by Via Mari
She slithers her leg along my calf and curls her toes around my foot, and something inside me just lets the feeling be. It’s caring, almost possessive in nature, and most definitely sexy as hell, and all while she’s sleeping. The fact that her body is drawn to mine in the same way that I crave hers gives me reason for pause. Things are happening fast, too fast, probably, and while my mind knows this, there’s nothing I want to do but selfishly hold her closer. I stroke her hair and caress the soft silkiness of her sleek back, rubbing before the curves dip into her ass. So sexy, and she softly moans, rubbing herself against me as I caress her.
I don’t stop, and she finally opens her eyes, and it takes a minute before she recalls where she is, what we’ve done, and who she’s with. “Matt,” she says, running her hand along my chest, coming dangerously close to my nipples, which are already painfully erect, a small tell of what she’ll find when she heads south.
“What, Princess,” I say, pushing her hair from her face so I can look at those now-wide eyes gazing at me with a swirling look of lust.
“I want you again, to feel you inside of me,” she says softly, like she’s trying to overcome her embarrassment.
In one movement I’ve flipped her, and she’s straddled on top of me, but I keep her pulled close. I stroke her lips with mine, kissing along her seam, pushing in, parting her lips with my tongue so I can explore the depths within. So fucking sweet, and my cock has already hardened painfully and is dripping with arousal for this woman. It’s pushing against her belly as we kiss, and her breathing tells me she can not only feel how hard I am, but just how badly she wants this.
She is brave, telling me that she wants me. I decide to reward her by letting her be on top and grab one of the condom packets on the nightstand, pull it open with my teeth, and hand it to her. “Roll it on, Princess,” I say, watching her eyes widen. She licks her lips, nervous, and I don’t know why the hell the fact she’s never done this before is such a turn on, but it causes my dick to harden like a stone.
The consternation of her gaze as her delicate fingers push it over the head of my cock is adorable. She bites her lip as she continues to slide it down, and my cock throbs with this level of intimacy. I’ve never let any woman shield me. I usually do that myself, and it’s certainly not ever been an intimate moment, more of a necessity. Mitigating risks and all that. I pull her to me and kiss her lips, then allow her to rise back up, watching her eyes all smoky and glazed over with heat. “Are you ready, Marenah?” I ask as she finishes wrapping me, looking pleased at her accomplishment.
She nods, and that gives me the confirmation I need before I lift her and pull her down slowly onto my cock, letting it finally reach that spot that I’ve already learned drives her crazy. She moans and tries to squirm, but I hold onto her hips, keeping her in place, exactly where I want to be, buried in her wetness and velvety folds, moving a little but never giving her what she really needs. She finally cries out with the need to move, and then I thrust hard, upward, deep inside of her as I use her hips to pull her down over my cock. Her eyes glaze over, and her mouth forms the perfect little O for me as the orgasm rips through her. I ride her through the waves, and the way her tight little pussy squeezes my dick and the way she looks on the end of it with her little tits bouncing pushes me over the edge, and with three more deep thrusts, strand after strand of my white-hot desire is released deep inside of her.
I remove the condom, tying it off and letting it drop to the floor so I can pull her into my arms, holding her close as she nuzzles into my chest. I’m going to need to head out in a few hours if I’m going to be in Italy tonight, but I don’t want to leave her, and I’m not letting her stay here by herself until I know what the hell is going on with her grandfather, why she’s so scared that he may capture her on camera with me, or why the hell she was in the bar and why she lied.
So many things running through my head, but the one that is the loudest is how I plan to leave her when the time comes, if she won’t come with me. I press my lips into her soft silky hair, and she lets out a little moan of pleasure. I grab my phone off the nightstand and look at the time and messages. Nate should be arriving in a few minutes with our rolls and coffee, and I haven’t got one word yet back from my request to find out who the fuck her grandfather is.
There’s something that keeps trying to come to the surface, but it evades me.
“Princess, I need to go to Italy, and I want you to go with me.” She just looks up at me with sleepy eyes, smiles, and nods her head, nuzzling deeper into my chest. Her immediate agreement to come to Italy with me is a surprise. I thought I was going to have to convince her, but she feels this insane attraction that we seem to have, too, and I don’t think she wants to see it end anymore than I do. In a matter of moments she’s dozing again, on and off, lying in the curve of my arm. I push her hair to one side so I can watch her and stroke a finger across the sleekness of her shoulder blades and down her spine. Her body responds, curling into me, and I caress her some more, enjoying the change in her breathing. Even in her sleep, she responds to my touch and that is an intoxicating feeling.
Jay’s message to me comes across. “I’m bringing Sasha with me to Italy. She’s not safe in Chicago with us in Italy. How’s her sister doing?”
Everything finally clicks into fucking place. The intel I retrieved on Bernatelli, Sasha’s father: Marenah’s her sister. Their father is one and the same. I remember uploading the transcript I came across, lifting off the audio line that I sent to the intel site when I was undercover trying to get anything on Bernatelli that could give us some leverage to get Jenny Torzial off their wanted list. I remember exactly what that conversation was. “The documents need to disappear, or they do. If anyone ever finds out what happened years ago, it will be the collision between two of the largest crime families on earth. We don’t need the Russian Mafia crawling up our ass. Deal with it!” Fuck, that means that whatever Sasha is dealing with, my Princess is, too, and given her reaction last night, it must have something to do with her grandfather.
I send another message to the intel team to hurry the fuck up with the report that I asked for. They send me back a message to cool my fucking jets. They’re close and will get it to me as soon as they can, and some of the tension I feel dissipates, knowing they’re working as hard as they can to pull any and all information I need together.
I spend the next few minutes stroking my princess as she continues to drift, caught up in my thoughts about what’s happening. A sharp three-knocked rap on the door let’s me know that Nate is here with our rolls and coffee. I probably should’ve ordered lunch fare, but my princess seemed to love these so much that it’s what we’re having for lunch. I kiss her on the forehead, and she stretches, sliding her legs down the length of my own, curling tighter around me, wrapping me with her body. Fuck, now I just want Nate to go the fuck away, but when I don’t answer the door he sends me a text.
Message: I’m outside the door. It’s been over an hour. Couldn’t you get it up?
I laugh out loud reading his message, and Marenah stirs on my chest and finally opens her eyes, trying to focus. I stroke her cheek and run my fingers carefully over her lips, still plump from the abuse she took at the hands of her captors. I would say good morning, but it’s already tipped into afternoon. We must have needed our sleep. “Nate’s at the door. He brought pirogi. Jump in the shower while I talk with him,” I say.
She squints and smiles up at me. “Pirogi? Yum, I’m starving,” she says. She stretches, and the lines of her sleek back arch, rubbing against me as she does, and that movement alone is enough to harden my dick. Damn this woman turns me on.
I kiss her lips. “Go shower. Otherwise, I’m going to send Nate away and fuck you until dinner time.”
Her cheeks flush and she looks up at me.
“Go shower, Marenah,” I say, reaching down to give her ass a playful swat.
She feig
ns indignation, but I see the desire flash across her bright blue eyes.
“We’ll experiment like that another time. If I don’t answer the door soon, Nate’s going to have a team of men invade this place, and I promise you those asses will eat every single one of the pirogi that I’ve ordered,” I say, gesturing for her to go to the bathroom with a nod of my head.
She opens her mouth as in shock. “No, they wouldn’t. I would seriously defend my beloved rolls. Heathens,” Marenah says, mocking me.
“Oh, they would, now get going,” I say, swatting her ass again, this time a little harder.
She yelps. “I’m going,” she says, but I don’t miss the glazy look in her eyes as she grabs the sheet and pulls it from the bed, wrapping it around her as she walks to the bathroom.
She’ll learn soon enough not to cover herself from me, but today I find it incredibly interesting. She’s not trying to use her body to seduce me, although she clearly could. Instead, she’s covering herself from me, and while it has the reverse effect on me, she wouldn’t know that. She could have just let us walk into the shit with her grandfather last night, but she didn’t. I told her to get the hell out of that bar, but she stayed back, ensuring I wasn’t outnumbered and could handle the oncoming men before she did as I told her and left the bar. Whatever she’s got herself into, she’s not trying to pull me into it, but instead, trying to keep me distanced from it, as evidenced by her reaction last night to me pulling up at her grandfather’s restaurant.
I hear the shower start up, slip out of bed, and slide into my pants and pull my t-shirt over my head. When I reach the door, Nate is smiling at me. “What, bring that shit in here and help us eat it,” I say, knowing that if he’s gone to the bakery, he’s also bought something sweet for himself, because he can’t pass a damn candy machine without throwing his money down.
He perches himself on the stool by the breakfast table and opens the white paper wrapped bag. “What do we have here?” Nate says, pulling out one after another of the pirogi that my princess loves so much, and then pulls out a couple of different rolls and places them in front of him and takes a big bite of the open-faced pastry with berries on top.
“What is that?” I ask Nate as he hands me a pastry with what looks like cream cheese and red berries on top.
“It’s vatrushka. Goat cheese and berries,” Marenah says, walking into the kitchen, looking refreshed and ready for the day, as Nate nods his head and murmurs his appreciation for the sweet dessert. She settles herself onto the barstool and reaches for a pirog—when my cell phone and Nate’s light up with incoming warnings, and the overhead security alarm lights start flashing.
Marenah
The silent alarms are set to only go off when someone has reached the stairwell two floors below me. The elevator is impenetrable, watched by an on-duty guard, but also by the feature on my phone that is changed often to ensure no one can possibly retrieve it. At least, that’s what I’ve been led to believe.
“Come, they’re heading up the stairs. Let’s move,” I say, swiping the bag of pirogi and danish, along with my purse from the counter which holds everything I need to get from country to country as I march toward the elevator.
I don’t think they’re going to follow me until Matt and Nate glance down at their phones, almost at the same time. They nod to each other, and I shake my head at their big brother shit. Right now we need to get the hell out of here, because someone, and I have a pretty good idea of who, is heading up that stairwell.
“They’re in the stairwell, we have to go,” I say, but if I thought I was in charge of this operation, I have another think coming.
Nate takes up the front, pulling his weapon, and Matt pushes me into the elevator. “We’re going down. They expect with this set up that you’ll take the stairs. We have about four minutes on these fuckers,” Matt says, swiping his phone against the electronic eye of my private pad. I reach into my pants pocket to pull my cell phone out but stop when the elevator engages and begins the long descent down to the lobby, the one that I thought only I had the access code to.
As the elevator dings, it opens into the private cove of the exclusive skyrise’s lobby. We walk out with Matt urging me to go faster toward the black Lincoln. Matt almost pushes me in, and Nate jumps into the front seat and tells the driver to go.
“The Chicago Mafia are ruthless, Princess. We need to get you out of here,” Matt says, pulling me close and whispering in my ear so as not to be overheard by the rest of his team.
I shake my head because there are more people and factions than I can imagine who would come after me if they knew who I really was, but I don’t believe that’s who is trying to break into my penthouse tonight. The only people that know I’m home in my motherland, Russia, are the people that work for my grandfather. The thought that he may have discovered my work, and has seen me with Matt, both, send a chill down my spine, but I also know he would not hurt me. I don’t have time to dwell on this, because whoever is heading up those stairs will be here soon.
I don’t say a word, and Matt doesn’t need me to. “Your grandfather. Let’s get out of this mess, and then you can tell me what the hell all of this is about,” Matt says, and I don’t correct him as he pulls me closer and kisses the top of my head as his driver weaves through the city.
The only explanation that makes any sense is that the people I work for have put two and two together. As much as me being together with Matt would anger him, he would not send his soldiers in to harm me. Unless the Chicago Mafia has tracked me, but my grandfather’s men surely would know if a rival was in their country, right under their noses, intending to do his granddaughter harm. The thought rattles around a little bit, and I don’t see how that’s possible. I was so careful, but then again, Bernatelli’s crew was able to sniff me out, or maybe it was just that they saw me when they were hauling Matt downstairs and didn’t really know who I was. It’s not like they had the chance to torture it out of me. The driver navigates us out of the city and toward the airport, but it’s soon clear that’s not where he’s headed. “Where are we going?”
Matt pulls me close. “We’ll drive for a while. The Gulfstream is refueling and going through some maintenance checks. They’ll get clearance to land at an airport about an hour away. We’ve got folks working to get you a new passport. Otherwise, as soon as your name pops, the people after you will know. They could even have the flight grounded,” Matt says.
I nod, letting it sink in. He’s right, and if I were on my own I’d be fine, but I’m not and I need much more information than I have before I can put the entire picture together. “That won’t really be necessary,” I say, opening my purse, which is as big as it is for a reason, rummage around and pull out my passport and hand it to Matt.
If I thought it would shock him, it doesn’t. “What’s the plan for the hair?” Matt says, gesturing to the picture of the short, dark-haired lady on the passport staring back at us with my blue eyes. I reach into my bag and grab a pony, wrapping my hair into a bun, and then pull my short black spiky wig out and place it on my head, shifting it into place. “Anika Smirnov, nice to meet you,” I say.
“Well, Anika Smirnov, glad to meet you. Looks like you’ll be traveling to Italy with me and my crew,” Matt says, smiling.
I am about to try to explain some of this, but he shakes his head and places his index finger on my lips. “We have a lot to discuss, but not right now. I need to focus on getting us out of this country and into Italy.”
We pass through checkpoints and the passports are cleared without so much as a raised eyebrow.
We turn into a remote airstrip where a plane is waiting for us. “Make yourself comfortable, Marenah,” Matt says, gesturing to the main cabin. “I need to work with the crew. I’ll join you when I can,” he says, leaving me to settle into the space on my own.
I don’t blame him. He has no idea who I am really, and he has a job
to do.
* * *
It’s been hours, and I wake slightly as Matt slides in next to me in the two-seater leather recliners, buckling up just before we touchdown on a private strip in Italy. “It’s a short drive from the private strip to the airport we’re headed to,” Matt says, taking my hand, guiding me to the awaiting car, but offering me no more information than that. He probably doesn’t know what to think after what’s happened today.
I don’t know what’s going on between Sasha and Jay, but she’s clearly pissed and doesn’t plan to stay with him and instead intends to head to a hotel from the airport. I mention this to Matt, and he gets on his phone almost immediately.
“Did you just text Jay what I told you in confidence?” I ask, narrowing my eyes at him.
“First, you didn’t tell me it was in confidence. Second, her security is at risk if she’s on her own. He needs to know. He needs to keep her safe, Marenah,” Matt says, grasping my hand and pulling me closer.
I should be mad, but instead I feel a deep sense of relief that for once I don’t have to solve everyone’s problems and that he and Jay have it all under control.
It is with that thought that I nuzzle into the crook of his side, with his arm wrapped around me, keeping me pressed warmly against him until we arrive. My phone buzzes with a message. Sasha again, and now she wants me to pick up some bag she’s left in the women’s bathroom at the airport.
* * *
H The driver pulls up at the front entrance of the airport and lets us out into the night. Matt walks around and opens my door, helping me out of the car and taking me by the hand as we head into the airport. The security team has us surrounded, some in front and some in back.
