Page 10 of Tamed Enemy
Cole’s throat works, and I think he won’t be able to pull up the words. “Ten million. By midnight.”
He cuts the call before Nikolai can force him to say more. But the computer chimes almost immediately, displaying a new message on the screen across the room.
Nikolai Tarasov
It is a pleasure doing business with you.
He follows the words with a picture of his fist clenched around his dick. His pubes are gray. His knuckles are swollen with arthritis. But his erection is as strong as his message: Nikolai Tarasov thinks he owns Cole and me.
4
COLE
My usual four hours of sleep drop to three in the aftermath of being manhandled by Nikolai Tarasov. Lying in bed, I marvel at the peacefulness of Kate’s steady breathing. In the shadowed bedroom, her tangled hair looks black. I can barely make out the curve of her hip, where she’s thrown back the top sheet.
I’m still not used to seeing Kate in the dark. When she agreed to marry me, she made it a condition that she’d always have a lamp on, driving away bad dreams. She’s only learned to sleep without a light since she executed Pyotr Tarasov.
If Nikolai gets his hands on her, no lamp in the world will be bright enough to bring her peace.
As if she can sense my thoughts, Kate’s fingers scrabble beside her cheek. Her forehead creases, and her breath comes faster. She starts to murmur—something that might be Irish, or maybe it’s the twisted language of dreams. She moans, a shakysigh that’s backed with terror, and her head thrashes. “No,” she mutters.
“You’re dreaming,” I whisper. Every nerve in my body is attuned to her. My fingers flex, desperate to soothe her, but I’m afraid her dream-mind will read my touch as a threat.
“Stop,” she pleads.
“Hush, Kate. Go back to sleep.”
“Please…” she begs, and now she’s crying, deep, ragged sobs that sound like something is ripping inside her.
“Sweetheart,” I say, and that’s a word I’ve never used before—not for Kate, not for any woman. It leaves my lips half a promise, half a prayer.
She screams, a sound of pure terror.
She wakes herself. She might be waking half of DC. Her mouth is stretched and her eyes are wild. She’s kicked off the sheets as if they burn her, and the red cap tattoo at the top of her thigh stands out like a black brand against her moon-white flesh, weeping the individual scars from her cutting. Her stiffened fingers rake her sides—and still that terrible scream slices its way out of her body.
“Kate,” I say, grabbing her wrists before she can draw blood. “You’re safe. It was just a dream.” I pull her against my body, one hand spread across her shuddering back, one cupping her head. “I’m here. No one can hurt you. You’re safe. Sweet Kate. You’re safe.”
She gentles as I clutch her, her board-like arms and legs finally easing. When she buries her face against my neck, hot tears melt between us. Sobs turn to deep gulping breaths punctuated by hiccups as I keep up my stream of meaningless words.
“I…” she finally says, a single word that I feel more than I hear.
I kiss the crown of her head. In the quiet, I whisper, “Do you want me to turn on the light?”
She shakes her head, a trembling of butterfly wings so faint I’d miss them if I weren’t perfectly attuned to her body. For a moment, I’m certain that will be her only response, but then she whispers, “Just stay here. Just hold me.”
I tighten my arms around her, covering her legs with mine for good measure. As she clings to me, I wonder how we’ve come this far. The night we met, she threw champagne in my face. Later, she slapped me as hard as she could, and I struck back, only drawing off some of my heat at the last possible instant.
Some. Not all. And both of us were surprised by the flare in Kate’s eyes. She’d never found a man to match her wild spirit. But at heart, Kate Lynch is a submissive—and I’m the Dom who can give her what she needs.
Her racing pulse is slowing now. Her breath is almost back to normal. I move my lips close to her ear. “Want to tell me what you dreamed?”
This time when she shakes her head, she’s more determined. But she says, “Pyotr. In the Cold Room. While you watched.”
My body turns to granite—ice cold and stained, a gravestone crumbling over a shattered casket. I can’t change what that monster did to her. I can’t erase the memories. There is no way for me to take on that burden, to carry her past for her, even for a moment.
No one can.
But I can promise I’ll do everything in my power to spare her from another animal. So long as I have breath in my body, Nikolai Tarasov will not set a finger on her. I don’t care what it takes. I’ll spend every penny I’ve ever earned, begged, or stolen. I’ll move us across oceans, to the very ends of the earth. I’ll kill the man myself or hire a hitman, an entire team of assassins to take him out, to make sure he suffers every dying second.
