by Sophia Gray
Nikolai. Just as gorgeous and alluring as I remembered him.
Now, I wished that I’d picked something else. Anything else, but I’d had such a block and Nikolai had opened that up. Now it was much too late to hope to do anything else before the semester was over. I’d just have to live with this and when anyone asked, if they asked, I’d say it was just someone I made up, someone who might look like they belonged to the darkness.
“Good, Madeline, good. It’s really coming along,” my professor told me in that feathery voice that suggested she was probably taking some sort of mind-altering drug. She floated on past me to the next kid, making some minor suggestions here and there.
I sighed. She was right. It was really coming along. It was probably the best thing I’d ever done, in fact, and that was more depressing than I cared to focus on. Putting up my brushes early, I threw my canvas in the back to dry—and to protect from vandals who had occasionally wrecked other students’ work—and told my professor I had to leave early. I wasn’t feeling well. She encouraged me to feel better and to come in to use the free time to finish my piece if I needed it. I thanked her with a tight-lipped smile, then headed out.
I needed to see Shawn. I was going to have to say yes.
***
I was walking towards my apartment, holding the phone out in front of me. A text was typed up and ready to be sent, but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. What would this change? Not just for me and my potential life, but between myself and Shawn?
My answer is yes. You’re a good man and any woman would be lucky to have you.
It was the truth, mostly. He was a really decent, noble man. The fact that he was willing to volunteer spending the rest of his days raising someone else’s child spoke to that fact all on its own, not even mentioning all of the time he spent with me when I was sick or when I was bored or just whenever I needed a shoulder to cry on. Shawn was my best friend. Wasn’t that what all women should dream of, to marry their best friend?
Yet I couldn’t bring myself to send the message. I knew I would have to eventually, but for now, it could wait. For a little bit longer still, I could just be Madeline King.
I saved the message as a draft, then dragged out my keys to open the door, but as I rounded the corner, I froze.
Him. Nikolai. He was here, standing outside the door of my apartment, looking every bit like he didn’t belong and yet like he could belong anywhere.
What is he doing here? Does he know about the baby?
Hope surged forth only to be quashed a second later. No, of course not. He couldn’t possibly know about the baby. I hadn’t told anyone yet besides Shawn and I wasn’t far enough along for me to be showing. I still had my slim physique, though I could feel my breasts beginning to ache, as though they were swelling with the milk I would need.
He couldn’t know, but then why was he here?
I sucked in a quick breath, then let it out, trying to stay calm. Forcing myself to keep walking to the door, I refused to make eye contact with him, unlocking the door casually. “What are you doing here?” I asked, opening the door.
Without any prompting from me, he strode inside first, looking around my dingy little apartment. Instantly, I felt embarrassed. I remembered still what his luxurious apartment had looked like and he must be utterly disgusted by the way I lived. At the very least, it was neat and picked up, so he wouldn’t think I was just a total slob.
“When was the last time you saw your brother, Madeline?” he asked, completely ignoring my question.
I blinked at him. My brother? “What?”
He rounded on me and I was startled by the intensity of his eyes. Quickly I looked away before I got caught in their spell. “Your brother. Logan. When was the last time you saw him?”
How does he know Logan? Oh, god, did I sleep with one of my brother’s friends? I didn’t think so, but I couldn’t come up with any other reason for why Nikolai would know Logan. “Um, a while. He’s out of state right now.”
Nikolai frowned at me, his thick brows pulling together, creating a crease between them that was troubling and still sexy at the same time. I tried not to think about the strange craving I had for him, just as strong as the first time we’d ever met.
“Out of state,” Nikolai repeated flatly. “He hasn’t been here?”
I shook my head. “No, I mean, not for a while anyway. He had to leave town for a job or something.” I shrugged my shoulders. My brother was a carpenter, sort of. Mostly, he was a jack of all trades. He’d do a little bit of anything for some extra cash, which meant he was never really good at any one thing. But, he could half-ass just about anything. I guessed that was something.
“A job.”
“Why do you keep repeating everything I say? What are you doing here?”
Finally, Nikolai seemed to focus. He was troubled still, serious in a way he most definitely wasn’t the first night we met, but he seemed to have decided something for himself as he locked gazes with me. “Your brother isn’t out of state doing a job,” he told me, his voice low and deep and laced with that accent I loved so much. “He’s running.”
My mouth dropped open a little. “Running? From what?”
“From who. And the who is important only because it is a very powerful man who will do very bad things to anyone who crosses him.”
I almost felt like laughing. A powerful man? What, like a mob boss or something? Was this man some sort of gangster, Capone style? That was ridiculous! My brother was kind of a screw up sometimes, but he was family and I knew he had a good heart. He would never get involved with some sort of dangerous mobster. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. My brother is a carpenter—”
“A carpenter who was hired by this powerful man to do a job. He failed in that job and then he stole a lot of money. This man wants his money back.”
At this, I did laugh. It was a short bark that wasn’t wholly sincere, but it was all just too much. It sounded like a bad plot to some B-grade heist movie! My brother wasn’t capable of pulling anything like that off. But then I saw that Nikolai’s expression hadn’t changed. He looked just as serious—no, grave—as he had a moment ago.
He was being serious.
A shiver ran through me, all of the laughter instantly sucked out of me. I felt cold and worried and suddenly I knew Logan was in a lot of trouble. Bad trouble.
But I wasn’t ready to accept it. Not from this man who had used me and left me and then haunted my dreams and desires. No, not from him. My brother was fine. This was all some huge misunderstanding. “Get out.”
Nikolai’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. “What?”
“I said, get out. Now. Leave. Go. I don’t want to see you!” My voice was rising and I could tell I was almost hysterical. Maybe it was the hormones or maybe it was a part of me that believed what Nikolai was telling me. Either way, it was making it harder to breathe. He needed to go. “Leave me and my family alone. Don’t you ever come back here!”
Chapter 10
Nikolai
Being yelled at by a woman who was the sister of the man I was hired to kill should not have made me hard. But it did. Her face was flushed with anger, her freckles little pinpricks of burning heat. Her eyes were so bright they almost glowed blue in the dim lighting of the shitty little apartment she called home. Her long hair fell across her shoulders and tickled at her breasts in soft waves that called to me, begged for me to grab them and jerk them back to expose the long column of her smooth neck.
I thought I was getting better with this strange, lingering desire for Madeline, but I was beginning to think I was wrong. My cock ached in my pants, shuddering at being so close to her, with the need to be inside of her.
And she wasn’t helping matters at all. She was yelling at me, telling me she never wanted to see me anymore, but her breasts were trying to escape the simple button-down shirt she wore, and her legs were long beneath the shorts she was wearing. Even her delicate hands, pointing at the door to e
mphasize her words, were sending my mind spiraling towards dirty, dirty things. I imagined the way those tiny fingers would look wrapped around my shaft. I imagined the way they might grip my hips, my shoulders, my back as she writhed in ecstasy beneath me.
I wanted her. More than I should have, but I couldn’t help it.
Dragging her into this mess with her brother was a bad idea, but he was being reckless. He was reckless the moment he took a job offer from Mickey, but that would have smoothed over easily enough if he’d simply done what he’d been hired to do. Mickey was a shrewd man, but he paid you what you were worth. Do a good job, and he’d make it worth your while. All Logan had to do was not screw Mickey.
Which was the one goddamned thing he did do. And now Madeline was caught in the middle of this. If I could find her, someone else could. Someone who maybe didn’t appreciate that, though related, she didn’t have anything to do with her brother’s stupidity. And what if Mickey decided she was a liability?
He wouldn’t go after her…unless her dumb brother decided to show up and ask for help. And I had the distinct impression that he wouldn’t be completely forthcoming with her about the details.
The urge to protect her was almost as strong as the urge to strip her and plunge inside of her. An urge I didn’t seem able to resist. Ignoring her request, I closed the space between us and grabbed her, pulling her flush against my body. Her breath caught and her eyes went wide, but I didn’t give her any time to think. I kissed her hard, like I’d wanted to since that night. Like I’d wished I’d done every night since then.
She resisted at first, her small hands balling into fists and trying to pound my chest, but she couldn’t make me budge. Her punches were like love taps, and I wouldn’t let her go for anything. Nothing in the damn world.
I slid my tongue against her lips and I felt her shake, trembling not with anger, but desire to match my own. She was beginning to give in, her fists unclenching and her arms rising until her hands could slip around my neck and pull me closer. When my tongue passed over her full lips again, her mouth opened, and when I slipped my tongue inside to taste her, she moaned into me.
My hands slid down from her upper arms to wrap around her little waist. I wished she were still wearing that little summer dress so I could yank it up, pull it high enough to expose those luscious thighs and maybe just rip off her panties then and there in the middle of the living room, take her on the floor.
Instead, my hands slid lower until they hit the waistband of her short little denim cut-offs. Still kissing her passionately, holding her against me, I let my hands dip between the denim and her body so I could feel her firm, full ass in my hands. When I had one cheek in each hand, I ground her against me so she could feel my hard length against her thighs.
I wanted her to know how much I wanted her.
When she broke the kiss and gasped, I knew I had her. I kissed a trail of fire down her neck until I hit the collar of her t-shirt. Growling in frustration, I pushed her away from me—I was pleased when she made a sound of protest—just far enough so I could jerk that damn t-shirt up over her head. I tossed it to the side, pleased to find she was wearing a black lacy bra too small for her full breasts. They were practically half out of the cups, her cleavage spilling noticeably as her breathing caused her chest to heave.
I went to her shorts next, undoing the button and the zipper. Her hands went to my shirt at the same time, undoing the buttons quickly and then tracing over the expanse of my chest. I groaned at the contact, my body aching for more.
When her shorts were off, I yanked my shirt the rest of the way off and undid my belt. She watched me hungrily as I undid my slacks and pulled them off, revealing my large, aching erection.
I needed her. Now.
I pulled her to me and thrust my hand into her panties, searching out her wet folds and sliding a finger into her hot core. She cried out and I was surprised to find she was still just as tight as that first time. A thrill ran through me. She’s only been with me. I began to pump into her opening over and over again, her body arching and her hands gripping at me desperately. I added another finger, beginning to stretch her so she could more easily accommodate my girth.
When I added a third finger, she begged me, “Please.”
Losing myself, I laid her down on the floor, dragged down her panties, and aligned myself with her wet pussy. She was already panting, flushed and whimpering, needing me.
I let myself have a moment where I slid myself along her opening, collecting the moisture there, then I put my head against her entrance. Meeting her eyes and holding them, I gently slid inside her, slowly, inch by inch.
She winced, but urged me forward still. I knew to be gentler with her this time, though there had been no complaints with my aggression last time.
When I was finally fully sheathed inside her, we truly began. My rhythm started out slow, my pumps deep and hard, but the slow pull as I took almost my entire length out of her was sweet agony for the both of us.
That didn’t last long. I needed to pound into her, hard and fast, and I wasn’t one to enjoy waiting. Pinning her hands above her head, I thrust into her as deeply as I could, my speed building. I watched as her breasts, still encased in that tiny bra, bounced and collided with each other, as erotic as anything else I was doing.
Madeline moaned and arched her back and begged me, whispering again and again, “Please, oh, god, please, Nikolai!”
Hearing my name fall from her full, bruised lips was enough. I lost myself in her, jerking and thrusting erratically as I spilled myself inside of her. I collapsed there on the floor next to her, pulling her tightly into my arms where I could keep ahold of her a little longer before I had to really think about what I’d just done and what it really meant.
Chapter 11
Madeline
I awoke to a beeping sound, tangled up in someone else’s limbs. A very sexy someone’s limbs. It took me a moment, but when I blinked and cleared the haze of sleep from my gaze, I saw it was definitely Nikolai holding me to him. He looked to be asleep, just as I’d been, and for a moment, I couldn’t wrap my head around what had happened.
He showed up at my door. He accused my brother of stealing. I told him to get out and never come back. He fucked me senseless.
I shuddered at the memory and found myself beginning to ache and throb where he’d so thoroughly pleasured my body.
The beeping sound came again and I cursed quietly when I realized what it was. My phone. My phone was in my bag now, which was dumped on the floor not far from where we were lying. Carefully, I extracted myself from Nikolai’s warm, muscled arms. I crawled naked—my bra had come off later, after the sex and before the sleep—across the floor to my bag and dug around for my phone. When I found it, I saw I had a text.
From Shawn.
I winced when I realized I was supposed to have given Shawn an answer—and that I had been planning on a “yes” answer before Nikolai showed up at my door. I typed out a quick message, letting him know I was home safe and mentioning only that I’d fallen asleep, not that I’d fallen asleep with another man, the father of my baby.
That was too much for Shawn and way too much for a text message. I needed to think about this before jumping to conclusions. Just as I’d hit send, I heard his gravelly, sleepy voice.
“Who was that?”
I swiveled around, still on my knees and still naked, holding the phone. My eyes were wide and I was sure that I looked guilty as sin—which, I supposed I was now. Biting my lip briefly, I let it go and answered, “No one. Just a friend.”
A friend I’d been thinking about marrying, I thought, but didn’t add out loud.
I hoped my lie was quick and convincing, but when Nikolai stood, he walked over to me, holding his hand out for the phone. I shook my head. I was not giving him my phone.
But then, before I could even think to react, he snatched it from my grasp and looked through it. I saw his face harden and his eyes flashed. He was pissed
, I could tell.
“Who the fuck is Shawn?”
I folded my arms across my chest, causing my breasts to push together and spill over the tops of my arms. “I told you. A friend.”
“A friend?” he repeated, unconvinced. “Then should I tell him what we’ve been doing, Madeline?” he threatened, eyes glittering with danger and making my heart beat more from lust than fear like it should. “Should I tell him how I’ve plunged my hard cock into your waiting, wet, hot pussy until you screamed and begged me for more? Should I do that in a text message or a phone call, do you think?”
I shivered. His threats made me angry, but his words, his description of what we’d just done made my body ache with a dark lust that I was so unfamiliar with.
Oh, how I still wanted him.
But right then, my anger was stronger than my lust so I spat at him the first thing that came to my mind, “He’s my fiancé!”