The Devil's Beauty (Crime Lord Interconnected Standalone Book 2)

by Airicka Phoenix

  She was right. It was one wrong step from some infectious disease, but they only needed it for a couple of hours.

  “Stay in the car,” he told her as he reached across her lap and yanked open the glove compartment. He pressed a Glock 36 into her palm. “Do you know how to use one of these?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Use it,” he told her firmly. “Anyone comes near the car, shoot them in the head.”

  Her jaw slackened. “Are you serious?”

  He met her gaze. “We’ve nearly been killed twice in two days, myshka. Don’t miss.”

  Terror turned her wide eyes glassy, but she curled her fingers around the weapon and sucked in a deep breath.

  Dimitri started to push out of the car, he paused and glanced back at her. “Not me. Don’t shoot me.”

  His joke got the effect he’d been going for and she laughed. It was strained and unsteady, but it loosened some of the lines around her mouth.

  “It is tempting,” she said.

  Snorting, he rolled out of his seat and slammed the door behind him. His gaze swept over the deserted highway, the absence of any other life, and he wondered if it wasn’t safer just to find a rattlesnake pit to hide in.

  Senses on high alert, he stalked around to the trunk and popped it open. From beneath the felt hatch where the spare was kept, he pulled out a second Glock and a KP-90. Both were tucked into the waistband of his pants. His coat was tugged down over top. He locked and alarmed the vehicle before setting off in the direction of the office. He paused once to glance back at the car and Ava’s drawn, pale face watching him. Their gazes locked. He read the concern and fear in hers and tried to reflect his confidence back, his assurance that he would get them out of this. She said nothing and he ducked inside.

  Low, sultry jazz crooned from the ancient record player wheezing in the corner behind a low desk. The bit of space stank of grilled cheese, sweat, stale tobacco, and moldy cat fur. Flies buzzed around a cluster of plates stacked off to one side. A still burning cigarette in a glass ashtray sent twisted spirals of smoke into the air. Next to it, that morning’s paper sat open alongside a cold mug of coffee. Ava’s face peered back at him from the front page with the captions to call the police if seen.

  Dimitri grabbed the paper and rolled it up. He tucked it into the inside pocket of his coat. He glanced through the open doorway leading into a living area across the desk.

  “Hello?” he called.

  There was no answer.

  He was beginning to think they should continue on and find a different place when the door behind him opened and a large, squat woman wobbled in holding a bucket of dirty ice.

  “That your Jeep out there?” she asked in way of greeting.

  Dimitri went to peer through the grimy window, mostly to check on Ava; she was still there, looking anxious as the door closed behind the woman.

  “Yes.” He turned back. “We need one room for a few hours.”

  “‘course you do.” She tossed back the flap making up part of the desk and stepped through to the other side. “That’s a pretty girl you’ve got waiting.” She set the bucket down next to the dishes. “It’s fifty an hour. Extra twenty for the TV.”

  Dimitri pulled out two hundred and tossed it on the counter. “Don’t need the TV.”

  The woman gave him a toothless grin. “‘course you don’t. Room eight.”

  Ignoring that, he snatched up the keys she tossed him and stalked out without giving any information. Places like that seldom ever asked for ID.

  Gravel, bits of broken glass, metal, and what looked suspiciously like needles, crunched beneath his boots as he made his way back to the Jeep. He unlocked the doors and yanked Ava’s open.

  She snapped the safety on the Glock before letting her hands drop down into her lap with the gun still cradled between her fingers. She started to climb out. Dimitri stopped her. He gave her the room key then leaned in and slipped one arm under her knees. The other went across her back. He hoisted her out of her seat gingerly.

  She was warm and soft in a way that was disturbingly familiar. The subtle scent of her skin rushed over him the moment her slender arms encircled his shoulders. He tried not to notice how right it felt, having her there, cradled against him. He tried to focus on the mission, on the importance of getting her back out of his life as quickly as possible.

  “You shouldn’t pick me up,” she whispered, face hovering too close to his. “Your shoulder…”

  “It’s fine.” He wasn’t about to make her walk. Shoulder or not. Even if the ground wasn’t a carpet of torture.

  “Thank you.”

  Her breath kissed the side of his face. Its sweet coolness made him want to turn his head and nuzzle into the soft skin of her throat. It would have been too easy to get lost in her, to let himself drown in all the ways he knew how to make her come apart. It had been years, but he knew every trigger spot on her body. Her being in a t-shirt and white cotton panties didn’t help matters.

  He said nothing as he took them to their room. The door was a garish color of dried blood, faded and chipped against the wood. The brass knob seemed out of place jutting from its side. Splinters rose where lock met frame, a sign that someone had attempted to get in at some point. He had to remind himself they wouldn’t be there very long.

  He bent at the knees, bringing Ava level with the bolt. She used the key and let them in.

  He eyed the bed with its stiff, paisley covers and slightly stained sheets, and just as quickly discarded the idea of placing her there with whatever was currently calling it home. He took her to the chair by the window, a simple bit of wood that creaked when he set her into it.

  “We will find somewhere else in a few hours,” he told her, making his way back to the door and shutting it. He snapped the lock as an afterthought.

  “Hopefully before we’re tortured and skinned alive,” she muttered, drawing her knees to her chest, a bad move, in Dimitri’s opinion.

  The gesture left a visible gap between her ankles where he had a clear view of her lips perfectly shaped against the fabric of her panties. He had a clear image of them splayed beneath his fingers, held open to his darting tongue flicking between the swollen crown of her sex and the tight ring of her opening. His scalp gave a phantom prickle as though remembering the feel of her fingers fisted in his hair, urging him on, her back bowing, her hips lifting. The sweet, musky taste of her was an addictive mixture of woman and sex that he had yet to savor on anyone else. He could have lived on her for days. And had. Just a limitless melding of their bodies in a tireless marathon to see who begged for mercy first. Days had been spent being buried inside her, broken occasionally for the odd meal break or shower, but even then, if he could be inside her while doing it, he was. Her body had been his escape, his place of refuge, and he had spent every waking hour worshiping it.

  “Dimitri.”

  He jolted violently, his memories shattering like colored glass tinkling to the ground to reveal the dark reality he stood in. The foul odor of the room punched through the rest. He shook his head, but no amount of shaking relieved him of the rock hard erection cutting into his zipper or the clawing desire working up through him. He struggled not to glance at her again, knowing he’d never be able to contain himself a second time, but the weakness was too great. Her pull was too powerful.

  His gaze slanted back to her, back to the patch of white taunting him from between her calves. It greeted him with a dark stain just in the center and the sight of it nailed him in the sternum.

  It hadn’t been there before. It was now, and the longer he studied it, the darker it became, the wider it grew. The rich potency of her arousal filled the space, masking all other smells. It swirled around him, a beckoning call his cock refused to disobey. In his mind, he already knew how it would start. He knew he would take her by the ankles and pull them over his shoulders. He would draw her to the edge of the seat. Then he would feast on her until she was coating his tongue with her release. />
  That was the plan. That was what he needed to do. He even started forward, a single step that made all the difference, because that was all the space that had been separating them.

  Her head tipped back, her eyes swirling with a dark hunger that mirrored his own. She made no sound. There was no other movement, except the rapid rise and fall of her breasts. He couldn’t see them behind her knees, but he knew the nipples would be hard and straining for his attention. He knew he would take them between his teeth while he fucked her, adding just enough pressure to guide her into her first orgasm. That was how she liked it, just the hint of pain leading up to the plunge.

  But that would wait. He needed to taste her, needed to gather the rich cream being wasted. He needed to stretch her around his tongue while she pulsed and moaned his name.

  “Fuck!”

  He had no recollection of speaking. The word hung suspended in the thickening tension solidifying through the room. It should have been enough to propel him back to his senses. It should have been enough to remind him this wasn’t the time.

  It started to. He felt the tug of reality working through the red fog, calling him back.

  Her arms slipped away as though no longer wielding the strength to keep their grip. The gun and key dropped to the floor in a forgotten clatter. Her knees parted. Her pussy was in perfect display. There was nothing subtle about it.

  He dropped to his knees, right there on the filthy carpet, right between her alabaster thighs. Control was a thing of the past, an inconvenience he no longer cared to exercise. His cock was a raging, throbbing force demanding immediate gratification of the one thing that had always felt like home. It didn’t care to recognize anything else.

  His head bent, following her musk to the source. His mouth was watering even before he took a greedy swipe of his tongue through the fabric.

  Above him, Ava gasped, a weak sound he ignored, because it wasn’t about her. Devouring her, making her come, it was for his pleasure. It was for his sanity. It was for the years of dying of starvation and finally finding relief.

  He forced aside the bit of sopping fabric from the beauty he’d missed in the dark of night. Every dip, hollow, and valley of it was exactly how he remembered it in his dreams, but somehow wetter. She was a mess, a beautiful, delicious mess of pink, hairless skin and soothing promises. Her juices ran along the valley from one hole to the other, lubricating them both in a generous flood that reminded him all too well of how it felt to be balls deep in each. A sort of smug satisfaction came of knowing he’d claimed every inch of her, that he’d pumped her full with his come in every orifice and watched as it leaked out of her. He had dominated her in every vile and twisted way possible and left her in a sticky, sated mess across the sheets each morning. And it had never been enough.

  “It’s not going to eat itself,” she breathed, voice trembling as hard as she was.

  Dimitri allowed his gaze to lift, to move away from the object of his obsession and fixate on her face. He took in her parted lips, the dark flush of arousal on her cheeks, the plea in her eyes and inwardly grinned.

  He lowered his face, extended his tongue and took a long, relishing taste of her from center to crown, all the while watching her expression as it twisted into a soundless gasp. Her pussy flexed against his mouth. He repeated the trail, cleaning her until there was nothing but his tongue filling her, stopping the flow.

  “God … fuck…”

  Her head dropped back. Her hands went beneath her bent knees and she held them apart wide for him.

  He didn’t care. He was in heaven. Nothing was pulling him away.

  His phone buzzed to life in his pocket. The high pitched shrill made them both jump. Dimitri didn’t need to check the caller ID to know who it was. He pulled it free of his pants, tongue buried in Ava’s pulsating cunt, and passed it straight over to her.

  Confusion flickered over her dazed expression, but she accepted the device. She glanced at the screen and her eyes widened, confirming his theory.

  “It’s John Paul,” she panted.

  He extracted and moved to her clit. “Answer it.”

  Her expression was one of pure horror, then dark passion when he suckled on the swollen muscle. She moaned deeply as the phone continued to buzz in her grasp.

  “Answer the phone, Ava,” he ordered, raking the sensitive bundle between his teeth.

  She answered. Her eyes stayed fixed with his as she brought the phone to her ear, pleading.

  “Hello?”

  Dimitri couldn’t hear what was being said. He didn’t give a fuck. His only mission was to make Ava come, to make her scream his name and beg him not to stop. If John Paul happened to be on the phone when that happened … well, that was just too bad.

  “No, I’m okay,” Ava was saying, visibly struggling to maintain a regular speech pattern while he tongued the tight ring of her opening.

  He smirked when she squeezed her eyes shut tight and silently mouthed a series of fucks, a clear indication she was about to come.

  “Dimitri?” Her eyes opened and she looked down her body to where he was lazily teasing her clit with the tip of his tongue. “He’s busy. He’s…” Her breath caught. Her body gave a jerk. “He’s … Dimitri…”

  He took the phone from her, mashed it to his ear and barked, “She’ll call you back.”

  The thing hit the floor somewhere over his shoulder and was forgotten as his entire focus became the woman begging him not to stop. It dawned on him that her sounds of pleasure were for him only and sharing them with anyone, even as a taunt could never happen. He’d always been a greedy, possessive lover, more so when it came to Ava.

  “Come for me, myshka,” he prompted, stretching her on two fingers. Then a third. “I need to hear you.”

  He worked them deep inside her as she practically bowed off the chair in her reckless abandonment. Her thighs quivered. Her toes curled. She gave a strangled sob. Then she was coming. Her body broke and she liquefied around his thrusting digits. The heat of her ran down his wrists and dripped to the carpet. Her pussy sucked in violent throbs that made her clit twitch erratically. He teased the defenseless little bundle until the last tremor had left her and her death grip on his hair had slipped free.

  He cleaned her with his tongue, lapping it all up, every last drop, ignoring her weak whimpers of protest. Once satisfied there was nothing left, he raised his head.

  She lay in a slumped, discarded heap in the chair. Her knees were sprawled open wide, her top bunched around her naked hips, her panties shoved to one side, revealing her glistening and swollen mound. There was a flush in her cheeks that spoke of a satisfied woman and a smile on her lips that made his cock twitch. Her dusky lashes parted and he was caught in her gaze.

  “I missed that,” she whispered. “I’ve missed the feel of you inside me more, though.”

  He wanted her from behind with her body bent over the chair, her hair twisted in his hand as he slammed into her like a mad man. That was how he planned to take her. He was already starting to tell her as much, when his phone sprang to life a second time, insistent and demanding.

  “Ignore it,” she whispered, her voice low and sultry; the same voice she’d used in the past to give that exact same command.

  But it was the sick reminder he needed to draw away. Too much damage had already been caused by his weakness. Reality had worked itself past the urgency of his own needs and had smacked him upside the head.

  He jerked back and shot to his feet. He spun away from her. His hand trembled as he lifted it to wipe the dampness from his chin.

  What the fuck had he done? What had he been thinking? How could he allow himself to toy with her, knowing what he needed to do? When had he becoming such a sick and twisted bastard?

  “Dimitri?”

  He heard the chair squeak with the shift of her weight and it speared through him. Loathing and disgust wound around his throat and squeezed.

  “Don’t.”

  He didn’t face he
r. He couldn’t. Not after what he’d done. Not after what he would do. As if he hadn’t already made her suffer enough. As if she needed another excuse to hate him.

  “That shouldn’t have happened,” he told her, barely in control of his voice. “It can’t happen again.”

  The phone had stopped ringing. It lay still and useless on the urine colored carpet. The absence of its sound seemed even louder.

  “I don’t understand,” she whispered. “You—”

  “I know!” he cut her off, not needing her to remind him that he was the one responsible. “It won’t happen again.”

  He couldn’t see her face, but he could feel her pain. It swelled through the room like a tangible force. It curdled inside him like sour milk. It filled him with a wrenching pain that nearly sent him doubling over.

  She didn’t say anything. He honestly wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting, a chair upside the head, maybe. But there was only silence, and he almost longed for the chair, because at least then she wasn’t just sitting there in that fucking thing, watching him like he’d torn her heart out. Again.

  Christ, how many times was he going to have to break her? It seemed like every time he got anywhere near her, it ended with him being the cause of her pain. But wasn’t that what monsters did? Wasn’t that what his mother had always told him he was good at? Causing pain and suffering to those around him. It was his own fault he hadn’t listened. His fault he’d allowed himself to believe he was ever capable of more. The evidence of his nature, the extent of his cruelty sat in that very room with him, saying nothing yet condemning him for his weakness.

  “What happened?” she whispered at last. “Did I—”

  “It shouldn’t have happened, Ava.” He turned to her, no longer able to avoid her eyes. “In a few days, you’re going to go back to your life and our paths will never cross again. They can’t cross again.”

  She sat ramrod straight, her feet neatly side by side on the ground, her knees touching. She sat as though she were prepared to have tea with the queen.