STEFAN ROMANESCU WAS not a man of faith.
In anything.
But he had seen a vision in a shitty back alley two years ago. And even though he would have said he believed in visions even less than in the dour Orthodox god of his childhood, long since happily renounced, he had immediately known one thing above all others.
A man should never turn down a vision, no matter how inconvenient it was.
Though the word inconvenient was a mild way indeed to describe how he’d spent the past twenty-four months.
None of his former associates—because a man like him didn’t have friends—had understood. But then, how could they? All they’d seen was Stefan systematically dismantling a network he’d worked hard to put in place, removing himself completely, piece by piece.
For no good reason, he was sure they would have said if he’d encouraged such conversations. Because his network made money and for a long while, that was the only thing he’d cared about. It was the only thing that mattered to most of his associates, as it had to him, too. Before.
Only people who had always lived safe and secure—and rich—ever imagined that money wasn’t power.
But he’d met her in Budapest and everything had changed.
He couldn’t have explained it himself. He’d seen Indy March, bright with a fresh beauty though it had been the middle of the night. And no one who was wandering around that particular neighborhood at such an hour could possibly have been fresh in any sense of the word. Still, she was such a tiny little thing, with glossy dark hair and a heart-shaped face. Picking her way through the rubble and ruin of the world he lived in as if she hadn’t noticed the state of it.
She’d looked at him the same way.
His heart, that useless organ, had stopped. Then kicked back in, hard.
She had looked like an angel, and what fallen man could resist?
He couldn’t. He hadn’t.
And now here she was on her knees again, only this time Stefan had no gun aimed at her head. No collection of associates he barely tolerated himself. This time, she appeared before him of her own volition. Not because she’d wandered down the wrong alley in the wrong part of the wrong city.
Not to mention, she’d had two years to think better of the whole thing.
These were all important distinctions.
His cock might have been rock hard, the way it always had been every time he’d thought of her since he’d dropped her at the airport in Budapest, but he was in no rush now. Not now.
Because she was here. And Stefan could see from the expression on her face that her hunger was as fierce as his.
“Welcome to Prague, foolish girl,” he murmured, settling back in his chair and regarding her almost lazily. “Why don’t you tell me, at last, how you ended up in that alley?”
Her chest moved, telling him she was breathing too hard. He liked it. And though he saw a kind of dismay on her face, or possibly impatience, she didn’t argue with him. She settled back on her heels, giving him the opportunity to miss that flowy little red skirt she’d worn before that had fueled any number of fantasies since. She shoved the silken mass of her hair back from her face and smiled at him.
As if this was a proper dinner date in whatever squeaky-clean world she came from.
Though he knew what her world was like. All its fresh, bright, happy details. A man might trust a vision all he liked—but a wise man verified it.
Only wise men survived the kind of life Stefan had built for himself, then destroyed.
“I was at a club,” she told him, and her voice was as lovely as he remembered it. Sweet and sultry all at once, with that American Dream accent of hers. “It was just down the street in some crumbling-down warehouse I couldn’t find again if my life depended on it. I wanted a breath of fresh air and a little walk and then there I was. In the middle of your... Situation.”
That was significantly less celestial. He studied her, the laziness giving way to a frown. “You wanted to walk. At that hour. You didn’t notice what kind of neighborhood you were in?”
Indy shrugged, and his eye was drawn to how delicate she was. She was such a little thing. He remembered, vividly, picking her up. Holding her against him, his imagination wild with all the ways a man of his size could indulge himself with a tiny little creature like her—but he’d urged himself to be careful.
He might not have been a good man, but he didn’t break his toys.
Then she’d proved herself more than his equal. She’d showed him a libido to match his and better still, the ability to take his cock even if she hurt herself doing it.
Men changed their lives for far less.
That night had been warm, as he recalled. She’d worn a strappy little tank top, a tiny little backpack like the one she’d tossed aside here, and that filmy red skirt that had haunted him ever since. And loads of necklaces and bracelets that marked her as one of the carefree backpacker set who polluted most of Europe—and the world—with their vast privilege wrapped up as wanderlust. Today she wore skinny gray jeans that seemed pasted to her and a flowy sort of T-shirt that did as much to expose her midriff as cover it. She still wore a ton of bracelets, but the only necklace she wore today was the key to his villa.
Back in the alley, his first thought had been angel. His second thought had been bohemian—in the sense of a certain beach culture style popular with both Californians and those who aspired to look like Californians. Not in the sense of the Bohemian region where they currently sat that had nothing at all to do with Californian anything.
When she’d spoken, he had not been surprised to hear that she was an American, though he hadn’t known how to feel about that. And then he hadn’t cared, because it made his path clear.
He had practically been able to see the white picket fences of her people stamped all over her.
“Those kinds of clubs are always in terrible neighborhoods,” she was saying, almost dismissively. As if he was being...silly. Something Stefan had never been in his life. “I never got into trouble before.”
Stefan leaned forward. He rested his elbows on his knees and got his face close to hers.
She was even more perfect than he’d recalled. Flawless, really. That pretty face of hers, eyes like chocolate and that sweet and dirty mouth. She looked soft and breakable, but he knew better, didn’t he? His Indiana was wild, and a little crazy, and her pussy was voracious.
God, she was perfect.
Even if, right at this very moment, he was pissed at what could have happened to her if he hadn’t been the situation she’d stumbled into.
“Do you know how much trouble you were in?” he asked quietly. “Do you really know?”
Her melted chocolate gaze glittered. “I think the gun to my head was a clue.”
Stefan reached over and slid his palm over her jaw, her cheek. Not sure if he was holding her there...or assuring himself that she was real.
That he had not simply lost it in that alley two years ago, as many had claimed since. That there had been a reason and it was her.
That she was here.
“The man who held a gun to your head no longer exists,” he told her, making no attempt to keep the darkness from his voice. “But he was a very bad man, Indiana. You should have been terrified of him. Why weren’t you?”
She smiled and pressed her cheek deeper into his palm. “I don’t know.”
“I gave you that key and an address. You could have come here any time you liked, but you didn’t. You could have forgotten all about one strange night in Hungary, but you didn’t. You waited two years. You came to Prague. You showed up tonight at precisely the right time and now look at you, down on your knees with your skin already flushed with arousal.” He shook his head, his gaze all over her. “Why?”
“I trusted you.” When his scowl deepened, her smile widened. “And it didn’t occur to me to come here any sooner. I guess I could have come straight to Prague after Budapest, but I went to New York instead. And by the time it occurred to me, much later, that I had the key and could come over here and see if it fit in anytime, I was too busy... Recovering.”
He searched her face intently, something in him going still. “You were hurt?”
She shook her head. “No. But it was...”
Stefan nodded. Because he knew. “A beautiful catastrophe.”
Indy’s eyes glowed. “Yes. And then I thought I might as well wait. You had been so certain about the time period. Why was it two years? Why not two months? Or five years?”
He could have told her. That he had always had an exit strategy, because longevity was not a feature of the life he’d chosen after he’d left the army. He’d been planning his escape almost from the day he’d started. Meeting her had simply expedited those plans.
Instead of sharing any of that, he lifted a shoulder. “There were things I had to do.”
It was her turn to study him for a moment. “Like... A divorce?”
Stefan had not been expecting that. He laughed. “A divorce? What makes you think such a thing?”
Indy let out a small sigh, once again nestling her cheek a bit deeper into his palm. “It seemed like the kind of thing you might have had to get out of your way. I’ve never slept with a married man, to my knowledge, but then we didn’t do much talking.”
“I have never been married.” The very idea was ludicrous. “Have you?”
“Never.”
“And no unpleasant diseases,” he said, finding his thumb moving over her cheekbone. “Or I would have known soon enough.”
“Right back at you. And yes, I’m on the pill.”
“I suspected these things. I am happy I was right.”
“You strike me as the kind of man who’s usually right.” Her eyes were big, but she smiled. “Or usually thinks he’s right, anyway.”
He was a lot more than that, but Stefan saw no reason to share that with her. Not until this all felt like less of a dream.
“You are even more beautiful than I remember,” he found himself saying, almost as if it wasn’t up to him. As if the words simply came out of their own accord. “How is that possible?”
Indy let out another sigh, her cheek in his hand and her gaze bright with heat. “Do we really have to do all this talking?”
She leaned forward, sliding her hands up along the inside line of his thighs. And still Stefan couldn’t quite believe that she was here. Right here with him. That he hadn’t made her up as he’d thought he must have over these last dark months. Even though he could remember her taste. And that fierce grip of her tight little pussy on his cock.
He still couldn’t believe that she could possibly be real.
But he took her hands before they reached his cock and held them away from him, smiling a little as he gazed down at her.
“I like it that you are still so greedy, my foolish girl,” he said. “But there are things we must discuss.”
“Can’t they wait?” she asked, her gaze between his legs in a hungry way that almost made him think, what the hell.
The way he had in Budapest.
Almost.
“You flew all the way to Prague for this, Indiana. You can wait a little longer.”
Her eyes were a little bit wide as she looked up at him, and he could see the hunger there. The same greed that burned in him.
“I would have flown even farther,” she told him. “But why make the anticipation even worse? It’s been two years in the making for one night. What if it’s not worth it?”
He regarded her for a moment, taking that in. She thought this was one night. That felt a lot like a blow.
But the flip side of that surprising notion was that she’d waited two years and flown all the way to Prague for that one night.
“It will be worth it,” he assured her. “But you should know something about me, Indiana. I am... Bossy.”
“A lot of men are bossy,” she said softly. She smiled. “Not all of them have your cock. So... I’m okay with it.”
“Excellent.”
And then, Stefan thought, it was time to reacquaint themselves.
He settled back in his chair and inclined his head, not surprised that she understood his command immediately. Watching the change in her made him even harder. She flushed, swallowed hard, and then reached for him again with hands that trembled slightly.
Because she continued to be perfect in every way.
Indy angled herself closer to him and this time, when she ran her hands up the inside of his thighs, he let her. He looked down the length of his torso as she knelt there between his outstretched legs. Her glossy dark hair flowed down her back and her heart-shaped face looked fierce as she concentrated on unbuttoning his jeans. Then that ferocity turned into something far hotter as she reached into his jeans and pulled out his cock.
She made a soft little humming noise, wrapped both her hands around the base of him, and leaned in.
Then she licked him, swirling her tongue around the broad head. She took her time learning his length before she tried her best to suck him into her mouth.
Stefan thought he could die happy, watching this tiny, impatient woman—his woman, whether she knew it or not—try to suck him off.
She returned her attention to the head of his cock and began to move her hands up and down his shaft, not exactly gently. That mixed with the hot suction of her mouth, and the way she used her clever tongue, and that fire in him began to build.
Indy took her time, teasing him. Swirling her tongue around and letting her hands play him like he was nothing but her instrument. Something he should have hated, but he didn’t.
Not with her.
The fire grew higher, more intense. So did she.
Until the marvel of it took him over.
Because this was already better than all his expectations, and his expectations had been extreme.
He let his head fall back against the chair while he gripped her hair with one hand, holding her head to his cock and feeling her as she worked.
And when he came, it was with a roar.
Stefan wasn’t at all surprised to find she drank him down, then sat back on her heels and smiled up at him as if he’d given her a gift.
This woman was going to kill him.
He was going to let her kill him.
“Take off your clothes,” he told her, doing nothing to soften his voice.
She shivered a little, still smiling, and stayed where she was as she stripped her shirt off, then tossed it aside, without a word. Her small, perfect breasts weren’t contained by any bra, so he could see her hard nipples immediately, and he liked that. Then she knelt up higher on her knees, unbuttoning her jeans and shoving them over her hips, with another one of those thongs that he vividly recalled from Budapest. Tonight it was hot pink, a detail he suspected would live within him always.
He hoped it would.
When she sat back, she rolled back so she could stretch her legs out in front of her and pull her jeans the rest of the way off.
So smooth, so easy.
“You take your clothes off well,” he said. “Almost as if you have done it before. For money, perhaps?”
He knew she had. But would she admit it? It wouldn’t ruin anything for him if she lied on this, their first night. Stefan knew too well the risks of oversharing, or even the faintest attempt at transparency. But if she lied, it would give him an insight into her. And her relationship with shame.
Indy’s smile was wicked. And completely shameless. “You should see me on a pole.”
“Is that what you do when you’re not roaming about bad neighborhoods in Europe? Strip?”
She shook her head. And she knelt so easily before him once more, he was already hard again. “You know how all the girls like to say that they’re stripping to get through college, right? I actually did. It was fun.”
“Then why did you stop?”
She considered him for a moment while she knelt there, perfect and naked and within reach. After all this time, he could simply extend a hand and touch her as he wished.
Part of him still couldn’t believe it. Not even now, after she’d sucked him good with that wicked mouth of hers.
“I think that stripping is the kind of thing that could quickly become pretty much the opposite of fun, if it went on for too long and became about, for example, paying rent. And here’s something about me that you should probably know, Stefan.” Her gaze was steady on his. Her voice was quiet. “I don’t want to do it if it’s not fun. Whatever it is. Because what’s the point of that?”
“Life is not always fun, foolish girl. I would say it is very rarely any fun at all. How have you never learned this?”
She was so young, he thought. A product of the country she came from and the splendid life he knew she’d lived there, white picket fences and shiny dreams and all the rest of that New World crap. While he had been born into the ruins of the very, very Old World, had been raised dreamless and dark, and knew better.
But when she smiled, she seemed neither young nor naïve. “Whether life itself is fun or not isn’t the point, Stefan. How I choose to live is fun or I don’t choose to do it. Do you understand?”
“I understand that you are a privileged American girl, no? So maybe it is easier for these things to be fun for you while for others, living is not so delightful. It is merely the better option.”
“Maybe,” she said, and though he studied her expression he could see no indication that she took any offense at his words. He couldn’t tell if he liked that or not. “Or maybe I don’t think that we all need to be quite so serious all the time. Really. We don’t. No one does.”
“And if I tell you that I’m a very, very serious man?”
Another flashing smile and something like wisdom in her gaze. “I like how serious tastes. And I’m guessing you like how fun tastes, or you wouldn’t be here either. Would you?”
He laughed at that and then he stood, leaving his jeans unbuttoned. And enjoying the look of her there, still kneeling at his feet.
His beautiful, foolish girl.
Stefan reached down and picked her up, but he didn’t set her on her feet. He lifted her even farther, liking the way she laughed a little and melted against him. Making it the easiest thing in the world to lift her so high that she was kneeling on his shoulders.
Indy laughed. “You aren’t really...”
“I would hold on,” he advised her. Sternly.
Then he gripped her ass, made sure he was holding her securely, and brought her pussy directly to his lips.
He licked his way in, finding her wet and sweet and hot and in the next moment, coming against his mouth.
Just as he remembered.
He teased her clit, sucking on it and raking it gently with his teeth. He saw how many more times he could make her come as she gripped his hair so hard it hurt and arched her body there where she knelt on his wide shoulders. She tossed her head back, writhing against him and showing him that she fully trusted he would not drop her.
Her trust made his cock so hard it nearly hurt.
And only when he was satisfied with the way she screamed and rocked against his face did he lower her down his body, handling her with an ease that made him ache, to finally slam his way inside her.
This time, her whole body formed a perfect bow. She wrapped her legs around his hips, her mouth wide open as if the scream was trapped inside her, and he could no longer tell if she was coming or about to come again.
He didn’t wait for her to accommodate him, because she was molten hot and so sweet it almost burned. Instead, he moved her, using her to fuck himself, loving the feel of her in his hands. That tight fist of her pussy, wetter and hotter with each stroke.
The longer it went, the more she moved into it, letting her back arch once more. Letting her head fall. Closing her eyes and once again trusting him to hold her where he wanted her, to move her as he liked.
Taking all of him and making low, greedy noises as if she loved every inch.
And when he felt her pussy clamp down on him once more, she sobbed wildly, another orgasm taking her over. Stefan found his own release, emptying himself into her with a few hard, deep, glorious thrusts.
Then he held her there as she collapsed against him, her mouth wide open in the crook of his neck as she fought for air.
He was still inside her and carried her that way, enjoying the little noises she made when he took the stairs up to the second floor. He carried her to the loftlike master suite and into the bathroom, where he set her down outside the massive shower stall. He reached in and turned on the water, smiling with deep satisfaction when she made her way in a moment or so later, but had to hold on to the tiled wall as if her legs weren’t quite steady.
He stripped, then followed her into the hot spray, already steaming up the room.
“Oh,” she breathed, gazing at him in what looked like awe. His cock certainly thought so, and stood proudly. “I’ve been wondering what you look like naked.”
She reached over and traced the tattoo that took up the better part of his chest, then wrapped around his back. It was a phoenix etched in bright colors and utilizing all his scars, its tail ending in the small of his back. And Stefan had always loved his tattoo, the story of how he always rose from any ashes, but never so much as now. Because Indy moved closer and began to trace it with her fingers. Her soft little hands. That hot, dirty mouth of hers.
“What are these?” she asked softly, finding his various scars concealed in the lines and swirls.
“Knives and guns.” He grunted as she found a different ridge. “The odd boot.”
Her dark eyes rose to meet his, then dropped. But she kissed his scars a little bit longer.
After the shower he dried himself, then took her towel from her and amused himself with drying her, too. She combed her tangle of hair with her fingers, then braided it, letting the damp mass of it fall over one shoulder.
“I left all my clothes downstairs,” she told him when he pulled his jeans back on.
“You don’t need clothes.” He studied her. “Are you hungry?”
She considered, and then her face lit up. “Ravenous, as a matter of fact.”
He had her walk before him down the stairs so he could watch her move. So he could contemplate the sweet line of her spine and the flare of her hips as he imagined taking her from behind.
Would his hunger for her ever end?
Once on the ground floor, he settled his hand on the nape of her neck and steered her into the kitchen at the back of the house that looked over the terraced grounds, green by day. Tonight the pool gleamed turquoise and beyond, down in the valley, the city of Prague lay like ribbons of light.
“Tell me about this place,” she said, jumping up lightly to sit on the counter as he moved around the kitchen, assembling a simple meal of savory pancakes, a Romanian staple his grandmother had always made him when he’d visited her. “This villa. The art on the walls, the air of old-school elegance mixed in with all these modern lines... None of this seems to go hand-in-hand with an alleyway in Budapest.”
“I think you would call this layers, no?”
“Are we naming all these layers?”
He glanced over at her, but she didn’t look avid in any way. Just... Interested.
In him.
Not what he could do for her. Not what she could get. Just him and whatever story he might tell.
It felt like a new kind of magic. He remembered he’d called her a witch, and it fit.
Stefan cleared his throat. “My father was a hard man. When I tell you this as a Romanian, you must understand that I do not mean hard in any American sense. I mean the real thing. A real kind of hardness that went deep inside him. He should not have married, but then, even monsters get lonely. After my mother died he stopped pretending to be a father, not that he had ever taken to the role. He was a jailer. I mean hard, you understand.” He moved his shoulders to do something about the tension in them, not sure why he was telling her this story. There was a reason he wasn’t much for sharing. But he didn’t stop. He couldn’t. “It was a relief to escape him when I joined the army. But then, the army takes all men and makes them hard. I think this is true everywhere. Afterward, I found other ways to fight. And learned to live by my own laws.”
“Meaning outside everyone else’s laws.”
He nodded. “But my grandmother left Romania a long time ago and settled in Old Town. Far away from her troublesome son-in-law and her memories of the daughter she lost. I visited her here in Prague as a boy. And I bought this house early in my...career, let us call it. Maybe as a monument to her. I always knew that someday I would retire here.”
“You don’t look old enough to retire.”
“The kind of business I was in...” Stefan shrugged. “If you are lucky enough to retire, you do it young. Or not at all.”
For a while she didn’t say anything, and he finished preparing the meal. He brought a stack of the savory pancakes over on a plate that he set down on the counter next to her, and then stood there himself, watching her as she ate. Eating himself, until it felt as if that, too, was a kind of sensual act.
Simply being with her was a sensual act.
He was going to have to find a way to get used to it.
And for more than one night—but he did not intend to argue that with her. Not when there were far more interesting ways to make the same point.
“You still have not told me how you ended up in Budapest.” He shook his head. “Did you travel the world, finding dark alleys to wander down alone?”
She paused in the act of licking her fingers and smiled at him. “As a matter fact, I did.”
“You were a backpacker.”
“Yes, though I always traveled a bit more lightly than proper backpackers. If I needed something I would buy it or borrow it. And then when I didn’t need it anymore, I’d gift it to someone else. I didn’t tote around a mobile office or anything. I just had my phone.”
“And who funded all this aimless wandering?”
“If I didn’t have money, I worked.” She took another bite of her meal and chewed happily, then smiled when she swallowed. “Budapest was a stop along the way, though I didn’t really have a destination in mind. I’ve never been one for itineraries. I was thinking that I was going to head back toward Australia, to keep the summer going, but then you happened.”
He liked that. “As if I am some storm?”
“I didn’t see the point of traveling anymore when all I wanted to do was come here.” That almost sounded like a confession, but she looked so casual that Stefan thought he must have misunderstood. “So I went back to New York instead, where I’ve been living with my sister ever since.”
“Is your sister like you?”
“Bristol? Oh no. No, not at all.” Indy laughed. Almost too hard, in his mind. “She’s a very serious person, like you. She finds me... Delightfully trying.”
“But what is it you do? You must do something. Everyone does.”
She lifted her chin, and though her voice stayed light when she answered him, her gaze was not. “I thought I told you. I do whatever makes me money and if I don’t feel like doing it anymore, I don’t.”
“Indiana.” He sounded severe, but he didn’t modify his tone. “That is playtime. Not real life.”
She sighed. “Everybody says that. A lot, actually. But none of them are particularly happy, are they? So why would I listen to them?”
“Does this mean you did not work in New York?”
“I worked in a lot of different jobs in New York.” Indy shrugged. “I like temporary positions. Right when they get boring, you move on to the next.”
He studied her, sitting so carelessly on his counter, eating food he’d made her with his own hands. Naked and unselfconscious. Perfect in every way.
The ways he wanted her should have horrified him, but they didn’t. They never had.
Still, he wanted to know her. Not what he could dig up on her, but her.
“Surely you must know that the kind of life you lead is only possible because you’re young and beautiful.” He tugged on the end of her braid. “It cannot last, this wandering here and there with no thought to your future. That is the thing about the future. It finds you, always.”
“All the more reason to enjoy it then,” she replied with maddening calm. “While I can.”
“You must have some kind of dream. Some ambition.”
“Must I? Ambition is for people who don’t like what they have. But I do.” She frowned at him. “And if I have a dream, I go after it.”
He didn’t believe her. But he didn’t press. She wanted one night, so that was what he would give her. Because there were a lot of things a man could do in the course of one night that might just teach his foolish girl how to want a few things she couldn’t possibly be sure she could get.
And to learn how to long for them, like everyone else.
“Lie down on the counter,” he told her then, all command and heat. “Face down.”
The heat in her eyes kindled, but she still took her time licking her fingers. Then stretching sinuously, like a cat, so he had no choice but to watch the way it made her breasts bounce. She rolled herself over, sliding herself across the countertop until she was stretched out before him.
“Enjoy the stone on those greedy little nipples,” he invited her.
Stefan gripped her hips, pulling her back toward him so her legs hung down over the edge of the counter and he could line her up with his cock again.
He slid inside, sheathing himself fully. She made a cute little grunting sound, wiggling this way and that because he filled her so completely and she needed to make a little space. He had the notion then that no matter how many times he took her, she would always be this tight, always gripping him just like this, always precisely this perfect.
This time he went slow, because he wanted to enjoy looking down at her the way he’d imagined so many times before. Feeling her cute little butt against him as he plunged deep, then drew back. The line of her spine, the swell of her hips, the soft nape of her neck.
She stretched her arms up so she could grip the other end of the counter, giving herself a little bit of leverage as he worked.
Slow. Deep.
Relentless.
He watched as her skin reddened, everywhere, and listened as her breathing changed. She came differently in this position, one wave into the next, an easy kind of roll. But Stefan wanted more than waves, so he reached beneath her to find that eager little clit and played with her until her intensity skyrocketed.
On and on he went, drawing out her responses, learning the difference between those light little climaxes and the wilder, deeper ones that made her whole body seem to shatter around him.
The ones that made her sob. Real tears.
And only when he thought he could read her well enough did he build her up to one more bone rattling, screaming finish.
Then follow her.
But he still wasn’t done.
Because she thought this was only the one night.
And Stefan knew full well that one night wasn’t going to be enough.