“Feels good, doesn’t it? To take control of your own pleasure,” he growls.
“Oh my—oh my god,” I breathe. “Yes, yes, yes.”
“Go as slow or as fast as you want. Hard or soft. Tell me what you need,” he commands. “Don’t be afraid of your own desires, Daisy. Don’t wait. Don’t worry. Just take what you want when you want it. I can handle whatever you ask of me.”
“Harder,” I gasp. “Faster.”
Alexei sits up and pulls my legs around his waist, now bucking his hips in tandem with mine to intensify the depth and power of every single stroke. I’m crying out, tossing my head back while he fucks me. He leans forward to kiss my forehead, my cheeks, my neck. His hands slide up to cup my breasts, rolling my nipples between his fingers.
Tendrils of electric pleasure shoot down through my body, circling around my pulsating cunny. He’s pounding into me now harder than before, sweat beading and pooling down my spine and his as we meet every stroke with a gasping sigh, the both of us ratcheting higher and higher, closer to the edge.
“Reach down deep inside yourself, my angel,” he snarls. “Reach in and tell me your darkest needs, your purest desires. Give them breath. Make them real.”
I do as I’m told, my mind screaming at me the answer.
“I want you— I want you to fill me up,” I whisper roughly.
“Yes, tell me everything,” he prompts me.
“I want you to come inside me, Alexei. I want you to make me yours. I don’t want to be careful. I don’t want to be safe. I want danger, I want risk, I want— oh god,” I mewl, shuddering as my body is wracked with a powerful orgasm. I can feel my pussy clenching and unclenching tightly, and Alexei doesn’t let up for even a second.
“So good,” he hisses, “so very good. Come for me, Daisy.”
“I want you to come. Give it to me,” I snarl, surprised at how insistent I sound. How desperate and debauched. Who have I become?
And why am I happier to be this new version of myself? Shouldn’t I be afraid? Or ashamed?
But I’m not.
I feel nothing but utter freedom, total release. And it’s addictive. I need more. Always more. I know I should be careful. Alexei could knock me up. I could end up like Jenny Parsons. But I don’t care. In fact, the idea that this powerful, virile man could pump me full of his come and make me pregnant only turns me on more.
The danger, the risk…
I want to embrace it all with no fear. Dean is gone. Dead. No longer a threat to my life, to my happiness. I’ll be damned before I let another living soul take my freedom away like that. Never again will I worry like I used to. From now on, I will live for pleasure and excitement and nothing else. And I know that if I just stick with Alexei, life will abide. Pleasure will take over where pain used to dwell, and my days will be sweet and heavenly like in my dreams.
Funny how it takes being bad to make things good. I have to embrace the darkness to find heaven on earth.
“Ask me again,” he commands. I can feel his thrusts becoming more erratic, and I pick up the pace to match him, unwilling to be outpaced.
“Do it,” I beg, “Come inside me, Alexei. Fill me up. Please. Now.”
With a few short pumps, he kisses me hard, his huge hands gripping my ass, and I can feel it—his cock bursting inside of me, his hot, sticky seed filling up my tight little hole. I clench around him, eking out every last precious drop, not wanting a single bit of him to go to waste.
He holds me for a minute, the two of us just heaving and gasping, drinking in each other’s warmth. Our scents mingle together in the still air, his cock slowly, slowly stilling inside of me. I wish we could stay like this forever, but eventually, Alexei gives me one last kiss and lifts me away from him. He stands up, offering me his hand without a word.
As I take it and stand beside him, I feel a rush of dizziness. And then the slick sensation of his seed leaking down my thighs. I smile to myself, reveling in how filthy, how delicious it all is, letting myself be dirty and dangerous with this remarkable man. He leads me by the hand down the hallway to the bathroom, turning on the shower so we can get cleaned up. As we step inside, he presses me to his chest, letting the hot water rush down over our aching bodies. For a few moments, we are silent, just letting the moment be soft and peaceful. But before long, my curiosity, that unrelenting voice in my head, urges me to speak my mind.
Almost as though he can read my thoughts, Alexei says gently, “Ask it.”
I look up at him, at the steam rising around us and the water streaming down his sharp cheekbones, and I ask the question lingering in my mind. “In New York… did you escape a murder conviction? I have to know. Was that you, Alexei? Is it true?”
Alexei
I knew the question was on her lips before she even started to ask it, and for once, I hate being right.
Our eyes lock for a long time. Both of us are searching one another’s souls for answers to different questions. She’s still so innocent, so naive that it almost makes me feel guilty just for letting these questions cross her mind. She expects me to lie to her, just like she expected me to lie to her about killing Dean. She wants me to be a liar as well as a murderer, I realize.
That would make things so much simpler for her. She would be able to live with herself for leaving me.
And I would let her go, if she wished it.
But I cannot give her the answer she wants. I can only give her the truth.
Because while she searches my eyes for that answer, I search hers to know whether she can stand to share a bed with me when she knows the kinds of things I have done throughout my life. It took me long enough to be able to live with myself. I became cold to my ferocity, my brutal efficiency.
I sleep soundly. Will she be able to?
I answer.
“Yes.”
She looks at me long and hard before I take the next words from her lips.
“You knew. You knew before the question was even finished leaving those beautiful lips of yours. Why did you ask?”
“I had to know if you would lie to me,” she replies quietly.
“You have your answer,” I say. “What will you do with it?”
She’s quiet for a long time, unmoving. As I gaze into her face, I watch the flecks of water on her forehead build up until they’re too heavy, and they run down her face in thin streams, down like little tributaries to join the rivers of water pouring out her hair, down her breasts, between her thighs, and down her knees to the drain. She isn’t moving, but nothing about her is still, ever.
“Tell me why,” she says at last, her voice thick. “Who was he, Alexei?”
“His name,” I start, “was Earl McPherson. When he turned eighteen, he joined up with the Irish mafia in Brooklyn and started running rackets like his bosses told him. He liked the money. The fear and respect made him bold. Violent. Willing to kill. His first blood was an old man who couldn’t pay back the loans he took out for his wife’s medical bills. He became hired muscle, and soon, he had another dozen rival gang members as notches on his belt. He was strong, and he knew he could get away with much. Too much. At a party, he met the daughter of one of my bosses. He wanted her. She refused him. He killed her.”
Daisy looks stunned. I watch the last shards of innocence leave her eyes as she takes in the story behind that particular hit, realizing it’s all true. I go on.
“Of course, we could not abide this, but he was too influential for his own people to deal with him. My then-superiors paid me $200,000 to end his miserable life. I did it.”
Daisy’s mouth is hanging open. I come closer to her, and she takes a step back. I put one hand on the cool glass wall of the shower, then the other, pinning her between my arms as I look down at her, bringing my face close to hers. We’re so close that the water splashing off her face hits me.
“Earl McPherson was not the first. And he was not different from any other of them.”
“Alexei…” she breathes, “how many have y
ou killed?”
“I am a hitman, Daisy,” I say, slowly and clearly. “And I am one of the best. What you saw in the newspaper was the one time I had a kink in my plans. The one stain on my perfect track record.”
“Is that all it is to you?” she croaks.
“Yes,” I say coldly. “Because those men, Daisy? Every single one of them was scum. McPherson wasn’t even the worst man I killed. I am the best, and because of that, I get to choose what contracts I take. I do my research. Every man I kill, I know his life in the most minute details, down to when he took his first jobs and who his bosses were. I kill rapists. Murderers. Sex traffickers. Pimps. I want to tell you something that I learned my first year doing this, Daisy. Those men’s lives are worth more as the money that built this fucking farm than as the horrible ways they carried on as scum of the earth.”
I have never spoken to anyone about this before.
Daisy has not budged an inch since her first step back, and she looks up at me with eyes that do not waver. I still don’t know what it is about this girl that makes me able to open up, and I don’t know what she will do now that I have.
“Doesn’t that make you a murderer too, Alexei?” she says, barely above a whisper.
I look hard at her for a long time, then nod slowly.
“The men I killed were the kind the law could never pin down. They made the world a worse place, profited off it, and walked away without a single consequence. If you want to call it that, then yes, I became a murderer so I could cleanse the world of that. I am not like them. And I left that life behind me. I am not a killer any longer.”
As she looks at me more, I realize she has found her courage, and she speaks again, this time with more purpose.
“Not anymore? Then what about Dean?”
Damn her.
I lower my arms and step back so that the water runs over my face, and I run my hands over it, feeling the heat through my hair washing away my sins.
“Dean was an exception,” I say. “A one-time exception.”
“How do I know that?” she asks. “How do I know you’re not just lying to me? How do I know you aren’t still killing people based out of this one-stoplight town where nobody would come looking for you?”
I look down at her, and I smile. That’s not a bad idea. She has good instincts.
Wrapping my hand around the back of her head, lacing my fingers into her soaking-wet hair, I draw us into a kiss. When it finally breaks, I bring my lips to her ear.
“Because I did it for you, Daisy.”
I step out of the shower, leaving her standing there while I grab a towel and dry myself off. I head into the bedroom while the water is still running, and I wrap the towel around my waist as I go to the kitchen to get a drink.
This girl asks many questions.
The ice clinks into the glass, followed by the smooth, clear vodka I pour over it, and I swirl it around a few times before I hear the sound of bare feet padding down the hallway and pausing in the entrance to the kitchen.
I take a drink, then turn to face Daisy, who’s standing there in my oversized bathrobe, wet hair dripping behind her, eyes glaring at me. I raise an eyebrow, then hold up the bottle of vodka, offering her some. She starts to look indignant and shake her head, but finally, she frowns and nods.
“How did you get involved in… all this?” she asks.
I raise an eyebrow, and she swallows.
“You know what I mean,” she clarifies.
I pour her a glass of vodka and mix it with some of the orange juice in the fridge, then hand her the glass before making my way to the counter and sitting down and thinking for a few long moments. I haven’t been asked to recount how I came to this life in a very long time. I hoped I never would.
I always imagined the day I’d be called to answer for my life of crime would be the day I stood trial before a court of law. That, or I’d be long dead before anyone picked up on my trail.
Never did I think I’d be talking about it with a country girl who’s more than a head shorter than me.
I look long and hard at her while she sips the screwdriver and makes a face at how strong I made it, and it makes me chuckle before I speak.
“You know, I’ve never told anyone the things I’ve said so far, much less what you’re asking.”
“And why do you think that is?” she asks.
“If you knew me,” I say, “you’d have your answer.”
“Has there been anyone you’d want to open up to?” she asks cautiously.
“No,” I say. I look down at my drink for a moment, then take another swig before I speak more. “My life has been a solitary one. This was partly my choice. I was young when I joined.”
“Joined?”
I look her dead in the eye, then bring a finger up to the large red and black star emblazoned on my chest. “The Bratva,” I say.
“Br…?” she repeats, trailing off with a look of confusion on her face as she steps further into the kitchen and takes a seat on the table.
“Bratva,” I say again, more slowly this time. “It is a Russian word. It means simply brotherhood in Russian. But it is much more than that. It is several groups of Russian men across the world who carry out business. We’re organized. Principled...in theory.”
“A mafia,” she breathes, and I see some color drain from her face before she takes a longer drink of her stiff screwdriver.
“The police would call it that, yes,” I say, and I smile at the sight of her eyes going wider. “In theory, we look out for each other. We’re comrades. But the reality is a somewhat different situation. It was all politics. But as for me, my talents had me rising through the ranks somewhat independently.”
“You were doing this from the very start?”
“Almost. Sooner than most,” I admit, giving it a little thought myself. “Usually, they have young recruits like me doing things like guard duty, sometimes going to our rivals and causing trouble in a group. But I tended to attract unwanted attention that way, both from our enemies as well as other ambitious young men in our ranks.” I crack a smile. “I made them look bad. So, the bosses decided I was more valuable working in the shadows.”
She’s quiet for a long time, looking into her drink, probably wishing it was kicking in faster. She takes another drink, draining a third of the glass and swallowing with eyes shut tight. She shakes her head at the bite.
“Careful, don’t make yourself sick,” I say mildly.
“I just...I never knew all this was real,” she says. My eyebrows go up.
“Not real?”
“I mean, you see it on TV, but you’ve seen what Broken Pine is like. The most exciting thing that happened in the past five years was the time one of my neighbors’ goats accidentally got into the seat of a tractor and got it moving. There’s nothing like you here, no mafia, no-”
“No killers?” I ask, stepping forward after draining my glass and setting it aside. “No violent men who’d hurt people? Really, Daisy?”
She seems to shrink in my shadow, but she gets my meaning, and she nods. “I guess it’s easy to ignore things like that when you’re not looking hard enough.”
“That’s what all of New York City does every day,” I say. “Contract killers, enforcers, it’s all right there under their noses, but only a few people know it’s there, and fewer actually look on that underworld with their own eyes. Me, I thrived in it. I started by picking off lowlife loan sharks who ruined other people’s lives. Then it was pimps who overstepped their boundaries. Before long, I was settling scores between rival gangs. I was always quick, quiet, and efficient. Nothing is in more demand in a man like me than those qualities.”
She’s staring out the window now, and her face is unreadable. I wonder whether her mind is wondering about running off during the night, or trying to call the police while I sleep.
“Why here, though?” she asks at last. “Why Broken Pine?”
I chuckle. “Wish I’d come to some other hapless sm
all town?”
“No, I don’t mean that,” she says. “I just...I don’t know, I’m just trying to understand all this.”
“The short answer is, exactly the reasons you like this place,” I say, crossing my arms matter-of-factly. “New York became a hotbed of politics the higher I climbed. When enough powerful people fear that you could kill them, they become a lot more interested in what you do.”
“You were too good at your job,” she says, cracking a faint smile of her own.
“Something like that,” I say, laughing. “Too many dinners, too many cloak-and-dagger meetings in dark places, too many enemies smiling like friends with open arms and a knife in each hand to stab me in the back. The more valuable you are, the more dangerous you are. But they came to rely on me. I was a tool that many people wanted, and soon, I was under pressure to do jobs that I refused. You can only refuse powerful people so long before assassins of your own start coming after you. So, I retired.”
It is an abrupt end to probably the most I’ve ever spoken at once at a time, and Daisy looks almost dazed trying to take it all in. I’ve just radically changed how she sees the world, and I feel a pang of guilt because of it. But if she wants to be with me, she needs to know all this. Even if it makes her leave.
Maybe it’s better that way, for her.
“Now, I have a question for you,” I say, and she looks up at me as I close the distance between us and put my hands on her shoulders. “Why do you act so skeptical of my methods...when you yourself asked me what it feels like to kill?”
Her eyes shine up at me, and she chews her lip a little before she puts together an answer.
“I...I guess I wanted to know what makes you able to do it so well. How you do that with a clean conscience.”
I think about that for a few moments before I speak again.
“Control,” I say slowly. “It’s something I never had growing up. Control over my destiny. Over whether good or bad people have a say in my life, in the world. That control means everything to me—a man who’s been across the world, mostly not by his own choice.”
I Hired a Hitman Page 11