Russian Gold (Russian Love Book 2)

by Holly Bargo

  Russian

  Gold

  By

  Holly Bargo

  © 2016 Karen M. Chirico

  Hen House Publishing

  www.henhousepublishing.com

  This is a work of fiction. All characters, locations, and events in this book are either fictitious or used fictitiously. Any resemblance of characters to real persons, living or deceased, is purely coincidental.

  Acknowledgements

  As always, I didn’t publish this little book without the support of key people. First, I extend a debt of gratitude to the generous persons who volunteered to serve as beta readers, namely Ashley Gregory and Cindra Phillips. Their importance to polishing the rough draft into something fit for public viewing cannot be underestimated or overstated.

  I also owe thanks to my husband, David, for his constant support. It’s difficult to recognize my weird little hobby is actually closer to a life calling, but he has managed to do it—regardless of how long it took.

  A final expression of thanks goes to my readers, without whom I would not be able to call myself an author of any merit whatsoever.

  Chapter 1

  Pyotr watched the love of his life move about the kitchen with languid grace, like a butterfly floating in a beehive. Where clanging chaos reigned, pots steamed, and skillets sizzled, Cecily maintained an almost otherworldly calm as she directed cooks and busboys and waiters. His stomach rumbled in anticipation of the supper she would later cook for him and his groin tightened in anticipation of sinking into her plump, soft flesh that night.

  She looked up, eyes lighting with pleasure to see him standing at the kitchen door. To Pyotr, her smile brightened the entire place as though a star from the heavens had descended to earth to illuminate his life.

  Bog, he was getting sappy.

  He nodded at her, but she’d already turned her attention to the stovetop, and returned to the small dining room of the restaurant, The Matrynoshka, the restaurant Maksim and Olivia had purchased.

  “Your woman needs a kitchen and I need a legitimate and profitable business,” Maksim said as sat beside Pyotr, Gennady, and Iosif as they cheered the graduation of Cecily and her roommate, Latasha. The girls’ other and former roommate, Gia, would graduate next semester.

  Maksim continued, “With your Cecily cooking, the restaurant is sure to be successful.”

  Pyotr agreed.

  He’d been uneasy about meeting her parents who had traveled up from some tiny town in southern Indiana, but they’d greeted him cordially enough. He supposed it helped that his suit, tailored to accommodate the expanse of his shoulders and generally big frame, hid the tattoos that festooned his arms and chest. He wasn’t as heavily tattooed as Vitaly, but enough so that a discerning eye would notice that much of that ink had been imprinted into his skin in prison. And some in the military. Like Vitaly, he’d been an orphan and transitioned immediately upon adulthood to army life.

  He’d hated the army.

  It was weird that life after the army imposed as much discipline and rules as during, with less forgiveness or tolerance.

  The money was better, certainly.

  “Privet,” a deep voice captured his attention, followed by a heavy hand clapping down on his shoulder. “You got a table for us?”

  “Vitaly!” With a kiss to the big man’s cheeks, Pyotr welcomed his old colleague and friend. He saw that Gia, Vitaly’s myopic Italian wife, stood beside him, smiling a little uncertainly. “And Gia!” He kissed her cheeks, too, with just enough flair to make Vitaly growl.

  “What am I, chopped liver?” demanded the irrepressible Latasha, her skinny figure dwarfed by Iosif, who gently and firmly restrained her by means of a big hand splayed across her belly.

  “Of course not,” Pyotr chuckled as he bussed her on the forehead. Vitaly might tolerate a little teasing, but Iosif would not. “It’s good to see you, Latasha.”

  “Humph.”

  “I’m surprised it’s so busy,” Gia commented, looking around as she adjusted her glasses.

  “Three-quarters of the customers are Bratva,” Vitaly remarked, his keen eyes sweeping the room.

  “And the rest are mafia,” Iosif murmured.

  “Well, if the food’s as good as I think it will be, then regular customers will soon be coming in,” Gia said. “I have faith in Cecily. She’s a terrific cook.”

  “She’s a great chef,” Pyotr corrected with pride.

  “Is Maksim coming tonight?” Iosif inquired.

  “No,” Vitaly replied and switched to Russian. “He had business in Springfield. Giuseppe Maglione requested a favor.”

  “Oh?”

  “Da. Something to do with Giancarla’s parents. He didn’t elaborate.”

  “They’re somewhat estranged, aren’t they?”

  Vitaly shrugged. As far as Giuseppe Maglione was concerned, the Bratva owed him a favor for ridding Cleveland of the Culebras. A family dinner had witnessed the very unusual and eerie spectacle of the usually dour mafia don laughing and calling himself the St. Patrick of Cleveland. He’d had to look that one up to understand the reference.

  A shiver ran through Gia’s body and immediately she immediately occupied his whole attention.

  “What’s wrong, vozlyublennaya?”

  “I’m queasy,” she muttered, breathing shallow, rapid breaths.

  With murmured excuses, he left the small group and steered his wife toward the restroom.

  Pyotr glanced at Iosif, who shrugged. “She’s pregnant, but hasn’t decided to tell anyone yet. I think she’s waiting for a family gathering.”

  Pyotr’s imagination immediately segued to the picture of his fair, plump Cecily ripe with his baby nestled beneath her heart. His groin tightened again.

  “You need to marry that woman,” Iosif said quietly, sticking to Russian which Latasha hadn’t quite picked up.

  “Da.”

  “Olivia will have Maksim kick your ass if you don’t. He doesn’t want to lose our best cook.”

  Pyotr shrugged. Cecily had already refused his proposal. Three times. She wanted to keep her options open. She wanted to experience life before settling down. The words hurt him more than he’d ever admit, but he could understand the sentiment. She was young with a newly minted degree in the culinary arts burning in her back pocket. If Maksim hadn’t purchased the restaurant and offered her the position as head chef, she would have taken the best opportunity offered to her wherever in the country that might have been

  And Pyotr would have followed her.

  Bog, he had it bad.

  He glanced across the small dining room where Vitaly stood guard outside the ladies’ room. Vitaly had it bad, too. Maksim’s second lifted his eyes to meet Pyotr’s gaze and he gave a short nod of recognition, one lovesick man to another.

  A table of diners erupted into applause. Iosif, Pyotr, and Vitaly looked at the disruption, then relaxed. Cecily had emerged from her kitchen for a tableside presentation of cherries jubilee. With her serene smile and golden hair, he thought she looked like a slightly sweaty angel. The diners exclaimed their delight as she served them their portions of premium ice cream and cherry sauce in pretty, cut crystal bowls.

  Then she walked over to where he and Iosif and Latasha stood, waiting for a table. She squealed. Latasha squealed. The women hugged and the men winced.

  “Catherine, the next available table goes to them,” Cecily directed the hostess.

  Other would-be diners glowered. However, being the crowd they were, none dared complain. Maksim’s inner circle received certain privileges. Priority seating at this new restaurant was, apparently, one of them.

  “Spasibo,” Iosif murmured a quiet thank-you. “Lat
asha gets cranky when she’s hungry.”

  “Don’t I know it,” Cecily laughed and earned a sharp poke from her best friend’s bony finger. She waved her own plump hands at Latasha. “Don’t poke me, you skinny thing. I still say half our grocery budget went down your gullet.” She sighed and ran her hands over her wide hips, hips that Pyotr found very handy for holding onto while he pounded into her. “I just wish I could eat like you do, but every single calorie goes straight to my thighs.”

  “I like your thighs, moy sladkiy,” Pyotr growled, catching her to him and pressing a kiss on her deliciously plump and rosy lips. Then, just her for ears, he added, “And I like what’s between them even better.”

  A red flush rose up her neck and burned her fair cheeks. “Pyotr! We’re in public. Worse, we’re in my restaurant!”

  “Da. And you are queen here.”

  “Da,” she repeated, mimicking his tone with perfection. “You get your sexy butt to a table and quit distracting me. I have a kitchen to run.”

  “Are you going to let her boss you around like that?” Iosif asked in Russian.

  Pyotr replied in his native language, “Like you don’t let your skinny girl boss you? Hah.”

  Iosif’s expression turned sly and knowing. “I know how to keep my girl in line.”

  Pyotr laughed. He couldn’t help it. Every time the outspoken nurse started spouting off, Iosif kissed her senseless. He could very well imagine what they did in private when she got a little mouthier than Iosif liked. He saw the knowing gleam in Latasha’s eyes and knew that she’d understood every word. Maybe she had caught on to the language better than anyone realized. But he also knew that it was Latasha who ruled that relationship, not stone cold killer Iosif. She’d reel him in when she was ready and he’d find himself in front of a priest before he could gather his wits.

  Pyotr just wished Cecily would do the same to him.

  Chapter 2

  Six weeks later.

  Cecily lay snuggled in Pyotr’s arms, her body still tingling from his enthusiastic and skilled lovemaking. She blinked and inhaled the heavy fragrance of their spent passion. Pyotr’s light snore worked like white noise, masking the sounds from outside that wafted through the open windows and the typical noises of a multistory condominium. She sighed. She missed the sound of crickets and the railroad just a mile from her childhood home. She missed the lowing of the cattle just up the road.

  Moving from small-town Batesville to big-city Cleveland had been a major adjustment. The excitement of moving to a major metropolitan city on Lake Erie had long since faded. The sounds of city traffic and the impersonal bustle of city life palled.

  Cecily disliked the discontent that simmered within her. The restaurant Pyotr’s boss had opened offered a wonderful opportunity. Really, as a new graduate, there was no other way she’d have been hired as head chef anywhere else. She knew that Maksim and Olivia had done so only out of kindness to Pyotr who loved her.

  She wasn’t sure how she felt about that love.

  Not quite as naive as her roommates assumed, Cecily figured that a passionate fling with the Russian thug would add to her growing collection of life experiences. Grandma Polsen, whose advice was usually good, had recommended that she live fully before settling down to cook, clean, and pop out babies. Then she’d have something worth reminiscing about, stories to tell her children and grandchildren. She had seen what became of her high school friends and close relatives: they never went anywhere, they never did anything, they had no interests beyond their small, routine lives.

  She wanted more.

  But she missed the peace of her rural hometown where the birth of twin foals at the Patterson farm featured as the most exciting topic of conversation for weeks.

  Cecily wasn’t sure she loved him back.

  Oh, he made her body sing, that was for sure. She’d had three boyfriends before Pyotr, one in high school, two in college. They were ineffectual, clumsy boys compared to her tattooed, Russian thug with his bulging muscles, broken nose, and wicked, wicked tongue.

  A delicious frisson ran through her at the thought of just what Pyotr could do with that talented tongue.

  But there was more to a lasting relationship than sex and food. She knew that Pyotr’s attraction to her had begun with her cooking. Few men looked twice at her round face, curly blonde mop of hair, and size fourteen body. Pyotr claimed to appreciate those generous curves. He said her full hips were perfect for grasping when he pounded into her. He murmured praise over her large, pendulous breasts.

  Not for the first time she wished she were slender and willowy like Gia. When she first met Gia, she’d wanted to hate the brainy marine biologist. But she couldn’t. Gia was just too damned nice.

  She’d wanted to hate Latasha, too, but the feisty woman had quickly and firmly ensconced herself as Cecily’s best friend, helping her with the technical aspects of the food science courses and then fiercely defending her when a group of college boys made fun of the “fat cooking school student.”

  Pyotr would have pummeled them and then offered to string their teeth into a necklace for her. Latasha just flayed them with her sharp tongue. The threat of sending her gang-member brothers after them hadn’t hurt, either. Cecily did not know whether Latasha’s brothers would have “put a hurt on” those idiots, but she liked knowing that Latasha would offer their violence to protect her.

  She didn’t need them anymore, she reminded herself. She had Pyotr and Pyotr had Vitaly, Gennady, Iosif, Bogdan, and others she’d yet to meet. Wrapped in Pyotr’s possessive embrace, she felt cold when thoughts of Vitaly and Gennady crossed her mind. Sure, Vitaly had fallen in love with Gia and she with him, but she imagined that the big man had been sculpted from an iceberg. That man was cold, with a cruel twist to his mouth and that thousand-yard stare that promised death and worse to anyone who so much as irritated him. Gennady, she’d heard, broke women; Pyotr had mentioned he put the “sadism” and “masochism” in the S and M part of BDSM, which made her think of those naughty BDSM romances she tried to read after Fifty Shades of Grey came out in movie theatres. She quickly learned she didn’t like the kind of stories wherein the so-called hero was a sadist and the heroine enjoyed being hurt.

  Cecily didn’t like pain. She wasn’t sure how any woman could. Pyotr occasionally gave her plump bottom a light slap, but he didn’t spank her until her skin turned red or do anything else to hurt her. For a man who looked like a brute, Pyotr treated her rather gently. His grizzly bear size made her feel dainty and feminine. His compliments made her feel beautiful. He did not criticize her occasional lack of understanding. Of course, neither had Gia or Latasha, but she’d noticed the occasional glances they shared when their sharp minds quickly caught on to a scientific concept that she just could not quite grasp.

  She did not need to know the exact science behind why one patted a steak dry before setting it in a skillet for a good sear. She just needed to know that a dry surface seared better than did a wet one for locking in the juices and flavor.

  Feeling a bit too warm and more than a little sweaty, she rolled over. Pyotr’s arm slid aside, leaving his hand splayed over her mound. The man was always touching her, even in his sleep.

  Cecily didn’t know whether she liked his possessiveness.

  Her mind racing, she gently rolled out of bed. With his military-trained awareness, Pyotr awakened immediately.

  “Chto ne tak?” he asked.

  “Nothing’s wrong,” she replied, keeping her voice gentle. “I just need to use the bathroom.”

  “Otlichno,” he replied and went back to sleep with nary a pause.

  True to her word, she did go to the bathroom and took the opportunity to wet a washcloth and wipe her skin clean of saliva, semen, and pussy juice. Their copious fluids made for terrific sex, but not so much the afterward. At least Pyotr didn’t make her sleep in the wet spot. He was considerate like that.

  Cecily decided she’d gotten too comfortable here in Cleveland, here in Py
otr’s apartment. She was settling down before she’d even lived. Tomorrow morning when he went back to work, Cecily decided she would use that time before heading to the restaurant to sign up with some job search websites, search through Craigslist, see what restaurants in other cities were hiring. She wanted to travel, see New York, experience Austin and Savannah, swelter in Honolulu and Las Vegas. She wanted to tour the Sonoma and Napa regions and taste grapes still warm from the sun. She wanted to explore the flavors of regional cuisine cooked by experts in those regions.

  Looking at her reflection in the mirror, Cecily found the word she was looking for. She felt restless.

  Chapter 3

  Cecily woke to Pyotr inexorably coaxing her body to yet another stupendous orgasm. God, she loved waking up that way! While she lay in bed shuddering from the aftermath of having pure pleasure liquefy every bone in her body, Pyotr kissed her and then left to fix breakfast.

  After a quick shower and donning a bathrobe, she joined him in the kitchen. He kissed her cheek, squeezed her bottom, and placed a plate of scrambled eggs, toast, and bacon on the table.

  “What’s all this for?” she asked as she forked a bit of steaming hot egg.

  “Today, I cook for you before you cook for everyone else,” he said simply as he filled his own plate and carried it to the table.

  “Juice?” she offered. At his nod, she poured him a glass. It was cute, really, the way her big, bad Bratva-man shunned coffee and drank herbal teas and juices instead. She set the pitcher back down and asked, “Are you going to the gym this morning?”

  He grinned at her and flexed his muscles. Since he’d yet to put on a shirt, the display impressed her. As always. She grinned back at him.

  “You like my muscles, yes?”

  “God, yes,” she blurted, then glanced down at herself, the way her muffin-top and breasts bulged. “Perhaps I ought to start working out, too.”

  “Nyet. I like you soft. You’re built like a woman should be,” he said, his tone brooking no denial. “A man wants to sink into his woman’s softness, not clatter against a skeleton like your skinny friends.” He thumped his chest. “A man should be hard, opposite of a woman, strong to protect her.”