Page 54 of Lethal Alliance

17

ROMAN

Darya is quiet in the car as I drive us up to the lab. The rocky mountain landscape is lit gold in the dying afternoon sun. She stares at it through the window, her face turned away from me. The light turns her skin to a glowing, buttery sheen. With her hair in a loose knot on her head, a few strands drifting about her face, she has an incandescent beauty that makes my heart twist. Her hands rest on her belly, one thumb stroking mindlessly back and forth over the thin fabric of her sundress. She seems entirely turned inward.

I need her.

It isn’t only the sexual desire, although that is always there between us. I need her smile, her touch. After Sergei’s revelations, I need to know that Darya and I are connected, that we’re both safe.

That we are here, together.

On a broad curve there is a scenic lookout point, bordered by granite boulders. I pull the car into the gravel, facing it out over the valley below, and step out, walking around to open her door. I give Darya my hand and she takes it, moving straight into my embrace. I wrap my arms around her body, shivering as hers go about me. One hand cradles her head against my chest, the other at the base of her spine, pressing her body flush against my own. She smells of vanilla and coconut, feels warm and vital against me. When my thumb touches her jaw, I can feel the rigid tension beneath her velvet skin. I stroke her face softly, feeling the tension slowly melt from her body and my own heartbeat gradually settle against hers. We stand like that for a long time, the shadows slowly growing around us, just breathing.

When Darya pulls back, her face is wet with tears. “I’m sorry.” Her voice hitches, her eyes on mine wide and dark with hurt.

“For what?” I hold her face, using my hands to collect her tears.

She shakes her head, her eyes fluttering closed then opening again. “That your mother has been alive all this time. For the secrets my father kept from you. For... all of this.” She drops her forehead against my chest, her head still shaking, as if she can somehow push away the revelations of the past hour.

I kiss the top of her head, inhaling her essence like a tonic. “None of this is your fault. None of it, Darya. Neither of us are responsible for the sins of our parents.”

“You have nothing to be responsible for. Your parents did nothing to deserve any of this.”

“That’s not entirely true.” She looks up, frowning. “The conversation I told your father about, the one I overheard between him and my parents? I need to tell you what was said.” I lead her over to one of the boulders looking out over the valley. Drawing her down to sit opposite me, I take her hands and tell her everything I recall of what was said between Sergei and my parents.

“Sergei didn’t want my mother to run,” I say at the end. “He wanted to protect my parents and me. It was Rosa who insisted she had to leave, and my father who forced Sergei to let her go. Whatever Sergei’s faults, and whatever else I might lay at his door, I can’t blame your father for my parents’ decisions.” I tip her face up so she meets my eyes. “And you shouldn’t either.”

She shakes her head again, that wordless gesture of rebuttal, as if trying to push away all she’s learned. “How can you defend him?” Her voice isn’t quite steady, tears brimming again. She swipes her eyes angrily. “God, I wish I could stop crying.”

I touch her cheek. “You have reason enough.” It occurs to me that I’ve seen Darya close to tears more in the past day than ever before. She’s not given to fits of crying, normally holds her emotions tightly within. I guess the trials of the past week would test anyone’s resilience. “I’m not defending Sergei.” I pause, searching for the right words. “But perhaps I understand him.”

“You’re joking.” She frowns at me. “Are you saying he did the right thing, concealing Rosa’s identity from me as well as from you? I still can’t believe he did that.” She goes on without waiting for an answer. “You have no idea how difficult it was, getting to Argentina. An entire sea of immigrants was coming the other way, and none of them understood why we were going south. Nobody wanted to help us. Papa was sick, and I’d never gone further than the walls of our compound without security. I might as well have been an infant, for all I knew about the world. I trusted Papa implicitly. Everything he told me to do, I did. So when we got to Argentina, and he told me his contact was too dangerous for me to meet, I believed him.”

Her face hardens. It hurts me to see her pain, the effect of those years.

“I took Papa to meet this contact in an apartment building in a run-down part of Buenos Aires. He made me leave him in the foyer. I remember the floor was pockmarked, paint peeling off the walls. I wanted to stay and try to catch a glimpse of this person we’d battled mud, hunger, and exhaustion to find. But I’d been raised in a household where men took care of business and women took care of the kitchen. Papa’s word was law. When he told me to leave, I obeyed his orders. Never once did he tell me it was a woman he was meeting, or anything about who she was, why she was important. Why didn’t he tell me?” The palpable hurt in her voice breaks my heart. “Why couldn’t he just trust me? And what is so damned important about the Naryshkin treasure that it needs all this secrecy? It’s just... stuff, no matter how valuable. How can it truly matter to them all so much that they’d tear all of our lives apart, just to keep the contents of that vault safe?”

She’s crying again, and I wrap her in my arms, rocking her until the sobs subside, stroking her gently as my shirt turns damp.

“I don’t understand it either.” My lips rub against the silken mass of hair. “I guess there’s more to the story. Maybe we’ll find out, after all this is over. I just couldn’t listen to any more today.”

“Me either.” Her voice is muffled against my chest. “I was too angry, and your face when he told you about Rosa...” She lifts her head and without warning kisses me, her mouth fierce on mine.

I understand it. I understandthis,the primal need for connection in place of words.

I take her passion and return it, my hands twined in her hair, my body suddenly raging with need. I want her with a blind, mindless urgency.

“Oh God, Roman.” Her moan against my mouth rips through my body, sending my dick into overdrive. Her hands delve into my shirt, and the soft cry she gives when she touches my chest has my body pounding for hard, fast release.

I’m also horribly aware that since her return, our only time together was exactly that.

I can feel her devastation and hurt. Darya already knows how desperately I want her.

She also needs to know how fiercely I love her.

I stand and move us both to the Maybach. Hitching Darya onto the hood, I spread her legs and stand between them, her musky scent hot and intoxicating. I tug the sundress down to her waist, releasing the clasp of her bra. Her breasts surge into sight, somehow even more lush and rich than I remember, tawny in the afternoon light. The swollen buds atop them thrust toward me as she arches her back, moaning, and my good intentions are almost shot to hell right there.

Forcing my lust under control, I bend my head to her, taking first one creamy mound then the other, and she cries out, her hands in my hair pulling my face against her. I lathe her with my tongue, her body twisting under me as she pushes herself into my mouth. She seems to swell under my tongue, her whole body bucking under my touch.

---