I leaned back down to his ear. “If you don’t start talking, I’m going to have to kill you,” I said calmly, giving myself a little chuckle.
I looked at the big strong Russian tied to his chair, helpless, clueless, completely at my mercy. I patted him on his massive shoulder and laughed.
“I guess I’ll send your friend back down here,” I told him. “I might also know a couple of guys who’ll enjoy coming down and getting to play with you a little bit. I might send them down after Julia comes back.”
He tilted his head back to scowl at me, as if to remind me that he couldn’t understand me.
I laughed and patted his shoulder again before walking out of the room. Now that I had someone who could actually talk to him, it wasn’t as fun to mess with him. I realized I was wasting time that Julia could have been using to try to break him down.
Oh well. He still deserved it for thinking he could get one over on us. I glanced at him one last time before closing the door and locking it behind me.
I wondered how a conversation between us would have gone if we had been able to understand each other. It certainly wouldn’t have been friendly. I knew that much for sure.
I shut the door and locked it, turning away to walk upstairs and get Julia. It was her turn to talk to Dimitri and see if she couldn’t get him to come around.
Besides, I had another job to do. I had to figure out how to use this situation with Dimitri to my advantage with Julia. I had to figure out how I was going to seduce her. She wasn’t like any other woman I’d been with before. Julia seemed more sophisticated than my usual taste in women.
On my way upstairs to get her, I decided it was time to sit her down and talk to her about what I needed and why I needed it. I didn’t want to be too open and run her off, but I wanted her to have at least a little understanding of why she was asking what she was asking when she went back in there alone. I figured maybe that would give her a better opportunity to break through his wall.
Plus, letting her in on what we were doing here with Dimitri would help me break down her walls as well. She seemed to appreciate being in the loop, and whenever we talked, I could sense that she wanted more information out of me than just the basic, “say this,” or “say that,” that I was giving her so far.
When I walked into the clubhouse, I spotted her sitting at our table with another glass of wine. My heart skipped a beat. I couldn’t explain what she was doing to me, but when I looked at her, I felt a strange, deep desire for her. I had to figure out what not to tell her before I made it to the table.
Chapter 6
Julia
“I’m ready to talk,” Gage said as he joined me at the table in the clubhouse bar.
“To talk? What about?” I asked him.
“I think it’s only fair that I explain a little bit about what’s going on before you go back down there to talk to Dimitri.” He didn’t grab anything to drink. He’d just walked straight over to the table and sat down.
“Okay, what’s going on?” I asked him, taking another sip of wine.
“How many of those have you had?” he asked, suddenly sounding concerned.
“This is only my second glass,” I assured him. “I had the one with you, and I started this one after you were downstairs a while. Besides, what does it matter?”
“I don’t want you going down there trashed and trying to talk to him. I need you coherent, so if you get something, you can bring it back to me.” He placed a hand over the top of my glass to keep me from drinking any more. With his other hand, he grabbed the stem of the wine glass and slid it away from me.
“Hey, what are you doing?” I cried. I wasn’t really upset, just more shocked that he was so bold and commanding. I was even more shocked at how it made me feel. I wanted to be offended that he was trying to control me, but I wasn’t. I was turned on by his dominance. I’d never known another man with such a take-charge attitude.
“I want to make sure you’re listening to me. I need you to take this seriously, Julia,” he said, his dark eyes penetrating through my nerves and anxiety.
“Okay, I got it,” I told him. I took a deep breath, realizing that in spite of my reservations, I had allowed myself to get too comfortable being here. The pace seemed so much more relaxed here than what I was used to. It was easy to let it steal my sense of urgency.
“Alright, you already know I need to know where this Ivan person is. I need to know what his next move is and who all is involved,” he explained, diving headfirst into the world surrounding his relationship to Dimitri and dragging me with him.