Devil's Prey

by SE Chardou

  After all this time, the thought of a rumor floating around Dimitri had killed his first wife and their two sons plagued him with a sense of foreboding. Not because he couldn’t believe they weren’t true but because he suspected the man was as guilty as sin.

  Dimitri was a man who would get rid of any one and anything standing in the way of his lust for more power, domination and control. No one was safe from his wrath. That alone had him questioning everything he’d done in the name of expanding the Koslakov Mafia Empire. Instead of dwelling on it, he allowed the thought to quietly slip into a hidden corner of his mind.

  Cooking had always been a carefully concealed passion and it soothed him the way most artists were relaxed by doing what they did best. He made orzo pasta with chicken broth, prawns, scallops, chopped zucchini, red bell peppers, and red onions with a fresh lemon zest and olive oil drizzle to go on top. Of course it was more than enough for two people but he didn’t stop there.

  He also made fresh water salmon, which he baked in the oven, and marinated with molasses, olive oil and sea salt. By the time Mags returned, the whole house smelled heavenly as he prepared a pitcher of fresh sangria using Sauvignon Blanc wine, apple-flavored vodka, fresh pomegranate juice and thin slices of Anjou pears.

  Mags walked into the kitchen and looked around at the feast prepared before her in absolute shock. “Good evening to you too. If I knew my going away for a few hours would illicit such an expression of overwhelming emotion and food, I would have left a long time ago.”

  Max busied himself with setting the table. “I thought perhaps you’d decided not to keep your end of the bargain. That you wanted nothing to do with a plan that has been cultivated for years.”

  She strode toward him before she stopped a few feet away. “No, that’s not why I left. I had to take care of some personal business but I’m sorry if you were worried about me—believe me, that wasn’t my intention.”

  His aquamarine eyes glared at her with a mixture of cool condescension and detachment. “Why would I care what you do with your time, Magnolia? If you want to screw half the neighborhood, by all means, go ahead and do it. However, I must insist you be discreet.”

  Her mouth opened and closed like a fish struggling to breathe. “Is that what you think I was doing? Fucking a man? Sorry but my hormones don’t rule my body anymore than they rule yours. Besides, why would I do that when I have a perfectly capable man in the house who can cook?”

  Max finished setting the table and stood before he turned toward her. “You mean you don’t know how to cook,” he said in a voice reeking of sarcasm.

  Mags rolled her eyes. “Yes, as a matter of fact, I do know how to cook . . . food and meth. Serra wasn’t exactly domestic and I put meals on the table more often than not. I even know some gourmet recipes but the Deckers weren’t that kind of family. They wanted the basics—steak, fried chicken, mash potatoes, corn, peas—you get the idea.”

  Max struggled to maintain his composure as he began to transfer the food to the table and she began to help without him asking her. “Exactly what kind of people would teach a young woman to cook meth?”

  “The kind who make a lot of money off selling the drug.” She smiled facetiously before she sat down across from him. “It’s not a big deal. I was pretty good at it but I was always scared I would have an accident. It’s dangerous—under the most ideal conditions. My worst nightmare was being horribly disfigured or blowing myself up. I rather liked cooking in the conventional sense and there were other jobs that needed to be done around the place so I didn’t do it for very long.”

  Max poured them both generous glasses of sangria. “You’ve lived a very interesting life and yet . . . there is still so much I don’t know about you.”

  Mags smiled after she served herself a hearty helping of orzo and salmon. “Well, you’ve lived longer than me and I know nothing about you. Why don’t we try to get to know one another and maybe we can fill each other in on the gaps.”

  He breathed deeply as he speared a piece of salmon and placed it in his mouth. “My life only seems interesting because of the mysterious nature surrounding it. Believe me, if you knew everything about me, you wouldn’t find me fascinating at all.”

  She swigged from her sangria after she’d tasted the orzo. “I’m sorry but if that is your way of convincing me your life has been anything other than unconventional, you’ve failed entirely. I think you want me to find you rather boring because then I won’t learn anything about you and I won’t ever become curious enough to ask.”

  Max set his napkin down and drained his sangria before he poured himself another glassful. “Go ahead, you can ask questions about my past.”

  “How long have you worked for Dimitri?”

  “A very long time. The man is like a father to me. I’ve spent most of my life with him and I know him as well . . . as he can be known.”

  Mags bit her lower lip lightly before she continued, “Were you supposed to murder me after we completed our mission?”

  He paused and stared into her wide green eyes. They were paler than ever and although she tried to hide her feelings behind false bravado, he knew it was a genuine worry.

  “Perhaps but he won’t touch you now. I’ve assured him you can be quite useful on future missions.”

  And that you will belong completely to me.

  Max would never reveal that truth to her.

  She drank more sangria and stabbed a prawn with her fork. “How can you be so sure he won’t turn on you? Surely he’s made promises in the past he had no intention of keeping. I have to be able to trust you.”

  “Dimitri is his own person, sweetheart. I cannot tell you what the man is thinking—”

  “No, you’re not understanding me at all. I. Need. To. Be. Able. To. Trust. You. Only you, Max, and nobody else.” Mags’ pale green eyes never left his face as he assessed her words.

  Of course he knew what she was implying loud and clear. She would never trust Dimitri but as long as he gave his word and promised to keep her safe than she would cooperate and everything would work out just as they’d planned.

  In theory.

  Truth be told, neither one of them could promise anything because they didn’t know Angelo Abandonato well enough to say what he would or wouldn’t do.

  He finally nodded his head in agreement. “You can trust me. I won’t let anything happen—not before shit goes down or afterwards either. Angelo will never know about your involvement. If everything happens to fall apart then the blame will be solely on my shoulders. You have my word.”

  “I’m glad you could at least grant me that promise.” She dug into her serving of orzo again with relish.

  “Why? I mean, I understand you wouldn’t want to be looked upon as a traitor to your own family but why is it so important?”

  Mags set down her fork and stared at him for a long time before she finally spoke. “What we’ve got goin’ on . . . me being involved with the Koslakov Mafia, it’s not a situation a woman like me ever wants to be in because I’m screwed no matter what happens. If we’re successful and take out Angelo, his crew will be gunning for me—blood ties or not—and if we aren’t, I’m still on the losing end.”

  “I’m not exactly sure I catch your drift.” He ground his teeth together, flexing his jaw.

  Of course he knew exactly what she meant but he needed her to express herself fully so there was no signs of miscommunication or misunderstandings. Again, this was something she would have to want to do. He couldn’t convince her to participate in a situation that could easily end up with her dead without her knowing the full implications.

  Max knew Mags was far from stupid but at the same time, if they had to work together, he had to be able to trust her and the only way that would happen is if she was completely honest with him up front. Otherwise, they were both wasting each other’s time. He’d been responsible for plenty of people being murdered but she wouldn’t be one of them.

  Not now.

&n
bsp; Not this time.

  Fuck me for thinking this but not ever, he contemplated with resounding resignation.

  “I mean I’m screwed all the way around.” She brushed strands of her hair away from her face. “The Koslakov Mafia will want me dead because I didn’t complete my assignment and everything with the Abandonato family will be fucked up beyond all recognition. I’ll have nowhere to go and absolutely no one to catch my fall except you. I can’t knowingly participate in this without some reassurance that if everything goes to hell in a hand basket, you won’t leave me hangin’.”

  He wiped his mouth and kept his brilliant aquamarine eyes unreadable. “I will be there for you. There will be an out if that happens and I promise you I will personally let you go. I will set you up with a new identity, passport, and cash—everything you need to get the fuck out of dodge and away from here. Is that reassurance enough?”

  Mags nodded though she didn’t look him in the eyes. “Max, how many people do you really trust?”

  “Unfortunately, no one, sweetheart. I’m on my own. This is my last mission and I won’t have the family to protect me—not after everything goes down.”

  “If this whole situation didn’t work out the way you planned it, Dimitri will murder you?” she inquired in a voice that sounded more like a statement than a question.

  “I don’t work like that, sweetheart.” Max smiled and for the first time, it was actually genuine. “My brain is like a computer and I think about the probability factor and percentages. There is a better chance that Dimitri would kill me than keep me alive. If I’m no longer working for him then what function can I serve by being alive?”

  Mags sipped from her sangria before she shook her head and stood. “For someone who likes math—who views life as odds and probabilities, you’re not seeing the forest for the trees. What about the X factor?”

  She approached him as quietly as a snake scoping out its prey. “I believe you’ve lost me. There isn’t an X factor to take into consideration.”

  “That’s not true and we both know it.” She knelt between his splayed thighs in an almost obscene way but there was nothing about her behavior remotely sexual. “Dimitri would only kill you if you were no longer any use to him. However, if he believes you can be a bargaining chip to get someone else to finish what we started, he would. I’m not saying he wouldn’t torture you and make your life a living hell but he would keep you intact . . . barely.”

  “I think you’re opinion of Koslakov is a bit too generous, my dear. The man doesn’t care about anything other than money—”

  “Exactly. If you meant something to someone then he wouldn’t murder you. He’d blackmail that person into completing whatever we began and he would make him . . . or her finish what we started. The bargaining chip would be you. Your freedom, release or whatever you want to call it for the job being completed. You should really kiss me now before I lose my nerve, climb in that Mini Cooper and get the hell out of this town and on to somewhere I could be safe.”

  Max didn’t know when it had happened but he was closer to her than he realized. While she massaged his thighs in a rhythmic motion, making his cock harder by the second, he’d cupped her face and held her close enough to smell her breath. The scent of orzo, salmon and sangria invaded his nostrils and he breathed deeply.

  “What do you want from me?” he whispered, her lips drawing closer and closer to his.

  “It’s not what I want, baby. What the fuck do you want? Do you wanna live or do you wanna die?”

  He laughed; her gorgeous mouth a hair’s breadth from his own. “What a stupid fucking question. What the hell do you think?”

  “I believe you want to live,” Mags began in a seductive whisper. “And Dimitri will keep you alive just to allow one person to complete the job. The one person you saved without knowing it. The one person who owes you everything in this world because without a few tender words from you . . . her life, body, spirit and soul would be no more. He wouldn’t murder you because he knows what kind of person you saved and how she’s loyal to everyone who gives her self-preservation above everything else. It is human nature after all—for us to think otherwise is sheer stupidity.”

  Max could feel the softness of her lips brush against his own and for one moment, she was the only person who existed, who even fucking mattered. She’d not only bore into his skin but she’d become a part of him without even realizing it. The fucked up part about this whole situation was he didn’t love her—he couldn’t because he didn’t know her well enough—but he would if he didn’t stop himself from falling . . . now.

  “And this person who would be willing to risk everything to save a piece of shit like me if one ever walked the earth . . .” His vocabulary failed him as her lips pressed softly against his before pulling away.

  “She would be me.” Before he could stop her, their lips pressed together in a hungry, enticing kiss that blurred the edges and scorched everything in its path into a blazing inferno, them included.

  Max surrendered, not because he wanted to but because he couldn’t stop himself from not wanting to possess this beautiful creature that’d started a fire neither one of them would ever be able to extinguish.

  Not without destroying themselves in the process.

  Chapter Nine

  Magolia

  I knew exactly what I was doing but even if I could have stopped myself, I didn’t think I would have been strong enough to resist the heat within Max.

  It didn’t make any sense. We barely knew one another and although what we felt wasn’t love, it went beyond mere lust and desire. It was a base emotion, a need we had to fulfill in one another or die in the process.

  Nothing about our emotions made sense but I allowed the feeling of being free and near a hot-blooded man to carry me away.

  Part of my abandonment of my cold-hearted and closed off ways stemmed from my earlier visit with Edward. If we could have gotten away with it, I would have readily allowed him to lay me down on his bed and fuck me seven ways to Sunday—protection or no fucking protection. I craved him that much, the consequences of our actions would have left my moral compass and I wouldn’t have cared about the aftermath.

  Fuck it.

  However, he was truly back with his wife and a long-awaited tryst between us would never happen.

  Max was mine—in theory—we were supposed to be engaged after all and if we couldn’t get past our sexual frustration without backbiting one another, we might as well use the angst to play our appointed roles. It was hard to look like a couple in love if you’ve never felt the guy’s cock inside of you, pulsing through rigid flesh and moaning into a mouth made for cradling your own. I couldn’t all the sudden become hot for Max and dote on him like a caring fiancé if I’d never seen him without his clothes.

  He backed away from me quickly as our kiss ended. I was scared for a moment, fearful I’d pushed him too far but I remedied that with a smile on my face. Not the innocent, precious smile you see in cheesy family portraits but a come hither, half-lidded smile with more lips than teeth showing. I bit playfully into my bottom lip while I removed my t-shirt, unafraid of what he’d think when he saw a gorgeous black lace bra. Beneath it, a tattoo of a snub-nosed pistol covering my ribs on the right side of my body and the phrase, “Love,” over the gun while “Hurts” lay beneath it. It wasn’t my only tattoo. I had a trail of magnolia on my right thigh below my panty line.

  Max stood to his feet, his height overwhelming me while the sheer strength of his brutal masculinity finally pushed itself to the forefront. He stripped out of his dress shirt and in the daylight filtering through the room; I finally spotted the tattoo he’d had on his left shoulder, snaking down his arm almost to his elbow. An intricate spider web without an insect in sight.

  I stepped back reluctantly just to take in the sight of this man as he unbuttoned his jeans and shed them right there in the dining room. Nude and completely unashamed, I watched his body with fascination. The deep V of his l
ower stomach, just above his erect cock, had a phrase in Russian I couldn’t quite make out. I wonder what it meant as I traced the Cyrillic lettering with careful fingers.

  “It means spider in Russian,” he whispered as if he’d read my mind. “I have it other places too just in case my body is dismembered.”

  “Really?” I wondered out loud.

  He lifted his dick and that’s when I noticed the Prince Albert piercing. It was thick, heavy and would be quite enjoyable to play with but going down on him would take some work on my part. On the underside of the sensitive skin that made up the male genitalia was one word, “Araignée.”

  I chuckled. “Spider in French?”

  “Yep,” he murmured as he allowed his hands to drop to his sides as he approached me again. “I have it here too.”

  He pulled down his lower lip and low and behold, a word was written where it would have never been seen had he not pointed it out.

  “Spider . . . in what language?”

  “Polish.” Max approached me aggressively as one arm wrapped around my waist while the other grabbed the back of my neck and kissed me again.

  His tongue invaded my mouth and I responded to him without shame. I’d fought my attraction to him for as long as I could and although it seemed like a lifetime, we’d only known each other a few days. Yet, it could have been longer than that. I didn’t care. No one had touched me sexually in over eighteen months and I was dying for someone—anyone—to wrap their arms around me and make me feel wanted, needed and special.

  Max being the person to do it was definitely a bonus I hadn’t counted on, at least not this soon.

  He grabbed me and wrapped his arms around my waist, hoisting me off the floor as if I weighed nothing and walked us into the informal living room where he sat me down on the sofa. Our kiss ended, my lips feeling swollen from where he’d crushed his mouth against mine but I didn’t give a damn.

  With expert precision, he removed my bra and unbuttoned my jeans before he slid them down my legs—panties included—and tossed them to the hardwood floor. As he stood to his full height, I stared at him, trying to read anything in those impenetrable aquamarine eyes filled with lust and wanting.