Page 40 of Savage Surrender

“Let’s get out of here before we’re interrupted again,” I said, not really joking about how Jessica had just popped in that one day.

I spoke too soon, though, because the sounds of people walking in a closer aisle came next.

Irina opened her eyes wide with panic, then stepped away from me. “I’m going to go to the ladies’ room.” She set her teeth on her lower lip. “Just to clean up the best that I can.”

I held in a growl at the thought of my cum dripping out of her. If we were somewhere more private, I would’ve pushed it back into her tight little hole.

After one more kiss to her forehead, I watched as she walked off to clean up in the bathroom.

And that was the last I saw of her.

It shouldn’t have taken me so long to figure it out. She’d bolted after Jessica caught us red-handed in an awkward and compromising position with Irina on my desk, her legs spread wide. And it seemed that she’d bolted again.

I wanted to be mad, but deep down, I couldn’t be. She wasn’t running off because she wanted to put distance between us. I didn’t think that was it. I suspected she was such a flight risk because she didn’t know how else to act afterward.

I shouldn’t have let her go.

I should’ve walked her there. Hell, I should’ve helped her clean up even if it was in the women’s restroom in the library.

When it came to Irina, I was constantly caught up between what I should and shouldn’t do. Now that I’d crossed a huge line of should and shouldn’t with her, I couldn’t care as much about being careful or walking delicately around her, as though she were forbidden.

For half of the next week, though, that wasn’t an issue. She went into hiding again, or so it seemed. Her absence was noted at my English History class, and without her there, it just wasn't the same. I had no reason to be there, pretending I was lecturing without her there to listen. Without her being there for me to watch her expressions and wonder what she was thinking.

“She didn’t come to the poetry class either,” I told Rurik near the end of the week when I was curious whether he’d seen her.

“Maybe something is going on with Igor?”

His guess didn’t fill me with any comforting hope. I was concerned about her, but I couldn’t distinguish whether I felt like that because I wanted her again or if I anticipated something happening, like an attack from the Petrovs. My mind ran a mile a minute when I thought about her. That was how much more she’d gotten under my skin from just that one time we’d fucked in the library.

I took the initiative to try to follow her some more, checking in at the public places on campus where I’d seen her before. Going to her apartment seemed like the next best step, but I would save that as a last resort. Cameras would mark my presence there. While Irina was ignorant of who I was, someone watching the Petrov footage would be able to match me to whatever latest image someone might have on file of me somewhere. Like the Baranov organization, the Petrovs had access to hackers and expert IT servicers.

After I worked out one evening—another attempt to find her, in case she was there in that skin-tight gear while she did cardio—I got a call from one of the contacts I’d spoken with in Moscow.

“What the fuck?” I whispered to myself as I looked at the number, catching my breath from a run on the treadmill.

Of all people to call me, over a month since I’d left…

“Hello?”

“Hey, Vik,” Timber answered. I never did get a solid explanation for what seemed like a cheesy, ridiculous nickname. Maybe it was an inside joke. It was irrelevant, but what he was calling to tell me wasn’t. “I might have an update for you.”

“Oh?” I’d been so focused on Irina and this current assignment that was a much-needed break from the whorehouses that I’dcompletely dismissed that cold case about Sonya. I, like so many others, had figured she was long gone. Dead.

“It looks like there’s been activity in that account you were asking about.”

I wiped my brow, stepping off the machine and leaving to have this call in private. “Really?” I had to wonder if the fact that I was recently in Moscow and asking around had triggered something to pop up or be revealed.

“Yeah. A withdrawal that couldn’t be traced, but then almost the same amount put right back in.”

“Hmm.”

“I have a couple of guys looking into it, but like I said before, if anyone is behind this and it’s not just a bunch of coincidences, this isn’t the work of an amateur.”

“I agree, Timber.” The only leads that Oleg had ever received about the disappearance of Sonya and Boris’s mother were loose trails of money that were hidden under layers of identities. Shell corps had him guessing for years who might have been behind the two women's disappearance—if anyone was behind it at all. Some, like Eva, believed that they’d just run away and hidden from the Baranov family, wanting out of the Mafia life and to be free like ordinary citizens.

Giving up on finishing this workout, I left and listened to the scant details Timber had to offer me. After I showered, I called Oleg to see if he wanted to meet up. I’d give him these updates as they came. That was only right.

He agreed to see me uptown, so I made the drive there. The further I got from the campus, the further from Irina, the morethis longing and anxiousness settled in and took root. I couldn’t bethissmitten over her already. I couldn’t be this desperate for the young virgin I’d fucked in the library. I wasn’t some new lover, an idiot who would fall for the first pussy, the first woman who’d pay attention?—

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