“And Dom, I’m sorry I lied.”
“You didn’t lie to me, baby.” He tucked his hand under her hips, angling them for her to take him deeper. “You never lied to me.”
Eija cried out, back arching and grip around him tightening. To draw out her orgasm further, she squeezed his length. A slew of curse words spilled from his lips as he came on a deep stroke, lodged as far as he could go inside her body.
She held him in place.
He didn’t try to move.
“Dom, will you really be mine for these next two months?” she asked. Then, at the end of it, she’d do her job before Randy or Colin did it for her. At least, if she retained control, she could keep him somewhat safe.
“Will you?” he countered.
For two months.
And possibly longer.
“Yes.”
“I’m serious, Eija. I don’t want anyone else.”
“Neither do I.”
He pulled out, disposed of the condom, and fell asleep with one arm wrapped around her.
She didn’t sleep for the rest of the night.
Chapter 20
“Gentlemen, I think I’m going to have to skip out on the rest of this meeting.”
The men looked up at Dom.
“And those for the rest of the afternoon,” he added.
“Do you have somewhere more important to be?” William Thorpe asked, frowning, his silver brows like wolf fur.
On the outside, he was the CEO of one of the largest asset management firms in the world. However, his money was even bloodier than Yuri’s. The group of men, all over the age of seventy, probably believed their little cushy set up hid the fact that they were all sociopaths in poorly tailored designer clothes.
Dom nodded. “Yes. I do.”
“Yuri wouldn’t have left like this.”
“Do I look like Yuri?”
“Actually, you don’t. I’ve always wondered if he shouldn’t have done a second paternity test, verified the purity of the Sokolov lineage. Yuri’s so eager for a son, he’s blinded by your ineptitude.”
Dom grabbed a steak knife from the tabletop.
William continued to flap his lips.
“Yuri would be better off putting one of his daughters at the head of Sokol Incorporated. We’ve heard the story. Your mother was some whore. Her father was a junkie. The funny thing is, I never knew Arabs could be whores. That’s what she was, wasn’t she? One of those Arabs?”
Dom studied the stout, ruddy-faced little man. All of them, every last one, stumbled over their own feet or choked on Yuri’s dick for the little bit of power he drizzled their way. But that power didn’t give any of them, especially this sweat-soaked motherfucker, the right to talk about his mother any way they pleased. No amount of money in the world would ever grant them the right.
He wrapped his elbow around William’s neck and jammed the knife through his hand until the steel tip met wooden tabletop. William cried out and looked around for help, but no one so much as leaned toward him.
“I don’t like when people talk about my mother, who’s Persian.” Dom released him, removed a cigar cutter from his pocket, and grabbed the other hand. Eija didn’t like cigars, so he didn’t smoke them anymore, but he kept the cutter on him because of a movie he’d watched when he was a kid. “Instead of talking about my mother, you’d be better suited worrying about why your wife is upstairs, right now, sucking the twenty-one-year-old bellhop’s dick.”
Dom slipped the cutter over the man’s middle finger and snapped it shut, taking a couple inches of the digit with it. Yuri entered the room just as he tossed the cutter onto the table with the stub embedded in its jaw.
“Say what the fuck you want about me,” Dom began, “but there are two women in this world who, if you say the wrong thing about them, will get you killed. You’re right. I’m not Yuri Sokolov but, right now, I bet you wish I was.”
He dipped his bloodied fingers in William’s half-full glass of brandy, wiped them off on a hotel napkin, and headed for the exit. Just before he exited, Yuri gripped his forearm.
“Is one of those women Miss K?” Yuri asked. “Careful about how you answer me.”
Dom pried Yuri’s fingers from his arm. “If I do.”
“We have a way of doing things.”
“Your point?”
“You have to be strategic about this transition. You can’t have a woman like Miss K as your wife. I understand that, as a man, you can’t help but find her intriguing.”
Dom’s teeth ground together.
“And she’s an exquisite woman,” Yuri went on. “But Leah is the power play. We have the ability to align with one of the most powerful families in Europe. It’s all I’ve wanted for you, ever since you were a boy.”
“Then why the whole farce?” Dom asked. “Why the whole Dostavka bullshit if you’ve already preordained who I’ll end up with? Why not just tell everyone, now, who I really am?”
“Because you still have a choice, and there’s a time and place for everything.”
“If I really had a choice, I’d be able to pick the woman I want.”
Yuri’s voice took on a tone Dom had never heard him use. “Listen to me, son. I understand that you have held a chip on your shoulder for me for years because of what happened to your mother. A part of me regrets telling you the truth, but I’d assumed you were man enough to deal with it.”
Dom huffed out a laugh. “I was sixteen.”
“Do you know what I was doing when I was sixteen?” Yuri flipped up his thumb. “Working my ass off, day and night. Preparing for the role I’d already known I would play being the only male among my sisters. I wasn’t sucking my thumb and running to my aunt to take care of me.”
Nearly everything that left Yuri’s mouth was a lie. There’d been no preparing to head the Bratva; Yuri hadn’t even known he would be in the Bratva until he was already an adult in his mid-twenties. At sixteen, while Yuri had been lying to him about what had really happened to his mother, who’d really forced her into a life of sexual slavery, Dom had been doing his own research. The man could barely talk without a lie spilling from his mouth.
“At least she took care of me,” Dom said, stepping forward until he was only a few inches from his father’s face. “And, one day, I hope you’ll let me do the same.”
Then he stepped around Yuri and headed for the exit.
Dom, tipping back a paper cup of coffee, found Pavel, Eija, and Nikolai once again at Hyde Park. Pavel had gotten Yuri to lighten up and let Nikolai do whatever he wanted on his last day in London, which was to spend the day in the park and eat ice cream for lunch. Dom was sure Eija hadn’t allowed him to only eat ice cream, but she’d definitely granted him the treat. She was the type of person who would, and he’d found himself, more than once, wondering what type of mother she would make. Saying he didn’t want children hadn’t been a lie, but there was a part of him that wanted to see what their DNA could come up with if it had the chance.
Did that mean he was falling for her?
She smiled at Nikolai waving to her from one of the playground houses, and it caused him to almost miss a step.
Yes.
Definitely.
He dropped the empty cup in a nearby trash bin, crept up behind her, and wrapped his arms around her from behind. She covered his arms with hers and leaned into his embrace, eyes briefly closing.
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
“I cut out early to spend time with my woman.”
“Okay, caveman.” She turned so she could keep one eye on Nikolai while they talked, but Nikolai was with Pavel Volkov. That made him one of the safest kids in the world.
“Me want take woman ‘round London.” Dom thumped his chest. “Me want woman with me.”
She giggled.
Actually, giggled.
Women only brought out the giggle when they were smitten.
“I can’t.”
“Actually, you can.” He waved
to get Pavel’s attention. “I’ve arranged for Nikolai and Pavel to spend the rest of the day together so that you and I can get some time alone.”
“And if Yuri finds out?”
“What if he does?” He moved a strand of hair out of her face. It was pretty straightened, and it made the colors stand out even more, but he found he missed the coils, kinks, and curls. “You have my permission. That’s all you need.”
“You know Yuri doesn’t want us getting close.”
He frowned. “Didn’t think you’d picked up on that.”
“The all day meetings? The full schedules?” She motioned around. “He probably thinks I’m trying to seduce his sweet, innocent boy with my wicked Caribbean pussy.”
Unable to stop himself, he drew her into him and bent to place a kiss on her lips. Surprise moved through him when she wrapped her fingers around the back of his neck and kissed him until propriety made them separate. They were at a park, after all. Had it been an empty park, she would have been in trouble.
“Wicked Caribbean pussy?” he asked. “You know I love it when you recite poetry to me.”
Again, she giggled.
Pavel approached, Nikolai on his back. “You’re all set, Dominik?”
“Yep. I’ll see you back at the hotel.”
“You’re not coming with us, Miss K?” Nikolai’s bottom lip trembled. “You’ll be lonely if me and Pavel leave you.”
“I’ll take care of her,” Dom reassured him. “Do you trust me to do that? I know she’s important to you.”
Nikolai nodded, a wide grin on his face. “I trust you.”
The pair walked off, Pavel swinging Nikolai around his body like a figure skater and Nikolai shrieking with delight.
“Does he know?” Eija asked.
“Know what?”
“That Pavel’s his father.”
She was much more perceptive than he’d given her credit for. Pavel had confided in him that he’d had an affair with Yuri’s middle daughter, but Sonya had been seeing another man at the time who she’d told that he was Nikolai’s father. Like her, that man had succumbed to addiction. Around his first birthday, as Nikolai’s face changed, Pavel had secretly had his paternity tested.
“He does not,” Dom said. “And Pavel prefers it that way. He feels like, with the secret, he’s better able to keep him safe.”
“Seems to be a lot of that going around.” She looked up at him, shielding her eyes from the sun. “There are photos of you at the penthouse, but nothing about them stands out. I guess it’s what Yuri had to do to shelter the mysterious Bratva prince.”
Damn it.
He loved the way she said the word Bratva now, all confident and with the roughness of his native language. He had a treasure hunt planned for them around the city, but if she kept talking that way, they wouldn’t make it through half.
“In this line of work,” he looked at where Pavel and Nikolai walked, “it’s sometimes necessary to keep family under wraps, especially if that family is vulnerable.”
“Like a child?” she asked. “Or maybe…someone elderly or disabled?”
“Precisely.”
“So why show up now? Why reveal the prince now?”
He took her hand, and they headed in the opposite direction. “If there was one thing I knew, Eija, it was that this life was always going to find me. The funniest part about it is, my father had tried and tried for a son, but when he finally got one, it was with someone he couldn’t care less about.”
“Did Yuri hate Aani?”
“Not even.” Dom glanced over his shoulder, around the park. “Hate is just about as strong as love. You have to care to hate. She was property. Something to be used.”
To be bought and sold.
“I know your way of picking a wife is archaic,” Eija began, “but if you hadn’t come along, couldn’t one of Yuri’s daughters take over?”
They crossed the street with a large group of people.
“Not now. There are female mafia heads, but the Bratva isn’t ready for something like that. Maybe my daughter will be the first.”
She wrinkled her brows. “You don’t want children. Did you forget your conversation with Mila the Lovely?”
“Not even I remembered her name.”
“Her dress reminded me of salsa.”
He laughed and leaned down, needing to feel Eija’s lips on his even for a moment.
“I don’t want children with her,” he said. “But I could be persuaded to have at least one with the right woman.”
“Just say it, Dom.” She playfully rolled her eyes. “You want me to ‘sire’ your ‘heir.’”
He picked her up and threatened to toss her into a fountain in the middle of the square.
She latched onto him and begged him not to, laughing, and he realized he liked her like this. He liked carefree Eija just as much as he liked sultry Eija. To hear her shriek and laugh, especially since Eija didn’t seem like a woman who shrieked unless she was climaxing, brought him a deranged amount of joy.
They started their treasure hunt at the National Portrait Gallery, and she was shocked that he’d been serious about what he’d planned for them for the rest of the afternoon. They were on the hunt for The Red Queen, and it would be three to four hours of them going about London looking for clues that would lead them to the iconic Alice in Wonderland character. It was one of the most interesting and creative ways he could think of to make up for all he hadn’t had time to experience with her, in one day.
Their first stop was inside the National Portrait Gallery, where they had to get a clue from a random worker. Eija was like a detective with how quickly she’d singled the worker out.
The clue turned out to be a riddle written on the back of a pocket watch cutout.
“Cultures clash, green fields,” she read. “I might be over three hundred years old, but I’m no L-7.”
Dom’s brows wrinkled. “Isn’t L-7 from the nineties? It means—”
“Square.” She paced in front of him like a female Sherlock Holmes and then came to an abrupt stop. “Dom, look up when Leicester Square was founded.”
“I know that off the top of my head. Sixteen-seventy.”
“Baby, you’re as smart as you are handsome.” She squeezed him, and he leaned down for a kiss. “Okay, enough loving. Let’s go!”
By the time he turned around, she was already through the doors.
They bound from location to location—Westminster Cathedral, Green Park, the front of Buckingham Palace, Princess Di’s Memorial Fountain, a random H&M—and her excitement grew each time she found a clue. When someone looked at her like she’d lost her marbles, he looked at them like he would shove those same marbles somewhere only a surgeon could retrieve them.
There was a planned break in the middle of their hunt, so they stopped at a tavern for a burger, fish & chips, and beer. Eija had gone for pineapple juice, and he reminded himself to find out if it had to do with Yuri checking for drugs on a too-frequent basis. Father or not, he wouldn’t let him treat Eija like she was the criminal in this equation.
She couldn’t stop talking about what she thought their next clue would be and, with every word she spoke, Dom realized he was definitely in love with this woman.
“Ready to get back out?” he asked, although the answer was obvious.
“Yes!” She sucked down the rest of her drink. “Dom, this is one of the best days I’ve ever had in my life. Thank you. I needed this today.”
“Your whole life?” He covered his heart with his right hand. “I’m undone, dorogaya.”
“I’ve made it all the way to ‘darling’? You must really like me.”
Little did she know, he’d left “like” back at Buckingham Palace and picked up love at the intersection of Downing and Parliament Street. One day, they would return with their grandchildren and tell them the story about how Grandma and Pop fell in love in London.
Maybe.
Hopefully.
Someone su
ddenly walked by, set a petit four on their table, and scurried off. The words “Eat Me” had been written in white icing on the pink top, and Eija looked up at him, wide eyed.
“Dom…it’s the cake from Alice in Wonderland.”
He was definitely in trouble.
Hijacking the dostavka had been the dominant theme of his dreams these days, but he wasn’t sure how Eija would feel if he asked her to sign on as his wife. They’d only just agreed to see each other, and their agreement had come with conditions. Going from “be mine for two months” to “be mine forever” was serious fine print.
“Hey, Sokolov.” She tapped the table. “Let’s go.”
The second part of their hunt took them around Trafalgar Square, to Madame Tussaud’s, all the way back to Downing Street, across the Waterloo Bridge, and then back across the Thames via the Westminster Bridge, ending at Big Ben.
By the end, they were wiped out, but she was happy. Everything was fine as long as she was happy.
They had dinner in Soho and took a black cab to the hotel, Eija asleep against his shoulder. When they reached the front of the Havre, he woke her up with his lips against her forehead. She released his hand as they walked inside, but he didn’t care anymore if anyone saw them. Not holding her hand or kissing her in the middle of the lobby, that was for Eija. Had it been up to him, everyone would know what she meant to him before they returned to Russia.
They stopped in front of his suite’s door.
“I’m going to run down to my room to get my stuff,” she said, her pinky hooked around his. “I’ll be right back.”
He nodded.
She started toward the elevator, but he tugged her back and crushed her to him, claiming her lips. It wasn’t until she was breathless that he let up.
“Let’s try this again.” She licked her lips. “Five minutes. I swear.”
Again, he nodded.
She started off.
He pulled her back, pushed her against the wall, and moved his mouth over hers. One hand slid under her top and the bottom of her bra. When his fingers found her tight right nipple, he plucked, and she nearly melted into the wall.
Prince of the Brotherhood: A Mafia Romance Page 17