Instead of being afraid or put off by this change, I find myself panting with need. I want him to take me, to use me and mark me as his own. He is my family now, and I want more than anything to feel united with him, with his hard, hot flesh. I want him to be rough, to use me however he pleases, so long as he is mine and I am his.
“Andrei,” I breathe, “I want you to take me. Please.”
His chest is heaving as he looks down at me through heavily-lidded eyes, his lips parted. I am suddenly fully aware yet again of just how massive, how muscular and imposing my husband is. I know that he could break me in half without even trying. If he were to let go, his usually gentle touches could become aggressive, even dangerous. I can tell that he is struggling to contain himself, fighting with some primal need to tear me apart, to use my body in a way that might actually hurt me.
And I long for him to give into it.
“Please. Take me however you want. You don’t have to be gentle anymore. I’m ready.”
I tell him this emphatically, though my voice still trembles.
“Ya ne mogu. I don’t want to hurt you, Cassie,” he replies, his jaw clenching. I know he wants this, too, and he is on the brink of losing the tightly-held control he’s been clinging to ever since we first made love. I realize that he has had to work so hard to please me, to love me without hurting me, and a rush of warm affection comes over me.
“I don’t mind,” I answer, my hand still stroking his shaft. “Please, I want you to lose control, Andrei. I want you to… to fuck me like you really want to.”
I’ve never said that word before. I’ve never even thought that word before. But Andrei’s eyes go wide and blazing and I know immediately it must be setting him off. He knows now that I’m serious, that I really and truly want him to let go and finally take me with abandon.
And he does.
Without wasting another second, Andrei picks me up and spins me around to face the wooden bench, his hands pushing on my back to bend me over. I brace my hands on the wooden bench and look back behind me to see Andrei positioning the head of his member at my wet entrance. The steamy air of the sauna fills my lungs as I inhale sharply, my body shuddering at the slightest touch of his shaft to my aching slit. He’s going to take me from behind.
One of his hands roves up my back to grab my hair, pulling my head back. I let out a little yelp of surprise, my private parts responding to this show of dominance with a tingling approval. I want to be completely submissive to him in this moment — I want to give him absolutely anything and everything he’s ever wanted.
“Say you want it,” Andrei growls, rubbing the head of his manhood up and down my slit.
He gives my hair a little tug and I respond, “I want it, oh please.”
And with that, he pushes inside of me, filling me up until I can feel his tip hitting that deep, secret spot. At this angle, he is able to hit that impossibly delicious spot so easily! I moan as he starts to pound into me mercilessly, his massive shaft sliding in and out of me so fast and hard that I see stars. He smacks my backside and I cry out in mingled pain and pleasure, wanting more, always more.
“Yes! I want it — I want it to hurt!” I manage to choke out between heavy breaths.
Andrei responds with another hard slap, and then he grabs hold of my hips with both hands, using this position to slam into me with more power and precision. I suddenly feel another climax coming, and when it does I cry out and nearly lose my grip on the bench. My legs are so weak that my knees buckle, and Andrei senses this. He promptly scoops me up, turns me back to face him, then lifts me up to straddle him standing up. With my legs wrapped tightly around his waist, he guides his member back to my pulsating hole, penetrating me as he holds me up in his arms. He bounces me up and down on his shaft, slapping my backside and burying his face in my neck to leave more bruising kisses.
Even as my pleasure mounts to a third orgasm, some part of my consciousness is intensely aware of how strong Andrei must be to hold me up like this. I marvel at how well he has kept this animalistic side of him hidden from me until I was ready.
“Ohhh!” I cry out, trembling through my climax.
“Horoshaya devochka,” he murmurs, his teeth grazing my collarbone.
He starts driving into me faster, his strength unbelievable as he manages to keep me held in his arms even as he begins to lose control completely. He has never used me like this before. The pain gives way to pleasure as I come for the fourth time, and as my hole convulses around him, Andrei bellows out, “Da, malyshka!”
With a few quick, hard thrusts, he shoots his seed deep inside me.
We stay there for several minutes just clinging to each other as though we might blow away on the wind if we let go. Andrei covers my face with kisses, making me giggle. We are both drenched with sweat from exertion and from the intense, damp heat of the sauna. I rest my forehead against his and he kisses the tip of my nose. Finally, we get dressed and head back up to the apartment to shower and get ready for bed.
Feeling perfectly loved and protected as I snuggle into bed next to my husband, my heart hardly even aches when my family crosses my mind. I have a new life now. And finally, for the first time, I am truly happy.
Andrei
I’m sitting alone in a bathtub. If my information is good, I don’t expect to be hearing noises from the bedroom outside for a few minutes yet. But the curtains are drawn, leaving me shrouded in pale light while I inspect the silenced pistol in my hands.
The bathroom is rather nice, but it isn’t as lavish as I’d expect from a man like Kasym Slokavich.
I suppose he’s most likely not planning to stay in America long-term. That would explain his heinous behavior over the past few months he’s been in New York City. My research on Kasym brought me to places I never thought I’d have to visit again but felt like revisiting old friends — partly because it was, oftentimes.
The lower-ranking Bratva were the only ones who had anything interesting to say about the hedonistic son of Sergei. To the higher ups, he was a saint, a visionary, and a rising star, particularly within the sex ring — the industry he’s been partaking in almost nonstop since arriving.
His handlers, the initiates, and the other less notable muscle tell a very different story. They’ve never seen a more violent, abrasive, spoiled, and lustful human being sweep through the city in all their short careers put together.
He’s been throwing money into the dog fighting rings for amusement, a business the Bratva usually leave for the less dignified dregs of the city. Anyone who dares cross him, he has killed if he doesn’t do it himself.
After I left the auction that fateful night I’d bought Cassie, Kasym went home with five of the other girls out of spite that he’d been outbid. Within a month, all of them turned up dead, a trail of bribes covering up their disappearances as runaways or accidents. To hear the pimps talk, his swathe of bloodshed didn’t end there, as Boris’s assessment of the man was true.
To think that Cassie was so close to being bought by this monster fills me with enough rage to step outside my profession and murder him with my own bare hands. I need to kill this man to keep Cassie safe from him. If he’s that bitter about being outbid, it’s only going to be a matter of time before he goes after what’s mine. It is enough to make me think my dear wife’s God does indeed watch out for her.
Even if he must use foul men such as me.
The contract from one of the relatives of the murdered girls calling for Kasym’s death could not have been more timely. Nor is it a surprise. I’ve garnered something of a reputation for such hits since completing the contract that ended Boris’s life. I may be the Shadow, but witnesses spread rumors, and the woman I saved could not be expected not to talk. I knew it was a liability, but I can no longer turn a blind eye to plights like hers. I have to take action, and I will do so the only way I know how.
And my time making friends in low places has been more of a help than I could ever have imagined. As I gathe
red information on Kasym, I realized how many of the men are quietly disgruntled with the change in tone he’s brought with him to the Bratva. Many of them don’t care for his fast and loose lifestyle, nor for the brutality that inevitably comes with such displays of wealth. He’s bringing risk to all our Brotherhood with his brutality, and they all know it’s only a matter of time before his carelessness brings us all down. He has no concern with greasing cops, or setting up a fall guy.
More than a few of those connections helped me get here tonight.
I hear the door to the bedroom swing open, muffled through the bathroom door, Kasym’s loud laughter roaring and boisterous. There are two other sets of footsteps that accompany his, just as expected.
“...and that dog won me more money than all the other pups that night combined! Ha! To think it was the runt of the litter! Didn’t seem so runtish with all that blood on its jaws!” Kasym’s voice makes a bizarre barking noise, and the feminine voices with him give a forced laugh at his disgusting antics.
“Now you,” he says to one of them, “get to start with me early. You,” he says presumably to the other, “go get yourself cleaned up before the fun. Don’t want you stinking up the new sheets.”
“I won’t keep you waiting too long,” the voice of the second woman teases, but I can hear the fear behind her voice.
The bathroom door opens, and I remain deathly still. She knows I’m behind the curtain, but whether she can pretend she doesn’t may jeopardize the entire hit. She closes the door and runs the water in the sink, and the moment she thinks she’s out of earshot of Kasym, I hear her suppress a sob. I want desperately to tap the side of the tub to remind her this is all part of the game, but I know I have to resist.
I hear her freshen up a bit before stripping some of the clothes from her body and stepping back outside.
“All yours, baby,” she says, and she’s soon answered by a dark chuckle from Kasym. I can already hear the first woman grinding on him, her breathy gasps loud and forced — that much is obvious to someone who’s heard the real thing.
I wait only a minute. I hear Kasym’s voice whispering to the girls as they begin their work on him, and I know we have a time limit to work with.
Stealthy as a wolf, I rise from my position in the bath and very slowly pull the curtain back.
The sex worker who had been in the bathroom had left the door open but nearly shut, and something on the mirror caught my eye. She’d used the lipstick she was applying to write a message on the corner of the mirror:
First moan
I cock my gun and put my shoulder against the door gingerly, waiting, listening. Contact like this is dangerous, because there’s so much room for error or miscommunication. Every small gasp I hear faked from the girls in the room could make me twitch, but I wait, a bead of sweat rolling down my forehead as I prepare for the most dangerous hit of my life.
Then, an unmistakable cry of feigned ecstasy.
I shove the door open, and as I do, like clockwork, the two naked women on either side of Kasym in his satin-sheeted bed seize one of his arms and pin him down. Kasym, his eyes wide as baseballs and his body naked and exposed, hardly has time to react before I step forward, my face stony as a statue of a saint, and I unload three rounds into him: two to the chest, then one to the head.
In all of two seconds, it’s over.
The women had held their heads down the moment I pushed the door open, bracing for what would happen. It was such a risk, having them so close like that, but it was one they had volunteered for when I contacted them for information about the hit.
Sex workers all over the state knew and hated Kasym. He was hurting them, and no doubt word has spread not to take him as a client, leaving him to prey on only the most vulnerable girls.
And now they were free from him forever.
The two women leap out of the bed and back away from the pool of blood soaking into the sheets around the man, but neither of them look away.
“Thank fuck,” one of them murmurs.
“What now?” asks the other.
“Now,” I say as I step forward to inspect the body, “the two of you need to disappear. Things are going to get very hot, very soon.”
“The goons outside won’t give you any trouble?” the second asks.
“No. They’re almost as tired of these rich bastards’ abuses as you are. The staff tonight is who got me here in the first place.”
The two of them exchange glances, then nod. “We’ll get the word around that this fucker’s dead. Make it sound like someone on the inside did him in, maybe put the fear of God back in the higher-ups.”
I give a single nod. “Good.”
“You gonna be okay?”
I glance at her briefly. “Don’t worry about me. I was never here.”
The door opens, and one of the bodyguards with an uzi at his side peers in. We exchange a look, and he nods, beckoning me out to the escape route he has planned.
Despite all my precaution, I know this is almost a foolishly brazen move on my part, but I had to do it to keep Cassie safe. I may have succeeded in rallying the blue-collar criminals against the sex ring in New York, but silence can’t be assured from so many people, even in the best of conditions.
There may be retaliation from this. The only question is how much the Bratva still knows about me.
Cassie
I wake up from a pleasant dream just past midnight to a horrifying, loud crack followed by the sounds of glass shattering. I sit up ramrod straight in bed, looking around in terror. For a moment, some part of my brain tries to dismiss the sounds as psychosomatic, just figments of my hazy, sleepy mind. But then the bedroom door bursts open and Andrei comes bolting in. Blinking my eyes in the low light, I can just make out his grim expression and panicked eyes. I have never seen him look like this. Andrei is never afraid. Never.
As he rushes to my side I grab for him and ask, “What was that? What happened? I heard a horrible noise — ”
“Nothing, printsessa, but I need you to get up and put on some warm clothes for me, okay? It’s time for us to go,” Andrei says, helping me out of bed and running to grab me a sweater and a coat. As I ease into the sleeves of the sweater, struggling to pull it closed over my bulging stomach in my nightdress and warm leggings, I look up at him in confusion. The clock reads 12:17. Where would we possibly have to go in the middle of the night? What is going on?
“Where are we going?”
Andrei yanks a duffel bag out of the closet and starts stuffing random sweaters and pants into it — all winter clothing, though it isn’t even that cool outside anymore. He doesn’t answer me as he hurriedly tosses a pair of boots my way and squishes several thick scarves into the bag.
“Andrei!” I cry, stomping my foot. “What are we doing?”
“Put on the boots,” he says simply, not even looking up.
Crossing my arms over my chest, I fight the urge to just give in and submit to his order, standing my ground. This is insane!
“Not until you tell me what’s going on.”
Finally he looks over at me, fixing me with one of those cold, hard glares. A chill runs down my spine. I know he is angry — even if the anger isn’t actually directed at me.
“Cassie. Please. We need to leave, now.”
His voice is low and deliberate, and I sigh, sitting down to pull on the boots. Andrei opens a box in the back of the closet, one I have never noticed before, and withdraws a little blue booklet, along with a manila folder filled with some official-looking documents. He stuffs these items into the front zipper pocket of the duffel bag, as well as a thick wad of hundred dollar bills.
“What is all that for?” I demand to know, running up to him and trying to unzip the bag.
Andrei catches me in his arms and holds me by the shoulders, peering into my eyes.
“You have to trust me, lapochka. It is my job to keep you safe, and I will do exactly that. But you have to listen to me and do as I say,” he explain
s softly. Suddenly I am truly afraid. Keep me safe? From what?
“Okay,” I reply weakly.
Andrei grabs the duffel bag, takes me by the hand, and leads me quickly out of the bedroom into the living room. There is a loud zinging noise as something impossibly small and fast whizzes by just in front of us, putting a hole in the wall. I scream and fall back into Andrei’s arms, my heart racing.
“Wh-what was that?” I ask, my eyes huge.
Andrei holds me close and covers me with his body as we rush out of the apartment, down the hall, and into the elevator. I’m still shaking when we reach the ground floor lobby, Andrei nearly carrying me as we run out to his Corvette in the parking garage.
“Andrei!” I shout, tears in my eyes. “I’m scared! Please tell me what is happening!”
“There’s no time,” he says flatly, easing me into the back seat and throwing the duffel bag in the trunk. I put my hands protectively over my pregnant belly, looking out the windows.
“Why can’t I sit up there with you?” I ask, leaning over the console as Andrei slides into the driver’s seat and starts the engine. We peel out of the parking garage just as another car zooms out of a spot just a few rows away and quickly falls in behind us.
“Get down!” Andrei shouts, spinning the wheel so that the car turns a sharp corner, slinging me back into the seat. “Lay down on the seat! Don’t sit up for anything, don’t look out the windows!”
I fall back on my side, curling my legs up to my belly and wrapping my arms around the unborn child inside me, whispering nonsensical words of comfort to him as though he could hear me. We fly around corners so fast that I feel the tires come up off the road slightly, the Corvette drifting around hairpin turns. It occurs to me that Andrei is trying to shake off someone who is tailing us.
Sights on the SEAL: A Secret Baby Romance Page 30