The Sins Duet

by Abbi Cook

  Against my skin, he whispers, “Never again, little bird. I won’t let you be hurt ever again.”

  Tears well in my eyes at how protected I feel right now. Never in my life has anyone made me feel this safe.

  A second later, he covers my back and I feel his cock nudge between my legs. His warm breath drifts over the shell of my ear, sending waves of desire rolling through me.

  “You’re mine, Natalie. Mine.”

  The need he feels comes through in his voice, hoarse and deep. His power envelopes me, and I revel in it, even though I’ve never been with a man like this before. I don’t want him to know that, though. I want to be that sexual creature able to give him what he wants like he does for me.

  His hand slides up over my breasts on its way to my neck, and he whispers in my ear, “Don’t be afraid, little bird. Just relax and enjoy.”

  Alexei presses a kiss to my cheek, and the hand that had just encircled my throat moves to the back of my head. His fingers tighten in my hair as his cock slides into me. It feels unlike anything I’ve ever experienced, and I instinctively inhale sharply.

  Pushing my head down toward the mattress, he groans behind me, “You feel so good. I promise you’ll like this.”

  I press my forehead to the bed and close my eyes, not afraid and eager to feel him move behind me. When he does, I gently push back against his hips to take all of him. Alexei pulls hard on my hair before thrusting again, and we settle into a rhythm that makes my body come alive with every time he buries himself inside me.

  Behind me, he thrusts and retreats, his grunts and groans sounding sensual and animalistic, and I wish I could see him with each moment he makes love to me. I know he looks beautiful and powerful in that way he did the first day I met him.

  Suddenly, he begins plunging into me faster and deeper, so I claw at the sheets, balling them up in my hands. I’m his, possessed by the man I can’t imagine being without now.

  A tiny lick of something I’ve never felt during sex ignites deep inside me, and it doesn’t take long before a feeling of euphoria races through every inch of my body until it centers on where Alexei’s cock expertly fucks me.

  I cry out as the most perfect ecstasy makes me come with Alexei finishing right after, pounding into me once, twice, and then stilling as he fills me a final time. My limbs feel like they’re boneless, and the two of us fall onto the bed seconds later.

  He wraps me in his arms, holding me close to him, our sweat drenched bodies pressed against one another. Breathing heavily, he kisses my ear softly.

  “Little bird, you are perfect in every way.”

  My mind feels muddled, like I can understand him but don’t have the words to answer. Pressing my cheek to his chest, I listen to his heartbeat pound rapidly next to my ear as my fingertips drift over his abs.

  “Your heart is racing.”

  “You gave me a workout.”

  I look up at him and smile shyly, unsure how I could give him that since I wasn’t sure what I was doing most of the way through. “How did I do that?”

  He’s beautiful looking down at me, a sex god all my own. “I can’t control my need for you, little bird. You were perfect.”

  “That was my first time doing that.” I glance down at his body and cringe. “I sound so stupid saying that.”

  Alexei kisses the top of my head and chuckles. “Not stupid at all. One man’s mistake is my good fortune. I’d be a fool to not be thankful for that.”

  I close my eyes and sigh, loving how perfect he feels under me. Never did I believe being with a man could be like this.

  As I drift off, I hear Alexei softly say above me, “I love you, Natalie.”

  Nuzzling the warm spot between Alexei’s jaw and shoulder, I kiss his neck and sigh at the reality that I can’t stay in that bed any longer. Dread fills me at what I must do.

  “I have to talk to my mother tonight. I don’t want to, but I have to get this out of the way. She needs to know I’ve left him.”

  Alexei squeezes me to him and kisses the top of my head. “Are you sure you should go alone? He might be there.”

  Looking up at him, I shake my head. “No, I’ll be fine. Anyway, who would I say you are? Just some guy who happened to want to come meet my mother?”

  “Are you going to be okay?” he asks with a look of concern in his eyes I love seeing.

  “It’ll be fine. My mother doesn’t really like to talk about upsetting things anyway, so it’s not like she’ll want to have a whole discussion. I just need to tell her.”

  “Is that because of your sister still being missing?”

  For a second, I wonder if that’s true, but no. My mother has always been this way. To her, nothing needs to be hashed out. Things are just as they are, and we all need to accept them.

  “No. It’s just who she is. Lauren’s disappearance is just another issue she’s added to the list of things that can’t be talked about.”

  I know how callous that makes her sound, and in many ways she is, but it’s merely the truth. Elizabeth Tarrigan decided a long time ago that any topic that upsets her isn’t one she’s willing to allow.

  “The police have no leads on her whereabouts?” Alexei asks, as if he can’t believe after all these months that we’ve heard not a single word about where she could be.

  “No,” I answer sadly, the familiar feeling of loss filling me as I think about Lauren missing from our lives. “It’s almost like my accident. After a few weeks, the case just went cold. I think they believe it’s a situation of a teenage runaway and nothing more.”

  He runs his hands through my hair and remains silent for a long time before he asks, “Do you think it’s something else?”

  The way he says that, like it’s something I should be considering, makes me feel better about the times I’ve wondered if something bad happened to my youngest sister. I pushed it out of my mind every time it came up because I worried what I was dealing with in my life was affecting how I thought about hers, and I didn’t want to even entertain the idea that her disappearance wasn’t just her running off.

  But as much as I want to deny that could be a possibility, the fact remains that no one has ever seen or heard from my sister since that night. The police have never gotten a single tip that anyone’s seen her in all this time.

  Pressing my cheek against his chest, I sigh. “I don’t know. God, I hope not. I hope she’s living on the beach somewhere and having the time of her life.”

  Alexei doesn’t say another word about it, but I sense he’s thinking the same thing I am at this moment. She isn’t living at the beach. She isn’t having the time of her life.

  She may not be alive at all anymore.

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Natalie

  My mother sits in her kitchen looking out at the gorgeous night sky I didn't notice the entire drive there. Smiling, she points out the window. "It's amazing how incredible nature is. Look at those stars. It's like an artist created that in the sky."

  "I need to talk to you, Mom," I say flatly without the emotion most people would think would be present in the voice of a woman who has left her husband.

  She turns to face me and her eyes open wide when she sees my bruised and scratched up face. "Why? What happened?"

  “I’ve left Adam.” I take a deep breath and point at my cheek. “He’s the one who did this.”

  “Why? What in the world would make your husband do that to you?”

  Always making an excuse for him. It’s like she can’t help herself.

  “I don’t know. Maybe he’s a horrible person and I deserve better. Maybe he’s lost his mind. I have no idea, but what I do know is it’s his problem from now on, not mine.”

  That’s not the truth, but I don’t feel like explaining myself to my mother right now. I’m not interested in her opinion on what’s happened to my life, much less who I’m choosing to spend it with.

  Shaking her head, she stands up and says, "Enough. I've heard enough."

/>   I brace myself to hear her tell me how I need to work things out with my husband and that marriage is forever. I don't know what I can say to convince her, but Dr. Trevino was right. If I feel danger, I shouldn't stay in that place. Maybe that will make her see why I needed to leave the only home I’ve had for nearly seven years.

  “Do you want to stay here for the night?” she asks in an uncharacteristically kind tone.

  “What?”

  Isn’t she going to give me chapter and verse about how I have to return to my husband, even though he’s clearly abusing me? What happened to her undying love for Adam? Is the evidence of his attack written all over my face finally enough for her to care more about me than about him?

  "You can stay in your old room, if you want, or any of the other bedrooms."

  As I stand there in her kitchen in total shock that her usual speech didn't come, she walks into the pantry. She comes back a few minutes later with something she hasn't given me since I lived there with her.

  "Drink this. Warm milk always makes whatever's going on a little better."

  I take a sip of that familiar drink with a sprinkle of nutmeg on top, and it's like my childhood comes rushing back to me. Instead of being a twenty-six-year old woman in a troubled marriage, I'm a ten-year-old girl being taken care of by her mother.

  "I have some errands I need to run for a few hours, but make yourself comfortable. I'll be back soon."

  “Mom, I have to go. I just wanted to tell you I’ve left Adam. We’re over.”

  Smiling, she gently touches my upper arm and gives me a sympathetic squeeze. “Where? To a hotel? Just stay until I get back. You can certainly give your mother a few hours, can’t you? Stay here, relax, and when I get back we can have something sweet to eat like we used to when you were a little girl and got upset. I’ve missed doing that, haven’t you?”

  I don’t know what to do with this newfound kindness from my mother, but I’ve missed sharing those moments with her too. “I have, Mom. Okay, I’ll stay for a little while. Don’t be long. It’s been a long day, and I’m feeling a little tired.”

  She kisses me on the cheek and leaves me standing there in her kitchen still practically in shock at her reaction to the breakup of my marriage. My mother has been many things in my life, some of which haven't been wonderful, but tonight she's decided to be someone she’s never been to me as an adult.

  My friend.

  By the time I finish my glass of warm milk with that special topping, I feel better. My problems haven't gone away, but for the moment, I feel good. Alexei will be there for me when I return, but I want to wait for my mother.

  I walk upstairs to my old room and a sense of comfort comes over me. After everything I've gone through in the past few days, all I want is to take a little nap and sleep without having any nightmares or dreams. My eyelids slowly flutter closed, and I take a deep breath before letting it out slowly. I haven't felt this relaxed in ages.

  When I wake up, it's dark and for a few seconds, I don't know where I am. My mind feels scattered and confused. I must have slept until the middle of the night. Rolling over, I reach down into my purse to get my phone and check the time.

  12:44.

  I only slept for two hours, but it feels like I've been in bed for five times as long. I do feel rested, though.

  Leaning down, I drop my phone back into my purse as something catches my eye in the moonlight. A piece of toilet paper sticking out from beneath the mattress. I tug on it, but my weight is too much and I end up ripping only a tiny shred off.

  Curious, I roll off the bed onto the floor and lift the mattress. I can't tell what it is, so I grab the toilet papered thing and get back onto the bed. When I turn on the light, I can see it's about six inches long and wrapped in about half a roll of paper. What was my sister hiding?

  I unwrap it and instantly recognize what she didn't want anyone to see. My eyes are drawn to the two slightly faded pink lines in that window in the white pregnancy test stick. How many times have I prayed to see those pink lines? How many times have I paced back and forth in my bathroom hoping beyond hope that I'd see two lines instead of one?

  My hand shakes as I hold the proof that my youngest sister was pregnant at some time. Is that why she ran away? A mixture of shock and sadness fills me as I stare at those lines. Did she tell our mother before she left, or did she keep this secret to herself?

  I know the answer to that question.

  I lift Lauren's diary out of my purse and begin flipping through the pages to find anything she wrote that can tell me how she felt about this. It isn't until I reach the last few pages that I see she wrote anything about being pregnant.

  I don't understand. This can't be possible. The test must be wrong. It has to be. Shane and I only had sex twice and we used condoms. That was three months ago. I can't be. I can't even write the word.

  Her misery and fear is unmistakable. It echoes in every word she wrote. The sadness I felt before only multiplies now. If only she had come to any of us. Did she? I would know if she went to Claire for help. She would tell me. Maybe she went to Tess. If so, whatever she said didn't help.

  On the next page, her unhappiness is palpable.

  I went to the clinic in town and they confirmed the first test. I don't understand how this happened. What am I going to do?

  My heart sinks as I imagine my sister sitting in the same spot I am at that moment and thinking what would happen when she told our mother. So young, she likely knew she would be unforgiving about her mistake.

  Elizabeth Tarrigan's rules don't allow for mistakes.

  As I imagine how she must have worried about how to tell her, my stomach clenches and my aching hands tighten into fists. Lauren deserved better than to spend her last days in this house terrified she'd be found out. My mother's hypocrisy leaves me fuming. My not having a child is something horrible, a crime against my marriage. That I've never been able to give my husband a baby means I've failed in some way as a woman and as a wife. But my sister being pregnant would be just as big a crime. No husband and no marriage would mean she'd have made a monumental mistake, yet the very same behavior is what my mother judges me on.

  Maybe she knew. Maybe my sister turned to her in her moment of need and told her the truth. I try to imagine my mother hearing the news and accepting it in any loving way, but I know better. There is no way she would celebrate the pregnancy of her only unmarried daughter. Forget about the fact that merely having that piece of paper saying she was someone's wife would change the news of a baby from a travesty to a celebration. She simply wouldn't have been able to be happy for my sister.

  Then I think about Lauren agonizing over the choice of keeping the baby and becoming a pariah or getting rid of it. She sat alone in this very room where I am now, on the same bed, trying desperately to figure out a way to have that life she'd always dreamed of. She never wanted to be a young bride to an established older man like the rest of us. No, that wasn't the life for her. She wanted to go to college and see what the world outside our mother's home offered.

  And because she broke one of the cardinal rules, she had to leave. My mother’s rigid beliefs left her no other choice.

  My heart breaks at the sadness of it all. Alone and afraid, she had no other way out. I didn't understand it before, but I do now. I may not be as brave to leave my entire life behind, but I know something of wanting more than our mother's expectations offer.

  In my hurt for all Lauren went through, I have to speak to my mother about what I know. If she didn't know my sister was pregnant, she deserves to know, and if she did, I want to know what she said to Lauren when she heard the news.

  For hours, I wait for her to return home, but she never does. Drowsy again, I lay down and close my eyes, clutching my sister's diary to me as I drift off to sleep.

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Alexei

  Garrison Lane feels eerily quiet tonight. I glance up and down the street and see the familiar warm yellow light in e
ach window alerting whoever may be interested that family is home for the night. One after another tells the same story, except for Natalie’s house.

  No warm yellow light shines in the front window there.

  Samson’s watch ended hours ago when Natalie left this place to come to my home. His part of this job is over. Mine will soon come to an end too.

  And then Adam Anchoff will be nothing but a memory, good or bad, I guess, depending on who actually thinks of him after he’s gone. Not that I’ll think of him. He’ll be simply another job completed.

  Nothing more and nothing less.

  And yet, this kill is personal.

  I think back to that day he walked into my office, unsure about everything but one thing. His wife had to die. That he thought I’d be the perfect man to do it had nothing to do with my skill or ability and all to do with his mistake that I shared the same ridiculous beliefs as he does.

  To him, I was just a man like my father before me, a soul tortured by the choices he made who sought absolution through a church based on little that could truly be called godly ideals. That was his first mistake.

  See, I don’t suffer like my father did with guilt about what I do in this world or who I am. I am a killer, like every firstborn son in the Volkov family has been for generations. Adrian Volkov was the same thing as I am now, my teacher and mentor as I grew to be a man destined to do the job of my ancestors. However, he had a fatal flaw.

  Guilt for the people he killed haunted him day and night.

  So to make himself feel better, he turned to the Church of Genesis. There he found people willing to forgive him for all that he’d done and who convinced him some god would do the same if only he bought into their nonsense.

  I pinch the bridge of my nose at a headache that’s beginning to form behind my eyes. What idiocy all that Genesis bullshit was. And to think that a killer sought forgiveness through a group of people who made him believe that what he did wasn’t so bad after all, as long as it helped out the men in the church whose wives had become more difficult than they liked.