by Nikki Sloane
“How have I used you?”
“You want me to kill your father.” It was getting hard to hold back. Her grip on me was too tight, too good.
“No. I want . . . your help. Be someone who’ll have my back,” she whispered. “My partner.”
She wanted someone to cover her ass. Ironic, given I was actually inside it at that very moment. “Why should I believe anything that comes out of your lying mouth?”
She turned her head to the side so I could see her profile and the grimace she made. “I’m not lying.”
I spanked her like the strike would punish, but it had no effect. She kept talking.
“We can work together.”
“Shut up!”
I slapped a hand on her shoulder and held her firm as I drove into her. My vision narrowed. My heart pumped blood through my system at the speed of light. My knees ached against the hardwood, but I fucked her relentlessly. She didn’t like it, but she didn’t hate it either. Or at least, she didn’t hate it enough to give in.
“You’re gonna make me come,” I groaned. My body took control. I leaned over her, crushing my chest to her back and shoved a hand down between her legs. I wanted to turn her body against her. I stirred her clit, rubbing my fingers furiously from side to side, and bit down on her shoulder.
“Oh, shit,” she whined. “Shit, Vasilije.”
“Fuck, yeah.” I grunted it between thrusts. “Oh, fuck, yes.”
Pleasure shot from me. It ruptured from my core in waves of heat, traveling like flames through gasoline. I came in a torrent, one gush of ecstasy after another, filling her in spurts. She moaned through it, like my enjoyment was hers, and fuck me . . . was it? Did she get off knowing I had?
As soon as the last pulse thudded through my body, I reached over and grabbed the plastic bag. I’d bought her more than just lingerie to wear, but thought it might be a while before I sprung the small plug on her. It had been more a gift for me than her.
I turned the small velvet drawstring bag over and dumped the silver plug out into my palm, and slowly retracted my dick.
“What—” she started, and the rest of the words died as I slid the metal plug into place.
I yanked her underwear back up. “Maybe I’ll fuck you again and pull that plug out so you’ve got my cum dripping out of both holes.”
“Oh my God.”
I stood, went to the bathroom, and cleaned up, and when I came back, she was as I’d left her, waiting for me. “You’re still here,” I said. It would have been easy for her to lift the bench and slide the duct tape handcuffs off.
Her breath came and went rapidly. “If this was an attempt to drive me away . . . it failed.”
“You’re fucking stupid. Get the fuck out of my house before I change my mind and kill you.”
She was bound, yet she stared at me defiantly. “Then do it, because I’m not going anywhere.”
Did she have a death wish? No, I thought bitterly. At this point, what did she have to lose?
“Go,” I said. “Run back to daddy for protection.” Or at least her brother. Konstantine wasn’t as powerful as his father, but like me, he was next in line. It was fucking inevitable one day I’d be pitted against him, if he survived to succeed his father.
She shook her head. “I’d rather let you fuck my ass again.”
I came to her, kneeling beside the bench and got in her face. “You’re seriously starting to piss me off.”
“Look at me. Do you think I care anymore?” She spat the words like bullets.
I’d degraded her. Pushed and humiliated her, and yet she stayed. Every second she stayed made me nervous. When was she going to give up? She wasn’t loyal to me. She couldn’t be. I was eager for her to break.
“You don’t get to choose your family,” she said quietly, “but you can choose your friends.”
Was she fucking nuts? “We’ll never be friends, Oksana.”
She let out a sigh of frustration and squirmed against the tape. “I’m still the same person I was before you knew about my father, and you, Vasilije Markovic, are the only person I’ve shared that with.”
Fucking her had been a bad idea. It messed with my hormones and made me weak. If she had told me the night I brought her home she was Sergey Petrov’s illegitimate daughter, she would have left in the trunk of my car. It shouldn’t be different now, but . . . fucking hell.
Everything was different.
I’d thought we were the same, and I’d liked her so goddamn much. Now, I stared at the woodgrain in the floor, and considered leaving her here while I went upstairs to smoke a joint. It was all too much. I felt heavy.
“Please,” she said. “I need you to tell me my brother is going to be okay. If you want to kill a Petrov, you know which one is the bigger threat.”
It slipped out before I thought better of it. I was used to saying whatever I wanted around her. “We can’t get to him.”
“But I can.”
Well, shit. At least that was true.
Her voice was firm. “You don’t want me anymore, fine. But we can help each other. Think about it. How much better would it be for your family if Sergey was gone? And my father doesn’t care about me . . . but Konstantine does. My brother’s not going to do something if he thinks it might get me killed.”
It all sounded too good to be true.
I found myself on my feet and walking toward the kitchen, and as I came back to her carrying the chef’s knife, her panicked look was sharper than the steel blade in my hand.
“I can help with your uncle,” she said in a rush. “I could—”
“I don’t need your help.” My voice was hard and cold. Her eyes doubled in size with every step I took.
“Oh, God, don’t,” she cried. “Not with a knife.”
Her gasp of horror was surgical, cutting deep to my bones, and I fell to my knees. I slipped the tip of the knife between the tape and the bench leg, and jerked upward. She used her newly freed hand to wipe away a loose tear while I cut her other wrist free, and the knife clattered to the floor.
She scrambled into my arms, and I went on autopilot, allowing it for a moment before I realized what she’d done. It was wrong to hold her, but it didn’t make it feel any less good, and I hated her for it. I dumped her from my arms.
“If you stay here,” I said, “I’ll come to my senses and kill you.”
She pressed her blood-red lips together, but otherwise didn’t move.
“I’ll probably fuck you again, and then kill you,” I added. Although, I’d thrown everything at her and she was still here, sitting on the floor and looking at me with her big doe eyes like I was her savior and not the devil.
“I’m not leaving.” Her tone was firm. “You said you always get what you want, but you also said we’re the same. I want your help.”
I stood. “I need a shower to wash your fucking stink off me.”
I trudged toward the stairs and lumbered up them, ignoring her as she followed. I kicked open the door to my room and stormed through it, walking directly into the shower. I didn’t even take my clothes off, and neither did she. Only her shoes were left outside the glass shower door.
I turned the water on. It blasted us, cold at first and then so fucking hot it should have melted our skin off. I wanted it to wash away her lies, but all it did was soak my jeans until they were stiff and heavy.
Water cascaded down her pale skin, drenching the lingerie. I finally gave her my attention, backing her up against the wall and putting my hands on either side of her head, trapping her in. Although I wasn’t sure why. She’d had every opportunity to leave and hadn’t done it, even after I’d ordered her to.
She reached a hand up and set it on my jaw, but I pushed it away and slapped my palm against the tile right by her head, making her flinch. “You don’t get to touch me unless I say so.”
I moved, gliding my hand down her body, following the flow of the water, making my point without words. I didn’t need permission to touch
what was mine.
“If Konstantine dies,” she said, “my father won’t stop until every Markovic is in the ground. But if you kill him, and your uncle . . . Vasilije, you’ll run this town.”
If I put the personal shit to the side, deep down I knew she was right. I couldn’t trust her, but the opportunity was hard to ignore. Killing my uncle was my priority, but inheriting the family empire afterward was a nice perk, and the idea of her keeping the Russians at bay was tempting.
I’d stay on my toes and could always kill her if I sensed her loyalty was fake. Which gave me an idea. “If I stop the order on Konstantine, I’m going to need something from you.”
She looked eager. “Anything.”
“You need to kill Alek.”
Oksana barely blinked. “Fine. How do you want me to do it?”
33
Oksana
After the shower, I went to my room and dressed in the outfit I’d been wearing the first night I’d come to the house. Vasilije had instructed me to. He wanted to burn my clothes after I took care of Aleksandar.
It was him or Konstantine, I reminded myself repeatedly. If it would save my brother’s life, I would have to pull the trigger. I might be a panicked mess while I did it, but it would happen. Killing Ilia hadn’t been premeditated. It had felt right, and I had no regrets.
However, this murder felt . . . muddy.
Vasilije sat on the couch in the living room, and looked up at me when I entered. His gaze was cold and impersonal, and it stung. I’d shown him the side of myself no one had seen, and I believed he’d done the same.
I’d been so wrong.
“Alek’s on his way,” he said, setting his phone down on the coffee table. “There’s the gun in the office. You know how to use it?”
“Yes.”
“Go get it.”
It felt like a test. I strode into the darkened office, yanked open the bottom drawer, and scooped up the gun. When I came back into the living room, he eyed the weapon in my hand. I’d had plenty of opportunities to kill him, and hadn’t. Wasn’t this proof I wanted to work with him?
I sat on the oversized chair opposite him and tucked the gun under my leg, hiding it from view. Vasilije’s gaze was crushing, and the silence stretching between us was painful. My anxiety about what was going to happen made me honest.
“The only thing I lied about was my father.”
His expression was fixed. “Yeah? Well, it was a big fucking lie.”
“I’m sorry I had to tell it.” I borrowed a tactic from my stepmother, and went the passive-aggressive route. “I didn’t want to hurt you.”
“You didn’t hurt me,” he snapped, but his quick answer was too revealing. The Serbian boy had feelings after all.
“Then working together shouldn’t be a problem.”
He seethed as he searched for the perfect comeback, and then he stood abruptly, as if he’d found it. “I don’t know how I didn’t see it before. You’re a lot like him.”
My blood slowed to a stop. “Like who?”
“Your father.”
The terrifying statement landed, and I launched to my feet as if I could get away from it. “I’m nothing like him.”
“You’re getting awfully worked up for a girl who said she doesn’t have feelings.”
I took in a deep breath. “Maybe I only have feelings around you.”
He jerked back. His surprise lasted only a moment, and then evaporated into suspicion.
“It’s not a lie,” I said softly. “God, Vasilije. I wish it was.”
His mouth dropped open to say something, but he was cut off when the security system chirped and the front door swung open. My heart climbed into my throat as Aleksandar stepped inside and dusted the snow off his jacket. He hesitated when he saw me.
“What’s up?” His guarded gaze went to Vasilije.
I sat down on the chair, concealing the gun. It was a hard, uncomfortable lump beneath me. I wasn’t supposed to use it right away. Vasilije wanted to confront him first, although I was sure he was drawing this out to torture me. The anticipation was its own kind of murder.
“I need your piece,” Vasilije said.
The statement put Aleksandar on high alert. He stiffened, his hands balled into fists, and his angry gaze snapped to me.
“Don’t look at her,” Vasilije ordered. “I’m handling it, and she’s not the one you stabbed in the back.”
Fear mixed with regret, contorting Aleksandar’s face into an ugly mess. “They got to me, Vasilije. I’m sorry—”
“I need to know how,” he said flatly. “I was good to you. I deserve a goddamn answer on what they had that got you to turn on me.”
Aleksandar’s shoulders slumped and his voice went small. “I needed money.”
That seemed to piss Vasilije off. “I’ve got lots of fucking money.”
Aleksandar shifted his weight, uneasy. “I was in deep, with a lot of different families. Some of them, you’d told me to stay away from.”
“So, that’s it? A shitload of money was all it took for you to sell me out?”
“They’ll kill me if I don’t do what they want, and besides the money . . .” His gaze flashed to me. “When it was done, Sergey told me I could have her.”
My pulse climbed as Vasilije’s voice did. “What the fuck does that mean? Have her?”
“After she did what she needed to, she’d be mine. I could fuck her, or marry her, or . . . whatever. He promised her to me.”
There wasn’t anything left of me to crush. I’d never intended to hold up my end of the deal with my father, and obviously, he hadn’t either.
But Vasilije didn’t like this at all. “She’d never be yours. Oksana’s been mine from the first moment I saw her.” Even without looking my direction, I knew he was addressing me. “Did you know about that deal?”
“No, but after burning down a house with an innocent family locked inside, nothing Sergey does surprises me anymore. I told you, he’s evil.”
“And that’s who you work for now,” Vasilije said to Aleksandar.
The guy’s face twisted with remorse. “I don’t!”
“Then give me your fucking gun, Alek.”
For a long moment, he considered not doing it, but must have realized there was no upside. Even if he outdrew and killed Vasilije, he’d have both the Russians and the Serbians after him, and they’d tear through his family until they got what they wanted.
He moved cautiously, pulling the gun from behind his back and reluctantly handing it to Vasilije. “She’s the one who works for Sergey,” he muttered.
Vasilije’s head swung toward me, and his smile was so wide and sinister, my heart stopped. “Go ahead, Oksana.”
I jammed my hand beneath my thigh and closed a fist around the 9mm. As I stood from the chair on shaky legs, I raised the gun, and Aleksandar’s beady eyes flooded with horror.
“Does she look like she works for Sergey?” Vasilije snarled.
The gun weighed a million pounds in my hand, but I kept my aim fixed, waiting for Vasilije’s final command. I was stunned he wanted me to do it right here in the entryway. It’d take hours to clean, but then again, I’d gotten lots of practice over the years, cleaning up after my father’s downsizing meetings.
“If I tell you to pull the trigger,” Vasilije said, “will you?”
My voice was so much stronger than I felt. “Yes.”
He looked pleased. “You can put that down. I’ve seen what I need to.”
My gasp of relief was internal, but Aleksandar’s was loud, and he was so overwhelmed, he nearly collapsed. I lowered the gun, grateful to have the strain gone.
Vasilije’s focus turned to Aleksandar. “Don’t look so fucking relieved. The only reason you’re still alive is because I don’t want your blood ruining my floors.”
Aleksandar froze. “What?”
Vasilije strode to the front door and yanked it open, revealing the man lurking on the front steps. Filip’s gun was out—no
t up—but it didn’t make him any less dangerous. His critical eyes surveyed the room. When his gaze caught mine, they widened a degree. He was probably thinking about the last time he’d seen me, when I’d been crouched down on the dirty warehouse floor, pretending to be cowering in fear. I’d watched Goran’s top enforcer kill one of my father’s men with surgical precision that night. His expression had been cold and joyless.
“Don’t make it quick,” Vasilije said. “I wouldn’t if I was doing it.”
Aleksandar stumbled backward, maybe thinking about running, but where would he go? He was the only one not armed. “Vasilije, just wait a minute.”
But he was ignored, and Vasilije kept talking directly to Filip. “When you’re done, make sure he’s somewhere the Russians will find him. It needs to send a message. I already talked with my uncle. We’ll hold off on Konstantine, and see how they react.”
Filip stepped through the door, and his swift approach seemed to paralyze Aleksandar. He peered up at the man with the shaved head like he was God himself, and didn’t move as Filip grabbed his arm.
“I have to ask a favor, though,” Vasilije said abruptly. “He’s going to say some shit about Oksana, and I need you to keep it from my uncle. Not forever. Just until I’ve got it handled, which, trust me—I will.” If Goran believed I was a spy for the Russians, my fate would be worse than Aleksandar’s, yet Vasilije’s tone was casual. “Do you mind?”
Filip considered the statement as he began to drag a blubbering Aleksandar toward the door. “How long?”
“A few weeks. If you want to tell him before then, I respect that. All I ask is a heads-up.”
“Vasilije!” Aleksandar sniffled, sucking back tears. “Please, I’m sorry. Don’t do this!”
“I’m not doing shit,” he fired back. “You tried to set me up. You made this choice for me.”
Filip put both hands on Aleksandar and wrenched him from the doorframe he’d latched onto. “If it’s only a few weeks,” Filip said, “I can sit on the info.”
“Thanks.” Vasilije smiled. “Get him out of here and . . . have fun.” He shut the door on Aleksandar’s cries for help, and they grew quieter after a thud, making me think Filip had thrown a punch to shut him up.