Free Conflicted (Undercover #2) by Helena Newbury Page A

to tell me what you were.”
    His shoulders set even tighter, even harder. He gripped the rail so hard his knuckles went white.
    “At dinner...you said I was your spaseniye ,” I said. “What does that mean?”
    I knew damn well what it meant, but I couldn’t tell him that. And part of me needed to hear him say it.
    He shook his head. “I was being weak.”
    I pressed close to him and slid my arms around his waist from behind. I could feel the tension in his body again. I molded myself to him, my breasts crushed against his back. “Tell me.”
    He let out a long sigh. “Salvation,” he said. “It means salvation.”
    I didn’t say anything; I just stood there holding him. When he spoke, his voice was bitter. “When I saw you in New York, so innocent…” He let out a long sigh, his big hands squeezing and releasing the rail. “I am not good with words like you.”
    I just waited and let him speak.
    “I thought...I thought that maybe you could save me,” he said. And then he snarled and kicked a folding chair someone had left on the deck. It flew thirty feet and splashed into the ocean.
    “Maybe I can,” I said softly.
    He shook his head and it reminded me of a bull, about to charge. “ Eblan!” he cursed savagely. “Eblan Mudak!” Dumbass bastard, he was calling himself. “ Stupid!” he snarled in English.
    “No,” I said. “Brave, to say what you feel!” His anger scared me, but I stepped closer. “I like you, Luka.”
    “Even now you know?” he muttered.
    I stepped right up close to him. “Even now I know.”
    He gradually calmed and became still. I leaned forward and we touched foreheads. He had to lean down to me to do it, hulking over me like a monster.
    “You should not get involved with me,” he said at last. “This is not wise, Arianna.”
    “I know,” I whispered. “But I don’t think I can be apart from you.”
    He cursed in Russian and then said, “I hurt many people.”
    The hairs on the back of my neck were standing up. “Would you hurt me?” I asked.
    “No.” And he said it with such stony certainty that I believed it. “But I might get you hurt.”
    Cold fear welled up inside me, ice water that merged with the ice that was already there. He wasn’t a bad boy as in he might cheat on me or break my heart. He lived in a whole different world to me, one where people who got in the way just disappeared and loved ones were nothing more than leverage.
    I felt sick. Another reason he’d always kept his relationships short-term. Being with him would be dangerous as hell, even if I wasn’t secretly spying on him.
    The smart thing to do would be to walk away.
    Yet I was getting closer and closer to him and the most worrying thing wasn’t that I was doing it, it was that it felt so right. Every time he touched me, every time he kissed me, it felt as if the ice inside me cracked just a little. It was a slender thread, a stupid, childish wish that I could be fixed. But it was one that I didn’t want to give up on.
    “I’m not scared,” I said.
    A tiny smile touched his lips. “You said that before. And you still are.”
    I still was. But I wanted him anyway. I tilted my face up and reached for him, pulling him down to me. We kissed and it was soft and slow, his size only making his gentleness more shocking. A slow-motion bomb went off in my chest. In the warm glow that followed, it felt as if each of us was drawing life from the other. I was filling in the missing parts in him, and he in me.
    We’d taken a step. He was opening up to me in a way he hadn’t with any of his other girlfriends. This wasn’t a fling, anymore.
    His hand came down to brush my cheek and suddenly he recoiled. “You’re freezing!” he said. He shook his head at his own stupidity. “You’re out here in a dress!”
    I’d been so focused on helping him, I hadn’t noticed the cold creeping in. I realized my arms and legs were growing numb. As soon as I thought about it, I gave a violent