by Alexa Land
“I thought all your uncle’s business dealings were kept secret from you. How did you hand them over?”
“By handing over Sokolov’s men. They’ll fill in the blanks. They’ll kind of have to if they want to become a part of the Dombruso organization. Plus, my uncle was doing a lot of business with the Dombrusos, and all those operations will belong to Dante free and clear now.”
“What other assets did you give him?”
“I gave him almost everything I own – the house, the Maserati, my bank accounts.”
“All of that, just for helping you tonight?”
“Not just tonight. You and me and our families, we’re all under the protection of the Dombruso organization now, so my uncle can’t possibly retaliate. No one can hurt us.”
I stared at him in amazement. “You gave up so much for me.”
“I love you, Jamie. I’d have laid down my life if that’s what it took to save you.”
I pulled him to me and kissed him deeply, then held his gaze and said, “Will you marry me, Dmitri?”
His eyes went wide, his gorgeous, sexy lips parting in surprise. And he whispered, “Yes. God, yes. Of course I’ll marry you.”
“Good,” I said with a smile, kissing him again before resting my head against his chest. It hadn’t been the big, romantic proposal that I’d planned on, but it had just felt so right in that moment.
He smiled happily and murmured, “You want to marry me.”
“Of course. That’s what you do when you love someone with all your heart.”
“Let’s do it soon, ok? I can’t wait to be your husband.”
“Sure baby, we can absolutely do it soon. We’ll probably have to have to keep it pretty simple, like a backyard wedding at my parents’ house, since we’re both going to be totally broke. I decided I’m resigning from the police force.”
“Why are you resigning?”
“It’s not what I want. As I build a new future with my new husband, I want it to include a career that makes me happy.”
“I think that’s great.” After a moment he added, “Hey, do you have any interest in owning a bar?”
I looked up at him. “I always thought that sounded like fun. Why do you ask?”
“Well,” he said, “I won one from Dante a couple weeks ago in our bimonthly poker game. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with it. And he actually didn’t want it back when I was handing over my assets – he ran it for a while and decided it was too time consuming.”
“I just knew you were an excellent poker player,” I said with a grin. Then I asked, “What kind of bar is it?”
He grinned too and told me, “It’s an Irish-themed sports pub called Flannigan’s, in the Richmond. Like I have a clue what to do with something like that.”
“You own Flannigan’s?” I said with surprise. “That’s awesome. I love that place.”
“Well, good. Then you can have it as a wedding present,” he told me. “Do whatever you want with it. But if you decide to keep it and run it, I’m actually really good at managing a business. We can probably get it to turn a pretty sizeable profit. And once it’s running smoothly…well, maybe I’ll go back to school.”
“And study what?”
He glanced at me. “I’ve always had an interest in computer science. That’s what I was planning to study when I quit school.”
“Right. You dropped out at the start of your sophomore year,” I recalled.
He smiled at that. “I’d love to see the file you had on me when you came to investigate me, Officer Nolan.”
“It was fairly dry reading. I found out later that all the juicy bits had been unintentionally omitted. It didn’t include anything about your sex life.” I gave him a playful wink.
“Oh God. I mean, anything you want to know, I’ll tell you. But I’m really glad you didn’t read about it first in some file. I could only imagine what you’d have thought of me.”
“Um, that you were a smoking hot guy that got laid a lot? I probably could have handled that,” I teased lightly. Then I added, “Actually, I do have one question about your sex life.”
“Only one?”
“For now,” I grinned. “So here’s my question: were you and Dante Dombruso involved at some point?”
“Yes and no. We went out a couple times, maybe two years ago, but I never let him fuck me. And of course he wasn’t about to let me fuck him, he doesn’t do that. So we were kind of at an impasse. Now he’s just a friend, albeit a highly lethal one.”
“Why wouldn’t you let him fuck you? He’s a good-looking guy.”
Dmitri looked at me steadily. “You know what you don’t want to do when you’re dating the undeniably dangerous leader of one of the most powerful crime families in the western U.S.? You don’t want to give them control.”
“But a cop you seduced on a public street, that guy you gave control,” I grinned.
“Not just any cop,” he said, and curled up in my arms. “The one I knew I wanted to spend the rest of my life with within two minutes of meeting him.”
“Two whole minutes? Damn, I thought I was better than that.”
“It took you much longer to fall for me,” he said with a smile. “It even involved an act of public indecency on a city sidewalk to reel you in.”
I smiled too and said, “I never intended to fall for you. That was totally off plan.”
“As were you. And thank God for that, because my original plan sucked.”
I kissed Dmitri awake the next morning, and went down on him while he was still groggy. “Jamie,” he murmured, “How do you feel? You should be taking it easy.”
I released him from my mouth and said, “I’m fine. And I am taking it easy,” before sucking his cock again.
“Are you sure you’re ok? We should take you to your doctor’s office today, make sure there aren’t any lingering injuries from last night.” He moaned then and ground out, “Oh God.”
I looked up at him with a grin and took his cock in my hand. “I really am fine. And what I need now is to claim my fiancé in every way possible. And I have a couple ideas on that subject.”
A little tremor of pleasure went through him. “What did you have in mind?”
I stroked him as I said, “First of all, I need to put you over my knees and spank you, long and hard.” He gasped as his eyes slid shut. “We’ve teased each other around that for days, but we’ve never actually done it. I think it’s time.”
“Oh God yes.”
“But that’s just phase one.”
“What’s phase two?”
“Well, that depends. Where do you stand on the issue of unprotected sex?”
His eyes opened and he looked at me gravely. “I’ve never had unprotected sex. Literally never. I’ve never trusted anyone enough to really believe them when they told me they were clean. In this case,” he said, raising himself up on his elbows, “I trust you, of course. But it’s me that poses a potential risk to you.”
“Do you really think you pose a risk?”
“Well, no. I actually know I don’t. I’m clean, I’m tested regularly, and I’ve never had unprotected sex. But why on earth would you take my word for any of that? You know I’ve slept with hund—um, lots of guys.”
“Hundreds?” I said, raising an eyebrow. Then I smiled at him. “That’s impressive. Ok, so for phase two, I want to fuck you without a condom between us.”
He looked stunned. “You really trust me that much?”
“With my life, baby.”
He sat up and took my face in his hands. “I will never do anything to betray that trust, Jamie. I swear it.”
“I know that, Dmitri.” I grinned at him mischievously as I swung my legs off the side of the bed. “Now come and lay across my lap, sweetheart, so I can give you what you need.”
His entire body shuddered with desire as he quickly complied. I rested one hand at the nape of his neck while I ran my other hand over his back and his gorgeous little butt, caressing
his silky, flawless skin. And then I brought my hand down with an experimental slap. The yell that tore from him was intense, primal. I brought my hand down again, harder this time, then again and again. He went wild, bucking, moaning, as I continued to spank him, his hard cock pressed against my thighs, his hips thrusting. After a few more blows he begged urgently, “Please Jamie, fuck me.”
I reached for the lube in the nightstand and worked him open, then swung him onto his back on the mattress. I knelt between his legs as I lubed my cock, stroking myself as I watched him. He was flushed and excited and radiant, his hard cock straining against his stomach as he parted his legs wide for me. I fell forward and pushed into him, bare skin against bare skin, our bodies joining. “Oh God,” he gasped. “God Jamie, yes.” I began to fuck him, carefully at first. But he begged, “Take me hard. Please, Jamie.”
I thrust into him forcefully, my body slapping against his as I pumped his tight hole and we both moaned and lost ourselves to the pleasure. My bruised ribs complained a little, but I ignored the discomfort. What was happening was too wonderful, too important to let anything interrupt. And after a few minutes I told him, “Baby, I’m going to cum in you.”
“Oh God. Yes!” he cried out, and I yelled as I came deep inside his body, filling him, claiming him as he’d never been claimed before. Again and again I shot into him as he ground out, “Yes, Jamie. Oh God, I’m yours. Fuck me.” I took hold of his cock and in two strokes brought him to orgasm as I emptied myself into him.
Afterwards, I stayed inside him and propped myself up with my arms, kissing him deeply. And when finally I pulled back to look at him, I said softly, “I love you Dmitri. And I can’t wait to marry you.”
He smiled up at me and touched my face tenderly, love and devotion shining in his beautiful blue eyes as he said, “I love you, too, Jamie. Forever.”
Epilogue
“Do you really think that’s a good idea?” Jess asked as she leaned against her husband and reached behind her to run a hand around the nape of his neck. Fernando had returned four days ago from apparently quite successfully filming his duckumentary, and I was pretty sure the two of them hadn’t stopped touching each other since his return. They now sat in a booth across from me in my bar, Jess on his lap, Fernando kissing her shoulder. It was totally ridiculous.
But since Dmitri currently had his arm around my shoulders and one leg draped over my thigh, I was one to talk. He took a sip of soda before leaning over and kissing my cheek, and I turned away from the employee shift schedules spread on the table before me and smiled at him fondly.
He was wearing his reading glasses, which made him look like a very sexy Clark Kent. He’d liked it when I’d pointed that out to him, and had taken to wearing them with a little more frequency. I stared at him for a long moment, reaching up to brush his hair back from his face, my silver wedding band catching and reflecting the early afternoon sunlight that streamed into the bar.
We’d gotten married three weeks ago, two weeks to the day after we met. And we honeymooned in our bedroom. Going anywhere would have been pointless – we barely left the bed for days.
I remembered Jess had spoken then, and dragged my attention away from my husband. “Sorry. What was the question?”
She rolled her eyes at that and grinned. “I asked if you really think it’s a good idea to give Charlie a job here at your bar. He’s not over you, you know. It might make things awkward, you being his employer and all.”
I shrugged and said, “It’ll be fine. And he really needs the job.” He’d quit working for his uncle on my advice, and had called off his engagement, apparently ending it on decent terms with Callie. He still hadn’t come out to his parents, but hey, it was progress. “Charlie waited tables in high school, and he enjoyed it. I think it’ll be a good job for him until he figures out what he wants long-term.”
“You mean, what he wants besides you,” Jess said.
“He knows he can’t have me. I’m off the market.”
“Yes, you are,” Dmitri said. He turned my head toward him with a gentle hand on my cheek and kissed me deeply as his other hand snuck up under the hem of my t-shirt and caressed my belly.
“Should we leave you two alone?” Fernando asked. “You still have a couple hours before the bar opens tonight. You can probably try out three or four of the booths and tables in that time.” He winked conspiratorially.
Yeah, like we hadn’t done that already. In the two weeks since we’d officially taken over ownership of Nolan’s (formerly Flannigan’s), Dmitri and I had fucked on almost every surface in this place. The bar and pool table were particular favorites, and we revisited them frequently. It was almost a shame the bar was open nine hours a day, because that really cut into our play time in here. I grinned at Dmitri, and Jess exclaimed, “Oh Christ. You’ve done that, haven’t you? Ugh, and you serve food here.”
“Oh don’t judge,” I told her. “I keep this place spotless. And like you and Fernando didn’t sneak off to both the ladies’ room and my office last night.”
She looked guilty and started to say something, but Dmitri’s ringing phone interrupted her. He scooped it up from the table and answered it, and had a very one-sided conversation with what I gathered was Catherine. His part mostly consisted of, “Yeah, but–” and “But do you think–” and “Shouldn’t you–” each attempt at speaking cut off by his exuberant cousin. Finally he ended it with, “Fine. See you then.”
“What was that about?” I wanted to know.
“Catherine’s flying in this weekend,” Dmitri said with a sigh. “She’s picking up Joe, and they’re eloping to Vegas. Then they’re honeymooning in New Haven while she finishes up her senior year.”
“What? She’s only known him a few weeks!” I exclaimed.
“Oh my God!” Jess said. “Hypocritical much?”
“This is different,” I said defensively, running my hand down Dmitri’s thigh.
“Oh yeah, totally,” she said flatly. Then she said, “So Cat’s marrying into the Dombruso crime family. That’s interesting.”
Joe had taken Dante Dombruso up on his offer of employment after his old boss got hauled off to jail. Gregor Sokolov currently faced charges on drug smuggling, racketeering, and the kidnapping and assault of a police officer (that would be me). The Packard had been checked for evidence linking him to the Pasteretti murder as well, but the forensics team hadn’t actually found anything in the car. Still, Dante had given the police enough evidence linking him to other crimes that Gregor would be behind bars for a good long time.
Sokolov’s arrest had been a big feather in my father’s cap, as had the arrest of the two police officers that had been on Sokolov’s payroll. Joe had given up the names, along with documentation willingly, it turned out, when he saw it would help him cement his new position in the Dombruso organization – and his new position as Catherine’s main squeeze.
“It’s not ideal,” Dmitri said. “But Joe Rudin will be good to her. She could do a lot worse, actually.”
Charlie wandered in through the back door then. He paused for a moment, taking in the group of us, and then said, “Hey guys,” as he crossed the room to our booth.
“Hey Charlie. What’s up?” I asked.
“I came to tell you that I finally did it, Jamie. I came out to my parents.” He looked at me levelly and said, “It didn’t go well.”
“I’ll bet. Wait, did they kick you out?” Charlie still lived at home, because he’d never been able to afford his own apartment in the city.
“Oh yeah. Out on my ass. I kind of thought they might, so at least I had the foresight to pack up a few clothes and stash them in my truck before telling them. But that’s kind of as far as I got in the planning process. I don’t actually know where I’m gonna live now.”
“Well, my old apartment’s empty. Dmitri and I got the last of my stuff moved out this weekend.” We’d decided to move into the spacious apartment that had been standing empty above the bar. It was a great
space with a lot of potential, and I was looking forward to making it our home. “I’m held to my lease through the end of the year, so you’re welcome to crash there,” I told him.
“Thanks. I owe ya,” Charlie said, pushing his short, dark brown hair from his forehead.
“You’re about to owe me even more,” I said with a grin. “I decided I need to round out my staff, so if you still want the waiter job, it’s yours.”
Charlie shot a quick glance at Dmitri before looking at the floor. And he asked hesitantly, “I’d love the job. But is that…is that going to be ok with everyone?”
