I kiss the hollow of his throat, and trace his collarbone with my lips.
There’s a mirror on the wall, and I catch sight of us in it. I don’t even recognize myself at first, because we just look so good together I can’t believe it. His powerful, thrusting form filling me, working with mine. Me, spread out to accommodate him, our skin dewy and glistening from perspiration, we look far better together than either of us has any natural right to look apart.
And he bites my neck, suckles it as we make love. My breasts rippling atop my chest as they rock with his hard thrusts, his thumb pressing upon my clit, making it tingle and ignite with such fiery sensations!
“You’re the most gorgeous woman in the world, Alice,” he growls out in my ear before returning to his hungry assault upon my flesh.
Ever since I first laid my eyes on him, I knew he was someone special.
Ever since we touched, I knew what we had was something special.
But there’s something about him coming back into my life, after all these years, that makes everything take on a new significance and importance. We’re meant to be together.
A future filled with dance classes and playdates for my daughter, always putting my own needs aside, stretches and expands. Suddenly I can see a future not just for her, but for me, too. And it’s all because of him. All because of Viktor.
I whimper as electricity starts to gather in my lower belly, and my limbs begin to quake. I dig my free hand into the blankets, clutching them hard as I gasp.
“Oh God, just like that,” I beg.
And he does it exactly like that. He keeps that perfect rhythm going, hitting me in just the right way as I stare up at his gorgeous body, all bulging, rippling muscle so perfectly sculpted and honed. He’s a killer, but he’s a killer for a good cause. He’s a man made fighting machine, but he’s my fighting machine.
And I adore him for it.
But right now, all that perfected muscle and practiced ability is put towards pleasuring me and I couldn’t be happier to watch him pound into me. His thick cock vanishing inside my pussy with each new thrust, my narrow little cunt clinging to his cock whenever he tugs back, eager to pull him in once more as he moans and grunts.
When I can’t take it any longer, my head knocks back, and my eyelashes flutter down as that awesome pleasure crashes over me. I bite down on my lower lip — hard — just to silence the scream that’s brewing in my chest.
My free hand clutches him, nails digging into his flesh as I ride out my orgasm, him hitting me just so with every single thrust.
It’s such an overpowering intensity and I get so caught up in the moment I almost miss the glorious sight of his hulking, muscular body twitching and coming to life with his own impending orgasm. He groans, shudders, all those rippling muscles bulge as he comes hard. His moan loud and bellowing as his cock swells and he shoots his load deep inside of me. Each new throb of that manhood another heavy spurt of his seed, and I know it.
I know the risk intimately. We’ve been here before, though I didn’t know it at the time.
But I know what comes next. I know the worst case scenario, because I lived it, and I wouldn’t have traded Cierra for the world. I’m not afraid of the worst case anymore.
I choose to have hope. For us, for him. For our family.
My mouth crashes against his again, and our intensity is nearly bruising as we kiss and nip at one another with such need, such relief.
Like before, he holds me, squeezes me in his arms and just tenderly strokes my hair and sides. The two of us draining every last sliver of pleasure from the moment as he empties his loins into me, our lips smacking noisily as we rest upon his bed.
“I’ll keep you safe,” he husks between kisses. “No matter what it takes.”
I don’t doubt him. But at the same time, that’s what has me worried. Because I know he’ll truly stop at nothing.
Chapter 12
Viktor
I wake up before Alice, slip out the door without waking my daughter, who I give a kiss on the forehead to. She’s angelic as she sleeps on the sofa, curled up beneath a blanket. I’ve missed so much of her life, but it’s like I finally found a piece that was missing. A sacred part of me that was stolen from me, for doing what was right to the wrong man.
I want to linger, to watch her sleep in that beautiful peace, but I have something I need to do first. I need to give her and her mother real peace. The type of peace that will last. I don’t want her to ever have to go through a day like yesterday again.
Part of me acknowledges that this whole thing can go south and this might be the last time I ever see my daughter. My daughter.
The whole premise blows me away. Makes the world seem so wild and crazy, when yesterday it had been so dark and depressingly predictable.
I want to be there for her, learn to braid her hair so I can make her smile. I want to make her grilled cheese and teach her about the world. About all the good parts, all the things that I desperately need to rediscover myself.
But before we can have that life, I need to make sure these thugs stop bothering Alice and her. I need to put an end to the criminal scum targeting her to get at this piece of shit John, her ex.
Short of killing them all, the best way I can think of to do that is to find John myself and deliver him to these punks. It’s harsh, it’s cruel, but short of going on a mass murder spree, I can’t think of anything else.
They won’t let him or Alice go free until they have him.
I quietly shut the door behind me and lock it. Looking around, nothing seems out of the ordinary, and that puts me at ease at least. I stayed up most of the night, watching over Alice as she slumbered and just appreciating the fact that she’s still here. She’s survived and thrived, and she still loves me.
She called me her hero. I have to make sure that’s true.
So my first stop is the next place on my list, the place I was gonna hit up after tracking John to his girlfriend’s place.
Some poking around had given me the location of a storage unit that John had paid for a while back. I track it down in the early morning, which turns out to be tougher than expected.
The little storage rental place is off the beaten path. It’s a sleazy area used by criminal types, folks wanting to hide things off the record. They don't accept credit cards, it’s a cash only business, and I got word through a friend of Mark’s. It pays to have sleazy connections I guess.
I make my way through the maze of old, worn down storage units, gun ready in the back of my pants. I don’t want to use it, but as always, I come prepared.
I arrive at the storage unit, and it’s not locked, at least from the outside. But when I gently test it, careful not to make a sound, it proves my suspicions: it’s barred from the other side.
That means this is now a waiting game.
John’s inside, but if I make a scene or alarm him, he won’t be coming out. I still have the element of surprise, at least. Unfortunately, anything could happen to me out here as I brandish a gun, including police finding me. I have to be quiet. Still. Wait for him to leave.
Time ticks by agonizingly slowly, my mind continually trying to divert to thoughts of a future with Alice and our daughter. But I have to stay focused, in the present. Ready. This is where my military training really helps. People think of combat as all action, but it’s not. It’s boring as fuck, and you have to stay ready at all minutes of the day. Anything could change on a dime, and so I’m never lulled into a false sense of security. My senses are always alert.
It’s a tough fight to keep from grinning dumbly at the thought of a real future with a beautiful, amazing woman, and our kid, but eventually — after hours of waiting — I hear John stir inside. And then… the door starts to crack open.
I crouch and slip in under the garage-style door to get at him. Quickly, I grab him by the neck and pin him to the wall.
“You’re comin’ with me, John,” I tell him, this man who was once probably hand
some, now looking and smelling like a wreck from being on the run for so long.
“I ain’t got the money, pal! Leave me alone!” he whines.
“Too late for that,” I tell him. “Your running off put a good woman and her daughter in danger. They nearly died because of you. You’ve gotta make that good.”
“Fuck! She ain’t my problem man! Lemme go! If they catch me…” he says, full of self-pity and not an ounce of concern for Alice and her daughter.
That makes this a little easier to do what I need to do at least.
“C’mon. Time to pay the piper,” I tell him, towing him out of the storage unit and back to my car. He struggles, but he’s weak. I guess he hasn’t been eating much since he’s been on the run, locked in that storage cube.
That works out better for me. For my family. I’ve gotta handle this all quickly. Before anything more might happen to Alice.
I’ve got a bad feeling about this all. I hope it’s just because I learned that I’m a dad, and there’s now two people I care more about than my own life.
Chapter 13
Alice
I awoke to find Viktor’s home empty of Viktor. I made breakfast for Cierra, but the two of us quickly grew antsy.
“Where’s Prince Charming?” groans Cierra, not for the first time. I’ve put on her favorite shows, got her paper to color on, but still, she can sense my nerves. I don’t know where he’s gone, but I can only imagine, and as the minutes turn into hours, it’s just getting worse.
And Cierra hates that her routine has been broken, and she’s not in a familiar place anymore. It drives her up the wall to not follow her schedule, and I guess I’m partially to blame for that. After all, working nights was the best way I could spend days with her, and I tried to make each one special.
“I don’t know, sweetheart. He’s probably just gone to get us some lunch.”
“He’s been gone forever,” she says, exaggerating as she slumps back against the couch. “And I miss kitty.”
“I know. We’ll be home to kitty soon.”
Honestly, the cat’s a survivor, and will definitely be fine ‘til we get back home. If it’ll ever be safe to go back home. I would’ve taken her with us, but she took off out an open window when those thugs broke in and I wasn’t able to find her before we had to leave.
“Is he my daddy?”
The question shakes me from my thoughts, and I look at her seriously. My kid is intuitive, if nothing else, and I lightly stroke her curly hair.
“Maybe, honey. Maybe one day. We need to figure some things out first.”
She nods at that and relaxes back for a second, lost in her own four-year-old thoughts. Unfortunately, that leaves me to my thoughts as well. I pull out my Kindle from my purse, but as I flick through the dozens of romance novels, I realize I’m definitely not in the right headspace for that.
Not when I don’t know where Viktor is, nor what my future holds.
I toss it aside and pick up my phone, the battery approaching the danger zone, and I put in a call to the house mom at the club.
“Hey Rosie. I’m not going to be able to make it in tonight.”
“Oh no, sweetie! Are you not feeling well? You haven’t missed a day in years... and that’s quite a feat in this business.”
I laugh. As if I had the option of taking time off work at the best of times. The only time I can even remember was when Cierra was a baby and she had a fever of 103, and I spent the night in hospital with her. Then I had to work even harder to get out of that debt.
Strippers don’t have great health insurance.
“Yea, I should be fine for tomorrow but I’ll let you know.”
“Okay,” she says thoughtfully. “Chicken soup. It’s good for the soul, you know,” she says and I can’t help but smile. She really is like a mother to us.
“Sure, Rosie. I’ll have that for lunch.”
“Good. Good. Rest up!”
As soon as the call is over, though, my mind is once more free to wander back to the growing dread in my stomach. I glance at the clock and it's already afternoon.
“What do you say we have some soup, huh?” I ask, knowing that any bachelor worth his salt had at least better have some canned soup in the cupboards. Honestly, I just crave the distraction.
But when I look in the cupboards, and then the fridge, I realize he must be living completely off of takeout, and I sigh.
“We can order in,” I suggest, but Cierra shakes her head.
“No! Soup, mommy. You made us soup last week, in the fridge.”
And that much is true, but the thought of going back there...
“C’mon, we’ll be back soon, and we can get kitty!”
“I don’t know, Cierra. What if we miss him?”
“Note,” she says, handing me the pad of paper she’d been drawing on. On the front page was three stick figures, done in blue, pink and red.
“Who’s this, huh?”
“You, me, daddy!”
I swear to God, Viktor, you better not disappoint this girl, I pray, and I pet her head. Maybe it would be good to head back home. I might feel a little less on edge, at least, back in my own kitchen. And if the cops were called... well, it’d just make things worse if I disappeared for a long time after two murders took place in my home. It’s better to face the music now.
“Alright, honey. I’m going to leave him a note saying we’ve gone home.”
She smiles at me, but she’s a bright kid. She can hear the hesitation in my voice. Honestly, I just don’t know how I’m going to handle the questions. Handle... what happened. We were innocent, it was self-defense, but innocent people don’t run.
So it’s time to not run.
I pack up our few belongings and we head outside to wait for our Uber.
Cierra’s well-behaved as usual on the drive back, and I’m relieved when we get there to see nothing seems to be particularly out of place. There’s no police presence… nothing.
We head on up the stairs into the building and the ease of it all begins to bother me.
Didn’t we hear sirens the other day? Weren’t they coming here?
There’s no way to know that, I tell myself. But then… that might mean I’m about to open the door to a ghastly sight for Cierra.
“Just wait here, sweetie. Mommy’s gotta run in and get something real quick,” I tell Cierra, giving her a kiss on the forehead.
I get my key ready and prepare to head inside, taking a deep breath before I slip it in and open the door.
But instead of a grisly murder scene I’m greeted by… nothing. It’s as if there were no killings on the floor. No sign of men dying. And I can’t wrap my head around it at all.
I’m confused for a moment, but quickly search around, checking the rooms of my apartment. Again and again, each room is empty, no signs of blood or death. Nothing.
It sends a chill down my spine, almost as bad as if I’d come back to the stinking corpses of the dead men.
“You almost done mommy?” Cierra says to me, standing there in the doorway, disobeying my orders to stay outside.
“Yes sweetie, just wait outside, mommy will be right there,” I tell her again before shaking off my discomfort and just getting down to work. I need to grab her a few things. Some food and toys, the things I didn’t bother grabbing when I was in a rush.
And luckily kitty is back, and I put her in her carrier.
Part of me wants to stick around and go back into the comfort of our home, but I know what happened here. And though I can’t see the bodies or the blood, I can feel it like a ghost that’s lingering over my shoulder as I gather Cierra and I’s things.
I use an old duffel bag, same one I used to come here originally for a brief trip. That brief trip where I met Viktor and conceived Cierra. I stuff as much as I can fit into it before getting ready to leave.
“Oh shoot,” I hiss before going to the fridge and pulling out the container of soup. This will definitely make Viktor’s place a bit
more like home for us both.
“Alright sweetie, mommy’s ready now,” I say and turn around.
“Good, we’ll head right out then,” the strange man says, holding Cierra in front of him. There’s a gun in his free hand, out of her sight. “I expect that won’t be a problem for mommy, will it?” he says with a condescending smirk.
This time I have no choice. It’s not my life on the line. It’s Cierra’s.
Chapter 14
Viktor
I’ve got John in the car seat beside me; I zip-tied his wrists together so he’d be less of a problem. Nothing stopped his pleading, his pathetic begging. I’d feel bad for him except he shows no remorse for putting Alice and Cierra in danger. No concern for anyone but himself, despite landing himself in this situation.
“No no no! No man!” he cries out in objection as I pull up to the storefront that masks the headquarters for the Asian mobsters that have been tearing up Vegas in search of him. “Not these guys! Anyone but them!”
I ignore him. I don’t want to give them anything, not after what they did to Alice, but I have no choice. If I want my girls to be safe, I’m going to have to give them something in return for the two men I killed.
Immediately once I’m out of the car I can see two guys that are trying their best to look as if they’re hanging around outside the shop casually stiffen. They know I’m not here for the shops supposed purpose of imported rugs and incense.
I haul John out, grasping his arm tightly as he cringes and struggles weakly.
“I’m here to see your boss,” I tell them. They’re both trying to look tough but they’re not doing a good enough job to intimidate anyone but John. “I’ve got a present for him.”
One of them heads on in, presumably to speak with the boss, while the other escorts me inside, taking me into a back room. But he stops me before I go any further.
“We’ll wait,” he says, hand still lingering near his back where he undoubtedly hides a gun. It’s a waste of time really; at this distance, if it came to a fight, I’d snap his neck before he could get that thing pointed at me.
Begging for Bad Boys Page 46