death howl

It was a cheap distraction and Nikolai knew it, an out to keep him from baring the feelings he’d gone years without speaking of. When he’d still been Oliver’s handler they couldn’t say anything at risk of upsetting their balance. To be more than they were or to acknowledge that they were lovers was to court disaster. Nikolai never could have kept Oliver on the path set out for him without silence. If they were in love, even if Nikolai was in love with Oliver, then there was a future for him besides the CIA. He would hide him in his skin without a second thought and Nikolai wouldn’t turn him out. Even when they parted Nikolai didn’t tell Oliver he loved him. There was no need to break that streak.

Wrapping an arm around Oliver’s waist, Nikolai tugged him down, rolling to pull him onto his chest. It was unequivocally cheating. He couldn’t bring himself to care. Not when Oliver was warm and firm and solid on top of him, his mouth close enough to be kissed until his lips parted willingly. "You won’t starve,” he murmured. “Don’t whine.”

God, how he’d missed this man. Nikolai missed the span of his hands and his smart mouth, his clever eyes and the softness of his sleep. He’d never had a relationship that lasted this long, twenty years since they’d first been introduced. Oliver was far more valuable than any fortune he could ever have amassed, and he’d spent a small one finding him. Not that Nikolai would say such things. Maybe someday.

He still didn't believe in God—not really—but every time Nikolai touched him he swore he saw something religious.

He laughed, a breathy sound as he turned his head, lips skimming along Nikolai's cheek. He looked older now, more laugh lines that weren't caused by laughter feathering at the edges of his eyes, but Oliver didn't mind. He was older too. Maybe not entirely wiser, but this had changed and he didn't care that Nikolai had. “You weren't around for some of my lesser glory days. I didn't starve but it was a close call.”

Money had always been tight. Even when Oliver had been careful to only spend what he had to, skipping over buying in favour of stealing, he was still constantly trying to make ends meet. What was he supposed to do for a job? It wasn't like he could put down his credentials onto a resume. He couldn't write down any of his former employers as references. Every time he had to shell out the cash to buy a new identity he put himself a couple thousand in the hole.

Inhaling sharply, he curled a hand into Nikolai's hair, fingers curved to cup the back of his skull, thumb tracing over the shell of his ear. “Don't get up,” he murmured, leaning forward, pressing his lips against Nikolai's jaw, hips rolling against him. He ached still, thighs burning from whatever position Nikolai would push him into, lower back aching from the constant pressure, but he didn't care.

Oliver hiked his leg up, half-hard cock sliding against Nikolai's skin. God, how had he lived without this? He still didn't know. The past few years felt like a blur of commotion behind his eyes, things that didn't matter but happened nonetheless. It was probably a sickness—sick on Nikolai, sick from Nikolai. Never sick of him.

She could already hear the music from a block away. Kennedy had taken the bus, because cars were for girls whose parents didn’t feel the bite of tuition into their paychecks or lock up the keys. Kennedy’s did both. She had no idea how she’d get home, but that could be figured out later. Whenever she came back to herself and stopped acting crazy for a girl.

Ally wasn’t even Kennedy’s type, if Kennedy could be said to have a type. On paper they would never work. Ally was disruptive, first of all. If one had to be delinquent, they could at least do so quietly, so as not to irritate everyone around them. She was brash and loud and acted out just because she could, while at the same time playing a role to fit in. 

On the other hand, Kennedy thought a lot about Ally’s mouth. And her hands. And her waist. And her body in general, preferably naked. Instead of pissing Kennedy off, she turned her on, something like insecurity wrapped up in a fierce and unstoppable charge that she was just brave enough to let slip. One stupid night on a roof after Ally had shooed her friends away and Kennedy was hooked. Enough to have her mounting the steps in front of the house, thumbs curled in the belt loops of the low slung skinny jeans plastered to her body, baring more than an inch of midriff.

Ally loomed out of nowhere. In the time it took for Kennedy to ascend three stairs, or maybe just the gap between looking at house numbers and the ground and the door, Ally seemed to have materialized against the railing, red cup in hand, as if she’d been there forever. Maybe she had.

It was so stupid to get so wound up over one girl. Kennedy was just Kennedy, just another person at her high school, just another person that she saw every day. It should matter so much that Kennedy even knew her name, but she had. That was when the butterflies had taken up permanent residence in her stomach, fluttering awake whenever Kennedy was around.

It was horrible, especially when she saw her in the halls. Ally was going to end up with a busted nose from all the lockers she had walked into.

“Kennedy.” Ally winced. It sounded too bright and pitch-y even to her own ears. She pushed off the railing, side-stepping over and standing at the top of the steps. She stuffed her free hand into her front pocket, not knowing what else to do with it. Slapping a too-sure grin on her face, she rocked back on her heels and said, “I wasn’t waiting. It was just gettin’ boring in there with all the crying drunk girls. It’s really annoying to listen to.”

Ally didn’t know why she did it. There were no drunk, crying girls inside, but there were a few sloshed and overly-touchy girls sitting on their ex-boyfriends’ laps, practically smelling of hangover regret in the morning. Lying, making up little tiny twists of reality, was something she’d always done. Why tell the truth—that she was absolutely sitting around outside like a lovesick puppy, waiting for Kennedy to maybe show up—when she could say something else instead?

It had been a long time since Ally had actually liked someone. There were the guys that she screwed around with on Friday nights because her parents weren’t around and she was a bored teenager, but she didn’t like any of them. Some of them were decent conversationalists, but most of them were too busy touching her boobs to actually say anything she cared about. Ally had liked it that way. She was young and pretty and her parents didn’t care; why would she want to like someone?

Still grinning, she swallowed the last of her drink, setting the cut on the railing. A smooth, whiskey-warm feeling was trailing up her stomach and into her throat, like little champagne bubbles were popping on her tongue. She wasn’t drunk, couldn’t be drunk, but she felt tipsy now that Kennedy was here.

It was a stupid feeling. Ally wanted to stomp on it, just like the butterflies.

A few shallow seconds stuttered by, Brannagh scarcely daring to breathe lest she hear the rap on the door that would tell her someone heard her outburst and had come to investigate. She remained frozen, eyes locked Joshua’s. Pulling away, moving at all, seemed to be inviting trouble. She exhaled softly. He had blue eyes. Who - what - was he? The silence rushed against her ears, deafening as a ticking clock. Suddenly claustrophobic, the sense of not having enough time seized up in Brannagh’s throat, like she’d been locked in a trunk and was running out of air. Her pulse slammed against her temple. She knew suffocation all too well. Years on and it still haunted her nightmares.

A minute passed. Two minutes. Five. Slowly, Brannagh unwound her muscles from the tense knots she’d forced them into, pulling back from Josh’s still form. She swallowed hard, the uncomfortably flickering bulb overhead abruptly returning to her awareness. Everything was too harsh. Until now she’d lived asleep, and touching Josh jolted her awake. If only one point of contact could so thoroughly shatter her world, what could more do?

Showing up on Brannagh’s doorstep just seemed like a one-way ticket to getting himself shot before he could get out a mouthful. At least this way she had been forced to listen to him, had been forced to be in his range of touch.

Josh had never expected the reaction to be so violent. It was as if someone had reached into his head, scrambled his thoughts around and shoved pieces of Brannagh into him. There was nothing soft or gentle about it, all hard, sharp points pricking into his most tender parts.

There were parts of her that made him want to throw up. There were parts of him he never wanted anyone to see, and now he was all but certain she had full access to the hallway with all the doors to every single little part of him. It was like being ripped apart and stitched together in all the wrong ways, insides displayed on the outside.

Still shaken, he pressed his hands together, a mockery of praying, just looking at her. She looked pissed. Josh wasn’t surprised. “Don’t leave,” he said, half-rising in his seat before falling back down. Trying to get up to block her from leaving the room was pointless when he was shackled to the spot. “If you leave, you’re fucked and I’m fucked. Everyone’s fucked anyway, but I need you to not leave.”

Josh felt twitchy and hot, like someone had pushed blue-white needles under the first few layers of his skin and left them there. He swallowed, screwed his eyes shut and tried to get his thoughts in order. This part of the plan hadn’t been thought about, which Josh knew was a huge oversight. He should have thought about what he was going to do once they’d touched, once he got some kind of leverage for her to stay and listen to him.

He was certain he would still sound insane to her. Sometimes he sounded insane to himself, like he needed to be locked up in some nut-house and left there to live out his fucked-up little life in peace.

“They did something to us,” he said finally, opening his eyes, head tilting up to look at her. “Before we were born, they did something. I think we were supposed to be watched, but the program was shut down before the first few phases were complete, and it was just some fucking doctors screwing around.”

This wasn’t going the way he wanted. There had been a specific plan at some point, he was sure, but that was before he’d touched her and before his fingertips were begging to press against the skin of her palm. He felt like a junkie with a craving.

In response, Zoya drew her legs together and straightened her spine, hips balanced for a solid stance even on the thin points of her stilettos. She was neither a lady like her mother nor a fighter like her father, but Zoya had taken pieces of both of them. She had her father’s confidence and her mother’s poise. Between the two of those things, she would make herself a match for Hayden at his most domineering.

"Hayden." Zoya crossed her arms. "You could have just texted. My phone’s on vibrate." Tucked into a holster on her knickers, in fact, plastered to her thigh, but Hayden didn’t need to know that part. In a darkened club, people were less likely to notice someone putting her hand up her own skirt, but with the halo of space that had formed around their confrontation, it would be hard not to pick up on. "You didn’t have to come get me."

She’d known he would, of course. That was what Hayden did. Zoya left, he tracked her down. Zoya went to class, Hayden stood outside her lecture hall lurking and reading one of her romance novels with a blank cover slipped over it. Zoya went to the store, Hayden went along with her. Zoya knew it was necessary. The easiest way to get to her dad was through her. Not as many people knew about Mishka, and her mom was safe at her dad’s side. Until whatever political storm her father was at the eye of died down, Hayden was around. That didn’t mean he couldn’t have a little fun. Everything short of a test thus far had confirmed his allergy to populations higher than one person per square meter. 

If she thought too much about it, Zoya felt a little guilty. It could be PTSD that made him hate clubs, and much as she tried not to, she understood that. The flashing lights and driving bass probably stressed him out more than necessary, and if he wasn’t staring her down like some amped up Alpha male, Zoya might have been a little nicer about it.

The pounding bass and screeches of joy over the drowning music were pulling his attention in a million different ways. Hayden had always liked the quiet because he knew what creeped around. Little noises were heard in the silence, and he didn't have to focus on anything but what was in front of him.

Maybe if he'd been a normal kid who'd gone to college instead of bootcamp he'd understand why Zoya and Ana were drawn to these places. He probably would have been better equipped to deal with them. Clubs were full, spilling over the brim with drunk and buzzed and high and only God knew what else people crowding in on him. He hated them. There were too many people and too many lights, and even worse were the vibrations rattling through his legs from the stabbing subwoofer.

Hayden wanted to grab her, toss her over his shoulder and carry her out to the car. It was a terrible idea. She would probably bite him. Zoya didn't seem like the kind of girl who fought nicely.

“Why can't you just stay at home for the night? Why is it so hard for yo—”

“Oh-kay, let's just stop before the bouncers bounce our butts to the curb,” Ana interjected, stepping forward and holding a hand between Hayden and Zoya.

Hayden pulled back, turning his head to look over his shoulder. People were looking. Not a lot, but enough that it made Hayden feel that awful sick-slick tightening of tension across his shoulders and in his gut. He doubted anyone would target Zoya while she was out in a club, but he could never be sure. Even if he had set up camp in her living room, sleeping on the floor because her couch wasn't long enough and he didn't want to leave an imprint of his ass in the cushions, someone could be waiting outside for her to leave on her own.

Glancing back at Zoya, he pressed his lips into a line, looking her over from head to toe. Reaching out, grabbing her wrist and pulling her through the crowd to the door seemed like a terrible idea. She would probably smack his hand.

He wasn’t sure how long she’d been dragging him, only that when the screaming started, when he’d moved towards it with a sort of thoughtless determination, it had been her sharp nails in his arm that pulled him back, forced him to think long enough to push her towards the stairs. They could meet up later. For the moment, everyone needed to get out intact.

On his way, Mitch had pulled the fire alarm. His hand and arm were stained blue black, covered in a jet of ink that wouldn’t fade for a week. The wasted water barely grazed against his consciousness, mind too overfull with the other events of the night to even consider it. Everything had gone so wrong so fast. This wasn’t supposed to happen. They dealt in demonstrations, not tragedy. Whatever had happened tonight at the Ritz, it was not part of the plan, or what remained of it. Mitch could practically feel everything spiraling out of control, his heartbeat loud in his ears.

His feet hurt and if he walked any longer he was going to throw up. The evening’s horror weighed too heavy to keep off his chest any longer, thick in the grimy streets and garish motel signs glaring down at him. When Ana turned, Mitch stopped gratefully.

Swallowing around the lump in her throat, she turned looked at Mitch. This was new territory for her. Getting involved with what had been branded an Eco-terrorist group probably wasn't what her mother had meant when she'd told her and her sister to do good in the world, but Ana had gone ahead and done it anyway. Sure, part of it had been the infatuation she'd fallen under when it came to their leader, but that had worn off within a few weeks.

Now she was just scared.

Ana bit her lip, her lipstick chewed off long ago. “You don't have a phone, do you?” she asked, tugging the last of the pins from her hair and shaking it out. She felt out of place, like there was an obvious, blaring neon sign above her head screaming that she didn't fit in. Mitch might be able to get away with it, but she was in a freaking floor-length gown and heels.

How the heck had everything gotten so mixed up? It had been simple, they'd said. Just do your parts and don't look suspicious. Ana had thought she could do that. She had been doing it until someone had screeched like death had rode in on his gallant steed.

Ana looked down at her hands. They were shaking, her fingers twitching to a beat she couldn't follow. She shook them out, looking back to Mitch, desperate for him to give her some answers. She knew what she was supposed to do, but she didn't know how she was supposed to do it. Her bag had been left at The Ritz, her clothes neatly tucked alongside her phone, and she wished she'd been smart enough to shove a few bills into the strap of her thong.

Even so, she’d take it. The few scattered memories Kiara had of herself when she was first recovering were nothing good. The face reflected back at her in the mirror was pale, skin drawn tight against her skull such that she looked like a banshee. Now, at least, she had colour in her cheeks and could stay awake for more than an hour at a time. Recovery was a disturbingly exhausting cycle of eating and sleeping, leaving Kiara as helplessly reliant as an infant. Kellan had been her lifeline, the person who kept her from falling into sepsis or Niall Tierney’s hands. 

Kiara could handle Niall. She’d proven that time and time again since he’d first taken an interest in her two decades ago. She’d been a serious, focused child, with the straightest spine of any of the little girls in her ballet classes. Niall liked that. He came to her classes and recitals, paid for her to keep going, to receive the sort of training Siobhan never could have afforded, Aiden a little shadow beside him, or sometimes not. When she was older, he occasionally brought Sparrow. Kiara knew, but never said, that he liked neither of them. Certainly not the way he liked her. She was the shining star, his fearless little dancer. When Niall watched her, he watched only her, so Kiara had learned to draw his eye. 

In the ten years since they’d spent time together he couldn’t have changed that much. If he ever saw her like this, he would never forget it, never let her forget it. Kiara refused to let Niall know that unprotected versions of her existed. In a relationship like theirs, there was only the user and the used. If given a chance, Niall would use her in every way he could. Kiara would drain him dry first.

Picking up half of her sandwich with her free hand, Kiara took a bite, chewing contemplatively. Kellan’s voice soothed her. It sounded like home and contentment, a soft Irish burr so different from the harshness of Russian voices. He might well have been raised here for how well he mimicked the local tongue while her accent was still corrupted by foreign pronunciation. 

Sometimes he wanted to blame Niall for his violence, but Kellan wasn't an idiot. He'd been born with this capacity for terror and rage, just as Kiara had been born with her capacity for discipline. He could blame Niall for taking advantage of what Kellan had always been capable of, but he couldn't even find it in himself to curse him for it. The blood on his hands—the stains Kellan had voluntarily put there—were for a reason.

Kiara was a good reason to add another. Kellan wanted to. He wanted to get on a plane to Russia, hunt down the one who had stabbed her in the back like an animal and then treat them like one. A little docile lamb walking around covered in her blood, and Kellan was the hungry wolf with a blood-soaked muzzle. It was a bad idea. That was what poked at what parts of his heart were still visible. It would be a foolish idea to do anything other than what he was doing now. He didn't trust anyone else with Kiara's recovery (perhaps Brannagh, at best, but she was an entirely different story of guilt he tried his damnedest to not think of). Not with Niall lurking around like an emaciated vulture, aging and losing the traction that came with youth, ready to sink his teeth into anything that looked remotely vulnerable.

Even if he could have found someone to look after Kiara, there was no way for him to ensure he would be able to do what he wanted. Russia was foreign territory. He could barely even navigate his way out of an airport terminal. Something would probably go wrong, and Kellan would end up dead, or Kiara targeted once again.

It was a bad idea to ask, so he hadn't.

He huffed a laugh, taking a bite of his sandwich to smother the noise. “I'm more worried about you tearing a stitch again,” he said once he'd swallowed, wiping his lower lip with the edge of a knuckle. “I'm not concerned with you fallin'. You'd probably just drag yourself out the door anyway.”

Kellan had no doubt that it was true. If there was one thing that Kiara was, it was determined. It had showed through even when she'd been a child, taking ballet far more seriously than any of the other kids in her class. If Kellan tried to confine her in her bedroom, she would somehow find a way to get out when he wasn't looking.

It all unraveled so quickly. Two powerful, possessive men, one jealous member of her company with a knife in hand, and Kiara was bleeding out backstage, just minutes before she was set to go on. If she thought back on it, the few fragmented memories she had of the hospital in Russia, she was surprised she survived long enough to make contact with Kellan. The text was just an address, painstakingly typed out and checked twice over for error before she slipped back into unconsciousness. 

He’d shown up for her. In all honesty, Kiara had never really doubted he would. So many of her other family members would have asked questions she had neither the time nor energy to answer. Kellan just brought her unconscious body back to Ireland and hid her in a cottage on the coast. Kiara was silently grateful for his actions. She trusted no one else to make decisions for her - no one else made the same decisions she would have. 

Healing from a knifed organ turned out to be a long, slow process. She’d been bedridden for several weeks, relying on Kellan for everything, from feeding her to helping her stay clean to carrying her to the bathroom. The pain medication dulled humiliation’s sharp edge until it barely cut into her consciousness, need overriding self awareness. Kiara had no memory of what she’d said to Kellan during those times. If it was anything too incriminating, he hadn’t let on. Kiara had so many secrets locked in her head that letting even one loose could be deadly. Maybe she ought to be appreciative for Kellan still keeping her alive.

Kellan unpacked the bag, moving about the kitchen and placing the sandwiches on plates. He liked the kitchen and the little house it dwelled in. He liked Fanad, with its shores and its cliffs and its lighthouse and busybody people who sniffed around the end of the driveway whenever they passed by. Kellan could have down without them, but it was amusing enough to sit on the front porch with his coffee and book, giving passersbys looks of disdain and watching them power walk their way down the hill.

The reason for needing the cottage didn't sit well with him. He knew it was stupid to go back to Russia just to hunt down the bitch who had attacked Kiara, but he still wanted to. He wouldn't, of course, because he wasn't a stupid man and that was a stupid decision, but he wanted to. Kiara was far too precious to him to not feel protective over.

Balancing the two plates on his forearms, glass of water in hand, Kellan stepped out of the kitchen and down the short hallway, moving to Kiara's bedroom. His lips twitched into a soft smile as he sat on the edge of the bed, placing a plate in front of her. “You look better.”

And she did. When Kellan had first arrived in Russia, lost and angry and unable to communicate with most of the people he spoke to, he had truly thought Kiara had died. There had been nothing in her message to indicate that she was alive, that something good had happened, and he had assumed the worst. Why else would she send him just an address? A message like that could only mean one thing, and Kellan had been twitching with the urgency to find her before he'd even boarded the plane in Dublin.

Seeing her alive had been a relief, but seeing her in that condition had been...unnerving.

"Fuck." As much as she just wanted to go out and have fun with her friends, there was something almost fun about knowing that Hayden would come after her. Zoya would prefer if he stayed, even if he had to stay glued to her side, and give her more time to dance, but the spike in her pulse as she grabbed Ana’s hand and dragged her through the crowd was undeniably exciting. Zoya knew from experience that it would only make the disappointed drive home worse.

The next time his voice sounded, he was closer. A lot closer. Zoya almost thought she could feel his heat on her back, looming without touching. They’d sparred often enough for her to know if they got into it in the club they’d cause quite a scene. Not that Zoya wanted to fight back. Hurting her bodyguard because he was doing his job just seemed incredibly ungrateful, both for the time he was putting in and the money her father was spending for her protection. She didn’t really remember the time before they’d been wealthy, young as she was, but the appreciation stuck.

With a graceless shove of his elbow into a college-aged boy caring a beer stumbling backward into him, Hayden move with purposeful, angry strides. Why did she had to do this to him? It wasn't like Hayden breathed down her neck every minute of the day. He didn't even force her to shower with the door open, or sleep in the same room as him. There were some bodyguards who took their jobs too literally, in his opinion, and he didn't. Giving her the freedom to go out at all was a fucking privileged, and constantly being defied was starting to gyrate on his nerves.

When she stopped, Hayden pulled back, spine straight and shoulders pushed  back. Neither Zoya or Ana were particularly short women, but he still had enough height on them, and he made a point to fill out as much space as possible. If she wanted to make a run for it around him, he wanted to be within grabbing distance.

“Zoya,” he said, lips pressed into a thin line as he glanced at Ana. She didn't look a single shade of pleased to be stuck in front of him. Hayden flicked his gaze back at Zoya. “What the hell do you think you're doing? You just disappeared. I thought you could've been in actual trouble.”

Ana didn't say anything, eyes rolling up and finding something suddenly very interesting about the ceiling. At least she wasn't fighting it.

Hayden looked Zoya over, scanning her from head to toe for any signs of distress. Ignoring the fact that she'd slipped out of his sight again and probably wasn't going to be skipping and jumping to the car, she looked fine. Hayden's shoulders slipped a notch. It was always a worry for him, that when Zoya slipped out to go to a club or a bar or a party or wherever she wanted to go, she would end up hurt, kidnapped or even worse.

When he told her he hadn’t left anything in the cab, Ree let out a breath she didn’t know she’d been holding. She didn’t trust him - that would have been insurmountably stupid. But if he knew enough not to take his stuff with him, he wouldn’t be as much deadweight as she was expecting. If he’d forgotten something, that was on his own head.

For the second time since she’d entered the room, Ree looked around. That first search had been pure security, making sure no one had any nasty surprises where she didn’t want them. This time, her gaze was more assessing, lingering on the stained green drapes over the large window. She flicked the safety back on her gun, shoving it in the front of her leggings as she stood. Good gun protocol? Absolutely not. But for the moment, it would do. Ree practiced vigilance often enough that she had the confidence to make reckless choices and know they’d turn out alright. 

The room darkened as soon as she pulled the curtains shut, light taking on a yellower tint reflective of the overhead light. It was the best she could do. She had no doubt that the windows in this place weren’t bulletproof, but the likelihood of a drive by shooting, with a view that faced only the dumpsters, was slim.

She had. God, she had. Miles had never hated his life for being mundane and easy to glide by on, because it meant that nothing unpredictable happened. Sure, his dad dying had been unpredictable and his mother's car tended to have a mind of its own when it decided to break down, but those were every day, normal things that could happen in life. No pretty girls with guns and cold, snake-life voices were part of his every day routine.

Miles' fingertips twitched against his thigh. He flattened his palms against his jeans, letting out a deep sigh and forcing himself to focus on her.

He'd never seen her before. He was sure of it. Living in New York meant that he came into a lot of contact with a lot of different people, but he would remember her face, if only because he'd forced himself to look back in his memories of the past year, picking out anyone with her chin, her eyes, her lips, her height and hair. Nothing clicked, which meant she probably hadn't targeted his taxi in specific. Which meant he was collateral, and he didn't want to tack damage onto the end of that.

“Phone? Oh, phone, yeah.” Sliding his hands off his thighs, he stood slowly, every movement careful and deliberate, eyes steady on her. He wouldn't attack her, but that didn't mean she wouldn't look at any sudden movements as an attack. Miles dug a hand into his back pocket, pulling out his phone—a model from a few years before and not a touchscreen—and handing it out to her, the SIM card and battery following.

Want was a good way to describe what Nikolai felt for Oliver. Desire like this was rare enough for him, the sort of thing he’d experienced a few times during his life, but never really marked him. Most of the time, when Nikolai had sex, it was a fight. Teeth and nails, grabbing and pulling and shoving and taking to the point of orgasm. Beyond that, he and his sexual partners had little to do with each other. They went on their ways, Nikolai went on his, and their paths didn’t cross again. Maybe once before had he desired someone the way he did Oliver, the way he wanted to bury his cock inside him, bracket him with his arms and feel Oliver’s limbs around him, shaking with need. It burned inside his skin, the knowledge that Oliver was here, that Nikolai could have him in every way he could think of and then some. He wanted to go again, and again, and again, leave the mark of his teeth on the insides of Oliver’s thighs and the feel of his cock inside him, so that Oliver knew where Nikolai had been with every step he took. That was new too, the spark of reaction to Oliver’s limp. Every place Oliver and Nikolai intersected was uncharted territory, and yet when Oliver stretched himself out, Nikolai’s mind cleared of all that. Oliver was here, in his arms and under his chest and Nikolai’s, for as long as he could keep him.

“Why not?” Nikolai nipped his collarbone, kissing open mouthed at the little white mark left behind where his teeth had been, already fading into his skin. “Ты красивая. Я хочу тебя.” He hummed, running his hand down Oliver’s side, from his ribcage over his thigh, fingers dipping in between his legs, stroking the inside of his knee. “Don’t tell me you’re tired already.” Oliver, insatiable as he was, worn out after one night. After they’d been fucking for months, so far over the line of handler and agent that Nikolai could barely imagine what it would be like if he’d done what he was supposed to, there were times when he’d just lay in bed, pull Oliver back against his chest or kiss him breathless and finger him, stroke his cock until he spilled between them, arching and demanding and so full of energy (and beyond that, stamina) that Nikolai could only watch appreciatively, pressing Oliver onto his back once his cock perked up again. And now he was tired after one night. Nikolai was too, but the fullness of his bladder had him half hard, and it seemed like a better idea to fuck Oliver again than get out of bed.

Curling his hand around Oliver’s thigh, a small smile raised the corner of Nikolai’s mouth. He’d never say as much, but he liked the way they touched. It had been disarming when he first started waking up in bed with Oliver, another person’s body tucked close to him, his right arm asleep where Oliver’s weight rested on it, but when they’d parted, Nikolai missed it more than he’d expected. It made him weak, whatever lay between Oliver and him. If he stayed true to his training, he would have given up on it long ago. Specifically when he should have killed Oliver instead of letting him go.

There had been no Nikolai Maslak. How the hell had he existed without Nikolai?

Oliver’s head tipped back, eyes half-closed and mouth turned up into a smile. Teeth, tongue, hands—Oliver would take anything Nikolai was willing to give him.

"Это прозвучало почти романтично. Собираетесь ли вы мягкий на меня?" he murmured, voice husky and thick with sleep and desire. His leg slipped down, the side of his knee touching the mattress as he let out a moan, hips twitching up. He was spent from the night before, but his body still sparked up with hot-white pleasure when Nikolai touched him. “I’m not tired. I’m just…resting. For round twenty.”

It hadn’t been twenty rounds. Oliver knew that much. As blurry as the haze of sex he’d gone through the night before was, he knew that not even years of celibacy would give him enough energy to fuck for that long. It had been years since he’d gone all night, sprawled out on his stomach and drawing lazy patterns on his partner’s side, resting and waiting for his cock to perk up again. He’d been younger then, too, when he and Nikolai had been intimate, and the years that had passed had dampened his libido.

Mostly, he corrected, tipping his head down and sliding his hand from Nikolai’s shoulder and down his back, thumbing riding over the bumps of his spine. There had been people Oliver had slept with, shedding the last of his shame off his shoulders when he’d stepped off the plane and told himself he could never go back to America. What was the point in feeling shame about what he liked when he didn’t need to be Oliver Kennedy Hayes anymore?

This was different. This was Nikolai, the man he’d known since he was a child of merely ten, and he was the one who’d built him up, made him into who he was today. Or, at least, had a part in it.

Oliver pushed up onto an elbow, fingers digging into Nikolai’s shoulder as he sat up, hips stuttering up with a jerky movement. “We’re not going anywhere if you have your hand on my dick,” he said, fingertips dancing down his spine again. “No shower, no coffee. We’ll probably never leave this bed. Hell, I might end up dying of starvation mid-fuck.”

His hand flattened against his shoulder, tipping his head down to brush his lips across Nikolai’s cheekbone. He’d missed touching. It wasn’t easy to touch people so intimately when you were constantly on the run and glancing over your shoulder, and Oliver had never been particularly touchy-feely. It wasn’t how he was raised. His parents had never put much stock in touching beyond what was socially acceptable in public. A pat on the back, a one-armed hug. Nothing which lasted more than a few seconds.

Touch with Nikolai was different. It always had been. He had known Nikolai since he was a child and their relationship had always been an odd one. He had twenty years on him, had been through harder times than Oliver could ever dream of, and he’d seen and done things Oliver hadn’t been able to deal with—but he’d been the only one to touch him constantly. Even when they weren’t sleeping together and Oliver was just a teenager, Nikolai had been the one to touch him. Even when it was just training, it had been touch, and Oliver had felt like a dying man in the desert tasting water for the first time in years when Nikolai touched his skin.

Hayden hated going out. More specifically, he hated her going out. If he had his way, Zoya would never go to another club or bar or house party. He’d probably restrict her to the library, bookstores, coffee shops, class, and other places where Zoya’s dad-unfriendly clothes would stay in the closet. Within a few minutes of her and Ana going somewhere fun, Hayden would pull her away and insist they go home. Zoya had no doubts that he’d carry her if she resisted.

So she’d devised a different solution. Zoya had never snuck out of the house in high school, never even broken curfew. Student of Krav Maga or not, she knew it would have been hard to defend herself in the high heels and fashionable clothes demanded just to step onto Russian streets. On her first day of university in England, she’d been shocked to see more than one person wore sweatpants to class.

Even now, Zoya was sometimes taken aback by the lax standards of dress here. She’d been told several times to just sneak out of her apartment in plain clothes and change in the car, but she refused. Bad enough to let Ana and her friends see her barefoot, heels in hand. It was just wrong to undress the way they suggested she should. Besides, then she wouldn’t have to go get her original clothes from the car when Hayden inevitably came to find her. She’d never had a walk of shame, but Zoya imagined it felt something like Hayden pulling her out of a club, face stormy.

While she danced, she kept an eye on the front door, looking for the wild, tall blondness that would announce Hayden’s arrival. At first Zoya had tried to pull him into the crowd, bodies pressed close on all sides. It would do him good to let loose a little. If anyone here wished her ill, they’d be a kidnapper, not an assassin. Zoya was most valuable alive.

On one of her glances around the club, Zoya saw what she’d been keeping an eye out for. Hayden was a distinctive man, hard to miss or confuse someone else for. She’d only made a mistake once.

Only he wasn't that cruel and he wasn't that disrespectful. He might have a tap on her phone but he didn't read through her messages. He didn't scour her room for anything incriminating, didn't rummage through her drawers and her purse and catalog every object he found. Hell, he didn't even stand outside the bathroom door when she was showering. Hayden gave her her personal space, hyper aware every time he woke up on the uncomfortable couch that this wasn't his home and he was invading hers.

He liked to think he was giving Zoya her freedom. Apparently he was going to have to reel back on that.

It was easy to scan over the crowd. Being a good four to six inches taller than most people in the club had a lot to do with it, and being intimately familiar with what Zoya looked like at all angles was another. He knew her when she was sleeping on her stomach and her side, what she looked like when her head tipped back and she looked at the sky, what she looked like when she was bent over her laptop doing homework. Hayden didn't pride himself on knowing what she looked like at all angles; it was simply his job.

Moving through the throngs of people grouped together on the floor, he squinted past the flashing lights from above, eyes scanning over everyone with dark hair and enough height to be Zoya. Hayden wished he knew what the hell she was wearing, if she was in heels or flats, and how many inches of heel she was in if she were.

He saw her. She was moving away from him, and Hayden swore under his breath. Had she seen him? Probably. She knew he would come looking for her, that he would track her down eventually, and Zoya wasn't a stupid woman. Even when she broke the rules he'd set down for her own safety, he knew she could take care of herself.

“Zoya!” he called, pushing and elbowing those who collided with him, ignoring their shouts of fuck off and ouch. Hayden didn't care about what kind of bruises he left on them. The only thing that mattered was getting to Zoya and getting the hell out of there. There was something entirely discomforting about being in a club with dimmed and flashing coloured lights, where spiked drinks happened and it was easy to get lost in the crowd.

"If I wanted you dead," Ree snapped, "I’d have shot you in your taxi, dug out the bullet, and been on my merry way." Another thing she had no time for right now was smart-mouthing. Quips had their time and place. Namely: not now, and not here. Miles could crack wise all he wanted on his own time. On Ree’s, she expected him to take this seriously.

"Okay, Miles." Create a connection with the hostage, make him feel as though he was part of the proceedings, rather than a simple bystander. "Here’s the plan. You and I are going to stay the night here. As long as you do what I say, you’ll be safe. Tomorrow morning, we’re going to leave out the back. Follow my lead exactly. From there you have a choice. You can go back home and take your chances, or you can come with me. Whatever you do, you can never affiliate yourself with that taxi company again. Quit, steal all records of your employment and anything that might lead back to you, and burn them. Burn a few others while you’re at it. Do you understand me?”

God, his mother was going to kill him.

He blinked. “Right. Right.” Sighing, he shoved a hand through his hair, tugging at a chunk and trying to focus on what was going on. Miles might have been a lot of things, but he wanted to live. Preferably to see the next morning. “This is so fucked.”

It was. Fuck, it was. Maybe if he had been like every other kid in his class and just taken out student loans that would take him twenty years to pay off he wouldn't be in this mess. Maybe if he'd convinced his mother to move to a smaller town, open up her own business, try for somewhere new, this wouldn't be happening.

Shit luck for him, because it was happening, and the only person he could trust was the girl in front of him who'd pointed a gun at him in the first place.

And now the girl looked more like a hissing cobra than a human. Miles drew back sharply, eyes narrowed and wary as he spoke. “No,” he said, the word clipped shorter than he intended, his voice harder than he'd wanted. He was exhausted and pissed off and worried and exhausted, and he didn't have the energy to deal with king cobras masquerading as college-aged girls. “You might've turned my world upside fucking down but I'm not stupid.”

With a snapped goodbye in Welsh, Ree dropped her cell phone on the bed. It bounced a few inches into the air, propelled by the shoddy springs of the Motel Six mattress. On the other side of the bed, where there should be no one at all, sat the taxi driver she’d kidnapped, right where she’d left him before she dialed Vaughn’s number. Fuck.

Carefully schooling her face into an impassive, tight mask, Ree dropped onto the bed, legs crossed and gun cradled in her hands. Ready to fire at a moment’s notice. She hadn’t fucked up a job this badly since she as nineteen, on the botched mission in Prague that ended with four extra men dead and a pregnant woman clinging her her young daughter’s hand, staring at Ree in abject horror. She’d saved the woman for the sake of her unborn child even as she hated her for it. 

She ought to just kill the driver where he sat. No one had seen him come in; Ree made sure of that. She’d paid with cash, kept her face turned away from all the cameras. It would take only a few seconds to draw a knife and throw it. At such a close range, Ree couldn’t miss. Twist it to obscure the entry wound, clean it off on his clothes and pocket it. No one would be able to catch her. Ree couldn’t even say what stayed her hand. She’d had more than enough opportunities. If she’d left him with his taxi, even, someone else would have done the job for her, clipping up loose ends.

It didn’t matter. Unless he fought, Ree had resolved to keep him alive. This was her mistake, her choice whether to have another casualty or not in an underground war.

He’d been calm there. Cool and collected, maybe, even with a girl with a gun sitting so close to him and telling him to drive like his life depended on it. Miles was pretty sure that he was going to have to quit driving after this for good; picking up strangers off the street for cash, even with the potential for good tips when he got a suited man or woman with flashy watches, didn’t seem that appealing anymore.

Miles bit the inside of his cheek, watching her, looking her over. She had a gun, he knew, but what else did she have on her? A knife, another weapon that could make his heart pick up and ram against his ribcage in fear? He didn’t know. That was the worst thing for Miles. He hated not knowing. Not knowing meant that he was open and vulnerable, left for the wolves and vultures to circle and slam into him without warning. Miles had never been a fan of the unknown when it came to the big picture, and right now the big picture was a pretty girl—and it was always pretty girls—holding him possibly hostage in a motel room with questionable stains of the carpet.

He swallowed, head jerking up as she spoke. Shit, she didn’t sound happy either, and Miles drew back. Not like a snake would but like a frightened deer in headlights. He’d probably end up jumpy and freaked out over the littlest noises after this. God, he was so fucked.