Nikolai

by Shandi Boyes

  She’s lost as to where I’m going with this, but since she’s more trusting than scared, she nods her head. Slanting mine to the side to hide my smile, I climb out of the bathtub and make my way to her. As I did the last time we tussled in this very room, I drastically reduce the length of my stride, giving Little Red Riding Hood plenty of time to escape the Big Bad Wolf.

  Unlike our last soiree, Justine doesn’t seek the closest exit. She holds my gaze as I bridge the gap between us, her breathing as unhinged as my desire to show her she’s perfect.

  A floral scent stirs my cock when I grip the hem of her dress to pull it over her head. The thin cotton material falls to the floor with a whoosh, concealing the whistle of my lungs from the hurried breath I suck in. I’m not gasping in horror. I’m struggling to maintain a rational head.

  Her body… Fuck. Me.

  I’m a goner.

  I want her now more than ever.

  Her perfect tits, her milky white hips, and the scant little pair of panties she’s wearing has me wanting to forget why I’m stripping her bare. I want to sample the scent growing stronger with each second ticking by. I want to fuck her until the embarrassment in her eyes disappears, but since I know that will tiptoe her closer to the madness I’m endeavoring to save her from, I listen to the head on my shoulders instead of the one headbutting the zipper in my jeans.

  It’s a fucking hard feat.

  A vibrant pink hue creeps across the thrusting globes I’m struggling to ignore when I press my lips to a bite mark on Justine’s right shoulder. “Perfect.” I drop my lips to the tear that forced her onto her knees during her mauling. It’s as silky as the skin on her stomach, but glittered with strength. “Perfect.”

  When I fall to my knees, a smirk curls my lips. I’ve always believed it is better to die than show weakness by kneeling. Clearly, I had no clue the power associated with kneeling before a woman whose only weakness is you. I may be on my knees, but I am the most lethal I’ve ever been, because nothing will stop me from protecting this woman. Not a million bullets or the Almighty himself. Nothing.

  “Perfect,” I mumble against two smaller bites on the back of Justine’s knee.

  I kiss every bite I know of, and a few she kept well-hidden, before standing to my feet and locking my eyes with ones that aren’t as pained as they were minutes ago. “I previously said you’d be worth three nights in lockup. I was wrong. You're worth so much more than that. You're perfect, Justine. Don’t ever let a monster like Vladimir lead you to believe any different.”

  I anticipate for the lust depriving the air of oxygen to thicken from my confession. All I get is more torment. She wants to believe what I’m saying, but her exchange with Vladimir didn’t just dint her ego, it stole her trust as well.

  Justine stiffens like a board when I spin her around to face the vanity mirror. It’s one of those old school Hollywood ones with over a dozen lightbulbs covering a rectangular wooden frame. The bright lights illuminate her pale skin, making her glow as if she truly is an angel.

  “Look in the mirror and tell me what you see.” When Justine shakes her head, I tighten my grip around her waist before repeating my demand in a manner she won’t be able to refuse. “Look in the mirror and tell me what you see, or I’ll bend you over the tub and fuck you so mindless, you’ll submit to my every command without stopping to think.”

  I understand this is hard for her to do, but I need her to see the woman I do before she’s swallowed by a blackness so thick, no amount of purity will clear.

  When Justine’s eyes remain arrested on the floor, my dominance gets the better of me. “Five. Four. Three...”

  My words trail off when her eyes slowly lift to our reflections beaming from the retro mirror. At the start, she stares directly at me, her focus only shifting when the contrast between our bodies becomes too great for her to ignore. Her eyes shoot in all directions as they take in the way my large frame swaps her tiny one. Her skin looks super pale against the darkness of the ink covering a majority of my body, and although both our eyes have shades of blue, her are too angelic to ever appear evil.

  “We look like night and day. Darkness and light—”

  “Angel and devil,” I interrupt.

  As confirmation flares through Justine’s impressive eyes, I pull her molten-red hair away from her shoulders. My hold around her waist allows me to feel the surge of her pulse when the bright lights emphasizes the slithers of silver in her scars, but she remains as quiet as a church mouse.

  After locking my eyes with the mirror, I ask, “What do you see now?”

  Justine’s pupils swamp her corneas when she mumbles, “I’m not who I used to be, Nikolai...” Her words are replaced with a squeak when our eyes collide for the quickest second. The thirst I saw in her heavy-hooded gaze the day we met is unmissable in mine. Scars or not, I want her. She’s beautiful. A true gift from heaven.

  “Nothing changed, Ahren… Nothing.”

  When disbelief remains in her eyes, I set her back onto her feet before taking three steps backward. Her lips twitch like she wants to question my retreat, but before a word can spill from her pouty mouth, I yank my shirt over my head by the tag at the back before popping open the button on my jeans and sliding down the zipper.

  Once I’m as naked as Justine’s vulnerability makes her, I raise my eyes to Justine’s face. She’s still facing the mirror, but her eyes haven’t left mine the past two minutes. “Turn around.”

  It’s a hard struggle to conceal my smugness when she follows my order without batting an eyelid. Once again, she’s not being submissive. She’s just being open to the idea not everyone is out to hurt her.

  I wait for her eyes to stop scanning my body before saying, “Come here.”

  I can’t hold back my smile when she whispers, “No. I’m safer here,” so I set it free. It doubles the heat on Justine’s cheeks while ensuring me I’m on the right path. This is all new to me. I’ve never done anything like this before. I’ve only ever placed myself first.

  That’s set to change now.

  “I guess I’ll come to you then.” When I take a step forward, Justine takes a shaky one back. “Don’t run unless you want to be chased, Ahren.” My growl of her nickname reveals how far out of my depth I am. I’m struggling just as much as Justine. I’m just too fucking stubborn to back down. “I will chase you no matter how fast you run. Because I know that’s what you want.”

  My cock throbs with want when my threat freezes her feet. She watches my stalk across the room with wide, hungry eyes, proving she doesn’t just want to be chased. She wants to be devoured as well.

  I’ll give her what she wants after showing her only the most courageous people have scars.

  Some wear them on the body.

  Others wear them on their hearts.

  Justine wears hers beautifully.

  With peering into Justine’s eyes, I gather her hand in mine before tracing it over the tattoo just left of my six-pack. Tears pool in her eyes when it dawns on her why the scales in the dragon’s head look real… because they are. My dragon tattoo conceals over half a dozen scars that sizes differ as much as the reason I have them. Some are grazes from being dragged, others are cigar burns, and the main one is from the acid on Rico’s back soaking into my hip when I struggled to keep him on his feet while moving him from the dungeon he was tortured in to his bedroom.

  The second scar I show Justine is the one Rico gave me after he learned I organized for his wife to be raped and killed. When he used my knife against me, I did nothing to stop him. I tried to lessen the severity of the blaze when I order Blaire’s hit, but I still played with fire, so I deserved to get burned.

  After showing Justine a handful of less memorable scars on my back and chest, I lower her hand to the gravely skin stretched across my right rib. This scar is more notable than the rest because it’s a reminder that no amount of fear will ever abolish my sins. I can beat them until their skin is as black as mine was when I was tortu
red. I can whip their backs until their blood pools around their feet, and I can stomp on them until their bones break under the pressure, but there is one thing they stole from me only now am I realizing no amount of retaliation will return.

  My freedom.

  I thought they broke me thirteen years ago.

  I thought they stole my wish to live even more than the hell I was born in.

  I thought I was worthless.

  I know better now.

  Time didn’t heal my wounds. Showing an angel her scars mean she is stronger than the person who tried to break her did. The wounds of our battles reveal how hard we fought to survive. We didn’t break, cower, or give up. We rose above the ashes and conquered the beast.

  We chose to live.

  With my chest sitting as high as my determination to show this beautiful woman just how perfect she is, I lock my eyes with Justine’s and ask, “Do you see me any differently now, Justine?”

  She answers me in a way I never anticipated, but in a manner that may very well kill me if I don’t tread carefully.

  She kisses me.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  When Justine’s tongue slides across my parched mouth, I fist my hands into balls. My fight not to touch her is the cruelest I’ve faced. I’m not denying her kiss because our exchange is more emotion-packed than lust-filled. It’s because I know firsthand how fucked your thoughts become when you’ve been pushed to the brink.

  I don’t want to break Justine. I want her to be free, so if I have to walk the through the gates of hell alone to ensure that happens, I’ll do it. I will do anything necessary to stop her wings being clipped as mine wrongly were thirteen years ago.

  My resolve slips when Justine murmurs over my mouth, “I want you.” She locks her eyes with mine. They’re crammed with undogged determination. “I’ve wanted you from the moment I laid my eyes on you.” Her lips raise against mine as a mischievous gleam in her eyes brightens. “And now that I’m not your attorney, I can have you.”

  When my lips crack into a smile, pleased she’s not mad I had her pulled off my case in a moment of childish anger, she fills in the gap with her tongue. The moan she releases while dragging her tongue along the roof of my mouth thickens my cock to the point it’s painful.

  The tightness of my jaw gives away my fight, much less than the throb of my dick when she rakes her fingers through my hair to deepen our kiss. I breathe in her deep exhale when her endeavor to make us one has my cock’s head getting friendly with her aching clit through her scarce panties.

  When she shudders like she’s being tasered, the cocky bastard inside me roars to life. I’ve known from day one that we’d be explosive, and I’m not one to shy away from gloating when I’m proven right.

  My willpower frays when Justine glides her hands from my tattooed chest to my six pack. The tips of her fingers trace each groove in my stomach before she lowers them to the tuft of dark hairs on my groin. I groan an inaudible grunt when she gauges the size of my cock by scrubbing her hand down my hard rod.

  Once she’s confident her measurements stack up, she shifts her attention to my ass. When she gropes it as I’m dying to do to hers, I announce how desperate she makes me. “I want to fucking touch you. I’m dying to fucking touch you.”

  “Then touch me,” Justine responds, like keeping her sane is as easy as putting my cock out of his misery.

  When I fail to respond to her suggestion as she’s hoping, Justine bands her arms around her back to unclip her bra. A groan bubbles in my chest when the hardened peaks of her nipples scrap my chest compliments to her bra falling to the floor.

  After taking a big breath to free the butterflies in her stomach, she steps back, giving me an uninterrupted view of her standing before me in nothing but a pair of soaked panties.

  My cock stretches beyond my belly button when I drink in her tiny, yet enticing-as-fuck body. Her face is as sweet as an angel, but her body is more sinful than Satan.

  “You’re fucking perfect, Ahren. If I stared at you long enough, I’m certain I could cum just from looking at you,” I’m not lying. Cum is biting the crest of my cock. I’m the hardest I’ve ever been—even more so when Justine lowers herself onto her knees. “Fuck, Ahren. I was trying to fix the wrongs I made, not have you kneeling before me.”

  My balls pull in close to my body when she locks her eyes with mine before she teasingly moistens her top lip with her tongue. “I should be stopping this, but fucked if I can.”

  I realize I said my statement out loud when the lust in Justine’s eyes triples. She smiles up at me, loving how reckless she makes me while dragging her hand down the length of my cock. Her hands are so tiny, she needs both of them to handle the rod of flesh throbbing with untamed want. I’m so hard, I’m shocked I haven’t passed out from a lack of blood supply to my head.

  When Justine’s tongue darts out to lap up the bead of pre-cum on the end of my dick, she doesn’t look like the angel I named her after. She looks like a queen willing to do whatever it takes to satisfy her man.

  Vibrant red locks spill over her shoulders like lava when she sucks me deep into her mouth. I growl when the head of my cock hits the back of her throat. She doesn’t gag, but the bulge of her eyes evaporates any hang-ups I have that she’s only sucking my dick to get back some of the dignity she lost earlier. She’s not doing this because she is being forced. She’s doing this because she has finally realized she wants this as badly as me.

  My thigh muscles bunch when she slides her tongue up the underside of my cock. “Fuck,” I moan through a roar, my hands moving to secure a hold of her hair. “This is even better than I imagined.”

  I watch her worship my dick for the next several minutes before adding the faintest rock to my hips. The change in position allows Justine to draw me deeper into her mouth, while it also doubles the tension teeming between us.

  “That’s it, Ahren. Just like that.”

  Her cheeks hollow as she endeavors to unravel me. She sucks me off like a woman born to bring me to my knees. Just as I predicated, she knows how to give good head. She pays careful attention to the vein feeding my shaft with every descend she does, and her hands ensure my balls don’t feel like they’re missing out on any action.

  I’m tempted to close my eyes when her tongue swivels around the crown of my cock, but a subtle movement in the corner of my eye stops me. Desperate for touch, Justine is sliding her left hand between her legs. The groan she releases when she feels the dampness I’m sucking in vibrates my shaft. It is full of need.

  “Don’t worry, Ahren. I’ll look after you,” I promise, my voice gruff with lust. “You’ll feel me for days once I’m done with you.”

  I’m awarded an uninterrupted view of her thumb toying with her clit through her panties when I gather her hair to one side of her neck. The image of her playing with herself while she sucks on my cock like a good little nymph sends scorching heat rushing through my veins. The wildness in her eyes as she strokes her clit has my climax building shockingly fast. I’m hot all over, certain she’s seconds from extracting the marrow from my bones with her greedy sucks.

  When her teeth graze the skin angrily stretched over the crown of my cock a few minutes later, the sensation gripping my sack gets the better of me. I come with a roar, my clutch on Justine’s hair almost cruel.

  She doesn’t seem to mind. Her eyes widen before her throat works hard to swallow the salty white goodness pumping from my cock in roaring spurts. I fill her mouth with my seed as she looks up at me with bright, lust-filled eyes. The scent of her arousal is catastrophic to my senses, but when it’s added to the way she’s staring at me it makes it out-fucking-rageous. She’s as free as a bird—all because she has my dick in her mouth.

  I fucking love that.

  Once she’s gobbled up every drop of my spawn like she’s starved of taste, I bend down to scoop her into my arms. A popping noise sounds from Justine’s mouth when my still rock-hard cock springs free from the tight clen
ch of her lips. While making a beeline for the living room, my cock acts as if it didn’t just seek release when Justine uses the intermission in our exchange to check for any spillage on her lips.

  “You got every drop. Every fucking one.” Her shit-eating grin lowers to a smirk when I place her in the middle of her three-seater couch. When her eyes stray to her bedroom door, I grunt. “Too far. I can’t wait another fucking minute.”

  I can’t even form full sentences, so there’s no chance in hell I’ll make it all the way to her room before tasting her. For all I know, her curtains could be open, which would delay me further, and I’m not going to mention the mountain load of paperwork I saw sprawled across her bed while debugging her house of surveillance cameras.

  When I snap Justine’s saturated panties off her body, her eyes rocket to mine. How do I know this if my head is buried in her neck? I can feel the heat of her gaze watching me worship her body like I did when she brought me to the edge of insanity.

  I kiss her from her neck to her inner thigh at a painstakingly slow pace before tilting back so I can take in the stunning visual without anything in my way. Her skin tastes amazing, but it has nothing on the sexiness of her laying before me bare. Her hands are balled at her side, but the visual is unlike anything I’ve ever seen.

  Her rosy pink nipples are the first thing I notice. They’re round and perky and sit exactly where they should on the generous mounds on her chest. Her thighs are parted enough I can see her cunt is glistening, waxed, and throbbing with need. And her hips have the perfect little curve to grip while fucking. She is a fucking knock out. A genuine ten out of ten.

  After drinking her in long enough tiny bumps circle her areolas, I shift my focus higher. Her shoulders are curtained by fiery red waves of perfection, the column of her neck is misted by a fine layer of sweat, and her swollen lips are the ones you’d expect after sucking cock for twenty minutes.