by Stacy Gail
He sucked in a sharp breath. “Fuck that crazy shit, Dasha. We are not cursed.”
“Yeah. Sure we’re not.” But I didn’t believe it. No matter what I did, or how hard I tried, fate knew the Vitaliev name was too deeply steeped in blood, and someone had to pay for that. I was just sorry with every piece of my broken heart that Konstantin was the one who’d paid, and not me.
God help me if Polo had to pay that price, too.
I couldn’t survive that. I just... couldn’t.
“I mean it, Dash. There’s no unseen, celestial hand that keeps score when it comes to bad deeds versus good, you hear me? There’s no curse, or paying for our fathers’ sins, or whatever the hell else that brain of yours comes up with. Someone very much alive and mortal is jacking with us, and that has nothing to do with balancing out some imaginary cosmic scale.”
My throat tightened so hard it made my eyes water. Or maybe that was just my grief. “You sound so sure.”
“I am. Our enemy isn’t bigger and badder than I am. No one is bigger or badder than me. Some living, breathing sonofabitch is trying to take away our happiness, our hopes, our dreams, and that shit’s important, Dash. Hoping that we’re going to have love and family and a solid, stable future is what life is all about. Trust me, I know—I had all of that stolen from me once, and it’s taken a long, long time to get it all back. But I have gotten it back, and I’ve gotten it back with you. I will never allow anyone to take my life from me again.”
Despite my best efforts, my eyes overflowed. The way my man saw it, I was at the heart of all the things that made life worth living, and in a world that seemed cold and dark and ugly, that was the most achingly beautiful thing I’d ever heard. “How do we make sure we hold onto it?”
Very gently he wiped my tears away. “We live carefully, but we live. You understand? We don’t hole up. We don’t let this defeat us. We go about our daily lives, just with a lot more bodyguards.”
“I don’t know how thrilled you’ll be when you hear what my daily life has in store,” I said, trying to put a cap on the rest of my tears. “The fundraiser I’m having for Chicago’s Future is next week. Unless you think it would be best to cancel it?”
He grimaced, then shrugged. “It’ll be a pain in my ass, security-wise, but I don’t think backing out would be a good thing for you. I want you to keep up with your routine as much as you can.”
“I don’t care about my routine.”
“Yeah, and that’s why I want you to stick to it. Get out of bed every morning. Take a shower and get ready for work. Go out there and make the world a better place by feeding people who need to be fed. Yeah, it’d be easier for me if you stayed up here, hiding from the world until it was safe for you to come out, and believe me, every instinct I’ve got is telling me to have you do just that. But I know that wouldn’t be good for you. I can keep you safe while still making you get up and get on with life.”
“I don’t doubt that for a minute,” I said, shaking my head as the sorrow and grief hit all over again. “It’s just...this was so crazy and out of the blue, you know? We heard nothing from the Scorpeones for so long and then, bam—two police raids in a row, and everything went downhill from there.”
“Yeah, it did.” Very gently his hand smoothed over my hair. “It sure as hell did.”
“And the worst of it is, I don’t know with any certainty that the Scorpeones are behind this, like Knives says. If he’s wrong, that means we have no clue who’s targeting us, or why. I don’t even know if Konstantin being hit was an act against the Vitaliev organization, Konstantin, or the Medvedev family. How are we supposed to defend ourselves when we don’t even know for sure who our enemy is?”
An expression I couldn’t decipher flashed across his face before he once more pulled me against him, his hand at the back of my head coaxing my face to fit into the curve of his neck. “You let me worry about that, you hear me? You just take it easy.”
“Polo—”
“When I was looking for Kon, you know I wasn’t out there with the Medvedev clan just randomly searching the city, yeah?”
I frowned against his neck. “Yeah.”
“We might not be as in the dark as you think, though there’s still a lot left for us to uncover before we make a decision on what move we need to make. That’s not something that touches you,” he added when I lifted my head against the pressure of his hand. His fingers curled into my hair, and he dipped his face to touch his lips to mine. “I mean it, Dasha. You need to give me enough room to let me do my job, and if you’re not clear on what that job is, let me help you out—it’s you. My one and only purpose in life is to keep you safe. I know keeping you happy is out of my reach right now, since I can’t give you back Konstantin. But I swear to God, I’d do it if I could. I’d make a deal with the fucking devil to bring Kon back and make you happy again.”
“I wouldn’t let you.” I rolled up onto my tiptoes to silence him with a quick, hard kiss before he made me break down completely in a hot mess of emotions I couldn’t begin to untangle. “And while a part of me is screaming inside because I don’t know what to do without having Kon as part of my everyday life, I’m also incredibly moved that you’d go to any lengths to protect me. I have no doubt that you really would challenge the devil himself if that was what it took to keep me from harm, because you’re the bravest man I know. I love you so much that all I want to do is hold onto you and make sure you’re safe in my arms where you belong, and nothing can get to you. Nothing else matters to me but you, Polo. Nothing.”
Well. I guess untangling my hot mess of emotions wasn’t that difficult after all.
Polo’s eyes closed for a moment, as if filing the words away deep inside, before he stepped away, opened the copper doors, then turned back to pick me up off the floor.
My arms tightened convulsively around his neck. “What...?”
“I’ve always wanted to do this,” he muttered, moving through the penthouse toward his bedroom. “Sweep you off your feet like some corny-ass hero. Don’t laugh.”
Sweet, breathtaking emotion bloomed in my chest, and its miraculous warmth dulled the edges of grief that had been cutting me to ribbons for days now. The relief from that agony felt so good, I couldn’t help but relax into his arms while a low, thrumming excitement began to bubble in my veins. “I’m not laughing, sweetheart. How could I? I’m swept off my feet every time I look at you. Every time.”
He looked at me as he nudged his way through the bedroom’s open door, and what I saw in the depths of his eyes made me feel like I had given him every gift he’d ever wanted in his life. “Love you so much, Fearless.”
That thrumming became a throbbing, and a whisper of slick warmth surged between my legs. “Good. Because I love you too.”
His smile was like a light in the darkness.
He lowered me onto the bed and followed me down, easing his body onto mine. I welcomed his kiss by opening my mouth, letting him sink into me just as his body pressed mine deeper into the mattress. Everything went quiet in me, and it took me a while to realize that for the first time in nearly a week, I had stumbled upon a precious moment of peace. The horror, the grief, the depthless rage—all of it was pushed back. It didn’t belong here now. For that moment, there was just Polo and me.
That was all my world needed to be complete.
Clothes were a hindrance, so we made quick work of the barriers separating us. I was now on birth control, so once all our clothing was out of the way there was no hesitation as Polo slid into me. A small sound of pleasure escaped my throat, and I closed my eyes to better savor the sensation of my interior walls stretching, stretching, until we were one. I was already aroused—with him in the same room with me, that was pretty much a given—but with his magnificent, muscle-packed weight pressing down into me and his cock pushing all the way to its hilt into the sheath that was my body, I couldn’t help but shudder at that stark beauty of it.
“We fit...so perfectly.” I spoke
between shallow breaths and opened my eyes to look up at my man. When I did, I found his stormy gaze was already trained on me, looking at me as if I were his reason for breathing. “God, Polo. I was made to fit you.”
Raw, almost tortured emotion rippled through his taut expression, and all at once he was thrusting inside of me with a gentle savagery, and each stab of his stiff flesh pumped up a rising tide of pleasure. I moaned and writhed beneath him, helpless to stop myself. When he was inside me like this—urgent and bold and unrelenting, like he was on a mission from a higher power to bury all of himself into all of me—I couldn’t hold anything back.
How amazing my Polo was. He made me feel so beautiful. So cherished.
So loved.
The slick glide of his cock became the center of my attention. My intimate tissues tingled and throbbed, swelling with hot blood while the sweet, teeth-grinding tension low in my belly intensified. I loved the wet achiness of the pleasure he gave me, the building urgency behind it, just as I loved the sound of our bodies coming together as we pushed each other ever closer to the finish line.
I loved how he loved me. Because it was Polo, it was perfect.
For a small, unknown eternity we moved together, our disturbed breath mingling while my legs moved to anchor him more securely to me, my heels digging into the rhythmically clenching muscles in his spectacular ass. Then he surprised me out of my euphoria-induced trance by pulling out and flipping me over onto the pillows against the headboard like I weighed no more than a doll.
“Polo...baby—”
“Ass up, beautiful.” Strong hands lifted my hips up so fast that I almost left the mattress, before my knees sank into the soft bedclothes. With my heart hammering in my throat, I spread my thighs wide, arching my lower back while pressing my cheek deeply into a pillow. Offering everything to him. Knowing I’d get everything back in return.
That was the moment I discovered there was nothing more erotically exciting than trusting your lover to take care of you.
“Jesus, if that isn’t the most beautiful sight these eyes have ever seen.” His hands roamed with hungry possessiveness over the curve of my ass and hips, his fingers cruising down my thighs as if enjoying the texture of my skin before delving into the feverishly hot, desire-slick folds of my sex. “This is mine. All mine. I’m going to pleasure you so thoroughly that from this day on, it’s going to feel wrong to not always have me inside you.”
“You’re the one who’s going to... oh.” My words evaporated, my higher brain function dissolving as the thick crown of his cock again pushed into my threshold. Like that, I became nothing more than a vessel for sensual sensation as he surged into me once more, filling me completely. At the same time, one of his hands reached for mine, brought my finger to my over-sensitized clit and made it go in feverish little circles over it.
Oh... wow.
“You don’t know how it gets me off, thinking of you touching yourself. Moaning. Thinking of me.” His voice was rough, his breath hot on my shoulder moments before his teeth sank into the curve of it. And all the while his finger and mine circled and circled... “Moan for me, Dasha. Let me know you like it.”
I did because I couldn’t do anything else as I eagerly took his direction, rolling and massaging the pulsating nub while his thick, powerful length surged inside me. It was so good, so hot, fingering myself while his hands were now free to grip me hard around the hips, pulling me back into his thrusts. My world jolted with each impact as he bottomed out on that golden spot he seemed to find so effortlessly, and it was so exquisite I couldn’t help but rock my hips, striving for that sensation that would drive me wild.
“Yes. Oh God, Polo, yes, yes, don’t stop.” I was babbling and didn’t even know it. The drugging pleasure invaded me cell by cell, sucking me ever deeper into a world of mindless bliss. It was so addictive, that elusive but burgeoning pleasure; it blocked out all the pain and grief and heartache, and for the first time in what seemed like forever I was glad to be alive. There could be no ugliness in the world, not when so much joy and delight could be had. That was all I wanted now.
And I wanted it to last forever.
That carefree, forever-bliss wish was the reason why I tried to hold off the deepening pleasure. It folded in on itself, creating an inexorable gravitational pull that threatened to snap me in two. “No,” I whispered, taking my hand away, though denying myself that oncoming roar of fulfillment took the last ounce of willpower I had. “No, I want it to last, I don’t want to come yet. Oh God, I don’t want to...”
“Already happening, baby. I feel it... fuck.” His words ended on a deep groan of satisfaction even as his movements went wild. Blindly he reached around between my legs, and at his first stroke he pushed me off the cliff I was trying so valiantly to cling to.
Rapture exploded in me was such a joyous frenzy I cried out until my throat hurt, wave upon wave of ecstasy flinging me into a world of glorious madness. It kept coming on like a runaway train, filling me with its wild perfection, but as perfect as it was, it didn’t last. Just as I’d known it would, that euphoric madness shimmered, broke apart and faded away until only the sweet, shivery echoes of it remained.
The tension had drained out of Polo, and when I collapsed in an exhausted heap on the pillows he sprawled on top of me, no longer connected to me but as warm and encompassing as any comforter.
Wow.
“Woman, there’s going to come a time when I won’t be able to recover from what you do to me.” Polo’s breath was a hot-silk caress on my nape before his mouth slid along the sensitive skin there, making my over-stimulated body shiver in helpless reaction. “If you weren’t on the Pill, I swear we would’ve made a baby just now.”
The very idea stole my breath. Then my head went so light it was a wonder it didn’t fly off my shoulders then and there. “Do you...” I stopped myself, because already the harsh realities of the world were coming back to me. Now wasn’t the appropriate time to talk about such things. Now was the time to grieve.
His arm tightened, and he pulled me onto my side so that we faced each other. “What?’
Oh, what the hell. Maybe talking about life was the most appropriate thing we could do at a time like this. “Do you want children, Polo?”
“Didn’t used to.” His legs tangled with mine as his mouth slid lazily along the line of my shoulder. “My outlook has changed on that subject this past year, along with a lot of others things.”
“Yeah? Is that a good thing or a bad thing?”
“A natural thing, I think. I’ve taken this past year of freedom to become the man I should’ve been, and that’s brought about a lot of changes that needed to happen. When it comes to my outlook on kids, those changes have been good.”
“How so?”
“I never would have dreamed of bringing a kid into the world as long as I was the official hostage of the Vitalievs. I wasn’t free, or safe. That meant my kid wouldn’t have been, either. I’d have been a fucking selfish bastard if I’d ever had a kid while still wearing the Vitaliev leash around my neck.”
My heart turned over as I listened to how stunted and shackled his existence had been because of both his family and mine. “But now that you’ve got your freedom?”
“My freedom.” I heard the savoring of that word before he rolled over and took me with him, maneuvering me so that I was sprawled on top of his chest, my nakedness sliding against his in a way that, even sated as I was, had my blood heating once more. “Now that I’ve got my freedom, let’s just say I’m highly motivated to make our world as safe as possible so that we never have to think about whether or not it’s a good idea to bring a child into the world. That means I’m going to have to get my hands dirty again, Fearless. Maybe dirtier than they’ve ever been, with people you might not expect. People you might not believe they’re deserving of what I give them. I don’t want that to become a problem for us.”
Without conscious thought, the vision of Emily Scorpeone’s earnest blue eye
s flashed through my mind. “Are you talking about the people who took Konstantin out?”
“Yes, I am.”
Another dagger of grief pierced my heart, and I couldn’t help but wonder when that would ever stop. “And you don’t want to bring an innocent child into the world until you’re certain it wouldn’t be threatened by the people responsible for Konstantin’s death?”
“That’s right.”
“Because you know these people would pose a threat to that baby.”
“If that baby happened to be yours and mine...yes. Absolutely.”
If that baby happened to be yours and mine...
The words reverberated inside me, clearing away every other thought until it was the only thing in my mind. Looking into his sleepy but watchful eyes, I propped my chin up on his chest and let my fingers trace over the large scorpion tattoo decorating his right shoulder and neck.
“Then you’d better get busy, getting those hands dirty,” I said without a shred of regret or guilt. I was a Vitaliev, after all. I knew a war when I saw one, and while we didn’t start this war, we were more than capable of finishing it. “I’m not getting any younger.”
At that, Polo smiled his crazy smile. “Yes ma’am.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Polo
The black BMW Roadster was a thing of beauty. Hardtop convertible, zero to sixty in under five seconds, six-cylinder three-hundred-plus horsepower under the hood, digital surround sound, star-spoke chrome rims...yeah. It was a honey, all right. A work of art on wheels and a middle-aged man’s wet dream.
If its owner didn’t show up soon, Polo figured busting out its windows would do the trick.
“Is that him? Coming around the corner of the delicatessen.”
Through the darkness, Polo’s eyes narrowed on the smallish, wiry man with a thick shock of salt and pepper hair. He looked like Chicago’s version of Batman’s pal, Commissioner Gordon, except this assclown would never be a friend of a do-gooder vigilante watching out for the helpless citizenry. If anything, good ol’ Bats would take this loser down for being the dirty scum that he was.