Claimed Darker by Em Brown

Chapter 3

Chen noticed that her smile fell into a frown at beholding him.

It was her. The woman whose photo he had seen on Peter’s refrigerator. Could this woman possibly be involved with Peter’s death?

With an unassuming demeanor, she didn’t come across as a criminal. But criminals came in all shapes and sizes. Beautiful ones, too. Like this one.

On the long drive over flat terrain to Heihe in Heilongjiang Province, before crossing the border to Blagoveshchensk, many of the other nine other men in the van talked of how beautiful Russian women were. They made generalizations that Russian women were less materialistic and better in bed.

It seemed unlikely that a matchmaking service would want Peter dead. They didn’t even seem to know he had died.

“Peter Wong?” the driver had confirmed upon picking Chen up at Peter’s apartment. “You have the thirty-five thousand?”

Chen had taken out his money clip and paid the man. Not wanting to come across as ostentatious, he had left his more expensive items behind. The driver had accepted Chen as Peter, or the man simply didn’t care who was who as long as the money was there.

The matchmaking agency may or may not have anything to do with Peter’s death, but following the money trail usually led to answers.

“Ni hao,” the woman, Alena, said in halfway decent Mandarin. She gave him a smile.

With Peter’s death still on his mind and the possibility that this woman might be connected, Chen wasn’t in the mood to be friendly, but he wasn’t going to get anywhere by being frosty.

“Privet,” he returned in Russian.

Her countenance brightened, making her prettier. “Otlichno.”

But she continued to look at him with some misgiving. She spoke in accented English next. “It is nice to see you finally. I said correctly, yes?”

He returned a puzzled look.

“My English,” she said. “I am trying to improve. You said your English is fluent.”

“Yes. I went to boarding school in England.”

Not knowing what Peter might have told her, he decided to say as little as possible. They moved aside for the remaining men and women to pair up. They were then guided to a larger room for dinner, which included Chinese staples like steamed rice, green beans in black bean sauce, and ma pao tofu, alongside Russian dishes like beef stroganoff and borscht.

The men pulled the chairs for their partners. Alena wobbled in her attempt to sit down. Chen caught her before she stumbled. Her scent, unadorned with fragrance, wafted up his nose, stirring something inside him. He helped her into the chair.

“Blagodaryu vas,” she murmured, then switched to Mandarin as if realizing he didn’t understand her. “Xièxiè.”

He knew a fair amount of Russian and had been tempted to speak with the older woman and a burly, bearded man who both seemed to be from the agency. But if they were involved in anything questionable, he didn’t want to come across too prying. Best to start with Alena.

Taking his own seat, he tried not to dwell on how she had felt in his arms. Under different circumstances, he would have been open to bedding her, though the quieter ones usually weren’t his type. Given his proclivities when it came to sex, he preferred partners who seemed to have stronger constitutions.

Still, he found himself wondering if someone like Alena could handle any BDSM.

After everyone had sat down, the woman from the agency explained that they would spend four days at the hotel getting to know each other in person and determining if they were right for matrimony. For those who were ready to marry, the agency would arrange for the services on-site.

“Do you wish to marry today or tomorrow?” Alena asked Chen as the others dug into the food.

He tried to hide his surprise. Had Peter offered to marry a woman he had never met in person?

“I don’t know,” he answered as he poured tea into her porcelain cup and offered to scoop rice onto her plate.

Her lips turned into a small frown. They weren’t the plump lips he was used to seeing on women who could afford Botox injections, but they would look pretty enough wrapped around his cock.

Damn. Where did that thought come from? He was here on a mission to find out who had killed Peter and why. Not to get laid.

“You said you could not wait,” she said in English.

He thought for a moment before turning the question back on her. “What of you?”

“Me? I like soon.”

“But you’ve only just met me.”

“I feel I know you well.”

She seemed to try to reassure him with a smile, but her statement was not spoken with a great deal of confidence.

He placed some pelmeni on her plate. “Just because you know someone well doesn’t mean you’re ready to marry them.”

“I am. Ready.”

He eyed her more closely. She and Peter had probably gotten to know each other online, via email or some chat room. Peter had clearly not shared his appearance with her. She had to be naive to think she could get to know a person well simply through typing words into a computer. They had no shared experiences.

“You don’t know me as well as you think,” he said before taking a bite of the chicken. It was mediocre fare, about as good as a lot of the Chinese restaurants in England. “And there are certain elements required for a marriage to be successful.”

His father and grandmother had been pestering him of late to marry. As if his sperm might dry up next year. But having suffered the disaster that was his mother and father’s marriage, he was in no fucking rush.

She furrowed her brow. “You wrote you love me. Is love not enough?”

Peter had said he loved her? Chen supposed it shouldn’t surprise him. Peter fell easily for a pretty face and a sexy body. And Alena, though a tad thin, had both.

“Do you love me?” Chen returned.

“Yes,” she said and gave him a big smile after a brief pause.

Bullshit. He had heard the hesitation in her response.

“Love isn’t enough,” he pronounced. “A man and woman must be compatible in temperament and expectations. They must satisfy each other mentally, emotionally…and physically.”

The last word seemed to startle her. She must not have given such things much thought. She poked nervously at the food on her plate.

“You should eat,” he told her. “Put on some weight.”

He didn’t know where that last part came from; it wasn’t his place or inclination to tell a woman what she should weigh—except that was what his grandmother was always telling him, and would probably continue to tell him until he weighed three or four hundred pounds.

He had noticed her shoes—which had likely contributed to her clumsiness—were frayed and that her dress, though she looked flush in it, was worn. If she came from a poor background, she should take advantage of the food.

“Is it the money?” she asked, looking at her plate instead of him. “The two million rubles?”

He coughed on his tea. Of course. The little gold digger was marrying Peter for money.

Chen could tolerate stupid women, uncouth women, bitchy women, but he couldn’t stand gold diggers. His mother had been the biggest one of all. After swindling tens of millions from his father, she had deserted him, leaving behind a son and daughter, children she obviously cared nothing for.

Chen was tempted to get up in disgust and leave the table. But he had to find out if Alena knew anything that might help solve Peter’s murder.

“Like I said, we need to be sure we are compatible.”

“How?”

A hunger, not for food, reared inside him. He should have banged one of those nurses making eyes at him back at the hospital. Maybe that would have gotten the desire out of his system.

“Let’s start with the physical,” he tested her.

Her bottom lip dropped open a tad.

He set down his chopsticks to put his full gaze on her. “My room. Tonight.”