Total pages in book: 96
Estimated words: 113324 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 567(@200wpm)___ 453(@250wpm)___ 378(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 113324 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 567(@200wpm)___ 453(@250wpm)___ 378(@300wpm)
Realization dawned. This was a banya. A sauna house. I’d read all about them!
Russians took their saunas very seriously. There were rituals and social etiquette surrounding the banya. Creating the best mist—with the finest steam droplets—was considered an art.
The first room, the pre-bath, had pegs to hang clothes and a supply of towels, sheets, and liniments. Deeper inside was the steam room. Polished wood benches stretched along the walls. At one end of the room was a small blue pool. At the opposite end were a firebox and rock chamber.
A water bucket and ladle stood beside the rocks. Veniks—tied bunches of dried branches and leaves—hung from a nearby rack, like mini brooms. Wetted down, they were used to strike the skin to improve circulation.
For some reason, the firebox was already lit, spilling light across the area. The rocks radiated heat, making the air warm and humid. It smelled of cedar and vaguely of the birch veniks—like wintergreen, forest, and leather mixed together.
Realization dawned once more. I was going to be trapped in a banya with the most desirable man I’d ever imagined. A man I couldn’t have sex with—without risking permanence. A man I wasn’t even supposed to be fooling around with.
Though freezing, I whirled toward the exit, ready to brave the storm.
Sevastyan ducked through the doorway, rifle in hand. “Where do you think you’re going?” Once he shut the door behind him, I could scarcely hear the thunder outside the insulated sauna, even as it rumbled the ground and walls.
It was as if we were within a moist, firelit cocoon, separate from the world.
As he shook out his black hair, he propped his gun against the wall, then placed a bar over the door.
Why would he lock it? Between chattering teeth, I said, “We n-need to ride back. Or call for someone to p-pick us up.”
He discarded his gloves as he headed to a wall cabinet. I heard the clink of glass, and then he turned back to me holding a vodka shot. “Drink.”
I accepted the glass but hesitated. Though I was eager to get warm, I knew better than to be in a sauna with this man—while drinking vodka.
“Natalie, drink. You don’t even realize how cold you are.”
At that instant, my teeth decided to chatter with a vengeance. With a mulish look, I chugged the burning liquid. When I set the glass down on a shelf, rim first, he gave me a satisfied nod and took my hand, leading me back toward the fire. While I watched, he stoked it even hotter, then ladled water over the rocks.
Steam hissed, floating through the air. It surrounded us, caressing my face. “If we stay h-here, something might happen.” Something sinful.
Like the two of us stripping down to nothing, so we could lick droplets from each other’s skin.
“Happen?” He strode toward me, removing his coat on the way.
I backed up a step. “You know, between us.” He’d gone so long—why would he blow his perfect record now?
He raised his brows, eyes devilish in the firelight and mist. “Can’t control yourself where I’m concerned?” His voice was a deep rasp.
Resist him, Nat. “Maybe I can. Doesn’t mean I have to prove it by hanging out in a freaking sauna with you.” When he stalked closer, I demanded, “What are you doing, Sevastyan?”
“Getting you out of those wet clothes,” he said in a tone that brooked no resistance.
What the hell? Had the countdown clock finally zeroed out? My breaths shallowed as I recalled his restlessness, his piercing looks and mounting tension, as if he’d been about to strike.
Because he had been?
But why now? Why today? And in what . . . manner?
I pictured those indecipherable warnings he’d cast my way. Was I brave enough to face whatever it was he’d been warning me from? “And what if I refuse to take off my clothes, huh?”
“Pet . . .” Now every time he called me that it reminded me of his words: collar and keep you. He reached for my jacket, his gaze gone molten. “There’s one thing you should know.”
How could a single heated look make shivers dance over my entire body? “What’s that?”
“I wasn’t asking.”
CHAPTER 18
“Hold on!” I tripped back from Sevastyan as he advanced on me through the billowing steam.
Hanging out in a sensual sauna, naked, with an off-limits enforcer who happened to make my mouth water: what could possibly go wrong?
And Sevastyan had been all too prepared to take advantage of the storm. The sauna fire had been lit before we’d even arrived. He’d hinted around about planning my seduction, which made me wonder . . . “What’s gotten into you, Siberian? I know the rules—we’re not supposed to be trifling with each other.”
In a low tone, with words like a promise, he said, “I have no intention of trifling with you.”
I frowned. “But that’s why you’ve avoided me, isn’t it? Because you don’t want to risk getting saddled with me. So what is this?”
“It’s simple.” He was almost upon me. “You’re freezing when I can make you warm.”
When I skirted away, he raised his palms, as if to let me know he’d never force anything on me.
I rolled my eyes. Like he ever would have to.
“Then I’ll need to make it hotter in here.” He returned to the fire. After coaxing more warmth and steam, he sat on a nearby bench and began undressing, his manner casual.
I was rapt as he unbuttoned his shirt with those ringed fingers. I didn’t know if it was the vodka in my belly or a growing coil of excitement that was heating me more—just knew my chill had all but disappeared.
When he drew off the wet fabric, the muscles in his arms and shoulders rippled, those tattoos stark across his flexing chest.
I’d researched more about those markings of his. The two stars meant that he was a criminal aristocrat, a man who’d neared the upper echelons of the Bratva. The ones on his fingers signified that he’d been a thief and an assassin. But I also saw scars that I hadn’t noticed on the plane—one from what must be a bullet wound in his side and another slash down the back of his arm that looked like a knife wound.