“You too,” Lilly said, glad to finally be alone with Vasily again.
As the door closed, she deflated. Turning toward him, she ran a hand through her hair. “Wow,” she whispered. Words were too difficult at the moment. She just needed to let it all settle into her head. After all that she had seen, and all that she had been through.
Vasily saw her visibly grappling with everything and took her hand. “I’ll take you to your room.”
Lilly wiped a tear from her eye. “Is my son in the room with me? I’d really feel more comfortable if he were. I don’t want to impose… ”
Vasily cut her off. “He’s in the room with you, and you’re not imposing on anyone. Once you’ve had a chance to rest, you’ll be able to think clearer,” he assured her, rubbing her back gently.
She looked up at him, thankful for his tempered strength. God, bless him. He was trying. “Okay, well take me to my temporary home.”
“Come with me,” he said, motioning toward the door.
As Lilly and Vasily walked through the house, alone and slow this time, Vasily gave her a tour. Each room had a story, one that either he had been there for or heard about. Relaxed and composed, he told her funny stories about his time with Anatoly and Dmitry and how much he had learned under their leadership.
“I can tell that you’ve grown,” she said to him as they made their way up the back staircase.
“Time here has given me clarity,” he confessed.
“Can I ask a question completely off of subject here?” Getting to the top of the staircase, she looked around the second floor now in just sheer amazement. “How big is this place?”
He looked up at the ceiling to recall. “17,000 square feet,” he said, guiding her down the dimly lit corridor.
“17… ” Lilly shook her head. “You need a map to get around this house.”
“You learn it over time, but at first, it can be intimidating,” he said with a shrug. “So, what is your question?” he asked, stopping and turning toward her.
“That was my question,” Lilly said with a laugh. “How big is this freaking house?”
Vasily also laughed. As he did, his face lit up and Lilly couldn’t help but stop and look at him. Wow, he was still so incredibly handsome. It made her heart skip a beat just to see him happy, to see some glimmer of something other than gloom. “It’s really good to see you smile,” she said, voice wispy. “I don’t think that I’ve seen that in a very long time.” Her head ducked shyly. “It suits you.”
He tilted his head. Was that a compliment? “It’s just good to see you, period.” He stepped closer.
The smile left Lilly’s face. It was inevitable that they would arrive back at the conversation about the elephant in the room. She was just relieved that they were alone.
Licking her dry lips, she beetled her thick black brows at him. “You may not believe this, but I wanted to tell you, Vasily,” she said, heart beating faster by the second.
She could see it in his face. He needed to hear her say it. He needed a real explanation, though he was respectful enough not to demand one at the time.
Despite her nervousness, Lilly kept her voice pitched low and even. “I didn’t know until after you were gone that I was pregnant. Six weeks after to be exact. And after everything that we’d gone through both together and apart, I thought the only way to keep us all safe was to keep my secret.” Huge raindrop like tears began to form again, but she tried to fight them. “Giving birth in a hospital for the poor wasn’t exactly my dream way of bringing a kid into the world, you know.” Her mouth began to quiver. As she blinked over and over, the tears fell to her cheeks. “But after I saw him for the first time on the ultrasound all small and perfect, there was no way that I was going to get rid of him.” She huffed. “But then reality set in. If I called you, if I said anything, then maybe the word would have gotten out and I would have put him in danger. And I know you, albeit not very well, I know you well enough to know that you would have done anything for us. But what you hadn’t considered is that I’d do anything for you too.”
Vasily was quiet, deathly still. His face was stoic, hiding every emotion that he felt or wanted to feel, but she could see it in his stance. He was without a doubt relieved to know that she still felt something for him.
“You don’t have to explain your decision to keep Dylan to me,” he said softly. “I just wish that I could have had an active role in his life. A boy needs a father.”
“What about what you said in the car?” she asked confused.
He frowned. “What did I say in the car?”
“You asked me why I had done this to you?” she said, astonished that he had already forgotten such a cruel insult.
“I meant, why did you keep him from me?” He looked away. “I may not be the best person, I’ll admit that, but I’m not the worst.” Inwardly, he wasn’t sure about that, even as he said it, considering his profession.
Lilly exhaled a deep breath. “Wow,” she said, shaking her head. “I thought you meant something else.” Her eyes watered again. “I thought you meant… ”
“No,” Vasily said, cutting her off. He didn’t want to hear what she had thought he meant. He knew what he had meant and that was enough.
“That’s a major relief.” Wiping a tear from her eye, she laughed. “I am an emotional wreck today, huh? I mean, look at me. I’m a mess.” She sniffled and wiped her nose. “And I think I stink.”
A laugh escaped him again. “You don’t stink,” he said with a grin.
Vasily watched her with unadulterated fascination. Lilly was both soft and commanding in her presence. She was so strong, stronger than he had ever expected. Yet, she seemed not to know it. So self-conscious. “You’re… beautiful,” he said in a matter-of-fact tone. “More beautiful than I ever remembered.” Wiping her cheek with his thumb, he paused, wanting very much to kiss her heart-shaped lips, wanting very much to do so many things.
She looked up at him, waiting for his next move, breathing hard, eyes wide.
The tension in the hallway reached fever pitch, both realizing at the same time that while time had passed, their attraction to each other had not. In fact, it might have grown.
After some insidious thought that made him curl up his bottom lip, Vasily finally relaxed his shoulders. “Let me take you to your room,” he said, stepping back.
Lilly exhaled reluctantly. Some things had remained the absolute same no matter how many years passed. Vasily had always been a hard man to understand. Often, one would never know what he was thinking until acted on it.
She guessed tonight would be no different in that regard.
Walking with him down the dimly lit hall side-by-side, she pushed back all the things that she wanted to say to him. When they got to her bedroom door, she simply bit out, “Thank you for everything.” Her heart was still trying to leap up into her throat. “I know that I’ve said it a hundred times, but… ”
Vasily cut her off. “You don’t have to thank me.” For one thing, it made him uncomfortable. He looked away. “If you need anything, I’ll be right next door.” He pointed at the door several feet down the hall to a door that they had already passed. “That’s my room.”
“I would say the same thing here, but it’s pretty clear that you can’t read signs,” she said, winking at him. She wanted to plant a seed, to let him know in some way it was okay to speak in more than three sentences at a time to her.
Vasily was speechless. Pursing his lips together, he narrowed his gaze on her.
“Have a good night,” she said, going into her room and shutting the door.
Chapter 7
Vasily peeled out of his suit, one slow layer at a time and threw it over in the corner of his large bedroom on the leather sofa for the maid to pick up and clean the next day. Like every night before, he put his designer shoes in the walk-in closet, lined up perfectly with his other shoes. Took off his platinum watch and placed it in the jewelry tray with his clip of $100 bills a
nd his wallet, along with his Saint Jude cross necklace. Carefully, he laid his guns on his dresser across from his very inviting bed, and looked at himself in the mirror, shirtless and covered in tattoos.
He almost didn’t recognize himself tonight.
Running a hand over the scar on his chest where Leo had shot him, he slipped into a daze.
Over and over in his mind, he played out the entire day, remembering each and every single detail. Lilly’s lips. Her eyes. Dylan’s smile. His hair. Her smell. His voice.
He swam in a sea of new sensations, head barely above water, and tried to make sense of it all.
The reality was that when he woke up this morning, he was just Vasily. No family. No children. No ties. A true Vor; living by the code of the great men before him.
Tonight, however, he had an entire ready-made family in the next bedroom, depending on him for everything from food, clothes and shelter to safety from a very vengeful crime lord.
What were the odds?
One thing was for sure, he’d never cast another judging thought toward his bosses for getting married and having children. Before he had secretly harbored a little frustration against them for complicating their situations by creating families, especially considering what the risks would always be. Now, he understood at least half of the equation.
Seeing Lilly tonight, after all those years, felt like someone stuck his head through an electric current. He wasn’t surprised that the last thing that she’d done before going to her bedroom was to challenge him. It seemed that her entire purpose in his life had been to do just that, even when she didn’t mean to. What did surprise him was the fact that he had done nothing about it.
He wasn’t a saint.
He had been with more than his fair share of women.
So, why hadn’t he told her how he truly felt?
Maybe it was that he felt she was too vulnerable right now to make some cheap pass on her.
Maybe it was the fact that she was the mother of his child.
Maybe it was nerves.
He slammed his hand down on the dresser and shook his head. Damn that woman. She was going to drive him crazy. Trying to get his bearings, he bent over and ran his hand over his buzzed crew cut and shook his head.
It had been so long since he had had her. So long since he had held her in his arms, tasted her sweet plush lips, felt her soft brown skin against his and her heart beat against his chest. It was a torturous fact, but he still remembered her face when he was in between her thighs, how her mouth parted as he entered her. How she closed around him and took him into her velvety folds and made him forget everything and everyone.
Seeing her again, brought the desire back that he had before, he’d been able to control, damn near ignore. But after he had seen her, after he had fallen for her even without touching her, out of necessity, he had to avoid her just to keep the glimmer of hope from being exposed in some unplanned moment between them.
The truth of the matter was that 10 years ago, when he ran up the stairs of Leo’s home to save her and was shot as a reward for his trouble, the pain didn’t come from the sneaky bullet of the hidden body guard, but her ultimate rejection of him by her. He wanted to die on that cold, wooden floor after she had recoiled away from what he offered. Protection. Respect. A new beginning.
When he had recovered from his wounds, all he had felt was a fog of fury.
But when Yakov contacted him nearly a year later and told him what she had done – testified against her husband just to seek revenge for that night – he had known that whatever deep emotion had drawn him to her, she had felt also. Perhaps, just as strongly, but no doubt enough to break the chains that Leo held on her.
And now she was here.
Next door.
“What the fuck am I doing?” He mumbled as he rose up from his slumped position. He couldn’t let her slip out of his fingers again, just to protect some foolish pride.
Heading quickly, in just his boxers, back out of his bedroom, he stalked down the hall to her door and raised his hand to knock on it.
Check the knob, something told him as he lowered his hand before he could disturb her or worse, wake up Dylan.
He twisted it open and stepped inside as quietly as possible.
Dylan was asleep under the heavy duvet covers in the large, elevated queen-sized canopy bed, snoring lightly and completely oblivious to the world around him.
Proud, Vasily fought a smirk. No one could conquer that bed. It was legendary. Walking as softly as he could over to the bed, he pulled the covers up on Dylan’s little body and bent to kiss his curly mop of hair.
The boy smelled of sticky sweets and his mother’s perfume, just like a child should.
And then as if to completely smitten Vasily, the boy smiled in his sleep.
So innocent, Vasily thought to himself as he stood over his son. He aimed to keep him that way for as long as this world would let him. At that moment, he realized that he had a new purpose in life and it was not only to serve the Medlov family, which he would always do, but also to serve this young child.
He stood there in silence, committing everything he could about the boy to memory. Assailed with visions Dylan growing older, he felt himself warming up from the inside out. Hope began to sneak into empty places like water filling a pot of dry soil. He felt himself renewed, bursting with new energy.
The draw to Lilly was unexpectedly intensified.
He could hear the water shooting out of the shower head in the adjoining bathroom and the echo of it as it hit a body instead of the marble floor. Moving quietly from the boy, he went to her.
Evidently, she really did think that she stunk. He hadn’t left her, in his mind, long enough for her to have jumped in the shower, but a woman on a mission couldn’t be stopped.
She had her body facing away from the door, leaning against the cool marble wall, allowing the sheets of hot water to cover her from head to feet. At that angle, it was impossible for her to know that she was no longer alone. He closed the bathroom door behind them quietly and pulled down his black boxers. Fully naked, manhood growing with every step, he walked over to the shower.
He appraised her with needy eyes, soaking in her feature. Her body was shapelier now that she’d had a child. Her back was thick with muscle probably from carrying her son and doing manual labor. She still boasted an incredibly thin waist, wide hips, a curvaceous bottom worthy of being kissed, runner’s legs, thick calves and small gold anklet on her left leg. Her natural hair curled up against her back and her shoulders, glistening with water.
Resting on her elbows, she rolled her neck and looked up at the showerhead for the water to splash in her face.
He couldn’t watch a moment longer. Opening the door to the shower, he startled her. She turned; brown bobbing breasts exposed and sucked in a gasp. The look on her face told him that she’d wanted him to come to her, even though she wasn’t sure that he would.
Control and domination shaded his masculine features as he stepped inside the shower with her. “Did I read your signs correctly this time?” Vasily asked, walking up to her in the water.
Lilly was speechless. Stuttering, she wiped the water from her eyes and tried to avert her eyes from his engorged member and carved abs to his handsome face. “I meant for you to kiss me,” she said, breaths dragging.
He pulled her by her waist to him, forcing her to feel his bare skin against her own. “What makes you think that I won’t kiss you?”
Lilly was praying that he would.
Picking her up off the ground, he made her wrap her legs around him. With one hand on her back and the other under her bottom, muscles bulging, manhood erect, he laid a gentle, teasing kiss on her parted mouth, sucking on her lips and then her tongue, going deeper and deeper with each revolution. The silkiness of the kiss was sweet. She felt his breaths as he taste her. Sucking him in, she wrapped her legs tighter, unable to get close enough to him.
She gasped as the water poured over th
em, but kissed him back as eagerly as he had kissed her. “I’ve missed you,” was all she could get out before he pinned her up against the wall.
He paused and looked at her, trying to decide what to kiss first. His eyes were blazing with fire, saying all the things that his mouth would not.
Even though the water consumed them, heat exploded.
With her arms wrapped around him, she pulled him in closer to her hardening nipples. He ran another sweet kiss from her lips, down her long neck to her aching breasts. Suckling her rigid nipples and fondling her with his tongue, he looked up into her eyes as he hoisted her up to watch her eyes roll to the back of her head.
Her sex was swelling now, barely an inch from his throbbing penis. He ached to be inside of her, ached to fill her tighten around him again.
“Are you on birth control?” he asked, gripping her back.
“Mirena,” she whispered.
“What’s that?” His eyes flashed open.
“Birth control,” she answered, holding him tighter. “Are you safe?” God, please let him be safe, she thought to herself.
“Yes,” he sputtered in between kisses all over her body. “But it’s been a while.”
“For me too. You have no idea,” she whimpered. “But please, Vasily, be careful with me.” Her tone was full of warning.
He grabbed her chin and made her look at him. “Lilly, I would never hurt you.”
As he said the words, all fear evaporated.
She bent to kiss his sculpted, sensual lips again. This time sucking on his bottom lip harder.
Her legs parted further, and she found his head at the apex of her blossoming flower. It had been so long until she could feel herself on the verge of eruption at just the thought of him being inside of her. His roaming hands only made it worse. He massaged her swollen sex, bringing milk down in a pool between her legs, catching her clit in between his index and middle finger and using his knuckles to arouse her to the point of madness.
Vasily's Revenge: The Complete Story (The Medlov Men Book 1) Page 7