THEO: A Dark Mafia Romance

by Scott, Raven

  Her throat couldn’t compare to her pussy, and pressure tightened my abdominal muscles as her walls rippled and shivered around my cock.

  “Fucking cum . . . fuck . . . cum on my cock, Illya . . . t-tight . . . ” I couldn’t last, and I sputtered stupidly through clenched teeth as I sucked in a breath through my nose. Sweat dripped down my arms and neck, and I thrust hard with a grunt as my balls drew up. Hot ropes of cum spurted up my shaft, and spasms attacked my muscles as stars burst behind my shuttered lids.

  “Oh fuck, yes-s-s . . . ” Every ounce of energy I had left kept me from just collapsing on Illya, and I gripped the armrest with clammy, trembling hands. Despite dying down, the waves of euphoria— the almost religious fever of finally obtaining a goddess of my very own— ripped up my sternum, and icy prickles followed. Soft palms caressed up my chest, and I somehow managed to open my eyes to find her smiling at me.

  A divine gift.

  “You’re so beautiful, Illya.” Her smile widened, the redness in her cheeks darkening I ducked to kiss her with a low, pleased groan. “How could you be anything less?”

  “You’re probably the only one in the world that thinks having no nipples is sexy, Theo.” Pushing myself heavily back on my knees, I grabbed her arms— gently, this time— to pull Illya with me. She seemed so easy now, and I sprawled on my back to let her settle against my chest. Her sweat-slickened skin stuck to mine, and I glanced down the ruined plane of her chest with a stirring ache in my abdomen.

  True, she didn’t have nipples, but that was fine. Her scars were sexier, anyway.

  Cupping Illya’s face with my bad hand, I stroked her cheek with my thumb, and I reached to swipe the television controller from the coffee table. Her weight was comfortable against me, and I buried my nose in her hair to take deep breaths of her.

  “Tomorrow is gonna be different, Theo.” The murmur twinkled with a promise in my ears, and I grumbled lowly in response when my tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth. “I’m gonna try to be better.”

  “I know you can, Illya. Nothing worth doing is effortless.” Just as the television blinked on, a soft beep echoed from the hallway to the front door, and Illya tensed against me. Tightening my grip on her face, I held her where she was, and her jaw worked under my palm. Carlyle appeared around the corner, hand covering his eyes like he didn’t want to catch his sister naked or something, and I snorted roughly.

  “Put a blanket on or something, please.” Illya was only too happy to oblige, grabbing the throw that hung over the back of the sofa, and I frowned against her crown. “I have guests coming on Tuesday, and both of you need to be there. This affects them, too, so I want you to hear everything everyone has to say about this whole mess.”

  “I’m decent.” Well, not really, considering the cum dripping down your hair. Carlyle still lowered his hand, seemingly unaffected by Illya’s red, blotchy face and obvious roughed-up-ness, and he nodded firmly. “Who are they?”

  “My father and brother.” Surprise rocketed through me, and Illya shot up with a squeak before I could even process Carlyle’s declaration. “They’ll be here in about thirty-seven hours. You have that long to go through everything.”

  “You have another brother?” Carlyle grunted, and I inhaled a calming breath as my mind whirred furiously, trying to keep up with the conversation. “Well, that’s just great, isn’t it? I thought this was a personal problem. It’s not? You should’ve told me that earlier. I— ”

  “I wanted to see what you’d suggest before mentioning it. I know what you’re thinking, why would I need you if this is a huge, company-wide thing? The answer to that is simple, Illya. You’re unaffiliated and can look at everything with fresh eyes. Also, you have experience in the dirt that I thought would be helpful.” The skin on Illya’s back rippled, and I covered the spot with my palm to feel her lungs shudder in a huff. “Not to mention, it’s all happening to all three of us at the same time. We need someone outside the situation for clarity, but also because we can’t trust our own people, apparently.”

  “You trust me, though.” The accusation earned Illya a scowl, and I rubbed the smooth, porous skin on her back with my right hand. I could feel the fine hairs that she didn’t have on her chest, and the muscles rippled so regularly, without the bumpy clumps of scar tissue above them.

  “Don’t make me regret it.” Carlyle turned on his heel, and Illya sat straight until the door lock clicked into place before flopping back against me. Her groan of frustration shot straight to my cock, and I reached over her thigh to circle her clit. She threw the blanket off her in a fury, her knees bending high, and grumbling as hunger gnawed at my gut.

  “How long do you think it’ll take you to get through everything he piled up in your kitchen?” Dripping with cum from the both of us, Illya’s hot cunt flexed as I eased inside, and she gasped softly. When she came, she didn’t make any sounds. She barely made any sounds anyway, but I thought it was cute. Leisurely curling my finger against her quivering walls, I thrust my hard cock between her ass cheeks. “I wanna keep going.”

  “A couple hours, at least five.” Smirking broadly against her cheek, I sucked in a sharp breath when Illya rolled her hips eagerly.

  39

  Illya

  “You need to get down here. Now.” Carlyle didn’t respond, simply hanging up at the graveness that roughened my tone, and I sat back in the kitchen chair to sigh heavily as I set down my phone. “Do you think I can talk to you about this shit?”

  “Who cares. What’s up?” Standing over the stove, lording over sizzling bacon and eggs, Theo twisted to frown at my under furrowed brows. “Did you really have to call Carlyle down here? He always ruins the mood.”

  For a second, I debated what to say and waved my sheath of papers around absently. I’d gone through about half of the boxes of translations and hard transcripts, and I nodded at Theo’s second question.

  “These are all wrong, Theo. How come no one saw this? The translations are off. There’s no way these mistakes should happen.” Scanning the page, I held my forehead on my palm, and Theo grunted softly as he turned back to the stove. “I don’t get what’s going on. No one with a grasp of the language would make these mistakes . . . unless they were deliberate. These aren’t regional dialect mistakes. They’re just . . . mistake mistakes. Slight ones, but obvious. To me, at least.”

  “Well, you’ve never met these guys. Maybe they’ve got their quirks.” Maybe, but no. That objection was reasonable to a point, but it didn’t account for the blatant mistranslations of simple words in simple context. My mind churned, and I flipped over to the next page before a shrill beep echoed out from the front door. Carlyle was leaning over my shoulder within a second, and I didn’t hear the door shut, but that didn’t matter.

  The hairs on the back of my neck stood up, and I licked my suddenly dry lips with a thick tongue before parting them.

  “These conversations are all translated by different people, right?” Reaching to grab the sheet of paper I’d been scribbling on as Carlyle nodded curtly, I held it up for him. “I wrote down all the wrong translations, and this is what I found.”

  “What is it?” To be honest, I didn’t expect to find anything so incredibly brazen in these records, and I twisted as Carlyle rocked back on his heels. “These are just mistakes made in translation. It happens all the time.”

  “Read every third, first, and second word, in that order.” Now, this was the troubling part, and I held my breath as Carlyle’s expression tightened with irritation. His eyes narrowed before snapping to mine, and my heart stuttered under the force of his glare. “It’s a code. The people doing your translations are working together through the transcripts. They all have access to it, right? From anywhere they’re called to work.”

  Carlyle’s light eyes flashed almost reptilian as he reset them against the page, and he cupped his chin even as his foot tapped rapidly. After I started cataloging the mistranslations, it became obvious that the people doing the transla
ting were trying to do some clandestine bullshit. Who mispronounces the word ‘money’ in any language?

  Especially considering that they were working for Carlyle’s family, they had to be good.

  “This is all you’ve found so far?” I nodded mutely, and he tapped his cheek as he turned the paper over, his eyes bouncing from word to word in rhythm. “How many transcripts have you gone through?”

  “A little less than half, but I have a feeling that your father’s and brother’s records contain a majority of the conversations. There’s definitely not enough here, and you speak Spanish fluently, which cuts out your need for a translator for most of your business.” Even though it’d been months, I had no knowledge of what that ‘business’ actually was, although I assumed it was illegal. Nodding with a troubled crease between his brow, Carlyle turned the paper to the front to read it again. “I suppose it doesn’t matter what they say— this is enough to do something about the translators that are doing this.”

  “It is. I didn’t expect this. It’s actually pretty sophisticated. Now . . . ” Carlyle palmed my crown thoughtfully, and heat crept up my neck when he started stroking my hair. His hand was warm and hard, and I watched him stare into space for a long moment before speaking up again. “What to do? I hadn’t planned on you figuring this problem out so quickly, Illya.”

  Pride thickened his tone, and my face flamed as Carlyle’s gaze flickered to mine ever so briefly. Despite what he’d done to Mateo, I found it hard to believe he had such a soft spot for me. The genuinity in his eyes said differently, though, and I blushed fiercely as my scarred chest tightened.

  “Wait a minute. ” Turning to Theo, momentarily forgotten by the stove, my face flamed at the amusement that glimmer in his dark orbs as they trained on me. “What do you mean ‘what to do’? Isn’t it obvious? Fucking shoot them and get it over with.”

  “That’s boring.” Carlyle scratched my scalp even as he shot down the idea, and Theo grimaced darkly. “I have something much, much more satisfying in mind. Although I’m sure you’ll enjoy it just as much, Theo. Speaking of satisfying, have either of you heard the maids talking about Mateo today?”

  “He’s all they ever talk about since word got around that your father’s coming. They’re placing bets about what’ll happen.” Speaking up as Theo busied himself, flipping the bacon, I scrunched up my face in distaste as Carlyle’s fingers flexed against my crown. “I feel kinda bad for him, but . . . ”

  “Don’t. He’s been locked in there for weeks because of his own inadequacy. As usual.” Taking his hand off my head, Carlyle pulled a chair out and twirled it around to straddle the back with a heavy sigh. “Illya, you’ll need to finish this another time. As you said, the rest doesn’t matter. This is more than enough to implicate, which is more than enough for me. I’ll inform my father and brother about sending me their records, but it’ll be a while before we can set something up to deal with this. So, for now, I have another job for you. I was going to wait, but seeing as you’re truly exceptional . . . ”

  “You lay it on thick for a dude who thinks I’m disgusting.” My cheekiness earned me a smirk, but it didn’t last before Carlyle shook his head. “What’s the job?”

  “Technically, it’s a job for you both.” Gesturing to Theo, his eyes didn’t leave me, and my brows rose in surprise. “I’ve told you why you’re here. You’re going to infiltrate a party hosted by the Italian Mafia and drug someone for me.”

  “Infiltrate?” Nodding firmly, Carlyle gripped the low back of the chair to lean away from it, and I gulped down the dense lump that formed in my throat. “I mean, okay. What does that entail, exactly?”

  “I’ll give you the details after my dad and Oran leave. It’s not for another few weeks, but it’ll probably happen before we can set up the translators. You said it before, we can’t arouse suspicion. The next planned function between us all that requires all the translators is around Christmas. I thought you’d appreciate a heads up.” Gnawing on my inner cheek, I only nodded at that, and Carlyle tapped the flat top run of the chair. I could see the cogs working in his eyes, and he cocked his head back a little. “Make yourselves presentable. We’ll talk more during lunch.”

  “Righto.” Tapping two fingers to my temple, I couldn’t help but smile when Carlyle chuckled before standing up and pushing the chair back in. “What should I wear?”

  “Whatever makes you comfortable.” Leaving me with that, Carlyle sauntered out of the kitchen and then my apartment, and I reached to ruffle my hair as my mind raced. To me, it was so easy to spot, such a simple concept to use a code in plain sight. No one double-checked this stuff but the translators themselves, so no one faulted someone for making an occasional mistake, days and weeks apart, especially if they didn’t know it was a mistake.

  “I wonder if anyone caught on outside of this?” Throwing my question out there, I grabbed a short stack to flip through it, and Theo grunted from over the stove. “These translators are pretty much cycled around depending on where they’re needed, so they have conversations with the same people. Do you think any of them noticed the slip-ups?”

  “How would I know? I only speak English.” My lips twitched up at that, and Theo shook his head before gesturing to me from over his shoulder. “Anyway, it doesn’t really matter to me. All I’m good for is being a meat shield, and I’m okay with that.”

  Watching the muscles roping just under his tanned skin play along his back, I propped my cheek on my fist on the table. I hadn’t gotten a chance to ask whether or not Theo had been threatened by Carlyle, but I got the sense that he hadn’t. Which meant he came and apologized on his own.

  I wished I could say the same, but Theo would never have to know that it wasn’t my choice to take off my bandages. Everything turned out fine. I was fine.

  And I had the sneaking suspicion that things would only get better from here, regardless of how crazy ‘work’ would get. We— us— Theo and I, we would be good together.

  40

  Illya

  Adjusting my curled hair over my shoulders, I nodded at my reflection, and dull, brown eyes gazed back at me. Feminine pride bubbled up in my chest at how different I’d managed to make myself look now that I had proper products. Lightening my hair had been easy, and I flexed my toes against the carpet as I stood up with a happy huff.

  “Do you want help with your bandages?” Pursing my lips thinly at the offer, I pulled open a drawer that contained nothing but rows and rows of medical-grade bandages.

  “Uh . . . I’m not sure what I’m gonna do, yet, so . . . ” Arching a brow quizzically, Theo leaned back on the lounge leisurely. He didn’t seem offended, and I kicked the dresser drawer shut as I scratched my head thoughtfully. “I guess it doesn’t really matter.”

  “Okay?” I didn’t bother elaborating as I held the end of the roll to my hip, and my brows furrowed in concentration. “I hate watching this.”

  My heart throbbing at his grumble, and I turned to Theo as the most unhappy grimace stained his expression. The scar ripping down the side of his face flushed an angry red, and his lips thinned when I sat the bindings down next to him. Bracing my foot low against his chest, goosebumps swept up my leg at his hard, steady heat beat pulsing through me. Blood drummed in my ears as he caressed up my calf, his left hand creeping unabashed over my inner thigh.

  Dark eyes met mine, and my mouth dried with the undeniable urge to smash my lips on his. I didn’t fight it . . . couldn’t fight it. Straddling his waist, my mind went blank as Theo stuck his hand between us, and I grabbed his face to kiss him hungrily. Now that I had him, I couldn’t stop, and his groan clogged my throat when he forced his tongue between my teeth. Tangling his tongue with mine sweetly, his taste tingled along my buds, and I smiled into the kiss as he worked a finger against my clit leisurely.

  “When we get back, I’m gonna fuck you again.” The murmur sent delicious shivers down my spine, and I pulled back to gnaw on my bottom lip. I wanted to suck Theo’s cock. The
urge curdled in my gut almost to the point of pain. I wanted to sit on his face and feel his beard burning my thighs. I wanted to make up for the past two months in just one night.

  “We’ll be okay, Theo.” Smooth, scarred skin brushed my cheek at my mumble, and Theo didn’t protest when I stood on my feet. Clenching and releasing my fists by my sides as need sloshed in my chest, my knees wobbled dangerously, and hot, short breaths ravaged my lungs. “The wait makes it better.”

  “I’m not so sure it can get better.” I definitely wasn’t expecting him to say that, and my brows rose as he flopped his head back to let out a tight huff. “Hurry up and get dressed.”

  “Do you remember in California . . . ” Grabbing the bandages, my heart refused to calm down, and I licked my dry lips heavily as they tingled with need. “You told me once that you wished your fingers weren’t gone so you could appreciate my ass fully.”

  Theo barked a laugh and nodded as I started my bandages at my hip again, and a fond smile stretched my lips. Things seemed so simple back then. He was kinda creepy and awkward, and I wrestled so much with it. Deep down, maybe, I acknowledged that that comment was what made me even more confused.

  Because he wasn’t just a creep foisted on me by Sylvie’s bad decisions. That was when I realized, man, I was in trouble.

  “I remember. Honestly, Illya, it’s hard to remember shit before I met you. It just seems like there was nothing there. Being with Mateo was basically a dull, endless routine of strip clubs and trips that were all a blur, and before that . . . obviously, I mean, I got blown up by a tire.” Oh, my God. I couldn’t friggen handle it anymore, and my hands trembled as Theo continued to rant, stuck in his own head. Wrapping as fast as I could without risking having to redo it, I blinked hard as saliva pooled in my mouth. “I know I said this before, but all I wanted to do was fuck your brains out since the first time I saw you at the club. After a while, I realized, you know, your chest and that shit, screwing you with the bandages on was a disservice. I didn’t want to be another name on a list of bad experiences. If I was gonna fuck you, I had to do it properly. It really . . . I guess I got more interested in that than trying to make you happy or feel accepted.”