The God: (A Dark Mafia Romance) (Bratva Blood Book 3)

by SR Jones

  I look at Bohdan to see him grinning at me. “Good, huh?”

  “Yes, it is delicious.”

  “Can’t believe you’ve not had one before. Latte girl, are you?”

  I shake my head. “Espresso girl.”

  “Oh, surprised you like this then.”

  “I drink espresso because it’s not fattening,” I explain.

  His expression darkens.

  “Dasha, we grew up with nothing. You shouldn’t be denying yourself. You should take everything you want and be greedy for it. Greedy for life.”

  His voice is quiet, and we’re speaking in Russian, but I don’t trust Jasper not to have bugged the place. I shake my head at Bohdan who gets the message.

  He doesn’t say anything more, but he comes to sit by me at the breakfast bar. His arm touches mine, his scent wraps around me, and I turn to him; I can’t help it. I put my head on his shoulder and close my eyes.

  He stiffens for a moment, and then his hand comes up and caresses my hair.

  We sit like that for the longest time, as our coffees go cold, untouched.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Bohdan

  What am I doing? I came here telling myself I was going to save Dasha, but how? If she wanted to leave Jasper, surely she would have already. The other issue is, in order to save her, I need to tell her I know what her husband is doing, and that means fessing up that I’ve filmed them. That’s going to go down like a bucket of sick.

  My head’s messed up, and I’m fucking up. Last night after that achingly boring dinner party, I let her lean her head on me and stroked her hair the way we used to as kids, but we aren’t kids anymore. The way I feel about her isn’t innocent. It’s … complicated.

  I want her. If I’m being honest with myself, I did from the first moment her gaze collided with mine in the corridor of the opera house. I stretch under the sheets and push them down.

  My legs are covered in scars. It’s why I only wear long board shorts, even on the hottest day in Corfu. Not many people have seen my legs. I look now and grimace. The scars are still there. Some less livid than they used to be.

  I close my eyes as a shudder wracks me. I can still smell the searing of hairs as they put the red hot metal onto my skin. They had laid the poker on me four times in total on the right leg, twice on the left. My uncle came off worse. All because of Dasha.

  It’s why I’m so fucked up over her. She told the Bratva boss my uncle and I were skimming off the top, and got me the beating of my life, along with a branding. It cost me my uncle’s love and meant I had to flee St. Petersburg. How can I forgive her that? When I think about her now, I’m seething, but when I see her, the anger and the need for revenge fizzles out.

  She’s already broken. How can you hurt a broken thing? It would be like pulling the wings off a fly.

  I touch the worst scar and wince. I hate the sensation of the puckered skin.

  My stomach churns and I sigh, scrubbing a hand over my face. I should leave her to her fate.

  The thing is, though, Dasha is the only connection to my past. The only thing left from who I was before and something about that is heady. It’s probably the reason why siblings who can’t stand one another remain locked in their dysfunction long after their parents have died. They could walk away, but they can’t resist that siren call of someone who knows them.

  Dasha knows me. We shared so many secrets. We laid at night wrapped up in one another’s arms, whispering our hopes and dreams and fears to each other.

  My dreams were to be a world-famous photographer, traveling the world capturing famous sights. Dasha wanted to be a ballerina. Look at us now. She achieved her dream, and me? I’m an ex-thug who might be about to finally make something real of himself if I don’t fuck it up with this shit with Dasha.

  Konstantin won’t be forgiving if I end up embroiled in some Parisian society scandal before we’ve even set up the operation. Then again, he and Andrius did give me permission to do this, didn’t they? Andrius is a romantic deep in his soul. It’s obvious. Konstantin? I think he merely did it because he thinks seeing Dasha again will get her out of my system and have me back in Corfu in days.

  I could go back.

  I should go back.

  There’s a crash from the room next to mine, and I’m out of bed before I think. I grab my gun from the bedside table, and rush to Dasha’s room. I push the door open and see her on the floor, dazed.

  She blinks twice, stares at me and then rubs her arm and shoulder. “Ow.”

  “What happened?”

  “I erm, I think I fell out of bed.” She giggles, and it’s an alluring sound. One I’d like to hear her make more. She rarely smiles let alone giggles. “I never fall out of bed, but I was dreaming.”

  Pulling herself up by holding onto the bedspread, she sits on the bed and rakes her hand through sleep-mussed hair. She’s so beautiful it makes my heart hurt.

  Looking at me, she smiles. “You can go; I’m fine.”

  Then her gaze drops, and the smile drips from her face like melting wax.

  I follow her gaze and freeze. Fuck, I came in here in only my sleep shorts. My thighs are exposed.

  “Bohdan,” she begins.

  “I’ve got to get dressed,” I say and leave the room.

  My heart is pounding, and my mouth is dry. Fuck. I bet she hates how they look. She should; she caused this. I half want to pack and leave, and half want to go back in there, grab her hair and scream at her to take a good look at her handiwork.

  Instead, I shower and dress. The shirt I wear covers the scars on my back, and the trousers the ones on my legs. I never fuck women in broad daylight unless I’m keeping my clothes on. It’s why I never go back for seconds.

  They say how gorgeous I am, how hot I am. If they saw the state of my legs, they wouldn’t think so.

  I touch my nose and smile. Maybe now my nose is busted I won’t get as many of them sniffing around anyway. It kind of suits me. I was getting bored of the fucking. It had started to feel worn out. Tired. Like me. Like life.

  I should leave her, go back to Corfu and just soak in the sun. I feel happy there. But that would mean leaving Dasha to her fate here with Jasper, and as much as she deserves it, I can’t.

  Take her to Corfu and torture her yourself, a dark, dark part of me whispers. Not in the way Jasper does though. I would never hit her. I could make her pay, though. Fuck with her head.

  Dasha’s always been the extremes to me. Like yin and yang. Part of me put her on a pedestal and she never fell off it no matter what she did. The other part has spent years hating her and seeing her as nothing but trash.

  The truth is probably much more complex. She’s a person who feels, and thinks, and makes mistakes like the rest of us. Only her mistake almost cost me my life.

  I eat breakfast and what seems like ages later, Dasha appears. She’s dressed in a loose t-shirt and leggings. Her hair is pulled back tight, and on her feet, she has some slip-on shoes. Her large bag is slung over her shoulder.

  “Darling.” Jasper appears as if by magic, the fucking creep.

  “I’m off to practice,” she says. As she reaches the front door, me trailing her, she pauses, turns to her husband and says with what seems like sincerity. “Thank you so much for last night.”

  He smiles and dips his head. As we close the door behind us, I want to ask her how she can thank him? He made her lie in the garbage for fuck’s sake.

  I don’t, though. I don’t say anything. Neither does she. The whole drive to the opera house is silent and tense. Once we arrive, I follow her to her changing room and stand outside as she goes in.

  A few minutes later the door opens, her arm reaches out, and she pulls me in. I’m so surprised, I let her.

  She closes the door, locks it, and stands with her hands on her hips. It makes me laugh. She’s got the stance of a fearsome Russian mother, but she’s a slip of a thing.

  “Bohdan, what happened to you?”

  “Wha
t do you mean?” I ask her, knowing full well what she means but not wanting to do this. Not now. We do this when I decide, not her.

  “Your legs. What happened?” She purses her lips, and I see tears shimmering in her eyes.

  Fuck her, she doesn’t get to cry crocodile tears over this.

  “You happened, Dasha. You.”

  I blurt the words out and immediately regret them. Fuck me, this isn’t how I pictured it. The moment I showed her what she’d done to me. The moment I made her pay.

  “What? I don’t understand.”

  She’s good, I’ll give her that. But, of course, she is because her whole life is a lie. “What don’t you understand?” I sneer. “That loose lips do more than sink ships?”

  “What? Stop talking in riddles. What the hell happened? What has it got to do with me?”

  I sigh, scrub a hand through my hair, and start to pace. “I know I fucked up, Dasha. I know. But what you did was so much worse.”

  “You still haven’t told me what I did,” she points out angrily.

  “I think you fucking know.” I go for the door because this isn’t how I planned it, and the white-hot fury coursing through my veins tells me I’m not in control.

  She beats me to it, standing in front of the door as if she can stop me.

  “Fucking move,” I order.

  “No. Not until you tell me what happened to you.”

  “Dasha, don’t make me force you.”

  “Tell me what you mean. You can’t say shit like that, Bohdan, and not explain it. I feel like I’m going mad here. You come back into my life, then you start saying crazy stuff. I don’t know what is going on.”

  “Yeah? How does it feel? I hope you fucking drown in it, Dasha, the way I did when you fucked me over.”

  She stills, her face paling, and I realize just what I’ve said. I’ve basically told her I wish her harm. Me. Her supposed bodyguard. Shit.

  “I’m calling your firm tonight, and you’re off my case. You’re in no mental or emotional state to keep me safe. I already have enough threats against me, Bohdan. I don’t need another one. I don’t care what you think you know about me. I didn’t do anything to you.”

  “You’re the only one who knew.”

  “Knew what?” she shouts at me.

  “About my fucking uncle,” I whisper low and deadly. “You were the only one who knew he was skimming off the top and making me hide the money in the walls of that old garage we used to play in.”

  “I still don’t understand.”

  “You told them. You told the Pakhan what my uncle was doing.”

  She pales even more, and I wouldn’t have thought it possible for a person to look so deathly white and still be upright if I didn’t have the evidence right in front of me.

  “I never told them,” she whispers. “Is that what you think? Is that what you thought all these years? Your legs, did they do that to you?”

  “Yes, on all three fucking counts. They took me and him the day you left; pretty good timing for a girl who didn’t know, huh? They took us to that garage, and they tortured us. They lit a fire on the floor, and they put a long metal poker in it, and they burned my thighs. They burned my uncle’s chest and back. They took the money and told my uncle he was dead. So he blamed me. You cost me everything. My uncle, the only fucking family worth anything I had, disowned me. I had to leave St. Petersburg, start fresh. You did all that because what?” I sneer at her. “You were jealous.”

  She hits me so swift and hard I don’t see it coming.

  “Fuck you. You broke my heart, but I never said a word. Not one word.”

  I falter. She seems so sure in her conviction. She’s a consummate liar, though, isn’t she?

  “You’re a little liar, Dasha.” I click my tongue. “Lying to me. Lying to your husband. Lying to yourself.”

  “I’m not lying to you. I never could lie to you,” she says sadly. “I am not lying about this, Bohdan. I don’t care if you walk out of this room and I never see you again, but you must believe me on this. I can’t bear to think of you somewhere in the world believing this of me.”

  She comes to me and drops to her knees, undoing the buckle on my belt. What the fuck?

  I move back, but she shuffles after me and pulls my trousers down.

  “Dasha, get off me.”

  “Let me see,” she says simply.

  She saw the scars on my back years ago. I showed them to her. No one but her. Now she’s seeing these scars. Yet again, I’m letting her be the only one to really see me.

  Her gaze lifts to me, and there are tears on her cheeks. “Bohdan, I swear on my life. I. Never. Told.”

  Then she leans in and kisses the scars. I freeze. I don’t even breathe. I’m not sure if my heart is still pumping.

  “I never would have done that to you. Not you. You were my … everything.”

  “And you were mine,” I say.

  She shakes her head. “No. I wasn’t.” Her voice is so sad.

  I’m torn up inside. Confused and directionless. She swears she didn’t do it, but there’s no other explanation.

  My uncle had been skimming money from the Bratva and making me hide it in the walls of the dank garage I’d been going to for years. No one knew except Dasha, and I only told her because I was so terrified of what he was making me do.

  Why is she on her knees?

  Why am I not exultant?

  This is what I wanted, isn’t it? To have her on her knees, begging me. I’ve got it, but it doesn’t feel good.

  “Get up,” I say gutturally.

  She doesn’t move, but presses her face to my thigh, her arms coming around me. “You broke me, Bohdan, but I swear I didn’t break you in return.”

  Fuck.

  “Dasha, get up.” I reach down and put my hands under her arms, hauling her to her feet.

  She stares at me, and there’s some color in her cheeks now. Her lips are parted, and God help me, but her eyes are even prettier shining with tears.

  I don’t think. I’m not capable of it. Instead, I simply react as I reach for her, pulling her to me and crushing her mouth with mine.

  She opens for me immediately with a moan, and it goes straight to my cock.

  I spin us around and walk her back to the dresser until she’s up against it, and I press into her, feeling her small body tight against mine.

  She kisses me like she’s drowning, and I’m her air. I’ve never had a woman so desperate for me. But then this is us, isn’t it? I’m the same way for her.

  My hands roam her body, touching, learning. I skim the delicate bones of her shoulders and sweep one hand down the graceful arch of her back.

  She reaches for me, pulling me into her, and wrapping her legs around me as I hoist her onto the dresser. There’s a part of my mind screaming at me to stop, but I don’t think I can. This is too heady. Too much. She’s so new, but like coming home too.

  Her hands flutter at the front of my shirt, and she starts to fiddle with the buttons, but then with surprising strength she simply rips it open. Buttons fly, and she presses her hot mouth to the skin of my chest. She kisses me everywhere, and I’m not even able to get with the program because this is all so not what I expected when we came here today.

  She pulls her leggings down, along with her panties, and then she looks at me, waiting. I stare at her then spin her around, bending her over the dresser, her ass in the air, and pussy exposed to my hungry gaze. I don’t ask her if she wants it gentle and slow, or hard and fast the way I did the air stewardess on K’s plane.

  Dasha doesn’t get to choose.

  I pull my cock out, so aching and hard, and line it up with her wet entrance. I test her with my fingers to make sure she’s wet enough, and she’s soaked.

  I sink into her with a groan, and she cries out, her arms spread out and her hands gripping the dresser.

  I fuck her hard and fast. Years of hurt, anger, aching, and longing pour into it, and I’m nothing more than a being
on another plane of existence right now.

  She’s right there with me too, grinding back against me, telling me more and harder. I reach around and find her clit and play with it, wanting her to come for me.

  When she does, it’s with a cry loud enough to be heard outside, but it still doesn’t stop me. I speed up, taking what I need, what I’ve wanted all these years.

  All those women, they were all substitutes for this. I come with a groan and bury my face in her neck as I fill her up.

  Then it hits me.

  I didn’t glove up.

  For the first time in my life, I didn’t use a condom.

  I pull out of Dasha, and she’s shaking as she pulls her panties up.

  What the fuck have we done?

  What have I done?

  She starts to dress herself and looks at me. Her gaze is cold. Those blue eyes of hers hard like stone.

  “Get out,” she says.

  “What? No. We need to talk.”

  “Get out.”

  “I don’t have a shirt,” I say stupidly.

  She grabs a sweater off the clothes rack and throws it at me. “It’s Jasper’s; put it on and get out.”

  I do as she says, shocked at this turn of events. Shocked at the whole thing. I pull the too-small sweater over my head and fasten my pants before leaving her, still shaking.

  I always knew we’d be dynamite when we finally got together. I was wrong.

  That was a fucking nuclear explosion.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Dasha

  The minute he shuts the door behind him, I run to the small bathroom in the corner, lift the toilet lid and throw up.

  What have I done? What have I done?

  Oh my god. What if Jasper finds out? He’ll hurt me. He’ll ruin me. He’ll go after my mother.

  Bohdan isn’t here to protect me. He’s here to get his revenge on me. He’s right too, I’m the only person he ever told. He always said I had to keep it a secret or his life would be on the line, but I never told a soul.

  I retch and retch and when there’s nothing left, I sink back onto my haunches, wiping my mouth.

  Two men I can’t trust. Two men who might wish to harm me. It wasn’t the best life decision to sleep with one of them. Oh, how I want him, though.