Year of the Scorpio: Part One

by Stacy Gail

  “Want me to stop?’

  “Don’t you dare.” I gasped before biting my lip when he pushed on a particularly sore spot on my arches. Then I squeezed my eyes shut and gripped the back of my seat until I could feel the velvety nap of the upholstery slide under my fingernails. “Damn it, that just feels...so...good.”

  “You like it hard and deep don’t you? Yeah, you do. My Dasha loves it hard.” With my eyes closed, Polo’s voice seemed rougher, unfamiliar.

  Exciting.

  “You should see you face right now, Fearless. So damn beautiful. I’ll bet you look this beautiful when your body’s on fire and you’re fucking as hard and fast as you can because you feel like you’ll die if you don’t come.”

  The word-picture he painted was so easy for me to see with my eyes closed.

  To see, and to feel.

  Hot blood flowed through my veins, warming my skin and thrumming along my nerves, heightening my awareness until every part of me was attuned to him. That heat pooled at the juncture of my thighs in such a delightful way I couldn’t sit still, the intimate tissues there swelling and growing slick with arousal.

  Damn.

  Maybe massage was my kink, after all.

  “I want to keep you looking exactly like that, Dasha.” He sounded closer now, and I opened my eyes to find him right there, leaning into me while pulling me closer by my ankles. “But it’s not your feet I want to massage. I want to pull you onto my lap and put that look on your face by massaging another part of your anatomy entirely, but my timing’s shitty. We don’t have time for that now.”

  The disappointment that speared through me bordered on grief. “I’m almost on your lap now.”

  “Not like I want you to be. I don’t want you on my lap all nice and proper and chaste, with your knees closed. I want you straddling me, legs wide, no panties, grinding your pussy as hard as you can against my cock in a lap dance to end all lap dances. I’d make sure we both got off on it, you can bet on that.”

  His language should have shocked me, since I’d never heard those words from him before, but all I felt was wild, surging excitement. “Lap dances and stripper poles. I see a theme here.”

  “Pole’s for private parties I throw every now and again for my more influential guests. I bring in talent for that pole to put my guests in an agreeable mood. Agreeable moods are great when it comes to getting whatever it is I want out of them. In the end, everyone walks away happy—they’re happy because they got their rocks off, and I’m happy because I got what I wanted.”

  “So you don’t have a thing for girls who work a pole?”

  “I have a thing for seeing you try to work that pole. A private dance, just for me.”

  The thought of his eyes on me—wanting me, devouring me as I peeled off one piece of clothing at a time—made the cleft between my legs throb so urgently I had to will myself not to moan. Oh God, I wanted to strip for him. I wanted to strip for him right now, and to hell with the world around us. “Oh, dear.”

  “What?”

  “I think we just found my kink.”

  A visible shudder went through him, and his lips parted on a low, moaning breath. It was so intoxicating to see the rawness of his hunger that I leaned into him just as he reached a hand toward me.

  “It’s about that time, boss.” Indigo stepped out onto the balcony, took one look at us, then reversed course until he stood just inside the open doorway, eyes staring blankly ahead. “Mr. Yuri and Alex are here, and Wyla said she’d be up in a minute with a new recruit for River Styx. You want me to tell everyone to wait?”

  Polo hesitated just long enough to make me think he dearly wanted to say yes. Then he lifted my legs off his lap, and I wanted to cry when my thoroughly massaged feet touched the floor. “No. I’ll be right there.”

  Shit.

  “Yeah, my timing sucks for sure.” Polo grimaced and shifted in his seat in a painful way that I understood all too well. “Last fucking thing I want to do is to walk into that damn meeting with a raging hard-on.”

  “You only have yourself to blame.” I tried to sound casual, but the fact was I sympathized. Whether he knew it or not, my panties were soaked through just from a dinky little foot massage. “A raging hard-on is only to be expected when you have a stripper pole as a conversation piece.”

  “It’s definitely a piece that has me hard.”

  I reached out and tweaked his ear. “You didn’t just call me a piece, did you?”

  “Ow,” he muttered, catching my hand and bringing it to his mouth before I could dodge him. “You’re the choicest piece around, and the most dangerous. I’ve killed men for less than what you just did to my ear.”

  My fingers curled around his and I leaned into him, seeking the heat of his body and the pleasure of his touch. “You want to kill me, Polo?”

  The low growl in his throat thrilled me. “I want to fuck you to death. Does that count?”

  It was my turn to shudder, but it couldn’t be helped. As crazy as it was, his long-awaited admission of wanting me—as violent as it was—turned me on in the worst way. “I want to live, so I guess I should get out of here.”

  “There you go again with those cautious little dips, but this time I’m with you. You need to get the hell out of here so I can get some work done. But understand this,” he added, once again bringing my hand to his mouth so that he could graze my knuckles with a shockingly arousing pseudo-bite, “fucking you to death, or at least until you can’t walk, is something that’s going to happen. Take whatever time you need to make peace with that. But eventually you’ll open up those amazing eyes of yours and see that you and I are a thing now. It’s real, it’s happening, and there’s no running away from it.” He pulled me into a hard, openly possessive kiss before he let me go, pushed to his feet and instructed Indigo to drive me home. As he did, his words echoed in my ears, but not as a taunt or a threat.

  All I heard was a promise.

  Polo

  It was almost two in the morning—closing time for Heaven. Standing on the office’s private balcony, Polo watched the people still on the dance floor, dancing as if they thought closing time would never come if they just gave it all they had.

  He understood. For a long time, he’d been that way about Dash—pretending there wasn’t something there. Something powerful. But there was only so long the inevitable could be denied, so at last he’d given in. After years of tortured denial, he’d given in.

  While he wasn’t sure what the fallout from that giving in was going to be, he didn’t have one fucking regret.

  All he had was the screaming need to bang her so hard it would be heard around the world.

  “Polo.” Behind him, Yuri stepped out onto the balcony. He glanced back, then narrowed his eyes when he caught the other man’s somber expression. Somber and Yuri never boded well. “Knives is here to see you. If it were anyone else...”

  “Yeah.” Polo had left word that he wasn’t to be disturbed, but Knives was the new head of the Vitaliev organization. While everyone who worked for him was officially retired from the Vitaliev Bratva, the respect shown to the new head of that organization was as natural as breathing. “It’s fine, Yuri. Thanks.”

  “Be cautious, Polo.” To his surprise, the older man moved a step closer, his deep voice lowering to a whisper. “You have your freedom now. You more than earned it. Keep it by staying on your guard with Knives. He’s not his father. He never will be. Remember this.”

  “I will.” Polo did his damnedest to not show his surprise, but that was a tall order. Yuri never talked smack, never volunteered his thoughts and he sure as hell never gossiped. Not that he was doing any of that here, but it did make his unsolicited comment pretty fucking notable.

  He followed Yuri into the office, closing the balcony door and the pulsing music out while Yuri silently left through the office’s interior door. Standing near the desk, Knives watched the older man leave before turning to lift a brow at him. “For a minute there, I thoug
ht the old bear wasn’t going to let me see you.”

  Polo lifted a shoulder and moved to the wet bar. “I put the word out that I wasn’t exactly feeling sociable, so Yuri was probably hoping to protect you from my bad mood. Want something to drink?”

  “Vodka, if you’ve got it.”

  “What kind of product of your father’s would I be if I didn’t have vodka?” Pouring two shots, Polo returned and handed him one before perching on the edge of the desk. “Remember when Borysko decided it was time for the two of us to know what it was to get drunk?”

  “Oh fuck, yeah.” Knives smirked. “I remember you trying to act like you were totally sober and that everything was fine, just fine... right before you face-planted on the floor.”

  “You got pissed off at everyone and tried to start a fight with... shit, what was his name? The skinny guy with the watery eyes. You kept calling him crybaby.”

  “Nicolai Voromin.”

  “My God, you actually remember his name.”

  “He was a pussy. I remember the name of every pussy I come across. His English was so bad he didn’t even know I was insulting him. So I switched to Russian, but my Russian was just as bad as his English, so in the end I just started throwing shit at him to get my point across.”

  “You’re a mean drunk.”

  “And you’re a sleepy one.” With a laugh Knives toasted him, and together they knocked back the drink that had choked them so long ago. “Aw, yeah.” Knives huffed out a satisfied breath, held up his empty glass, then set it aside on the desk. “That brings back memories. That night taught us the very valuable lesson that everyone pays for overindulging, one way or another.”

  “I don’t think I’ve ever overindulged on anything since. It’s not worth the headache.”

  “It could be said that you’ve overindulged on the whole freedom thing my father granted you before he died, considering how completely you cut your ties after helping me clean house.”

  The pleasant burn of the alcohol froze in Polo’s stomach, and in silence he turned to study the other man, senses alert. Despite the lateness of the hour, Knives looked perfectly fresh—not a wrinkle in his tailored pants or slim-fit button-down shirt, or a dark hair out of place. His shirt cuffs were rolled back to show a gold Rolex on one wrist and a gold link bracelet that had been his father’s on the other. Polo had one just like it—a gift from old man Borysko after Polo had taken a bullet for him before wiping out the half dozen fools who’d thought an ambush would be enough to take over Vitaliev territory. He never wore it; flashy jewelry wasn’t his style. Actions had always meant more to him than flash.

  “Shit, listen to that silence.” Knives grimaced and sent him a sidelong look. “Not exactly the answer I was hoping for.”

  “What the hell do you expect?” Dark and dangerous fury bubbled up from a never-healed wound deep inside, and the heat of it scoured his insides until he wanted to double over. “I gave you six months even after your father freed me from being a hostage for nearly half my life. Now you want more?”

  “Can you blame me? Think how much we got done in just those six months.”

  “Got done?” The words shot out of him, and their bitterness left a bad taste in his mouth. “On your orders, I killed more people in those six months than I did the entire time I was your father’s head torpedo.”

  “I had to move fast, thanks to you. You have no one to blame for that timetable but yourself.”

  Polo stared at him. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

  “The vultures were circling, trying to get whatever they could out of my father’s empire, but they could have been dealt with in time. You’re the one who said you’d give me just six months before leaving me high and dry, so I had to strike while I still had you with me.”

  “I didn’t have to give you any time once Borysko set me free, but I did. Out of respect for you and your father, and to give you time to find your feet. It wasn’t my choice to use that time to settle every score the Vitalievs ever had, rather than stabilize the organization. It was yours.”

  “By settling those scores, I did stabilize the organization. By the time we were done cleaning house, no one had any question about who was in charge, and where the Vitaliev Bratva was headed. I’d just thought that as I moved the organization into a new era, you’d want to be by my side, where you belong, doing what you do best.”

  “Killing.” That bitterness just wouldn’t go away, and belatedly he realized why. It wasn’t just inside him. Somewhere along the way, he’d become the bitterness itself. “Yeah, that’s me, isn’t it? A fucking murder machine.”

  “You have an amazing gift, Polo. Not many people have it. They think they do, but they don’t. Not like you.”

  “I wanted to be one of the good guys when I was kid, did you know that?” The very thought was laughable now, so he did. But even to his ears, the last thing it sounded like was a laugh. “I dreamed of having a career in the military. I was going to learn how to fly jets and defend our country. I wanted to be a fucking hero.” He closed his eyes as the pain and rage burned deeper into his soul, then opened them again when he realized on a chilling wave that he probably had no soul left. “A hero. Fuck. Look at me now.”

  “You are who you are. Whether you kill for Uncle Sam or for me, it makes no difference. This was always how you were meant to be.”

  “No, this was not how I was fucking meant to be, man. Who I was supposed to be was taken from me when that fucked-up family I was saddled with made me pay for their goddamn sins. And I paid, Knives. I paid, and paid, and paid.”

  “No one knows that better than me.” Like a switch being thrown, the light went out of Knives’s hazel eyes. A terrible darkness flooded in, and he reached out to grip his shoulder. “Every time I think about what happened to you—to us—it makes me want to burn the fucking world down to the ground.”

  “Then why piss and moan about the freedom your father finally granted me? It wasn’t forgiveness he was giving to the Scorpeone family, if that’s what you’re thinking. It was a kindness he wanted to give to me.”

  “The second son of his heart,” Knives said quietly, his eyes still dark as he dropped his hand. “In Papa’s eyes, we were brothers, you know. Brothers. I remember it well.”

  “Do you?” Polo shot back, pushing away from the desk to pace the length of the room. “His final order to you and every lieutenant in the organization was to respect the fact that not only was I free, but that I was not to be pressured in any way to continue with either the Vitalievs or the Scorpeones. And if anyone brought pressure down on me to join their side, I was ordered to look at it as a declaration of war and act accordingly. People know what my acting accordingly would be, Knives. Since no one’s eager for me to plant their asses six feet under, everyone’s been keeping a respectful distance. Except you.”

  “So what, you gonna kill me now?” Knives spread his arms open wide, brows raised. “It’d be easy enough. I’m in your office without Grigor or any of my guys, and I’m unarmed. Fuck, I’m a sitting duck.”

  “You’re an idiot.” Still pissed, Polo smoothed a hand over his hair and tried to find a sliver of control. “Your dad understood that my life, what it was supposed to be, got stolen out from under me. It was gone, and it couldn’t be given back. Too much damage had been done. But he thought I deserved a chance at making some kind of new life for myself—a life that was all mine. Borysko’s last words to me... do you know what they were?”

  “No.”

  “He said he had one last, great hope in his heart for me. He hoped that I could somehow find a little bit of peace as I finally made my own way, my true way, in the world. If my trying to find that peace is your definition of overindulging on freedom, then you and I are going to have a real fucking problem.”

  “We’re not going to have a problem, man, swear to Christ. Not as long as I know your loyalty will always belong to me.”

  “It’s un-fucking-believable you have to even ask. You
’re more my brother than the shithead who actually is my brother.”

  “Matteo Niccolo Scorpeone.” Knives said the name like it produced a bad odor. “He’s head of the Scorpeone operation now. Of course, he would be. Matteo’s the reason your father chose to throw you under the bus. You know that, right?”

  “Jesus.” More than anything, Polo wanted to throw up the vodka he’d downed. “As if I’d ever fucking forget that.”

  “You father obviously had lofty dreams of his beloved firstborn son taking over the family business, and he would’ve looked weak if he’d given up Angelina, the only girl of the Scorpeone family. You, the clean-cut, all-American good boy of the family... what good were you to them? That’s why you were the one who was expendable.”

  Polo’s jaw knotted along with his stomach, and that never-healed wound pumped out more god-awful poison until he felt like he was drowning in it. “You don’t have to tell me what I already know.”

  “Now that you’re no longer a hostage, the Scorpeones have been getting bolder, Polo. Their name is popping up more and more, after being silent for so many years. It’s no coincidence.”

  Every muscle in Polo’s body tensed, and he knew that feeling all too well, from the time when he’d been locked in a cage with yet another unknown opponent. It was his body’s way of readying itself for battle. “You’re here because of that bullshit raid on Dash’s charity today, aren’t you?”

  Knives nodded, watching him. “Why else?”

  “No one gets close to Dash, you hear me, Knives? No one. I’d die for her. Kill for her. Burn the fucking world down for her. None of that’s a problem.”

  A faint, almost excited smile touched the other man’s mouth. “Now there’s the Scorpio I know and love.”

  Polo bared his teeth. “When it comes to protecting Dash, this is the only way I know how to be.”

  “Hey, don’t feel like you have to apologize for it. I love it when you’re like this, because it’s you at your best. I even heard you wanted that cop to call you Scorpio. Kiss of death right there.”