Anatoly : Ruthless (Bad Russian Book 11)
Page 9
She doesn’t look up, but snuggles deeper against me. “Could they take us to the Caribbean instead?”
I stroke her hair. “Probably. Is that where you always wanted to go? It might cost something in fuel, though.”
“Oh, I can probably cover that.”
A chuckle rises in my chest. I can’t stop myself. I ask her, “Do you know how much aviation fuel costs?”
“I don’t think it matters. Do you know how much Igor’s deal was worth?”
I stop. I wait until she turns her head to look back up at me. Her sly little smile sets me alight. I ask her, “Are you expecting a mountain of commission?”
“No,” Her eyes sparkle with mischief as she tells me, “I sent the .pdf of Igor’s contract to Tania. She changed the numbers on the receiving account to one she set up on Pole Island in the Caribbean.”
I’m stunned into amazement. “You stole the money? All of it?”
She shrugs. “Tania did. I guess we did.”
“You have balls of steel.”
“Bad people took it, probably from good people at some point. Stanislav won’t come looking for it now, will he?”
I hug her, and admiration swirls inside me. “You are ruthless.”
“No,” her look of innocence makes me hard. “But I know that you are. And Tania is. For all that she has achieved already, I knew she always had one really powerful ambition. She’s always wanted to fund a full-service refuge for kids. When I told her about the contract, she didn’t miss a beat. She said that she’ll set up a facility on Pole Island and take all the kids there.”
My head shakes in amazement. “You aren’t going to tell me you didn’t have a hand in planning this all out.”
“Well, no. I did kind of think it through.”
“That’s why you wanted me to hit Stanislav?”
“It seemed only fair. He got us into this mess.” She bites her lip. “You might not like the deal I made with Tania, though.”
“Tell me?”
“She wanted to split the money fifty-fifty with me. I said you had to have a share, too. So she had to set up three accounts.”
“Why wouldn’t I like that?”
Her mouth tightens. I adore the look of concentration. I’m feeling that I’m just an ordinary Russian male at heart. I love a strong, smart woman, and I’m seeing now that my Emma is the best of the best. She says, “It’s not fifty-fifty. I said she should take two-thirds of the money to fund her refuge. We split the rest.”
“I can’t object to that. It’s still a lot of money.”
“It’s a ridiculous amount.”
“Besides, I’ve got enough for us both already. We might have to start a foundation, too.”
“We?”
“You’re going to marry me.”
“Am I?”
“Aren’t you?”
“You haven’t asked me.”
“I can get the captain to marry us.”
“You can not. I want Tania to be my maid of honor.” She sits up. My queen. Looks me in the eye. I know what she wants. What she needs. It’s what she deserves.
I lift her into the seat and she sits, regal and splendid. With genuine humility, I get down on one knee.
“Emma Fielding. Will you make me the happiest and the luckiest man who ever lived, and do me the great honor of agreeing to be my bride? To have and to hold, from this day forward, for better, for worse, and forevermore till death do us part?”
“I’ll think about it.” My stomach knots as she teases.
I have the only thing in the world that will do for this moment. I had it enlarged before, I’ll get it altered again. I hold it out to my princess. The precious faded silver of my dear grandmother’s ring.
She makes me wait. It’s agony, but it’s her right and I respect her for taking her time. Still, I’m burning inside. Until, at last, her smile cracks open and she says, “Yes. I will.” and I take her in my arms. She tells me, “I do,” and I kiss her.
Epilogue 2
Him
JEREMEY SLOCOMBE-WHITTINGDALE, THE whiskered, twinkly eyed Justice of the Peace for the Bahamas district of Pole Island, agrees to marry us on the sun-bleached terrace of the Bahamas Grand Hotel.
Then Emma decides she’d rather have our ceremony on the beach, at the Pole Beach Bar.
“I want to spoil you with a reception at the Bahamas Grand,” I tell her, “You don’t want that?”
Her smile is like sunshine. “I want to be on the beach, Anatoly. My toes in the sand, out in the sun and the sea air.” Standing behind her, I can see from Tania’s held-back smile that they’ve discussed this, she and Emma. I’ve learned already that when Emma decides that she wants something, or she wants a thing a certain way, our path to happiness is going to be me making that happen for her.
Even though she wants a barefoot wedding, at a bar that’s hardly more than a palapa, Emma and Tania spend most of the first three days at the Bridal Boutique on Lord John Street with Suki, the dressmaker and proprietress.
Jarel, the pilot of our plane decides he’ll stay on Pole Island, at least for a while. I know that he’s happy to keep away from Russia or anywhere he’s likely to meet Russians. I think his decision may be more influenced by his first view of Emma’s friend Tania, though.
Anyway, he’s a good man and I’m happy to have his help as my best man. He keeps me company while Emma and Tania make endless arrangements and preparations.
How they divide their attention between the serious business of finding and arranging the premises and permits for Tania’s refuge, and the intricacies of cocktails, finger-food, cakes, and dance tunes for our wedding is beyond me.
I’m just happy to have Jarel’s easy company to keep my mind off my rumbling impatience with every moment that I’m kept apart from my Emma.
I would have arranged for us to be married straight off the plane, as soon as we arrived. But the build-up, the anticipation, all the preparation for the ceremony is what she wants. So it’s what I want. However nuts it drives me.
I can handle it, I tell myself. It’s only a couple of days. I spent longer than that up to my chin in water in a muddy hole outside Aleppo in Syria. In some ways, though, those days waiting for a certain ISIS commander were easier. It was definitely simpler.
When the day arrives, Emma seems to have made firm and close friends with almost everyone on the island. She seems determined that we’ll spend the first night of her honeymoon at the full-moon party on the beach.
Little does she know that I’ve prepared a surprise that will have the two of us on a deserted beach with its own little Caribbean bay. Soon, she will be all mine, and mine alone.
Waiting is so hard, though.
Epilogue 3
Her
I WAS HAPPIER THE night of our wedding than I can ever have been before.
He gave me my wish, for a wedding on the beach. He wore a linen suit, aviator shades and a white shirt so perfect I could have eaten it. He looked every inch my hero. In front of Tania and Jarel and the Justice of the Peace and everybody we’d gotten to know on Pole Island. As he slipped the ring onto my finger, I felt like he took possession of me. It felt like I became a new person.
As if Emma, wife of Anatoly, was someone else, a later form of me. Bigger. Stronger. More of me.
In all the time I’ve known Tania, I never once saw her ever shed a tear. I didn’t see it this time, either, but I know that she did.
After Mr. Slocombe-Wittingdale told Anatoly, ‘You may now kiss the bride,’ and he did, oh, in the tenderest, deepest way. So strong and sincere that I felt naked and free in the warm breeze on the shore.
Afterward, when I looked back at Tania, her smile was crossed by the fallen track down her cheek, where a single teardrop had wriggled out of the corner of her eye and down, alongside her nose.
We danced at the Buck Moon midnight party, but I knew that Anatoly had something up his sleeve. When Xander, the DJ from Temptation, put on the midnight anthem, A
natoly whisked me away to a launch, moored on the beach.
He piloted the powerful launch out of the little bay and silver flying fish followed alongside us. His secret smile made it hard to keep my hands off his perfect shirt, especially while the spray wetted it and stuck it to his bronzed muscles. The wind raked his hair as he took us out into the ocean, where there was nothing around us but dark emerald and turquoise water. Clear and so deep it made my breath fill my chest and my heart fluttered.
Then he cut the launch across the moonlit waves and around the island to a tiny, perfect half-moon bay, highlighted by the moonlight in a silver blue.
At the back of the fine, sandy beach was a small, simple, and perfect little wood cabin, wrapped around by a wide deck.
Anatoly brought coolers from the launch and he made us champagne cocktails to drink under the moon.
The firmness of his low voice made my knees weak. “There’s nothing here but food, drink, moonlight and each other.”
“I hope there’s a bed,” I told him, although I wouldn’t have cared if there wasn’t.
“I could cope without the food and drink, too,” I said, “As long as I’ve got you, the bananas and pineapples will be more than enough.”
“Well, that’s good,” he held me, opening my dress, “Because you’re going to get a lot of me.”
And he held me, stroked me. Worshipped my body. And fucked me in ways I hadn’t even dreamed were possible.
He stroked and tugged my hair as the heat of his huge thickness rode and throbbed between my breasts.
His tongue and his lips found parts of me, unbearably sensitive parts of me that I didn’t even realize I had.
His fingers played me like an orchestra, making me float and rise, spiral and spin, whoosh and cascade in rising currents and a swirling vortex of bright and thumping sensation so intense that I didn’t think I could survive it. But still I cried out, wicked, wanton, guttural and hoarse, “More, Anatoly. Fuck me harder. Faster. Don’t stop.”
His rigid length pulled and stretched me wide. My juices burst and gushed around him, and he hammered me till I was too sore to stand.
“I’m going to give you babies, Emma. I’m not going to stop until you’re a mother to be.”
He told me, “I realized in the hotel that you love the de luxe life, but you want to stay grounded. I think that’s what holding the wedding at the Pole Beach Bar meant for you. Your understanding is instinctive. Based on real things. You value simplicity.”
I hadn’t even thought about it that way myself, but it was like a cool breeze let into a darkened room.
“You are my queen. My only desire is to give you everything you need. All that you want,”
I knew that it was true. He told me, “Life hasn’t been easy for you. I know that you had struggles in your past. When I realized that you had gotten all the money from the consortium, I was afraid that you might get swept away by the wealth.” He kissed the top of my head and buried his face there for a moment.
“I worried about how you would handle having all the money. More money than you will ever need. More money than you would need for a dozen lifetimes.” He looked in my face. “I need not have worried, though. As soon as you told me you wanted our wedding to be on the beach with your toes in the sand, I knew that you had too much sense to be carried away by trinkets and glitter.”
“You’re right,” I tell him, wondering how he could possibly know me so well. “I couldn’t put it as clearly as that myself. I think I’m understanding it as you tell me.”
Extra Epilogue
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READ ALL OF
THE BAD RUSSIAN SERIES
Alexandr Obsessed
Arkady Possessive
Yevgeni Protector
Nikita Demands
Mischa Dominant
Nikolai Powerful
Dimitri Driven
Leonid Unstoppable
Konstantin Urgent
Valentin Jealous
Anatoly Ruthless
Christof Brutal
THE NEXT
bad Russian
CHRISTOF is huge and hard, a dark, brooding,
older Russian man
and he knows exactly what he wants
from the innocent young
American girl
CHRISTOF
CHRISTOF
NOW
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READ ALL OF
THE BAD RUSSIAN SERIES
Alexandr Obsessed
Arkady Possessive
Yevgeni Protector
Nikita Demands
Mischa Dominant
Nikolai Powerful
Dimitri Driven
Leonid Unstoppable
Konstantin Urgent
Valentin Jealous
Anatoly Ruthless
Christof Brutal