by A. Zavarelli
I turn my attention back to Alexei. “And may I ask who you are?”
“I am of little importance,” he answers. “In fact, it puzzles me exceedingly what honor has bestowed a bastard like me the presence of your captor this evening.”
Nikolai’s eyes flash. “I do not trouble myself with the relations you speak of. It seems you have mistaken me for Sergei.”
Alexei shrugs. “It is hard, sometimes, to tell the difference between you two.”
A crimson flush edges up the pulsing ridge of Nikolai’s throat, and my stomach flips in response. I know I probably pushed him too far, but Alexei is unconcerned about his role, even when Nikolai excuses himself from the room.
When he’s gone, and the room is silent, I blurt something that would be better kept to myself. “Are you really his brother?”
Alexei pierces me with his eyes. “How did you know?”
My eyes wander over his features, and while it isn’t blatant, there are some similarities. It’s mostly their mannerisms, though, that I have seemed to connect. “You look alike. And you also hinted at it. Bastard. Relations. I think the only missing ingredient is brotherly affection.”
His eyes study me curiously while he sips from his cognac. “It’s hard to warm to a man like Nikolai.”
I think maybe he’s trying to tell me that Nikolai is not a good man. He doesn’t need to say so. My heart still hurts from the memory of last night.
“Does he treat you well?” Alexei asks.
I find myself nodding on autopilot, though I’m not sure why. It’s probably not wise to say anything else. Their hatred runs deep, but guaranteed, their loyalty runs deeper. It’s the mafia way.
“Why did you come to dinner tonight?” I ask. “If you don’t get along with him?”
Alexei responds with a flippant gesture of his hand. “I’m not sure. We still have business to discuss.”
Nonna returns with another course of roast and vegetables. While Nikolai is absent, I decide to eat a little because it smells good.
“If you stay here long, perhaps you can come visit my wife sometime,” Alexei suggests. “She could use a friend.”
My fork halts, and I look up at him.
A friend.
I’ve never had a friend. I wouldn’t even know what that relationship entails, but the opportunity sounds too good to pass up.
“I would like that very much,” I answer. “What is her name?”
For the first time since his arrival, there is a sign of life in Alexei’s eyes. “Her name is Talia.”
“Talia,” I repeat. “It’s a beautiful name.”
“She’s a beautiful woman.” He smiles. “But she is not yet familiar with this world, and I fear that it makes her an easy target.”
I nod in understanding. Growing up in this life, I’m intimately acquainted with the baggage that comes with it. But for an outsider, it can be disorienting, I’m sure.
Alexei retrieves the phone from his pocket and wakes the screen. “I have a photo of her. Let me show you.”
It’s probably not appropriate of me, but I stand and move to the other side of the table. I’m eager for the opportunity to leave this house, even if only temporarily. The idea of having a friend fills my heart with hope.
Alexei hands me the phone, and I stare at the photo, cataloging the details of the woman on the screen. She is beautiful, but there is also something heartbreaking about her. The gray eyes staring back at me are haunted and sad, and I’m left to wonder if she’s happy with her husband. And then I wonder why I would even question it.
What mafia wife is ever happy?
I want to assure him that she’s beautiful, which is probably what he wants to hear, but instead, I tell Alexei that she looks like she could use a friend. He nods, and it takes him some time to drag his eyes away from the photo.
“She has not had an easy life,” he admits. “And I don’t know that I make her happy, but I try.”
The profound level of sorrow in his voice provokes me to do something I probably shouldn’t. But I reach out and touch his hand, if only to let him know there is always hope.
“Will you tell me about her?”
For the remainder of the meal, we get lost in conversation. He opens up about his wife’s background, giving me intimate details about someone I’ve yet to meet. But I can see that it’s what he needed, and when I hear her heart-wrenching story, I feel like we are friends already.
After such a deep subject, the natural progression is to move on to lighter topics. Alexei explains his position within the Vory, their hierarchy, and some of their customs. The things he tells me are not so different from my own family’s codes, and I’m surprised to learn that I even find some of their practices more agreeable.
It’s when we are on the matter of children that Nikolai chooses to return. The timing isn’t ideal, considering he left us as strangers and returns to find me leaning in to study more of the photos on Alexei’s phone. The flash in his eyes as he examines the narrow distance between us warns me that his mood has only darkened, but for the first time in as long as I can remember, I’m enjoying myself, and I know he’s about to ruin it.
“You are dismissed, Nakya,” he thunders. “Go to your room.”
Not about to argue with his tone, I move to get up, but Alexei halts me with his hand on my arm. “She can stay.”
A silent war rages between the two brothers while I remain in my seat, hands clutched in my lap. The game of trying to provoke Nikolai is no longer fun, and at the end of the day, it is him I must answer to.
“Perhaps I should go to my room,” I volunteer.
“I think perhaps you should stay here,” Alexei argues. “It’s not a problem, is it, bratan? You trust me, yes?”
Nikolai’s nostrils flare, and I can’t be sure, but I’m beginning to think I have become the proverbial stick between the two.
“With my life,” Nikolai answers. “As blood should.”
Sticky silence descends over us before Nonna suggests we all move to the sitting room for drinks. She is quick to follow our movements, already prepared with fresh beverages. It’s my third vodka cranberry of the night, and I am feeling it more than I should.
I don’t drink often. Only on a few occasions did I steal a sip from my father’s liquor cabinet or nurse a beverage during a dinner party, but in general, I don’t make it a habit of imbibing. In the past, it was partly because my father had high expectations for my behavior, but mostly, it was because there were too many calories.
Tonight, however, I am not thinking of the caloric content. I am only thinking of the impending doom that awaits me if this tension does not dissipate before Alexei takes his leave.
Watching Nikolai as he speaks to his brother in Russian, I’m cursed to wonder what made him this way. Volatile one minute, and placid the next. His emotions do not ebb and flow like a ripple in the sea. They are either a tidal wave or the eerily calm silence before disaster strikes. I have known him to be kind, and I have known him to be cruel. But it’s apparent I am not the only recipient of his mercurial mood swings.
He is self-destructive in his own right. For someone constantly surrounded by people, his relationships are shallow and meaningless. He seems to have sabotaged the only ones that stand a chance at a deeper connection. I have an intense desire to understand what caused the rift between these two brothers, and more importantly, why their shared DNA needs to be kept a secret.
While I’m attempting to sort through these thoughts, Alexei’s attention drifts back to me, much to Nikolai’s vexation. It’s deliberate at this point. Alexei wants to provoke his brother, and it might be amusing if I wasn’t the one who will bear the brunt of it.
“Enough.” Nikolai moves in front of me, obscuring Alexei’s view. “I thought we could be civilized, but it’s obvious that you can’t let go of the past.”
“Perhaps when I am dead,” Alexei answers. “I will let go of it then.”
Nikolai curses his disp
leasure in Russian. “You never listen. You would not listen when I told you she was a whore. You would not listen when I told you she was servicing your Vory brothers. You needed to see it for yourself.”
“And you needed to take what was mine,” Alexei sneers. “Because you couldn’t allow me to have anything. You are just like Sergei.”
Before I can comprehend what’s happening, the two men are grappling with each other on the floor. Rage-soaked insults are hurled between punches as I watch on in horror. Drink glasses shatter, and the coffee table splinters across the room as I take shelter behind the sofa. I am not immune to violence, but this is pitiful.
“Stop it!” I scream.
Nikolai is the one to turn and look at me. His eyes lance right through me, piercing me with blame.
“Come.” Nonna tugs on my arm, and I’m not even sure when she entered the room. “Leave the men to their business.”
14
TANAKA
ANY HOPE that a hot shower would dissolve some of the tension in my body is lost when I climb beneath the sheets. My muscles are fatigued, my eyes are heavy, and soreness has taken a stronghold over me.
The house is quiet now, and I’m left to wonder how the evening ended. It should make little difference to me, but I’m curious how Nikolai fared in the gladiator sports downstairs. Reason dictates I care only because he’s my captor and he’s in charge of my fate. But if I’m honest with myself, I know it’s more complicated than that.
I’m not left to wonder for long. When I’m on the verge of sleep, the bedroom door thunders open, and Nikolai emerges from the shadows. The light from the hallway creates a halo of orange around him, illuminating a swollen jaw and blackened eye. But it isn’t his face I’m worried about.
When I meet his gaze, an edgy, twitchy feeling crawls over me. I need to get away. Far, far away.
He stalks toward the bed, and I scramble to the other side. I’ve got one foot on the floor when his arm comes around my waist and captures me from behind. His lips ghost over my ear, breathing fire into my skin.
“Where are you going, little doll?”
I squeeze my eyes shut, desperately seeking shelter from the storm in his. The strength I need to endure has abandoned me, and I won’t survive him this time. He’s going to wreck me.
He drags me back to the middle of the bed, immobilizing me with the weight of his body. His skin is feverish, and his breath is laced with whiskey. But it’s the tension rippling through his muscles that scares me the most.
“Perhaps you would rather go home with my brother. Is that it, pet?”
“No,” I whisper.
“You spent the evening flirting with him.” His booming voice vibrates against my chest. “So why shouldn’t I send you home with him?”
“Please.” I cling to his arms. “That isn’t what I want.”
“Guess what, kitten?” His words blow over my throat. “I don’t care what you want.”
A tear falls down my cheek, and Nikolai collects it with his tongue. His fingers take ownership of my face, and he forces intimacy by staring into my eyes.
“Tell me that you want me.”
“No.” It’s a faint protest, drowned out by his mouth crashing into mine. The first thing I taste is his blood, and the second is his whiskey.
My first kiss. He’s taken my first kiss. The shock anchors me to the bed, rendering me a prisoner to his lips. Swollen and rough, fiery and insatiable. He has the will of a fighter and the artistry of a lover. Right now, he’s both. And I’m a slave to my weakness. A slave to him. He squeezes my jaw open, and his tongue clashes with mine. It’s intimate. It’s a violation. Yet I thirst for it.
“You are my angel,” he murmurs. “And if I want, my whore too.”
My body arches against him, and my fingers tangle in his hair, wishing for the strength I don’t possess. “I hate you.”
“I think you wish that you did.” He forces his leg between my thighs.
I’m not wearing any panties, and my nightdress has migrated up over my hips during the struggle. A flush sweeps up the back of my neck and over my face as I endeavor to put myself back together again. The thought of him seeing me spread open is terrifying. Humiliating. But Nikolai doesn’t care about my modesty.
His lips are lazing over my throat now, his angry cock straining against his trousers. I’m supposed to remain pure. There was a reason, I’m certain, but I can’t think of it now. Not when he’s pawing at me, licking and biting and kissing my flesh. My nails sink into the rigid angles of his back, searching for my sanity. My breath comes in waves as I wonder if this is it. If this will be my damnation. His mouth reaches the swells of my breasts, and I stop breathing altogether.
“Fuck these tits,” he grunts as he squeezes them together between his fleshy palms. “Fuck you and your pretty little tits.”
The lashing of his tongue softens the harshness of his words when he lowers his head to suck my nipples through the silky fabric. A thousand jolts of lightning arc through me. I don’t want to want him, but he is manipulating me with his touch, his sounds, and the drugging scent of his body.
The same way he manipulated all the other women before me.
“Nikolai.” I shove him. “We can’t. I can’t. You were with her. You chose her.”
My protests stall when his fingers move between my legs and drag against my bare sex. The place no man has ever touched before. The place only my husband is supposed to touch. Logically, I know this, but I’m so wet for him that it doesn’t matter what my mind knows is best for me. My body doesn’t want what’s best for me. My body wants to lay down and sacrifice for him.
“You are mine to play with.” He pulls down the nightdress and kisses each of my breasts. “Mine to toy with. And fuck. And use. And degrade. You belong to me now, zvezda, and I’m going to let you know it.”
My head rattles against the pillow, but my protests have dried up. He’s right, and I know he’s right. He can do anything he wants to me.
To further prove his point, his hands grip the back of my thighs, pushing them up until my knees kiss my chest. Cool air passes over the most intimate part of me, and embarrassment colors my cheeks as his eyes drink me in like this. I’m on display, just like the doll he says I am. It’s lewd, and it’s dirty, and I try to squeeze my thighs back together, but they don’t budge.
“Nikolai.”
“You can call me Nikolasha,” he tells me. “Whenever I eat your pussy.”
His mouth comes down on me, and I yelp. But when I feel him bury his tongue inside me, spasms rock my body. I squirm against him, fighting for each ragged breath as he laps at me without restraint. My knees buckle, and I feel like I’m falling. I’m out of control, and I’m falling, and there’s nothing to save me.
My fingers coil in his hair, twisting with the intent of pushing him away, but instead, I pull him closer like a deviant. He kneads the flesh of my ass cheeks in his hands and drinks from my body like I’m the sweetest nectar he’s ever tasted. I’m hypnotized. Strung out. Drunk on a pleasure I never realized existed. But I know it’s a lie. I’m not the sweetest nectar he’s ever tasted. Every time my eyes fall shut, I see him with her. I see him with all the others who came before me. And I hate it. I hate him.
I tell him so.
He grunts. “You won’t hate me when your pussy is raw from my lips.”
Sharp teeth pinch the most sensitive part of my flesh, and I reflexively yank on his hair. His grip dominates me, and I am left to thrash against him as he schools me in the art of control. I claw at his arms. His shoulders. Even the back of his neck. I tell him in one breath that I hate him and beg him not to stop in the next.
None of it matters. Nikolai has his own agenda.
“You are going to come on my face,” he murmurs. “And you’ll be filthy just like me.”
I don’t want it to be true. But it is. The onslaught is sudden and explosive. With the tug of his puppet strings, the master fractures the good girl inside
me. All that’s left in the wake of his devastation is a broken doll who wrings out every ounce of pleasure from his mouth before she deflates.
I’m bankrupt. Devoid of contrition as he kisses my thigh and smears the arousal from his face into my skin. Tomorrow I’ll repent, but for now, the devil’s got his grasp on me.
Nikolai unzips his pants, and my tongue darts out to wet my lips as his cock springs free. It’s a violent pulsing monstrosity. I watch his face as he strokes it in his fist. Eyes half-drunk, he soaks in the sight before him. I’m still spread wide, my sex wet and swollen and tender from him.
He edges his body between my parted thighs, and I try to squeeze them shut, but he just pries them back open. I think this is it. This is where he will ruin me. This is the moment that my life will be over.
He drags my body closer to the giant throbbing dick, and I shiver. It’s going to hurt. I might cry. I don’t know how my body will ever accommodate him. The piercing heat thrusts against my sensitive flesh, dousing his cock with my arousal. I take a breath, and the world doesn’t end.
He doesn’t violate the sacred barrier, even if I secretly wish he would. Instead, he reaches for my hand and guides it down between my legs, wrapping it around his heavy flesh. He shows me the way, teaching me how to touch him. How to grip him. How to force the sounds of agony that rip from his throat. Lusting for that power, the student quickly surpasses the teacher. The tides have changed, and now it is this savage of a man who is a slave to me.
He collapses forward, his palms coming to rest on my knees as his head falls back in a drugged daze. His hips move disjointedly, jarring his cock into the tiny opening of my fingers. He’s fucking my hand, and not my body. But it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter because I’m in control, and he can’t stop himself.
I watch his face, cataloging every detail. The tension pulling at his drooping eyes. The five-o clock shadow feathering over his sharp cheekbones. The tousled hair that I attacked. He didn’t look this way with her. He didn’t look this way with anyone.
