My gaze could kill a lesser man. I should have rolled Mila into a nun’s habit instead of leaving her naked, though even if I had, my brother would still come away with provoking observations. I was now regretting his open invitation.
“Normal people have normal hobbies,” I said. “Why don’t you find one that doesn’t include dissecting everyone around you?”
A smile played in his eyes. “You’re twice as fucked up as I am.”
“The fact you find the idea of me going down on a woman more concerning than her being my prisoner tells a different story.”
“I just find the former a bit out of character. And interesting.”
“You find infomercials interesting, so forgive me if your curiosity about my sex life doesn’t hold much weight.”
I could count how many times I’d given oral on one hand. All of those encounters happened when I was a young, horny teenager; when I couldn’t stop myself from eating the pussy spread out in front of me. But once I’d gotten familiar with it, the desire waned beneath the cold, childhood memory of seeing the sexual act through a cracked closet door—including my mother’s day job as a whore and the sick perversions she and her clients forced upon my brother. I could only blame almost going down on Mila on the fact seeing her naked, tied up, and at my mercy really fucking turned me on.
Gianna slipped into the room and moved to her suitcase near the couch. My gaze followed her movements as she grabbed something from the chaotic pile of clothes inside. She glanced at me. My expression darkened, telling her if she was clothing my little captive, I would teach her daughter every Russian curse word I knew. And between living on the streets and prison, I knew a few.
She glared and disappeared out the door.
“Your wife better not be freeing my collateral,” I said, biting my cigar between my teeth.
“It’s not like she’ll get far.”
Eighty acres of remote land surrounded the house. It was a four-hour walk under the best conditions. Even if Mila managed the snowy jaunt before I could catch her, I’d have all five-thousand men in my arsenal on her tail. She’d never make it out of Russia.
My brother worked for the corrupt director of the FBI and could probably find Alexei if I asked him to. Then we would be done with this whole charade. But this was my fight, not his.
“How’s the one-pussy life treating you?” I drawled.
His gaze hardened.
A smile touched my lips. He was so touchy about his little wife. He was never exactly a sharer before her, but now all locker-room talk was completely off the table. He didn’t even seem to give a shit a woman had him by the balls. I never thought I’d see the day. Our mother had fucked all of the love right out of us—figuratively at least. Although . . . the analogy hit so close to home, dark amusement rose in me.
“I haven’t exactly heard of any of your recent exploits lately,” he said. “Well, except for the teenager in your bed.”
I tapped my cigar on my desk, holding his gaze. “I’ve been busy.”
“Too busy for Nadia Smirnova?”
When we were younger, I was the sidekick standing next to my brother’s ridiculous face. I always had to put in a little effort with women, but it only made me excel at the chase. It’d taken fifteen minutes to fuck opera singer and spank-bank legend Nadia Smirnova facedown on my desk a year ago. She was easy and up for anything, though her jealousy was becoming more trouble than she was worth.
“Nadia likes to be slapped around when she comes. It’s starting to kill the mood.”
“Charming.”
I chuckled.
His eyes settled on the claw marks on my neck. “It seems you haven’t tamed your pet yet.”
I rocked back in my chair. “Good things come in time.”
He stood, lifting Kat in his arms. “Your revenge is in your hands.” He stopped in front of the door and turned to me. “I’d advise you to take it and stop playing with your food before it bites back.”
I held in my response. It had to do with assuring him I wouldn’t eat my pet—at least in the way he suggested—and saying that would just give him more ammo to use against me.
“We’ll find another place to stay since it seems your guest room is occupied.”
“I have ten more. Take your pick.”
“Not sure the environment will be very family friendly.”
“I think it’s futile to shelter Kat. She probably has multiple plans of demise for her brother soon to be born.” It was a joke, but I did think she would reduce her sibling to the status of her slave.
Kristian didn’t think it was funny.
“How long are you staying?” I asked.
“A few weeks. Gianna wants to spend some time here before the baby comes.”
As soon as he left, I lit up, inhaled deeply, and kicked my feet up on my desk.
I didn’t expect Mila to fight me. I didn’t expect to lose my shit once she was naked either. There was just so fucking much of her. So much to touch, to play with. Her long legs and smooth, unblemished skin. Her newfound hatred and flashing eyes. I wanted to watch them go soft again when I finally pushed deep inside her.
My thoughts were interrupted by Viktor appearing in the doorway. The communist hammer and sickle tattoo on his shaved head caught the light. He got it in prison with a contraband sewing needle and burned rubber from his boot heel. I had more than a few souvenirs from the time I spent in the overcrowded cells of Butyrka. Ink and alliances included.
“Nikolay has become a problem again,” he told me in Russian.
The vor of mine had always made a sufficient amount from tax evasion and a used car dealership—or, more accurately, the brothel in the basement.
“He was arrested for pimping out a twelve-year-old girl.”
I bit down on my cigar, a lash of heat licking at my chest. Truthfully, I hated the prostitution business. I wouldn’t touch the industry with a ten-foot pole if I thought I could banish it from the streets of Moscow altogether. Even God couldn’t accomplish that, so I might as well capitalize on it.
But pedophiles . . . I loathed them most of all. Blood-stained sheets, cloying cologne, and the clang of coins on a grimy folding table. In prison, they were forcibly marked with a mermaid tattoo—that is, if they stayed out of my sight long enough to be inked before I beat them to death with my bare hands.
“Where is he?” I asked.
Viktor told me the name of a holding cell, one that employed multiple police officers in my pocket.
“Send Nikolay’s wife a sympathy card,” I said.
Viktor left without a word. Nikolay would be found hanged in his jail cell come morning.
I exhaled a smoke ring, eyeing the fake heart-shaped earring on my desk. My little vegan didn’t wear fur or diamonds. Her soft heart was unanticipated given her last name, but she also hid a fire beneath.
I wanted to see how hot that fire burned.
And then I wanted to put it out.
I wanted Mila, but I wanted her willingly. Her tears unnerved me. Even the shocked expression in her eyes after I gave her a light slap to the face didn’t settle right. Nadia would have been on her knees at my feet faster than I could blink, not giving me a look like I’d just strangled a baby humpback.
Apparently, I wouldn’t be able to slap this girl into submission, which made things a little more complicated. Especially because I couldn’t stand her apologies. They made me remember she was an innocent in all this. They made me feel like I had a conscience, and that wouldn’t do at all.
After last night, it seemed I couldn’t trust myself with her—not with her claw marks on my neck and the hot awareness of where she had the nerve to bite me. I’d leave her be for a few days, let the fire subside.
In the meantime . . .
Ivan rolled through my mind while I blew out a white cloud of smoke. A whisper of tension tightened in my body.
I wanted to find the man who had dibs on my pet when I was finished with her.
; kakistocracy
(n.) to be ruled by the worst person ever
Tap. Tap. Tap.
I sat on the window seat tapping my finger on the cold glass while trying to get the one lone rabbit in the wasteland of snow’s attention. He’d become my friend the past four days. The four days I’d spent locked in this room.
A middle-aged woman, owner of a tight bun, permanent scowl, and, apparently, one medieval black dress, delivered my meals three times daily.
“You can call me Yulia. I am housekeeper here. I do not like messes,” was how she introduced herself.
I didn’t respond, preoccupied with the perpetually locked door that finally lay open. I’d stepped toward it but froze when I saw a man standing in the hall with an assault rifle held across his chest. I imagined if I ran, a spray of bullets would follow.
By what I saw from the fixed bay window, I was on the second story of a remote house. Large and built of stone, with nothing but snow and trees surrounding it. If I shattered the glass and managed the jump without breaking my leg, I doubted I would get far with only a T-shirt and Elvis’s smolder to keep me warm.
I refused every meal the first day, receiving a look of condemnation from Yulia and a, “You are going to get in trouble.”
The second day, when I refused breakfast, she handed me a note.
Every meal you refuse is another day in your room.
Choose wisely, kotyonok.
I flushed the note down the toilet. And then, I refused lunch.
Yulia shoved another piece of paper at me.
I can only assume my pet wants me to hand-feed her.
But just so you’re aware, the thought of my fingers in your mouth makes me hard.
I ate the next meal.
Hours passed in this bedroom with nothing to do or watch except for the homemade porn on the TV. I washed my single item of clothing in the bathroom sink with a bar of soap and showered more often than necessary due to sheer boredom—and maybe with the small vendetta to skyrocket Ronan’s water bill in retaliation.
Soon, I realized solitude was the worst torture. Dwelling on my feelings of doubt especially. I wondered if my papa was responsible for that boy’s death, and if so, whether I would turn my back on him for it. I clearly wasn’t the honorable person I aimed to be because I didn’t think I could.
The truth was, love was self-serving. A greedy monster without morals, corrupting my most basic principles. Loyalty came hand in hand, tightly gripping my throat.
My thoughts and the walls closed in further each day.
I tapped on the glass again, drawing a look and a twitching nose from my furry friend. “I guess it’s just you and me, buddy,” I whispered.
And then an eagle swooped from the sky, his claws extended, taking off with my rabbit and leaving nothing behind but a wasteland of snow.
I woke to darkness and the Woman in Black at my bedside.
As a gasp of terror squeezed my lungs, I scrambled back against the headboard. My eyes focused in the moonlit room, and an exhale of relief poured from me. The phantom was none other than a skinny housekeeper.
“God,” I snapped. “What is wrong with you?”
Yulia arched an eyebrow, but I swore, as she moved to the door and turned the light on, her bony shoulders shook with silent amusement. Heart still pounding at the disturbing awakening, I blinked against the harshness of the overhead light.
“Your presence is required downstairs, devushka.”
The words settled on my skin like a thick, suffocating paste, and everything in me went quiet. I glanced at the clock on the wall to see it was twelve o’clock, and, slowly, I said, “It’s the middle of the night.”
Yulia yanked the comforter off me and began to fold it on the foot of the bed. “Laziness casts one into a deep sleep, and an idle person will suffer hunger.”
Did she just call me lazy? Most importantly, did she actually quote the Bible while aiding and abetting the devil? I didn’t dwell on her brand of insanity for long. The ironic thoughts floated away on an icy flood of anxiety.
I hadn’t seen Ronan since he locked me in here days ago. I assumed he had so many superior villainous things on his mind he’d forgotten about the captive in his guest room. The solitude was a relief and a hell all at once.
It seemed I was no longer forgotten.
Maybe, at this symbolic midnight hour, he’d decided to finally trade me for my papa’s life. Or maybe this was when the torture would begin. Maybe he’d decided the best revenge was to kill me instead.
My imagination conducted a circus in my head, flashing snapshots of my demise: Ronan pushing me out into the snow; inked fingers in my hair that forced me to my knees; his cavalier expression, and a pop as he put a bullet between my eyes.
A tremble rocked me at my core, and I grabbed the sheet Yulia was pulling away for something to hold onto. “I’m not going down there.”
Eyes narrowed, she tugged on the other end of the sheet. “Da, ty poydesh.” Yes, you are.
I tugged back. “Nyet, ya ne poydu.” No, I’m not.
Her glare intensified. “Get up. You have already made them wait long enough.”
Them?
The single word ravaged my body and soul, and the sheet slipped from my fingers. Yulia pulled it away, her expression smug with triumph, though her gloating was soon lost beneath the dread that poured in.
Maybe Ronan wouldn’t just kill me. Maybe he’d pass me around to all of his men first. I felt sick. So sick, I was unable to move. My breathing accelerated; chest squeezed tight. The panic raged a storm within me, and I was on the verge of losing this horrid reality to darkness, but the winded sensation paused when Yulia set a silky piece of fabric on the bed.
I stared at it.
It was a white, modest dress—one that looked long enough to reach the floor even on my tall frame, so it couldn’t have been an easy find. Why would Ronan make the effort to send me this dress if his men were only going to rip it off?
Disturbingly, the grip on my lungs eased at the thought maybe it would just be death.
But I refused to die in Gucci.
Somehow, the image of me lying in a frozen grave while vultures picked at my corpse adorned in a luxury dress sent a wave of amusement through me. It inflated in my stomach, rose to shake in my chest, and then, the laugh escaped in a deranged peal of hilarity that brought tears to my eyes. Yulia stared at me like I was one giggle away from being committed. Slowly, I sobered, wiped the tears from my cheeks, and headed to the door.
“You must dress, devushka.”
I didn’t stop.
Her voice hardened. “He will be displeased.”
Days ago, that statement ruled me, controlled my every movement like a puppet on a string. Now, with unhinged mirth in my veins and my demise on the horizon, it had no hold on me.
“I don’t wear silk,” I said, stopping in the doorway to give the dress a fleeting look. “But you can have it.” My eyes took in her stuffy black uniform she probably slept in. “Your wardrobe looks like it could use some variety.”
Her growl followed me into the hall. “I do not wear white!”
As of today, I didn’t either.
If I was a virgin walking toward sacrifice, I’d do it dressed in a black hand-me-down.
fress
(n.) to eat without reservation and heartily
Sweat and animosity cloaked the dining room like a saccharine shadow, though it remained silent enough to hear a pin drop. Or just the scrape of my fork.
This wasn’t a usual dinner for me, and it wasn’t due to the presence of two of Alexei’s men, whose bruised bodies and egos were bound to their chairs, but because I preferred to eat supper at eight.
Polina swept in to grab my finished plate dressed in her nightgown, a frilly sleep cap askew on her head. Curiosity pulled her out of bed no doubt, rather than a desire to serve me herself; gossiping and cooking were two of her finest talents. It was the latter that made her become the only woman I cons
idered marrying, regardless if she was twenty years my senior and probably weighed more than me. Poverty as an adolescent and four years of prison food taught me to enjoy a meal more than most.
When Polina continued to stand there and stare at my guests, I told her in Russian, “That will be all.”
She practically jumped out of her nosy stupor and muttered, “Of course,” before rushing from the room so fast her cap flew off. Her arm reached back into the doorway, a hand searching around until it grasped the ruffled hat, and then it and the rest of my cook disappeared.
Alexander, Alexei’s nephew, sneered at the scene, but he didn’t say anything. Probably because he was warned if he spoke a word, I’d cut out his tongue. There was nothing more nauseating than hearing loyal sentiments toward Alexei while I ate.
Albert sat at the end of the long table, eyes cold, arms crossed. Viktor sat beside him, both pinning my guests with intimidating stares. The overload of rivalry and testosterone was beginning to make me feel thirsty. And bored.
Sitting back in my chair, I trimmed the end of my cigar and wondered whether Mila would deign to make an appearance anytime soon or if I would have to drag her ass down here. Patience was a virtue. It was the only reason she got four days to play the isolated captive in my guest room. Of course the circumstances and end goal weren’t so virtuous. Solitude was an effortless way to bring even the strongest men to tears.
I lit my cigar and wondered if seclusion had changed Mila’s temperament; if it had dulled her hatred and turned her into a good, submissive pet. The idea ached in my cock, and a very impatient need to know how she would behave expanded. I found both reactions bothersome, so, instead of giving in to the urge to go retrieve her, I decided to wait a few more minutes.
I gestured to the servant who stood beside the door to pour me a drink. As always, the girl moved as quietly as a church mouse. She even squeaked like one when I grabbed her unsteady wrist before she overfilled my glass. The noise was one of pain, and I knew I hadn’t hurt her.
The Darkest Temptation Page 13