the lurch of my stomach as he’d basically told me that he’d killed a guy. But however much I focused on the wrongness of it, I could feel myself getting hotter with each kiss. And it wasn’t that his evil was overridden or that I ignored it. The scary thing was that it sort of twisted together with the pleasure, enhancing it. There was a sort of power coming off of him, an aura. Everywhere we went, people got the hell out of his way and I understood why. It wasn’t just his money or his power or his armed bodyguards. He could be unarmed and alone in an alley and people would still run from him. It was just something he had, maybe something he was born with. And something about it made me—#p#分页标题#e#
He finished with my coat’s buttons and whipped it back off my shoulders. It tangled on my arms, trapping them. He didn’t seem to be in any hurry to release them.