Asher

by Shandi Boyes

  I slowly rise to the balls of my feet, the expertise of his pumps making me match him grind for grind. When his fingertip brushes my clit, my body soaks up the sensation. I’m shivering all over, my urge to come rampant.

  I wish I could trick him into believing I’m not seconds away from detonation. Unfortunately, he knows my body more intimately than I do. That’s why his fingertip only ghosts over my clit. He’s happy for me to build the orgasmic wave, but he’ll stop it before it crests.

  He brings me to the brink of hysteria over and over again until I snap, “Fuck you, Asher Yury. Fuck you!”

  “Wrong again, Little Mouse. I’m the one fucking you.”

  He pulls his fingers from my pussy and sucks them into his mouth. The flare passing through his eyes lightens the glint they always wear when he goes on the warpath. He wasn’t joking when he said he’d kill a man just for thinking about me naked. If my body wasn’t harnessing his urge to go on a rampage, he would have been out the door twenty minutes ago.

  Fortunately, I’m more important to him than anything. Revenge. Money. Drugs. Nothing is more imperative to his sanity than me and my backbone.

  When I slip off his desk, Asher pushes me back down. “I didn’t say you could move.”

  “And I didn’t agree to be your wife, but that’s still happening, isn’t it?”

  “Why seek confirmation on something when I already know what the answer will be?” He sounds cocky. He has a right to be. I dreamed about being his wife since I was six. I’ve never wished for anything more.

  Feeding off his arrogance, I lift my torso off his desk and spin around. The tingle racing through my veins makes my stride wobbly, but I’m facing a much bigger battle than an impending climax. I’m fighting to show Asher he wants this as much as me.

  “Zariah...” he warns in a growl when I push him with enough force, he lands in his office chair with a thud.

  He’d continue teasing me if he wasn’t fascinated by the way I’ve lowered myself onto my knees in front of him. “Why seek confirmation on something when I already know what the answer will be?”

  As the hiss of a zipper breaks through the silence, he strokes my jaw, softening it for the exhausting activity it’s about to undertake. I’m still a novice when it comes to all things sexy, but I’ve been shown a few tricks the past four weeks. Asher is a great teacher, and I’m a more than eager student.

  “Moisten those lips, Zariah. Get them ready to be stretched.”

  You could call him cocky, but I see it more as confidence. It isn’t an act when he has the goods to back up his claims.

  “Scoot back. We need leverage to ensure I fit all the way down your throat.”

  After I shuffle back, he stands to his feet, tilts my head to the correct angle, then feeds his cock into my mouth. I suppress a gag by swallowing when he takes it to the very back of my throat.

  “That’s it. Deepthroat my cock like you’ve been taught.”

  I feel the hum of his words all the way to the base of his dick, amplifying my choking response when my airway is restricted by him. Whether being choked by his hand or by his big cock stretching my throat, I love the sensation that comes from it. It’s weird, and I honestly feel a little dirty, but Asher doesn’t seem to mind.

  When tears well in my eyes, Asher’s thumbs stroke my cheek and jaw. He soothes the pain rocketing across my face, but he doesn’t slow his grinds in the slightest. He fucks my face, growling when my lips reach the clipped hair displayed across his pelvis.

  My hand stops skating down my stomach when Asher growls, “Touch that clit and I’ll drench your throat with my seed instead of your cunt.”

  His threat makes me want to fondle myself even more. I’m surrounded by his scent, gagging on his cock, all while he stares down at me with lust-filled eyes. I’m not strong enough for this.

  “Zariah.” He already knows me so well, aware no amount of threat will stop the tsunami cresting in my womb. “If you come—”

  Fireworks explode in front of my eyes before his entire sentence leaves his mouth. It’s a beautifully terrifying climax that has me choking on more than Asher’s cock.

  With a hazy, lust-clouded head, I don’t realize Asher’s cock has been yanked from my mouth until I’m plucked off the floor and planted on Asher’s desk—right as he burrows his head between my clenching thighs.

  “Your orgasms are my fucking orgasms, Zariah. I own every one of them.”

  His deep timbre intensifies my climax. I scream his name on repeat as my lungs fight for air. I feel like I’m drowning, the sensation unlike anything I’ve ever experienced. His tongue is fucking me as well as his fingers did. It is a vicious, frenzied exchange that heats me up everywhere. He’s angry I took his victory away from him, but more than that, he’s annoyed he has been left to lap up the remnants of my climax instead of devouring it during the process.

  He has said time and time again the past month that he loves when I come on his face. That and being able to smell me on his skin are what keep him going in the hours we’re apart. It’s crude yet beautiful, and makes me fall for him even faster than I did when we were kids. The feelings I have for him are deep, dark, and rough, but they’re also real. It’s the realest thing I’ve ever felt.

  “Asher—”

  “Shh, Little Mouse. I’m not angry. You’re not in trouble.” He climbs up my body to seal his mouth over mine. I taste myself on his tongue when he spears it between my lips. He kisses me almost tenderly, like he too heard the sentiment in my tone. “Open up for me, Zariah. Let me in.”

  One of his hands cradles my face as the other notches the crest of his cock into the entrance of my pussy. His coat bunches around my stomach when I curl my legs around his waist to help him fill me.

  At a time when Asher would usually turn into an animal, shredding my clothes off with no consideration of their price tags, he’s gentle and sweet. He rocks into me slowly, the grinds of his hips precise and calculated. It isn’t about punishment. It’s about pleasure and love.

  His perfect pace, the heat of his breath on my neck, the praise he whispers in my ear about how good I feel, and that he’ll never want anyone but me are too much. The open rawness of our lovemaking has me choking back tears. I honestly feel like I can’t breathe.

  It might be easier once I get this off my chest. “I love you, Asher Yury.”

  Tears leak down my face when he murmurs into my ear, “Wrong again, Little Mouse. You don’t love me. You own me. Every piece of me is yours. Completely. Wholly. Without constraint. I am yours.” I bite on the inside of my cheek to stop more tears from falling when he lifts his head from the crook of my neck to peer down at me. “And you are mine. Back then and now—”

  “And forever?”

  He bites my lower lip before soothing the sting with his tongue. He hates my tears even more than I do. “And forever. No one will ever take you away from me again, Zariah. We’ll never be apart. I promise you that.”

  I don’t need his words to hear his promise. He doesn’t pretend to be brave; he is brave. He doesn’t talk a big game; he hits the ball out of the park. Just like he’d never makes a promise he has no intention of keeping.

  Some may say I’m stupid to believe the word of a mobster, but they don’t see the man I do. People with good intentions make promises, but only those with good character keep them.

  Asher is the latter.

  Chapter Thirty

  Asher

  “Straight to our room, Zariah. Don’t test me.”

  I should walk her to our room than no man would be game to look her way, but I was in the process of an extremely important call when I detected her presence. My call could wait; Zariah couldn’t. But now that she is satisfied, I have no excuse not to return to the matter I was attending to before the scent of insatiably greedy cunt got the better of me.

  Once Zariah closes my office door behind her, I dial a number scratched on a sheet of paper on my desk, the same paper holding evidence of Zaria
h’s climax. While sinking into my chair, I think back to our exchange. My sweet, innocent Zariah is in love—with me.

  A mobster.

  A man who has killed more people than all of my foot soldiers combined.

  A man who loves her too, but doesn’t know how to say it back.

  This is arrogant of me to admit, but I knew Zariah loved me long before she declared it. She’s never been good at hiding her emotions, so I’ve seen it in her eyes for a few weeks now. Call me cocky, but I’m fairly certain it’s the same glint her eyes held the first time they landed on me after over a decade of absence. It’s the same, groggy, hazy look she gives me every morning when I wake her by eating her for breakfast. It is edged with lust, but the core of it is love.

  I stop smiling like a smug prick when a deep, accented voice comes down the line. Usually, Bahrain handles logistics for my empire, but since this is more a personal matter than business, I’ve outsourced a few tasks. Nikolai swears by this man, and since he trusts him, I can as well.

  “Back so soon?”

  I hear Hunter drag his hand across his thick beard as he struggles to stifle his chuckle. Hunter Kane is a security genius. His equipment is unsurpassed by anything I’ve seen, and it fills every corner of my compound, but I don’t want him for that. I want his hacking skills. Skills that will help him bypass a program he designed not to be bypassed.

  “It was brunch. They never take as long to consume since it’s a snack between breakfast and lunch.”

  He laughs again—the fucking prick. Anyone would swear I hung up on him twenty minutes ago, not the hour and half that’s ticked by.

  I work my jaw side to side to ease the agitation in my voice. It does me no good when I spit out, “Keep the jokes coming, and we’ll see how many you can tell when your intestines are hanging out of your stomach.”

  He laughs again.

  He must have a death wish.

  “Calm down, big boy. I know it’s fucking cold in Russia, but there’s no need to get snappy.”

  I’m going to get snappy—when I snap his fucking neck.

  I flatten the palm not clutching my phone on my trousers, abandoning the clench and unclench routine when Hunter tells me our time apart served me well in more ways than I realize.

  “It wasn’t fucking pretty, but I’m in.”

  My chair creaks when I sit forward. “And?”

  “You were right. Vyesniy Volkov wasn’t the payee for Dominique’s procurement.” Anger. Hate. Vengeance so fucking thick I can barely breathe through it hits me at once when he murmurs, “Vaughn Volkov was. He inherited a nice chunk of the Volkov fortune when he turned eighteen. Half of it went toward purchasing Dominique.”

  I knew that fucker couldn’t be trusted. Zariah doesn’t see in his eyes what I do because she’s conditioned to ignore it. She always sees the good in people until she’s proven wrong. I’m the opposite. You don’t gain my trust until you deserve it.

  Wanting as much evidence as I can, I devote my attention back to my cell. “What did he spend the other half of his inheritance on?”

  Hunter chuckles again, the sound nowhere near as humorous as his earlier laughter. “That’s the real kicker.” I’d give anything to be able to reach through the phone and strangle him when he pauses to suck down a quick breath. “He used it to bankrupt his father’s corporation.”

  “What?”

  “Shady investments. Hijacking his own shipments. If it had the Volkov named attached to it, Vaughn was fucking with it. He even returned a shipment of guns to the Popov crew at the cost of thirty K. I’m no expert, but it’s like he has that condition, you know the one I’m referring to, where they like seeing others suffer—?”

  “Borderline personality disorder?”

  I don’t know who the interrupter is, but her voice is feminine.

  “I was more thinking Munchausen syndrome.”

  A girly giggle shrills down the line. “No, that’s when you pretend to be sick. This is more a BPA condition. He’s fucked in the head—”

  I interrupt the quarrelsome duo’s private conversation. “He’s more than fucked in the head; he’s fucked. Permanently.” I stand to my feet, my blood raging. “I’ll send payment to the account you requested by the end of the day.”

  Not giving Hunter the chance to reply, I disconnect our call. I’m out of my office even quicker than that. When Matvei sees me storming past him, the expression on my face tells him everything. I’m wearing the same murderous look I had when I first brought Vaughn in for justice. Except this time, I’m going to kill the little fucker. You don’t play me and expect it not to cost you your life. I don’t give a fuck who you are. You mess with me, you’re a dead man.

  “Get Zariah into lockdown. I don’t want word of this getting out.”

  I’ve had enough shit to wade through the past month when word spread that I gave Vaughn a second pardon in his lifetime. I don’t issue pardons—ever—but I knew the chances of explaining things to Zariah without him were slim. Except for waking up with the worst hangover I’ve ever had, I remember nothing about the night Zariah cracked her skull.

  You’d think it would have scared me into getting clean. It didn’t. It had the opposite effect. I wanted to see Zariah more than I craved air, but every attempt I made to reach her was shut down. She had become a fucking ghost, and I was supposedly the one who sent her into hiding.

  I was pissed. I hated the entire fucking world, and I made sure everyone around me knew it. That’s how I became the man I am today. I swore I’d never let another woman get under my skin as my Little Mouse had, that I’d never be played for a fool again. It was working until my drug-fucked head thought I could replace the girl I dreamed about every night with one who looked similar to her.

  Dominique was an obsession, but my fixation wasn’t on her. It was on the girl I couldn’t have, the one I still craved after I thought she had shunned me from her life. I told myself having Dominique would be the same, that it wasn’t Zariah I craved. It was her skin, her hair color, and her scent. I had the first two things right within a week of Dominique landing in Russia, but I could never replicate Zariah’s scent. Even buying Dominique the same perfume Zariah wore didn’t work. No matter how much I wished it were true, Dominique wasn’t Zariah, so she never smelled like her.

  My long strides down the hall slow when I spot a pair of feet sticking out of a room halfway down the corridor. After unclipping my gun from my harness, I glide down one side of the corridor, keeping my shoulder as close to the wall as possible.

  As suspected, the unmoving feet belong to one of the guards I placed on Vaughn’s door. Zariah may have trusted him, but I never did, so I did everything in my power to keep them apart. Zariah has only visited Vaughn’s hospital bed when I am with her, and even then, her visits are sporadic. She’ll never admit it, but I know she’s angry at him. He may have only been ten when he drugged their mother, but age doesn’t matter when you have a conscience. He knew what he was doing was wrong, he just didn’t care. I guarantee it.

  I’d lean down to check if the guard has a pulse, but I don’t need to. He’s dead. Taken down by a clean mafia kill: a bullet between the eyes. I prefer exploding their brains with a shot to the eye first. Because there’s no skull to break through, my bullet turns their brains to mush with only one shot.

  My cell phone buzzes in my pocket. I ignore it. I can hear voices murmuring from inside Vaughn’s room. One belongs to my Little Mouse. She isn’t talking, but I’ve heard her moan enough times the past month I can’t mistake even a gagged murmur.

  With my gun braced high, I push open the door. It gives out a little squeak, but it’s nothing on the fury that rages through my veins when my eyes zoom in on a visual too sick to put into words. Vaughn has Zariah clutched to the front of his body. One hand is covering her mouth, and the other is holding a gun to her temple. If the make and model is anything to go by, he’s holding his sister hostage with the same gun he stole from my guard.

&
nbsp; Nothing but rage is audible in my voice when I warn, “If she gets so much as a scratch, I will gut you where you stand.”

  “You’re not in a position to issue threats—”

  I cut him off with a glare. “It isn’t a threat when it’s true. That beatdown I gave you last month will seem like child’s play compared to the hell I’ll rain down on you if you don’t release her this very instant.”

  When Zariah’s pupils widen after her eyes shift to the side, I follow their gaze. There’s a person dressed head to toe in black hiding in the shadows, wearing a balaclava. He is clutching two syringes full of murky liquid.

  With a banshee cry, he pushes off their feet and charge for me faster than I can squeeze back my trigger. I knock the first syringe out of his hands, but I miss the second one. It jabs into my arm so forcefully, the needle snaps off. I don’t know what the fuck he hit me with, but it instantly paralyzes my arm—the one clutching my gun. It falls to the ground with a clatter, its boink, donk, boink scarcely heard over Zariah’s screams.

  My attacker makes the mistake of watching my gun fall. It gives me plenty of time to shoot out my uninjured arm to pin him to the wall by his throat. My right leg wobbles like it is seconds from giving out, but my grip is fierce. He will be dead before I hit the ground.

  Well, that would have been the case if a bullet didn’t take me down first.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Zariah

  When a bullet rockets through Asher’s shoulder, my throat goes dry from my mangled cry. Tears pool down my face when he falls to the floor a few seconds later. My baby brother just shot the man I love.

  He killed him.

  I feel the burn from his gun’s recent fire when Vaughn returns it to my temple. I smell the gunpowder in the air, but I’m too enraged to stop and calculate the consequences of my actions. He isn’t here to protect me. He’s here to kill me.

  If Asher is dead, he did precisely that with only one bullet.