Chapter 3

As I leave the state, I try not to look in the rearview mirror at Ania constantly. She's still wearing her ballet gear and tight clothes, which makes my mind go to all kinds of steamy places. My cock keeps threatening to harden, lust stiffening me, as she sits there squeezing her hands together with anxious red blotches on her cheeks.

She's eighteen, I remind myself, and she looks it. Eight-fucking-teen. I need to chill the hell out. I've never been with a woman with so much of an age gap. Hell, it's not like I'm some ladies' man anyway. Even if I was, she's just too young.

So why can't I stop feeling like this?

It gets even worse when she says, "So we're relatives, sort of, then?"

I swallow, keeping my eyes fixed on the road, trying to calm myself down.

"You're my stepbrother, aren't you? If you're telling the truth about my mom?"

"Hmm."

I can tell it pisses her off when I do that, which is maybe why I do it. She gets this flustered, beautiful look when she's angry. She bites her lip as she looks at me in the rearview. She might like to think she's not innocent and naive, but she looks it. That makes me feel a whole load of things I shouldn't.

"Okay, stepbro," she goes on. "You can hmm all you want. I'm just glad we're spending some family time together."

She's making me fight a constant smirk, trying to push down my response repeatedly. I wonder if she knows the effect she's having on me.

"However you want to think about it," I tell her.

"So, where next on our family road trip?"

I grit my teeth. For some reason, the idea of her thinking of us as brother and sister floods me with rage.

"A private airstrip, then the East Coast."

"We're catching a flight."

"Not catching. I'm flying us."

"I guess I should be impressed?"

She looks out the window, her small body shuddering. Reaching over to the passenger seat, I grab my hoodie and toss it into the back. "If you're cold."

"I'm not cold," she snaps, but she takes the hoodie anyway.

I know I've made a mistake the second she pulls the hoodie over her head and adjusts the sleeves to fit around her wrists. She has a small, vulnerable look that appeals to the savage in me, the beast who was put on this planet to save people like her. That's a seriously messed-up thing to think, considering I'm the one she needs saving from.

She says nothing as I drive down another dusty road, turn a corner, and finally reach the airstrip. The entire drive, she's looking out the window, her arms wrapped across her middle, making me want to hold her as gently as a man like me can.

"What are you looking at, stepbro?" she says as I bring the car to a stop.

"Why do you keep calling me stepbro?" I growl.

Her eyebrows twitch with a flutter of victory like she's glad she could get a response from me. "Why does it bother you so much?"

"It doesn't."

She takes a moment, then says forcefully, "Hmmmmmm."

I bite down before I can let out the biggest laugh of my life. Of all the ways I imagined this going, holding back laughter wasn't one of them. She's too captivating and exciting to me in ways she shouldn't be.

Despite her sleepy look and suspicious eyes, a grin lights her face up. "You were about to laugh then."

Fighting this smile is so damn challenging. "No, I wasn't."

She laughs in the most alluring way, a laugh that makes me want to hold her, kiss her, and protect her, again, from myself. "Sure you weren't, bro."

"Stop calling me that," I grunt as I pull up beside the hangar.

Climbing from the car, I walk around to the back and open the door for her. She steps out, giving me what I automatically think of as a seductive look, even if I know that's crap. She's not trying to seduce me. She seems so naive and innocent. I wonder if she's ever tried to seduce anyone. I've got to stop thinking that because it just makes me mad.

She looks up at me like she's reading my mind. "Do you have any gum?" she asks. "My breath stinks of puke."

It's like she knows what I want, and she's trying to put me off. I need to get my mind under control, calm the battle raging inside me, and stop all these thoughts from fluttering about. She doesn't want me. She doesn't need me. Or maybe she feels the same intensity coursing through her that I do.

"Come on," I say, gesturing to the surrounding emptiness. "It's not like you've got anywhere to run. I've got gum in the plane, I think."

She frowns, like she's annoyed at me for reminding her I'm her kidnapper, nothing more. She follows me to the hangar, frowning again when she sees the small one-engine plane.

"That's going to take us all the way to the East Coast?"

Outwardly, she's calm, but she can't stop her hand from tapping endlessly against her leg. She shifts from foot to foot constantly, too, though I don't think she knows she's doing it. I almost reach over and touch her hand to calm her down, but obviously, I can't.

She's my sister, sort of. She's eighteen. She'd probably think I was going to assault her or something.

"I've got us a couple of seats on a military cargo plane. This is what's going to get us there."

"It seems you've thought of everything," she says, with a toss of her head, maybe an attempt to make me think she's not panicking. But I can read her too well. "Do you mind if I sleep on the plane?"

As I fly—my alibi being that I'm a man called Scott Simmons, a recreational flyer—I try to focus on the sky. On the clouds. On the mission. I can't help but glance every so often at Ania in the seat next to me. She stares down at her hands, breathing slowly. Sometimes, her breath will ramp up, like hiccups of panic, and then she'll force herself to breathe slowly again.

When we hit some turbulence, she gasps and darts her hand out to me. The second she clutches onto my arm, she snatches her hand away. "Sor—" She stops herself before she can say sorry.

"It's okay," I tell her.

"I don't like flying."

"It's okay."

Not exactly the most well-thought-out words of support, but they are the best I can offer her.

"What's my mom like?" Ania asks. "If you're really taking me to her, you should be able to tell me that. Or do you have something made up, hmm? Maybe you've got a whole biography written out, like you're writing a book. There's no point asking you for the truth."

"She likes to dance," I tell Ania once her rapid-fire talking has stopped. "She hums when she cooks. Dad and Molly?—"

"Molly," Ania cuts in, her voice breaking. "Molly. That's my mom's name? I asked your name, but not hers! What's wrong with me?"

"Nothing," I say.

"Why didn't she try to find me sooner?"

"She was terrified, Ania," I say. "Konstantin put the fear of God into her. She just wanted to forget, but I knew about her history. After my mother passed, I wouldn't let my father get involved with somebody without knowing everything. Your mom hasn't told my father yet. I think it's too painful for her."

"Then why take me to her if she never cared enough?"

"Because she doesn't have to be scared anymore," I growl.

"My brothers won't just let this happen."

"With all due respect, I'm not afraid of them."

She looks at me bleakly. "You should be."

I grit my teeth, shaking my head. Part of being an effective operator is not having a big ego. I shouldn't let this get to me. Usually, I wouldn't. I'd shrug it off and get on with my life.

"What?" she goes on. "You think I'm wrong? Maybe you're tough, and you've got some training or whatever, and maybe you found a way to sneak into the compound, but that doesn't mean you're on their level, Aiden."

"You're trying to antagonize me," I say.

"Am I? I didn't know that."

Her sarcastic tone almost gets a laugh out of me again. "This is trickier than driving a car," I growl, staring across the blue sky and the bright clouds, trying not to think about her silky hair or soft-looking skin. "Give me space to think."

"I don't want to talk with my kidnapper anyway, even if he is my brother."

My teeth are starting to hurt from gritting them so much. Does she know I'm having steamy, inappropriate thoughts about her? Is that why she's digging at me with that?

"Then let's just not talk," I grunt as I fly.

A wild fantasy grips me as she turns silent again. What if I didn't bother heading to the plane waiting for us back to the East Coast, Molly, Dad, and baby Henry? What if I decided to fly somewhere else, disappear with Ania, and make this petite bombshell with dark, captivating eyes want and need me as much as I'm beginning to want and need her? What if …

However, I don't live based on what-ifs. I never have, and I can't let myself start now. I'll have to use some old-fashioned discipline to stop my thoughts from straying there, if that's even possible.