He began to move, stroking slowly out of me, and the feel of him against my satiny walls made me dig my toes hard into the smooth lining of my coat, the snow scrunching beneath it. I missed the heat and hardness of him inside me but I wanted that sweet friction, knew that in a second it would—
God! He slammed back into me, even deeper than before, and my head came up, eyes locking with his. We kissed, hard and hot, as my hands explored his back. He began to thrust, breaking the kiss and dipping his head to lick at my breasts, shoulders hunched like a beast, and I went wild, thrashing and gasping under him as his tongue lashed over my nipples.
The heat inside me was taking control of me, spreading out to my fingers and toes. I wrapped my legs around him, loving the feeling of his solid, muscled thighs against my heels. I grabbed his ass and immediately went weak as my fingers found the hot, solid power of him there, the tight muscles that would let him pound me for hours. The heat was folding in on itself, tightening, beginning to thrash and seek escape. And with Angelo, I didn’t have to keep it under control: I could let it out.
He raised himself up on his arms, biceps bulging, and I couldn’t stop myself running my hands all the way up his naked back and down his arms, melting inside as I swept my fingertips over the hard swells. The size of him made me feel small; the strength of him made me feel weak. For someone like me who’d been trying to be strong her whole life, there was no better feeling in the world.
He began to move faster and the heat inside grew too much to bear. I lifted my ass and began to shamelessly grind my hips in circles, both of us groaning as the liquid friction grew and changed. I felt Angelo’s body tense, a wicked smile teasing the corners of his lips: he loved to see me like this, loved to see me lose control for him.
My head began to toss from side to side, strands of hair falling across my face as I sucked in air through my nose, jaw set and teeth gritted. I was notching higher and higher, my toes dancing against my coat, my whole world narrowing down to the hard, hot thrust of him inside me. “A—Angelo,” I gasped, his name floating upward in a desperate little puff of mist.
He lowered his head and kissed my chin. “Irina,” he growled. My hands clawed at his back, my heels digging into his ass….
I felt it on my breasts first: an angel’s kiss, so soft I wasn’t sure if I’d imagined it. An instant of cold that only made the heat more real. I opened my eyes and saw my breast shining wetly, a drop of water running down my side.
Another soft kiss, this time on my other breast, and this time I was in time to see the snowflake melt against my heated skin. I looked around: snow was falling all around us, flakes hitting Angelo’s muscled back and turning instantly to jewels of water. Even when the wind whipped across our bodies and flakes dusted our sides, it didn’t stop us. The cold only made the heat inside more intense. The orgasm was building and tightening inside me. I was bucking and twisting under him, the sweat standing out on my forehead. We were both so close—
He suddenly leaned back and stared right into my eyes and the look I saw there sent me over the edge. His eyes were heavy-lidded with lust, drinking in the sight of me. I was his ice princess and he’d reduced me from imperious and frozen to a melted, gasping wreck. He was my hot-headed, black-hearted gangster, driven by blood and fire, and yet I’d put him under my spell.
He owned me. And I owned him.
He thrust into me, deep and I saw his ass clench as I felt the first hot explosion inside me. My own climax tightened into a blazing, white-hot ball...and detonated, making me bury my face against his shoulder and shout in Russian, my lips moving against his skin. I was clenching and spasming around him, shouting and shouting—
He bit at my earlobe, nuzzling there. “Don’t stop,” I repeated in English, all shyness gone. “Don’t stop, don’t stop—”
He didn’t, burying himself in me again and again as he shot and shot, and my orgasm stretched out and out, waves of it crashing through me, until I finally wrapped him in my arms and legs and lay still, chest heaving. We lay there for long minutes, the snow covering his muscled back first with a sheen of water and then, as he cooled, with a dusting of white.
We dressed, stopping every few garments to kiss. When I lifted my coat, the snow beneath it was gone—our heat had melted it, right down to the grass below. Even now, I didn’t feel cold. We were both warmed from the inside out, by what we’d done and by the possibilities ahead. It didn’t matter that the odds were against us. The odds had been against us right from the start. What mattered was that we were going to face them together and head on.
Angelo called Rico, who said he’d come and pick us up. The plan was for him and Angelo to drop me back in the city, a good distance from my house, and then I’d get a cab home. I’d find Mikhail and Yuri and explain that I’d attempted to run away, but had decided my place was with my family. I wouldn’t mention Angelo. Then I’d start trying to talk Vasiliy into agreeing a ceasefire. Meanwhile, Angelo would try to calm things with the Cosa Nostra.
Angelo pushed my hair back from my face and kissed me again as we waited. “I don’t want to do this,” he muttered. “I just got you again. I don’t want to give you up.”
“We’ll be together soon,” I promised him.
Moments later, Rico came over the top of the rise. He stood there for a second staring down at us...at me. Does he hate me? In his eyes, I’d taken his best friend from him….
He started down the slope towards us, shaking his head softly. “What the hell are you wearing?” he asked Angelo as he drew close. Then he nodded to me, polite but cautious.
I grabbed his hand. “Thank you,” I said. I didn’t just mean for picking us up. Angelo was going to need his help if we were going to pull this off.
Rico shrugged. “Yeah,” he muttered, “Well—”
There was a metallic click and we all turned to look.
Yuri was marching down the slope, his gun leveled right at us.
36
Irina
I figured it out pretty fast. Yuri was a master at tracking people down and he’d do anything to protect me. When I hadn’t come down for my room, he would have come upstairs and found me gone. And with no way to follow me, he’d done the next best thing. Realizing that I’d be meeting Angelo, he’d hunted him...and when he too couldn’t be found, he’d hunted down his right-hand man, Rico, then followed him here.
Yuri was almost at the bottom of the slope, now, maybe twenty feet from us. “Irina,” he said sadly, “move away from him.”
Instead, I moved around in front of Angelo. I wasn’t sure what orders Yuri had been given—was he just here to get me back, or would he kill Angelo as soon as he had a clear shot? I wasn’t taking the chance. “No!”
At that moment, Rico yelled and threw himself at Yuri. The two of them crashed down into the snow, Yuri’s gun flying out of his hand. They tumbled over and over, battling for dominance. I could see Rico had the youth and strength, but Yuri had decades of training, some of it with Russia’s Spetsnaz special forces. He slammed his fist into Rico’s kidneys, then headbutted him and threw him off. Before Rico could get to his feet, Yuri was standing over him drawing a vicious-looking knife.
That launched Angelo into action. He charged Yuri from the side and knocked him to the ground again, the two of them sending up showers of snow as they landed. My chest went tight: I didn’t want anything to happen to Angelo but Yuri was like a brother to me. “Stop!” I yelled.
But they didn’t. Yuri got to his feet, crouched over in a fighting pose. Angelo ran at him again and Yuri was forced back, slashing with the knife to keep Angelo at bay, the blade flashing in the painfully-bright sunlight. By now, Rico was back on his feet and the two of them moved in together, inching Yuri back towards the slope.
“Stop!” I yelled again. Angelo glanced quickly back at me and Yuri used the distraction to spring at him. Angelo barely jumped back in time and then, with a growl, he charged Yuri and grabbed his knife hand, forcing it up and away f
rom him. Yuri staggered back, hit the bottom of the slope and fell, dragging Angelo down with him—
And suddenly everything was still and silent. Yuri lay on his back on the slope. Angelo straddled him, panting hard.
I ran over. Yuri seemed to have given up: he was staring up at Angelo in dismay, his face pale. Angelo had gone almost as white, looking down at his hands in horror.
Then I followed Angelo’s gaze and saw the knife, buried to the hilt in Yuri’s heart.
37
Irina
“No,” I croaked. “No, no, no!” I ran to Yuri and fell to my knees beside him. I put my hand to his cheek and it was already clammy and gray. “No!”
Blood was spreading out beneath him, oozing through the snow. Angelo and I looked at each other. “I didn’t—”—he shook his head—”it was an accident.”
All the bits of first aid I’d picked up over the years swam into my head but my brain was fogged and slow because this was Yuri, the protector who’d been there for my family as long as I could remember. Yuri wasn’t supposed to get hurt. Yuri was forever.
Rico knelt beside me. It was the first time we’d been this close and the glance he gave me said so much: anger and hate and distrust...and guilt. Then he focused on Yuri. “If we want to save him,” he told Angelo, “we’ve got to go now. Right now.”
Angelo nodded and jumped to his feet. “Get his arms,” he said.
Yuri gave a long groan of pain as we lifted him but, with all three of us helping, we managed to get him up the slope to the big Chrysler Rico had driven there. Pulled up behind it, I could see one of Vasiliy’s black Mercedes with blacked-out windows—that must be how Yuri got there.
We slid Yuri into the back seat and Angelo got in with him. Rico got into the driver’s seat and they both looked up at me, waiting for me to get in.
“I can’t come,” I told them.
“What?” They both said it at the same time.
“Vasiliy will kill whoever did this. If I disappear, he’ll figure out it was you. I need to go home. We stick to the plan: I claim I tried to run away and then had second thoughts, nothing to do with you.”
Angelo just stared at me. His instinct was to stay with me, no matter the consequences. He shook his head.
“We don’t have time to argue!” I told him. “I’ll take the Mercedes. Find the keys!”
Angelo shook his head again but rooted in Yuri’s pocket and pulled out a key fob. He weighed it in his hand, looking at me beseechingly.
“We gotta go!” yelled Rico.
Angelo drew in a long, shuddering breath and tossed me the keys. “Be careful!”
I nodded and slammed the door before he could change his mind. The big car roared away, threading its way quickly through the highway traffic in the direction of the hospital.
Jesus. Yuri. It was difficult to breathe. Please don’t let him die! Not Yuri. There’d been too many casualties of this war already.
I ran over to the Mercedes, got in and started it up. How did this go so wrong, so fast? Vasiliy would want vengeance against whoever had stabbed his beloved bodyguard. There was no question: he’d put a hit out on the attacker. The only saving grace was that no one knew it was Angelo.
“Hello, Irina,” said Mikhail from the back seat.
38
Angelo
I had Yuri’s head resting on my lap, my hands slick with his blood as I tried to keep pressure on the knife wound. The knife itself was still in his chest, evidence of my crime. I wanted to throw up every time I looked at it, but I didn’t dare move it because it was stopping some of the bleeding. Please don’t let him die. Yuri’s face had gone the same color as the soot-stained snow back in Little Italy, his eyes narrowed in agony, his teeth gritted. From what Irina had told me, this guy was practically family. The guilt was like nothing I’d ever felt.
And yet, each time I felt Rico glance furiously back at me, that guilt was almost worse.
“What were you doing, Angelo?” he demanded.
“Just drive,” I said tightly.
“You’re dressed like you’re going on vacation.” Rico was almost panting, he was so angry. “You’re out here by the highway—what’s out this way, huh? The airport?!”
“Just drive! He needs the hospital!”
“I’m fucking driving!” He banged the steering wheel. “You were running out on us. You were fucking running out on us, weren’t you?”
I didn’t answer, just looked down at Yuri’s ashen face.
When he spoke again, Rico’s voice was so full of hurt it brought a lump to my throat. “Fuck you, Angelo.”
Moments later, we arrived. Rico pulled right up to the Emergency Room entrance and I ran in to get a doctor. We got Yuri onto a gurney and inside but, immediately, nurses were asking me questions: who was he, who was I, what happened?
I had Vasiliy’s number in my phone from when I’d set up the peace talk. I scrawled it on a form and handed it to a nurse. “Call this man. He’ll take care of everything.” Then I was running back to Rico. I didn’t want to leave Yuri, but there was nothing more I could do and getting myself arrested wasn’t going to help.
Rico pulled away as soon as I got in the car but we didn’t head towards the city. He turned and headed out of town. “What are you doing?” I asked.
“The Saints just called,” Rico said. “They want to see you.” He twisted in his seat and looked at me, his face drawn with worry. “Angelo...they know.”
39
Irina
My hands were still on the Mercedes’s steering wheel. I sat there clutching it, willing it not to be true. But when I looked up into the rear view mirror, I could see the lower half of Mikhail’s face, his unmistakable wide smirk almost splitting his pink, doughy face in two. With shaking hands, I adjusted the mirror and those beady, lust-filled eyes gleamed back at me.
We hadn’t even considered it, when we carried Yuri to Rico and Angelo’s car. The Mercedes had been sitting there with the doors closed, the blacked-out windows concealing Mikhail. We’d just assumed Yuri had come alone.
Mikhail leaned forward. “I saw everything. I took a peek over the top of the hill, just in time to see your boyfriend murder Yuri.”
I wanted to throw up. When he found out, Vasiliy wouldn’t rest until Angelo was dead.
“Since you’re already in the driver’s seat, I think you should drive,” said Mikhail. He sat back in his seat. “Let’s go home.”
My heart pounding, I put the car into gear and drove off to Vasiliy’s house to seal Angelo’s fate.
40
Angelo
It wasn’t like the last time I’d seen The Saints. Last time had been like being summoned to the Principal’s office. This was like the walk to the gallows.
The big, dark room was lit this time by a huge fire roaring in the fireplace, the flames turning one side of Nicky’s scowling face to flickering gold. He stood, hands braced on the table, but insisted I sit down. The other Saints stood beside him, looking equally pissed. Even kindly old Vincenzo was giving me a you’re fucked, kid look.
I sat. I figured that if they were going to kill me, it wouldn’t make much difference. Rico stood in the doorway behind me. I figured that that would be my warning: if they asked him to leave, I was dead.
Nicky opened a brown envelope and tossed a sheaf of photos onto the table. They spun and spread as they landed, covering the table in a glossy fan of eyes and lips, breasts and thighs. Moments that were meant to be private.
Mikhail, you bastard….
“You arrogant, self-centered little fuck!” snapped Nicky. “How dare you? How dare you endanger everything, just to dip your dick into that little whore?”
I felt the anger start, then. It was red-hot and clean, burning upward through the cold black layers of tradition and respect as if they were so much filthy coal. “Don’t talk about her like that,” I grated.
Nicky groaned. “You’re fucking sweet on her?” he asked incredulously. “Oh, Jes
us….” All of The Saints were shaking their heads in despair, now. “We knew you’d been dumb but we thought you were smarter than that!”
I stared at him in confusion.
“It’s a trick, you dumb fuck!” yelled Nicky, slamming his fist down on the table. The photos of Irina and me jumped and drifted further apart, revealing more and more of us. “Vasiliy sent her to get into your pants, so you’d go soft on the Russians!”
“No,” I said angrily. “She’s his niece!”
“So? He’s a Russian. Russians don’t have any fucking qualms about sacrificing their own. Don’t they teach you history in school? World War II?” He leaned across the table at me. “That’s why he brought her over here, to fucking seduce you!” He glanced down at the photos, his eyes stopping on one of Irina, her leotard rolled down to mid-thigh. “She’s got a nice pussy, I’ll give you that. She was probably turning tricks for Vasiliy when she was fifteen.”
If I’d been standing, I would have been able to hit him. But I had to shove my chair back first and stand and, when my fist was an inch from Nicky’s jaw, it slapped into Rico’s hand. I twisted around and glared at Rico but he simply shook his head. He forced my fist back with me resisting every inch of the way.
“It’s not like that,” I told Nicky. I had to pant through my anger. I barely recognized my own voice—God, what had happened to me?
“Yeah, it’s true fucking love,” spat Taavetti. He coughed and adjusted the valve on his oxygen cylinder. “We got no confidence in you anymore, Angelo.” He indicated the room. “That’s what this is.”
He nodded at Rico and my shoulders tensed. This was it. Rico would leave the room, some hired killer would come in to take me off into the woods and it would all be over.
Kissing The Enemy Page 20
