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  XTREME

  RUBY LASKA

  Copyright © 2015 by Ruby Laska.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.

  Xtreme / Ruby Laska. — 1st ed.

  ISBN 978-1-940501-19-2

  CONTENTS

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  About the Author

  CHAPTER ONE

  The two men stood at the edge of the crumbling wharf as the Pacific Ocean pounded the pier. Silently, they smoked and watched the three figures dressed in black as they formed a bucket brigade of sorts, handing off the heavy square packages from the hold up onto a waiting handcart on the wooden pier.

  Eight hundred pounds of uncut Peruvian cocaine. Tomorrow it would be fanned out over the city of Los Angeles, distributed by the network of hustlers under Sergey Tochiev’s control. It would go smoothly, a testament to the control Sergey retained over his men even in the face of devastating losses—because of the fucking Spanish mudak, he’d lost three men in the past month alone.

  Sergey’s fingers trembled slightly around the imported cigarette. He threw it angrily to the planks under his feet and ground it out with his heavy boot.

  Bad enough to be afraid. But it was absolutely imperative that Ivan Vrubel not see the fear.

  “Very well,” he said, forcing his voice to stay calm, even bored. “These men will do.”

  “They are better than you deserve,” Vrubel snapped. “I do not appreciate coming down here to babysit, do you understand me, Sergey?”

  “Yes, certainly,” he gritted out. Someone was going to pay for this humiliation…and that someone was Ricardo de Santos.

  “These men are good. They will take care of the distribution problems, but it is up to you to prove that you can still command your region.”

  “Of course.”

  Vrubel turned to go, but then he paused and looked over his shoulder. In the illumination provided by the lights rigged up at the end of the pier, it was possible to see the network of scars that had given him the nickname Shramlitso—though no one would ever dare call him that to his face. “One lone limp-wristed dilettante,” he muttered. “How could you let such a man get the better of you?”

  As he stalked back toward the wharf, Sergey fumed.

  Yes. De Santos would pay with his life.

  But first he would watch his woman suffer.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Several hours later, as the hot morning sun bore down on the skyscrapers of downtown Los Angeles, the dilettante in question propped himself up on one elbow, better to watch the woman he loved as she slept. This was a moment to savor, especially since it would be their last opportunity for such intimacy for a while.

  Ricardo hadn’t told Chelsea Ryder last night that he would be leaving today. Hadn’t wanted to spoil the last of their three nights together, holed up in this most unlikely of urban aeries while Mr. Smith patrolled the street below.

  She shifted in her sleep, sighing his name while her body pressed more closely against him. God, he loved the way she yearned for him even in the twilight place of dreams, the only place Ricardo knew where people could not hide from themselves.

  Then her eyelashes fluttered open. A slow smile started at the corners of her mouth and kept going until it blossomed into a grin. “I love you,” she whispered.

  His hand stilled on the curve of her hip.

  And she woke the rest of the way up.

  “Oh,” she said, drawing away from him, pulling the sheets free of the bed and wrapping herself in them. Her face burned pink with mortification. These were not words she spoke easily. “Oh gosh, morning! Already! I can’t believe…I mean, good morning.”

  Then she looked around the room, and he tracked her dawning realization of where she was, and the memory of all the events that had brought them here crashed through her momentary bliss. He watched the joy drain from her face, the smile go back into hiding.

  Worst of all, he knew he was the cause.

  “Mi amor,” he said, picking up her hand and bringing her fingers to his lips. He kissed each knuckle, gently, aware how even a touch as innocent as this could stir him to readiness in an instant.

  She tugged her fingers back and pulled the sheet farther up around herself. “I don’t suppose there’s coffee yet?” she mumbled from beneath the heavy curtain of her unruly dirty blond hair.

  He laughed. Couldn’t help himself. The rest of his day would be long: dangerous, dirty, an errand he wouldn’t wish on anyone he cared about and one he trusted to no one but himself. God willing, he would return alive in a number of hours. By the grace of that same God, this woman would still be waiting for him, and if there were any justice at all in this world, not a single hair on her head would have been disturbed—at least, not by anyone but him.

  “I’ll have coffee sent up,” he said, getting reluctantly out of the nest of fine linens. Chelsea rolled over and pulled the sheets up over her head again. He knew that this modesty was a part of her, and he adored it...as he enjoyed the other side of that rare coin, her raging need, the need that only he had been able to master. It was this knowledge, the singularity of their passionate bond, that enabled him to leave her with the hope that she would wait for him to return.

  He crossed the luxurious hotel suite from one end to the other, leaving the bedroom for the beautifully appointed sitting room. He hadn’t closed the drapes the night before, and sun blazed brilliantly through the windows, lighting up downtown Los Angeles with a million flashing reflections, off buildings and cars and pedestrians’ sunglasses. They’d slept well past Ricardo’s usual early waking time, and he didn’t regret it.

  The challenges of his current situation were a small price to pay for the hours he’d spent holding Chelsea in his arms. Still, it had to end, at least for now. He had no way to work out the frustration that accompanied that thought. If Ricardo had been at the gym he could have taken it out on the heavy bag; if he’d been on his motorcycle he would have hit the gas along the nearest open stretch of road. But in this place, with this woman, he summoned the strength to master his emotions by sheer will and dug in his pocket for the latest phone that his assistant, Mr. Smith, had secured for him.

  Ever attentive to details, Mr. Smith had programmed it with his own latest number. And, of course, he answered it on the first ring.

  “Yes?”

  “Good morning. I trust your night was uneventful.”

  “Yes.” More information was conveyed in that single syllable than would be evident to anyone listening in, but then again, one of Mr. Smith’s main functions was to assure that no one ever listened in. The dozens of listening devices Smith had found and removed over the years were proof of that.

  At the moment, he’d just informed
his boss that his overnight patrol had yielded no encounters with people who possessed an unseemly degree of curiosity about Ricardo and Chelsea. Or, for that matter, a desire to kill them. Which didn’t mean that such people didn’t exist. Far from it.

  Three days ago, members of a Russian gang had brutally murdered one of Ricardo’s oldest friends. The killing was meant to serve as a final warning. The gang wanted Ricardo’s help in liberating certain works of art from the international black market; they would then use those pieces as collateral in their burgeoning trade in Peruvian cocaine and other narcotics. Ricardo was uniquely positioned to help them in this regard, given his knowledge and contacts in the world of fine art, as well as certain other skills and attributes best not discussed.

  Ricardo had no intention of working for the Russians, who were steadily losing ground to their rival Chechen gang. Ricardo had his own business with the Chechens, but—whether they were aware of it or not—he called the shots in that regard. Nonetheless, he found himself at the center of the current firestorm of violence between the rival gangs, and for the first time in his life, he had made an error that made him vulnerable.

  That error was Chelsea.

  “Sir?”

  “Sorry, Smith,” Ricardo said, pulling himself away from his thoughts. “No sign of our friends?”

  Smith made a sound of contempt. “I didn’t say that. Two of them were here around three o’clock in the morning and again at five thirty. I suspect they will watch the building all day.”

  “I see.” Ricardo thought for a moment. “Which ones?”

  “Replacements,” Smith said without hesitation. “Nikolai Zakirov and Oleg Timchenko.” He had memorized every known member of the avtoritet, or local branch of the Russian mafia, as had Ricardo.

  “As we suspected. Sergey cut his losses.”

  “Vlad Aksyonov and Viktor Lazovsky will have been disposed of,” Smith agreed.

  Ricardo was quite sure that the first man was dead, because he was the one who shot him three days before at dusk in an abandoned school yard. Lazovsky, formerly one of Sergey Tochiev’s trusted associates, had undoubtedly been executed by now for incompetence.

  “His ranks grow thin,” Ricardo said thoughtfully.

  “Ivan will send replacements.”

  “This time. But perhaps he is becoming tired of Sergey’s mistakes.”

  “Perhaps, hermano,” Smith said, in one of the very rare instances he used the native tongue he and Ricardo shared. Very few people knew that the two men had grown up together in Segovia, Italy; fewer still knew that Smith—not his real name, of course, though it had been so long since anyone had used his real name that it might as well have been forgotten—had been caught up decades earlier in the street violence between local merchants like Ricardo’s father and the thugs who demanded exorbitant protection payments.

  Smith’s brother had made the mistake of not paying.

  Ricardo’s father paid until his death.

  Then the extortionists made a mistake. They underestimated what the poor, quiet, young son of the tailor was willing to do to protect his mother and safeguard his father’s business.

  Ancient history, as they say. But the partnership that was forged on the streets of Segovia lived on, a quarter century later, in their trans-Atlantic business interests.

  “Sergey may well be desperate,” Smith continued.

  It was a long sentence for Smith, who practiced an economy of words—and proof that he was worried about his boss. Ricardo smiled at the thought that one of the deadliest men in the world was worried about him.

  “I’ll be careful,” he promised. “For now, I wonder if you might be able to bring the lady some coffee?”

  “Of course.”

  “I have an errand that will take me out of town, but I will rejoin her as soon as I can. Tomorrow, if all goes well. But it could take several days.”

  “Understood.”

  “How are conditions at the box?”

  “Unchanged.”

  It was probably not necessary to speak in such veiled terms, considering the care Smith had taken to ensure the privacy of their conversation, but after working together for many years, it had become habit. It was an odd intimacy—Ricardo knew little about Smith’s life outside their partnership, including such details as where he lived and who he spent time with—but a necessary one.

  “And provisions?”

  “Ample.”

  “That’s decided, then.”

  “Yes. Good luck.”

  “And to you.”

  Smith hung up.

  Ricardo stood staring out at the city for a moment. Everything was in order; their careful planning would pay off. Smith had outfitted several hidey-holes in different parts of the city; each was cycled out of use after several months, whether it had been used or not. Ricardo had not needed to use any of them for quite some time, but rising tensions between the gangs—and more important, the threat to Chelsea’s safety—had forced him to change course. Which was too bad. He was especially fond of the small bungalow high in the Hollywood hills where he’d twice taken Chelsea—sometimes he even allowed himself to wonder what it might be like to live as an ordinary man there, doing ordinary things like gardening and cooking meals for his beloved.

  But he might as well have wished for wings so he could fly high above the city. The gang had Chelsea in its sights, and Ricardo would do everything it took to keep her safe.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Chelsea stood under the stinging, hot spray with her eyes closed, replaying the last few nights in her mind with equal parts mortification and arousal. There was not an inch of her body that had not been kissed, caressed, stroked…but also abraded, whipped, pinched, bitten…

  The sex between her and her sometimes lover could not be described as tender. No greeting card or love song would ever capture the exquisite blend of lust, passion, pain, and surrender between them. Chelsea would never be able to confess to a living soul besides Ricardo the things she had done…the things she longed to do. And as he had already proven time and time again, the things she could imagine were only a pale, small subset of the vast trove of experiences he meant to share with her.

  Of course, there was still time to back away. Or was there? Three days ago, Chelsea had watched in horror as an old man was taken from his home, lying on a stretcher under a sheet, his widow screaming as she tried to reach his lifeless body. Chelsea knew she was in danger of meeting the same fate. While she still didn’t know exactly how Ricardo spent his time while he was away from her, it was obviously far more deadly than she’d allowed herself to imagine.

  If she left now—

  If she moved far away to a new city—

  If she assumed a new name, got a new job, cut her hair, burned every trace of the life she’d led—

  But she couldn’t. Because the struggling art gallery she owned, a few miles away in the arts district, was more than just a job. It was her life, her identity, her promise to her dead father.

  She turned off the water and reached for the thick, soft towel. As she finished drying off and wrapped the towel around her body, the shower curtain was pulled open. Chelsea clutched the towel tightly, her heart pounding.

  Ricardo stood in front of her, fully dressed. He held a single paper cup of coffee.

  “Where’s yours?” she demanded, accepting the coffee, but she already knew the answer. She had known this was coming, but it didn’t keep a sense of betrayal and abandonment from overtaking her.

  “Regrettably, I don’t have time to enjoy coffee with you today,” Ricardo said formally. His eyes, so expressive and full of dangerous energy last night, were as veiled as if they’d been shuttered by curtains.

  It was unfair that she should always feel so exposed around him while he often retreated behind his perfect manners and cultured conversation. But it was also, she’d been forced to admit, part of their dynamic. A truly dominant man reveals himself only measure by measure and only when it suits
him. He is always in control.

  And the reverse, Chelsea was beginning to realize, was also true. A submissive—which she’d only come to understand she was when Ricardo came into her life—reveals herself when ordered to. She has no secrets from her Dom. She gladly gives what he demands. And one of Ricardo’s first demands, the night they had met at a crowded gallery opening, was to know her intimately. Before he’d ever touched her, he had recognized her for what she was. And now it was too late to hide.

  She gave up and reached for the coffee. The first sip was heaven: hot, dark, earthy. It definitely hadn’t come from the coffee maker in the suite’s kitchenette, but she had learned not to underestimate the resources at Ricardo’s command.

  Wherever the caffeine fix had come from, she was grateful. But she was not at all happy about what she knew was coming next. “You’re leaving,” she accused.

  “It is unavoidable. I must work, Chelsea. You understand that.”

  “I do, but—” she felt like hurling the cup across the room, letting it splash against the silk curtains, the floor-to-ceiling views of the city. “It would be one thing if you went to work like an ordinary man and I knew you’d be home in time for the evening news.”

  “We both know you would not love an ordinary man.” His tone was patient, but the words were laced with the faintest hint of danger. Chelsea knew it wasn’t her place to question what he did, but the idea of him leaving her there, alone, felt like a force that would scour her empty.

  “Maybe,” she said, petulance lacing her words, “I’d love you a little more if you were a little more ordinary.”

  Then she looked directly into his eyes—just in time to see the fire blaze to life. He went still, the corner of his mouth tightening.

  If this was a staring contest, Chelsea already knew she was doomed. But she glared back defiantly nonetheless. Of course she hadn’t meant what she said—she didn’t want Ricardo to be anything like the bland, predictable men who went to work every day in the gleaming high-rises of the city. And he wouldn’t be who he was if he allowed her, or anyone, to dictate his comings and goings.