Page 14 of The Enemy’s Defector (Ivanov Syndicate #3)

NIKOLAI

W e weren’t surrounded—yet.

This rear exit from the safehouse was our best option to reach the alleyway that offered more shadows and nooks to hide in if these men gave chase. I knew this because it was one of the first things I’d checked out once we got into this place.

Always having an exit plan was a habit.

Studying the best routes of escape was a must.

This way out, I could run with Katerina at my side or just behind me, and I wasn’t giving her any more space than that.

The timing of someone finding the safehouse couldn’t have been any shittier.

I was ready to talk to her, to really open up and demand that she tell me why she was acting so off.

She’d taken it the wrong way, implying I only wanted to boss her around and be in charge.

I was, though. Because I was more equipped and knowledgeable about how to navigate this life on the run. She’d never been in the thick of combat as much as I had been. As a woman, she was sheltered—or dismissed and exempted from the violence that was the norm in my life as a spy.

She’d shot two men this week. She was a killer, trained by none other than me on how to handle a gun in the first place.

But she wasn’t in any position to handle this situation without me.

I didn’t want her to.

Holding her hand tightly, I ran until we reached a dumpster in the alley. Shots fired off the metal surface, protecting us, and I leaned up to shoot at the masked men.

“Of course,” I growled, scowling at the men. They were all hiding their faces, dressed the same in militant gear in all black. It would’ve been nice to see someone I could identify, but whoever was targeting me was letting an independent contractor firm do all their dirty work.

“Nik. Come on.” Katerina tilted her head toward a parked car, indicating for us to use it to get away. Getting into the cargo van that we’d left in the garage wasn’t an option.

Volleying my attention between the men behind us and the car, I nodded once and backpedaled toward the driver’s door.

Ironically, she was the one who’d looked up how to hotwire a car and taught me and my brothers that.

She’d always been so quick to learn and entertained by technological or mechanical challenges.

She dropped to grab a brick then smacked it against the window while I covered her back, the gun trained in the direction of the men who had yet to creep toward us. “Hurry.”

She grunted, perhaps annoyed with me for telling her what to do.

I didn’t need to order her to hurry, but it came out anyway, as a warning to the world.

I needed her to get this car running for us so we could escape to safety—because I needed her safe.

And with me. The men shouting at each other to “get her” was all I needed to hear.

They weren’t aiming for me, but Katerina. She was their target.

It was pointless to direct her. Within seconds, she’d smashed the window and yanked the door open. The car was old, not some new thing that would be trickier to mess with. As she crouched low to get to the wires, I knocked off the shards of glass to fall away from her.

“Got it.” She reared back as the lights turned on over the dashboard. Without giving me a chance to reply, she slid into the seat and took the wheel.

I ran around the car, keeping the gun poised in the right direction, then got into the passenger seat.

Just like before, in the van, she sped off without my having the time to close the door.

It swung wildly, banging against another dumpster, but that was in my favor.

With the metal panel cracked away, I had better access to lean out and shoot at the men behind us.

She sped down the narrow street, then began a twisting, turning, and complicated series of changing directions once we entered the city roadways. I knew she was doing it to lose anyone potentially tailing us, and it worked.

Checking behind us once more, I was satisfied that we’d gotten away. Barely. Again.

I sat back and tried to catch my breath from the rush. “I need more ammo.”

She nodded, saying nothing as she focused on driving.

“Give me your phone.”

She furrowed her brow. “It’s not traceable.”

Of course, it wasn’t. She was the one who’d helped me configure my phone to be a trackless device. “I wasn’t saying it was.”

After she handed it to me, I typed in the general location of an Ivanov facility where we’d be left alone. Once I gave it back to her with the directions showing, she frowned at me. “Why can’t you just go home?”

I shook my head, checking over her for any sign of injury. That paleness was still there, and she looked even more guarded than before. Then again, we’d just run with fear fueling us. I could cut her some slack. “It’s too soon.”

“If you need more guns or ammo, you’d get it there.”

I would. “I am not going home until I know who ordered me to be taken. I need to have answers so I can protect anyone else from being taken.”

She huffed. “And you can only figure that out while you’re on the run?”

“I’ll have better chances with them not knowing where I am at all.”

“Your brothers can’t help?” she asked, frowning again.

“I don’t want them to be exposed to danger. They know I’m alive. I’ve been sending a line of code to my computer for them to see as proof of life.”

“Fine. Then how about I get another car and go my own way? That would prevent you from being in danger near me.”

Jerking around to face her, I narrowed my eyes and tried to believe she’d actually said that. That she’d be that stupid. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

“It’d be harder for those men to find us if we separated.”

I shook my head, warring with the need to shake her. “I don’t fucking care.”

“Look, I can’t help you. I’m useless to you.”

What? “The fuck you are.”

“I don’t know if Anton was behind this by himself or not. But you don’t need me.”

I slammed my fist on the dash. “Says who?”

“And you’ve made it clear that you don’t want me.”

My jaw dropped. “How the hell do you figure that?” Did she already forget about our night together?

Things were tense between us in the safehouse.

I wouldn’t deny that. But she couldn’t hold it against me.

So much had happened too soon, and I had to process how to approach it.

Maybe I was too calculating and serious as I recovered, but then again, she wasn’t too cozy with me either, like she was hiding something.

“You don’t want me,” she repeated as she parked at the building I’d given her the coordinates for.

The underground parking space was empty, and I was glad no one would witness us getting out of the car and entering the building.

I wasn’t in the mood to scope my surroundings and check for danger.

I was too riled up and focused on her and this bullshit she was saying.

“You hate me,” she added as she reached for the door handle.

I shook my head, furious that she’d made such a fucked-up assumption like that. Grabbing her hand, I hauled her toward the door with me. She ran to keep up with me, but I didn’t slow down. I couldn’t. She’d pushed me and goaded me too far.

She needed to get it into her head that I wanted her so damn badly I couldn’t breathe right when she was near. She had to understand that one night would never be enough to satisfy me.

“Just let me go, Nik,” she said when I dragged her into the hallway to the old, empty building. “You can hate me somewhere else and I’ll start a life somewhere far from you so I’m not an obstacle to your getting back to your family and being happy with them.”

Reaching a bare bedroom, the mattress uncovered and plain, I shoved her until she fell back onto it. She set her hands behind her to catch her fall, but I was right there, looming over her and cupping her jaw.

“I don’t hate you,” I bit out, snarling and breathing hotly through my nostrils as I tried to banish the thought of not seeing her ever again.

I lowered my hand toward her neck, easing my fingers over her soft skin. The redness was gone from when that fucker in my torture room had tried to kill her. Feeling the steady and fast tempo of her pulse beneath my fingertips, I felt my dick harden.

She was excited, not scared. I saw the difference in her brilliant blue eyes shining at me. She was paying attention to me, to how close I was, not this bullshit about separating and going our own ways.

As I squeezed slightly, reveling in how much this chokehold could turn her on, I leaned lower until my lips were inches from hers.

“I hate that I want you.”

She narrowed her eyes, that telltale show of fire that normally meant she wanted to lash out and argue with me.

This time, I didn’t let her. I loved when she fought with me.

That was how toxic we were. Bickering and arguing were the ultimate turn-on between us, the escalation of high emotions that grew and intensified until we both snapped and exploded.

I wasn’t in the mood to hear her deny that I wanted her. I showed her. Slamming my mouth against hers while forcing her chin up, I kept my hold on her neck as I devoured her sweet lips. Her sassy mouth. That addictive pull she always maintained over me.

Pushing her down onto the bed, I kissed her with hunger and greed. I tasted her mouth, sliding my tongue between her lips until I could claim her as I pleased. And when she moaned, raising her hands to clutch the front of my shirt and hold me close, my control snapped.

Her submission was that potent. The force behind her kissing me back just as desperately was all I needed to know she wanted the same thing that was on my mind. The thing that had no business being on my mind when I should’ve been focusing on surviving and protecting my family.

“I want you more than I’ve wanted anything in my whole fucking life,” I growled, grabbing her skirt and shoving it up as I kneeled between her legs.

Still, I kept my hand on her neck, not choking her but applying pressure so she could feel the strength behind my desire.

Arching up to kiss me, she then bucked her hips to help me tug her panties down. Then under my lips again, she kissed me deep and sucked on my tongue. Every stroke of her hands felt like a firebrand. Each time she reached for my pants to get my dick free was an extra instance of impatience.

“I want you, Katerina,” I snarled at her, still holding on to the anger that she’d think otherwise.

That not wanting her could ever be an option.

She drugged me. She ensnared me. And I was sick of feeling torn between wanting her with every cell in my body and knowing I was supposed to keep my distance because she was a Kozlov.

“I can’t fucking stop wanting you.” After that gritty admission, one of total honesty and vulnerability, I shoved my pants down with my boxers.

Too many garments remained as layers between us.

I had yet to see her tits, her silky, smooth skin, all of her.

We were both too frantic to reunite like this, clumsy and hurried.

There was nothing elegant about how I rammed my thigh against hers to force her to part for me.

There wasn’t any bit of delicacy as I notched my dick to her slick entrance.

She gasped, and I squeezed her neck harder, so driven to have her and reclaim her like this that I couldn’t hold back at all.

Thrusting into her in one long, hard push, I was seated inside her pussy. Those smooth, tight walls of her muscles spread and stretched to let me in. All the way to the hilt, I was inside her. So deep. So snug.

I closed my eyes for a millisecond, tormented by how damn good it felt to finally be back in her cunt. To let her suck me in deep and clench around me. To hear her moaning and whimpering in need for me to pummel her with my cock.

Not wanting to miss out, I opened my eyes and watched her as I withdrew then immediately drove my dick all the way back in, hitting against her so brutally, so greedily that my balls smacked against her ass cheeks.

“I want you more than I should,” I explained in a gravelly whisper as I picked up the pace.

This wasn’t a sweet occasion of lovemaking.

Escaping danger and determined to show her how wrong she was about my ever hating her, I fucked her relentlessly.

My fingers stayed latched around her neck as I used that leverage to pin her to the bed.

My dick slipped in and out of her with loud, juicy suctioning sounds, her juices and cream coating my cock.

And when she tensed, her face contorted with a mixture of pleasure-pain from the pounding I gave her, she came.

In a wicked grip of perfection, her pussy walls reacted to the drag of my shaft.

She gloved me, squeezing me so good that I couldn’t wait.

There was no chance to linger and savor this reunion, this second chance to fuck the one woman I’d always wanted and always would.

“Fuck.” I bit it out before my spine tingled and my balls drew up tight. Unable to resist the urge to come, I squeezed her throat a little tighter as I rutted into her harder, one last time.

The rush of euphoria nearly chilled me. Goosebumps prickled over my skin at the sheer relief of my orgasm at last. Every second of spending time with her had built up to this moment, and as I spilled my seed into her womb, I dropped over her and collapsed.

Spent and sated, I lay over her and tried to catch my breath.

Because I knew I’d need it.

I’d need to recharge for the next fight with her. And the next. And the next after that.

It didn’t matter how many times she’d be so silly as to accuse me of hating her. I’d beat back that line of bullshit every single chance I could until she knew, without a doubt, how badly I wanted and needed her in my life.

Even though I shouldn’t. Not at all.