by A. Zavarelli
“Because of your father,” he agrees.
He isn’t the worst looking guy in the world. In fact, right now, he is superior to Nikolai in every way. Because he is here, and Nikolai is not. Even if he doesn’t have the same imposing build or the electric blue eyes, he is a man. And I suppose if I’m to be ruined, I should be able to choose which man will do the job.
Anyone but Nikolai.
Anyone but the traitor downstairs.
“I want you to do it,” I tell Mischa. “I’m ready now.”
He sighs as though he’s already tired of this game but comes to sit beside me on the bed regardless. Admittedly, I feel like I’m going to throw up all over again. But maybe if I close my eyes, it will be over quickly, and I will have the last word.
The bottle is still clutched in my hands when I implore him to do it. Mischa’s eyes rake over me, and I think that he wants to. But for some reason, he still hesitates.
“I should speak to Nikolai first.”
“I don’t care what Nikolai says,” I insist. “I want you to do it.”
Mischa is still conflicted, but he disrobes anyway. He pries the cognac from my fingers, and my heart pulses in my throat. I have nothing else to do with my hands when he kneels on the bed before me.
He’s naked, and I can’t bring myself to really look at him.
“I’m just going to rest my eyes,” I whisper. “But it’s okay. I want you to do it.”
I hope that if I keep repeating the lie, it will be easier. But it doesn’t get easier when he leans down and tries to kiss my neck.
His scent is all wrong. His body is all wrong. And I can’t keep pretending that I want this when I don’t. So I disconnect and try to go to another place.
Nothing can hurt me if I’m not present.
It seems to work for a while. I can’t feel Mischa. I can’t feel anything. But my mental sanctuary is not as impenetrable as I had hoped. The sudden commotion ruins everything, and when I blink, he’s there in my vision. The devil. A monster who thinks he can take Mischa away from me.
“Give him back!” I demand.
Nikolai turns, his eyes flaying me open. “What did you just say?”
“Give him back,” I repeat. “I want it to be him.”
His hands lock into fists at his sides, and his nostrils flare as he stalks toward me. A voice tells me to run. Maybe it’s Mischa. Maybe it’s my own sanity, unraveling. But I run. Around the bed and straight past Mischa, down the hall. Nikolai gives chase.
There are only two places for me to go. His bedroom, or his office. Fear, not logic, is dictating my direction, so I choose his office. Locking the door behind me, I dart beneath his desk and try to catch control of my breath.
The lock turns, and hope abandons me.
I’m curled into myself, gasping for breath when he bends down to meet my eyes. His are cold and possessive. Cruel and mocking.
“What now, zvezda? Where will you run to now?”
I don’t answer him, so he snatches me by the wrist and yanks me away from my hiding place.
“Please,” I whisper.
He drags me back down the hall without mercy. “Save your begging for all the men who will come after me.”
A sob heaves from my chest at the viciousness of his words. He can’t mean them. I don’t want to believe he means them. He is angry with me for choosing Mischa. I know that’s what it is.
“I never wanted him. I swear it. I just wanted to get it over with.”
“Tell him that,” Nikolai demands as he tosses me back onto the bed.
Mischa is almost fully dressed when he meets my gaze, and I implore him to forgive me. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it.”
“I know.”
He leaves the room, abandoning me to my monster and his rage. I try to curl into myself, but Nikolai is not done. He flips me onto my stomach and utilizes the restraints from the bed to secure my hands above my head.
I shake my head frantically, pleading into the pillow. “Please, not like this. I didn’t mean it.”
The metal clank of his belt buckle is all I hear, followed by the zipper of his jeans. He’s undressing. And I’m in this position because he’s going to take me face down, so he doesn’t have to look at me.
He moves behind me, prying my legs apart and pressing his fingers against my sex. Everything stills behind me, and the only sound in the room is that of his heavy breath.
“You aren’t wet,” he murmurs.
I strain my neck to look back at him, but his response is to push my hair into my face, obscuring my vision. His cock nudges against me, and I sob harder.
“Please,” I cry out. “Not like this, Nika.”
He freezes. I’ve never used such an intimate endearment with him, but I’m using it now. Time is suspended as I listen to his labored breaths, waiting to see what path he will take.
When his hands find the back of my thighs, they are unexpectedly soft and overwhelmingly large. He could easily pry me apart and never put me back together again, if he wanted to. But instead, his calloused thumbs press against my flesh in slow, shallow circles. A shiver charges up my spine, and Nikolai cups the globes of my ass in his hands, emitting a low, throaty groan.
“You are too obstinate for your own good,” he says. “You don’t deserve kindness from me.”
“I never wanted him,” I whisper again.
“So who then?” he demands. “If not Mischa. Or would you still insist on saving yourself for your precious Dante?”
When I don’t answer, his fingers move between my thighs, and there is no mistaking his effect on me. I am slick, and I am wanting. Wanting things I’ve never had. Things that are no good for me.
Nikolai slides over the moisture gathering between my parted thighs and dips a finger inside me, making me clamp around him.
“Answer me.” He squeezes my ass cheek with his other palm.
But I can’t. Because now his fingers are on my clit, massaging me in a slow, circular pattern. My hips are tilting back toward him, opening without shame. I want more.
I need more.
He grabs a fistful of my hair and tugs, inflicting pain while he gifts me pleasure. “I’m not going to ask you again, zvezda. Tell me now, or I will bury my cock inside you without consideration of your fragile virtue.”
I moan into the pillow and thrash against him. This isn’t right. None of this is right. I hate him. His body has no right to take my virtue. He doesn’t have the right to bring me pleasure when he takes no value in the sanctity of what I’m giving him. But it would be weak to deny the truth when he can so clearly see, or feel, it for himself.
“It should have been you,” I say. “But you are a hedonistic coward who thinks only of himself.”
In the next breath, I’m flipped onto my back, Nikolai’s hand wrapped around my throat as he breathes into my face.
“Say it again,” he challenges. “Tell me to my face.”
“You are a coward,” I spit at him. “Go and marry your Russian bride and set me free. You have no need for me now.”
His eyes move back and forth between mine, and I am a fool for revealing the jealous undercurrent in my voice. I’m a fool to let him believe for a second that it bothers me. More importantly, I’m a fool for reacting the way I do when his lips crash down onto mine as if he owns me.
I breathe him in and part my lips for his, allowing his tongue to sweep through my protests and lay claim to my mouth. His body is naked and hard against my stomach, and his flesh is on fire.
My legs curl around him as he drinks from my lips, and I plead between breaths for freedom. His answer is to unleash my hands from the restraints and drag them over his body. I curl my fingers into his hair and twist, encouraging the pain I want him to feel. But it makes little difference. He is a thrusting, pulsing, grunting machine.
“Tell me you want me,” he demands.
“You disgust me.” My nails sink into his back while my words lay into his ego. “You don’t de
serve to take me when this means nothing to you.”
He groans and shoves his throbbing cock against my wetness. “You are a little liar and a stuck-up bitch,” he answers. “And I will take pleasure in stripping you of your crown.”
“Then do it,” I challenge.
He kisses me to shut me up while he fingers me to make me pliable. I claw at him. I inhale him. We binge on each other, and I feel him everywhere. But mostly, I feel my willpower careening out of control as pressure builds deep inside me.
“Come on my fingers,” he coaxes. “Show me what a princess looks like when she has fallen from grace, zvezda.”
Explosions of light burst against my eyelids as white-hot lava melts between my legs. I unravel for him, spinning and spinning until I collapse, wrung out and useless. Everything comes back slowly. The awareness of him. The image of his face so close to mine. His ocean eyes are calm and serene, absent of the lies he likes to weave.
His honesty is brutal, even in silence. And the reverie on his face terrifies me more than any of his words ever have.
“Ruin me,” I whisper. “And never let anyone else touch me again.”
He closes his eyes and wrestles his cock against me. This trip is a one-way ticket, and there are no refunds or returns. He’s going to take my virginity. He’s going to ruin me for all other men. I don’t feel sorry for it. I only feel impatient.
He squeezes the head inside me as he did before, giving me tiny micro thrusts. His eyes fall shut, and he looks intoxicated before he’s even all the way in. It’s hard to fathom that it’s because of me.
I did that.
“Breathe, little doll,” he whispers.
And I do. His body collapses forward, and as he does, his cock takes root inside my body, fracturing my virginity and possibly my sanity too.
He shudders, and I shiver, and together, we breathe. It hurts, as I expected it to, but mostly, I just feel full. Full of Nikolai. And he is raw. There’s nothing between us, and I’ve never felt so exposed.
He buries his face in my hair, inhaling me. The muscles in his forearms shake. He’s holding back until I’m ready. And I have the suffocating realization that I need him. I need him on my side until I can find my way out. This is what I tell myself. This is what I try to focus on so that my heart remains caged.
“I’m ready,” I whisper.
His pelvis rolls back, and it drags his cock away, leaving me impoverished until it fills me all over again on the return. I touch his hair and smell his skin and watch his face while he fucks me. I watch the way his eyes open and close while he murmurs how good I feel around him.
He squeezes my face and kisses me again. He kisses my throat and my jaw and my hair.
“So sweet.” He hums. “Why must you be so sweet?”
It’s the last spoken thought before his body pulls tight and he buries himself deep, shuddering out his release. Bare. He is bare, and he’s filling me with his cum. His eyes are sated and heavy when he pets my face, his cock softening inside me.
“It does mean something to me,” he says. “This gift you have given means more than you could ever know.”
In the sober light of morning, the little star is no longer under my spell. Cool amber eyes find mine in the reflection of her mirror, disinterested in my presence. I left her in the darkness of night, stealing away to the sanctuary of my own room. And now she is wearing her armor, but she should know it won’t do her any good. I will blow it up or burn it down. Whatever I have to do to show her that she is mine.
Freshly bathed, she prepares herself for the day. It’s the same ritual I’ve watched her execute from the monitor in my office more times than I can count. She brushes her hair. Applies her makeup. And then she castigates herself in the mirror for twenty minutes, a slave to her disease.
I don’t know if she wishes she was perfect, or if it’s only her obsession. But either way, she is perfect to me.
This morning, a black silk robe hangs loosely off her shoulders. And despite the cold reception on her face, her nipples are hard for me. I hope she is sore. I hope that every time she moves today, she feels my cock inside her. I want her to crave it. I want more than anything to demand she never thinks of any other man but me.
“Where are my sheets?” she asks.
“Gone.”
Her eyes pinch together. “To my father?”
I don’t answer. If she expects remorse, she should know I have none. I don’t regret taking her, nor am I sorry for the evidence delivered to her father. It’s the way things are done, and she knows this.
She cinches the belt around her robe and crosses her arms. “It’s a disgusting tradition.”
I want to do all manner of disgusting things to her. For example, right now, I’d like nothing better than to shove my cock into her mouth to shut her up. I could easily spend the day buried inside her, brutalizing her tender pussy to remind her of her place. However, I have other pressing matters to attend to. With this in mind, I toss the morning-after pill onto her vanity, along with the birth control pills the doctor provided.
She picks them up and examines them, relief flooding her eyes when she sees the first package, only to be washed away with panic at the second.
Her eyes shoot up to mine. “I can’t go on the pill.”
“Why?”
“It causes weight gain.”
“So does a baby.” I walk toward the door.
“You’ve fulfilled your duty,” she says. “You ruined me. I see no further need for protection—”
“You can either take the pills or take a baby inside you, but either way, you will be taking my cock, zvezda. Don’t fool yourself by pretending otherwise.”
I find Mischa at Kosmos, half-drunk with a stripper grinding on his lap. It’s not even ten a.m., and I’d be hard pressed to determine whether he’s been at it all night or he’s just getting started.
He lives the life of a perpetual bachelor, enjoying all the perks the brotherhood has to offer. Unlimited booze and women have satisfied many a Vor, myself included. But when I look at him this morning, it is not envy or amusement I feel. There is only pity.
Over the past few years, I have indulged my baser desires often and with whomever I please. But it has been a fleeting satisfaction. This morning, I am a changed man. I have tasted honey, and I can’t ever imagine settling for anything less again. Knowing that Nakya waits for me back at my home is a privilege unlike any other.
Considering the facts, it’s a foolish notion. Soon, I will be engaged to Ana, and Nakya will be returned to her father. It’s the only way this can work. The only way I can save her. Our paths were not meant to parallel forever. Logically, I know I’ll be forced to give her up, but it doesn’t make the decision easier to accept.
Like many of the Vor, marriage is a natural step for me. I have thought about it from time to time, believing it would happen on its own schedule. But I never imagined the face of my wife or my unborn children because there wasn’t an instinctive fit. The molds were empty, something yet to be determined. But now the pressure to fill them is bearing down on me, and it isn’t Ana’s face that I see as my wife or even the mother of my children.
The face that I see is sharper. High cheekbones and honeyed eyes. After this morning, how could I not imagine Nakya swollen with my children? They would have her tenacity. Mocha skin and my strong Russian genes. They would be unstoppable.
If it was meant to be.
Mischa opens his eyes at half-mast, a Cheshire grin spreading across his face. “Kolyan.” He makes a sloppy gesture with his hand. “Come and join us, won’t you?”
I look at the stripper. Bare tits bounce around as she grinds on Mischa’s lap, her tiny red thong swallowed up by her ass cheeks. She does nothing for me. In fact, when I look around at the variety of naked women ready and willing to please, none of them do anything for me. Brunettes, redheads, blondes. Women of all flavors and shapes. Natural or perfectly sculpted silicone. There isn’t a club in this city t
hat boasts a better selection, yet not a single one of them inspires an erection. It only fuels my frustration as I snap my fingers at the stripper.
“Go away. We have business.”
She pouts but does as she’s told. Mischa grunts and pulls out his cigarettes, extending one in offer. I light up and allow the much-needed nicotine to soak into my lungs.
“You said you wanted to show me something.”
Mischa takes a long drag and nods, exhaling through his nose. “You still pissed at me?”
“I never was.”
He laughs, and I want to punch him. Of course, it’s a lie, but it’s better than the truth.
“You told me to have a go,” he says. “You said we needed to follow Viktor’s orders.”
“I know what I fucking said.”
“She’s trouble, Kolyan,” he slurs. “You should cut and run now while you still can. Before you get any more invested.”
“I’m not invested.”
Another lie, and a pointless one at that. Mischa can read me better than most.
“Have you spoken to Viktor?” I ask.
Mischa stubs out his cigarette and stands up, zipping up his jeans. “I need a fucking burger or something.”
I gesture to the back door, and we walk to my car in silence. I’m anxious to hear his response, and after last night, I wouldn’t be surprised if he sold me out. It’s what I deserve.
“I told him I got the job done,” Mischa says.
I look over at him, and I’m lost for words. He lied to the pakhan for me. If I go down, he’s going down with me, and the pressure I feel to protect him only adds to my current mental state.
“Thank you, Misch. I know I don’t deserve your loyalty, but I am grateful regardless.”
“It’s a loose end,” he answers. “The story might work for now … until he sees the girl and her feelings for you all over her face.”
If Nakya has any obvious feelings for me, I’m unable to see them myself. She is locked down tighter than a crypt, and like any thief worth his salt, I want to pry her open and uncover all her secrets.
“He won’t see her,” I assure him.
“I wouldn’t count on it,” Mischa says. “Considering he told me to give you a message.”
