Konstantin shakes his head. “It needs somebody who can speak Russian but pass as an American. A lot of the pipeline is Russian.”
Viktor avoids my eyes as he grabs the paper with the URLs Konstantin has written. “Writing websites on a piece of paper like an old man.”
“I am an old man.”
While other old men do crossword puzzles, Konstantin has been up to this.
Viktor is darkly focused on his flesh-trade flowchart, looking at the names. A lot of Russians. The names of the victims are mostly Russian, too. I see why Konstantin put him there.
“I would like to kill them,” he says. “All of these on the chart.”
“But you won’t,” Konstantin says. “Because you know others will replace them. We will destroy the structure itself. Like termites. Your father would never have run such a place as Valhalla.”
Viktor frowns. “I will be a termite for a little while. Then we will kill the shit out of them.”
“Good boy.”
We discuss how to get the American side of the Russian mafia involved.
He closes the laptop. He reaches out to grip my arm, tightening and loosening as if in extreme emotion. “You two brothers together take your vengeance.” Konstantin lets go of me and beckons Viktor over. He adjusts Viktor’s tie. “Some of Aldo Nikolla’s people may come over to you. Some you will be able to trust, some not. Use your gut. As you weaken Aldo, there will come a tipping point where you can finally pull everything to yourself.” He looks up, so full of emotion. “Your father built his empire to pass on to you, his sons. He would be proud.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Mira
I crash on. I think I hear people behind me, but it could be my imagination, like footsteps in the dark.
The way up ahead gets lighter, as though there are fewer trees up there. It’s a good sign—it could mean I’m coming out the other side. My legs are bleeding, but I don’t even care. I burst out from the trees, and there it is, a two-lane highway. Not much traffic, but all I need is one person, one driver willing to help.
And coming, in the distance, is a black car. I slide down the steep, grassy slope and wave and jump, right in the middle of the road, thankful I’m wearing bright colors.
The vehicle slows. Coming.
I move to the side, waving more frantically. “Help!” I call out.
And then I recognize Yuri. Eyes boring into mine. Angry.
I turn and scramble back up the side.
The vehicle pulls off. I run into the woods. My feet are getting torn on roots and branches. I trip, and suddenly he’s on me.
He pushes me down and presses a knee to my back. I’m squirming, trying to get free, as he makes a call.
A voice on the other end. Viktor. They speak in Russian.
I feel something cold and hard on my arm. I jerk away too late. The Taser shock jolts through my body.
And then the darkness closes in.
Familiar arms around my shoulders, under my knees. “Mira. Baby.”
Aleksio.
An angry voice nearby. “She would run to her father. Tell him everything.”
Viktor.
I open my eyes, blink in the sunshine.
Aleksio’s looking down at me, gaze dark with worry. “Are you okay?” Trees above. Dizzying sky. Part of the roof. We’re out in the driveway of that Stonybrook house.
I force my lips to form his name. “Aleksio.”
He’s holding me like I weigh nothing. “Fuck, Mira.”
“She was going to run to Daddy,” Viktor says again from somewhere nearby. “She would tell him where we are. Show the patsani we are weak.”
“I wouldn’t,” I mumble. “Wouldn’t…tell…” I try to speak but I can’t. Yuri Tasered the hell out of me.
I can feel the rage pulse through Aleksio. He must have pulled me from the truck. “She would never do that,” he says. “She would never betray us.”
“She’s a Nikolla.”
“This conversation is over.”
“She’s hurting us, brat.”
For once I agree with Viktor. I’m hurting them, tearing them apart.
I feel the growl in his chest, deep and possessive. “You don’t touch her.”
“Kiro is dead, and she lives,” Viktor says. “They would see that she even has her fingers. She weakens us. She shows them we don’t keep our promises.”
“This shit between us right here is the only thing weakening us.” He carries me into the house, through the foyer, limping.
“Your ankle,” I say. “Put me down.”
He tightens his arms around me.
Viktor’s drunken voice follows behind, talking half in Russian.
Aleksio pulls me more tightly to his chest. It reminds me of the first day in the yard when they shot up Dad’s boat.
We pass Yuri, standing in the kitchen holding a blue ice pack to his eye.
Viktor keeps coming. “Aleksio—”
“Lay off! And if you or any of your men touch her again, I’ll kill you.”
“Don’t say that,” I say. “Never.”
Aleksio doesn’t seem to hear me, as though he’s far away in rage. He slams the study door with his good foot and settles me down on a leather couch, putting pillows around me.
“Stop it—I’m not made of glass.” I sit up. “And you can’t fight with your brother like this.”
He goes to get me a glass of water from the wood-paneled bar in the corner. He hands it down to me. He seems wild.
I clutch the glass. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be fucking sorry. But you can’t do that again.”
“Think, Aleksio. How does this even work with me here?”
He loosens his tie and undoes a button, baring his neck. Raw power pulses around him. “Drink. Now.”
I drink. He watches me as if from on high, a dark god with unruly curls, chest rising and falling. I think about that night in the hotel with a rush of lust. But this is not the time for lust.
I hand him up the empty.
“Good girl.” He sets it on the desk and pauses there, with his back to me. He stacks up some files and puts them aside.
It seems strange he’s suddenly focused on files.
“I can’t stay.”
“You have to stay.”
“I wasn’t going to Dad, I swear. I would never betray you.”
“I know.”
“I was just going to disappear. You have to let me do that.”
He kneels in front of me. My skin heats under his gaze.
“You have to let me go.”
He takes my hand and turns it over, exposing my palm. He just holds it, staring at it like a trembling fortuneteller, trembling at the story that he sees in the lines. “I can’t let you go. It was only you. It was always only you.”
“You know I can’t stay.”
He kisses my palm. It feels intimate—forbidden—like he’s kissing the very secret part of me. I try to pull my hand away, but he won’t let go. He pulls back my fingers, and he kisses my palm again, feverish breath on my wrist.
Heat blooms through me. He’s invading me, taking me, and it’s just my palm. “You can’t keep me prisoner.”
He lifts his wild gaze to me, chocolaty hair half in his eyes. And fuck if that’s not a yes I can.
I want him so badly I can’t breathe, but he’s not thinking right. If he had his head on straight, he’d understand how destructive it is for me to be here. “It was the perfect solution. I was going to go somewhere where you’d never find me.”
“I would tear apart the world looking for you.” He kisses the inside of my forearm. I have the crazy sense of him as a large animal, consuming me from the edges in.
I gasp as he rips my sleeve, then he kisses the tender skin on the inside of my upper arm.
“I would tear apart the fucking world,” he says.
“The longer I stay, the harder it will be to let me go.”
“I’m not letting you go.�
� He kisses my neck, melting my resolve.
“You’re grieving,” I say.
He brings his mouth near mine, hovering there. Electricity builds in the blank space between our lips. “I need you.”
I could close the space between us. I could push my face to his and be lost in him. It starts with just this kiss. I would care for him and love him. Be his.
I want that kiss more than anything. But I push him away and stand.
He sways. His pain is rough and raw. He’s all heart, and right now that heart is wounded in a thousand ways.
“If I stay and drive out Viktor, you’ll come to hate me. And I’ll hate myself because this shit? All of this? It’s everything I ever wanted to be away from. I won’t give up my autonomy, and I won’t be with somebody in a life of violence and vendettas. This can never be for me. You know it.”
He comes to me. “We’re never over. We weren’t over when Konstantin took me away. We weren’t over when they lowered my coffin into the ground. We’re sure as fuck not over now.”
I back up and hit the wall. “What are you going to do, lock me up my whole life? Shoot me?”
He grabs my wrists and slams them above my head, pinning them there.
My heart stutters as he runs his fingers down my neck. He unbuttons the top button. The next button. “Don’t.”
His breath comes in gusts on my forehead. “Don’t what?” The next button. “Don’t use you like a dirty whore?”
His words are dark magic. His words set my skin on fire. “Don’t talk to me like that.”
“Why? Because you don’t want to like it?”
Exactly. This is the wrong time to be turned on. I twist, but he has me, muscles like steel under the fine white shirt.
“We’re never over.” He kisses my neck. He kisses my ear, warm and tingly. “I always watched you. Always saw you. You were always mine.”
I hiss out a breath I didn’t know I was holding.
“You need me just like I need you. Say it. ‘I won’t leave you, Aleksio.’” He shoves his tongue in my ear, and I start to melt. “It makes me fucking crazy to think of you leaving.”
“You need your brother—”
“I need you.” His fingers dance against my bare skin as he rips apart my shirt. “We belong together, that’s all we need to know.”
All of my protests fall out of my mind under his touch. I feel like a trapped animal, half needing to get away, half needing to follow him anywhere.
He rips open my shirt the rest of the way. He pulls aside the right cup of my bra and plants a kiss on the fleshy inside of my breast. “Deep down you’re an animal who wants to be used by a twisted, bloodthirsty killer like me, aren’t you? Say it.”
I shake my head. Things are starting to feel dangerous.
He slides a hand between my legs, cupping me through my skirt. “If I touch you here, how wet will I find you? How hot are you to let me take you however I want you?”
I twist in his grip.
“How hot? Tell me. Say it.”
“Aleksio…”
He pushes up my skirt and kicks my feet apart, then he presses his fingers between my legs, making contact with my soaked panties. His fingers graze over my pussy. I tremble with his every move.
“Aleksio…”
“What do you want, baby?”
I want him to call me a whore again. The word has a sharp point that I want to feel.
He strokes a finger between my legs, up and down, hitting nerves. His fingers graze over my pussy.
I tremble with his every move. I’m becoming more and more his with every stroke.
“No matter where you run I’ll always find you.” His strokes are strong and steady. He’s found the spot that’s sending me partway into the stratosphere. “Because you’re my dirty fucking whore and this is mine.” It feels like he’s sliding all four fingers through my pussy. “This is mine to use how I want, got it?”
“Yes,” I breathe.
He keeps going, stoking the energy higher. “And right now I want you relaxed and dripping so I can do you hard.” He slides two fingers into me, invading me, pushing me into oblivion. Shapes pulse and build whenever I close my eyes. He’s not holding me anymore, but I’m not going anywhere.
He picks me up and carries me to the desk. He shoves everything off it—the files he so carefully stacked, the mugs, the laptop. “Lie back for me, baby.”
I lie back. I want him so bad I can’t think. I’m flying. Trembling. I’m completely his.
He pushes open my legs and stands above me, then he yanks his belt open with a hard jerk and starts unbuttoning his dress slacks, regarding me hungrily. The heat of his gaze is too much, and I press my knees together.
He shakes his head. “No, this is mine, remember?” He pushes my legs apart again. “Touch yourself.”
“Wh-what?”
He pulls out his log of a cock, dark and veiny and fiercely beautiful. I get hot remembering the way he shoved it down my throat. “You have to touch yourself right now.” It’s part plea and part decree.
I touch myself. He watches me with that invasive gaze of his. Everything between us feels impossible. Like everything is lost and all we have is this impossible madness, and it feels good.
Our impossible madness feels like the only true thing in the world.
I touch myself for him.
He climbs up on the desk with his pants half down. He kneels over me, his pants like a band around my chest. “Open, whore. This mouth is mine, too.”
I open my mouth and he arches into me, shoving his cock between my lips. I’m spinning, stroking myself, bending to his will, taking him.
“That’s it,” he says. “Suck it. Feel me moving in your mouth. I want you to feel every throbbing vein. That’s what you do to me.”
I whimper.
“Shhhh, baby.” He hovers over me and grabs something from somewhere beyond my head. He places it in my hand. It’s round and smooth. “That’s a paperweight. You can crack my skull when you get tired of what I do to you. That’s your safe word.”
I grunt. It’s all I can do.
“Kill me, fuck me, love me,” he gasps, invading my throat.
I move under him, panting through my nose. I’m about to come.
“Oh no, you don’t.” He pulls out and gets off of me, pulling my hand away from my crotch. “Wider. Open up for me, give me everything, baby.” He grabs my knees, spreading me wider himself. He holds me there, holds me open.
The air on my throbbing pussy is wickedly cool.
I groan as he penetrates me with his fingers, pushing in deep and merciless. He nips the side of my thigh, and I gasp. He’s doing something with his fingers, curling them as he slides them inside me, like he means to pull an orgasm right out of me.
I’m panting, needing him to never stop. He kisses down my belly. Down, down, he goes until he touches his tongue to my clit. I let out a cry. He licks once. It’s not a dainty lick, it’s a hard, mad, rough lick. A lick and a suck while he moves his fingers inside me.
He does it again, and I drop the paperweight. It shatters below. He licks me again and again, and I shatter, too, into a zillion pieces.
My cries are throaty and low and like an animal and I don’t even care. I’ve lost touch with everything normal.
“I like you like this. Like an animal broken for me. Touch yourself some more. Keep yourself swollen and ready for me.”
I feel shy and exposed now that I’ve come down from coming, but I touch myself like he says. I think I’d do almost anything for him.
“What are you?”
“Your fucking whore to use.”
His hands tremble as he rolls on a condom, panting. “God, Mira,” he whispers. “I can’t…I can’t…”
He’s not making any sense. Not that it matters.
Roughly, he shoves away my hand, like it was too much for him to watch me touch myself for even for a second more. He’s over me, so gorgeous. I feel his fat, hard head between
my legs. He’s pushing into me, shoving into me, looming over me.
He presses my arms over my head and slides in.
I look into his eyes as he fills me. He’s impossibly thick inside me. Us together feels real and forever. The most honesty there can ever be in this world of lies.
“You feel better than I ever dreamed.” He moves in and out of me, harder and harder.
“You do, too.”
I’m on the knife edge of another orgasm, trying to make it last, but the way he’s panting, just gone, gone, gone, sends me over the edge, screaming his name.
And then he comes with a shout, clutching me, crushing me. I love the way he feels, the way he hurts.
After he comes, he stills, fully sheathed in me. It’s a long time before he pulls out.
I lie there boneless while he limps over to the wet bar. He grabs a bright blue towel and limps back.
“Your ankle.”
His lips quirk. “My ankle.” Like it’s so funny. “Lie the fuck still. This pussy is mine, and I plan to take perfect care of it.” He wipes between my legs—gently, thoroughly, gazing into my eyes.
I can feel myself getting addicted to his edge, to his possessiveness. Part of me wants to lie there and be his thing forever, like the rest of the world doesn’t exist.
Except it does exist.
When he decides my pussy is back to its perfect, pristine condition, he tosses the towel and lies down next to me on the desk, clothes half-off. He pushes my hair off my shoulder. “You look sad.”
I am sad. I’m sad for him. For us. “Our worlds are so different. You see darkness everywhere. Happy baby animals make you think of death and blood.”
“I guess I ruined happy baby animals for you.”
“You didn’t ruin them for me. You showed me your heart.”
He traces the line of my cheekbone.
“Be better than him, Aleksio.”
“It’s too late.”
“Fuck you,” I say. “You think I don’t know what you are, what you can be? I remember you as a kid. Maybe you don’t remember, but I do. I remember when you were good. I knew your heart, and yeah, you kicked down a few sandcastles in your time, but you had a good heart. I remember.”
“Are we back to this again?”
Dark Mafia Prince: A Dangerous Royals romance Page 16