From Russia With Fangs

by Jacey Conrad

  “No!” she yelled, stopping and swinging at his head. “I’m not fucking okay! You let me think you were dead, you sonofabitch!” She beat at his shoulders, grunting with every blow as he ducked and dodged. “How could you do that to me?”

  Galina grinned at Andrey. Nikolai was chuckling openly. They all stood there, the guys gloriously naked, watching the show.

  “I’m sorry,” Viktor said, pulling her close and holding her, even as she struggled to hit him again. “I’m so sorry to have put you through that.”

  “How are you alive?” Irina demanded.

  “The afternoon I was supposed to pick up your father, I thought I saw someone watching the front of the shop just a little too closely. When they saw me watching, they ran and jumped into a car. I followed and it took me a few miles to figure out the car was registered to the Seattle Sun. It was probably just a reporter checking up on you. I was running late and called Yuri’s cell phone to tell him I wasn’t going to be able to make it back.”

  “It was Yuri inside the car?” she sighed. “Poor Yuri. I’ve been in such a state, I haven’t even noticed his absence.”

  “I laid low for a few days and then I decided to go to Andrey, explain the situation. He put me up while we tried to figure out what the hell was going on.”

  Irina narrowed her eyes at Galina, who held up her hands. “I didn’t know anything, I swear. I wouldn’t have put you through that.” Then she smiled sweetly at Viktor. “But I told him that jewelry would be an acceptable way of saying he was sorry.”

  Irina sent her a dirty look. Galina just smiled wider.

  “I’m going to murder you,” Irina told Viktor.

  “You’re going to murder me because you’re so happy I’m alive?”

  “Don’t bring logic into this!” she cried and when he wrapped her in his arms, she started sobbing all over again. “I love you, you big dumbass.”

  Viktor laughed into her hair. “I love you, too, Беда.”

  14

  Love Bites

  AFTER THE GUYS LOCATED THEIR PANTS, Galina refused to let Viktor and Irina go back to her place, just in case there was some misguided faction still loyal to Alexei willing to exact revenge. She insisted that they stay at the house. They barely spoke as they walked up the stairs to Irina’s room, acutely aware that their whole world had just been turned upside down. They had outed themselves in a big way. And they had helped stage a takeover of the family business.

  Galina would be the first female werewolf mafia don in the Volk Organizatsiya’s history. And Irina had used Galina’s exhaustion and elation to extract a promise that Irina could take over complete control of Red Crown, without any interference—in exchange for twenty percent of the profits. She was sure Galina would be pissed off in the morning and demand twenty-five, but for now, Irina considered it a deal well-negotiated.

  The minute that Viktor opened her bedroom door, she pushed him inside and shoved him against the door. He sealed his lips over hers, refusing to let go, as if he needed her air to breathe. She pulled back, peppering his cheeks, eyelids and forehead with kisses as he walked her to the bed.

  “I missed you so much,” she whispered as he palmed her ass. “I am so angry with you, but I missed you so much. Please, please don’t ever do that to me again.”

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered against her brow as she hastily stripped out of her clothes. “I never want to hurt you. I love you. More than anything in the world, I love you. I’m sorry it took almost getting blown up to get me to say it.”

  Viktor dropped to his knees, spreading her out gently against the sheets as he shimmied out of his pants. He stood, licking his lips as his eyes trailed over her body like a starving man at a banquet. He fell on her, devouring with every press of his mouth to the flat planes of her belly, every flex of his fingers around the soft round weight of her breasts.

  Running her fingers along his skin, she tried to memorize every tattoo, every scar, every inch of skin, in case this was all a cruel dream and she woke up to an empty bed tomorrow morning. Tears streamed down her cheeks and he silently declared his allegiance, over and over, with his lips. Her answering moans were all the acceptance he needed.

  He spread his hands over her waist, running his thumbs over the curve of her hipbones. He mouthed at her fingertips, the ridge of her collarbone, the curves of her breasts. She stretched her hand between them and grasped his long, hard cock, running her thumb over the weeping slit and teasing the moisture over his head. He moaned in her teeth, circling his hips, rutting into her fingers. She felt powerful and primal, with her wolf’s wild need throbbing in her hand, and a wicked smile bloomed on her lips.

  Running her tongue along the edge of his teeth, she trailed her free hand down her stomach, gathering the wetness she found between her thighs. She brought those fingers to his mouth and dragged them across his lips.

  Viktor’s eyes flashed a celestial blue and he growled, capturing her fingertips in his mouth and licking away every bit of the arousal he found there. But when he tried to wrap her legs around his waist, she dodged, rolling to the edge of the bed.

  Maybe she was enjoying torturing him, just a little bit.

  Grinning, Viktor grabbed her ankles, dragging her back across the sheets. Hovering over her, he licked a warm, wet trail from her shin to the back of her knee to her inner thighs, huffing a warm breath over her glistening lower lips. A low rumbling growl spiraled out from his chest, sounding like a contented purr. He lunged, licking and tasting, the vibrations of his growls sending lovely little shocks from her clit to her tits.

  Irina curved her legs around Viktor’s shoulders, hooking her ankles under his arms and urging him to turn on his back. He obliged and steadied her as she rolled over him, carefully positioning her pussy over his waiting mouth. He purred again and she gasped, her hips stuttering against the combined stimulation of his mouth and the vibrations against her clit. Her nipples tightened against the cool air of the room as he fucked her with his tongue. The sight of him attending to her so very thoroughly was almost enough to make her forgive him for the whole “faked death” thing.

  But not quite.

  Breathing deep, he wound his arms around her ass and pressed her closer, giving her broad strokes with flat of his tongue. She writhed, chasing the pleasure of his mouth as he hummed and slurped. Pleasure simmered so close under her skin, she could practically see the steam rising from the bed. He dragged it out for her, bringing her to the edge with his fingers and tongue, then backed away, building it all over again. Then without warning, he closed his blunt front teeth around her clit and bit down lightly. She screamed as all of the tension in her body seemed to coil and release at once.

  Viktor grinned up at her, his jaw and lips shiny with her release. He growled playfully, tossing her aside on the mattress. He curved his palms around her hips and turned her on her stomach, watching carefully for her reaction as he lined his hips against hers, nudging at her wet pussy with the tip of his cock. And when she rolled her hips back, urging him inside, he aligned their bodies and plunged inside her.

  Irina sighed, contented, reaching back to clutch his hand while she used the other to pull her hair away from her neck, bending her head in submission. His lips curled back over his teeth and he sank them into her skin, pushing his cock deep inside of her as he bonded them for life.

  She tensed, but as his teeth worked into her flesh, she relaxed. This was her Vitya and he loved her. She could trust him not to hurt her. Viktor wrapped his arm around her chest, pulling her close as the bite took hold. A tingling sensation spread from her shoulder to her chest, down through her womb. Viktor wrapped his arms around her and gently withdrew his teeth, licking the wound. She could feel the flesh drawing together and sighed at the rightness of the sensation.

  “Look at that,” he whispered. “It’s already healing.”

  She rolled on her back and he tucked her against his side. Maybe they’d conceive from this. Maybe they wouldn’t. But
for now, she was simply happy that she had Viktor back where he belonged.

  Suddenly, she raised her head from her pillow.

  “If anybody asks, we waited until our wedding night,” she said.

  Irina lugged a box of books into the moving truck while Viktor used his werewolf strength to lift a chair that would have taken three human men to move. Irina had decided to let Mama Anya have the house after all, since it meant so much to her. But she wouldn’t let Mama Anya know until she was safely tucked away in the new condo in Andrey’s building. Irina was sure that Galina would eventually take up residence in said building. And Nik already spent a good portion of his nights in Kon’s unit—also in the same building. Irina was looking forward to having her siblings and their partners so close. They would need each other.

  ASAIC Gregory had come by the house just a few days before, inquiring about her brother’s whereabouts. It seemed that Alexei had dropped off of his surveillance detail’s radar after dragging her out of his favorite restaurant. Irina went with the story that Andrey and Galina had concocted. Alexei had flown to South America on a friend’s private plane for a “lost weekend” with his latest squeeze. But since Alexei’s lost weekends could last for more than a month, she didn’t expect him back any time soon. And no, she didn’t know the name of his friend or which private airstrip the plane flew from.

  “You know, Mrs. Volkov, I always hope that you’ll be smart enough to break from the family’s party line and you always disappoint me,” he’d told her, a false hang-dog expression sagging his handsome features. He was standing on her front porch, trying to look like he wasn’t cataloguing the moving boxes stacked behind her.

  “Perhaps you should manage your expectations, Mr. Gregory,” she’d said, with a smile that was sharper than any she’d ever used in his presence. Gregory had the good sense to recoil a little bit, stepping back off of her welcome mat.

  Gregory frowned at her as he walked toward his government-issued sedan. “We’ll talk soon, Mrs. Volkov.”

  While Irina considered giving Gregory the “fig sign” like Viktor had, she simply waved and closed the door.

  “You don’t have to do this, you know,” Viktor told her, pulling her out of her contemplation of rude gestures and federal agents. “You don’t have to move out of your home.”

  “It’s not my home. It’s a house, where I lived a miserable life with a miserable man. My home is wherever you are,” she said, kissing him. He set aside the heavy furniture to kiss her properly.

  “You’re only saying that because I’m helping you move heavy things,” he sighed against her lips.

  “Pretty much,” she admitted, slapping his chest.

  Viktor turned suddenly, putting his body between Irina and the thin woman with thick brown hair waddling up to the moving truck. She eyed the group with suspicion, pulling her jacket close around her stomach. Still, it didn’t take werewolf eyesight to see the basketball-sized bulge of her belly.

  “Can we help you?” Irina asked, setting her boxes aside.

  “You’re Irina Volkov, right?” the girl asked, shifting nervously from foot-to-foot. Her eyes flashed gold when she made eye contact with Viktor and she bowed her head slightly in a show of submission. The girl looked familiar somehow, but Irina couldn’t quite remember how.

  “Irina Sudenko,” she said, extending her hand to shake the she-wolf’s. Viktor stopped her, pushing her arm gently back to Irina’s side.

  “She smells like Sergei,” he whispered. “She smells a lot like Sergei.”

  “But Sergei’s been dead for months,” Irina shot back. “Why would she—” Irina glanced down at the girl’s swollen belly. “Oh.”

  And suddenly, Irina remembered where she’d seen the girl before, in the shop. This was the mystery customer from all those months before, who’d left without purchasing anything once she saw Irina.

  “Oh,” Irina said again, her eyes going wide. “Oh.”

  “Let’s go inside,” Viktor said.

  The girl seemed hesitant, but Irina looped her arm through hers. “I’m sorry to say that we’ve packed up most of the comfortable furniture, so you’re going to be stuck with the kitchen chairs. Is your back hurting at all?”

  She was babbling, she knew, but somehow she was afraid to leave the walk to her house in silence. She was afraid of the thoughts that would bubble up into her brain before the Beta female could provide the answers she needed.

  “A little,” the brunette said. “But I am hungry, like, all of the time.”

  “Well, come inside. We’ve packed almost everything up, but I’m pretty sure we can find cookies in my kitchen.”

  The she-wolf’s name was Oksana and she was a very sweet, very frightened wolf with a voracious appetite for raspberry tartlets, sea salt and vinegar chips, and pickles. Viktor and Irina kept a constant cycle of these treats circulating to the table, where Oksana sat; tearing tissues into bits as she tearfully recounted her tale.

  “Sergei gave me the bite,” she said, lifting her hair to show them a perfect snow white scar on her neck. “Months before he died. I don’t even think he meant to do it. I think he was just frustrated, and drunk as hell. He kept saying he wanted to get someone pregnant. I thought it was just a put-on, but boom, I’m knocked up. I called him, to tell him I was having a baby, and he laughed. He said it wasn’t possible that he’d wasted his mating gift on some waitress and told me to go back to the loser ex-boyfriend that knocked me up. He laughed.”

  “Did you work at the Black Swan Inn?”

  She nodded.

  Irina asked, “Were you working the night that Sergei died?”

  “I didn’t mean to hurt him. I just wanted to talk to him. I needed to tell him about the baby. And he laughed at me. I waited out in the parking lot to see if I could catch him again and then I saw him coming out with you. You were so beautiful in your fancy clothes and your big diamond necklace. I thought about the baby and the sort of life he could have had if Sergei was any sort of man and the next thing I knew the gun was in my hands. I don’t even know why I’m telling you this, but I’m so scared and alone and I don’t know what to do. For a while, after the shooting, I thought maybe you might want to adopt the baby since you and Sergei never had children of your own, but I just don’t think I could give him up.”

  Irina shook her head. She didn’t want any part of Sergei in her life.

  “I have the gun that I used,” Oksana offered, pulling the handgun from her shoulder bag. Viktor was on her in a flash, taking the gun from her hand and checking it to make sure it was unloaded. Oksana didn’t seem offended in the least to be disarmed so abruptly. “If you wanted to compare the bullets or something. I’m not even sure why I kept it. I’m so sorry.”

  “I believe you. I think Sergei’s killer would have come forward to take credit for the hit had it been related to the…family business,” Irina said. “And I would never ask you to give up your baby. I’m not angry with you. Frankly, you did me a favor. The man was a miserable bastard and being married to him was living hell. You freed me. And I’m not going to send the woman who freed me to jail. I’m going to help you find an apartment in another city, if you want. You can go to school if you want to, get another job, make a better life for you and the baby.”

  Oksana’s eyes went glassy. “Really?”

  Irina reached across the table and squeezed Oksana’s hand. “Really. I couldn’t send you to Sergei’s family. It’s better for the baby if he or she stays as far away from Mama Anya as possible.”

  “Yeah, I’ve met Mama Anya,” Oksana said with a shudder. “I just can’t believe you’re willing to help me.”

  Oksana burst into wet, noisy tears.

  “Why is she crying?” Viktor muttered.

  “She’s pregnant,” Irina told him. “Pregnant women cry a lot.”

  “It’s true,” Oksana sniffed. “I cried during a tire commercial yesterday.”

  Viktor looked at Irina’s still-flat belly like it was a p
otential explosive device. He shuddered.

  “Thank you so much for this,” Oksana sniffed and began crying all over again. “I’m sorry. These last few months have just been really hard.”

  Irina squeezed her hand. “Well, they haven’t exactly been a picnic around here. But they’ve got to get better, right?”

  “Right,” Oksana nodded, giving her a watery smile. “Right.”

  Irina and Oksana exchanged information, so that Irina could help kickstart the apartment search and school applications. Irina walked back into the kitchen and found Viktor sitting at the kitchen table, drinking coffee and reading over a report from Galina, regarding a “purge list” of Sudenko employees who might still retain loyalty to Alexei. She leaned against the doorjamb, watching her man at ease. It was good for them to finally have some quiet time, when they were ninety percent sure no one was trying to kill them.

  And Viktor was her man. She used to be annoyed at the idea of her “belonging” to Sergei. But Viktor did belong to her, as much as she belonged to him. This was her life, Viktor was her choice, and she wasn’t going to look back.

  Viktor’s eyes lit up when he saw her in the doorway, though his expression remained neutral. She would learn to live with that strange dichotomy within him, his deceptively cold, brutal exterior and the inherently decent, ooey gooey center. She crossed to Viktor’s chair, where she climbed into his lap. He butted his head against her chest and pressed his ear to her heart. He sighed, contented, and wrapped his arms around her waist.

  “Are all of your big life-changing events this dramatic?” Viktor asked. “Because if so I can’t wait for Christmas.”

  “Nah, Christmas is really crazy,” she assured him. “You haven’t lived until you’ve witnessed Uncle Petyr’s pantsless version of ‘’Twas the Night Before Christmas.’”

  Beneath her, Viktor blanched.

  “It’s too late for you to back out now,” she reminded him.

  “Oh, there’s no backing out,” Viktor assured her. “There is nothing that will keep me from you again, Irina. No insane relatives, no social order, not even death is going to keep me from being with you. You’re my mate. You’re going to be my wife. To hell with everything else.”