Chapter Seventeen

 

Ivan felt like he’d been hit by a train. Repeatedly.

For a minute or two he and Kelly just held one another, her still in his lap, his softening cock still inside of her. It was… oddly, it felt like the most intimate thing the two of them had done. They weren’t sniping at each other. They weren’t trying to drive the other one crazy with sex. They were just existing, peacefully, holding one another.

It actually felt more… nice than he had expected. She felt well inside of his arms, and he could easily see himself picking her up like this and carrying her, perhaps to a warm bed or the giant porcelain tub in his bathroom—the bathroom in his actual apartment, not his now all but abandoned sex apartment.

He detangled his hand from her thick hair and started stroking it, helping her to come down from her high. She was still shaking in his arms, hit with what he’d always called ‘aftershocks’, the little tremors of pleasure that could come after the main wave of a good orgasm had faded.

Kelly made a tiny noise of satisfaction as he stroked her hair. She brushed her noise against his—not quite kissing, just sharing one another’s space, breathing into one another.

Ivan could smell the sweat and the stench of sex on Kelly and on himself, in the air around them both. Normally, this was the part where he’d get a warm washcloth, clean them up, and then collapse into bed for a while.

They didn’t really have the luxury of that right now, but he did eventually rock back, falling carefully onto the pile of clothes. Kelly propped herself up so that she could settle herself better, tucking her face into the crook of his neck and then sighing, relaxing into him. She wasn’t a small girl by any means, but she was still shorter than he was by a good few inches and she didn’t weigh enough for him to need to push her off right away. He liked her weight on him, liked that feeling of being grounded, solid.

Neither of them said anything. It didn’t, oddly enough, feel uncomfortable. He expected it to be. They weren’t really all that good at being in the same space together and not going at each other’s throats. Maybe it was just that Kelly was exhausted.

But it wasn’t just that for him, although he was plenty tired now. He liked having her in his arms, and when they’d been having sex… it was like all of the barbs they traded and all of the energy they spent snarking at one another was now being diverted into something that had them working together, building one another up instead of tearing each other down.

He ran his fingers soothingly up and down Kelly’s back. She made a noise of contentment. She was wonderfully vocal, had been doing the sex as well, begging and telling him exactly what she wanted. He’d loved it, had let the words fill his head and make him feel drunk.

And then when she’d started telling him to fuck her like he meant it, to knock her up…

He wasn’t ready to be a father yet, although he did know that he needed an heir and he did want one. He wanted a few kids, actually, if possible. Just not right now while everything was insane in the transition period. But the idea of marking Kelly in that way, of claiming so indisputably who she belonged to and who she’d chosen to be with—because there was no doubt that claiming Kelly meant being claimed by her in return—it had made him nearly blow his load right that second.

If he were a younger man, still a teenager, he’d be ready to go all over again just at the memory of it. His dick was sure putting up a valiant effort, twitching, reminding him of how good it had felt to be fucking up into her. But they had to get out of there and get to safety, and anyway, he wouldn’t be able to give anything more than a half-hearted sloppy fuck at this point.

Just a few more minutes, and they’d go, he promised himself. After all, getting discovered on top of a pile of contraband knockoffs from China while spooning naked with the daughter of another mob boss was not exactly the way that Ivan wanted to be found by the Murphys in the morning, thanks. Or by the port authorities.

But hey, they’d had sex. Amazing sex. Mind-blowing sex, he’d dare say. He hadn’t had that much fun with a girl or been that satisfied by sex in ages. They might still snipe at one another, but he and Kelly were sexually compatible. If they did marry and created a union, then at least they wouldn’t be straying to other people sexually. They might be able to build something off of this attraction, change it into something else, something more.

But that could just be ridiculous optimism. He might be completely mistaken.

Kelly curled into him, breathing quietly, heavily, comfortably. She didn’t seem to be in any hurry to speak—but then neither was Ivan. If he spoke, it might shatter the fragile peace they’d created for themselves.

Eventually, however, they did have to move. Ivan slowly started to sit up and Kelly moved off of him, grabbing the flashlight off the container and shining it around so that they could wipe themselves off with the pile of clothes and then get their own clothes back on.

They moved in silence. Ivan didn’t know what to say that wouldn’t ruin the mood and have Kelly at his throat again in a bad way, and he sensed that Kelly was just as tentative. It was odd. Normally he had no qualms about talking and he certainly never wondered or worried about what he was going to say to a girl. He was confident, in his element.

But with Kelly… it was an entirely different ballgame.

He didn’t know what she was thinking. Normally he could tell what the woman he was with was thinking, but with Kelly… he hadn’t been able to tell what she was thinking from the start. He’d though she might have been the murderer, for crying out loud. He clearly didn’t know her all that well.

So he just kept silent, for fear of ruining everything.

Once they were dressed, they put the clothes and everything back into the crates and containers as best they could. It wasn’t pretty but hopefully it would keep people from immediately realizing exactly what had gone on in this shipping crate.

Ivan couldn’t help himself—he started laughing.

“What?” Kelly asked, but she sounded curious rather than irritated.

Ivan shook his head. “When they find this,” he whispered, “they’re going to think that it was one of their men creeping around with a girlfriend while he was supposed to be on watch or something.”

Kelly laughed, smothering the noise with a hand to her mouth. “That’ll make things awkward around here.”

They didn’t speak again until they were safely back on the O’Gill side of the docks. They crept quietly through the corridors made by the crates, keeping a lookout for any Murphy watch, especially a larger group like before. But if the docks had been pretty dead when they’d first crept around, they were definitely deserted at this time of night. Not even mobsters wanted to deal with bringing in shipping crates at three in the morning if they could help it.

When they got back to the O’Gill controlled docks they relaxed, walking normally.

Ivan knew he couldn’t put off the question forever. He needed an answer about the union idea.

It was a smart move, politically, she had to see that. Neither family was larger than the other, so there wouldn’t be a power imbalance. He’d seen that a lot when there were mob marriages. The more powerful family would look down on the spouse from the less powerful family and treat them as less-than, or even expect the spouse to renounce their former family ties. That was, of course, if the bigger family didn’t just try to take over the smaller family completely.

The interests and business approaches of the O’Gills and his own family were different enough that they wouldn’t be stepping on each other’s toes but they would overlap nicely in terms of interest. They’d cover more bases. It was a neat solution to a problem—a problem that would only get bigger when the Murphys launched a full-scale attack.

Ivan could lend his support to the O’Gills. He had some contacts in Moscow that he could go over and talk to, get them backing him, and his men were well trained. The O’Gills couldn’t survive alone but with Sokolov help, they’d stand a damn good chance. And Ivan wasn’t all too keen on the idea of just the Murphys having a monopoly of the docks and squeezing extra money out of everyone.

But he couldn’t lend support to the O’Gills in an all-out war with the Murphys, not unless he was married to Kelly. Simply saying that Sean had agreed to mentor him wasn’t enough. He had to have a solid reason for backing the O’Gills.

They needed one another, plain and simple, but at the moment the O’Gills needed him just a bit more than he needed them. He had figured out who was behind the attack and that meant he had held up his side of the bargain with Sean. He could just cut his losses now and find another person to mentor him, someone who wasn’t apparently on the brink of a war with another family.

But he liked Sean, and it would be unfair to all the families who needed the docks if the Murphys got a monopoly on it.

It was all up to Kelly.

She seemed to know it, too, lost in thought as they walked quietly towards the exit to the docks. When they were almost there and Ivan was about to despair and just fucking ask her, she spoke.

“Were you serious, about your offer?”

He frowned. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

Kelly snorted. “Oh come on, Ivan, I know your reputation. You wouldn’t be the first man to lie to a girl to get her in bed.”

“Maybe not, but I’m not going to lie about something like this. Not about family matters.” That was far too important.

Kelly grew silent again for a moment. When she spoke, her voice was carefully neutral. “Then if you were serious, I agree to it.”

Ivan stopped walking. He honestly had been expecting her to say no, despite that mind-blowing sex they’d just had. “You’re—you’re agreeing?”

Kelly nodded, putting her hands on her hips. “You’re right. This is a good deal for both of us. There’s no way that we can stand against the Murphys alone, not as we are, and you get better deals on the docks and exclusive mentorship from my father without having to do any other favors for him. You have a guaranteed family at your back if you need, and vice versa for us. It’s logical.”

“You could stand to be a little happier about it.”

“You could have found a more romantic way to propose marriage, but then, we don’t always get what we want now do we?” Kelly replied.

Point taken.

“I have to go to Moscow to alert some contacts,” he told her. He’d been needing to do it anyway, what with taking over the family and all, but now with the Murphy thing coming to a head he needed to up his trip. “I can get some allies there, if they send word to some of the other families, they’ll listen. Moscow still carries a lot of influence over the families here. And they won’t send anything to the Murphys either in the meantime, they won’t want a monopoly raising prices on their shipments either. They’ll support us.”

Kelly nodded. “I’ll need to prepare everyone for war. If my father will listen.” She snorted at that, as if laughing at herself. “I doubt it.”

“I think you underestimate yourself.”

Kelly shook her head, tucking some of her now-loose hair behind her ear. “It’s nice of you to say so, but if my father truly thought that I was valuable he would give me an official position instead of just letting me a catch-all so nothing falls through the cracks.”

Ivan thought about that. Perhaps… perhaps Kelly’s aggression towards him hadn’t been actually at him, but rather at once again another person being given her father’s trust and authority rather than her.

“My father…” Ivan sighed. “I don’t have to tell you that he was an asshole. Everyone knew it. And—you know how it is, you can be an asshole but you can’t be a stupid asshole and he was that. He squeezed people to death over small debts, he scared people to the point where they didn’t want to work with him, he overextended himself.

“And I let him get away with all of it. I never said anything. I just partied and did what I was told. I was the heir and I let him get away with not teaching me a damn thing. I just enjoyed my wealth and my freedom.

“What my brother did—I still don’t know. If I agree with it. A part of me is still furious with him. But if anything, he freed all of us. We were on a drowning ship and none of us wanted to see it.

“I’m a fuck up.” Ivan took a deep breath. It was kind of freeing to say it all out loud, here in the darkness, with only one person to hear him—someone who already didn’t care all that much about him and didn’t have a high opinion of him anyway. It wasn’t like he could say anything to make Kelly like him less.

“I never acted the way an heir should. Our family was going down and we’re still going down and I’m just trying to keep it afloat as best I can. So listen—your father’s not perfect. He’s your father, but he’s not perfect, and he’s going to have blind spots and fuck up like we all do. And maybe you’re right and he’ll never give you an official position but that’s not from any fault on your end.

“You’re way ahead of where I was when I was in your position. I was in a better position than you were, arguably, and I did nothing about it. Your time is going to come and you’ll find yourself the head of a family or something, just wait and you’ll see.”

Kelly rolled her eyes. “Fat chance of that when I’m going to be married to you, unless you feel like sharing power.”

Ivan wasn’t sure what to say to that. “We could get a divorce a few years down the line if we really hate each other that much,” he joked, falling back onto humor for lack of anything better to say.

Kelly cracked a small smile at that. “Look, it’s not your business whatever my—my personal family issues, they’re mine. This isn’t family business, this is family business. If that makes sense.”

“Yeah, no, I get it.” That was the problem with their world—your sibling issues, your parental issues—they had a bearing on the business end of things as well. The line between ‘family’ issues and family issues was so blurred that sometimes it was nonexistent.

They walked in silence for a little longer, and then Kelly said, “You’ll contact us when you get back from Moscow?”

Ivan nodded. “It should only be a few days, that’ll give you time to prepare to go on the offense.”

Kelly grinned, looking relieved. “I’m just glad we finally have a plan. But—Bates.”

“Yeah?”

Kelly’s grin morphed into something sharper, more dangerous. Grim. “Nobody else touches him. You leave him to me.”

Ivan knew how she felt. When he’d learned that his father had been murdered, he’d wanted to stop at nothing to kill the person who had done it. When he’d learned that person was his own brother… he hadn’t known what to do. He didn’t regret letting Viktor go—most of the time—but he knew what it was like to want revenge on someone for hurting your family.

Kelly, at least, would get that revenge in a way that Ivan never would.

He nodded. “Bates is all yours.”

The look on Kelly’s face, oddly enough, was the one that he remembered when he fell asleep that night: the way her blue eyes glittered in the night, the sharpness of that grin.

An Irish mob girl, through and through.

She’d make a goddamn queen, he realized.

And didn’t that do odd things to his chest.