Conflicted (Undercover #2)

by Helena Newbury

  The smooth expanse of his pecs slowly came into view and, with it, the first of his tattoos. The spider at the center of its web, picked out in black against the smooth tan flesh. His chest was so wide, so solidly hewn that I wanted to run my hands over it in wonder. Then, as the shirt loosened around his shoulders, I saw the tattooed stars there, the ranking that lifted him above the others. What had he done, to earn those? How many men had he beaten or shot to rise up the chain of command? I should have been terrified—was terrified—but I imagined leaning around him from behind and softly kissing every point of each star, telling him that I knew what he was...and that I wanted him so much I didn’t care.

  His broad chest gave way to a tight midsection, the muscles hard ridges beneath the skin. As he slid the shirt down his arms, my eyes locked on the Bratva tattoo of a rose on his bicep. It wasn’t just him who would kill me, if he found out what I was. The entire weight of the organization could be turned, with one phone call, into an apparatus for tracking me down and putting me in a shallow grave. I was on their turf, where the games were played by their rules.

  The thought made me close my eyes for a second in fear but, when I opened them again and took in the whole of his naked torso, I knew I wasn’t going to run. The sight of him was short-circuiting my brain, going straight past every bit of common sense I possessed. I was acting on instinct and need. His body was sheer power, shaped not through vanity but through brutality. The ink was the final evidence, if I needed any: this man was as bad as they came. And he was staring right between my thighs.

  I closed my legs, out of instinct.

  He smiled, as if that was amusing.

  What have I done?!

  He kicked off his shoes and unfastened his expensive leather belt. When he pulled it through the loops, it whistled and snapped. There was something about the way he did it that made me go weak inside. God, does he use that on his women? Does he tie them up and—

  He lazily pushed his jeans down, taking his jockey shorts with them. I got my first look at his cock. Big. Thick. And already—God, already hard and primed in his fist as he climbed onto the bed—

  I moved away from him, my ass scooching up the bed. I don’t know why—primal instinct at the sheer size of him, I think. It wasn’t that I didn’t want it.

  And it didn’t make any difference. His hand seized my ankle and dragged me back down the bed. I let out a kind of strangled groan.

  He looked meaningfully down at my pressed-together thighs.

  I swallowed, the air rattling in my nostrils I was breathing so hard. And I opened my legs for him. I felt cool air hit my delicate flesh and I could feel myself throbbing, wet with need for him. God! I’d never felt like this, ever.

  He moved up the bed, kneeling between my legs and hulking over me, planting his hands either side of me. His thickly-muscled forearms might as well have been made of solid steel, imprisoning me.

  You wanted this, a little voice inside me reminded me.

  His knees moved up between my legs. God, his lower half was just as heavily muscled. That solid mass you get on a heavyweight boxer, dwarfing me. What was I thinking?!

  I felt the first touch of his cock against my inner thigh and the hot, throbbing weight of it made me gasp. Then he was leaning down over me as if to kiss me, his lips only an inch from mine….

  But he didn’t kiss me. This wasn’t going to be that sort of sex. His mouth moved down my neck, a soft exhalation sending little currents of air dancing across my skin. He moved down to my chest and—

  My upper body came up off the bed as his mouth enveloped my breast in its hot, sucking depths, his lips spread wide to take as much of me as he could. Then his hand was on my shoulder, ramming me hard back down to the bed. I gasped and stared up at him; the look in his eyes was clear.

  I wasn’t to move. He was in control.

  His tongue started to lash over my quivering nipple, his lips massaging the soft flesh around it, and I ground my thighs together, trapping him between them. His hand remained planted on my shoulder, pinning me down, even though I had no intention of moving. His other hand started working on my other breast, squeezing and rubbing, his thumb sliding back and forth across the nipple. My ass came off the bed a little, my thighs grinding harder. Looking down, I saw that his hand was so big, it covered my breast completely. A deep, hot throb went through me at the image.

  He switched his mouth to my other breast and slid a hand down over my stomach to my groin. The flat of his palm pressed against my pubis and suddenly that, too, was rammed down onto the bed, my grinding thighs held motionless. I was pinned by both his hands, now, shoulder and groin. Held down. I felt something rise and spiral inside me, black smoke shot through with sparks of pure fire, hot enough to blazing right through the ice. Fear...but the kind of fear that propels you out of the way of an oncoming truck. Fear that makes you feel alive.

  I pushed against his hands. Not because I wanted to escape; because I wanted to feel them holding me down. I might as well have been straining against solid rock.

  His fingers started to explore the soft folds between my thighs and I automatically tried to roll my hips...but I couldn’t. I couldn’t move away, either, or cover myself. His knees kept my legs open and his hand kept me pinned to the bed. I was his, and all I could do was give myself up to it.

  Being unable to move and respond meant that all I could do was feel. Every sensation was magnified. I could feel how thick and strong his fingers were as they played up and down over my lips, tracing the shape of them. I could feel that massive palm rocking and rubbing against me as he held me down, sending quaking pleasure through me. I could feel my wetness building with each passing second, the pleasure rolling out in hot, tight waves.

  His fingers rubbed and rubbed—and then, quite suddenly, two of his fingers slid into me. I felt myself spasm around them, my breath coming in quick, shocked pants. God, I could feel every knuckle. They slid in and then scissored open, spreading me, and I trembled. Then his palm was lifting off my groin and his whole body was shifting lower. One big hand pressed down on my breast, pinning me to the bed as his head—

  ...went between my thighs.

  “LUKA!”

  I hadn’t even been aware I was going to say it. It just escaped from me as his mouth settled over my sex, his tongue lapping at my clit. I was overcome, not just by how incredible it felt but by the fact he’d done it. I’d thought he was going to take what he wanted, not give back. I hadn’t realized that he wanted much more from me than simply to fuck me. I stared down and I knew the sight of him, of his strong, muscled back as he knelt between my thighs, would be burned into my mind forever.

  His lips sealed around my clit, his tongue teasing it from its hiding place with quick, expert strokes. The pleasure arced outward, lighting up every part of me. It throbbed upward through my stomach and chest, stealing my breath. It flash-fried my brain, driving out any thoughts outside of this incredible, beautiful man and what he was doing to me.

  His fingers began to pump at me. The thickness of his fingers and his heavy, rounded knuckles made me quiver and gasp with each stroke. The waves of pleasure became trapped in a hot ball that began to slowly expand. I was thrashing under him, now, but that strong hand on my breast and the push of his head against my groin locked me to the bed as securely as iron chains.

  His head drew back from me a little—far enough that he could glance up at my face, but close enough that, when he spoke, I could feel each word as a hot wind against my sticky, engorged flesh. “You are beautiful,” he told me, and underneath his strong accent I could hear his rising lust. “Come for me, now, Arianna.”

  His tongue lashed out again, circling just where I needed it most, and the ball of pleasure inside me was stretched and glowed blindingly bright—

  One of his fingers slid from me, quickly replaced with another as he continued to piston them in and out. Then the slickened finger slid underneath me, between the cheeks of my ass—

 
My eyes went wide, my hips helplessly trying to rise as the orgasm overtook me. My eyes screwed tight, my head grinding into the bed as I bent like a bow, spit-wet breasts straining for the ceiling. “Nggghhhhhhh!”

  His tongue lifted from my throbbing heat, but his voice started up again and it kept the orgasm going better than any amount of physical attention. He was talking to himself in Russian, unaware that I could understand. “I am going to take you, Arianna. I am going to end your innocence in every conceivable way. I am going to make you beg me to stop and then beg me for more.”

  I exploded. The climax roared through me, shredding me into tiny fragments of stardust that sprayed out into the void. I gave myself up to the idea of being his, that this monster of a man was going to do whatever the hell he liked to me. And that I was going to love it.

  I thrashed and shook and it felt like minutes passed. When I came back to myself and opened my eyes, I was bathed in sweat and my chest was heaving.

  “Wow,” I said in a tiny voice. It was all I could manage.

  He smiled down at me, a cruel grin that was all mastery and knowing confidence. The same smile, I guessed, that he wore when he’d done this to Elena and Natalia and his other Russian blondes. A smile that said he’d won, that he’d held me down and played my body like a maestro, shown me pleasure I’d never known before. All of which was true. And yet—

  There was something else there, just a flicker of it in his eyes. A deep, burning need that went beyond just sex. It went beyond just extracting pleasure from my body for both of us. It was about something deeper and more permanent. It was darkly possessive and powerful enough that it came close to making him lose control. Not tonight, maybe. But, if it grew, then someday.

  That flicker gave me hope. And raised a dangerous flutter deep in my frozen heart.

  The look in his eyes was gone in an instant, though, and I was back to being his plaything. I gasped as I felt his fingers pull from me and then his body was moving up to cover mine. He bore me down on the bed as his hips pushed my thighs apart. He grabbed my knees and spread them wide and then wider, so wide that my inner thighs ached. I heard the rubber sound of a condom and then, with one long push, he was filling me.

  My arms came up to clutch at him, hugging him to me. It didn’t hurt, but the deep stretch of it made me catch my breath and he wasn’t even all the way in. My fingers dug hard into the muscles of his back as he slid back and plunged in again—God! That feeling of his hardness opening me up, making me his….

  Deep. Deeper. His girth stretching me tight. God!

  His face drew level with mine and he laid kisses on my forehead as he filled me completely.

  He waited there for a second, allowing me to adjust to his size. I could feel myself tight around him, and the press of my groin against his. God, the feeling of him being rooted in me, my body so fragile and pale under him. Part of me wished there was a mirror on the ceiling so that I could see all of him. I knew that if I could glimpse the tan cheeks of his ass pushed hard up between my thighs, I’d come just from that alone.

  He began to move and it became buttery-smooth and perfect, every millimeter of the thrust a delight, ribbons of pleasure zig-zagging upward. I reached up to touch his face, my fingers stroking over his cheeks. He allowed it for a second and then his hand was capturing mine, bearing it down to the bed above my head and grabbing the other one, too. His hands were big enough that he was able to pin both of my wrists with just one, giving him a hand free. He used it to trace a finger down my cheek, then over my gasping lips and down to my breast. Taking his weight on his elbows, he started to stroke at my slickened nipple as he thrust, twirling his thumb and forefinger around and around the base of the hardened flesh.

  I drew in great, heaving gasps through my nose. It was all...too...much: the spirals of fire coming from his fingers on my nipple; the silken perfection of his long, hard thrusts; the feel of that strong hand, holding my wrists down.

  I began to thrash again, bouncing the back of my head into the bed again and again as I tried to vent some of the pressure that was building inside me. His thrusts were faster, now, the strong muscles of his legs and ass propelling him effortlessly into me, his groin slapping against mine.

  He’d angled himself lower and his chest was rubbing over my breasts with each thrust, my nipples hard as rocks. The ball of pleasure expanded for the second time, until it filled my whole chest. The power of him was incredible—his thrusts were so hard, so fast, that the huge bed was banging against the wall, yet they seemed effortless. Again and again, the silken push of him filled me and stretched me. He was just going to keep going and going for as long as he liked and there was nothing I could do—

  Nothing I could do.

  The pleasure expanded again, my climax rushing towards me. I bucked and wriggled under him and every press of my body against his, every reminder of how firmly I was pinned, made me hotter and hotter. God, I’m going to come again. I had no hope of escape. I just had to lie there and take the pleasure he was giving me. He had me exactly where he wanted me, trapped under his muscled body, helpless—

  Helpless.

  My back arched and I screamed in ecstasy as the pleasure exploded. I felt myself spasm around him, my whole body shuddering. I heard him grunt, a low, animal noise, and then the hot pulse of him inside me.

  My wrists pushed and pushed against his restraining hand and my fingers just managed to find his and knit together with them. We stayed there for a moment as we both rode out our peaks, and then he relaxed atop me. I noticed he was careful to support himself on his arms, preventing his hard body from crushing me. A gentleman, I thought dreamily. However much he used me.

  Used me. Now that it was over, reality started to come back. With it, the first stirrings of outrage and fear. God, he’d picked me up and thrown me on the bed. Pinned me down while he’d…

  ...given me the best orgasms of my life. I flushed. When I looked up at Luka with confused, guilty eyes, I saw that flicker again, just for a second. A hint that maybe he’d lost control, too, or come close to it.

  He got off me and walked to the other side of the room. The sudden lack of his body was like a physical loss, the cool air of the apartment making me quiver as it wafted over my shining nipples and the wet folds of my sex. God, I’d been...ridden. My legs lolled wantonly apart, too tired to close. My breasts were throbbing where he’d ravished me with his mouth and fingers. Inside, I felt a deep and very pleasant ache where he’d stretched me.

  What had I done?

  What had I let him do to me?

  I knew, instinctively, that this was the way sex was, for him. This was the way it had been with his other girlfriends. But with me...what was it I’d glimpsed, that had made it different?

  He was leaning on a countertop before a mirror. I saw him looking at himself and wished I could see his reflection from where I was. I wanted to know what was in his eyes. Guilt? Anger—at me, at himself?

  He finally turned around and walked back to the bed, still completely naked. “Are you okay?” he asked.

  He sounded...wait, was that...was he scared? Scared that he might have hurt me?

  “Yeah,” I said. “Yes. I’m fine.” I gingerly closed my legs and sat up, hugging my knees. I ached a little, but there was no pain.

  He nodded quickly, as if relieved. And, now that the fear was gone, he looked almost confused. I was getting to know that feeling pretty well myself, when I was around him. That what the hell am I doing feeling, the disconcerting sensation of being not quite in control. I couldn’t understand the hold he had on me. My confusion made sense.

  But why would he be feeling that way?

  “Will you stay the night?” he asked suddenly. And then he sort of coughed and said, “You’ll have to stay the night. I sent your clothes to be washed.”

  At three in the morning? But maybe anything was possible, if you were rich enough. The real question was, what had come over him? He was suddenly behaving like a nervous tee
nager, all his hard man exterior gone.

  “Yes,” I said. “Yes, I’ll stay.”

  He nodded gruffly as if that was what he wanted to hear. He pulled back the comforter to reveal soft cotton sheets and I slid between them. A second later, I felt him spoon me, the hard press of his muscles against my back comforting. He wrapped an arm around me and I felt a warm swell of emotion. It was the first time I hadn’t slept alone in a year.

  But this isn’t real. You know how he treats his girlfriends. It’s just sex.

  And even if that wasn’t true, it can’t be real. This is just a mission.

  He’s using me. I’m using him.

  I knew that. I kept repeating it to myself.

  And yet the warm press of him against my back felt so very, very good.

  I woke up alone in the bed. It felt wrong, as if I’d already gotten used to the feel of him against me. And that was ridiculous, after just one night.

  I could feel that the covers were warm behind me, though, so Luka couldn’t have been up long. Without moving, I opened my eyes. The blinds behind me must have been open because the room was bright with sunlight. I was about to sit up to look for Luka when I saw something. On the dresser, right in front of my eyes, was a steaming black coffee mug. And reflected in its shining surface I could see—

  I snapped my eyes closed again and then studied the image in my mind. In the reflection, I’d seen myself, lying on my side in the bed. And behind me, sitting in an armchair across the room, was Luka. He was sipping an identical mug of coffee and he looked fantastic in black jeans and a white shirt that he hadn’t bothered to fasten up yet. That glorious strong chest thrust out between the shirt’s open sides and my eyes tracked down, over the hard ridges of his abs and along the deep centerline, then back up over his pecs.