by Cole, Jagger
My eyes open and narrow, my teeth grind. I didn’t start this. Fyodor did. Taking Zoey wasn’t meant as payback or anything. But if that’s an added bonus, so be it.
He wants blood? He’ll have it.
My stomach suddenly gurgles. Christ, I don’t even remember the last time I ate today. I smile hungrily to myself.
Yes, I do.
My lips remember the taste of her little cunt, and I groan. I stand, march down the hall, and knock on her door.
“What,” she snaps.
I chuckle. And yet there’s something about her petulance and sass that’s fuel to the fire inside of me. I growl to myself, feeling my desire for her surge again.
“Are you hungry?”
There’s a pause.
“You can say yes, I won’t hold it against you.”
“What’s for dinner?”
I chuckle again. “Will it make a difference?”
The door swings open. And there she is… all five-foot-four, one hundred and twenty pounds of her. Her long blonde hair is pulled back in a ponytail. And God help me, all I can think of is grabbing it in my fist and guiding her—
“It might,” she snaps, record-scratching my fantasy.
I grit my teeth as my eyes sweep over her. For all her sass about me buying her or keeping her with “pretty things,” it looks like she’s already put a dent in the clothes I had brought in for her. She’s wearing this tantalizingly short little dress that hugs every fucking curve on her body.
Her bare legs grab my gaze, and I groan, imagining them spread around my hips. The neck plunges low, giving me a full view of her cleavage and the black lace of a bra beneath it. A simple silver necklace with single diamond pendant—also from me—adorns her neck, falling between her tits.
My eyes drag up and down, like I can’t get enough of drinking in the sight of her. And suddenly, I don’t give a fuck about whatever I was going to do for dinner before. Because I can only think of one thing I want to devour now…
She smirks, like she’s pleased with herself that she’s thrown me off with how she’s dressed.
“Like it?”
“Yes,” I grunt, like there’s marbles in my mouth. “I do.”
“Oh good,” she mutters dryly. “You bought it.” She smiles sarcastically up at me. “So, what’s for dinner. Borscht?”
“Exactly, yes. The gulag special.”
She grins sensually at me. My jaw tightens. The looks, the flirtatiousness, the outfit... it’s as if she’s seducing me. And I’m not opposed to that situation at all.
“I had some scallops I was thinking about searing.”
She arches her brow. “You cook?”
“I cook.”
“My my. Aren’t you full of surprises.”
“I also paint, play the piano, and speak Mandarin.”
She blinks. “Seriously?”
“No.”
She giggles, blushing. I grin and turn to head into the kitchen, leaving her to follow. I start to get dinner stuff out of the fridge when I hear her walk into the kitchen behind me.
“Can I do anything?”
I turn and shake my head. “Have a seat and relax. You want a drink?”
She rolls her eyes. “Oh am I your guest of honor now?”
“I actually lock all of my special dinner guests up in the guest room with eighty-thousand dollars’ worth of new clothes and jewelry.”
She grins. I grin back.
“What do you have?”
“White wine?”
She runs her tongue over her lip, like she’s contemplating it.
“Sure.”
I pour her a glass of wine and a vodka on ice for me. I raise my glass to hers, and she does the same.
For a second, the situation seems different. I’m not me—the Russian gangster who just literally abducted her from her own wedding because I’m obsessed with her. And she’s not the bratty little rich girl hurling vitriol at me. It’s like we’re meeting for the first time. Like this is a first date, where I’m going to cook her dinner.
But even if we’re pretending, there’s no getting around the fact that no first date in the history of first dates has ever had this much heat boiling just beneath the surface. I start to prep for dinner. We make small conversation about who the fuck knows what while we sip our drinks.
But there’s no ignoring the tension. There’s no pretending that we’re both not very much thinking of the fact that three weeks ago, we fucked each other’s brains out. Three weeks ago, she was raking her nails down my back and begging for every inch of my cock—harder, deeper, more, more, more.
Likewise, there’s no pretending that less than an hour ago I had her tied to a clothes rack while I ran my tongue over her clit.
I’ve never been much for dating. But I doubt there’s many or any “first dates” out there with that sort of background and heat threatening to boil over.
“So, you’re… in college?”
She nods.
“For?”
“Undecided.”
It’s the most heated “small talk” in the history of small talk. If there were subtitles under us, “you’re in college” would translate to “bend over this fucking counter so I can pull your panties to the side and push every thick inch of my cock into that greedy little pussy.”
“And you?” She smirks. “College?”
“Harvard Law,” I throw back, obviously sarcastically.
“How ironic for a career criminal,” she grins.
“You’d have to be to pay for it.”
Zoey giggles over the rim of her wine glass. “So, how did you get into kidnapping?”
I roll my eyes.
“Did you just jump in? Or do you like, start with small dogs and cats?”
Before I can answer, my attention is shattered. Zoey’s sitting on one of the bar stools at my kitchen counter, but pulled around to the side, near where I’m chopping things for the dinner. There’s no counter between us, she’s wearing that short dress… and her legs have just spread slightly.
I groan as my eyes drop between her thighs, right to the black lace of her panties pulled snug against her little pussy. Her legs spread a hair wider, before she crosses them. My eyes slide up to her face. But she’s looking away out the window, sipping her wine.
I stare at her. There’s no way she isn’t aware of what she just did, right? But when she turns back to me, she just smiles innocently.
“Well?”
“Huh?” I grunt.
“Cats? Dogs? Or you just started with people?”
“Small children,” I mumble out. I turn back to the cooking, trying to clear my head.
“Fascinating,” she giggles. I hear her slide off the stool and walk past me. “You sure I can’t help with anything?”
“I’m fine.”
“Is this where you keep your pots and pans?”
“No, they’re—”
I turn, and my jaw grinds. Fuck.
Zoey’s bent over by some of my kitchen drawers, pawing through them. The little dress pulled up high, giving me a perfect view of her bare ass, split down the middle with a tiny, lacy, see-through black thong.
I groan, out loud. My cock thickens and surges against the front of my pants as I stare at her. Slowly, she stands and turns back to me with that same goddamn innocent smile.
“Where?”
“Huh?”
She looks at me curiously. It’s like she has zero fucking idea that she keeps doing this.
“The pots and pans?”
I eye her, and she smiles.
“What?”
“You’re playing a dangerous game,” I growl.
She blushes and rakes her teeth over her bottom lip. But then she looks at me quizzically. “What?”
“You know what,” I grunt. “And this is your last warning.”
“What do you mean my last—”
“I mean if you keep this up,” I snarl. “I’m not going to be able to stop myself from bending you over
right here on the floor and giving you exactly what you’re looking for.”
She stiffles a soft “eep” sound, her eyes growing wide. Her mouth makes an “O” shape as her cheeks redden.
“I—I’m just trying to help—”
“I know exactly what you’re doing, little girl,” I snarl. I step closer to her as her breath comes faster.
“I—I’m just trying to help,” she whispers, looking half scared, half excited.
My eyes slide over her again before I nod. “You can get some water boiling for the pasta.” I nod behind her at a rack of cast iron pots and pans on the wall.
She swallows. “Sure,” she breathes. She turns from me, and I turn back to my chopping.
“Lev?”
“Find it?”
She’s silent. I frown as I turn.
“Did you—”
Fuck. I don’t see Zoey. But I do see her little black thong lying on the floor by the doorway.
An animal desire surges inside of me. My jaw clenches as I walk towards them, my cock thick against my pants. I bend down and hook the panties in my fingers before standing.
They’re still warm.
Lust boils like lava in my core. My blood thunders like diesel fuel through my veins.
“I warned you about playing dangerous games, lastachka—”
The hit comes from behind, right in the head. I groan as I drop, my vision fading. Then it goes dark.
10
Zoey
I run through the raining streets of Chicago in a panic. My heart is racing, my phone clutched tightly in my hand. And I’m barefoot.
It’s one of several weak links in my escape plan. I mean for one, how hard do you hit someone to make them black out? In a cartoon, an anvil or a piano dropped from a cliff or a high-rise window does it. But in the real world, I’m pretty certain that would have killed Lev.
So I used a frying pan.
I know he’s not dead. I mean he’s going to hurt when he comes too, but he’s breathing fine. And his pulse was fine too; I checked before I left. I mean he’s not dead. Or, he wasn’t when I left.
But I didn’t know how long he’d be out, so I just ran. Phone, no shoes, no real plan.
The rain starts to pelt down even harder, until I’m drenched to the bone. I duck under the awning of a bar and wipe my phone off. I’ve got a bunch of missed calls; some from my father, some more from Chet, and even more from his father’s number. But mixed in, there’s a million from Fiona.
Neither of us are big voicemail people, but she’s left me one.
“Oh my fucking God, Zoey,” she laughs on the message. “So at first I was freaking out, but Viktor just filled me in that you’re with Lev? Obviously, I want to know more, and I’m obviously pissed you didn’t tell me about this sooner. But, what the fuck, girl!? Congrats on ditching your own wedding!” She hoots in laughter. “Oh my God, this is hilarious. So, call me when you get out of bed, you nut.”
I groan. She doesn’t know the full story. She thinks I’ve run off with Lev like some fling or something.
I frown. Isn’t it though? Or, wasn’t it?
I quickly scroll to Fiona’s number and hit the call button.
“Please pick up,” I mutter out loud as I dance from foot to foot. “Please.” I squeeze my eyes shut.
“Hey! You’ve reached Fiona Murray! I can’t—”
I groan at the sound of her voicemail. With the wedding over—whether it happened or not—she and Viktor are back to their little honeymoon escape in the islands or wherever they are. Meanwhile, I’m standing barefoot in the rain on a Chicago sidewalk, shivering in a soaking wet dress after escaping from the penthouse of the gorgeous, hot, insane bratva criminal who took me.
Great. Just great.
My pulse starts to hammer again. I mean what the fuck did I just do? And what the hell am I going to do now? I weigh grabbing a cab to my place. But, what then? Like Lev won’t check there? You know, after he wakes up from me clocking him in the head with a frying pan?
Yet again, the idea of running from him gets me… hot. The idea of him chasing me gets my skin tingling with a desire that almost scares me. And yet again, I’m wrestling with the want to run from him and the throbbing desire for him to chase.
I start to scroll through my phone, but my spirits quickly sink. I might have half of the “in” crowd of Chicago’s numbers in my phone, but it’s meaningless. It’s a lot of contacts, but no real fiends. Or none that I can call about this, that is. But then, I frown when my eyes land on one number.
I bite my lip and hit dial before I can second guess it. He answers on the second ring.
“Hello?”
I wince. “Um, hey, I know it’s been a while…”
“Oh my God, honey!” Kevin Macintosh gasps when he answers the door and sees me. He grabs me and pulls me in. “Come in! Come in! Oh my goodness!”
I stumble into his townhouse as he quickly shuts the door behind me. He rushes off and comes back with a heap of towels along with a pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt.
“Here, these are Elise’s but they might fit you.”
I giggle through chattering teeth. “Kevin, Elise is like six-foot-one.”
He smirks. “Beggars can’t be choosy, my dear. Unless you’d prefer to keep rocking this shipwreck survivor look of yours?”
I grin as I start to towel off my hair.
My old fake-fling shakes his head. “Christ, you’re soaked.”
I shiver, my teeth still chattering from the cold rain. I start to shrug out of my clothes, and Kevin graciously looks away.
“Thanks.”
“Honey, unless you suddenly grew a beard and a cock, you know I’m not interested.”
I giggle as I pull on the sweatpants and t-shirt usually worn by a six-foot former lingerie runway model.
“Uh, Kevin…”
He turns and laughs loudly, drinking in the sight of me swimming in his wife’s lounge clothes.
“Okay, maybe she’s a bit taller than you.”
“Well, I’m warm now, that’s all I care about.”
He smiles, sighing as he ushers me into the living room. “Here, sit.”
Kevin pours a glass of wine as I sit on the couch. Then he glances at me with brow raised in question, holding up the bottle.
“Oh, fuck yes please.”
He chuckles as he pours a glass and slides it across the coffee table to me.
“Where’s Elise, by the way?”
Kevin and I have made about 5 “public” appearances—which is to say, five times we’ve made it clear we’re “together” in public or at party. His wife being fully in on his situation, obviously knows me. We’ve only met once before, but she was really nice.
Kevin sighs and sinks into a chair across from me. “Ibiza, with Raul.”
I smirk. “Raul?”
“Her boyfriend. He’s a painter.”
I blink in surprise. I never really imagined that Elise was also living her own private life aside from her and Kevin’s fake marriage.
He sighs. “What can I say? He gives her what I cannot.”
“Heterosexual sex?”
He taps his nose with a wink. “Exactly.”
I giggle but then I frown. I know their situation is different than most. But I suddenly wonder if it would still be difficult to have your “spouse”—real or not—off with someone they actually love romantically.
“You’re not jealous at all?”
“Oh, I am.” Kevin winks. “Of her.”
I start to laugh.
“Zoey, the man is gorgeous, and hung like an ox apparently.
I snort into giggles, tears in my eyes before I catch my breath.
“Awww, and you’re just lonely here at home?”
“Me? Oh, no,” he waves his hand. “No, I had some guests earlier.”
I grin. “Guests, hmm? Plural?”
Kevin blushes.
“Don’t get caught,” I sigh. “Otherwise, all of our hot t
rysts would have been in vain.”
“Too true,” he smiles. “I’m careful as always.”
I roll my eye. “And how’s work? I hear you’ve taken that fancy ass of yours global?”
Way back at our first “encounter”, Kevin was another ludicrously rich finance guy with political aspirations. Since then, he’s somehow managed to get himself a US Ambassador appointment—to Russia of all places, ironically enough.
Kevin laughs. “It really has been too long, hasn’t it?”
“How’s Russia?”
“Cold as fuck, and more closet cases than toga-night at a frat house.”
I erupt into giggles as he grins at me. But as it winds down, his smile fades as he frowns at me. “So?”
“So what?”
“Are we going to talk about you showing up at my door at ten at night, soaking wet without shoes?”
I bite my lip. “It’s… complicated.”
“Of course it is,” he grins. “But look who you’re talking to?”
I smile. I take a breath, and then I tell him everything that’s been going on. I only mean to give the basics without specifics, but once I get stared, it all starts rushing out of me. I spill everything—the night I had with Lev, the wedding, him taking me, where I’ve been… all of it.
When I’m done, Kevin’s wine is gone and he’s staring at me.
“Holy shit,” he breathes in disbelief. “You really took my advice about ‘just finding someone’ and kinda ran with it, honey. “
I smile wryly. “I’m sorry to crash your place like this, I just…” My brows knit. “I didn’t have anyone else I could call…”
He smiles and reaches across the coffee table to squeeze my hand. “I’m glad you did.” He smirks. “Hey, hopefully the paparazzi saw you coming in anyways, right? It’d be even juicier if they saw you leave tomorrow morning too.”
I sigh and shake my head. “No, Kevin, I couldn’t possibly—”
“Zoey,” he rolls his eyes. “Of course you’re staying.” Kevin smiles at me. “Hey have you eaten?”
I shake my head.
“Oh, come on. I made some scallops earlier.”
I laugh.
“What?”
“Nothing,” I sigh, smiling as I shake my head. “He—Lev—he was going to make scallops tonight too.”
