An angry voice nearby. “She would run to her father. Tell him everything.”
Viktor.
I open my eyes, blink in the sunshine.
Aleksio’s looking down at me, gaze dark with worry. “Are you okay?” Trees above. Dizzying sky. Part of the roof. We’re out in the driveway of that Stonybrook house.
I force my lips to form his name. “Aleksio.”
He’s holding me like I weigh nothing. “Fuck, Mira.”
“She was going to run to Daddy,” Viktor says again from somewhere nearby. “She would tell him where we are. Show the patsani we are weak.”
“I wouldn’t,” I mumble. “Wouldn’t…tell…” I try to speak but I can’t.
Because Yuri Tasered the hell out of me.
I can feel the rage pulse through Aleksio. He must have pulled me from the truck. “She would never do that,” he says. “She would never betray us.”
“She’s a Nikolla.”
“This conversation is over,” he growls. His growl reverberates through me.
“She’s hurting us, brat.”
For once I agree with Viktor. I’m hurting them, tearing them apart.
I feel the rumble in his chest, deep and possessive. “You don’t touch her.”
“Kiro is dead, and she lives,” Viktor says. “She weakens us. They would see that she has her fingers. She shows them we don’t keep our promises.”
“This shit between us right here is the only thing weakening us,” Aleksio barks. He carries me into the house, limping through the foyer, clutching me close.
“Your ankle,” I say. “Put me down.”
He tightens his arms around me.
Viktor’s drunken voice follows behind, talking half in Russian.
Aleksio pulls me more tightly to his chest. It reminds me of the first day in the yard when they shot up Dad’s boat.
We pass Yuri, who is standing in the kitchen holding a blue ice pack to his eye.
Viktor keeps coming. “Aleksio—”
“Lay off! And if you or any of your men touch her again, I’ll kill you.”
“Don’t say that,” I say. “Don’t say that to your brother.”
Aleksio is too far away in rage to hear anything. He slams the study door with his foot and settles me down on a leather couch, putting pillows around me.
“Stop it—I’m not made of glass.” I sit up. “And you can’t fight with your brother like this.”
He goes to get me a glass of water from the wood-paneled bar in the corner. He hands it down to me. His cheeks are pink. His eyes wild.
I clutch the glass. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be fucking sorry. But you can’t do that again.”
“Think, Aleksio. How does this even work with me here? It doesn’t!”
He loosens his tie and undoes a button, baring his neck. Raw power pulses around him. “Drink. Now.”
I drink.
He watches me as if from on high, a dark god with unruly curls, chest rising and falling. I think about that night in the hotel with a rush of lust. But this is not the time for lust.
I hand him up the empty glass.
“Good girl.” He sets it on the desk and pauses there, with his back to me. He stacks up some files and puts them aside.
It seems strange he’s suddenly focused on files.
“I can’t stay.”
“You have to stay,” he says.
“I wasn’t going to Dad, I swear. I would never betray you like that.”
“I know.”
“I was just going to disappear. You have to let me do that.”
He kneels in front of me, gaze like a weight on my skin, rolling all over my skin.
“You have to let me go.”
He takes my hand and turns it over, exposing my palm. He just holds it like a trembling fortuneteller, freaking out at the story that he sees in the lines. “I can’t let you go.”
“You know I can’t stay.”
He kisses my palm. It feels intimate—forbidden—like he’s kissing the very secret part of me. He feels dangerous.
I try to pull my hand away, but he won’t let go. He pulls back my fingers, and he kisses my palm again, feverish breath on my wrist. “I can’t let you go.”
Heat blooms through me. He’s invading me, taking me, and it’s just my palm. “You can’t keep me prisoner.”
He lifts his wild gaze to me, chocolaty hair half in his eyes. And fuck if that’s not a yes, I can.
I want him so badly I can’t breathe, but he’s not thinking right. If he had his head on straight, he’d understand how destructive it is for me to be here. “It was the perfect solution. I was going to go somewhere where you’d never find me.”
“I would tear apart the world looking for you.” He kisses the inside of my forearm. I have the crazy sense of him as a large animal, consuming me from the edges in.
I gasp as he rips my sleeve, then he kisses the tender skin on the inside of my upper arm.
“I would tear apart the fucking world,” he says.
“The longer I stay, the harder it will be to let me go.”
“I’m not letting you go.” He kisses my neck, melting my resolve.
“You’re grieving,” I say. “This is about Kiro.”
“This is about you.” He brings his mouth near mine, hovering there. Electricity builds in the blank space between our lips. “You’re mine. You always were.”
I could close the space between us. I could push my face to his and be lost in him. It starts with just this kiss. I would care for him and love him. Be his.
I want that kiss more than anything. But I push him away and stand.
He sways. His pain is rough and raw. He’s all heart, and right now that heart is wounded in a thousand ways.
“If I stay and drive out Viktor, you’ll come to hate me. And I’ll hate myself because this shit? All of this? It’s everything I ever wanted to be away from. I won’t be with somebody in a life of violence and vendettas. I won’t give up who I am. This can never be for me. You know it.”
He comes to me. “We’re never over. We weren’t over when Konstantin took me away. We weren’t over when they lowered my coffin into the ground. We’re sure as fuck not over now.”
I back up and hit the wall. “What are you going to do, lock me up my whole life? Shoot me?”
He grabs my wrists and slams them above my head, pinning them there.
My heart stutters as he runs his fingers down my neck. He unbuttons the top button. The next button. His gentle fingers set my skin ablaze. “Don’t.”
“Don’t what?” he whispers, harsh and hot in my ear. The next button. “Don’t use you like a dirty whore?”
His words are dark magic. My body hums in response.
“Don’t talk to me like that.”
“Why? Because you don’t want to like it?”
“This is crazy,” I gasp, voice barely a whisper.
I twist, but he has me, muscles like steel under the fine white shirt.
“We’re never over.” He kisses my neck. He kisses my ear, warm and tingly. “I always watched you. Always saw you. You were always mine.”
I hiss out a breath I didn’t know I was holding.
“You need me just like I need you. Say it. ‘I won’t leave you, Aleksio.’” He shoves his tongue in my ear, and I start to melt. “It makes me fucking crazy to think of you leaving.”
“You need your brother—”
“I need you.” His fingers dance against my bare skin as he rips my shirt down the middle. “We belong together, that’s all we need to know.”
All of my protests fall out of my mind under his touch, hot skin igniting mine.
“More,” I gasp.
He growls and rips open my shirt the rest of the way. He pulls aside the right cup of my bra and plants a kiss on the fleshy inside of my breast. “Deep down you’re an animal who wants to be used by a twisted, bloodthirsty killer like me, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” I say.
He slides a hand between my legs. His touch is hard, heavy.
He cups me through my skirt. Possessive.
“How hot are you to let me take you however I want? How hot? Tell me. Say it.”
“Aleksio…”
He pushes up my skirt and kicks my feet apart, then he presses his fingers between my legs, making contact with my soaked panties. His fingers graze over my pussy. I tremble with his every move.
“Aleksio…”
“What do you want, baby?”
I want him to call me a whore again. The word has a sharp point that I want to feel.
He strokes a finger between my legs, grazing my pussy. “No matter where you run I’ll always find you.”
I tremble with his every stroke, becoming more and more his. “Say it,” I say. “Like you did in the hotel.”
He rumbles, words like velvet. “Because you’re my dirty fucking whore.” He pauses and closes his palm over my pussy. “And this is mine. Got it?”
“Ungh,” I say.
He’s doing me again, owning me, sending heat licking up my spine.
“Mine to use how I want, got it?”
“Yes,” I breathe.
He keeps going, stoking the energy higher. “And right now I want you relaxed and dripping so I can do you hard.” He slides two fingers into me, invading me, pushing me into oblivion. Shapes pulse and build whenever I close my eyes. He’s not holding me anymore, but I’m not going anywhere.
He picks me up and carries me to the desk. He shoves everything off it—the files he so carefully stacked, the mugs, the laptop. “Lie back for me, baby.”
I lie back. I want him so bad I can’t think. I’m flying. Trembling. I’m completely his.
He pushes open my legs and stands above me, then he yanks his belt open with a hard jerk and starts unbuttoning his dress slacks, regarding me hungrily. The heat of his gaze is too much, and I press my knees together.
He shakes his head. “No, this is mine, remember?” He pushes my legs apart again. “Touch yourself.”
“Wh-what?”
He pulls out his log of a cock, dark and veiny and fiercely beautiful. I get hot remembering the way he shoved it down my throat. “You have to touch yourself right now.” It’s part plea and part decree.
I touch myself. He watches me with that invasive gaze of his. Everything between us feels impossible. Like everything is lost and all we have is this impossible madness, and it feels good.
Our impossible madness feels like the only true thing in the world.
I touch myself for him.
He climbs up on the desk with his pants half down. He kneels over me, his pants like a band around my chest. “Open, whore. This mouth is mine, too.”
I open my mouth and he arches into me, shoving his cock between my lips.
I’m spinning, stroking myself, bending to his will, taking him.
“That’s it,” he says. “Suck it. Feel me moving in your mouth. I want you to feel every throbbing vein. That’s what you do to me.”
I whimper.
“Shhhh, baby.” He hovers over me and grabs something from somewhere beyond my head. He places it in my hand. It’s round and smooth. “That’s a paperweight. You can crack my skull when you get tired of what I do to you. That’s your safe word.”
I grunt. He’s so off the chain. It shouldn’t turn me on.
“Kill me, fuck me, love me,” he gasps, invading my throat.
I move under him, panting through my nose. I’m about to come.
“Oh no, you don’t.” He pulls out and gets off of me, pulling my hand away from my crotch. “Wider. Open up for me, give me everything, baby.” He grabs my knees, spreading me wider himself. He holds me there, holds me open.
The air on my throbbing pussy is wickedly cool.
I groan as he penetrates me with his fingers, pushing in deep and merciless. He nips the side of my thigh, and I gasp. He’s doing something with his fingers, curling them as he slides them inside me, like he means to pull an orgasm right out of me.
I’m panting, needing him to never stop. He kisses down my belly. Down, down, he goes until he touches his tongue to my clit. I let out a cry. He licks once. It’s not a dainty lick, it’s a hard, mad, rough lick. A lick and a suck while he moves his fingers inside me.
He does it again, and I drop the paperweight. It shatters below. He licks me again and again, and I shatter, too, into a zillion pieces.
My cries are throaty and low and like an animal and I don’t even care. I’ve lost touch with everything normal.
“I like you like this. Like an animal broken for me. Touch yourself some more. Keep yourself swollen and ready for me.”
I feel shy and exposed now that I’ve spun down off coming, but I touch myself like he says. I think I’d do almost anything for him.
“What are you?”
“Your fucking whore to use.”
His hands tremble as he rolls on a condom, panting. “God, Mira,” he whispers. “I can’t…I can’t stop with you.”
“Don’t, then.”
Roughly, he shoves away my hand, like it was too much for him to watch me touch myself for even a second more. He’s over me, so gorgeous. I feel his fat, hard head between my legs.
He’s pushing into me, shoving into me, looming over me.
He presses my arms over my head and slides in.
I look into his eyes as he fills me. He’s impossibly thick inside me. Us together feels real and forever. The most honesty there can ever be in this world of lies.
“You feel better than I ever dreamed.” He moves in and out of me, harder and harder.
“You do, too.”
I’m on the knife edge of another orgasm, trying to make it last, but the way he’s panting, just gone, gone, gone, sends me over the edge, screaming his name.
And then he comes with a shout, clutching me, crushing me. I love the way he feels, the way he hurts.
After he comes, he stills, fully sheathed in me. It’s a long time before he pulls out.
I lie there boneless while he limps over to the wet bar. He grabs a bright blue towel and limps back.
“Your ankle.”
His lips quirk. “My ankle.” Like it’s so funny. “Lie the fuck still. This pussy is mine, and I plan to take perfect care of it.” He wipes between my legs—gently, thoroughly, gazing into my eyes.
I can feel myself getting addicted to his edge, to his possessiveness. Part of me wants to lie there and be his thing forever, like the rest of the world doesn’t exist.
Except it does exist.
When he decides my pussy is back to its perfect, pristine condition, he tosses the towel and lies down next to me on the desk, clothes half-off. He pushes my hair off my shoulder. “You look sad.”
I am sad. I’m sad for him. For us. “Our worlds are so different. You see darkness everywhere. Happy baby animals make you think of death and blood.”
“Yeah, I definitely ruined happy baby animals for you.”
“You didn’t ruin them for me. You showed me your heart.”
He traces the line of my cheekbone.
“Be better than him, Aleksio. Be better than your enemies.”
“It’s too late.”
“Fuck you,” I say. “You think I don’t know what you are, what you can be? I remember you as a kid. Maybe you don’t remember, but I do. I remember when you were good. I knew your heart, and yeah, you kicked down a few sandcastles, but you had a good heart. I remember.”
“Are we back to this again?”
“You have a good heart. And if you would just let yourself feel anything, feel just one thing, you would feel your good heart, and you would know you were better than all of this animal shit.”
“Do I need to fuck you senseless again?”
“Aleksio. You can make me want to fuck dirty and be talked to…dirty. But you won’t make me forget your beautiful heart. Why not leave all this? You could go away with me.”
>
“I can’t.”
“Why not? You’re alive. Screw the crime empire. Your father left you and your brothers huge amounts of money. You can do what you want.”
“It’s not that simple. I can’t just turn and run.”
“You won’t, you mean.”
He slides a knuckle over my lower lip. “Can’t.”
“I need to go back to my life,” I say. “In the Bronx. You can’t stop me.”
His phone rings. He watches my eyes.
“Your crime empire awaits.”
“Ignore it,” he says.
It rings again.
I slide off the desk and hand it to him. I need space. He takes it, not moving his gaze from mine. “Yeah.” Then he looks away. His brows furrow. “Who is this?”
I hear a woman’s voice.
“Hold on.” He passes it to me. “Lila.”
I take it and sit up. “Lila?”
“Mira,” she says.
He jerks the phone out of my hand and puts it on speaker so that he can listen, too.
“Is everything okay?” I ask.
“Fine,” she says. “Donald and Shauna Knutson are in the hospital—they’re badly beaten, but they’re going to live.”
“I’m glad,” I say. “Will they let you see them?”
“Soon.” She pauses. “Ronson’s out there pulling in their boat.” I get the feeling this is why she called—she can finally speak now that Ronson’s not there. Even with Ronson gone, she sounds furtive, like she’s imagining she might be overheard if she’s not careful. “I wanted to tell you something about Keith. But I want your word…I don’t want the Knutsons to get in trouble. But if Keith has brothers…”
I shoot a look at Aleksio. I’m ready to give my word, but is he? He understands. He gives me a nod. “I give you my word,” I say. “Whatever you have to say, the Knutsons will not be hurt by this.”
“That little boy, Keith, he was wild, like we said,” she says. “The Knutsons adopted a number of children. They opened their home. They were good people. But not with Keith. He would fight, and it was bad between him and Donald. It wasn’t a legal adoption, you see. Things weren’t right.”
Aleksio’s face has gone stony. I can practically read his mind: What the fuck did they do? I give him a warning look.
He twirls his finger in a circle, eager to get the story.
“What happened?” I say. “You can trust me.”
Mafia Romance Page 53