by Black, Paula
We left her there, sprawled and sobbing on the floor. What else could we do? A pity party wasn’t going to bring Daniel back.
“We have to do something,” I said. “We have to get those people out.”
Konstantyn nodded.
I followed him down the dingy stairwell and out into the dark street.
“You know the location of the underpass where your brother was found?”
I nodded numbly in response. When you’d spent months of your life mulling over the last moments of a loved one dying alone, and how you might have prevented it from happening, that kind of detail was indelible.
“Then I can locate Dante,” Konstantyn said, his voice rough. “First, we go back to your place. I need blueprints for the tunnels and disused tube stations underneath the area where your brother was found. From there, it will be a simple process of elimination.”
He was planning on going in then. I tried to put a rein on the frisson of excitement that buzzed in my veins.
“What will you do? If you find them?” When you find them.
“Whatever is necessary,” he said quietly, and I knew. He would kill to get his sister back, and to free the others. If I had his skills, I’d have been doing the same, but it went unsaid that Konstantyn would be going in alone this time. I knew enough to acknowledge that an untrained civilian would only be a liability in that kind of rescue situation. And it would be a rescue mission, not a search for bodies, I told myself, but dread weighed heavy on my heart all the same.
The first fat drops of rain were splattering the pavement when Konstantyn entered my apartment armed, securing each of its four tiny rooms before beckoning me inside and double-locking the door.
Making the gun safe, he laid it down on my coffee table, leaving me wondering when my home had turned into a war-zone.
I rummaged through the kitchen drawers for my dog-eared copy of the London A to Z, opened it up on the counter, and flicked through the pages to find the spot where Daniel’s body had been found. I felt Konstantyn’s presence over my shoulder.
“Here, this is the place. They found him under this bridge,” I said. My finger trembled as I stabbed at the map.
It was too much. Staring at the stupid map, I fell apart under the weight of Gracie’s revelations. She’d tried to help my brother, and likely killed him in the process. Had she not taken him out of there, Daniel might still be alive. Suffering, but alive.
Was I selfish to even think that way? I’d seen the photographs. If it were me, I knew, deep down, I’d be better off dead. Then again, if Konstantyn’s boast was true, then Gracie carrying Daniel up onto the street might be the key to finding Dante’s underground torture chambers, and to saving all those other victims.
My brother’s death just seemed too high a price to pay.
A great sob wracked my body and my face crumpled, breaking the composure I’d fought so hard to maintain.
Konstantyn gripped my upper arms and spun me around until I was facing him.
Through the wash of my tears, I watched his eyes tighten and knew immediately he regretted the move. Put a gun in my hand and I will kill for you, that pained expression said. Give me a ride or die scenario, with impossible odds, and I will stare death in the eyes for you. But confronted with an emotionally incontinent woman, Konstantyn looked helpless as a lost boy.
He shook his head and his fingers flexed on my arms, like now he had hold of me, he didn’t quite know what to do. “Please don’t cry.”
“I’m sorry.” I shuddered and scrubbed at my wet cheeks, but it was useless. Every tear I wiped was just as quickly replaced with another. “Just give me a minute. I don’t want you to see me like this.” I hugged my chest and tried to turn away.
He didn’t allow me to.
His warm hand on my cheek guided me back to his face and I watched his eyes darken with murderous determination.
“I will kill the ones who did this to your brother,” he said roughly.
My heart clenched and fresh tears welled against my will. “You’re not helping.”
His brows pulled together, questioning.
“Being nice to me only makes it worse,” I explained through another bout of ugly crying that made my chest seize.
“I mean it. I will kill them with my bare hands.” He sounded so assured, I had to smile.
“I believe you,” I said on a quavering breath. The sincerity burning in his eyes was all the promise I needed.
His thumb caught a tear as it fell, his warm palm still cradling my face. “Don’t give them your tears, Neva.”
“I can’t help it.” I was defeated. Exhausted. Broken.
“I can.” He knotted a hand in my hair and captured my hitched breath with his mouth and I yielded.
His kiss was everything I remembered it to be: brutal and demanding. Alive.
My body caught fire. Months of grief and frustration came pouring out in a savage lust, and I wanted nothing more than to let myself drown.
Through the salt-taste of my tears, I kissed him back with all the violence of my ragged emotions.
Needing more, I ran my hands over the short bristles of his hair, but there was nothing to hold on to. I settled for grappling at his top and clawing his muscular shoulders, hauling him closer.
He palmed the small of my back and jerked me against his body.
I melted instantly into his power with a tear-rough moan.
He was so hard and unyielding, every part of him crushed to my skin, and it was what I needed in that moment, a wall of strength to hold me up when I was weak. I’d fought so long on my own, struggling to keep it together. I’d thought I was strong. I wasn't.
“I want you.” He spoke the words against my lips in that guttural accent and I became liquid at my core.
“Yes. God yes.” I framed his stubbled jaw with my fingertips and kissed him again, fiercely.
His strong hands imprinted the rounds of my ass and he rode me up his body with the powerful grace of the dancer he was. The thick ridge of his erection nestled between my thighs, and desperation escaped my throat in a breathless moan.
When his lips found the sensitive hollow of my throat, I shivered, clamping my legs around his hips and wrapping my arms around his neck, even as my head fell back in surrender, opening myself up to the sensual, sucking torture of his mouth.
He carried me, vined around him like that, until my spine collided with the wall.
Konstantyn growled against my tongue-wet skin and I felt his need intensify in the squeeze of his hands on my ass and the grinding roll of his hips that rode his steel-hard cock over my throbbing centre.
He had me pinned, caught between a rock and a hard place, and the friction was maddening, stroking my lust to a tingling knot that pulled tighter and tighter with every curl of his hips into mine.
Aroused to the point of pain, I pleaded for release, but he was relentless.
He hunted my mouth, penetrating me with his tongue, opening me up to the invasion. I was so caught up in the feel of him moving against me that I didn’t even realise he’d moved us again, until his hands were prising my limbs from his body and I tumbled back onto the mattress with a cry of surprise.
Flushed, breathing ragged with desire, I bounced into the sheets. Konstantyn stood between my legs, his muscular torso flexing as he peeled the sweatshirt over his head. The look in his dark, green-flecked eyes was such pure predatory lust, it sent a frisson of fear skittering over my heated skin. The half-naked man towering over me was my every fantasy made hard, unyielding flesh. He would take what he wanted from me, without apology, and I would love every part of my surrender.
Transfixed by the raw beauty of him, my eyes scrolled down his rippling, gauze covered abs to where he tugged at his belt buckle, and the sound of the leather sliding free, coupled with the huge bulge straining his fly, had me salivating for what I’d tasted once before. Knowing what awaited me as the metal teeth of the zipper parted around his pulsing erection only heightened the core-clenching antic
ipation of finally having him inside me.
But Konstantyn had other ideas. I should have known he’d torture me before giving me what I wanted most. Fisting the waistband of my yoga pants in one hand, he yanked them down my thighs. As he knelt to remove my shoes, his eyes fell between my legs, to where I knew my panties must be soaked through. He made a noise I could only describe as animal, and my sex flooded with heat as I watched his nostrils flare and his pupils dilate.
His rough hands mapped my calves, riding up the sensitive skin of my inner thighs, spreading me wide for his mouth. I clutched at handfuls of the sheets and my stomach tightened in anticipation of what was to come.
Bristled kisses burned a path to the juncture of my thighs, and then he took me roughly with his mouth, sucking at my swollen lips through the thin, wet barrier of my panties. My toes curled and I bit down on a cry of pleasure, desperate to come, but loath to fall from the high he had me riding. He swept my panties to one side and even his hot breath felt cool on my throbbing flesh. I shivered, but he was only getting started. The assault of his tongue and fingers was simultaneous, a wicked, dual invasion, pushing deep inside me and parting my folds in a wet dragging stroke.
My thighs flexed to granite as the tip of his tongue flicked at my clit with fast, confident strokes. His growl vibrated through my sex and my ears rang with the moans and wild curses falling from my own lips. His fingers curled inside me right as he sucked me between his teeth and my hips jacked up off the bed.
He didn’t miss a beat. Mounting the crest of my climax, I felt his knees depress the mattress. His cock replaced his fingers, so much bigger, pushing past the tight, pulsing threshold of my sex, and the thick, stretching penetration tipped me over the edge. He thrust, balls deep, grunting pleasure as he slapped his thighs up against my ass, and I came hard around his iron girth, gripping him in the rhythmic, clenching contractions that left me mewling his name.
He fucked me relentlessly, pounding deep into me, over and over, bracing my trembling knees wide while my orgasm stretched on, riding the waves of intense friction. And I wanted nothing more than to lay back and watch his magnificent form through the haze of my own ecstasy: hips pumping, muscles flexing in a corded, sweat-sheened display of unrestrained masculinity.
I tilted my pelvis, taking him deeper, kicking my hips into his every thrust. I pushed up my top and gifted him the sight of my fingertips pinching the hard, dusky peaks of my nipples. He rewarded me with a bass groan of appreciation that triggered another orgasm, deep in my core.
God I’d lost count. I’d lost myself in this beautiful man. I looked into his eyes, wild with passion and restrained intelligence, and he held my gaze, even as his face tightened with the strain of imminent release.
Logic took a back seat to my all-encompassing need to finish what we’d started.
“Come inside me,” I commanded, hoarse with my desire for him. For the little sense it made, some primal part of me wanted all of him, deep inside me, branding me as his. I curled a hand around his nape and dragged his mouth down on mine. His restraint showed in every muscle and it only made me want him more. I wanted to watch him lose it.
“I want this,” I whispered, biting at his lower lip.
“Ah fuck, Neva.”
He moaned and his surrender was a thing of beauty, his powerful body shuddering above me as he buried his surging cock in my clenching depths. I wrapped my arms around his broad back and clung to him.
The tears came fresh, streaming down my cheeks, not tears of grief, but catharsis. This arrogant, unapproachable man, my avenging angel, my strength, and my weakness, had let himself go in my arms, and I never wanted the moment to end.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Of course it couldn’t last. The sweat hadn’t dried on Konstantyn’s skin before he reverted to type. In one lithe move he abandoned me to the cooling sheets and sat at the edge of the bed.
His muscular back flexed as he scrubbed a hand over his nape and swore in Ukrainian. For the first time, I got a close-up view of the tattoo I’d tried to photograph at the club.
My hand hovered close to his skin, but his back was even more scarred than his chest, and that gave me pause. In the end, my fingertips barely feathered over the image of the winged serpent, but the touch registered.
“Do you know what it means?” He asked, without turning around.
“You said it was the insignia of Dante’s elite troops?”
Konstantyn nodded his assent. “The snake eating itself symbolises the eternal cycle of life and death.”
“And the triangle, with the line and dot?”
“Is the alchemical symbol for blood.”
“Eternal blood,” I mused.
“Yeah, something like that.”
“One of the men in the photographs had the same tattoo,” I whispered.
“Alexei,” he said. “We trained together in Kiev.”
“He didn’t have this part though,” I said, tracing the Cyrillic writing across his shoulders.
“No, that is mine alone. You know what that means?”
“Faithful unto death,” I replied.
He turned his head to me, and his brow twitched up. “You read my language?”
“No. I, ah, I Googled it.”
He huffed a laugh, but his head sagged on his broad shoulders.
“Come back to bed?” I whispered.
He cradled his tight-cropped skull in his big hands and shook his head.
“This was a mistake,” he said.
“Then why don’t I regret it?”
“We should not have –”
“I’m on birth control, if that’s what you’re worried about.” Tentatively, I rested my hand on his bicep. At least he didn’t flinch, I thought, though I doubted this man was the type to cringe away from anything. “No nasty surprises in nine months time, I promise.” I tried to make my voice sound light, when in truth, his sudden coldness was contagious, and I shivered.
He turned to me with a scowl on his face. “You think I would not want a child, a wife?”
The burning sincerity in his eyes rendered me speechless.
“I didn’t mean... I –”
“Look at this,” he said, slapping a palm to the inverted cross branded into his forearm. “Loyal unto death. I am not a free man. Dante owns me.”
“But you said yourself, he’s dying. Couldn’t we just wait it out?”
“And what of my sister? What of the others. Would you wait it out, knowing Daniel could still be alive?”
Heat flared in my cheeks. I’d do anything to bring my brother back. Anything. My gaze fell and I plucked at the rumpled sheet, wondering when spending time with this man had eclipsed my appetite for revenge.
Konstantyn stood and stared out the bedroom window. “You must see. Dante will not hesitate to use you to get to me. He will make me choose between you and Mariya. That’s what he does.” I could see the lines of tension rippling his naked form.
“I told you I wrote Mariya a letter once,” he said quietly, “I never told you why I never sent it. It was in the early days of our training. Dante found the letter. In the middle of the night, he dragged me and the other trainees from our beds and lined us up against a wall, wearing nothing but our underpants. We were only boys, with peach fuzz on our chins and balls, and heads full of wet dreams about becoming real soldiers.
He asked us, “When you meet an opponent who is stronger than you, smarter than you, better armed than you, how will you bring him to his knees?”
Of course, thinking it was what he wanted to hear, we said we would make it our business to be the strongest, the smartest and the best armed.
I still remember his ugly laughter right before he grabbed between my legs. Laughter, and the most blinding pain imaginable as he twisted my testicles until I thought he would geld me with his bare hand.
“If you want to bend a man to your will, this is how you do it,” he said.
Another twist and my knees buckled under me. I
hit the floor, crying like a baby. “And if the man has no balls, then you target the next best thing. You identify his vulnerabilities, and you squeeze the life from them until your opponent has no choice but to yield. Do you understand me?”
He paced the line and asked the other boys what would stop them falling to their knees as I had. Afraid to speak, they covered their genitals with their hands.
“Mothers, brothers, sisters, lovers,” he spat. “They hang off you like dangling testicles, ripe for plucking by your enemies. You have to cut them off. When you have no loose ends, when you care for nothing and about no one, then nobody can touch you.”
Dante produced the letter and thrust it into my hands. “Do you understand,” he said, “or do I need to demonstrate on the rest of your snivelling bunk-mates too?”
I tore up the letter. I’d learned my lesson, and I never wrote to Mariya or my mother again. Loyal unto death doesn’t have to mean my death, Neva. This thing between us, it never happened.”
I closed my lids on the stinging tears that threatened. “Sure. If that’s how you want to play it.”
Maybe he could conveniently press the delete button on what we’d shared, but for me, the intimacy felt indelible as the ink in his hard, unfeeling skin.
“I must get to work on the location where your brother was found,” he said.
“Yes, of course,” I said, scraping my hair off my forehead and climbing out of the bed. “Just let me get my clothes back on.”
He stood there with his back to me as I scrambled to cover the lower half of my body, but even fully dressed, I felt emotionally exposed against the ice-wall of his rejection.
“I need a minute,” I said, shutting myself into the bathroom.
By the time I mustered the courage to come out, Konstantyn was already hunched over the laptop, pulling up websites that showed London’s subterranean infrastructure in the kind of minute detail I imagined was strictly the realm of MI5 classified information.
“Are you hungry?” I asked, attempting to channel my useless energy into something constructive. “I can order pizza.”
