It really shouldn’t have bothered her. He got all of those after he’d left her. He clearly wouldn’t want a reminder of her on him when he was the one who walked away. She was being ridiculous. Besides, there was so much there that even if he did have something about her inked on him, she’d need days and a magnifying glass.
The hand not balled loosely over his face lifted and closed over the hand she had running over his chest. He never opened his eyes, not even when he directed her to the place between his breasts plates, just over the bird’s head where the wings curled in an almost not so distinct, upside down heart. It wasn’t visible if someone didn’t point it out, but she could almost see it. But there, in the center of it, in elegant loops, embraced closely by discarded feathers and an array of patterns, were the words, lyubb-lyu tebya vsem sertsem, vsey dushoyu in black ink. Words he had whispered to her over and over again so many times, they had become their own tattoo in her head
She couldn’t breathe. Each time she tried, the lump in her throat grew an inch and she had to fight back the sobs. Tears blurred her vision, smudged the colors and images, and she had to blink several times to keep them from falling.
Why did you leave? She wanted to ask him, wanted to shake him and cry until he answered. And that was why she didn’t. When they talked about it, she wanted a clear head. She didn’t want to fall to pieces and blubber all over him.
She pulled herself together, doing it carefully so he wouldn’t notice. She cleared her throat and put on what she hoped was a playful smile.
“Does this mean you’re done already?” she teased him.
The forearm lifted a fraction and he squinted at her with one opened eye. “Woman.” His low warning had her biting back a grin.
“You are getting old,” she reminded him. “I’d hate for you to break a hip—”
In a movement she never saw coming, he had her face down across the bed. Her head dangled over the edge, her fingers gripped the mattress. Then he was on her, forcing apart her thighs and draping his body over her. His hands curled over hers, locking them into place, locking her into place when he pushed inside her.
Christ.
There was no better sensation than that initial penetration. It stole her breath, her sanity, her inhibitions—if she’d ever had any—and her thoughts in a single, downward plunge.
“How’s this for my hips?” he taunted, low and gravelly into her ear, just the way she liked it.
She managed a strangled mumble of something even she didn’t understand and was rewarded by the long, even thrusts of his cock. Each one painfully slow, painfully hard, painfully perfect. Each one sang through her in sweet, beautiful pangs of pain and pleasure that had her sobbing into the ledge of the mattress. Her fingers tightened and his tightened with hers.
“No matter how old I get,” he went on, delivering each word with a forward rock of his hips. “I will still fuck you the way you need it. The way you deserve it.”
Ava couldn’t think. The world beyond the pounding beat of her own pulse had abandoned her to the man coaxing her closer to the edge. She didn’t know how he did it, but he always seemed to find that spot inside her, that little hidden gem no one else could ever seem to find. He rode against it now, a rhythmic persistence that had her eyes squeezing shut tight. She didn’t even notice when his right hand lifted off hers until it was tucking beneath her hips, lifting her to him. She pushed back, digging her knees and toes into the mattress and meeting every plunge.
His movement quickened. The hand beneath her splayed along her pelvis. The fingers pulled apart her lips and slipped between to attack her clit.
“Fuck!” her sob broke against the mattress.
She was a wild, untamed bundle of nerves on the verge of snapping. She could feel herself coiling, tighter and tighter. Her hips rolled and bucked with unchecked gluttony.
She came begging him to fuck her harder, to not stop. The final push was the hot spray of his release rushing up her body. Her freed hand squeezed under her and clamped over his, holding him to her pulsing mound now drenched with a heavy dose of their combined fluids. Her finger joined his in teasing the last tremor from her clit. Her hand slid in deeper to where he was still joined with her. Her fingers wrapped around the wet base, loving the feel of him, still semi hard and throbbing.
“Don’t leave,” she slurred groggily. “Just stay here. Right here. Inside me.”
“I would fuck you raw if I could,” he murmured into the side of her face. “Just eat, sleep, and fuck until both our hearts stop.”
Ava giggled. “Didn’t we try that once?”
His hum rumbled against her sticky back. “One of the best weeks of my life.”
Her response was a sleepy mumble about trying again, but she couldn’t be certain if it was in her head or if she’d actually said the words before exhaustion claimed her in a peaceful slumber—him still nestled where she loved him best.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Dimitri had been expecting the call. He’d just been hoping it would be later, like some time after he’d gotten more than two hours of sleep, had a proper shower, and stuffed something other than bland toast into his mouth. But, no sooner had he tucked Ava beneath the sheets when his phone had buzzed across the surface of the nightstand. He thought about ignoring it. But the thing had vibrated right up against the metal base of the lamp and somehow grown in volume and persistence. Ava had shifted and made a low groaning sound, and that had been enough for him to grab the damn thing and stuff it against his ear.
“What?” He climbed out of bed and padded to the bathroom.
“Hey boss, you gotta to see this.”
He didn’t recognize the voice. Only Saeed called him boss, but the number on the screen wasn’t his. The voice was male, so definitely not Penny.
“Who is this?” He shut the door quietly behind him.
“Rusty.”
He hadn’t been sure who would call him with the news, but he should have guessed it would be that kid.
“Is it important? I’m busy—”
“Believe me,” the boy interrupted, excitement making his voice almost high pitched. “You want to see this.”
He told Dimitri the address. Dimitri already knew it, but he told the kid he’d see him there in an hour. Then he disconnected the call and turned on the shower.
While the jets sprayed and steam rose up the glass case, he checked on the gauze. He hated peeling those fuckers off and he was one of those people that picked at it slowly, grumbling and gritting his teeth the entire time as skin and hairs were lost. He’d never mastered the art of just ripping the bandage off. But he got the damn thing off and tossed it into the trash bin. He surveyed the puckered line, the neat incisions and compared them to the ones still healing on his shoulder. The latter was nearly healed. It barely hurt at all. But the new one was a bitch in heat the way it screamed at him, the flesh around it red and raw. He knew he hadn’t helped it the last few hours he’d been fucking Ava like a madman, but, if he were honest with himself, tearing them open hadn’t even crossed his mind. He’d forgotten all about them until now.
Exhaling, he stepped into the spacious box for his second shower of the day. The water ran clean, this time. It wasn’t rivulets of crimson swirling down the drain. Christ, he’d been a mess. Ava would have been horrified if she’d seen him sneak back into their bedroom, dripping in another man’s blood.
He hadn’t been prepared for it, that was the problem. He hadn’t planned properly. He never would have believed someone so small could bleed so much. But the moment he’d driven his knife into Chan Lee’s thin, pale throat, he’d realized he should have put tarps down.
It wasn’t about lessons. It wasn’t even about warnings. The man had killed eight of Dimitri’s people, two of which were children, and injured six more. It was personal. Dimitri would have killed him on principle alone, but there was a lesson and a warning to be learned, and it was about to become known.
Ava was on her bac
k when he padded into the room with a towel slung around his waist. Her hair was a wild tangle of red ribbons, a harsh contrast to the white pillows. One hand was loosely balled next to her slightly parted lips. The sheets had twisted around her, exposing her to the pale light of morning filtering through the sheer curtains over the French doors. Each ray danced over a stretch of flawless alabaster skin. They illuminated the rosy tips of her breasts, the soft, pink of her sex, the slender bends and valleys of her figure.
Beautiful.
Everything about her was all the things he lacked otherwise, all the things he was born without. Normal people were naturally kind, generous, loving, open and caring. Children were born with it. Most adults still retained it. But not him. She brought that out in him. She brought out the beauty in the devil. She made him better.
He dressed before going to her, not trusting himself anywhere near her when she was so perfectly vulnerable. He lowered himself down next to her bare hip and studied her like he hadn’t in eight years.
She’d changed, obviously. She wasn’t eighteen anymore. She’d matured in the face. The lines had become more defined, cleaner. She no longer held the youthful pudge she hated so much. He hadn’t minded. He never even noticed.
From the moment she’d turned sixteen and gone from the little girl behind the game booth to a bright, gorgeous … God, he couldn’t even say woman, but she hadn’t been a girl. Not in body. Not in maturity. She’d been all the things he never expected to find in a single person and she wasn’t even fucking legal.
He’d tried to keep away more. He tried to go whole weeks without seeing her, but the hurt on her face when he would return threw that idea out the window. He tried to remind himself she was still just a kid, then she’d walk out in a two-piece bit of scrap fabric and he was sure God hated him in the worst way.
Those two years had tested his boundaries, his sanity, his endurance, his fucking morals, like he’d never been tested since or after. The night of her eighteenth birthday, when she’d come to him in that red dress and asked him to be hers, he did try to fight, but he was already so worn down that even he had to admit it wasn’t a very good fight.
He would have stayed with her forever. He’d sworn to himself that night while she’d lain sleeping in his arms that he would never let her go. He would never give her up. She was his and he would fight for her.
He’d meant it. At the time, all he saw was her finally being his and the universe finally giving him a break. When in reality, it was just waiting to kick his teeth in.
He’d let her go.
At the time, he honestly believed it was the right thing. The way John Paul was talking, it had made sense. It was the only way to keep her safe. He had to leave. He had to give her a chance. What future could he possibly give her, except one hidden in shadows and darkness and constant fear? How could he ask her to stay and not be able to guarantee them a future? He couldn’t give her children. He couldn’t give her a life. In the end, he wasn’t sure he could give her himself. He’d done what he thought was best for her.
“Never again, myshka,” he murmured, stroking the side of her face, her cheeks warm from sleep.
He bent his head and kissed her first lightly on the mouth, then the cheeks, nose, eyes, chin, the hollow of her throat, the faint little pulse at her neck.
In his ear, she gave a weak little gasp of his name. The sheets whispered with the shift of her hips and the scent of her, mixed with him drifted around them with a subtle parting of her knees. He watched the slow puckering of her nipples becoming tight little buds and the warm flush working up her chest to her throat.
He didn’t look at the clock. He couldn’t give a shit how much time he had.
He took the nipple closest to him between his teeth. The other one was captured beneath his thumb. He tugged and nipped one and rolled and pinched the other. The woman moaned in her sleep. Her scent thickened.
He wanted to taste her. He wanted to wedge himself between her thighs and thrust his tongue so deep inside her that she could feel him at the very base of her. He wanted to fuck her. He wanted to put her legs over his shoulders, bend her in half and beat into her until she was screaming. It was his fingers who won. They dove into the pool of her heat, one, two, and then three, full to the knuckles.
Ava sobbed her gratifications. Her hips tore off the mattress and slammed her down on his hand. The urgency maddening.
“Cock!”
He hadn’t realized she was awake, but her eyes were partially open, the green swallowed by an endless, hungry black.
“Need you…” she panted. “Need you inside me. Now. Now, Dimitri!”
Fuck!
He didn’t take his pants off. The fabric was shoved somewhere around his thighs and his top was ripped up his chest. Then he was on her. His plans forgotten.
She clutched him to her, fingers digging into his scalp, clumping in his hair as her knees hugged his ribs.
“Fuck me … fuck me!” she chanted into his ear, urging him in harder, deeper with the heels of her feet against his backside.
The walls of her pussy grabbed at him, holding tight as she bowed and cried her release. The rush of her heat sent him over and he came, filling her already stuffed channel. He vaguely wondered how much he could get in there before no more could fit. It was a challenge he was more than willing to accept.
“Oh my God…” she half panted, half whimpered, body still quivering. “Wake me up like that every morning.”
Dimitri chuckled weakly into her shoulder. “Deal.”
He pushed himself up and peered down her body to where they were still joined. A thick, white ring surrounded the base of his cock and coated her clit, a clit that was still giving little quivers.
He looked good there, he thought. He liked the sight of her impaled on him, their come smearing them both. He liked her under him, her body splayed open and ready for whatever he wanted to do to it.
“Unless you plan on finishing what you’re starting … you better stop looking at her like that,” Ava teased with a soft little moan as a fresh wave of heat engulfed him.
His own cock was growing hard again and he couldn’t help thinking that this was how one of them was going to die.
“Do I have to leave?”
Her answer was a deeply, lusty purr and both hands cupping her breasts. Her pussy flexed around him with a downward push of her hips.
“Stay,” she urged, watching him through heavy lashes. “And you can make me lick you clean.”
He was rock hard even before she finished. The sultry drawl of her voice even had his hips pushing deeper into her slick folds.
He could stay. He was the boss. He could do whatever he wanted, and if he wanted to stay there, balls deep in his woman until a crash pad had to be brought in to revive him…
“Fuck!”
He pulled out and almost whimpered at the sight of her hole, still gaping from his abandonment and leaking onto the sheets. It was such an inviting sight. Too inviting.
He threw himself off the bed before he could even think about returning to where he belonged. He forced himself back inside his pants, ignoring the wet, stickiness of it and moved away from the bed.
“I won’t be long,” he promised.
She bit her lip. “Hurry.”
It didn’t need to be said. He barely took any notice of the man sitting on the sofa in the sitting area, idly flipping through a magazine. If Frank had heard anything, his blank features gave nothing away. He barely glanced up when Dimitri half sprinted to the doors.
The two men stationed in the hallway straightened quickly. It wasn’t the same two from the night before when he’d given them heads up not to burst in if they heard screaming.
He didn’t know their names. He probably should make an attempt to learn them.
“Stay here with Ava,” he told the pair.
The two exchanged glances.
“Sir…” started the one on the right.
Dimitri shook his hea
d. “I can handle myself. I want her covered at all times.”
Neither seemed to think that was a good idea, but they didn’t argue.
Dimitri marched to the elevator, phone in hand. He texted Saeed and told the boy to meet him downstairs.
“Now?” came the immediate response.
Dimitri frowned. “Yes now!” he typed back.
“Be there in a flash.”
He wasn’t there when Dimitri exited the hotel and reached the curb. He was there a full three minutes before the shriek of tires had his head spinning around. The black SUV swerved back and forth over the two-way lane, zipping through incoming and forward going traffic until it squealed to a stop in front of Dimitri with a rattle that made him think the vehicle had already started reaching its limits.
Saeed jumped out and darted around the hood to yank open the backdoor.
“Sorry, boss,” Saeed panted like he’d ran the entire way. His shirt was inside out and his fly was open, and he only had one shoe on. “I thought we had a few more hours.”
Dimitri climbed into the backseat, waited until Saeed was behind the wheel again before speaking.
“Your fly’s open.”
Saeed’s head jerked down. He cursed and quickly fastened the zipper.
“Thanks.” He cleared his throat, the back of his neck a subtle pink. “Where to?”
He gave the address and waited until they were going with the flow of traffic before asking, “How have you not lost your license?”
“Cousins.” Saeed smirked at him through the mirror. “My family breeds like rabbits on Viagra. There’s literally thousands of us. Anyway, I have cousin cops, cousins who work at the DMV, cousins who monitor the speed cams. I have a sister who’s a legal secretary and close with her bosses so…”
“So, you’re basically untouchable,” Dimitri finished for him.
The Devil's Beauty (Crime Lord Interconnected Standalone Book 2) Page 42