Page 5 of Brutal Secrets

“We’ve got a flight to catch. We’ve got concerts to get to. Kesera is very important. I?—”

I wave the muzzle of the gun in his face, and he stops. The girl’s warmth sinks into me as she steps closer, wraps an arm around my waist, and leans her head against my side.

It’s a strange feeling, playing someone’s savior. It’s been years since the last time I tried, and it didn’t end well. My little songbird here doesn’t know who I am. If she did, would she still stand so close?

I look down at her with a question on my face, and she nods again. Whatever she faces here, it must be pretty bad for her to take her chances with a gun-wielding stranger.

I lead her into the corridor and open the door next to her dressing room. Beyond it is a darkened room, but she steps inside without hesitation, still holding my hand. I follow her. Something about this room reminds me of the cupboard Sasha and I would hide in at the orphanage, which spooks me for a second.

I’m still gripping my gun, so I lightly touch her shoulder with my other hand. The darkness calls for lowered voices, the way it did when Sasha and I hid as kids. Back when I still believed I had the power to save people.

“Are you okay?” I whisper.

Her hair tickles the skin beyond my shirt’s opening, and I suck in a breath as she nods. “Yeah, I will be. Thanks to you.”

“Too early to be thanking me, zolotaya.”

She squeezes the hand that isn’t grasping the gun. “Why? Are you an axe murderer or something?”

I laugh as I lean my back against the door to prevent anyone from barging in, and then I pull her against me and let her drop her head into my chest. “Or something, zolotaya.”

I can’t see her, but I feel the tremble in her muscles as I stroke my hands up and down her back. Her whole body continues trembling, and her skin is ice against mine. All the signs of shock. I pull her closer, making a soft shushing noise. It’s not much of a come-on, but I’m sure she wants to feel safe, and this is the best I can do.

“You keep saying that word. Zolotaya. What does it mean?” There’s a southern twang to her husky voice, so different from the Americans I met when I was in New York.

“It means golden, honey. Because you’re golden. Precious. Not the sort of woman a man should be knocking about.”

She huffs. “No woman deserves that.”

I expect her to step away from me then. When she doesn’t, I let myself sink into the closeness as I stroke my hand from her lower back to the top of her spine and stop at the nape of her neck, circling her narrow throat. The reedy thrum of her pulse thumps beneath my fingertips. She is too delicate and fragile for a man like me.

I’m not sure how to reassure her. If she met anyone who knew me, theywould do nothing to set her mind at rest, so I just hold her in the darkness and silence, feeling the gentle tremor of her small body. And she is small. She’s not statuesque like the dancers, and she has tiny breasts.

Her head is level with my armpit as she burrows into me. I pull her into the circle of my arms, leaning down to bury my face in her hair.

Jasmine and roses.

I continue my rhythmic stroking of her body as I breathe her in.She smells of springtime and hope. It’s winter in Moscow right now. The kind of winter that will stretch on for six months until the snow turns to piles of dirty, icy slush that will yield the bitter fruit of dead bodies when the spring comes.

Her nose presses against my shirt as she moves even closer, and then her voice cuts through the illusion that this is the kind of woman I can pretend to deserve. “What are we doing?”

“Hiding from life. From work,” I say, flicking on the light switch and bathing us both in a blue florescent glow. “We should get going.”

She glances at my gun and then shudders and wraps her arms around herself. “I don’t have anywhere to go.”

I open the door and look into the empty corridor. “We’ll figure something out,” I say without really knowing what I mean.

Chapter Six

Imust be losing my mind, but my god, the man I’d been leaning on felt familiar, and he smelled so good. Like salt and pine needles. For one moment in that dark room, I had to fight back a sudden urge to taste the triangle of skin beneath his spread collar. Instead, I’d rubbed my face against him and allowed him to pull me closer.

As we step into the dark corridor, my entire body tingles. I chalk this up to coming down from the high of being on stage. It has nothing to do with leaning on someone and feeling their solid arms around me, or having a handsome man pull me into his broad chest like I’m meant to be there.

I feel foolish, but I haven’t felt anything in so long that I let myself shut out the world and snuggle up to a complete stranger.

A stranger who now strides ahead of me with a pistol in his hand.

Muffled women’s voices filter from a crack of light beneath a door ahead of us, and a sudden burst of laughter echoes in the gray corridor as the door opens. I guess that’s where he’s taking me, but instead of relaxing, the tightness in my shoulders returns as thoughts clang around my head.

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