Sevastyan couldn’t be hurt too badly if he could move like that, right? He wrested the gun from the stunned man, then pistol-whipped Gleb with it. “How many more are there?” he roared.

Gleb’s face split into a macabre grin. Whatever he said sent Sevastyan into a deeper rage, his fist flying.

I scratched at my bloodstained hands as I watched Sevastyan beating a man to death. Another sizzling bolt forked out above, spotlighting a grisly blow.

I’d never seen anyone fight like Sevastyan. Fighting to kill.

This was Sevastyan at his most raw—and real. He was an enforcer, and killing was what he did.

When Gleb collapsed, unconscious, Sevastyan followed him down, dropping to his knees to continue annihilating the man. It was as if some demon had taken Sevastyan over. Gleb’s face was a pulp; with each of Sevastyan’s hits, blood sloshed up from it as if from a disturbed puddle.

When would this end? I opened the door, stumbling toward him. “Sevastyan, we have to leave!” Freezing rain drummed down. “You have to stop this!”

He peered at me, the headlights gleaming in his eyes. I saw madness—and something more. Like he wanted me to stop him—because he was still beating the man.

Between bouts of thunder, I thought I heard bone crunch.

Then I heard something even more terrifying.

Gunfire in the distance. It sounded like a battlefield. The loyal and the disloyal waging all-out war? Sevastyan heard it too. His expression said he was desperate to join that fray.

If anything happened to him . . . if I lost both Sevastyan and Paxán in one blood-drenched night . . . ?

I remembered Paxán’s words: Extreme violence. Extreme vigilance. “You said you keep your promises, Sevastyan. You swore to keep me safe.”

He gazed up at me through rain-thickened lashes, his eyes aglow. I was drowning in them. We were drowning together. I held out my tremulous hand.

As if in a daze, he rose, seeming helpless not to come for me.

Chapter 27

“Will you let me look at your arm?” I asked Sevastyan for the tenth time. I figured I’d keep asking until he responded.

His clothes had dried on him, but he refused to move from the yacht’s steering wheel. For hours, the engines had hummed unceasingly as he’d guided us upriver, our end destination unknown.

He sat on the captain’s bench in the luxurious cockpit, his body rigid with strain. The muted instrument lights illuminated his weary face, those compelling features, his fathomless gaze.

This was the man who’d lunged in front of bullets for me. Who’d killed to protect me. On our first night together, he’d told me, “I will eliminate any threat to you, pitilessly.”

He had.

The glow from the dash highlighted streaks of dried blood across his cheek, neck, and the ripped material around his injured arm.

How much of that blood was his? Gleb’s?

Paxán’s?

“It’s just a graze,” Sevastyan said at length. “I’ve had worse.”

I knew. I’d seen the scars. Encouraged that he was at least talking to me, I asked, “Can’t you take a break? Haven’t we run far enough?”

I’d discovered that running was precisely what this boat had been equipped for. In one of the stately cabins below, I’d found new passports—for Natalya and Roman Sevastyan, a married couple—trunks of our clothing, and a trove of cash. Just-in-case precautions.

In case had happened.

Inside another cabin, I’d also discovered some of Paxán’s things. After the events of the night, this inclusion had seemed . . . naïvely optimistic. Tears had stung my eyes like needles, but I’d tried to stem them, tried to be strong.

I’d managed to hold back as I washed off and dressed in slacks and a sweater. But now, imagining Sevastyan’s own devastation, my eyes watered once more. Aside from me, he was the only other person alive who understood what the world had lost tonight. “We need to clean your injury and then you can rest.”

“Later.” Without looking away from his course, he said, “You’re not safe.”

“Who were you talking to earlier?” When I’d returned to the cockpit after changing, I’d heard Sevastyan on the phone, speaking in terse Russian: “I’ve never asked you for anything. Secure it.” Then, in a lower tone, “Do you understand the importance of what I’m entrusting to you?” Before hanging up, he’d said, “Do not consider this a chance for something more.”

What had that meant? And why had his very accent changed? It’d sounded like a different dialect.

Maybe a Siberian one? “Will you please talk to me, Sevastyan? I have so many questions, and I’m so sick of being confused.”

He exhaled. “Then ask.”

“What will happen to Paxán?” My voice broke.

Gaze fixed on the horizon, he said, “If those defending Berezka win, they will see to . . . they will take care of him.” His voice was a rasp. “Once I feel it’s safe enough for you to return, we would have . . . the funeral.”

I’d never looked at a man and known he was dying inside. But how could I expect anything different? Sevastyan had chosen me to live—over the man he hero-worshipped.

He’d saved me over his own savior.

How conflicted he must be. For myself, I felt a deep welling of grief. But it was pure.

Sevastyan looked like he was slowly crumbling.

I reached for his good arm. “I only knew Paxán for a couple of weeks. If I loved him this much, I can’t imagine what you must be feeling. I’m so sorry you had to choose.”

“There was no choice,” he said, but the guilt was plain on his face. “You heard his last words.”

I tried not to think about that. About being given. A decree sanctified by blood.

I changed the subject. “Can you at least tell me where we’re going?”

“I don’t know. Don’t know who we can trust. Everything is different now,” he said. “And though Travkin is dead, there will still be danger until all the players know the bounty has expired. The snake still twists even after it loses its head.”

Travkin. Just the name made my blood boil. I wanted revenge against that nameless, faceless thug, blamed him so much more than even Filip. My cousin had merely been the deceitful, ungrateful weapon; Travkin had pulled the trigger. “You truly killed him?”

Sevastyan nodded.

Then even from the grave, Travkin had effected my father’s death. “How did you get to him? He must’ve had an army of guards.”

With a menacing look, Sevastyan bit out, “I was unexpected.”

“That’s all you’re going to tell me?” I asked in disbelief. “Did you know that Travkin had put a bounty on me too?”

Sevastyan finally turned to me. “I found out five minutes before I walked into his customary haunt and plugged a bullet between his eyes.”

I swallowed, trying to imagine this man striding into the lion’s den like that. For me. “You could’ve been killed.”

Gaze back on the water, he said, “You need to rest, Natalie. You were in shock earlier. Go below.”

“I don’t like below. I’ve never been on a boat like this.” The farther we got from Berezka, the rougher the water had become. Hearing the waves slapping against the bottom of the boat terrified me. Surely it was only a matter of time before the hull cracked like an egg. “I’ve never been out on the water when there’s no land in sight.” Strange, even though I had no visual of the shore—no lights shone in the distance—I still felt like the world was burning all around me. Being close to Sevastyan made that feeling recede.

When we hit a larger swell, he muttered, “It’s not a boat; it’s a ship. And you’re perfectly safe on it.”

“All the same.” I climbed up onto the spacious captain’s bench beside him, sitting thigh to thigh. Maybe I needed to be near Sevastyan because of what we’d been through together. Maybe we needed each other because we’d both left pieces of our hearts back at Berezka.

Time passed. I lost my battle against tears. While I silently cried, Sevastyan stared out into the black.

Boom. Boom. Boom.

I woke in one of the cabins, tucked under the covers. I had vague recollections of repeatedly jerking awake against Sevastyan’s side, until I’d gone under for good. He’d moved me? And changed my clothes? I was dressed only in one of his undershirts.

It was still dark outside, but I had no idea what time it might be; fall in Russia meant vanishing hours of light.

I could tell we were stationary. Maybe Sevastyan had come down here to rest.

To grieve.

Boom. Boom. What was that hammering sound? I rose to investigate. As I made my way toward the source, I wondered how it would be with Sevastyan and me today. Would he expect us to abide by Paxán’s dying wishes?

Would I abide by them? Accepting Sevastyan as mine? I remembered how I’d felt at the thought of losing him too.

As if barbed wire had been tightening around my heart.

Boom. Boom. I followed the sound to another cabin. When Sevastyan didn’t answer my knock, I eased the door open. I heard the shower running in the attached bathroom—the booming was coming from within.

As a sinking suspicion took hold, I hastened into the bathroom. I sucked in a breath at the scene before me.

Naked under the spray of water, with his eyes glazed over and his teeth bared, Sevastyan was punching the stone shower enclosure with his battered fists. The steaming cascade hit his chest as he struck, over and over, as if at an invisible enemy.

If he’d been granite under pressure, now he was fracturing right before my eyes—just like the stone he pummeled.

“What are you doing?” I cried. How could he keep this up? His fists bled; more blood trickled from a knot of cloth he’d tied tight around his bicep, his idea of a bandage for his bullet wound. It formed a groove between bulges of muscle. “Please stop!”

He didn’t.

“Stop!” I tore open the shower door and scrambled inside, grasping his uninjured arm with both hands.

He was a killer, volatile and violent, but I felt no fear of him. Not even when he whirled around on me, black hair whipping over his cheek. He was breathtaking. Real. Raw.

Mine, my mind whispered.

That sense of connection to him flared like a blinding light.

Between gritted teeth, he said, “Leave.” His eyes were bleak, his noble face filled with such pain.

I could ease it. “I won’t leave you like this.”

“Why? You don’t give a f**k about me. Not beyond what I can do for you.”

Did he mean beyond pleasure? Beyond his protection? I remembered his parting words after our fight: Beyond sex, anything with me doesn’t appeal to you. “You’re so wrong, Sevastyan.”

He just stared at me. What was he looking for? Permission? Understanding? Finally he moved, placing his palms on the wall on either side of my head, boxing me in.

His star tattoos were at my eye level, mere inches away, beckoning me. I wanted to wrap my arms around him and press my lips to his chest.

Kiss him and kiss him and kiss him until all his pain disappeared.

Tentatively, I leaned forward to graze my lips over one of his tattoos. He flinched as if I’d struck him, but he didn’t stop me. I chanced a brush of my lips over his neck. He was motionless, a statue on the outside, a brutal enforcer on the inside.

I nuzzled the rugged line of his jaw. I smoothed those locks of hair away, then kissed the chiseled cheek I revealed.

When I slanted my lips over his, he shuddered out a breath and drew back. Blazing in his gaze was that bone-deep yearning, the one that called to mine. “What do you want from me, Natalie?”

How to articulate it? I want to kiss you until you forget your pain for a time, want to hold you tight against me because I can’t seem to get my body close enough to yours. In other words . . . “I want you to make love to me.”

Before, I hadn’t slept with him because of the future and consequences. I wasn’t sure I would live long enough to enjoy the former, so I couldn’t be bothered with the latter.

At my admission, his brows drew tight; he looked like he was unraveling.

I asked him, “What do you want from me?”

I gasped when he fisted the collar of my dampened shirt. “I want what’s mine.” He tore the material from me with one rip, stripping me.

I was trembling, bare.

As his gaze raked over my na**d body, he couldn’t bite back his anguished groan.

Sevastyan looked at me like a man plummeting toward death would look at a pair of wings. As if I were the difference between life or death for him.

I laid my palms over his star tattoos; he cradled my face. His forehead met mine. For long moments, we stayed like that.

When he took my mouth with his at last, I parted my lips in welcome, closing my eyes as he softly kissed me. God, I loved his taste, wanted to drink in the heat of his mouth.

As ever, I was struck by the contradictions of this man. He was tender, yet carnal. His thoughts were a mystery, but his body told a story—of his restraint: rippling muscles, heaving chest, shaking hands.

With a groan, he flicked his tongue harder against mine, telling me that he was about to deepen this kiss. Telling me that he was about to claim this part of me, with the rest of my body to follow.

That he was about to conquer.

And when I surrendered utterly, he consumed me like he’d been suffocating and I was the sweetest air.

Chapter 28

Sevastyan kissed me until I was dazed, boneless against his hardened body. I clung to him when he yanked my knee to his hip, clamping it there.