Misha’s face fell a little, but he didn’t get angry, just squared his shoulders and met Riley’s angry gaze head on. That was Misha; never giving an inch.
“Do it.” Misha lifted his chin like a self-sacrificing moron, as though playing martyr would somehow make it all right, or maybe just make Riley feel more in control. As though they didn’t both know that if not for the armor, Misha could’ve killed Riley with one hand tied behind his back.
“Guess I deserve it.”
Damn right, he did. He’d lied to Riley from the get-go… but then Riley wasn’t completely innocent, either. At the very least, he was guilty of looking the other way. He’d known something was off; he’d even had a pretty good idea what it might be, but he hadn’t wanted to see it. Goddamn it. This was why Riley preferred to run from relationships. Things inevitably went nuclear and then all the splinters and debris blasted right through his center and short-circuited his defenses, making it hard to breathe, even harder yet to open his mouth and talk. Physical fights he could do. Verbal? Not so much.
“Riley?”
So much worry in Misha’s tone, so much caring, and the hell of it was that Riley believed it, reacted to it like a dumb, beaten dog that kept crawling back to its owner no matter what. He struggled for words, but as usual, when it counted they failed him, got stuck somewhere between his heart and his brain. It took McClane nudging him to get past the sudden constriction in his throat.
“You fucking bastard,” he rasped, almost shaking with the need to touch, hating himself for it, hating Misha for making him feel this way, for not being who he was supposed to be, not a good guy yet still the man Riley had fallen in love with. Riley backed up a step, realized what he was doing, and promptly moved in again, because damned if he was going to run this time. “What the fuck do you want from me? Why are you here?”
Misha swallowed hard, his gaze fixed on Riley. “I’ve been searching for you.”
Riley thought of the man he’d spotted in San Antonio, that familiar face in the crowd, cold eyes over a charming smile as Short-Bald-and-Dangerous coaxed information out of Riley’s coworkers, and his anger flared up higher. His fists clenched tightly, spiked with metal. He couldn’t have said if that had been McClane’s doing or his own, and right then he didn’t care.
“Yeah,” he breathed, fury pressing his voice down into a low growl. “I spotted your goon at the bar.” A pained bark of a laugh cracked out. “You know, when you introduced me to Kolya, I actually did wonder why an
‘associate consultant’ was packing.”
He hadn’t asked, though. It had been just one more thing to carefully overlook, because questioning it would’ve meant facing the truth and giving up Misha. He hadn’t been able to make himself do the right thing then.