by Christa Wick
Eating her...
Would it hurt?
"Wh-what are you doing?" she whispered.
"Tasting you," he rasped. "Making you ready."
How could she be more ready than she already was? Her body wept its juices, the muscles down there contracting rhythmically to push out a steady flow.
"You'll like this," he promised, spreading the lips of her pussy wide and settling his mouth over that same sensitive spine with its absurd little dangling hood that she stroked sometimes when she was alone in her room.
Was that it? Was he going to use his tongue as she used her fingers?
A moan tore from her throat, her entire body tingling from the quiver of need that rolled in waves from between her legs.
Chuckling, Mikhael took his first taste, the tip of his fleshy tongue curling to tickle the underside of the hood, then running a few circles around it before finishing with a hard flourish up the spine.
She jerked and he did it again.
On the third teasing circumnavigation of that sensitive button, he slid a finger inside her. She began to vibrate. Nothing had penetrated her there before. Whining, she pushed against him and was rewarded with a second finger. She squeezed at the digits, whined some more as he licked up and down her sex, stopping to nibble until the vibrations slowed and her hips strained upward in a quest to reach her release.
He strained with her, forcing his fingers into an unyielding V despite the tight muscles that pushed in retaliation. Gently he thrust back and forth, fingers twisting. He teased her swollen clit, shook his face side to side when he had the sensitive flesh trapped between his firm lips.
"Mishka...Mishka..." she murmured. Her hips turned wild. She grabbed his head, held his mouth pressed tight against her flesh as her insides sucked and twisted around his fingers. "Oh, yes. Please..."
He sucked hard at her entreaty, his fingers growing rough in the way they twisted and pushed. She could feel them spread so wide inside her, knew his cock would make her feel even fuller with its fat girth.
Turning his head, Mikhael scored his teeth along her slick pussy before covering her clit again, his fingers racing in and out. Then his thumb replaced his tongue, rubbing over and over the swollen spine as lower down his fingers plunged and circled, thinned and thickened, methodically scraping against her soft, swollen tissues that convulsed around them as he went in, out, deeper and deeper until her hips bucked high and froze, her lush body shaking with its climax.
She collapsed against the mattress, the dance of nerves between her thighs and in the aching tips of her breasts making her wiggle and squirm along the bed. Mikhael pressed her legs apart, his weight transferring to his knees as he crouched in front of her.
His fingers wrapped around his cock, guiding its fat crown to where her muscles danced the hardest. He pushed forward, her flesh slow to yield. She stopped panting and held her breath for long stretches as her body strained to accept him.
"Slow," he groaned to himself.
His teeth dented his bottom lip as he fought for control. Her muscles fought back, tried to push him out with their tightness even as she whimpered and mewled to have all of him inside her.
Her fingers wrapped around his biceps, the nails digging deep enough to pierce his skin.
The contraction that his mouth and hands had caused still pulsed inside her. He waited, bracing himself for when they contracted outward then pushed when they retreated and the resistance fled with them.
Halfway in, he lost the battle to slowly conquer her flesh. He plunged forward, his weight settling against hers. Alina winced once then ardently squeezed her thighs against his hips.
This is what it felt like to be his woman, to be full of him, stretched to the point she didn't know whether she wanted to cry in pain or scream in pleasure.
Pleasure, definitely pleasure.
Her hips began to rock and bounce against his. With his face buried against her neck, he groaned. His body tilted to one side. He pushed her opposite thigh outward, his hand gripping and squeezing.
He took up a slow but building rhythm of thrust and retreat, thrust and retreat. She chased after him with each in and out, her voluptuous frame rolling in sensuous waves. Their bodies dipped and climbed in unison, pushed on and up so that every sensation multiplied as it bounced hot and slick between them.
Mikhael was the first to lock in place. Alina lifted her hips to meet him, her plump mound grinding furiously at the hard muscles of his stomach, the circle getting tighter and tighter until she froze, the soft, swollen tissues continuing to suck and milk at his cock, coiling and knitting around its thick, jerking length as he spilled inside her.
Together, they collapsed.
A smile curling her lips, Alina reached for Mikhael just as lightning illuminated the room one last time, the storm almost completely past.
Seeing no matching smile on his face, she pulled her hand back.
What had changed so quickly?
"You cannot stay," he said, patting around the pillows to find her nightgown. "You'll fall asleep, we both will."
He handed her the gown. She kept her arms folded against her chest, refusing his unspoken order for her to get dressed and leave.
"Kiss me goodbye, at least," she whispered when he continued to hold the fabric for her to take.
"No. You'll get me to let you stay just a few more minutes, then a few more."
Dropping the gown, he cupped her cheek, his thumb stroking softly across the surface.
"We have to be careful," he cautioned. "We live one day at a time at your father's will."
He glanced at the clock to find the hour well past midnight. "He returns this morning from his trip, the little devil at his side. They can't find you here. Neither can their spies."
Alina snatched at her gown, sat up and jerked it onto her body. Mikhael moved behind her and gently tugged her hair free from where it was trapped beneath the collar. His lips pressed against the back of her neck for one fleeting second before he repeated his warning.
"Each day, we decide by our actions—survive or die."
5
Alina
Logs burned in the fireplace of Dmitrey Rodchenko's study. Alina sat in the window seat overlooking the back garden. She had been sitting over an hour after being summoned by one of her father's guards to wait for the old man's return home.
Early August, it was too hot for a fire, even a small one, so she had the window cracked open, just enough to give her relief and let her close it quickly. She didn’t listen for footsteps in the hall or the cane Papa Rodchenko used only when he was in his house with no one but his children and trusted staff to see his growing infirmity.
Her eyes and ears were devoted to the gate at the corner of the garden, the one Mikhael used to come and go by Papa's orders since he was old enough to leave the house on his own.
Three days had passed since she had fled Mikhael's room in tears. Contact between them was minimal. He left for the docks early and came home near sunset. She could not catch his eye and only once had he touched her, his hand landing on a doorknob the same time as hers.
His thumb had lightly stroked her wrist, just one passing before he withdrew and murmured an apology. When she had looked at his face, she saw nothing to suggest the stroke had been intentional or even meaningful once done.
Downstairs, her father's cane slapped against the bottom riser. She pulled the window shut, but kept her gaze on the gate until she heard her father's movements just a few feet beyond his study door.
She turned in the seat to face his desk but didn’t get up to take one of the chairs close to it. He had summoned her more than an hour ago then left her to wait. Another hour might pass before he acknowledged her presence and she would rather not sit so close to the old man when she didn't have to.
Papa Rodchenko entered the room, his focus on his desk. Grigori, who managed the house, followed behind carrying a shoe box. Placing the item on the desk, he took Papa's cane before exit
ing the room.
After a glance at her father to ensure he was ignoring her, as always, Alina studied the box. Time had aged the cardboard, especially the corners of the lid. The shoes once housed inside it would be barely larger than her own.
She squinted, trying to make out the faded writing.
Boys, size seven.
She had never seen the box before, but its presence filled her with dread. There was no fancy name brand on the side like the footwear her half-brother Dima got when he was younger. And her father didn't need to save shoeboxes to store things in. He had manila envelopes and banker boxes, big filing cabinets, lockboxes, bank vaults and more.
Hands folded in her lap, she began to pull at the cuff of her sleeves. Like the fire, her long-sleeved shirt was too hot for the weather. She wore it to hide the pinch marks Dima added to daily.
Her arms had been covered in the small bruises the night she crawled into Mikhael's bed. But the room had been too dark and the bright glow of the room with each lightning flash too fleeting for him to see them. Like Papa and the rest of the household, Mikhael didn't know. There was no point in anyone knowing.
No one cared beyond Mikhael—and maybe not even Mikhael cared. If he did, his response to Dima might get him killed by one of Papa Rodchenko's thugs.
So she wore the long sleeves and tugged at their edges whenever tension began to build inside her chest.
A soft scrape of noise from the back of her father's throat pulled Alina's gaze from the box to the old man's face. The set of his eyes told her he was annoyed with her already, perhaps for not relentlessly studying him and awaiting his cue that she should approach.
Standing, she crossed the room and took the hard wooden seat in which he made all his visitors sit. He had been scribbling in a ledger the entire time and continued to do so. Waiting, she locked her hands together, fighting both the urge to pick at her sleeves and to touch the box that was now so close.
Outside in the hall, she heard the approach of footsteps, the long, heavy stride telling her it was Grigori, the only person in the house besides Mikhael with such long legs, but without the lightness of the young Russian's step.
Grigori stopped, out of view. She heard the creak of metal. She mashed her lips together, fought the urge to roll or bite at them. What Dima was doing to her arms, she had been doing to the inside of her mouth, especially after the night in Mikhael's bedroom.
She looked at her father, a scream running through her head.
Why had he brought her to live with him? He bought her clothes and fed her when he wasn't trying to starve the weight off her. He kept a roof over her head and the heat on in winter. Yet he had never shown her the slightest affection and was often cruel in his words.
Whenever she wondered why he had finally brought her into his home, she always came back to the same conclusion. She was there so that Dima didn’t step too far out of line.
She had been nine when Papa freed her from the dark, rundown building with its crying, drugged women and all the little children running around in rags. Dima, seventeen at the time, was openly arrogant around his father. Now his arrogance, and the violence that always accompanied it, was more veiled.
Hands still locked together, she sank her nails into the fleshy side of her palm. She was nothing to this man, just a token warning to her half-brother that where there was one bastard, there could be others, some of them suitable to take Dima's place as the family's crown prince—the future Pakhan of their criminal enterprise.
Papa Rodchenko finally stopped scribbling in his ledger. She looked up, meeting his brown eyes. Staring at him, she turned cold despite the fire and her long sleeves in the summer heat.
"I have decided, with Kata dead, you will take over hostess duties."
Her nails dug deeper into her palm. Her entire life, she had never worked beyond keeping her room clean. Staff, protective of their jobs, did everything else. Neither was she allowed to work outside the home and who would have hired her with one of her father's thugs always present? She had been caged up her entire life, first in the hellish house she'd been born into and then in her father's, with only a weekly trip to the library allowed on Saturday.
Even her clothes were bought by someone else and delivered to her.
"Grigori will do most of the work," her father added, his voice sharpening as Alina remained silent. "Just as he did for Kata."
Shifting in his seat, he leaned forward. His gaze critically scanned her outfit.
"You will need new outfits, better fitting and not so drabby. He will take you shopping and select the clothes."
She sucked a slow breath in, her mouth starting to tremble at the thought of the new clothes and the complications that might arise from them.
"Of course," she stuttered after waiting too long to respond. "Grigori knows what will please you and Di—"
The old man's face turned to stone as she started to mention her half-brother. She had erringly equated Dima's authority with her father's. In her world, it was true. Papa could have her killed with the snap of a finger, but the old man ignored her most of the time. Dima was the one who had tormented her from the day she arrived until Mikhael had joined the family and stopped the worst of Dima's bullying despite being five years younger than Dima.
"I'm sure Grigori will find outfits that please you, Papa," she corrected, one hand sliding below the other on her lap to brutally pinch at her soft thigh. The pain distracted her from the bigger hurt in her chest that threatened to choke her lungs.
"One last thing," Papa Rodchenko said, picking up his pen as he nailed her with his dark gaze. "Nazarov is no longer part of this household. He will no longer live here and you will no longer see him."
Never before had she blurted anything at her father, but she couldn't stop the protest from bursting out. "He is Kata's son—"
"But he is not my son. And Kata is dead." Her father's already narrow face pinched with a waspish frown that turned his eyes to small brown dots. "From the moment he entered this house, he has shown nothing but disrespect."
"He only pushed Dima down that one time," she argued, tugging at the cuff of one sleeve.
Would he change his mind if she showed him the bruises? Would he believe his precious boy had placed them there, that Dima always sought to torment her in some fashion, even in front of the staff, and that only Mikhael's presence kept him in check?
"Papa..." she started. Her lips tried to shape the rest of her plea, but the old man stopped her with his hard, uncompromising gaze.
"You disappoint me, Alina."
He didn't care, never had. It was all about Dima. And it wasn't that their father was blind to the little devil's faults, it was that Dima was the elder Dmitrey's mirror in all things. Their actions, their coloring, their unnaturally thin frames no matter how much they consumed, even the beak of a nose that fueled her nightmares of buzzards ripping out her guts.
When she could finally speak again, she nodded at the old man. "I understand, Papa."
"It is not enough to understand. You must know." The stern features never softening, he pointed at the shoe box. "Open it."
Pulling the box onto her lap, she lifted the lid with a hand that shook. As she had started to suspect, the box belonged to Mikhael and he had kept it over the years to store mementos.
Someone had clearly raided her room as well. The contents were a mix of small tokens she had exchanged with him. There was the glitter-covered card she had made at age eleven wishing him a Merry Christmas his first year in the Rodchenko family. In the valentine from when she was fourteen, she had graduated from signing her cards with "your sister Alina" to merely "your Alina" as her affection for Mikhael suddenly yearned in an adult direction she had not recognized at that tender age.
There were cards from him, too, and a small book of proverbs in Russian that he had taught her how to read. Beneath the slips of paper that marked a decade of their lives were other tokens, like a shiny silver button she had taken from a coat he ha
d outgrown three winters ago and the small bull she had fashioned for him out of copper wire as they both watched Kata waste away from an illness the doctors could not identify.
He was her Russian bull, strong and obstinate where she was weak and compliant. Knowing that tough times would follow if his mother didn't recover, Alina had made the wire sculpture to remind him of his fortitude—and her affection.
Now Kata was dead and the tough times were upon them.
Her gaze drifted from the box to the burning log before moving on to her father.
He nodded, the gesture an unspoken order for what she must do without arguing. Taking the box with her, she got on her knees in front of the fireplace and pulled back the screen. She worked on the smallest scraps of paper first and then the cards. Reaching in for the book of proverbs, she palmed the small bull and let it drop just inside the hearth before feeding the book to the fire. Finishing, she placed the box on top of the flaming log and watched it burn, hoping with each snap and crackle that the little bull would survive.
"Grisha," her father said, calling Grigori who had waited in the hall as her father delivered the bad news and forced her to feed the box of treasures into the fire. "Bring it."
Her stomach, already twisted in knots, turned slick with the need to vomit.
Hadn't the old man tormented her enough? What fresh pain waited in the hall with Grigori standing guard over it?
Had they already hurt Mikhael? Was "it" some part of him, like in the crude stories Dima told her on how the family took care of some of its problems by merely making people wish they had been killed?
Metal creaked again and then Grigori entered the room carrying a rabbit with yellow-gold fur a shade darker than Mikhael's hair. For the first time since her father had sat down, she rolled her lips in worry, her face screwing tight with the urge to cry.
Leaning over, Grigori shoved the rabbit at her limp arms, the creature frozen in fear.
"It is not enough to understand," her father repeated. "You must know. If you speak to Nazarov, he will die. If I catch him trying to speak to you, he will die."
