by Ruby Laska
He maneuvered slightly and the head of his cock rested along her hot, throbbing pussy lips, sliding very gently up and down, gliding through the viscous hot slickness of her. She couldn’t help wriggling and bucking, trying to force him to enter her, aching to be filled like she had never needed anything as badly before.
“Yes, yes,” she panted, dimly aware of what he had asked. She’d promise anything to this man; she’d offer him her body, her heart, her soul. Because she’d already fallen in love with him, the first time he’d touched her, the first time he’d set her on fire with his dark promises and firm hand.
As if sharing the memory, his hand slid up to caress her hair, then down, gently, around her throat. He straddled her, his knees pressing into her hips, his cock teasing and rubbing, but never entering.
With his free hand, he lightly slapped her pussy, causing her to jerk. Sparklers of sensation fluttered through her, wave after wave. She had to concentrate hard to keep her orgasm at bay; she could come with a word, a caress, a promise.
But it wasn’t yet time.
“But you’re already mine, aren’t you,” Ricardo mused, his hand gently massaging her throat before starting to apply pressure. His fingers encircled her neck; he could crush her with little effort, but he was an expert in the way he controlled her, letting her breathe enough to feel everything else he was doing. Everything stood out in relief—the hard outline of his thigh muscles, the glints of silver in his dark hair, the sharp planes of his face, as beautiful as if it had been sculpted by Rodin. “You’ve been mine since we met. You were made to be mine, Chelsea.”
And with that he entered her.
The last thought Chelsea had before he plunged inside her was that he had known, he had always known. He had made love to her with his first glance, with the way he first took her hand. Every nuance of their dance, every parry and retreat as they learned each others’ bodies, their needs, had already been afterthoughts. Every time he’d driven her harder and higher, it had been an effort to keep the truth hidden just a little longer: that they were already joined in the fundamental fire of their passionate bond, and no act could ever defile that, no matter how extreme, no matter how intense.
She moved against him, gasping as he stroked deeply, his hands tightening around her throat, his gaze locked on hers. She was pinned in place by his hips thrusting against her, his hand at her neck; she grabbed his ass and tried to pull him even deeper, tried to pull him all the way through her so that they were no longer two separate beings, but one, impaled and welded together.
“Harder,” she begged, her voice thick and gasping. “Harder!”
He fucked her like he owned her, fucked her like he was driving her to the molten core of the earth. She met his thrusts with her own, her savage need excited further every time she twisted and bucked. The concentric waves leading to her orgasm were building, quivering, encircling, and she rode him fiercely, and still it wasn’t enough, and she pummeled him with her fists and cried out.
“More, please, more!”
The pressure on her throat intensified; he grunted as he rammed into her. He slapped her face and she whipped it back to stare at him as she came to the point of no return, the cliff over which she needed to be hurled. She barely had the breath to speak at all, the heat between them molten, his own face a reflection of her desperate need, his jaw clenched and his lips parted with the beginning of a fierce roar.
“Yours,” she gasped as the crest took her.
He seized a fistful of her hair and held on as he plunged one last time and his own orgasm rocketed through him. He was so deep inside her when her pleasure burst that it felt like he’d burned all the way through. She could feel his seed pumping into her and she bucked greedily, wave after wave of crashing sensation propelling her, her own crazed voice garbled and indistinct.
Long after the first waves receded, she lay pinned below him, the aftershocks of her orgasm circling and eddying, as one by one the shreds of her awareness returned. The bed was drenched with her juices; their thighs were slick with sweat and cum. His hands in her hair and around her throat relaxed, but she could feel the rough calluses of his skin, the weight of his chest as he lowered himself, exhausted, onto the bed. He shifted so that he wouldn’t crush her, placing his hands on her hips and moving her with him, staying inside her, always inside her.
They lay together without moving for an eternity. Their heartbeats slowed; the heat of their bodies cooled, their damp skin dried. Ricardo gently brushed a few errant strands of her hair out of the way, tracing his fingertip along her cheek, the ridge of her upper lip, her chin.
“My love.” He murmured. “What we have done, it cannot be undone.”
“I—I don’t want it to be undone,” Chelsea said, snuggling tighter against him.
“But this brings a host of…complications. Because we cannot walk away from each other now.”
Chelsea closed her eyes and sighed. Couldn’t this delicious peace last just a little longer; couldn’t she hide out here from reality another hour, another day? “I’m not walking anywhere,” she mumbled.
“No, but—” Ricardo too trailed off. They were quiet for a while, their limbs twined, breathing in unison.
#
Chelsea wasn’t sure how much time had passed when she woke. The city twinkled and glittered outside their window. Ricardo lay next to her, his arm slung protectively over her hip. She slid carefully out of the bed, watching to see if he woke, but he merely shifted in his sleep.
She padded to the bathroom, then went to the kitchenette to get a glass of water. Seeing her purse on the coffee table, she dug out her phone.
A screen full of texts. Naomi, checking in to say everything was fine at the gallery and wondering if Chelsea felt better. Two from Jade, saying to call immediately.
Chelsea’s heartbeat quickened, and she scrolled down.
One more text from Jade:
Get away from him NOW. More when we talk. ASAP
Chelsea stared at the phone for a long moment, her pulse racing. What had Jade found? What truths was Ricardo still keeping from her?
All she had to do was pull on her clothes and leave. Mr. Smith, she was sure, was out there somewhere. But if she insisted on going, would he stop her? Could she get to the lobby, call Jade, summon Stone, agree to cooperate?
What we have done cannot be undone, Ricardo had said. What had Chelsea locked herself into? What had she given up? Who had she agreed to become?
Finally, she dropped the phone back into her purse. She wasn’t leaving, not now. This night was a gift that she didn’t intend to surrender. Tomorrow, she might have to pay in ways she couldn’t even imagine yet. Her safety, her principles, even her life…but for now she had pledged to be his.
She slipped back into the bed, finding the warmth of their joined bodies. He murmured in his sleep, his arms encircling her, pulling her close against him. It felt so right to be there.
“Yours,” she whispered, and gave herself up to the drifting bliss.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
In a bland office building several miles away, Assistant Special Agent in Charge Jonas Harrison stomped into Marco’s office without bothering to knock.
“Vlad Aksyonov was just found shot three times in a vacant school gymnasium outside Palmdale,” he said grimly. “Time of death estimated between six and ten last night. Couple kids were out there with those remote control plane things—found the body when their plane crashed up on a balcony.”
Marco was already out of the chair. “I’ll head over now.”
“It might not have been de Santos,” Harrison cautioned. “I can think of half a dozen ways that Vlad could have ended up there. Not to mention a few obvious people who’d want him dead.”
“It was de Santos,” Marco insisted to his boss. “With Boris Solonik killed yesterday morning?—de Santos would never let that pass without retaliating. It was just a matter of when.”
“These goddamn Russians,” Harrison sai
d. “To think I got into Art Crime because I thought it would lend a bit of dignity to my career. Get me home for dinner now and then.”
“Maybe he did us a favor,” Marco said, pulling on his jacket. “We weren’t having much luck tripping him up. Maybe now de Santos finally cut a corner we can nail him for.”
“What about your buddy Everson?”
Marco paused in the doorway. “He had his chance,” he said. Once they brought de Santos in, there was no way to keep his girlfriend out of the investigation, even if she really didn’t know how dangerous he was. Stone had wanted to protect her from that. Marco would find a way to make it up to his buddy. “But he’s been trying to save that girl since she was fourteen years old. Sometimes it’s just too late, you know? He’s going to have to accept that she’s past helping now.”
Harrison jammed his hands into his pockets gloomily. “Yeah, I guess so.”
Five minutes later Vega was on the road, fighting mid-morning traffic. It would be many hours before they got the scene locked down. Two days in a row that Vega would be knee deep in a crime scene before noon.
But it was worth it, for a chance to pin down Ricardo de Santos. Men like him went through life taking whatever they wanted as if wealth and women and power were their birthright.
Marco wouldn’t rest until he was stopped. And finally, he might just have the evidence he needed to bring him in.
Life was about to get a lot more interesting for the elusive Ricardo de Santos.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
By the time the knock came at the door, Viktor Lazovsky was drinking his second Red Bull of the morning. He’d used the first to wash down a handful of pain pills. He opened the second when the first one didn’t work.
Viktor dragged himself off the couch and opened the door, unsurprised to see Sergey Tochiev and Nikolai Zakirov standing there. The older man pushed his way into the apartment before seizing Viktor by his thick neck and shoving him against the wall, as Nikolai followed him in and closed the front door behind him.
“Why didn’t you pick up?” Sergey demanded. “Where the fuck have you been?”
Viktor didn’t fight back, even though he was fifty pounds of muscle heavier and two dozen years younger than the avtoritet. “I…lost my phone.”
Sergey was incredulous enough to release him. Viktor clearly wasn’t his sharpest employee—his best, Vlad Aksyonov, was lying in the police morgue by now.
“What happened?” he barked.
Viktor looked up with pleading eyes, his ordinarily menacing face reduced to quivering fear. “The driver,” he whispered.
“Speak in sentences.”
“Pavel and me…we went to the hotel. But de Santos wasn’t in the room Pavel said he would be in.”
Sergey bit back a grunt of frustration. He had sent several men to stake out the café, knowing that Ricardo wouldn’t stay away once he heard Boris was dead. Sure enough, Pavel had spotted him and followed him to the Maximilian hotel. It had taken a fair amount of convincing—in the form of a large amount of pure Peruvian—to get the concierge to give up the room number.
It should have been a sure thing at that point. But instead, everything had fallen apart. He had expected his men to bring in de Santos by yesterday evening. When none of his men had checked in by midnight, Sergey leaned on his connections; by morning, he had learned only that Vlad’s body had been discovered with three bullet holes in it. And still, no word from the others.
Sergey didn’t like where this was going one bit. If only Vlad had killed Ricardo’s woman instead of merely threatening her…if only he’d had the foresight to crush the Chechens when he had a chance, back when they’d first arrived in Los Angeles. When they still seemed like a joke.
No one was laughing now.
“Where is Pavel?”
“We went to the room, but there was, someone was, it was the driver…de Santos’s driver.” Viktor made a slashing gesture across his throat, unable to speak. So Pavel had been killed, too. Just great.
“And you ran home? Like a scared little girl?”
“No, I…the driver…”
“Don’t wet your pants, you stupid idiot, what is it?”
“He took my phone. He said to go home and wait for you to come. He said to tell you…to show you…” with a great heaving sob, Viktor pulled up the sleeve of his shirt.
Carved into the flesh, swollen and crusted with blood, was the word mest.
Avenged.
Sergey glowered. That insufferable Ricardo de Santos thought that bloated old Boris Solonik was worth waging a war over? Well, then a war was what he would get.
He walked to the tiny apartment’s window and looked out onto the row of dumpsters and the parking lot. Viktor sagged with relief, letting his sleeve slide back down the ruined arm. Behind him, Nikolai stood rigidly straight by the door.
“It took courage for you to tell me the truth,” Sergey said thoughtfully. “After failing in your mission. After leaving your comrade behind.”
Viktor nodded vigorously, rubbing the snot and tears from his thick, rubbery face.
The poor idiot thought he had earned another chance. He had probably run all the way back home, injured arm and all, calculating that confessing his mistake to Sergey was less of a danger than risking de Santos’s wrath.
Sergey took his gun from his shoulder holster as he turned back toward Viktor, and shot him in the face. The big man crumpled slowly to the floor, Nikolai moving to catch him before the body hit the carpet.
Now Sergey was down three men, almost a quarter of the brotherhood, and all because of Ricardo de Santos. Well, he’d been warning Ivan Vrubel for months that the man was a threat to the fragile balance of power with the Chechens. As long as de Santos worked for the Chechens, they would enjoy a direct partnership with the Peruvians, and Sergey’s crew would be forced to give up more and more hard-won market share. The latest bloodshed might finally force Ivan to listen—and to send Sergey the manpower he needed. He wanted warriors—not these weak, stupid idiots who were barely separated from their mother’s teats.
“Clean that up,” he said, gesturing to the body lying on the floor. “And then head over to the hotel.”
“Won’t they be expecting us?” Nikolai asked in alarm. He clearly didn’t want to meet the same fate as Pavel.
“No, no, it’s too hot now. Just watch the exits. See where de Santos takes his girlfriend.”
The girl was the missing link, the only vulnerability that they had been able to find. And Sergey wasn’t letting her get away again.
First he’d find her. Then he’d break her. Then he’d have de Santos exactly where he wanted him: outside the gates of hell, and Sergey would be the one to push him through.
The End
***
Did you enjoy XTRAORDINARY?
Check out more books by Ruby Laska:
The Xquisite Series:
Xquisite
Xtraordinary
Xtreme (August, 2015)
The Boomtown Boys Series:
Black Gold
Black Heat
Black Flame
Black Ember
The Cupid Island Series:
Larissa Learns to Breathe
Mandy Makes Her Mark
Plain Jane’s Birthday Wish
Standalone Novels:
Mountain Song
Heartbreak, Tennessee
A Man for the Summer
Mine ’til Monday
Along for the Ride
Snow Creek Novella:
Miss Bonny’s Buried Treasure
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Xtreme, The third novel in the XQUISITE series will be coming in August, 2015!
Art dealer Chelsea Ryder has a choice to make: the man she loves is demanding that she submit to him completely—but the price for their passion may be too high.
; As Chelsea follows the trail of theft and murder that seems to lead straight to her lover, Ricardo de los Santos eludes the FBI agent who is pursuing him. Ricardo appears one rainy evening with shocking news: he has located Chelsea’s abusive stepfather—and promises that the man will never hurt Chelsea again. In exchange, he asks for her trust…and her complete erotic surrender.
Ricardo makes a sexual demand that could push Chelsea past her limits—and force her to choose between a man who could be a killer, and a life of safety and stability. As she yearns for Ricardo’s touch, she asks herself: could passion like this exist in the shadow of evil?
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Ruby Laska has always been a bit contrary. Where others see stop signs, she sees green lights. What others consider obstacles, Ruby likes to think of as opportunities. And when it comes to men, Ruby has always loved the ones that her mother warned her about: demanding, conflicted, and more than a little dangerous.