Anatoly’s massive German Shepherd snored at the foot of the boss’s bed. Benny had assured him via a text an hour ago that the animal would be knocked out until morning. Unlike his disregard for human lives, Nikolai regretted the unnecessary killing of animals, especially loyal dogs.
Anatoly’s snore joined his pet’s. The fat bastard didn’t stir even when Nikolai clamped one hand over his mouth and shoved the revolver barrel against his head. Anatoly’s eyes went wide, only seeing Nikolai’s eyes and mouth through the grinning plastic clown mask Sasha had helped picked for him.
Fuck, just thinking about his woman’s sweet, lush ass and charming smile had been enough to make him rock hard. She’d worried all morning about him, begging him, like all the other times, to be safe. It felt odd, having someone worry and fuss over him. Odd but nice.
They had an agreement. Nikolai didn’t share the details of what he did but gave her just enough information in case the job went wrong. Before taking her as his prize, he had nothing to lose. Not caring whether he lived or died, made him an excellent killer. Now, the thought of losing her, of some fucker getting his hands on her, drove him out of his mind.
Focus on the job at hand, he told himself.
“Scream all you want, Anatoly, but no one will hear you. Your men are too busy, playing and fucking down below. Your wife and children are only two doors down. What a pretty wife you have. Your twins inherited her hair and eyes it seems.”
Anatoly's eyes bulged in their sockets.
“I’m paying you a visit tonight, just the way I did to Maxim’s fellow lieutenants,” Nikolai continued. “I’m going to take my hand off your mouth now. If you value your shitty life, you won’t call out. It’d be a pity if your wife found you with your brains all over your white sheets. Nod if you understand.”
Anatoly nodded. Nikolai took his hand away, although he kept the gun to Anatoly’s skull.
“Good boy. Do you know who I am?” Nikolai asked.
Anatoly hesitated, swallowed. “You killed the boss and took his daughter. One of my men came back with your message. He died soon after.”
“Maxim was fortunate, unlike the bitch. Now that I’m done with her, your wife seems like a good replacement.”
Nikolai hated the ugly words that came out of his mouth, but he had no choice. The Bratva considered him a monster, so he’d play that card. He’d be the bastard everyone thought he was, so no one would touch Sasha and him again. Let Anatoly and the other lieutenants think they would be better off serving their own interests and leaving him the fuck alone.
The smell of piss hit his nose. Nikolai dug the barrel against Anatoly’s skull harder, waited for the man to recover.
“Please, Gen and the kids are innocent,” Anatoly whispered. “What do you want? I have plenty of money.”
The other men he’d paid visits to didn’t hesitate to bargain the lives of their family with him. That made him like Anatoly just a little more.
“Money doesn’t interest me. Call off your hunt. Maxim was just one man, one job.” He watched understanding flash through Anatoly’s eyes. The less Anatoly knew about him, the better. Let Anatoly think lives didn’t matter to him, that killing Maxim hadn’t been anything personal.
“I can’t let the guy who killed the boss go free,” Anatoly finally said. “Maxim’s remaining men, the ones loyal to him, want me to track you down, to bring them your corpse.”
He recalled Sasha’s words the night he fucked her for the first time.
The cycle of vengeance doesn’t end, does it?
“Is that your answer? Hmm. Your wife would look pretty in chains. Maybe after I’m done with her, I’ll sell her off, not that she’d amount much as second-hand goods.”
Anatoly turned white with fear. Nikolai was impressed. Most men only cared about their own self-preservation. Anatoly must love his woman, despite sleeping in separate rooms.
“Please! I’ll do as you say, but I just don’t know what to do.”
“If they want a body, give them one that looks so mangled it’s hardly unrecognizable,” he said.
“Okay. I can do that,” Anatoly said, like a child eager for instructions.
“I’ll occasionally drop by to see if you’re holding your end of the bargain, Anatoly. You won’t know I’m there, but I’m watching you and your beautiful Gen,” he crooned in a dangerous voice.
Nikolai then slammed the butt of the revolver against the gangster’s skull, rendering the fucker unconscious. He left the way he came without incident. When morning arrived, Anatoly would discover the dead body outside his room and the big bruise on his head and realize his visit hadn’t just been one bad nightmare.
Once on the grounds, Nikolai picked his way out of the small garden and climbed the fence. He knew the guards’ rotation. The bodyguard on duty would be patrolling the other end of the property. Nikolai slipped out, took off his mask, and returned to his rental car. Once behind the wheel, he drove off. The burner phone in his back pocket vibrated. Only one person could be calling him. He took it out, putting his woman on speaker.
“Nikolai?” She sounded hesitant on the phone.
He knew she must be scared out of her mind, worried for him.
“All went according to plan,” he said.
“Thank God,” she whispered. A pause.
“Tell me what you’re thinking, baby,” he said.
“Nikolai, I don’t know how many of these kinds of nights I can take,” she admitted. “You don’t know what it’s like. I spend the entire evening, thinking of the worst-case scenarios in my head.”
“Baby—”
“Don’t ‘baby’ me,” she snapped.
His woman had a mouth on her. Then again, he liked her sass, relishing the opportunity to remind her who the boss was. Imagining Sasha naked and bound with her large tits on display and her legs spread, exposing the pink pussy he owned, make him grin and his dick strain painfully against the zipper of his jeans.
“Are you listening?” Sasha finally asked.
“You don’t have to worry about a thing, baby. This is the last visit I’ll pay to your father’s associates.” He let those words sink in for a moment.
“The last?” she asked. He could almost hear the hope in her voice.
“I’ll kill to protect what’s mine without hesitation, but if they keep their distance, I won’t need to do a thing.” At her silence, he knew Sasha didn’t quite believe him yet. Nikolai didn’t blame her. Violence was in his blood after all. Most people he’d tangled with didn’t bother understanding him. To the Bratva, Nikolai was no better than a dangerous predator without a leash.
Sasha still saw something good in him and didn’t care the rot underneath his skin.
“Baby?” Sasha finally asked.
“Hmm?”
“Just come home to me. I need to see you. Touch you.”
He smirked, already imagining her face and cheeks turning red. Red was such an enduring color on her.
“Missed my dick already?”
“I miss you.” Those simple words got to him.
“I won’t take long. You know how hungry I become after a job.”
“Hungry for food or for me?” she asked.
He chuckled. A month. That was how long it had been since he’d acquired his prize and he never expected them to come to this point, that Sasha would be comfortable enough being with him to tease and flirt.
“Both.”
“I—I’ll get things ready.”
Sasha ended the call.
Nikolai once considered Sasha his weakness, knowing she’d wind up killing him someday. Killers who lacked a conscience were the best in the field for a reason. They kept their edge sharp because emotion didn’t touch them. He once thought that, being with her, she dulled his killing instincts. Now, Nikolai altered his opinion. She soothed his edges, not dulled them. She tempered him, anchored him.
Maybe that wasn’t necessarily such a bad thing. Despite everything she’d endured, inn
ocence and curiosity still clung to her. Sasha still saw some good in the world, in him. That was enough for him.
Chapter Sixteen
Nikolai’s words continued to ring in her head even after they ended the call. Sasha busied herself by preparing dinner—pot roast and vegetables, his favorite. Well, not the asparagus, but she constantly told him he needed vegetables in his diet, too, not just protein.
Four weeks had passed since the shooting incident. A month of highs and lows as they settled into a rhythm. She hadn’t been sure of him at first. Sex between them remained mind-blowing, but sex didn’t define a relationship.
Small steps, she told herself and him. They clashed numerous times. They had small fights about him being too overprotective and bigger ones about how she was being careful about her movements, even though no one had been insane enough to go after them again.
Sasha still wasn’t sure what to call him. He began as her captor. Now he was something so much more. Nikolai killed her father, a man she had little love for. Maxim built her a pretty prison, after all, turning her into a punching bag when he lost his temper.
Nikolai had saved her, had done her a favor, giving her the keys to her freedom. He was no angel, no knight in shining armor, but she wasn’t the spoiled Bratva princess he thought he was getting either. In some ways, they suited each other.
Labels didn't matter to him anyway. She belonged to him, but the lethal, gorgeous male most in the Bratva considered a monster, belonged to her, too.
Sasha checked the meat roasting in the oven. They had this apartment for a few days through Airbnb. She never expected to return to this city, a city she didn’t know because she spent most of it confined in one space. Nikolai told her they wouldn’t stay here long. After he tidied up his business, who knew where they would go?
Sasha didn’t mind not knowing. She’d spent most of her life following the same routine, so it felt nice to be surprised. The door opened, and she turned, heartbeats spiking at seeing Nikolai. They locked gazes as if the first thing he wanted to see when he returned home was her.
Oh, this place was a temporary refuge. They had no home yet, but she didn’t mind being a nomad with him by her side. That dark look of pure hunger made her forget about the roast. She ran a hand through her messy hair, which she’d put into a tidy bun earlier. She planned on putting on some sexy underwear for him, not her plain granny panties and white bra underneath her denim shorts and a tank top.
Sasha even had a checkered red apron on. She’d bought the silly thing on impulse when they passed a cooking store in the area. Everything in this apartment belonged to someone else, so she wanted something new.
Despite how unglamorous and sloppy she felt, Nikolai still looked at her like she was the sexiest woman alive.
“Dinner will be ready soon. I didn’t think you’d be home this early,” she admitted.
Leaving his gear bag by the door, he strode to her. For a big man, he didn’t make a sound, his movements reminding her of a lethal predator locking sights with his prey. Her. She curved her lips into a smile, dinner preparations forgotten.
Hunger of a different sort moved him and her. He closed the distance between them, pinning her against the kitchen counter, one hand on her hip, the other tipping her chin so she looked at him. Relief flooded her, seeing no speck of blood or bruise on her man. Once after a vicious and delicious round of sex, he asked why she would be concerned for the wellbeing of a man like him. He might be a monster, but he was her monster.
Sometimes, Nikolai could be stubborn as hell, too. Their fiery personalities clashed on occasion, too, but unlike Maxim, Nikolai liked seeing the fire in her eyes, liked it when she challenged him. Sasha suspected it was because he thoroughly enjoyed punishing her later on. She’d never admit it to him out loud, but she looked forward to those moments, too, when he rendered her completely helpless and under his mercy.
“Next time, I want to come home to the sight of you wearing only that apron,” he said against her ear.
A shiver crawled down her spine as the erotic image rose in her head. He slipped hand to her back, undoing the straps of the apron, and she let him take it from her, watching for his next move.
Her breath hitched when he shifted his hand on her hip further down, past the waistband of her shorts and panties to cup her ass. Nikolai gave it squeeze, at the same slipping his other hand up the curve of her belly, to give her nipples a tug. She moaned, but he muffled the sound with a searing and biting kiss on the lips.
Just one touch and she opened her legs for him, aware of his fingers moving past the cleft of her buttocks to finger that forbidden, secret hole. She blushed all the way to the roots as he thumbed her puckered entrance. When he pulled away from the kiss, she panted. He gave her nipple a squeeze, making her groan.
“Your ass is mine today, sweetheart.”
Then he pulled his hands away, confusing her senses. She wanted him to touch her again, to feel him inside her and forge the most intimate connection between man and woman.
“Take off your clothes,” he ordered, taking a step back to watch her.
With trembling fingers, she tugged her shirt away. Her bra followed, her nipples already tightened to points. He licked his lips, grew impatient it seemed, because he neared her, gave one nipple a pull. She moaned as he slipped his hands down her curves, and hooked his fingers into the belt loops of her shorts. Sasha managed to take the button off when he yanked them down until they pooled at her ankles.
She kicked them aside, all too aware she remained bared, open to him, exposed. That was all right, too, because this man owned her, body and heart. Feeling bold, she grabbed the hem of his shirt. He chuckled, watching her as she managed to get it off. Then he grabbed her by the shoulder, spinning her until she faced the marble countertop.
“Here?” she whispered surprised and aroused at once.
“I haven’t fucked you here,” he told her. “Besides, the bedroom is too far.”
She moaned in agreement, not protesting as he placed a hand on the square of her back, lowering her to the counter until her tits pressed against the marble. Sasha liked it when he took control, when he reduced her body to a quivering mess. Her core heated up. Her tits pebbled against the cool surface. He pried her legs open and slid a finger between her legs to finger her slick pussy lips.
“So wet already for me, baby?” He pinned her hip in place, positioning his cockhead into her entrance.
Needing something to hold onto, she gripped the counter. Sasha realized how they must look, with her pressed down against the counter, ass in the air, and him eager to rut her from behind like an animal. Feeling his warmth leave her for a moment, she craned her neck to see him grabbing his lube from the back pocket of his jeans.
He promised he’d have her ass by today, the one thing he hadn’t done since he took her.
She blushed, no longer ashamed of her needs or of wanting him so much, it consumed her. Sasha felt the weight of her heart in her chest, beating like the wings of a bird eager to spread its wings. Nikolai plunged his dick into her tight, wet cunt without warning, wrangling a cry from her.
Like always, he felt so massive inside her, stretching her pussy wide. He tightened his hold on her waist. No doubt he would leave bruises on her creamy skin, but she liked waking up in the morning and seeing signs of his lovemaking on her.
Nikolai claimed this was the only way he knew how to express his love, but he was wrong in that regard. Some days, he’d surprise her, surprise both of them, with little gestures like leaving a vase of daisies on the dining table.
Her mother loved daisies, and so did she. Or Nikolai would suddenly decide to eat in and whip up dinner for the both of them, even though he preferred takeout. She’d volunteer to help him out, grinning when relief flashed in his eyes. They’d work side-by-side, in companionable silence.
Nikolai stole her ability to think and began to move, rhythm quick and steady. Sparks of electricity went right to her center as he pou
nded into her with more ruthless strokes. He chased the cold away by blanketing her back with the hard wall of his chest, his mouth on her pulse point. Nikolai bit her there, snaking one hand between her legs to finger her clit. She buckled, crying out against him, only to feel his mouth covering hers.
The sounds of their fucking filled the air. Sweat trickled down her back. She drowned, all too aware her body no longer belonged to her but him. He’d claimed it as his the moment he first took her in that motel room. She had to smile, remembering how he’d apologized to her for taking her in a seedy inn during their first week on the road together. Sorry wasn’t needed, not when he gave her a new reason to live when she thought she lost her way.
Day after day, stuck in that luxurious prison her father built, only her thirst to see the world had kept her from taking her own life. Once Nikolai took care of unfinished business, he promised her the world. Sasha would hold him to that promise.
Nikolai shifted his hips, slamming into her G-spot. She groaned as he withdrew his lips. Sasha met him for every push, willing her inner muscles to clamp down on his dick. He hammered deep inside her, breaching her most intimate places. Nikolai’s last entry sent her over the edge of oblivion. She cried out, the pressure inside her breaking as she came all over his dick.
He moved his hand from her hip to her other hole while her mind still floated in a sea of haze, his control impressive. Moments later, she heard the lube being uncapped and felt his finger in her asshole.
She moaned into her arm as he added a second. Her heart calmed down as she wrapped her mind around the unfamiliar sensation. Strange but not unpleasant, she thought as he added another finger her ass and began widening her for access.
“We’re really doing this,” she murmured, sounding languid to her own ears.
“You belong to me, all of you,” he gritted out, probably ready to explode. Nikolai gave her breasts a squeeze with his free hand, then her clit and sore pussy. Reminders he owned her body.
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