Total pages in book: 115
Estimated words: 107079 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 535(@200wpm)___ 428(@250wpm)___ 357(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 107079 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 535(@200wpm)___ 428(@250wpm)___ 357(@300wpm)
The words didn’t sound right, coming out of my mouth. Me? Put something off until tomorrow?
But for the first time, there was something more important than solving the mystery. I had someone to take care of.
I took Gennadiy’s hand and stepped back from the table. He stared at me, then looked at his family, then back to me. His eyes flared with frustration. “You sleep. I need to work.”
He turned away from me, and my stomach lurched. Am I doing the wrong thing? I didn’t want to embarrass him in front of his Pakhan. But then I saw Bronwyn giving me a big, approving nod, and I tugged his hand. “No. Gennadiy Aristov, you need to sleep.”
He turned to me again, and this time his eyes went wide in shock, and just a bit of arrogant horror. How dare she? He glared, just like he had so many times when we were enemies...and I glared right back at him.
He softened...and melted. Just like I’d seen Radimir do with Bronwyn. He rose from the table and allowed me to tow him out of the room.
“What are you…where are we going?” he muttered in the hallway, cranky and confused and resigned, all at the same time.
“To the kitchen,” I told him, and marched in there. I opened the pantry and rooted around for the bottle I’d seen in there, keeping hold of him with my other hand to make sure he didn’t escape. “Okay! Now upstairs!”
He sighed, staring down at me. I was comically small, next to him, and I knew I couldn’t drag him if he decided to stay put. But I lifted my chin, defiant...and he nodded and fell into step beside me.
I led him up to the top floor, to his bedroom. I turned on just a single light by the bed, so the room was mostly shadow. Without words, I pushed his suit jacket off his shoulders and began unbuttoning his shirt. His breathing became husky. When he was topless, I knelt in front of him and helped him slip off his shoes and socks, then unbuckled his belt. I heard him inhale tightly, and I saw his cock twitch through his pants. I shoved them down, along with his boxers, and now he growled.
I looked up at him. “Don’t get excited,” I said dryly. “That isn’t what I’ve got in mind.”
He frowned down at me, his cock half hard and rising. But I stood and pushed at him, guiding him into his bathroom and then into the walk-in shower. I turned on the spray and pushed him in. Then I stripped off my own clothes and followed him. When he realized I was naked, too, he tried to grab me, but I slipped out of his hands and started washing him, instead, slicking my hands over his shoulders, his back, his chest, working my way down his body. His cock rose more every time my body brushed against his, but eventually I got him to stand still and be tended to. When I turned off the water, he looked...maybe five percent more relaxed than he had been. Well, it’s a start.
“Why are you doing this?” he asked me as I toweled him dry.
“Because you’re under unbelievable pressure, you just lost a friend, and you haven’t slept in two days. Because I know what it’s like to think you can solve everything by working harder. Sometimes you need someone to tell you to stop.”
“You know this because you had someone like that?”
“No,” I said. “Because I didn’t.”
He looked down at me and scowled, and I felt his protective anger lift me like a wave. I nearly melted right there, but I had a job to do. I pointed. “Lie down on the bed, on your front.”
He reluctantly lay down. I pulled on a bathrobe so I didn’t keep distracting him with my nakedness, grabbed the bottle of almond oil I’d taken from the kitchen, and climbed onto the bed next to him. I was used to him towering over me when we were standing up, but he wasn’t any smaller lying down. As I shuffled over and straddled him, I felt like a bird hopping around on the back of a rhino. My eyes roved over the contours of his back, with its twisting, dark tattoos, then down over the ass I’d admired so many times as I’d followed him around, hard and loaded with power. Lower down, on his right calf, I saw something I hadn’t noticed before, a raised scar, maybe from a bullet. So that’s why he favors his other leg.
I put my hands on his shoulders and then poured a little almond oil over the back of my hand: a little trick to help heat the oil before it touched his skin. I smoothed the oil over the globes of his shoulders until they shone, then started massaging him. He cocked his head curiously, then closed his eyes.