by Nic Saint
“Thank you,” he said a little dubiously.
Introductions were made, and he learned that the woman’s name was Lilia Valiakov, and she’d been working for the family for over a decade. Strange, he felt, that they would never have met, but he knew better than to question her credentials. The mere fact she was here told him she was a trusty associate of the Gornakovs. They wouldn’t entrust an operation of this importance to her if she wasn’t.
The man called himself Andre Joshakov, and the moment he said it, Dimitri knew it to be a lie. He accepted the offered name without question, though, for the same reason he accepted Lilia’s. The man’s presence was sufficient proof of his bona fides, and when finally he’d been properly introduced to his so-called parents, they briefly conversed about the intricacies of the operation they were embarking on.
They’d been conversing in Russian, and now switched to English, as this mission would shortly take them to the United States of America. There, they would draw out the man Nathan Callaway, and it was imperative they spoke the language.
To his disconcertion, he discovered the twosome had no more details of the American part of the plan than he did. All they knew was that they were supposed to go to New York and present themselves as Dimitri’s parents.
Dimitri nodded curtly, anger making him eager to terminate this pointless discussion. The woman seemed pleased at this opportunity to engage him in conversation, however, for she returned to an earlier topic.
“Dimitri, how did you manage to make the American fall in love with you so quickly? I thought you only met her a couple of days ago?”
“I did,” he confirmed, the gruffness of his tone skirting the edge of civility.
“You have to teach me how you did it, young man,” his ‘father’ chimed in. “I have found the ways of the heart never divulged their secrets to me.”
He shrugged, unwilling to go into the matter any further. “As long as she does as she’s told, it doesn’t matter.”
“But will she?” questioned Lilia tartly. “Will she not be a nuisance once we’re on her native soil?”
“Yes,” agreed the little man, “if we’re not careful she will blow this whole operation by running to the police. Or drawing attention to herself by trying to escape and accosting strangers on the street or at the hotel.”
“Then we’ll simply drug her,” suggested Lilia. “Keep her sedated until we need her again.”
Exasperated, Dimitri stated, “She will do exactly as I tell her to, or else I will simply deny her the pleasures found in the marital bed.”
The woman’s face cleared, and she laughed merrily. “Oh, the cock!” She clapped her hands with lurid glee. “You will deny her the cock. Of course,” she nodded sagely. “That will do the trick. You have allowed her to become addicted to your glorious cock and she will dance to its beat now.” Turning to her male companion, she lectured, “The most potent elixir known to woman, Andre, is the male cock. Once a woman becomes addicted, she is quite apt to go to absurd lengths to retain its presence in her life and bed.”
The man pursed his lips and nodded appreciatively, though it was obvious no woman had ever been addicted to his ‘glorious cock’.
Dimitri felt nothing but outrage at the conclusions this pair had drawn, reducing the first stirrings of friendship and attraction he and Ariel had experienced that morning to these depraved notions.
“Nothing of the kind,” he countered, but then saw that he’d lost the attention of the pair, who were now discussing among themselves the pros and cons of the art of seduction in the business they were in.
Disgusted, he turned away, and that’s when he noticed the bedroom door opening, Ariel striding into their midst.
She was wearing the gown he’d gifted her, the flowing green velvet accentuating her porcelain skin and light hue of her eyes. Her hair spilled in a majestic tumble of gold across her bare shoulders. She’d applied a thin layer of makeup with a deft touch, and looked even more breathtakingly beautiful than the night he’d first laid eyes on her at the club.
She was simply stunning, and for a moment his breath caught. Then he saw the supercilious expression on her face, and he wondered briefly if she’d heard snatches of the conversation they’d just conducted.
But then she stepped into the room, and the thought was lost as he introduced his ‘parents’ to her and was gratified to find her graceful as well as polite to a fault.
Things, he reckoned, were going better than he’d expected, and he gave her a knowing nod.
Then, suddenly, she leaned closer and whispered in his ear, “I hope you won’t deny me the pleasures of the marital bed tonight, my dear. I would be devastated if you did.” There was a hint of ice in her voice. “That glorious cock? How could I ever live without it?”
Oh, God. So she had heard all that nonsense.
“I can explain,” he whispered back, but she tossed her head, flicking her hair in his face, and strode away from him, leaving him confused and not a little angry, both at her and at himself.
What was more worrisome was that if she didn’t play along, three people were ready to use any means necessary to get her in line. And they wouldn’t be as nice about it as he had been.
CHAPTER 11
She was fuming as she set foot for the pair of idiots Dimitri called his parents. Livid at the nonsense he’d spread about her. So she was addicted to his glorious cock, was she? As if! If this was the way all Russian sons talked about their wives to their parents, she pitied the Russian woman who had to endure this rubbish.
She liked the man, agreed, and had grown to see in him more than merely a harsh captor. He had shown compassion and restraint when she’d lashed out at him. She knew he could have struck her, or, worse, taken advantage of her when they’d had their clinch out on the balcony. Yet when she’d implored him to stop, he’d heeded her call and had stopped.
He was more noble than she’d initially given him credit for, and she’d grown fond of him, she now realized, especially after all the information he’d given her about her father and the terrible ordeal she was facing.
And now this macho nonsense of his wonderful cock and how he kept her in line with the lure of its promise or the prospect of its denial.
Infuriated, she had a hard time keeping a straight face, and yet she succeeded in doing so, making small talk with Lilia and Andre, as the couple had introduced themselves.
The man seemed innocuous enough, though from the brief strands of conversation she’d picked up, she knew the woman to be a serpent, eager to use drugs to sedate her and keep her in submission. As if to counter the impression they might have of her as a hellcat, she was amiability itself and even talked recipes with Lilia for a while, comparing notes on the advisability of using real butter when baking a cake.
Inanities suspended with, Lilia’s voice took on a maternal tone when the marriage to her son was mentioned. “I have to say I was quite surprised when Dimi announced his intention to marry an American girl. But now that we finally meet, I have to admit the choice was an excellent one.”
“Why, thank you,” Ariel returned. “Yes, when Dimi told me he couldn’t wait for me to meet his mom and dad, I immediately agreed to fly in.”
“That was very kind of you,” murmured Lilia. “Though it would have been nice if he’d have postponed the wedding so we could have been there.”
She gave the woman her brightest smile. “We simply couldn’t wait, Mrs. Loginovsky. You know how young love is.”
Lilia’s eyes swiveled to the wrinkled old man next to her, and she muttered, “Yes, of course I do.”
She remembered Dimitri’s admonition to play her part. Though she was now well aware of the horrible plot she was embroiled in, she couldn’t let on he’d told her all about it. Not even to his own parents, apparently. She wondered how they fitted into the ploy. Judging from what they’d briefly discussed before she’d joined them, they were part and parcel of the plan to draw out her father, and she resented
them for it.
On the other hand, they were Dimitri’s parents, so she figured they couldn’t be all bad.
“How did the two of you meet?”
Now it was Andre’s turn to look flustered, his eyes turning shifty all of a sudden. “I, erm, well, um…”
“We were high school lovers,” Lilia quickly interjected. “Isn’t that right, dear?”
“High school lovers,” agreed the little man a little wistfully.
“We met when we were barely sixteen,” mused the woman, placing a loving arm around her husband’s shoulder. “We simply couldn’t keep away from each other after that first kiss behind the old school gym.”
“School gym,” muttered the man.
“We’ve been inseparable since!”
“That’s such a beautiful story. Do you have many children?”
Lilia’s smile froze. “Well…” She gestured to Dimitri, who’d joined them. “There’s Dimi, of course. And, ah…”
“And Roman,” Dimitri added, sliding his arm around Ariel’s waist and drawing her near.
Ariel, trying to keep away from Dimitri but failing, finally dug her nail into his arm. He bravely endured the pain. Then, before she could stop him, pulled her in close and dipped her down, placing a devastating kiss on her lips. Her mouth crushed beneath his, she thought she might faint from the heat and the scorching demand behind the gesture.
When finally he restored her balance, she swooned a little and blinked, a hot flush mantling her cheeks.
The light chuckle of mother and father Loginovsky brought her back to reality. When she faintly smiled, Lilia fanned herself with her hand and said with an exaggerated flicker of her eyelashes, “Woo! Young love!” She then nudged her husband in the ribs and added, “Something us old-timers can learn from.”
Giving a good impression of a sad puppy, Andre sighed, “We sure can, Lilia. We sure can.”
One thing was for sure: the ruse that she and Dimitri were a young couple in love had been convincingly brought across. Judging from Andre and Lilia’s smiles, she’d just secured her and Dimitri’s safety.
If only she could keep up the charade until she found a way to escape the clutches of these people, everything might turn out fine after all.
But then she saw the sultry gaze Dimi was directing at her, and her knees momentarily buckled at the promise those dark eyes held. She swallowed at the thought of spending her first night with him, sharing the same bed.
She might survive the Russian Mafia, but she wasn’t so sure if she could survive a night alone with this man with her deepest, darkest secret intact. The fact that she’d never been intimate with a man before.
CHAPTER 12
That first night, like their first kiss, was filled with the sweet pain of desire denied and yearning held at bay. If she’d rejected him out of hand, Dimitri could have borne the blow with fortitude. Even gentle evasion would have been better than this—this torture!
Though it was supposed to be their wedding night—not counting the previous night when she’d been conked out—nothing he did or said could have persuaded her to act the part this time.
His brother had told him it was imperative they practice the art of love together, work on their kisses and their sweet caress, in order to convincingly present the perfect portrait of newlyweds deeply in love, but no matter how hard he tried to seduce the woman lying by his side, it was to no avail.
“I don’t think it’s appropriate, Dimi,” she kept saying. “I’m still your prisoner and you’re still my warden. I don’t think it’s right for us to get involved.”
“You don’t understand,” he explained. “Tomorrow we’re going to the States, and if we don’t present the right image, we’re both as good as dead.”
She shrugged, the negligee she’d slipped into swishing as she did so. It accentuated her slender form, and all the curves and swells of womanhood, eliciting a painful erection from him as he lay beside her. “I think we’ll manage,” she finally muttered, throwing him a sly sidelong glance. “Judging from the way you handled yourself with your parents, you’re quite the actor, Dimi. So I don’t think it’ll be hard to pull this off as well.”
It wasn’t the show they’d be induced to put on that made him yearn for her. It was the fact that she was beautiful and sexy and only an arm’s length away. Available, yet as distant as if she were on a different continent. Close, and yet so far away.
Slumping, he finally acknowledged her demand to know their itinerary.
“We’ll be setting up some press junket. Spread the news about our marriage. Make a big splash. I’m a well-known oligarch and personal friend of the Russian president. You’re my American wife, and together we will present a picture of the friendship that unites our two great nations.”
“Wonderful,” she murmured as she eyed him beneath fair eyelashes.
“There will be interviews with the members of the press, and they’ll ask you all kinds of questions. About how we met, what life is like being married to a Russian billionaire.”
“Shall I tell them about your glorious cock?” she teased.
He closed his eyes, willing himself to remain calm. “Perhaps don’t mention the glorious cock,” he suggested. Then, when she giggled, he looked up in surprise. For the first time in their brief acquaintance, she seemed almost relaxed, her pallor having given way to a healthy blush, her eyes shiny and bright, and her lips curled up into a seductive smile.
“What would you have done if I hadn’t complied with your outrageous scheme?” she wanted to know, as she laid her head on her pillow, but kept her eyes glued on him. “If you hadn’t managed to beat me into submission with your honesty and your charm?”
Now it was his turn to smile. “I would have had to use other means of persuasion.”
She frowned. “Like what? I heard your mother mention the use of drugs? Not very nice, I might add, to threaten to ply your daughter-in-law with drugs.”
“It’s true,” he admitted. “If you hadn’t come along willingly, we would have been forced to keep you sedated, merely presenting a fleeting picture of you to the press, in order to lure your father out of hiding.”
Her smile had disappeared, and her eyes were hard. “It’s a horrible thing you agreed to do, Dimitri. A really terrible thing to do to a girl and her family. Did you never stop to think what would become of me? What this would do to me?”
“Of course I did,” he admitted. He turned to face her. “Contrary to what you might think, I’m not a monster, Ariel.” He reached out a hand and placed it on her cheek, words failing him to describe how he really felt about her. “Perhaps we better get some sleep. Tomorrow’s going to be a long day.”
She nodded her assent and closed her eyes, and as he watched her drift off, he couldn’t tear his eyes away from her face. Her lovely face.
He remembered vividly when he’d first seen it. It was when Roman had shown him her picture. He’d fallen in love at first sight. Though telling himself it was crazy to fall in love with a girl he didn’t even know, and more importantly, one who’d been targeted as an enemy of the family who employed him, he couldn’t help feeling the way he did.
Roman was the main enforcer of the Gornakovs, Dimitri merely his apprentice. Destined one day to take over from his older brother when he moved up the chain of command, he hadn’t been part of the scheme to abduct Ariel Cole and use her against her father. Old man Gornakov had devised the plan personally, and appointed the eternally loyal and efficient Roman in charge of its execution.
Knowing his older brother as a ruthless man, his heart had shrunk at the sight of this poor and helpless creature, about to fall prey to a family of notorious gangsters. It was then that he’d volunteered to come along on this mission. To be the one who would seduce Ariel and make her do his bidding.
A crazy scheme, to be sure, but the only one he felt comfortable suggesting. His brother had something completely different in mind: he would simply have abducted Ariel, then dangled
her before her father as bait, keeping her drugged and locked up in some dungeon all the while, a prisoner of the Gornakovs.
Dimitri had suggested a different strategy, one in which Ariel would become his bride, and join him and his parents on a trip to America. They would present the perfect picture of Russo-American partnership, and the press would lap it up. Before long, word would reach her father’s ears, and instead of being coerced out of hiding, he wouldn’t be able to resist the temptation of reaching out.
Roman had expressed his doubts, but he’d managed to convince him.
For Ariel’s sake, or so he told himself.
He only had one shot at this. If Ariel didn’t play along, Roman would step in and return to his own plan of campaign, locking Ariel up in the deepest, darkest dungeon. Dimitri would be removed from active duty, and no one knew better than him what that meant. He would be dead meat, and so would Ariel, once she’d fulfilled her purpose and they had Nathan Callaway in their hands.
The only thing he didn’t know was what would happen the moment they captured Nathan. Would Ariel be allowed to return to her own life? Would she be left in peace? Roman had been evasive on the subject, so he feared the worst.
He tenderly caressed her rosy cheek, slipping a tendril of her silky hair behind her ear, and thought he’d never laid eyes on something more beautiful or delicate as the woman sleeping next to him.
God, he wanted her—wanted her so much he could have died and gone to hell for just a sign from her that she cared for him as much as he cared for her. It would never happen, of course. She would always see him as the brute who’d kidnapped her, then dumped her into this mess. A mere plaything in a cruel game devised by a devious mind.
He rolled onto his back and closed his eyes, incapable of finding sleep. If all went well, they’d draw out her father and perhaps she would have a chance to get through this thing alive. If things went wrong? They were all dead.
