“Then we will move faster. Think harder. We will race to catch up,” he offers, walking over to me and pulling me to his chest. “This isn’t over yet.”
“Then why does it feel like we’ve reached the end of the line?” I ask, burying my face in his chest. He strokes my hair gently.
“Because this is a lot to take in all at once. But you and I are made of tougher stuff than these assholes expect. You’re a vice cop in Las Vegas, for god’s sake. I bet you’re the only woman in your division, too.”
I nod faintly. “I am.”
“Exactly. And you know why? Because you’re tough as nails. And you’re smarter than any of them. They won’t help you? Screw them! You don’t need them, Nicole. You and I are going to find your sister and bring her home. We are going to make it,” Misha says firmly. “But you cannot give up on me yet.”
I take a deep breath and pull myself together, wiping my eyes with the back of my hand. “You’re right,” I admit. “I’m sorry. I don’t usually fall apart so easily. I just thought…”
“I know. You thought we’d find your sister here. But we’ve got to move on,” he says.
I look around the garage one last time, and my eyes fall on something I hadn’t noticed before: a rickety-looking chair in the corner of the room, with rope tied around it. I frown in confusion and walk toward it, pointing it out to Misha. “What’s this here?” I ask, glancing back at him over my shoulder. He shrugs.
“Just a chair.”
“No, but it’s got ropes around it. Like there used to be someone tied up here,” I comment.
“Well, there’s no one here now, Nicole. We need to get out of here,” he says.
“Just give me a second,” I put him off, bending down in front of the chair, blinking in the near-darkness. I can make out something small and black on the seat of the chair, and as I reach for it, the screen lights up. It’s a cell phone.
“What the hell?” Misha grunts, coming up beside me. I pick up the phone and let my eyes adjust to the brightness of the screen to read the word there. It’s a name.
Samantha.
“Don’t answer that,” Misha warns, but before I can think twice, I slide the screen open to answer the call, pressing the phone to my ear with a shaky hand.
“H-Hello?” I whisper, scarcely able to breathe.
“Oh, it’s all dark there! I can hardly see you!” giggles a lighthearted voice I would recognize anywhere, anytime. I hold the phone back to see that it’s a Facetime call.
And my sister’s smiling face is on the screen.
“Why are you sitting in the dark, weirdo?” she laughs. She’s got her hair pulled back into a short ponytail, sunglasses on her head. Her face looks freckly and tanned, and she’s grinning. There’s patches of blue sky visible behind her, and the faint crash of waves on a shore.
“Sam?” I ask, shocked.
“Yeah, dummy! Of course it’s me. Man, did I wake you up from a nap or something? You’re acting weird. And why the heck didn’t you tell me you got a new phone number! I’ve been trying to call you all day. Ilya — oh, that’s my boyfriend — he said we should try to call you today and just fill you in on what’s going on, but you wouldn’t pick up!” she rambles brightly. She lifts a fruity drink to her lips and sips it through a straw.
“New number…” I murmur, confused. “Sam, what are you talking about? And where are you? Are you at the beach? The police think you’re missing!”
“Missing? Oh, because I skipped some classes?” she says, rolling her eyes. “You know what, Ilya surprised me with a trip to Hawaii and I just couldn’t say no. I mean, yeah, I might have to make up some exams when I get home, but how could I turn down a free trip to Hawaii? I’m sorry, I tried to call you, but for some reason it wouldn’t go through. And then Ilya told me he has a friend over there in Vegas who knows you and that friend said you got a new phone or whatever, so I’ve been calling—”
“A friend? Who? What’s the friend’s name?” I demand. Sam looks taken aback by my demanding tone.
“Whoa, whoa, chill out, sis. It’s fine! I’m fine! I’m having an amazing time here. I would’ve told you about it beforehand but you changed your number,” she laughs, clearly tipsy, and clearly not kidnapped.
I open my mouth to try and ask more questions, but honestly, right now it doesn’t matter to me. All that matters is that she’s safe and happy, and she obviously is. The rest I can figure out later. Besides, the last thing I need is to further involve Sam in whatever bullshit I’ve fallen into.
“Hey, Nicki, I got to go. We have an early morning surf lesson starting in, like, five minutes!”
“Okay. Yes. You’re right,” I tell her with a smile. “I’ll, uh, keep my new phone close by. Call me again later, okay?”
“Okey dokey. I love you, sis!” she exclaims.
“Love you, too,” I tell her softly. She ends the call, leaving Misha and I in the dark.
I turn to him with an even more confused look. “What is going on here?” I ask.
This time, even he looks stumped. “Nicole, I have no idea. But we need to get out of this place before someone else comes along and—”
The door bangs open, morning light pouring into the garage. As I blink in the light, it becomes apparent that we are staring down the barrels of multiple guns. We both put our hands up and before we can say or do anything, three huge guys rush into the garage and pin our hands behind our backs. My heart races wildly as I realize our mistake.
We have walked right into a trap.
“No!” I call out, watching the men drag Misha away from me. At first, I think they’re just capturing him— after all, what importance am I to them? But then they take me, too. Pulling us out into the early dawn. Misha is silent and stoic while I kick and scream. But then someone claps a wet cloth to my face, my airways fill up with something vaguely sweet, and everything goes black.
When I come to, I realize that I can’t see. My whole body is aching, my brain fuzzy. I’m being carried somewhere, and it’s hot. Blazingly hot. Slowly, the events of earlier come flooding back to me, but I’m so weak and scared I don’t know what to do. There’s something slung over my head, obscuring my vision. It feels like burlap. I can feel the sliding footsteps of the man carrying me, and it occurs to me that he’s walking over sand.
We’re in the desert.
I wonder if Misha is still nearby, or if we’ve been separated. Then, just as I’m about to start screaming, the man carrying me calls out, “She’s waking up, I can feel it!”
Another man calls back, “Doesn’t matter. Graves are dug. This guy works fast. It’s almost a shame to lose him.”
“Almost,” adds another. There’s cruel, raucous laughter.
“Put me down!” I shriek, which only brings more laughing. The man holding me heaves me down onto the ground and whips the sack off of my head. I squint in the bright desert sunlight, looking around wildly.
I see Misha, several yards away, sweating and covered in sand and dust. He’s standing in a shallow grave, a spade in his hands. He locks eyes with me, a meaningful look in his steely blue gaze.
“Misha!” I cry out, fumbling to get up and run to him, but the man standing over me pushes me back down.
“Don’t worry, you’ll be together again soon,” the man says mockingly.
“Hell will be happy to meet you two,” jokes another man. Again, with the horrible laughter. I can feel rage and fear rising up in equal measure in my chest. We fell right into their trap. My sister was just the bait. All along, I was chasing someone who didn’t need to be chased. My brain is too muddled to put it all together just yet, but I know we’ve been had.
“Who wants to do the honors?” asks the man standing back from the rest.
“I’ll do it,” grunts the man standing closest to Misha. He pulls out a gun and aims it directly at Misha, who doesn’t even flinch. “I’ve been dying to do this since the first day you showed up here. Thought you’d just slip right in and ta
ke over my turf, huh?”
Misha doesn’t take his eyes off of me.
The man is getting angrier by the second, annoyed that Misha isn’t showing any fear.
“Answer me. Hey. Ublyudok! Look at me!” yells the man, brandishing his gun.
Tears sting in my eyes, my heart pounding so fast I feel dizzy.
Misha just gives me the smallest, faintest hint of a smile.
Misha
The man about to execute me stands close enough I can hear him breathing. The second man stands five feet back from him, the third exactly one foot to the right of the second.
I know this, because I designed this little execution routine.
Executions in the desert look like a quick ordeal to an untrained eye, but when they are not planned carefully, things go horribly wrong. After all, the men about to be executed know they have nothing to lose: they’re the most dangerous in the world. So when I took over the Vegas bratva, I drilled my men over and over again on the exact procedure for carrying out an execution. Every detail, from where each man stands to the slightest order of things, it’s all by my design.
I wanted it that way.
Because now, I know its weaknesses.
With my eyes fixed on Nicole, I exploit that weakness.
In a single, quick swoop, I bring my spade up and hit the hand of the man pointing his gun at me. He pulls the trigger, and the bullet pings off the spade and ricochets off into the desert before he drops the gun. On the backswing, I turn the spade sideways, and I drive the blade into the side of his knee.
The crunch can barely be heard over the shouts of the other two.
I planned for them, too.
Before the gun has even touched the ground, I’m down on a knee, using my own grave as cover. I catch my executioner’s pistol. My arms braced on the ground, I take aim at the two other men who are hastily drawing their guns.
One of them has time to get a shot off, and I feel its white-hot path blaze by my left ear before I fire at one, then the other.
Two quick shots is all it takes. One falls backward, clutching at the hole in his neck as he bleeds out, and the other simply crumples, blood running out from the wound through the center of his forehead.
The man who was about to be my executioner grabs my wrist, and I jerk back, but he hangs on and falls into the grave with me. I put a hand to his face and try to push him back, our grunting filling the tiny space, but he manages to get one arm free and punch me across the face. He then grabs hold of the gun, trying to pry it from my hand.
I get my hand around his throat and push him back as hard as I can, and his face turns purple as we struggle, each of us one wrong move from losing our lives. Despite my grip, his finger inches closer and closer to the trigger as my forearm burns, and his teeth grit while his eyes go bloodshot.
Bang!
I freeze, utterly deafened. The whole world seems to be spinning for a moment. Then I feel the man’s grip slacking. I realize his face is glazing over, and his jaw goes slack as I feel his warm blood on my hand.
I look up, and I see Nicole standing there, holding the gun from one of the other mobsters. Her eyes are wide, her chest is heaving, and the gun is pointing down at us.
She just shot my attacker in the head.
The corpse hasn’t even hit the floor before I spring out of the grave and wrap my hands around Nicole, who returns the tight hug. I hear a single sob into my chest as I smell the desert in her hair, and we just stand there, relief washing over both of us.
“I love you so much, Nicole,” I confess, a single tear in my eye washing some of the dirt off my face.
“I love you, Misha,” she sobs, “Damn you to hell, I love you.”
I press a kiss to her lips that seems to last an eternity. When it finally breaks, I feel like I’ve been baptized—a new man, the weight of the world off my shoulders, and the most beautiful woman in the world in front of me.
We can’t help but break into laughing smiles as we look at each other.
“How the hell did you-?”
“Planning, Nicole,” I explain, looking at the carnage all around us. “It’s all in planning. Now help me get these men into our graves,” I add, looking back down at my lover with a wolfish smile. “We still have loose ends to tie up. And this time, we’re holding the cards.”
When I pin Nicole to the bed under me, a hungry look in my eyes, I feel every bit as hard and ready for her as I did when I first had her in this bed so long ago.
It’s been three months since we were out in the desert together, about to face death, and ever since, life has been brighter and fresher with each new day... partly because every single night has been filled with this, and we’re not even close to getting tired of each other.
I press my lips to hers as I grind my thick, ready shaft against her wet lips. Her honey wets my cock and keeps giving more to me each time my bulging tip slides over her folds and brushes against her clit. She twitches and squirms under me with each thrust, moaning into our kiss.
And with each thrust, while one of my hands caresses her swollen breast, the other gently holds the tiny bump in her belly.
When neither of us can take the wait any longer, I bring my dark, bulging crown to her waiting pussy, and I press the tip against her. It slides in so easily, and it makes her gasp and push her hips up toward me, but I bring my hands down to control her and make her be patient.
I start to rock back and forth, teasing the uppermost parts of her womanhood, and all the while, we stare at each other in utter desire.
My body is stronger than ever. I have a couple of bullet wound scars now, one on my arm and one in my shoulder, but those will fade. Every night, she looks up at my rippling muscles as I slide into her, counting every one of my abs and my bratva tattoos. She strokes the Russian star on my chest, and she curls her fingers to let her nails drag down my front slowly. Each time she feels some new, rock-hard part of me, I feel her get wetter, need me inside her all the more.
She’s all mine, and I’m hers.
I thrust deeper into her, and the surprise makes her groan in pleasure. I watch those soft eyes close, and she tilts her head back to arch her body up and bring more of me in. My thick girth twitches and pulses as it slides inside her.
There’s nothing about her body that isn’t pure bliss. The more I slide my vein-ribbed girth into her, the more love I feel swelling in my heart, both for the body I’m touching and the woman who it is.
The hot, wet walls of her pussy are like a home to my cock — I feel so much more right when I enter her, more complete. We’re a part of each other, and every inch of my cock and her pussy that touch reminds us of that.
I start thrusting into her, going deeper each time. Her lips hug my shaft all the way from tip to base as it passes through them, and I feel her getting tense already. Each time I go in and out, she gets a little closer to the edge.
She reaches up for me, and I lean forward to let her wrap her arms around my neck and hold herself up by my shoulders. I pull her up off the bed and start bouncing her on my cock. It’s an athletic move, but the burning we feel in our muscles only make the promise of release so much sweeter with every passing second.
Her hips move back and forth in pace with mine, and now, my cock is pointing straight up into her, grinding against every part of her that she could want touched. I move my hands down to her ass, holding her curvy form to me tight. I feel her whole body in tune with mine. It’s been what feels like so little time, but we’ve been attuned to each other’s natural rhythms from the very start.
I piston my hips up into her like a machine, each new thrust hitting more and more of her, and her head falls back, letting her hair cascade over her shoulders as she lets out a sharp gasp. I don’t hold back or slow my pace at all as she starts to come, and when she clenches her pussy, I feel my whole body poised and ready to release inside her.
But I’m not done with my lover yet.
She comes, a body-shaking orgasm
that leaves me wetter than ever inside her, but I don’t stop. I’m torturously steady, like an unstoppable machine that drives her to her pleasure over and over again. Within minutes of the same, she starts to well up and climax again, and as she does, I push her back down onto her back and put her ankles up on my shoulders.
Going deeper than ever before, I plough into her with the ferocity of a wild beast. I put my teeth to her neck and let my hot breath wash over the sensitive skin as I tease it. She moans at the touch of my sharp teeth against her sensitive skin, and her body writhes with the last orgasm, even as another one is right around the corner.
I get faster and harder, and once I’m moving so fast I worry that I’m hurting her, she responds by gripping the sheets and clenching her teeth. I know by now that it’s how she tells me she craves more.
I hold nothing back.
My heavy, needy balls slap against her ass with each new thrust, and even my powerful body is starting to feel tense and sore at the need to release in her. She bunches up tight fistfuls of the sheets in her hands as she gets tenser around me, and the way her body is hugging my cock, I know it’s the right time to release.
At last, I give in, and just as she’s reaching the crest of her third orgasm, I let loose all my restraint. Like a dam breaking free, I feel my nerves go taut inside me as I’m paralyzed by the orgasm we share.
I groan a ragged, deep note as we come together, heavy gushes of my seed emptying into her pussy and mixing with hers.
Finally, when the last of me is spent, I slide out of her, and I flop onto the bed beside her and pull her into a kiss.
“I don’t know how it feels like you’ve been working out more after each time,” she says, her cheeks glowing as she looks lovingly at me.
“You keep me active,” I say back with a low chuckle. “Come on, let’s get a shower.”
I move around the bed to help Nicole to her feet, and she laughs as she stands up. “I’m not that pregnant yet, you know.” She blushes nonetheless.
I kiss her on the cheek once she’s up. “Call it practice,” I say, and I give her ass a pinch as she starts to make her way to the bathroom, and I watch her naked figure as she goes. Before I can follow her, I notice my phone buzzing on the nightstand.
Vegas Boss: A Mafia Hitman Romance Page 15