The Soldier

by Renee Rose

  We step in. It’s busy with Friday night activity. People stopping in to pick up six-packs or snacks for wherever they’re going next. I find the eyedrops, and we walk up to the counter.

  And that’s when everything goes sideways.

  Pavel’s paying for the eyedrops when the guy behind us jostles me forward. Ravil’s face contorts in anger, and he starts to turn, then goes perfectly still.

  The guy has a gun out. He points it jerkily between our heads at the clerk. “Give me all the money in the register.” He sounds panicked. Out of breath. God, why is he crowding me forward against the counter? Wouldn’t it have been better for him to wait until we’d paid and moved away?

  I let out an involuntary wounded cow sort of sound—a soft lowing of fear. I think the sound scares the robber because he seizes me and pulls me against his doughy belly. His jacket smells of gasoline, and the zipper digs into my back. He wraps me into a headlock, still keeping the gun pointed at the clerk.

  I choke on my gasp. Time slows as I take in the horrified expression on the clerk and the flash of danger in Pavel’s eyes.

  Pavel doesn’t hesitate. He grabs the guy’s gun arm with his right hand at the same time he throat-punches him with his left. The gun points toward the ceiling and goes off. Screams sound all around us.

  I wrench free, skittering back as Pavel slams the barrel of the gun against the guy’s temple. His head makes a horrible sound when it cracks against the floor, his limbs sprawled in every direction.

  Pavel’s movements were as smooth as a choreographed movie fight. This isn’t his first rodeo by any means. Or even his fifth. He points the pistol at the guy’s face with obvious expertise. “You don’t fucking touch my girl.” His accent is thick, voice full of menace.

  Chills race up and down my spine because I have zero doubts now that Pavel told me the truth: he’s a stone cold killer.

  And then I review what he said. You don’t touch my girl. He did that for me. If the guy hadn’t touched me, would he still have acted?

  The clerk behind the register mutters, “Whoa,” like he’s impressed.

  It was damn impressive. Pavel’s moves couldn’t have been better choreographed if he was in a staged movie fight.

  “Call the cops,” Pavel tells the clerk without looking away from the guy he’s aiming at.

  Before I can catch my breath, another pistol emerges, this time from a guy at the door.

  They were a team. This one can’t be more than eighteen or nineteen years old. Thick dark curls hang in his face, and his gun hand shakes so hard I’m afraid he’ll accidentally shoot the whole place up. He points it at Pavel. “Drop the gun,” he orders, like he’s watched too much crime TV.

  Pavel’s not impressed. In a clean sweep, he shifts the aim of his gun to the guy at the door, putting his foot on the chest of the guy on the floor, who is starting to rouse. “Put it down,” he minces.

  “Y-you put it down,” the teenager insists. “Or I’ll shoot.”

  “You’ll be dead before you pull the trigger,” Pavel advises him evenly. “I never miss a shot.” I believe him. The way he sights straight down his arm and his steady hold of the gun screams expert. Sureshot.

  Killer.

  “Damn,” the clerk murmurs with obvious appreciation.

  The thug’s face sort of crumples in defeat.

  “Slowly put the gun on the floor.”

  The guy obeys, bending his knees and placing the gun down at his feet.

  “Walk over here. Lie down beside your friend.” He points at his feet. His steady focus never leaves the guy’s face, and the pistol never wavers. “Anyone else here? You got other partners? Someone in a car outside?”

  “N-no.” He shakes his head, his long bangs falling over one eye. He crouches at Pavel’s feet then starts to sit.

  “Face down.” Pavel nudges the first guy with his foot. “You, too. Roll over.” When they’re both on their bellies, Pavel curses in Russian.

  “Can you pick up that gun, blossom? Carefully?” His voice is much softer when he speaks to me. Like he’s trying to soothe me with quiet tones—the same way he does during a scene.

  I move faster than I thought I could in stilettos and shaking legs and snatch up the gun. I bring it to him because holding it doesn’t feel safe to me.

  Pavel takes the second gun and tucks it in the waistband of his pants then reaches for my hand. “Are you okay? Are you hurt?”

  “Yeah. I mean, no—I’m okay.”

  Pavel delivers a hard kick to the one who’d held me. His normally impassive face has hardened into something frightening. “You’re lucky you’ll be dealing with the cops and not me,” he growls. “Nobody touches my girl.”

  The flag flying in my chest for Pavel whips and flaps at that, rocking me with simultaneous glee and horror. I’m dizzy at the idea he did all this for me. To protect me or to exact retribution. But for the first time, I am also scared. Because he looks positively murderous right now. He warned me all along—telling me he wasn’t a nice man. Asking if I was afraid. Promising to let me go.

  What would he do to this man if the cops weren’t coming? Torture him? Kill him? I don’t think I want to know.

  A crowd of frightened customers has started to gather at the perimeter of the scene now that Pavel has subdued the robbers.

  “Did you call the police?” Pavel asks the clerk.

  “I tripped the alarm right away,” he says. The wail of sirens reaches us, as if on cue.

  “Are you a cop?” the awed clerk asks.

  “Nah.” Pavel doesn’t illuminate the guy any further. Two cop cars screech up to the curb, the lights on their cars flashing blue and red into the store.

  Pavel crouches to place both guns on the floor then stands, holding both hands in the air. Again, not his first rodeo.

  The police run to the door, guns drawn. “Get down on your knees,” one of them shouts.

  I’m not sure who he’s talking to, but Pavel understands perfectly. He kneels, hands still carefully held in the air.

  “It’s not him!” the clerk protests loudly, maybe even more upset than I am. “It was them,” he points at the guys on the ground.

  “Yes, it was them,” I raise my voice in indignation.

  Pavel’s not upset, though. He’s been through this before. Knows what to do. His face still wears the hardened mask. He definitely looks like he’s been on the wrong side of the law more than a few times.

  “Nobody move,” the cop advises.

  Pavel

  “So you’re the hero.” The police officer who finally uncuffs me says it with total sarcasm. He’s run my ID. Sees my tats. Knows what I am.

  “No.” I turn to face him and adjust my sleeves.

  I saw this shitstorm coming the moment I got involved, but I had no choice. Now our evening is ruined.

  Possibly more than our evening. Maybe this was what needed to happen to slam some sense into Kayla. Make her see I’m not the guy she wants as her boyfriend.

  I see the way she looks at me now... like I’m a monster.

  I should embrace it. Instead, the need to soothe her has me itchy and raw. I’ve been on police lock-down for more than forty minutes now as they got everybody’s story and figured out what was what, and I’ve had to watch my little flower leaning against the counter like her legs won’t hold her up.

  I still want to kill the mudak who grabbed her. It would be a long, slow, bloody death.

  “Where’d you learn those skills?” the cop asks, even though he must already know. If not from my ID, then from the tattoos on my knuckles.

  “Russian military,” I say gruffly. It’s partly true. They began my training.

  “Uh huh.”

  I beckon to Kayla, only half-certain she’ll come. Whether she’s still my slave. “Am I free to go?”

  “Yes.” I barely hear his answer because the relief that rips through me when she practically flies across the floor and into my arms makes the room spin.

&
nbsp; I kiss the top of her head and rub her back. “Let’s go, blossom. Did you get your eyedrops?”

  “My eye drops!” she exclaims and whips her head around to look toward the counter.

  The clerk holds the bag up for her. He has mistakenly decided I’m the hero in this scenario.

  I’m not. I’m the avenger. Only for Kayla.

  We don’t speak as we walk back to the Four Seasons. When we’re in the elevator, Kayla peers up at me.

  This is it. I brace myself for a serious question or comment. How many men have I killed? What other crimes have I committed? Because she’s seen with her own eyes that I’m not the good guy.

  “If that guy hadn’t grabbed me, would you have still disarmed them?”

  I have to tell her the truth because she needs to hear it. She needs to know what I am. I shake my head. “No, malysh.”

  She blinks those baby blues at me. Gospodi, those eyes!

  I try to explain. “I knew what a cluster that would be. How long it would take—it ruined our night. If we could have just walked out of there without being a part of it, wouldn’t you have preferred that?”

  She hesitates a moment then nods. “Yes.”

  The elevator doors open, and she steps out. I stand there a moment, digesting her unexpected agreement. But then, she’s always agreeable. And it nearly always shocks me.

  She turns, waiting for me to come out. “What does malysh mean?”

  “Baby.” I step out and touch her cheek.

  She doesn’t pull away—a good sign.

  There’s something different about Kayla, for sure. A steel beneath her softness that isn’t usually there. Half of me thinks we’re galloping swiftly to our end, but I can’t be sure.

  Maybe she’s still digesting what happened.

  Despite my idea that this is the moment that could—should—end it all, and that I should welcome that outcome, my desire to fix this—to scoop her into my arms and hold her like we’ve just finished a particularly intense scene sizzles and pops beneath my skin.

  “Pavel?” There’s a little pop of her lips on the “P” that makes me think of how badly I want those lips open around my cock, and then my name comes out like a little puff of air. “Master?” she corrects.

  “Da?” I loop an arm around behind her back and pull her up against my body.

  Her lips tick up when I speak Russian, like she thinks it’s hot or something. “Can you… can we…”

  I cock my head. I’m good at reading people, but I have no idea where she’s going. I can detect lies; I can’t read minds. “Say it,” I command in no more than a whisper.

  She swallows like she’s nervous to ask me.

  “What do you need, malysh?”

  “I want you to fuck me.”

  I don’t wait. I tuck my forearm under her hips to boost her up and carry her, straddling my waist toward our hotel room. I’m still trying to decipher why she hesitated to ask. “Did you mean just fuck you?”

  She nips my earlobe. “Please, Master.”

  I manage to extract and tap the keycard against the handle then kick the door open. “How do you want to get fucked?”

  “Hard. Rough. Underneath you.”

  I set her down and peel off her dress. She’s flushed, her hair tousled.

  The ugliness of the convenience store seeps away. Maybe the night’s not so ruined.

  “You want missionary sex.”

  She checks my face, and when she sees I’m teasing, gets flirty, “Yes, but with a very rough missionary.”

  “Hmm. I’m not sure those exist.” I unbutton my shirt and toe off my shoes. “Lose the clothes. Missionaries definitely don’t wear heels and thigh-highs to bed.”

  She scrambles to obey as I strip out of my clothes, too.

  “Open the bed. We have to be under the sheets, right?”

  “N-not necessarily.”

  I reach past her and yank down the bedcovers. “I’m just giving you a hard time. Get in bed, printsessa.” I follow her in and crawl over the top of her. “Close your eyes.”

  I wait until she’s obeyed before I part her thighs and lower my head to lick into her. She’s already wet and juicy. “What got you wet, blossom? Me fighting for you?”

  “Yes,” she admits.

  I want to ask more, but she tastes too good to continue the interrogation. I roll my tongue around her clit, lick her sex like a juicy peach. I don’t stay long enough to make her come—my cock aches to be inside her already—again.

  Always.

  I climb over her and slide in, groaning inwardly at how good it feels. “You need it rough, baby?”

  She rocks her hips up to meet mine. “Yes, sir. Yes.”

  I pull back and slam in hard, bracing one hand against the headboard. “This hard?” I thrust again, throwing out my free hand to catch her shoulder when I realize her head is going to hit the wood.

  Her eyes roll back in her head. “Yes.”

  Well, damn. Missionary never felt less vanilla. The same heady power courses through me as when we scene. Her moans mingle protest with desire as I hold her in place to drill her.

  I move my hand from her shoulder to her throat. I’ve held her throat before but loosely, symbolically. Now I have to hang on to keep her from hitting her head. Her eyes fly open, alarm registering.

  The sadist in me fucking loves her fear, and I slam in even harder. I know I won’t hurt her, but she doesn’t know how far I’ll go.

  She cries out, so I know she can safe word if she needs to. I’m not cutting off her air. Her cries grow frantic, needy. Her legs thrash beneath me.

  All the adrenaline that pumped through my veins at the convenience store finds its release now—given a far more delicious purpose the moment Kayla made her request. I’ve never needed to fuck so hard. To violently pleasure myself and a partner.

  Kayla sobs with desperate desire. “Master.” I don’t know if she’s begging to come or for me to stop, but the pleading word brings on the hardest orgasm of my fucking life.

  I come and come and come inside her, forgetting to give her permission.

  “May I—?” She’s already coming, her tight channel squeezing my dick in quick pulses.

  “Come.” I keep rocking into her, slowing the force and speed of my thrusts but still nowhere near gentle. I keep my hand wrapped around her throat as I claim her pouty lips, kissing the hell out of her, my facial hair reddening her baby soft skin.

  “Was that what you needed, blossom?” My voice sounds rough, as if I’d been the one shouting a release.

  “Yes.” She pants, a sheen of sweat making her tits look slick and inviting. I release her throat and trail my hand over one of them, thumbing her nipple.

  I lower my body over hers, blanketing her as I nuzzle into her neck. “You’re beautiful when you come without permission.”

  Her breath stalls for a moment, and then she gets defensive. “You said yes.”

  “Mm.”

  She wriggles beneath me, and I roll us to our sides, still connected. “I said yes to save you from punishment. Don’t expect I’ll always be so merciful.”

  The room is dark—I never turned on the lights—but I think I detect a blush.

  I ease out of her and roll onto my back, the post-orgasm relaxation settling in swiftly.

  “You’re mean,” she murmurs, nestling against my side and scraping the tip of her nail over my nipple.

  I cover her hand and pull her fingers to my lips. “You like it.” I close my eyes, listening to the hum of pleasure running through my body. Marveling at what Kayla does to me. How sex with her can flip a situation so completely. “Well, this went in a totally different direction than I expected,” I tell her, uncharacteristically open with my thoughts.

  She pauses a moment. “What did you expect?”

  I make a non-committal sound, then I just admit it. “I was pretty sure you were going to call red on the whole thing.”

  She sits up, pulling the sheet up to cover her bre
asts like she’s feeling vulnerable. She stares straight ahead. “Do you want to end this?”

  I roll to my side to see her face in the shadows. I can’t, for the life of me, figure out why she sounds hurt.

  I also can’t explain the alarm that spreads through me. When we were walking back and I was assigning odds to the chance of her ending things, I was troubled but still calm as hell. Right now, adrenaline spikes through my system, and my skin prickles like I’m in physical danger. Or like she is.

  She’s asking me point blank. I could end things right now. Do what I planned to do. Before things get serious. Before I have to choose between the brotherhood and love. Between atoning for my sins in Russia and staying here with her.

  I should say yes. Explain how this is a bad idea. Right now. There won’t be a better time.

  “No.” I sound angry.

  She finally looks at me. “Then stop suggesting it.” Her voice is soft, but she’s never sounded so firm. Like she’s giving me an ultimatum that I hardly understand.

  Stop suggesting it.

  Fuck.

  4

  Kayla

  After a morning of torturing my body in the best possible way, Pavel tries to book a spa appointment for me at the Four Seasons.

  “I’m sorry, but we book weeks in advance, there’s simply nothing available,” I hear the spa attendant tell him over the hotel phone.

  “That’s okay, I’m good.” I sidle up to him. “Feeling pretty relaxed already,” I murmur.

  He hangs up and loops an arm around me. “What should we do?”

  I have this strong urge to get us out of the hotel room. I think that’s why I wanted to walk with him to the convenience store last night. All of our interactions are in the bedroom or BDSM club, which is amazing. But I want more. Or I want to find out if there’s the possibility for more.

  I should be running for the hills after what I saw last night. Seeing what Pavel’s capable of, being reminded that the world he lives in is far, far different from mine, should have been the clincher. It should have driven home the idea that I shouldn’t pursue more from this guy. We are just sex, and I should be happy with that.