Dimitri Read online

  Lifting my hands, I placed them on his broad shoulders, then thought what the hell and lost myself to him. Wrapping my arms around him, I let a hand bury deep into his thick raven’s-wing black hair and moaned while he kissed me. When we parted, I think I whimpered. I had come from something as simple as a kiss and the jackass knew it. I saw the laughter in his eyes, the delight that he had done that to me. He lifted a hand and dragged his thumb over my lower lip. In Russian, he spoke to me, telling me something about flowers, and from the huskiness in his voice, I could bet it was something sexual for sure.

  In English, I replied the only way I could. “Oh, go fuck yourself.” Angry with myself and my traitorous body, I ran off, thankful that he let me go. Dammit, I shouldn’t react that way with a man that wanted me for the most obvious of reasons, to get close to my family. It was clear now that had to be it, right? I couldn’t allow myself to think he wanted me for me. No man ever had.

  Chapter Five

  Dimitri

  Watching her run had been the hardest thing I’d ever done. However, the best thing I had done was kiss her. She was perfection. It solidified in my mind that she was exactly who and what I needed and wanted in my life. This woman was my waking fantasy. She was every man’s dream, yet she seemed to not realize it, and that had me wondering why. I whistled and watched Ivan coming toward me from one of the busier areas of the pathway. I smiled at my friend, then laughed at the look I was given.

  “It was a bitch to keep people off the path so that you could have your time with your woman.”

  “And I thank you for that. It was very good, but now I have more questions and a few answers. She tastes delicious.” I couldn’t help but smile. The taste of her was still on my tongue and I loved it. Her reactions to me when she gave in were real. She couldn’t deny that she wanted me as much as I wanted her. For those brief moments she had thrown caution to the wind and had allowed her emotions free. In those moments, I had felt the real her, and I knew she was truly it for me. The woman was going to be my weakness, and I was going to have to protect far better than I protected my back. This woman was going to be everything to me, and I was goddamn going to be everything to her. I was hers and she was going to be mine. I just had to figure out how to find a way around her family, around her thinking I was her stalker, around her thinking that I was sleeping with Susan. “Fuck,” I said aloud. Goddammit that one pissed me off more than anything else. I wouldn’t put my dick in that bitch for anything.

  “So, you kissed her?” Ivan’s teasing laugh was enough to make me want to punch my too-smug bodyguard slash friend. “Before you kill me, I should tell you that her father has guards on her twenty-four-seven. I don’t know why they weren’t here following her this morning or how she slipped past them, but it’s important you find that out. These guards are good. From what we were able to find out, they are former SEALs, served with her brother, at least the ones who guard Scarlett. The ones that were at the ball last night are hired muscle, because one of the men had to go to DC to testify behind closed doors and so did the other. Some serious shit is happening in that house, and I would really like to find out what.”

  “So would I. We need to get bugs into that house, or eyes. I want to know what is happening in the Vanderwall house and need to know why I’ve never been able to buy them off.”

  “That will never happen, boss,” Ivan told me and took a step back.

  “Why the fuck isn’t it going to happen?” I demanded.

  “Because they are richer than any other family on this continent or any other. They have no political aspirations, and even if they did, they would be able to attain them without much work at all since most of their family have been beloved political figures way back time and time again. They also have only one daughter. She’s the first girl born in just over a hundred and twenty-five years. You get my drift here, boss? The Vanderwalls are not going to let you into her life without giving you some serious shit.”

  “No girls in that long? How the fuck is that possible?” That wasn’t something that happened in today’s age. What the hell was that all about? A century and a quarter and no girls? That was fucked up. No, they had to be incorrect in their genealogy. There had to be someone hidden. I would find that hidden person, and they would be my leverage. That would be my in so that I could have Scarlett. “I want you to do your own digging into their past. I don’t care what resources you have to use or what you have to do. Assign it to Egrend. He’s good with research. I want to know every single fucking thing there is about that family, going back to when they were in England. I want to know absolutely everything. I want to know how their money began. Trace back everything for me, Ivan. I want to know all of it.”

  “You got it,” Ivan said with a nod. “Oh, one more thing. Susan is a righteous bitch and is demanding money. What do you want done with her?”

  “Kill her. Make it look like an accident. Everyone knows that she’s got a penchant for coke and driving too fast. Get it done, but ensure that we all have an airtight alibi first.”

  “Will do, boss.” That was the good thing about Ivan. He knew exactly what I wanted and needed and would get it done without me needing to hold his dick to do it. I watched Ivan turn to move away, and I myself turned to leave the path. Once again I wondered why it was that Scarlett ran on open paths instead of in the woods like the rest of the people in Arlington. Most people ran in the woods so they could stay the fuck out of the paparazzi’s eyes, but not Scarlett. She didn’t give a fuck whose cameras saw her. She stayed instead front and center. She almost dared people to look at her and say something. She was an odd one. I didn’t understand her, but I liked her. And I would get to know more about her.

  An hour later I was sitting behind my oak desk, flipping through what little information I had on Scarlett Vanderwall. I frowned. So, Susan had been correct. Scarlett had been overweight when she was younger. However, from what I was able to garner, the woman had worked hard to get every single extra ounce from her delicious body and had done it the healthy way and not in the way that so many socialites had done previously. She hadn’t gone to a doctor to get lifts, tucks, and silicone. No, she had instead taken up healthy eating and, if what he was reading was correct, had taken up a shit load of martial arts, personal fighting techniques, and many other physical activities that had taught her protection but had also trimmed her body in all the right places. There was no wonder when I touched her I wanted to run my hands down her body and pull her in closer. It had taken every ounce of my self-control in order to pull back from her. It had been so hard to let her go. I wanted to take her and toss her beautiful ass over my shoulder and bring her home with me. Fuck conventional standards and fuck what the American laws stated. I wanted her and I would have her. Now it was all a matter of waiting to see what my men came up with, because it was still bugging the fuck out of me that she was the first woman born to the Vanderwalls in over a century. That simply wasn’t right.

  It was as I sat there tapping my fingers and looking at Scarlett’s picture as she ran that Ivan and Dafid entered together. Fuck, this wasn’t going to be good.

  ****

  Dafid

  I hated dealing bad news to my boss. He was good to me and had saved my ass years ago, when we were both in a prison in Siberia. I would go to the wall for my boss, my friend, and sadly right now I was going to have to give him some shit news that I knew was going to make him getting the woman he wanted even harder. This wasn’t going to be easy, which was why I had asked Ivan to come with me. “Egrend passed this file to me and is terrified to give it to you.” I looked Dimitri in the eye because I knew that was the only way he would understand that what I had to say to him was the absolute truth and not a ball of lies like he was expecting. I knew Dimitri just like Ivan did. The three of us had been through hell and back again, so the only way he would trust and believe in us was if I was actually facing him and telling him what was found out about his woman. Dimitri was a cold son of a bitch
and I damn well knew it, just like Ivan and I were, but Dimitri took it to a whole different level.

  “Tell me.” Dimitri leaned back and leveled his gaze upon me. He wasn’t going to believe what was going to be presented to him, but it was the truth. Hell, I had gone over every single line of the information myself after Egrend had run, and it was one hundred percent accurate.

  “The Vanderwalls were originally from England and have a standing claim to a throne. Granted the claim is hundreds deep or more and would take a fucking massacre of epic proportions to put them on a throne, but all the same they have a claim. So there is that.” I saw Dimitri’s eye twitch and knew that he didn’t like that idea in the least, but fuck it, I should lead with that part first. “So starting there the birthrate for women has been notoriously low. We are talking they have always had to marry to get fucking women in their lives low. Since the twelve hundreds they’ve had a total of three women born, your Scarlett being one of the three.”

  “Are you fucking kidding me?” He rose slightly from his chair. Dimitri’s hands were braced on the desk, and he was pissed. Yeah, it was good that Egrend had passed the files over to me, because the poor kid would have pissed himself right now.

  “No, wish I was but I’m not. That’s why the guards are on her. Evidently she’s always had guards, but they were ones that blended into the scenery, ones she wasn’t aware of, until she turned twenty while at school and her father received a death threat against her. Not because of her. Hell, the faculty and students fucking worship the ground that woman walks on, but,” and this was where he was not going to like it, “we don’t know. Fuck, her father doesn’t know. There have been continuous threats on her life for the last several years and no one knows where they are coming from or who is making them. No demands for money. This person is fucking good. No DNA traces, no two threats have been mailed from the same place, and every single one of them have been mailed from small town USA with no cameras, and the local postal clerks have been on vacation or sick, so whoever is doing this is organized and they are planning well in advance. If I didn’t know better, I would swear it was something that was being done by either NSA or even one of Mother Russia’s agencies, but there is zero chatter, and we both know that there would be some sort of blip on someone’s radar if it was. There is nothing, so this is homegrown somehow and they are keeping quiet as church mice.”

  Again with the fucking twitch in my boss’s eye. That was the only emotion he showed, and I knew that whoever it was that was threatening his woman was a dead man and any who helped them were going to die as well, slowly, painfully.

  “Find them. I don’t know what the Vanderwalls have done to try to ferret them out, but I’m sure they’ve gone the legal way. We don’t have to. Do anything you have to in order to find them,” Dimitri said finally. Well, that wasn’t a shock that he wanted whoever had put a target on his woman’s head. “Tell me more about her being the only woman. I don’t understand this.”

  “From what is in the doctor’s files that Egrend picked up, it’s a genetic anomaly. They have never been able to figure it out either, so the likelihood of you ever having a daughter with her would be slim.” I disliked telling Dimitri that, but he needed to know.

  “Just as well. I need sons to take over from me, not daughters. Daughters are weaknesses I don’t need. Fuck, a woman is a weakness I don’t need, but I want her and will have her.”

  “I understand, boss, and I have a feeling she will make you stronger than you think,” I said with a smile. While Dimitri might think a woman would make him weak, I had a feeling that the delectable Scarlett Vanderwall was going to surprise him. I lay the folders down on his desk and smiled. “She’s going to give you hell, boss. She’s got more training than some of your men. When you bring her home, you are going to have to be careful who you put in charge of guarding her, or she might just kill one or two of them before they all figure out that she’s deadlier than she looks.” I opened the folder so he could see just who had trained her. The man that had trained me and Dimitri in cage fighting. When I had read that this morning, I’d nearly shit myself. This woman was a bundle of surprises, and I liked her more and more already. I couldn’t wait to see the fireworks fly and see who tamed whom first. The Boss or The Beauty.

  ****

  Dimitri

  Seeing the file flipped open to Stefan Boritz, I saw red. This man had put me and Dafid through fucking hell when he’d taught us the most brutal cage fighting that I’ve ever experienced in my life, and to think he might have taught the delicate flower I’d kissed on the running path something similar? My blood boiled, but I ignored it and kept myself calm and cold so I could assess everything before I decided if I was going to kill Stefan or not for putting his hands on Scarlett. “The list is impressive on what she learned. Does her family know her full accolades?”

  “No, they don’t,” Dafid told me with that smirk he was wearing. If my friend wasn’t careful, I was going to reach out and wrap my hands around his neck. I was pissed off right now, mostly because it seemed that my dainty winter rose wasn’t as delicate as I had assumed. She was, it seemed, as deadly as Hemlock. She was more and more interesting by the moment, and I wanted to see her again. Needed to see her again, dammit. “When is the next society ball?”

  “There is a masked ball in two days, and from what I understand, her parents are forcing her to go,” Dafid told me. A masked ball, perfect. I would be able to talk to Scarlett all I wanted to and no one would be the wiser. Well, except for Scarlett. That woman was far too intelligent for my own good. “Get us all tickets. We are going to a masked ball. I also want our own guards on her. I don’t care what her family has on her. Double the guards that I set on her. She’s precious and she’s mine. I protect what is mine, and I want her protected better than you would protect me.”

  “It’s already being done,” Dafid said simply. I watched the man and smiled. My two closest enforcers truly did know me better than I knew myself. They had anticipated exactly what I would need and how I would need it. They knew that my need to protect Scarlett would override everything, including protecting myself. These were the men that had watched my back and I had watched theirs. They were good men to have on my side, men that would kill for me and I for them. One day I would repay them for this kindness.

  “Thank you.” I bowed my head to my friend in respect. “I guess it’s time to go shopping for custom tuxes and for masks that will hide who we are.”

  “Boss, I don’t think you will be able to hide who you are from that woman. I have a feeling she will do all she can to avoid you.” This came from Ivan, and damn the man, but he was right.

  “Which is why one of you will bring her to me. Where is the ball being held?” I asked.

  “At the Bannencroft Estate.” Oh, I knew that place. Lots of lovely hiding spots. Plenty of spaces for me to steal my woman away. “Plenty of alcoves, and if I recall correctly, they are having their greenhouse worked on.”

  “They are. It’s being attached to the building, but they have it blocked off. Something we can easily get around since Ivan is currently seeing one or two of the housemaids there,” Dafid said with a chuckle.

  “This is true.” Ivan didn’t even try to hide his proclivities, and I didn’t blame him. We were all men in our prime, and until that one woman came along for him, Ivan would continue to live the life that he led. I couldn’t and wouldn’t blame him. Dafid tried to get under his friend’s skin from time to time, but that was the way of brothers, and that was what the two of them were, brothers. The relationship was a closely guarded secret that I was the only one privy to, but I knew they razzed each other because that was the relationship they had and it was growing stronger each day. I was glad for it, too. Not only for them but for me. Cold of me, I knew, but fuck it. I was their boss, and while I was good to them to a point, the bottom line was they served me. Them getting along meant they would serve me better, and I was all for that.

  “Now, eno
ugh of the circle jerk. Tell Manny that I’m going to be coming in for a fitting at eight a.m.” I don’t make appointments. Either my tailor would be ready for me and would kick out whoever might have that time, or I would find someone else and Manny would soon find that his place would be burnt to the ground. “I need to ensure that I look good for Scarlett. I didn’t seem to impress her much when I found her running, so I need to with the ball.” It was time I showed my woman that she was mine. Time for me to break into the fire that burned around her and figure out exactly what made her tick. I looked forward to it. She was perfection. She was going to be my weakness and I knew it. Fuck, she was innocent and I should walk away from her and let her live a normal life with a boring-as-fuck political that would fuck around on her with one of the whores that I kept on staff, but I couldn’t and wouldn’t walk away from her. This was a discussion I had already had with myself and it was getting old, so I told myself to shut the fuck up. She was going to be mine, whether she liked it or not.

  “You got it, boss,” Ivan said as he was shooting off a text, I’m assuming to Manny. “I will make sure he knows you will need a mask as well. Silk, I’m assuming?”

  “Of course, the best for my woman.” I would never spare any expense when it came to getting to my woman or getting her the best of things. I would move hell for Scarlett. I was, after all, the Devil, and it was just a matter of changing zip codes for the angel that was going to be mine.