by R. J. Lewis
“Nikolai can’t keep his eyes off you, Alina. You are my best option right now.”
“Why right now? Why not get Benji to do it?”
“Benji is frightened, and they’re threatening him. Even if he gives them some money, they’ll hurt him anyway. The sooner I give Nikolai something, the safer Benji will be. Doesn’t that mean something to you? He may be a fool, but he doesn’t deserve to get hurt.”
I don’t respond. I turn away and stare at the other side of the store, letting him know how unhappy I am about this. Ivan never struck me as weak. Is there nobody Nikolai doesn’t intimidate?
On that note, I don’t want to see Nikolai right now anyway. The thought gives me anxiety. I can only handle short encounters with that man. I mean, look what happened last night. Alone in a room with him and I’d lost my senses.
“You know he’ll be soft with you,” Ivan continues. “You’re beautiful, and he stares at you a lot. It’s the best option available for me right now.”
Yeah, for you. Not for me.
“You want me to go to his shop?” I ask with reluctance.
Ivan’s shoulders relax. “He won’t be there.”
“How do you know?”
He raises his phone that I didn’t realize he was holding. “I just called his shop to let them know you were coming around.”
My brows come together in surprise. “This was before you even asked me if I was going.”
He shrugs. “You wouldn’t have said no. Your life is brittle, and finding a new job would be a nightmare in this economy.”
My breaths slow as I stare at the old man, processing what he’s saying with a blank look on my face. I’m detached on the outside, but my heart’s thudding like a jackhammer on the inside. Ivan knows how badly I need this job, and he’s just used it against me to get what he wants. A complete power play.
I saw this coming. Just when you think someone’s good, they show you another part of themselves. The part that is unforgiving. I wish I could say this was the first time someone’s taken advantage of my situation, but that’s an utter lie. It’s happened so many times, I couldn’t give you a number.
I stare at him long and hard, until he can’t take the heat of my gaze. I do this to show strength, but I’m not strong. I’m just pretending out of instinct.
I’m angry. Fuming. Ivan’s a king atop of his mole hill, and he’s using this little control to make me do something I don’t want to do. It makes me shake. Yet again I’m being taken advantage of. I want to hurt him for doing this. For letting me down because a tiny hopeful part of me truly was beginning to think my boss was okay.
But I need this job, and the miserable fuck that is Ivan knows it too.
I want to tell him that one day I’ll make us even. I’ll make him feel as stuck as he has made me feel. It’s a pleasing thought, but not one I think will come to fruition any time soon.
Gritting my teeth, I glare at him and finally ask, “Where are you sending me exactly?”
*
A strip club.
He’s making me go to a strip club. I don’t get paid enough for this shit.
In fact, I’m not getting paid at all for this shit. The asshole had the nerve to make me finish my shift first!
It’s almost seven o’clock in the evening when I finally come to a stop in front of the place on the corner of Mugville and Shady People in Trench Coats. I look up at the yellow sign that reads, “TEASERS” with a bad drawing of a woman in high stockings with her hand wrapped around a dance pole.
Yeah, it’s totally classy. I’m extremely impressed right now.
“Fuck you, Ivan,” I whisper under my breath. “Fuck your cold miserable heart, you old motherfucking cunt.”
I don’t usually swear this colourfully, but I’m pissed and, wouldn’t you know it, out of options. It’s the story of my life.
Clutching tight my ID and the little patience I have left, I tense my jaw and go in.
Chapter Eight.
Nikolai
The Sokolov thirst for violence.
They taught us to be angry all the time. Anger made us more acutely aware of our surroundings, and now all I can do is look around, compulsively seeking trouble.
I twirl a cigarette between my fingers, hiding the tremors running through them. I let out a breath, trying to concentrate on Valeria as she strips before us on-stage, but I’m barely present. My body is tight. I’m wound up, the growing aggression making my mind race.
She does a little spin and then dances her way to where I’m seated, ignoring all the others. Her hands glide up my thighs, and she continues to sway her body to the light music as she brings her face closer to mine. Her round tits swing before me, her hand runs higher, pressing against my dick. She pauses, her brown eyes searching mine for several moments.
“I do nothing to you, Nikolai?” she whispers in my ear, disappointed.
I don’t respond. My eyes cut into hers, a warning to pull away, and she does.
If I was the same man I was in the Sokolov, I would have pulled my zipper down and forced her to stick my dick into her mouth. I’d have make her suck my soft dick until it hardened, and then I’d fuck her throat deep until I came. After, I would have discarded her and moved right along, never blinking twice at her.
But now…now things have changed and she’s right. She does nothing to me. Most women do nothing to me. It’s why my fingers start to shake. I begin to crave violence because it’s the only damned thing that gives me any form of release.
“You’re not a man until you feel the bones of another crack beneath your fist,” my father use to say. “You’re not a man until you make another man bleed.”
The first time I got into a fight, I was ten. The other boy was twelve. He was the son of a man that had betrayed the Bratva, and his father ate a bullet and the boy was sent to our house to be the punching bag of all the other boys in training.
I was the first boy to beat him. I remember the terror on his face as I clobbered him senselessly. He never fought back, and I remember how much that angered me. I knew my father was watching, and I wanted to impress him, to let him know I was worthy of the brotherhood. And when I drew blood from the boy, I felt a rush because I was doing it right. I was feeling bone against my fist and blood against my flesh.
Still, my father just stared at me, expressionless. When I stood up and turned to him, the boy half-conscious on the ground behind me, I raised my hands out to him, smiling as I proudly showed him the bright red. I’ll never forget what he said in that dead tone of his.
“It’s not enough blood.”
I look at my hands now, the spark in my body vacant, the transgressions of my past as present as the remorse I feel in my heart.
The darkness is unsettling. It swallows the light, like a feast to the serpent that dwells inside of me.
Fuck, I need a release, and I can’t have it in the form of violence. I need it sexually, but Valeria does nothing. Right now, my skin itches for different skin, different eyes, different lips.
I know why that is.
I know who to blame for this.
That store girl and her lips have fucked with my head. I won’t seek her out though, not after what I offered her this morning. What the fuck was I thinking doing something so brash?
Valeria backs away from me, unhappy about my disinterest, before moving on to someone else.
“You should fuck her,” Andrei mutters as he takes a seat beside me, watching her move seductively around the small room, doting on all the men that asked for a taste of a one-on-one experience with the beauty. I didn’t ask for it. I just need a place away from the crowd to conduct business, and so far, there has been none of it.
“Mind your business,” I tell him for the hundredth time this week.
“She is very sexy.”
“Then fuck her yourself.”
“It’s more important if you do it.”
I look at him when I hear the solemness in his voice. “Is there
something you’re not telling me, Andrei?”
“People, they talk, that’s all.”
“They talk?”
“Yes.”
“And what is it now?”
Andrei looks uneasy. “It doesn’t matter, boss. Drop the subject.”
I grit my teeth. “You brought it up. Tell me.”
“They say” – he shrugs vaguely – “you know, you’re not very obvious about your…you know.”
“I don’t know.”
“Your wants, Niko. Your wants, okay?”
“Get to the point.”
“They say you’re gay. There, I fucking said it.”
I want to laugh because I’ve just spent my morning thinking about fucking a convenience store worker in her tiny little shorts. And at the same time I want to beat someone’s face in because I suspect I know who’s talking.
“Who’s been talking?” I ask him anyway, my voice neutral.
Andrei studies me for a moment, confused that I’m not cursing. “Uncle Dmitry. He says ‘people won’t want to do business with men who don’t fuck women.’” He shrugs again at my stern look. “That’s what he said. Not me. I didn’t say it, Niko, he did. I don’t believe it, okay? I have no problem with people who sway that way either. I’m just saying.”
“You’re just saying, I get it, but did you defend me?”
“You’ve seen Dmitry. If I defend you then I’m probably in bed with you.”
“So you didn’t.”
“No, I didn’t,” he admits, looking sullen now. “I’m a piece of shit, I know.”
I nod, agreeing. “Yes, you are. How many times must I tell you how important loyalty is? You insult me by keeping your mouth shut. Your silence makes me look weak. How am I to be respected if I’m weak, Andrei?”
It’s not like I’m part of the Sokolov anymore, and only they know what I’m capable of. If they knew of these rumours, they would be laughing at me. I’m trying to establish myself as a serious business man and secure myself a place among the feared. I’m doing things I don’t want to do for the purpose of climbing this piss stain ladder to the top. I’ve worked hard for this. Opening a store in a piece of shit part of town while others like me took the cream of the crop someplace else. Money lending to a bunch of nobodies with drug addictions all so I can break bones and give myself a hard reputation.
It’s all for nothing if my own men won’t stand by me.
I would be nothing.
Two years out the window just like that.
Andrei knows he’s fucked up. “Nikolai –”
“Go find the owner,” I snap. “I want the payment now. This is strike number three.”
“Gresham is a bull dog. What if he doesn’t have it?”
I give him a cold stare. “He’ll have it. You’ll make sure of it.”
He reluctantly nods and slides out of the seat. I look back at Valeria, conscious now of the bastards in the same room. I’m apparently gay if I act disinterested. I trail my eyes down her figure, but she’s so utterly lacking compared to that girl.
The door to the room opens just then and one of the meaty bouncers comes through, staring right at me. “There’s someone here to see you,” he tells me.
I raise a brow, waiting. His large frame is blocking someone from view, so he shifts to the side and I lock eyes with the woman that’s been plaguing my thoughts for eighteen months.
Alina.
My chest sinks slowly. Without keeping my eyes off her, I nod at the bouncer and he lets her through.
The first thing I noticed about Alina the first time I saw her that morning eighteen months ago was her hair. Long, wavy, golden blonde and striking against her tan skin. She’d had her back turned to me, and the way that hair fell and framed her tiny waist, made me pause at the door.
I was a man on a mission, but I had this sudden urge to see her turn. And when the chime sounded in the air as I walked in and she turned, I was astounded. Not just by her beauty – although that was a major factor – it was her eyes that made me tilt my head to the side in surprise.
She has the softest face but the hardest eyes I’ve ever looked into. There is no softness in there, just two pools of hardness.
With her hard eyes now, she glances at the people seated around the tables behind me, and then at Valeria with nothing but her thong on. I never know what to expect with Alina. A part of me waits for her face to flush, but it doesn’t. She’s not uncomfortable in the slightest as she walks to me, but her expression is guarded and wary.
She should be after this morning. I made her an offer I didn’t think through entirely. Truth is, I can’t get her out of my head, and I’m tired of fighting it. I don’t have to court the girl. I just want to taste her more.
I know she’s here to accept it. I’m impressed she’s tracked me down.
Frustrations I’ve felt fade away, replaced by awe. She is beautiful, possibly the most beautiful woman I have ever seen, and I’ve seen my share of them. But there’s something else about her that intrigues me. There’s a story in Alina’s hard eyes, and I love the mystery. It’s one I don’t want to uncover in fear of it ruining the way my body responds to her.
My fingers twitch to touch her. My lips ache to kiss hers again, with more intensity than last night. There is a naked girl merely feet from her, but it’s only Alina I have eyes for, and I can’t understand it.
My mother used to say, “There’s always going to be that one girl, Niko. The one that defies all logic and cages your interest without explanation. You’ll do anything for her.”
The girl with the x-factor.
I always thought my mother used that as an excuse to get me away from all the women. She had high hopes for me. She wanted me with a nice girl, and at the time I had no interest.
But then there’s this girl, and she’s exactly what my mother spoke of.
I’ve kept her at a distance for this specific reason. I’m so achingly attracted to her, it’s driven me to her every morning for the last year and a half. I have always maintained distance, but I broke it the second I was alone in a room with her. She’s unhealthy for me. I can sense that already as she defies her hesitation and continues forward, that look of determination on her face.
She stops in front of me and, conscious of all eyes on her, she quietly says, “I need to speak to you alone.”
“Strip!” a man shouts behind us.
Alina looks up in surprise and then glowers at a face I’m not concerned enough to look at. Another man shouts the same thing, and laughter follows.
“Come on, baby,” they coo. “Let’s see that little body!”
“Fuck you,” she retorts, surprising me.
They laugh harder behind us and Alina’s face grows fierce with her anger. Before she can say something else – and I know she’s about to because her hands have closed into fists and her mouth opens – I grab her by the arm and pull her down into my lap. Her breath escapes in a rush as I trap her with my arms. She weighs next to nothing, and still she’s curvy, her cleavage practically spilling from her top, her shorts riding up and revealing those toned strong thighs.
“What are you doing?” she asks, her voice laced with admonishment.
I lean into her and whisper, “Sit with me like this and they’ll shut their mouths.”
“I’m not worried about them,” she retorts.
“I am.”
She furrows her brow. “Mister tough Russian man is worried about his safety around a bunch of drunks?”
I crack a smile. She’s cute. “I’m worried for their safety, rybka.”
The last thing I want to do is man-handle a bunch of alcoholic pricks. It’ll be annoying, and tiresome, and they’ll ruin my suit.
She looks momentarily thoughtful at my response, and then she grows quiet. She’s not happy about sitting here, but she doesn’t protest.
Valeria moves into my peripheral, her face turned in my direction. I’m sure everyone’s looking. Maybe this will shut their
mouths. To be honest, I don’t even care. Let the bastards think what they want.
“They’re looking at you more than they’re looking at her,” I tell Alina just then.
She’s so pleasing to the eye, I don’t blame them. Her breaths come slower, her eyes dulling as she looks over her shoulder at the exit before redirecting her gaze to mine. She’s troubled. I see it in her hard eyes, the panic lurking there. For a second, I wonder what plagues her, but then her eyes clear and her face hardens. It’s the strangest thing, seeing her close to cowering and then strengthening all at once.
The girl really does intrigue me.
Running her hands down her shorts, she tells me again, “I need to talk to you, not sit in your lap like some piece of fluff.”
“Shame. I’m the envy of the room.”
“A room filled with assholes with hands down their pants. Their envy isn’t the greatest accomplishment.”
“Mine’s at least eight inches, baby!” someone shouts, overhearing our conversation. “You can see it if you like.”
The sound of more cackling follows, and this time a vein in my neck throbs. I look over my shoulder, staring directly at the drunk man watching Alina with hungry eyes. I make sure to remember that face before I turn back to her. The dirty suka will be dealt with later.
“Ignore the animal,” I tell her on a shrug, keeping my anger at bay. “He acts like filth because he knows it’s the only way to catch your attention.”
She gives me an odd look. “It’s… fine. I need to talk to you.”
“What do you want to discuss?” I ask her.
“I can’t do it here.”
As much as I like her sitting on me, she’s right. I don’t want these assholes hearing us talk. Knowing this is about what I said this morning, I wrap my arms around her and stand up, carefully setting her down so there isn’t an inch of her that’s not pressed against me. Fuck, I can feel parts of me stir, that rabid thirst for skin returning with more fierceness than I felt last night. My eyes are right on hers, but I can see the way her body twitches at the close proximity. She’s more nervous by this than when she was sitting on me.