It wasn’t until Andrei had spent a couple of months working for Drake that he understood that he was working for an international criminal, one of the most powerful men in the world. A frisson had run up his spine. Surely there would be a way to use this information. An enemy to sell information to.

It wasn’t easy, because this Drake was mysterious as hell. It was an impregnable fortress up above, the domain of a powerful, untouchable ruler. Very few people knew Drake’s comings and goings. The man was like smoke—impossible to grasp, impossible to pin down.

And then Andrei had two strokes of good luck. Fabulous luck, actually. Shota developed a crush on him, and a Russian came to Drake as a friend and left as an enemy.

Shota was easy to lead on. He was a romantic, and was deliriously happy with soulful looks and stolen kisses in the pantry. Andrei had no interest whatsoever in fucking Shota, but he did want to string him along as much as possible. It was through Shota that he learned that Drake disappeared two Tuesday afternoons a month. It was through Shota that he learned that Drake was buying the entire production of an artist called Grace Larsen. Finding the gallery that sold Grace Larsen had been a snap. He waited in a coffee shop across the street on the right Tuesday afternoons and—voilà!—the mysterious Drake, slinking in an alley.

Hard info on a billionaire running a crime empire was worth money, big money, but you had to find a buyer for it. Then he overheard that a Russian was offering fifty thousand dollars for information on Drake. None of Drake’s men was willing to cross their dangerous boss for half a year’s salary. But then none of Drake’s men had any ambitions, other than to be a thug for hire.

Andrei did.

There was a Hotmail account. It had all been so easy.

If you want information on Drake, transfer $50,000 to this bank account.

The response, and the fifty-thousand-dollar payment, had come fast. Someone wanted the information badly. Andrei had sent the information and the money went into his savings account.

For a sweaty couple of hours after the attempt on Drake’s life, Andrei expected a tap on the shoulder and—well, fuck, Drake was a mobster, after all—two bullets through the back of the head, Soviet style. But as the hours ticked by, Andrei’s hands steadied and the sweat along his spine dried. His exquisitely sensitive antenna told him that no one suspected him. He was a sous-chef, a kitchen servant, off everyone’s radar.

The BlackBerry in his chef’s pants vibrated. Andrei took a bathroom break and checked the screen.

$100,000 for further information.

Andrei’s breathing speeded up, his heart raced. One hundred thousand dollars—100K per pop. Oh yes, this was it, his moment. In a day, maybe two, he could accumulate more money than in a lifetime of working hard in shit jobs in other people’s kitchens.

He was smart. He could feed the information in tiny incremental bits, string this Rutskoi along. In a couple of days, Andrei could have five hundred thousand dollars. Maybe more.

Five hundred thousand dollars would allow his father to retire, would allow Andrei to open up Troika with enough style to guarantee its success. This was opportunity knocking at the door, what everyone said would happen in Amerika. All he had to do was answer.

OK, he typed into the tiny keyboard. He combed his long blond hair, dabbed some Hugo Boss cologne on his pulse points and went off looking for Shota.

Though Grace was starving and though her stomach was making embarrassing noises, it was hard to keep her mind on food with Drake walking naked across a room.

The man was simply magnificent. There were no words to describe him. Luckily, Grace didn’t need words. Her artist’s eye told her everything she needed to know.

She’d studied human anatomy all her life. During art school, she’d drawn literally thousands of human backs, but had never seen anything like the musculature of Drake’s back. It was immensely broad, rippling with muscle, tapering to a lean waist. There wasn’t an ounce of fat on him. It almost looked as though he didn’t have any skin, either, the muscles underlying it were so prominent. Clothed, he was impressive. Naked, he looked lethal. The pristine white bandage over the enormous ball of his left shoulder looked almost like a decoration. It was impossible to think that he’d taken a bullet only the day before. He looked completely fit and moved with utter ease, like a huge panther.

It was hard to imagine what kind of exercises he put himself through to maintain a body like that. Bodybuilding exercises pumped muscles up, made them rise. These weren’t built muscles: they looked…forged. Out of iron and steel.

He didn’t move like a bodybuilder, either, with that muscle-bound waddle they developed. No, he moved like water, smoothly flowing across the floor, like a force of nature.

She remembered the feel of him in her arms. Amazing. Like holding a warm, perfectly proportioned rock. No, that wasn’t the right analogy. Though he’d been hard as stone, what had come through her fingertips had been life. As if the man had a greater proportion of life force in him than others. She’d felt her fingers sizzle with electricity when she touched him, a connection to something almost superhuman.

Everything about him was outsize. His physique, his fighting ability, his…wow. Yeah, that was outsize, too. Grace didn’t have that much experience with male members, but even so, she understood that she’d just held a champ in her hand.

It wasn’t that she didn’t like sex, it was just that sex involved men, and a goodly portion of them turned out to be unlikeable jerks. She’d tried, she really had. Done her best to relax, go with the flow, all the other clichés, but she never quite managed it.

With Drake relaxation hadn’t been a problem. Her muscles had turned to mush. All he had to do was touch her, and her entire body softened for him.

Drake opened the door and walked back to her, pushing an enormous trolley carrying covered plates, cups, cutlery, a Thermos. She could smell the rich aroma of coffee, buttery croissants and juicy meat from across the room.

Grace sat up against the headboard cross-legged, pulling the sheet up under her arms, covering her chest. Drake parked the trolley next to the bed and poured two cups of steaming coffee from the Thermos.

He held a cup out to her, while the other hand tugged down the sheet. “Don’t cover yourself up,” he said softly. “You’re much too beautiful.”

She could have put up a fight, but of course it would have been ridiculous, thinking she could win a tussle against Drake. She was naturally modest. Even in the locker room, the few times she made it to the gym, she preferred dressing in the toilet cubicles. Not out of prudery, but out of shyness.

Which, clearly, had taken a hike, because she let him tug down the sheet without a murmur. It might have been the molten heat in his eyes that convinced her to just let go of the sheet instead of clutching it to her. No one had ever looked at her like that, like he wanted to eat her up and was restraining himself with difficulty.

Once the sheet was down to her lap, he handed her the cup and curled his hand around her breast, his thumb lazily twirling around her nipple. Grace could barely hold on to the coffee. What he was doing made her shake, made her muscles lax, made her vagina contract so hard, even her stomach muscles clenched.

Drake was watching her closely. He understood exactly the effect he was having on her. She chanced a glance at his lap. Well, it was mutual. He was fully aroused again, his penis flat against his stomach, thick and dark, with ropy veins running up the column.

His dark eyes were hot.

“Drink the coffee,” he growled.