by KJ Dahlen
“Fuck,” Barron swore. “I never thought of that.”
Grace didn’t move her forehead from his chest but she let out a sad sigh. “Now he’s dead and Sasha is badly wounded. When will this nightmare end?”
“It ends when we rip Vitya’s world apart with our bare hands.” Barron growled. “When we drag his ass back to Russia and stand him in front of a firing squad.”
Grace lifted her head and stared at him. She stared at him with tears in her eyes. “Can you just be with me?” she whispered. “Just for a few minutes? I need you.”
“Da, I can do that,” Barron whispered back. “That much I can do but I think I would like it to last for more than a few minutes.” He smiled as he leaned closer and covered her mouth with his own. Then he swiftly and deftly stripped off her bra and underwear. Only when she was bare in front of him did he take a moment to study her luscious body. He definitely liked what he saw. Her breasts were full and ripe, her waist was small, and her hips flared out nicely. She was sexy yet adorable.
Her skin was smooth and felt like satin against his own skin. He kissed along her jaw down to her neck. Nibbling on her skin, he made his way down to her collarbone and she gasped when he briefly sucked and nibbled at her artery there. Barron could feel the beat of her heart and he smiled at the thunder of her pounding heartbeat. Licking and nibbling her, he made his way down her chest to her breasts.
Closing his lips around her nipple, he suckled her gently. The taste of her skin ramped up his desire and he sucked harder as he toyed with her other nipple. He heard her panting now, and that sound excited him. He could feel his cock harden with the blood rushing into it.
He continued his journey as he kissed and his mouth roved along her belly then her aroma surrounded his nose and he breathed in deeply. She opened her legs and her full scent hit him. Barron groaned and continued his way to her core. He took a moment to study her and saw her dampness. His fingers parted her lips and he could see she was already wet. He lowered his moth to her and covered her folds. Using his tongue, he tasted her.
Her cream tasted so sweet like strawberries and cream and he groaned as he lapped it up. He couldn’t seem to get enough of her. Then he found her clit and drew it into his mouth. His finger sought her core and it was her turn to groan as his fingers invaded her body.
Her hands reached down to his head and she pushed his mouth closer to her.
Barron smiled and took his assault of her body to the next level. He sucked and licked her clit and she began bucking her hips.
“Please, please I need you to take me. I need you inside me.” She moaned as she became even more breathless.
He pushed her legs apart and moved up to cover her. His cock was hard and wanted relief. He slammed into her and she gasped at the pain of his invasion. Then he began to move in and out, ramming deep inside of her each time.
The pain quickly turned into pleasure as she wrapped her legs around his waist and he continued to plunge into her.
Grace whimpered and moaned long and low as her body tried to keep up with his, then flexed her inner muscles around his throbbing length.
Barron moaned and thrust into her harder and faster.
“O-oh my god, I’m c-coming,” she whispered in a gasping voice.
Barron covered her mouth with his and pounded into her even deeper. He could feel what she was feeling and as she tightened in response to his thrusting, he felt the familiar tingle at the base of his spine. When he felt her walls clamp down on his cock, drawing out his own release, he sucked on her tongue and kept her screams from releasing. He felt her orgasm just seconds before his own and he came so hard he almost lost consciousness for a moment.
His body slumped for a moment before he could drag himself from her trembling form beneath him. He slid to her side and wrapped her in his embrace. He felt sweaty and fought to catch his breath but finally, he felt the sweat drying on his skin.
He tried to loosen his embrace but Grace wouldn’t let him. She nuzzled her nose into his chest and breathed in his scent.
Barron looked down at her and saw her deep breaths. “What are you doing?”
“I’m breathing in you,” she replied simply.
“Breathing me in?” he asked.
“Yup.”
Barron raised a brow at her. “Ok, but why?”
Grace shook her head. “It’s hard to explain. But for a while now, the scent of you seems to relax me. I don’t need to fear you because I know you will protect me. From the moment we met and you were so mad at me for taking your bike, all you had to do was touch me and I knew you would never hurt me. There is just something about you that I know I can trust. When I smell you...” Grace took in a deep breath and rushed on, “You’re all man but your scent soothes my fears and you bring me peace.” She closed her eyes. “I told you I couldn’t explain it correctly. I just made a mess of things didn’t I?”
Barron shook his head. “No Malyshka, actually you didn’t,” he told her calmly. “I don’t know why either but when I found you in that cabin I knew you were mine the moment I touched you. I didn’t know it then but I think for some reason we were supposed to meet.” He leaned closer to her. “And I get what you mean about breathing in my scent. Your scent has come to mean something to me as well. I can’t explain it either but it has.”
“Oh?” She arched an eyebrow. “And what does my scent tell you about me?”
“It tells me you are moy dom...my home and you are right where you belong.”
Grace continued to stare at him. One single tear rolled down her cheek. She leaned close to him and kissed his mouth gently.
Barron kissed her back and when the kiss broke, he tucked her closer to him and whispered, “Sleep now. Let the worry go and get some rest. We’ll talk in the morning and figure all this out.”
Grace nodded and snuggled into his chest. Closing her eyes, she repeated his Russian words, "Moy Dom..." Then she fell asleep to the sound of his heartbeat.
A few hours later, Grace awoke in a sweat. Her dreams were mixed with real memories of the event of seeing her father shot down where he'd stood. She saw him crumple to the ground and the blood pouring down his face. She hadn’t realized it at the time but she had raised her gaze from him and saw the expression in Vitya’s eyes after he took the shot. His eyes glowed with a cold hearted evil as he stared down at the dead man on the floor in front of him.
She saw him lift his hand to his cheek and rub a drop of blood away. He looked down at his hand and saw the blood on his fingers then lifted his fingers to his mouth and licked the blood off.
She had been too shocked to remember that detail until now and she couldn’t stand the image of it being in her head. She shivered in disgust and horror, as the full memory of it washed over her. She slipped out of Barron’s embrace and quickly threw some clothes on. Quietly making her way out of the room, she walked down the hall to the main room. She felt so cold, so very cold as she made her way to the kitchen. Her eyes went to the clock and she saw it was four a.m.
She groaned then started a pot of coffee. When it was ready, she poured herself a cup and walked out to the main room to sit down at a table. With her elbows on the table her hands were holding up her head. She was sobbing quietly. Her mind was in a turmoil as she remembered the details of that day.
Someone cleared their throat and this was first hint that she even knew he was next to her. She hadn’t seen him approach, nor had she seen him sit down beside her. She jumped and pushed her chair back as she sought out who he was. Her eyes found Yuri sitting across from her. She gulped in air as she settled back on her chair. Her hand went to her chest where she could feel her heart pounding. “Sweet Jesus, you scared the hell out of me!”
“How did you find these men? These Hell’s Bloodhounds?” Yuri asked in a flat emotionless tone and straight out without any leading into it. “How did you just happen to steal Barron Valerian’s bike? Are you as innocent as you’d like them to believe or are you working wit
h Vitya to kill his enemies?”
Grace lifted her shocked gaze to his face. “Are you fucking kidding me?”
“Net, I’m not.” Yuri glared at her. “I am very fucking serious.”
“Fuck you mister!” She swore as she stood up from the table. “I don’t have to answer your questions. You can go to hell.”
Chapter Ten
Yuri just stared at her for a moment before he leaned forward and said, “You do indeed need to answer my questions, and you will, if you want our help. Red called my friend Kosta and asked him to come.”
“I never asked him to do that!” she defended. “I didn’t know the Bratva was even here. I didn’t know what the Bratva was.”
“But he did and now we are here and we aren’t leaving until we clean up this situation. I do not like walking into these things blindly. You, my dear may know something that might help. I believe you do. Calls have been made and everything has been set in motion to take down your uncle.”
Grace placed both hands on the table and leaned in to speak. “Let’s set the record straight here. That bastard is not my uncle.” Grace growled. “He is nothing to me. Gene was my father, no one else. He was the only person I cared about.” She looked down at the table. Taking a deep breath to calm down some, Grace then said with a pained voice, “Gene was there for me since the day I was born. I don’t know if my mother ever loved me or even wanted me because she left shortly after I was born. Gene told me all my life that she walked out on both of us. I don’t remember her and now I know why.” She hesitated then asked, “Did you ever ask Kolya and Pavel what happened ? How did Niko get into the house in the first place?”
Yuri sighed. “Yes we asked. Niko apparently knocked them out to gain access to the house. He first took out Pavel, and he has a nasty headache. He told Kolya before he knocked him out that Vitya wanted to talk to you. They fought because Kolya wasn’t going to let him anyway near you but Niko never did play fair. He had a bat behind his back and without warning, he swung at Kolya. He tried to duck but he wasn’t quick enough. Niko laid him out cold then got into the house. By the time he came around again, the fight was over and Leonid and Red dragged Niko’s body out of the house. He helped drag the body into the woods and came right back to the compound.” He shrugged. “His wounds back up his story and no one has any reason not to believe him.”
“Well ain’t that great for him?” Grace stated quietly. “You seem to not give me the same belief.”
“We cannot know all about you. You just happened to grab Red’s Bike? You are also a mystery, being a Konovic. You don’t seem to understand the type of man Vitya Konovic is.” Yuri sighed.
“Oh, I know exactly what type of man he is.” She scoffed. “He’s a bastard from hell. His brother deserved what he got and Vitya knows this but he thinks he’s bigger and better than the next man. That man’s law as well as God’s laws don’t apply to him. He thinks he can come here and shoot a man without provocation and get away with it.” She hung her head. “His own sister was afraid of him and rather than stay in her own home, she ran away. She came to another country to escape their reign of terror and have her child. Then in order to stay free, she had to leave her child with someone else to go into hiding. She has moved from place to place changing her name every time she moved, hoping to escape him catching up with her, even after all this time. She knew he would find her eventually and when he does, she knew he will kill her for her defiance.”
“How do you know all of this?” Yuri frowned.
“My mother left or sent letters to Gene over the years. She would never tell him where she was but she wanted me to know why we couldn’t be together. Gene kept all of her letters.” She glared at him. “He wrote a second journal. He wrote about her struggles to avoid her brother and how his men would find her from time to time and she would have to run from them.”
“What else did he say about her?” Yuri wanted to know.
“He wrote to her that over the years, he could begin to see her in me.” She shrugged. “I don’t know if that meant I looked like her or I acted like her but he raised me to not take any shit from anybody. He taught me to be independent and for that, I will be grateful no matter what happens next. So, I tell you again, I have done nothing that was planned to be a part of this man’s agenda.”
Yuri shook his head. “We have to be careful of this man’s tricks, so I suppose you cannot understand that we have to examine every angle. We should hear sometime today whether the Bratva has taken your great uncle into custody in Russia. Vitya will lose everything he has back home. We have already frozen his bank accounts and released the men, women and children inside his prisons. We are tracing the women and children he has sold into slavery and will recover them and return them to their families. One step at a time.” He paused then asked again, “Then I still need and answer to my earlier question. How did you come to get involved with this group of men?”
“Ok, I’ll give you your fucking answer.” She snarled while scooting her chair closer. “When Vitya’s limo drove into the driveway to my dad’s shop, Gene turned to me and told me to run and not look back. He didn’t know I stayed behind. I hid but I stayed there and I saw firsthand what Vitya did to him. At first, I was stunned, then I was afraid. When I heard the shot and saw my dad crumble to the ground, I wanted to scream. Then I noticed the look in his eyes. He got a bit of blowback from the gunshot on his cheek. His eyes were cold and empty and when he brushed his hand over his cheek and looked at the single drop of my dad’s blood on his fingers that he wiped off his cheek he—he then licked the smear of blood off his finger.” She shivered in disgust as she looked over Yuri and whispered, “I knew then that I had to run. If he’d seen me, I knew he wouldn’t hesitate to kill me too. I went out the back door but as I ran, I heard footsteps running behind me. I ran a little faster and when I came through the woods, I found myself in a bar’s parking lot. When I got to the shadow of the bar, I saw two men coming out of the woods with weapons. I knew I had to get out of there so I started looking for the first vehicle I could find to make my getaway. But all the cars were locked then I saw a few bikes. I saw one I felt would be easy to hotwire, I didn’t know who it belonged to, all I knew was, I had to get away. I hotwired the engine and drove off. “
She kept looking Yuri in the eye as she told her story.
“I had no clue where I was going but I knew I couldn’t stay there. When I came out from behind the bar, I drove off as fast as I could but the two men were firing at me and I caught a bullet in the shoulder. I heard more shooting behind me but I didn’t stop and look. I just got out of there.” She paused and took a drink of her now cold coffee. “I knew I couldn’t stay here so I went to a place only my father and I knew of. It’s a small cabin near Bison City in Wisconsin.”
“So you didn’t know these men before that night?” Yuri asked.
She shook her head. “I had to steal a bike to get away. I didn’t know it belonged to Red, nor did I care. I just didn’t want to die.”
“And when they followed you to the cabin?” he asked after a long moment.
“She rather rudely told us to take the bike and get the fuck away from her.” Red’s voice came from the edge of the hall leading to the bedrooms. He stomped over to the table and clenched his fists. “She didn’t want to be here and some of my men didn’t want to bring her back. They didn’t want to bring Vitya’s attention to us any more than she did.”
“Well, I think you got his attention whether you wanted it or not,” Yuri assured them.
Grace shivered and curled up into herself.
Red frowned and went over to her. Touching her shoulders, he took note of how cold her skin was. He turned to Yuri and frowned at him. “Why did you ask her if she knew us before her father died?”
“Because when we read the journal where her father’s confession was, we read that he was very aware of you and your men living in the area,” Yuri explained. He turned to Grace and saw the look of su
rprise on her face. “You didn’t know this?”
She shook her head. She looked up at Red then back to Yuri. “Did he say why he never told me?”
Yuri studied her for a moment then he shook his head. “Not why he never told you but he did say if it became necessary there was one among the bikers he would ask for help.”
“What? W-who?” she stammered, as she felt shocked. “But why?”
“One of them is a distant relative of yours from the old country. He might not help but Gene would beg if he had no other choice.” Yuri stared them both.
Red clenched his fists again. “Who is this man? And how is he related to her?”
“I think that would be me.”
They all turned to see Pavel standing in the hall.
He came into the room, walked over to the table and sat down facing Grace. “Nikita Kostavic was my cousin. When he began his affair with Irena, he lied about his last name. Eventually, he told her the truth but she never told her family who he was. Then Vitya followed her to a place they met and he caught them together. He beat my cousin almost to death for touching his sister, then he threw him in prison. Irena managed to get away from her confinement and she knew she had to leave Nikita behind. She came to me for help getting away from her family and I hooked her up with Gennedi. They managed to escape and when they couldn’t find her and drag her back Vitya killed Nikita.”
Grace felt the tears roll down her face. “Did he ever know about me?” she whispered.
Pavel nodded. “Da, he did. He prayed for your mother to get away and he held on to hope she was able to give you life. He never knew if you were a boy or a girl but he knew Irena was pregnant with his child. He told me that much before he died. He died knowing there was still a small piece of him left in the world. The last time I saw him alive he told me that no matter what Vitya did to him, he didn’t regret falling in love with Irena.”