Wicked Mafia Prince: A dark mafia romance (Dangerous Royals Book 2) Page 16

  “You enjoyed when I acted like I wanted to use you, as though you were a beautiful, tender offering for me to heartlessly devour. That was very pleasurable for you.”

  My face feels hot. My neck feels hot. All of my skin so hot. “That’s not that kind of woman I am now.”

  “Sometimes I’d play a mental trick on myself where I would imagine another man had tried to move in on you—I would imagine it, and then I’d put my nose to your beautiful neck and breathe in your scent and go fucking wild. I’d press your hands over your head and fuck your brains out and make you mine again. You enjoyed when I had that feeling in me, when I was lost with this feeling of madness.”

  I try to force myself to look at his hands only, but my eyes travel over his hard arms, corded with muscle. My mouth goes dry as I imagine him lost to such a feeling. As I imagine him taking his fill of me, heartlessly devouring me, wild and out of control. Every nerve ending on my skin comes alive at the thought of him pushing me down and taking me like that.

  He smiles. “Now my secret’s out.”

  I open my mouth to protest, but the words fall from my mind.

  “We’d sometimes be sent into group situations, posing as strangers in public places. I had to pretend not to know you. I enjoyed that because I’d see you anew, from the eyes of a stranger, and I’d have to treat you coolly, but inside my hunger for you would rage.” He smiles at the memory. “You’d always taunt me a little bit, because you knew. And you had stranger sex fantasies. You loved anytime I played the dark stranger. When we’d finally be out of the place or off the job, we’d pretend we were still strangers and be fucking sometimes before we hit the car. In an alley, often. We’d talk to each other in our stranger roles. I would push you up against a wall and take you as a stranger. Like I told you before. It was true.”

  What he doesn’t understand is that he’s a stranger to me now. Is that why I want him so feverishly? I look away, but my mind is a boat in a maelstrom, spinning from the force of desire. I’m drunk on the sound of his voice and his dark stories.

  “You liked a little pressure right on your neck—”

  “No, I wouldn’t—I couldn’t.”

  “Not choking. Just a little…like this.” My eyes widen as he presses his huge hand to my neck, his palm rough and warm on my tender skin. He pushes my head backwards to the end of the bed and holds me there. “Claiming pressure. Exactly like that.”

  This neck hold does something to me. My sex throbs. My pulse bangs against his fingers.

  “Just enough to let you know you’re mine. To let you know my intention to take your body fully and completely. To let you know that I planned to rip off your clothes and take you in whatever way I wish.”

  I should push his hand away, but I don’t. Instead, I say, “Like that?”

  “Just like that.”

  “Just like that?”

  He removes his hand from my neck and lifts me. My leg chains clank as he lays me down on the rug. He kneels over me. “You liked it just like that.” His dark eyes flash in the firelight as he threads his fingers into mine, our hands forming two fists. His tie hangs loose, sliding against the side of my neck as he presses our two fists over my head and down onto the thick shag rug, palms hot against mine.

  This is the way a rough man holds a woman’s hands, I think—forming two hot fists. And I think it feels good.

  The rough fur of the rug prickles the backs of my hands. He holds me still like that, dark eyes fierce above me, inky lashes flashing in the firelight.

  His eyes drift to where my pulse throbs in my neck, and I know he’s seeing it. I think he sees everything of me. He sees more of me than if I were naked.

  “Viktor,” I say.

  “What, lisichka?”

  “I’m too far away.” I don’t know whether I mean from him or Jesus.

  “I have you.” He kneels over me, trapping my legs with his feet and knees now, while he holds my hands in place over my head. “You always felt safe when you were trapped like this.” He gazes down into my eyes. “Again?”

  I narrow my eyes.

  “Where am I now?”

  The game. But he’s not covering my eyes this time. I gasp as he lowers himself to me. He presses himself down between my legs, shifting to touch me there, suit pants to my jeans, hard ridge to my sex. I roll my hips up to meet the feeling. It spreads over me. I can’t let it stop.

  “Where am I?”

  “Viktor,” I pant.

  He transfers my hands to one hand, still capturing them, and then he takes my chin between his finger and his thumb and he kisses me.

  I kiss him back, moving under him, taking more of his ridge with my body. I think I’ve travelled somewhere.

  He presses his hand onto my breast, then. “This shirt. You kill me with this shirt and nothing underneath. You kill me.” He holds my breast, squeezes, then slides his hand back up to my neck.

  He kisses my neck in the V of his thumb and forefinger and proceeds to unbutton my shirt. His shirt. He kisses every new patch of skin that he bares to the air. One button, then another button, more skin, another kiss. He finds my tattoo and kisses it. He’ll have my shirt open soon.

  I lock my legs around his. The push of his body overwhelms me.

  “Tanechka,” he whispers, pressing his hand to my belly. I feel split open—my body is pure need for him. The champagne and his warm words softened me up, but Viktor and the poem split me open.

  “How does this feel?”

  I think I’m going backwards, losing touch with my simple life of poverty and chastity. I knew who I was there, and now I don’t. I feel frantic and confused with lust.

  Perversely, it makes me want Viktor all the more fiercely.

  “I feel lost.”

  “I have you.” He slides his hand up and down me, creating sweet, warm friction as he kisses my neck.

  “More,” I say, desperate.

  He presses his hand down on my stomach. “Like this?”

  “Yes.”

  “I have you, lisichka.”

  I rock my hips, body craving for him to go lower. He unbuttons my jeans and yanks down the zipper. I feel cool air on tender skin. He presses his hand under my panties to the slick wetness between my legs. He just presses there.

  I’m lost now and rushing toward him. I can’t bear to be lost.

  And then he begins to move his fingers. Gently, slowly at first.

  Viktor’s fingers are between my legs. His breath heats my ear. He feels like home.

  “Yeshche,” I say. “More.”

  He invades the seam between my legs with confidence. Arrogance, even. I try to remember why I shouldn’t like it. His finger feels impossibly thick and blunt, and my legs are like jelly.

  A beautiful haze of feeling wells up.

  “I’ll never deserve you, but I’ll always find you,” he grates out. He pushes my knees farther apart and slides his finger up and down, stroking up and down. His slow, steady strokes are dark magic. “Everything you are is perfect right now.”

  My eyes drift closed, picturing that corded, capable hand at my sex. I want him everywhere on me.

  “Look at me,” he whispers as he roams two fingers over my sex, over swollen skin full of feeling.

  I keep my eyes shut. Viktor is my anchor. But he’s also the man pulling me out to sea.

  “Come back to me,” he growls.

  I open my eyes.

  “There you are.” He kisses me as he works me. He thrusts his tongue into my mouth as he lengthens his stroke. I take hold of it, sucking it. Something inside me knows to do this. He’s stroking me harder. I suck his tongue harder as a signal for more.

  He groans. Agony or ecstasy, I cannot tell. It’s how I feel, too.

  With his other hand he presses my hands back to the carpet with renewed force. His domination gives me a helpless feeling that makes me crave his touch all the more. I’m a creature living on his touch like a vine living on air.

  I release his tongu
e, and he growls and nips my lip, then he sucks it, sharply, painfully.

  I make a sound of protest. We’ve gone too far. I’m losing something essential.

  I gasp as he begins now to lick my ear. His tongue is rough and hot there. A glittery, floaty sensation slides through me. The rawness inside me is like a beautiful waterfall of tears.

  He grunts as he slides his tongue deeper into my ear. I hiss out a breath. Every thought leaves me.

  Like sliding through the universe. He told me that’s how it would feel. He’s right. He invades me in this untoward place and sets me spinning through the stars. His massive fingers stoke a fire between my legs.

  “Tanechka,” he breathes, low and rough, pressing onto my hand above my head, reminding me that I’m safe.

  I try to fight the orgasm even as it rolls through me. But the feeling takes me over, carries me. His fingers are deep inside of me. I spin on, wild with feeling, stars in my mind. I cry out. It’s too beautiful. Too deep and too vast.

  A wilderness of stars.

  It’s only after the feeling leaves me that I realize the horror of what I’ve done. I push him away and scramble back, buttoning my pants, pulling his shirt around me, sitting against the end of the bed.

  I’m shaking. I feel crazy.

  “Lisichka.”

  “Don’t call me that!” Everything’s wrong. Everything’s different.

  He smiles. Happy. Or is he mocking me? He would take everything from me! Rage boils up from nowhere. I feel hot and crazy. A puppet out of control.

  And suddenly I’m on top of him. My hands are around his throat, one thumb pressed against the side of a little bone in there. I have only to snap that bone.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Viktor

  I look into her angry blue eyes, into the heat of her hate.

  She’s a gorgeous angel of vengeance, skin flushed, hair wild. My dress shirt hangs open, no longer covering her breasts.

  She trembles as she grips my neck, but her command is complete.

  “Tanechka,” I say. “Take what you need.”

  “You’d try to hurt me?”

  “Do what you have to.”

  She narrows her eyes. “You want me to kill you?”

  My heart pounds. Is this my old Tanechka? Or is this just the nun, pushed to the brink? “Tanechka?”

  “You’d die to make me remember? You’d die to take me from Jesus?”

  The nun, then.

  “Answer.”

  “Yes, I’d die to bring you back, to have you back in this world. I’d do anything.”

  “Because you love me?” She spits out the word love, showing her distaste for it, or perhaps for me.

  Yes, she’s the nun, but she’s poised to crush my windpipe nevertheless. I shake, waiting.

  “You love me so very much that you’d take all that I cherish in order to get me back?”

  I have the wild sensation that she could crush the guilt and shame from me with one single squeeze. “Do it, lisichka. I deserve it.”

  “You’d corrupt me from my heart’s desire to be a nun?”

  “The old Tanechka would never kneel and pray to a god. The old Tanechka knelt before nobody and believed in nothing.”

  “And the old Tanechka cannot change?” She’s wild, dangerous.

  But then, just as quickly as she attacked me, she eases off, looking at her hands. She stands. “No matter what you’ve done, you’re loveable. You are worthy of God’s love.”

  “Stop talking about God!”

  “God knows your heart, and he loves you. He knows you, and he still loves you.”

  I surge to my feet and slam my fist into the wall, feeling the skin break. “Stop talking about God!”

  I slam my fist in again and again.

  “I don’t want God’s love.” Plaster breaks around my knuckles, gouges my skin. “I don’t want your stupid prayers!”

  “Stop, Viktor!”

  I keep on. I’m out of her reach. She can do nothing to stop me.

  I think of her face the day I shoved her into Dariali Gorge. The way she pleaded with me. The way she clung to me. Predatel, I called her.

  I punch the wall again and again. The cuts deepen. My hand is wet with blood, the pain more and more intense. It’s nothing compared to how my heart feels.

  I didn’t believe in her like I should’ve. I didn’t believe in us. I didn’t understand she was operating as a double agent, pretending to have gone over to a rival gang to save her mother. All we knew was that she’d given secrets to the enemy. Kissed their leader, Sergei. We had photos. We had recordings of phone calls. It was only later that we put it together, how she planned to turn it all back on them after she had her mother back safely. We found a notebook where she’d worked it all out, and I could see the Rubik’s Cube thinking in it.

  But it was too late. I was nineteen and so in love, I couldn’t see straight. So in love with her that I was beyond listening, beyond reach. Beyond anything. And the gang my only family. And I killed her.

  The hole in the wall grows red with my blood. I should’ve believed in her.

  “Viktor!”

  “I’ll fuck you and hurt you and take you from your stupid god and you can’t stop me.” I slam my fist in even harder. Pain shoots up my arm. “And don’t say my name like you know me.”

  That’s when the shot rips out, like an explosion in the wall to my right. I still and turn, ears ringing, pulse racing.

  She has my Glock. The rug is bunched up on the floor. Did she use the rug to pull the gun to her? “Get over here,” she growls.

  My throbbing fist is warm with blood. “Tanechka?”

  She gestures with the gun at a spot on the floor in front of her. “Now.”

  Mischa bursts into the room.

  “Leave us,” I say.

  He turns and leaves.

  I turn my attention back to Tanechka. I want to cry. She’s back.

  Again she gestures at the floor.

  My heart pounds as I fall to my knees in front of her. She gazes down at me so strangely. I don’t know what it is. I think it’s her hate stare, grown so hot it’s gone cold. Like the dark side of the sun.

  I grab her legs. “I’m sorry, Tanechka.” I bury my face in her thighs, making her jeans wet with tears and blood. “I didn’t believe in us, and I was so rash, so wrong, so, so sorry. I’d die a million times to take it back—”

  “Get off me,” she growls.

  My heart pounds.

  Tanechka!

  I never thought I’d see her again. Once more she gestures with the gun. “Lie down. Facedown on the floor.”

  Cold shivers go over me. She means to shoot me execution style.

  It’s only right.

  Except I want to die looking at her. I want to look at her as I breathe my last breath, as the pain melts away.

  “Down! Do it!”

  I swallow. I will obey. This is what I’ve earned, then. To die alone at her hands, face shoved into the bearskin rug.

  I suck in a breath and lay myself in front of her, fingers knit behind my neck. I weep into the rough fur, thinking about our quest to find Kiro, this brother I’ll never know. My love for Aleksio. Most of all, Tanechka. She makes the world beautiful. She’s back.

  And now this pain I’ve carried for so long will be washed clean by the only person who can wash it.

  “I’m not afraid,” I say.

  She’s silent, standing over me. What’s she thinking? What’s she waiting for?

  I cast her into the gorge even as she begged me not to. She clung to me to the last. We were lost together. We were soul mates. We were each other’s island. She clung to me as I cast her off.

  “Make me suffer as I made you suffer. End this.”

  She kicks at my hands. “Hands down. Lie on your side.”

  I press my hands to my sides and lie on one of them, holding my breath. Whatever way she wants it.

  She stands over me. I look at her stocking feet. The
ragged ends of the jeans. “Eyes shut,” she commands.

  I shut my eyes. I hear a soft rustling sound above me. I hear her behind me. What is she doing? I feel a tickle on the back of my head. A hand over my arm. She stretches her body out behind mine. She presses a kiss to the back of my neck, arm draped over me, gun still in her hand.

  And holds me.

  Something in me breaks.

  I begin to weep.

  “You’re worthy of God’s forgiveness,” she says. “You’re worthy of God’s love.”

  Like a baby I weep. I don’t want her fake god’s love or forgiveness.

  But this strong fierce female feels so like Tanechka, shining with goodness. It fucks me up.

  Still she holds the gun—her hand isn’t on the trigger, but on the grip. She allows it to hang lazily from her hand in front of me as she holds me.

  This, too, is so like Tanechka, her Glock an accessory as much as the hoop earrings she so loved to wear. As much as the snake chain necklaces that would lie across her skin, sliding slyly along the curves of her collarbone.

  “I’m not worthy. Not of you.”

  “Shh,” she says, pulling me tighter.

  I’m so tired, so, so tired.

  I close my eyes, imagining my fierce, glorious female has come back to me. Except Tanechka wouldn’t be holding me like this.

  Tanechka was never one to forgive her enemies.

  “Shh,” she says again.

  Chapter Twenty

  Lazarus

  I’m sitting in my Mercedes on a street near Ping Tom Park. It’s a place I like to go and think, but right now I’m on a phone consultation with Valerie. She’s encouraging me to personally visit Dmitri, leader of the American Russians.

  “Visit my enemy…” I say. “Maybe I should bring him a little gift, too. But what do you bring the man who wants your head on a platter? Fruitcake doesn’t seem quite right.”

  She laughs. She thinks I’m using it as a figure of speech.

  I told her that I’m in a rivalry with a Russian accounting firm. I told her how competition for some business got out of hand, right when I don’t need the extra headache.

  “Your people stepped over a line,” she says.