GIFT FROM THE HITMAN: The Petrov Mafia

by Zoey Parker

  I felt exactly how I’d felt the first night we spent together—hollow, empty, needy. The answer to all of it was pushing between my lips, waiting for me to say yes before it could fill me. Before he could.

  I forced my eyes open as the orgasm Ben had given me continued to flare like fireworks up and down my body. My lower lip was scraped raw from biting it so hard. It was all I could do to nod desperately as he raised his eyebrows at me in search of a sign to keep going.

  “I want you, Ben,” I whimpered.

  He responded by pushing all the way into me. I gasped. It was even fuller than I remembered, thicker and harder. He went slowly, but I still had to dig my nails into the turf on either side and clench my knees hard around Ben’s waist. When he had driven deep and our hips were almost touching, he bent over and smashed his mouth against mine.

  I pulled his head close and hung on for dear life as he began to pump slowly in and out of me. Each stroke took minutes, hours, centuries, but it was pleasure all the way up and all the way down. When he was buried fully, I moaned, and when he was almost gone, I moaned. My arms were getting sore from holding onto him so tightly, but it was the only way I could ride out the waves of sensation rippling outward from where he was piercing me.

  He broke off the kiss, but he didn’t go far. He kept his forehead pressed against mine and his eyes boring into me as he began to increase the speed of our rocking. Faster and faster we went, building and building, getting higher together, until sweat slicked both of our brows even though the air around us was damp and cool. It didn’t matter—there was fire just below our skin.

  “Ben…” I cried.

  “Carmen,” he responded. His face was screwed tight in concentration as he slaved to keep himself from going over the edge.

  But I wanted him to. I wanted to feel him explode inside me and I wanted to see how his face looked when he came while we held each other. “Come for me,” I begged. “Please.”

  His hips slammed against mine like a hammer descending over and over again. His cock was stiff and strong, and finally, he was there. One more stroke and I felt him unleash. Deep in my pussy, he erupted, filling me. I held him tightly until his motion slowed and eventually stopped.

  Ben’s eyes were closed as he regained his breath. When it had normalized, he opened them again and looked at me. “The future,” he said, chuckling. “Who falls for something like that?” He grinned.

  I nipped at his ear. “You’re an asshole,” I whispered jokingly.

  Those eyes glistened with more emotion than I knew how to understand. “Yours, though.”

  The most beautiful words I’d ever heard.

  # # #

  We lay on the bank for a while until the water had dried from our bodies. Then, reluctantly, I let Ben help me wriggle back into my wet jeans. I picked up the ragged remains of my shirt and examined it.

  “Thanks a lot,” I said sarcastically.

  “Hey, that’s a very fashion-forward look,” he shot back.

  I glared at him. “Yeah, because you know so much about fashion.”

  “I was voted most fashionable in high school, thank you very much.”

  “No way.”

  “Okay, so I wasn’t. But I could’ve been.”

  “Did you even go to high school?”

  “No, but you’re missing the point.” I smacked him on the shoulder and he laughed. “Here,” he said, “take mine.” I eyed the shirt suspiciously, but I decided it would be better than nothing. I pulled it over my head. It wouldn’t be so bad to follow Ben and stare at his back muscles.

  Once we were dressed, we headed out of the enclave. The boulder was easier to climb going in the other direction, though Ben still kept a close eye on me as I swung over and dropped down. The bike was still waiting where we’d left it. The sun had dipped below the horizon and the last of its rays were close behind. It would be dark soon. The warmth of the day had started to disappear, as well.

  Ben was checking something on the bike when I heard footsteps approaching from around the bend. A few moments later, two people emerged, a man and a woman. They were both wearing big camping backpacks and chatting freely. My jaw dropped when I realized who it was.

  Dan stopped a few yards away from me. His eyes went round. He looked back and forth between Ben and me, trying to figure out just what in the hell I was doing in the middle of this huge state park wearing a man’s t-shirt while accompanied by a shirtless, tattooed biker.

  “Uh, um, Carmen, good to…see you again,” he stuttered eventually.

  “Hi, Dan,” I said.

  “Whatcha, um, whatcha been up to?” he asked, shifting around on his feet like he couldn’t decide what to do with himself. I could tell he was baffled. I couldn’t blame him. If I were in his shoes, I wouldn’t exactly have expected this to be our second encounter either. I didn’t really know how to go about explaining the situation.

  “Just, you know, exploring, I guess you could say.” I was blushing a little bit, but Dan was the color of a stop sign. Next to him, his companion was doing the same thing he was, glancing back and forth to try to make sense of this bizarre twosome, though she was doing a better job at not gawking like a fool. “You?”

  “There’s supposed to be a meteor shower tonight, so we’re, um, going camping. Oh, shit,” he said, smacking the heel of his hand into his forehead, “I’m sorry. This is Cassie. Cassie, this is Carmen.”

  The girl was cute and seemed friendly. She stuck out a hand and smiled as we shook. “Nice to meet you, Carmen,” she said brightly.

  “You, too, Cassie.” I felt Ben walk over behind me. “This is Ben,” I said. “Ben, meet Dan and Cassie.”

  Ben and Dan clasped hands firmly, nodding to each other in that overly stoic, masculine way that men always seemed to love doing. Underneath, though, I could tell Dan was downright terrified of Ben. I couldn’t blame him for that either. Ben didn’t exactly come off as the friendliest of guys on first impression.

  “How do you two know each other?” Dan asked. He sounded polite enough.

  “We’re married,” Ben responded flatly.

  Dan went from red to white in an instant. The little bit of poise he’d managed to collect prior to Ben’s sudden bombshell of a statement went whistling away with the wind. I almost wanted to laugh. This was the smooth, handsome guy who’d had me feeling like I was tripping all over my tongue at the park? God, that was just a few months ago. It hadn’t been that long, not really. So why did he seem like a child when he stood across from Ben? How could these two men even be the same species? Ben was calm and composed, while Dan spluttered, trying to find something reasonable to say.

  “That’s, uh…wow. Lovely. Great. Um, awesome, I’m really happy for you, Carmen. Wish I’d gotten that date when I had the chance, heh.” As soon as the awkward joke came bumbling out of his mouth, he looked like he immediately regretted it. Ben didn’t move, but a single muscle twitched in his face. It was enough to turn Dan into quivering putty.

  Cassie was looking around at all of us in turn. She looked lost, and why wouldn’t she be? Heck, I was lost, and I was the only thing these men had in common. Aside from me, Dan and Ben were as opposite as two people could be. Dan was smooth, lean, clean-shaven, whereas Ben was this hulking, scarred, tattooed mess of a man.

  A few months ago, I would have looked at him like he was from another planet. I wasn’t altogether sure he wasn’t. The difference was that now I knew it was a place I wanted to immerse myself in. I blushed deeper; my body was still ringing with the sensation of Ben burying himself inside me. It felt almost wrong to be standing around and chit-chatting with this youthful boy when just a few minutes earlier I had been in the midst of being filled with a real man.

  Dan forced a dry swallow down his throat. “We should get going,” he blurted suddenly. “Gotta set up camp, and uh, firewood, you know, for the, um, fire…” he trailed off without finishing his sentence.

  Ben nodded. “Good to meet you, Dan,” he said co
olly.

  “Likewise. And, Carmen, maybe see you…? Never mind. Have a good night!” He scurried off immediately, dragging Cassie behind him. They disappeared in the direction of the hiking trail that, according to a nearby sign, picked up just a little bit farther into the foothills.

  Ben turned and looked at me. “Friend of yours?” he asked with a raised eyebrow.

  I couldn’t read his face. Was he angry? Disappointed? There was no way he could possibly be jealous, right? That wouldn’t make any sense. Or would it? I didn’t know. Like always, he was a mystery to me until he chose not to be. “Not really,” I said, my voice low. “We just met once. He, uh, asked me out. But nothing ever happened.” I added, “I swear,” for reasons I couldn’t fathom.

  “Hmm.” Before I could figure out how to ask him what he was thinking, he turned and walked back to the motorcycle. “Coming?” he asked.

  I hurried over and climbed on behind him.

  He didn’t say a word the whole way home. I clung to his shirtless torso as we ripped down the highway way faster than we had on the way here. He seemed to be driving angrily, or maybe I was just projecting my worries onto him. I felt like I’d ruined the moment by bumping into Dan and not handling the awkward situation that had ensued. Ben and I had felt so close lying together in sunny silence on the riverbank. But now it felt like his walls were drawn up again, like he’d retreated from me just when I thought he’d finally begun to relax.

  He didn’t say anything as we parked outside the apartment, as we climbed the stairs, or as he unlocked the front door and let me walk inside ahead of him. I was too scared of what he might say to probe just yet. I needed time to think it over, so I didn’t dare turn back around and ask him anything.

  But just as I was about to walk into the bedroom to take a shower, he spoke up. “Carmen,” he said in a low voice.

  I froze. Slowly, I pivoted on my heel to face him. He stood a few yards away, just inside the doorway, leaning against the wall with his arms folded over his chest as he stared straight at me.

  “Yes, Ben?” I said hesitantly. I couldn’t hold his eye contact. My gaze kept darting between him and the floor. He was smoldering—not quite angry, but he was hot with some emotion I was struggling to identify.

  “Who was that son of a bitch?”

  “He was no one, Ben. I swear. It was just like I said. He came up to me at the park one day and asked if I wanted to get dinner with him. But my dad never let me go. That was the end of it. We haven’t talked since.”

  He growled something I couldn’t hear.

  “What?” I asked.

  “I said, I didn’t like him.”

  I bit my nails as I looked up at him fearfully. He straightened up, unfolded his arms, and cracked his neck on either side. Then he took another step in my direction. I surprised myself when I cowered instinctively against the doorframe that led to the bedroom. What the hell? Was I afraid he’d hit me or something? He’d never even come close to threatening me or making me think that before. But the way he’d responded to Dan was a whole new side of Ben, one I’d never seen in all our time together. Maybe it had been lurking below the surface the whole time, just waiting for the right stimulus to come out.

  I swallowed. It hadn’t really been that long, had it? Just a few weeks together, and before that, there was only the one night. He’d been nothing but courteous that whole time, if distant. But against that firsthand experience, I had a whole lifetime of hearing stories about the Dark Knights and the awful things they had been known to do to girls, at least according to the rumor mill. Beatings, threats, all kinds of ugly bits of half-heard gossip. A man like Ben was probably capable of doing lots of things I didn’t want to think about. There was every likelihood that this was one of them. Stick a toe out of line and watched it get smashed. Was that his style?

  I was surging with the desperate desire to run away and hide. My skin was crawling with anxiety and fear; my mouth felt dry and sticky. I forced myself to stop chewing my nails and instead to clasp my hands in front of me obediently. Maybe, if I acted apologetic—even though I’d truly done nothing wrong—he wouldn’t hurt me too badly.

  He stopped when he was right in front of me and spread his feet wide. I was quivering from head to toe. This was it; the punch was coming. Everything up until now had been just a honeymoon period, a brief oasis in time before the hitting started. The future looked bleak from this moment forward. It looked painful.

  Ben raised a hand towards me. I closed my eyes, waiting for the strike to land.

  But instead, he cupped my chin softly. His fingers were more delicate than I ever could have imagined.

  “Open your eyes, Carmen.”

  I forced them open, trembling.

  “There’s something you should know about me,” he growled. “I’m a jealous son of a bitch. I don’t share. Never have. I don’t play nice with others. When I want something, I want it all to myself, now and forever. And you…you’re like nothing else I’ve ever had before. With you, the need to have everything is more intense. It’s clawing at me. I don’t just want you now. I want you from years ago. I want your whole life. Do you understand me? I want you to belong to me so completely that it’s like you’ve always been mine. The thought of another man even looking at you makes my skin crawl. I’m a flawed man, and this is one of my deepest, but it is what it is.”

  He paused to look deeply into my eyes before continuing. “The thing is, I can’t and won’t force you to accept those terms. I meant it when I told you I’m not your prison guard. Your old man may have taken away your choices, but I’m not him and I won’t do that. So you need to decide right now. You can stay here, with me, on my terms. Or you can walk out the door and go anywhere you like. It’s your call.”

  He let his hand fall away from my chin and crossed his arms again. He took one last look at me, like he was trying to soak up the images of me, sear me on his retinas, as if it might be the last time he would ever see me again. Then he walked around me and into the bedroom.

  “Ben.”

  He was halfway across the room. The light overhead cast dim, twisted shadows across his muscular back. He stopped, but didn’t turn to face me. The air was thick and heavy.

  “Ben, I’m not going anywhere. I’m yours. No one else’s. Just yours.”

  Slowly, he turned around. He was bigger than ever, it seemed, or maybe that was just my imagination running wild. The fear that had corrupted my thinking was transforming into an intense, trembling energy. How could I ever have thought he would hit me? Of course he wouldn’t. Of course not. It felt like the last vestiges of doubt were getting purged from me in a flood of emotion I couldn’t possibly resist. The only thing I could do was give into it.

  Give in to him.

  “I’m not a normal man, Carmen. If you’re choosing me, you have to know it won’t be a normal life.”

  “I don’t want a normal life. I want this. I want you.”

  Before I could stop myself, I ran over to him and jumped into his arms. He caught me without blinking, and my lips crashed into his. His skin was still damp to the touch from the river, and as he threw me onto the bed beside us, my wet hair splayed out like a fan over the comforter. He fell on top of me, his body hot, his touch roving and insistent.

  I didn’t want to be wearing clothes for a second longer. Without waiting for him, I stripped his baggy shirt over my head and immediately reached for the buckle of his jeans. He slid out of them and tugged at mine, not even bothering with the button but instead just forcefully yanking them down until they were off and gone, and he could take his firm cock and push it into my hot, desperate cunt and start to fuck me, to fuck me hard and fast and with the most furiously intense passion I’d ever seen or felt or heard of. I was moaning by the third stroke and it felt like just seconds after we’d begun that I was coming. I wasn’t sure whether I was coming because of his manhood penetrating deep into me or because of his masculinity pouring around me like hot wax, but it didn’t
matter, because I was coming either way. I clawed at his back and felt blood start to run from where my nails dug deep, but that didn’t matter either. What mattered was his mouth sealed against mine and the frantic pumping of his hips to drive deeper and deeper into me. He wrapped my legs around his waist and used my hips to pull me towards him, to ensure that every single inch of him was diving as far as possible into me as it could go and then just a little bit more. He stroked a rough thumb across my clit and the lightness of that mixed with the thick density of his fucking made my eyes roll back into my head and my toes curl.

  Ben wrapped a hand around the back of my neck and forced my head up. “Look at me,” he commanded. He hadn’t stopped thrusting since the moment he entered me. I didn’t ever want him to stop. Little moans and whimpers escaped my mouth as he stared into my eyes like he thought he could see my soul there. He started talking. The words poured outwards like a tidal wave. Neither of us cared if they made sense. What mattered was that it was his voice, Ben’s voice, my husband’s voice and the voice of my baby’s father, that came rough and never-ending.