by Warren, Rie
He pushed me through, his smile eerie and white in the sudden dark that loomed around us when the door slid closed.
I heard a click, then the landing on which we stood came into view. Flickering light from torch-like sconces illuminated the secret area.
“Down.” Kirill pointed to stairs made of metal grating.
I swallowed as my heart dropped to my stomach, carefully navigating the steps. He followed right after me until we both stood in what I’d jokingly referred to as the dungeon.
I wasn’t laughing now.
Genuine dread swooped down on me, and Kirill didn’t help as he prodded me none-too-gently forward.
Our footsteps rang out, echoing down the long cool corridor lit by those electric torches. After the scary events of the past hour and now this new intimidation, I couldn’t swallow my fear.
Other passages led off in myriad directions, but Kirill kept herding me onward. I didn’t even know how far underground we were. The brick maze-like catacombs had to be at least a century old.
We passed by several soldiers who showed absolutely no surprise or reaction seeing their enforcer leading a captive female into the bowels of the building.
Drawing an old-fashioned skeleton key from his pocket, Kirill halted in front of a steel-banded door.
I gulped, quickly glancing around . . . always, always looking for an escape.
One more hallway ran perpendicular to where we stood.
“What’s down that way?”
When the door grated loudly open, Kirill turned a thoroughly sinister grin on me. “More implements of torture.”
7
Kirill
I WATCHED IN SATISFACTION as my ominous demeanor and menacing words had the intended effect on my little Irish prisoner.
Beneath my jacket, her petite frame shuddered, and her hazel eyes flickered like a cornered animal with no escape.
It was about fucking time the female learned her place.
Never mind the fact I’d been terrified stepping back into the club. Suddenly worried sick Joanna might’ve gotten hit by a stray bullet while I was out trying to run down the attackers.
Nothing scared me, and any softer feelings I was stupidly developing for Jo had to be squashed.
“In.” Shoving her ahead of me, I slammed the door and locked it from the inside.
I watched in sick amusement as she frantically scanned the box-like room for some way out.
No one was coming to her rescue.
Maksim, Yury, and Sasha were on their way to the mansion with an armed escort.
Arkady had gone up to the apartment.
But that left me no place private to have it out—loudly—with Jo.
I’d only taken her down here to get her alone but now, seeing the unmasked fear skidding across her pretty features, the idea of torturing her appealed to me.
Better yet, punishing her.
Especially when she’d asked about the offshoot corridor leading to the weapons store.
Rubbing my hands together, I considered turning her over my lap and paddling her ass until my handprint littered her pale skin.
She put the table between us and backed into a corner as far away from me as possible. “What are you going to do with me now?”
Another sick smile lifted the corner of my lips, and I beckoned her away from the wall.
She took one halting step then another, but still remained several feet from me.
I took my time, ambling over to her. I smiled harder when I heard her quick hiss of breath while I walked with measured paces all around her.
We were alone in the soundproof room. A cold and dank and musty place. I mean, everyone really did have a torture room, right?
The dreary steel table.
The heavy chains nailed into the wall at a man’s shoulder height.
The bare bulb dangling overhead.
Unpleasant and unwelcoming, just like me.
I cracked my knuckles as I stepped back to face her, and she flinched.
The echo of screams could be heard in these walls, and the dark maroon of blood spilled stained these floors.
“Sit,” I ordered, gesturing to one of the two chairs at the table.
Her pulse beat a rapid rhythm at the base of her neck, but she lifted her eyes to mine. “I’d rather stand.”
If she insisted, then I was going to enjoy the view. My gaze swept from her fiery red hair to the high hills of her tits. Seeing her in my dress shirt was such a fucking turn on, I clamped my jaw down in order to stifle a groan.
Then those goddamn sexy shoes with the blood red soles.
In defiance of my bold stare, Jo thrust out her breasts and tilted her head at me.
A current of hot electricity pulsed between us.
I’d held my fucking KA-BAR at her throat with the deadly promise of slitting her from ear to ear, and she’d remained captive, still, and silent.
She’d played at being meek, but I didn’t buy it.
To break the simmering tension surging between us, I said the first fucking inane thing that popped into my head. “Are you hungry?”
And where was this odd concern for her wellbeing coming from?
“Why?” She scoffed. “Do you have a chef’s kitchen in your dungeon?”
Smartass.
“How much did you have to drink tonight?”
She tossed her hair over one shoulder, jutting out her chin. “I mostly had water, thank you very much. And Arkady made me eat something anyway.”
I didn’t like the way she said my brother’s name so easily, like they’d bonded while I was getting ambushed.
“And maybe I had a few shots with Sasha,” she mumbled. “You haven’t told me why you dragged me down here.”
“I wanted a nice private place so I could take your family’s attack—not to mention the cost of repairs—out on your ass,” I mentioned oh-so-casually.
She bristled all over, going up on her tiptoes. “Like hell you are.”
Her feistiness turned me on too—one twisted part of me even liked butting heads with her—but Yury expected me to take her in hand.
It was time to let Joanna know I was in charge of her, and there was nothing she could do about it.
Faster than she could react, I kicked out a chair. I ripped my jacket from her shoulders, flung it to the table, and snatched her to me.
Settling on the seat, I pulled her right over my lap, her shrieks ringing out uselessly.
I pinned her flailing form down with a hand between her shoulder blades and one thick thigh spread out to separate her legs.
When I had the shrew locked in place, I flipped up her shirttail and nearly growled.
I ran one big palm up the back of her slim thigh, and her head shot up.
Her screeching ceased.
“So this is what you were wearing under my shirt.” Skimming my fingers to the crease where her thigh met the softly rounded contour of her ass, I listened to her sputter.
I slid my palm teasingly between her legs, not quite high enough to reach her pussy, but enough to raise goosebumps on her flesh.
“Absolutely nothing,” I murmured, staring down at her naked bottom.
“What was I gonna wear? You took my clothes!”
Even turned over my lap with her bare ass hanging in the wind, she talked back to me.
“I think that warrants a spanking to begin with.” Hauling back, I smacked her with half the force I’d put into a real blow.
The wobble of firm flesh.
The sound of her incensed shouts.
The mounds of her tits pressing into my thigh.
The whole thing was addictive, and I continued my swats, peppering harsher spanks all over her ass and even along the upper crease of her thighs.
“You already goddamn disobeyed me by getting out of your restraints earlier”—spank—“when I expressly forbade you from”—smack—“doing anything to defy me.”
I watched her pretty skin begin to glow with incandesce
nt pink as I rained blow upon blow on her.
“Ow!” Howling, she tried to kick out. “Dammit!”
A chuckle sounded from my throat, rife with dark humor at her helplessness.
My fingers tapped her bottom a couple times, then I palmed one whole globe—the heat of her flesh searing into my hand.
I spanked her again and again in between cupping and kneading the cheeks of her ass.
Then she moaned.
And it wasn’t a sound of pain.
My hand halted, half-raised in the air. I brought it down again, and she twitched then arched as a mewl escaped her lips.
Only then did I notice my cock had surged to full meaty thickness beneath her belly, hot and hard as a spike.
I clenched the shirttails at the base of her spine, my breath labored.
Jo got her legs under her and pressed her bottom up.
Blyad.
My swats softened, and she kept pushing back for more.
She panted.
I caressed her warm, warm ass and, Jesus Christ, for a second it felt like she was rubbing herself on me.
My caresses ended. I attacked her ass with another barrage of slaps.
Teeth gritted, lips pulled back, I chewed out, “Why the hell didn’t you try to escape when you had the remotest chance? You’re clever enough. You could’ve figured something out, especially with the club in chaos.”
That time I waited for her answer, running the pads of my fingers all over her ripened ass.
Her head turned my way, and she let out a stuttering breath. “Because I didn’t have any place I wanted to go, and I’m not sure it isn’t better with you than where I’ve come from.”
That little tidbit of truth caught me completely off guard.
I groaned.
Swearing viciously, I hauled back for one last strike.
My hand landed right on the soaked lips of her cunt.
Jo bit her lips, her eyes shutting.
My nostrils flared. She looked to be on the verge of coming.
Jaw clenched painfully, I drew my fingers up through her slit, and she jerked on my lap.
Fuck fuck fuck.
Then I focused on her ass and what I’d done to her. The heated skin, my handprints.
I remembered those painful bruises along her ribs, and that someone had clearly raised a hand to her in a less than pleasant way.
Stopping suddenly, I pushed her off me.
She stumbled, and I held her by the waist to make sure she was steady.
She stared at me, cheeks flushed, hair wild, and breasts heaving.
My cock strained against the front of my pants, obscenely rigid and huge.
When Jo glanced down, her mouth formed a great big oval.
I stood abruptly, knocking the chair back. Reaching for my jacket, I shrugged it on, hoping to conceal my dangerous reaction to her.
Something compelling was growing between us and, for all my intentions, I hadn’t done a damn thing to dampen the flame.
Instead I’d ignited the spark into a full-blown blaze.
“You couldn’t expect them not to retaliate.” Jo chewed on her lip, her gaze again straying to my groin.
I didn’t know if she offered the explanation as means of an apology, but I saw my way to shut down this thing between us.
Her ire was much easier to handle than her desire.
And I needed to get control back, because I was on the verge of tossing her onto the table, hiking that goddamn shirt back up over her glowing ass, and sinking balls deep into her.
I’d probably have to eat her out first. Blyad. I could smell her pussy—her scent had saturated my fingers for one splendid moment.
Pushing those thoughts, her scent, the feeling of her trembling across my lap from my mind, I growled right in her uptilted face. “Whether or not you had the chance to run and decided not to makes no difference, malyshka.”
“But—”
Hauling her against me, I growled again when her belly rocked against my dick. “The point is your clan hit us tonight. I plan to destroy each and every one of them. In front of you, if I have my way.”
“Not my brothers!”
“What about your da?” I snarled.
Head dipping, she didn’t say a single thing.
I snorted, thrusting her from me. “That’s right. You were raised by a pack of wild dogs.”
I raked her with my gaze, and Jo sneered.
“And you were raised to be an unfeeling robot.”
“Suka.”
“Svoloch.”
Towering over her, I drew her back to me. “You know what that means?”
“I picked up some Russian over the years. Bastard.”
She looked so damn daring, standing here in this tomb wearing nothing more than one of my shirts.
Yanking her arm from my grasp again, she spat out, “Perhot-podzalupnaya.”
There was that fiery spunk. She’d be a wildcat in the sack.
Her accent sucked, but that didn’t even matter. The insult she chose to fling at me made me first chuckle.
Then I leaned back, booming laughter rippling up from my stomach.
8
Jo
KIRILL JUST MADE ME so damn mad.
The utter mayhem of the entire day and night had my nerves strung tight.
Not to mention the sheer indignity of him throwing me across his thighs and spanking me almost to orgasm.
The hot reaction to his firm swats then soft caresses caught me off guard, lighting a fire beneath my skin and between my legs like no man ever had.
My ass still burned, and I continued to tingle deep below, like heat, sparks, and butterflies all tickled and teased my body’s most sensitive areas.
Threats.
Violence.
Bullets.
His untamed fury at me and my family.
Now he had the audacity to crack up? Right here in the middle of this torture chamber he’d locked us inside of?
He laughed and laughed uproariously.
I was about to kick him in the shins.
“What?” I gnashed between my teeth,
“You called me pee hole dandruff,” he huffed out between more bursts of deep, masculine laughter.
An unwilling smile began creeping across my lips. “Well, how was I to know what it meant? It’s an insult, right?”
He snorted. “Not the worst thing I’ve been called.”
I shook my head, trying to look away from him. But when Kirill laughed his whole face lightened up, and I’d never seen anything like it.
His chuckles died down eventually.
I dared placing my hand on his sturdy forearm, and his gaze immediately zoomed to my fingers touching him.
Seriousness wreathed his features. “What?”
“You know I really couldn’t have known anything about tonight, right?”
He considered me before acceding, “Da.”
“And there was no way my family weren’t gonna make their own point in response to you abducting me.”
“I’d except them to send me a personalized thank you note for returning a viper like you in a body bag.”
Flames about leaped from my sudden glare as my lips popped open. “How dare you?”
“Easily.” He smirked. “Now I have one more decision to make tonight, Joanna.”
I sighed, slumping.
Strolling around me, he listed off his options. “I could leave you locked down here for the rest of the night—”
“No!”
His smirk deepened when he stepped over to the chains bolted to the wall of this prison.
He gave them a good hard yank, the heavy, rusted links clanging together.
“One advantage of keeping you here is I know for a fact you wouldn’t get out of this bondage, printsessa. Men have tried. Men have died.”
Standing immobile, fear drove a spike through my entire being.
“Another bonus is”—he wrapped the links around one of his forearms
and pulled even harder, demonstrating the futility of trying to get out of that trap—“I wouldn’t have to listen to your mouth for several blissful hours. I could sleep peacefully. All alone in my great big bed.”
“You wouldn’t.”
“Wouldn’t I?” Kirill let go of the chains, which clattered against the wall. “Or I could drag your sore ass upstairs if you promise to behave for a slight change of pace.”
I mimed zipping my lips shut.
“For once you’ve made a smart decision.”
After unlocking the door of his torture room, Kirill marched me through another maze of halls that somehow miraculously ended at an underground elevator shaft.
I said nada, not even the whole way up and into the apartment.
Ambient lighting gave a soft glow to the kitchen and main living area, and I didn’t see a single sign of Boris.
“Does Arkady live up here too?” Perhaps I could use that to my advantage.
“He does. And you do know he’s Yury’s underboss, da? So whatever you’re thinking in that pretty little head of yours, just remember you’re fortunate to have landed under my protection.”
Protection? Ha!
Kirill crossed the room without his usual order at me to stay. He tossed his jacket onto the back of a sofa and stalked to the safe where he’d earlier stashed my switchblade.
He flicked through what remained of the money he’d used to pay off the customers earlier then locked it in the safe, swiftly closing it.
When he turned, he raked both hands over his short-cropped hair.
Peering at me, he dropped his voice. “Do you understand I had to do what was necessary in front of Yury before? And I’ll do it again—worse—if you don’t stay in line?”
About pulling the knife on me.
Not to mention he still wore two guns, one at his hip, the other in a shoulder holster.
“It wasn’t all for show, Kirill. I’m not that dumb.”
He sank down on the arm of a sofa. “You have a big problem, and it’s not just me.”
“The pakhan.”
He nodded. “If I don’t deliver something from your family, your life is worthless, unless—”
Biting off the words, he looked away.