Chapter Five

 

A lance of anguish stabs me right through the heart.

I knew that her sister had been taken. I didn’t know that my father was the one who took her. The misery spread by my family is never-ending. How many lives have the Toporovs ruined?

Her hand shoots out, and she slaps me across the face so hard my ears ring. I stagger back, clutching at my stinging cheek. “You lying bitch!” she screams.

The room explodes in motion.

Darya goes flying at her and hauls her off before she can punch me. Sergei lets out a guttural roar of fury and grabs Ludmilla by the throat.

I jump on him and claw at his hands. “Let go of her! Let go!” I scream. He squeezes until her face turns purple, then releases his grip.

Her mouth is opening and closing like a flopping fish’s on a deck, her eyes bloodshot and bulging. She makes wheezing sounds, struggling for words. She backs away from him, stumbles, and catches herself.

“Get out before I kill you!” he shouts.

It’s insane. I am falling right back into the Alice in Wonderland rabbit hole that is my life when I’m with Sergei. Does he want to destroy me or save me? He just acted as if he’d literally kill for me – after having me and my friends kidnapped and terrorized for hours.

Ludmilla runs out of the room, tears leaking from her pale blue eyes, still gasping and wheezing for air. The butler just stands there as she stumbles past him, as if this kind of thing happens every day.

“What the hell was that?” I demand furiously of Sergei.

“That bitch laid her hands on you, and she’s lucky she’s still breathing, that’s what it was. We need to talk.” He glances at Darya. “You need to leave. My men will drop you off.”

“Where, exactly, should I go?” she cries out, throwing her hands up in despair. “I have no money, I have no job. I was sleeping in the living room of a flat five blocks away from Club Hollywood. You think I’m safe going back there?””

Then she looks at me, her blue eyes intense. “You’re fighting traffickers? I want in.”

“She’s not fighting traffickers anymore,” Sergei snaps. “She just retired.”

I sigh. I haven’t retired, but I’m going to have to figure out a new approach, and after what happened last night, I don’t feel right dragging anyone else into this mess.

“Darya, Sergei may be an asshole, a liar, a manipulative bastard, and a psychopath…” I glare at him. He nods in agreement. “But he is right about how dangerous it is. You saw that video. That picture. They’ll kill you.”

“Don’t you get it? They’ll kill me anyway!” she cries out, her eyes full of tears. “This is the second time I’ve almost been kidnapped by Cataha, and the last time, he shot me! How long do you think it will be until the third time?”

She yanks up her T-shirt, and I see two round, puckered white scars on her perfect, flat abdomen.

“Oh God,” I say, staring at them. “I’m sorry.”

She drops her shirt, and her shoulders sag.

“Last summer, before he started wearing a mask, Cataha kidnapped me and a bunch of other girls, and I openly defied him in front of them. He was so angry at me that he shot me in the stomach. Then the police raided him, and it’s the only reason I didn’t die. I was in the hospital for weeks. I got some money from an organization that works with victims of trafficking, but the money ran out. I couldn’t work; I have anxiety attacks all the time. Medication helped a little, but then I couldn’t afford to pay for it.”

She’s staring off into space now, talking more to herself than to us. I don’t interrupt. She needs to get this out. She deserves to be heard.

“I ended up sleeping on my friend’s couch, and I met this guy who works at a garage down the street, and he was so nice to me. He never pushed me for anything. Grigor. We would just meet up for coffee and sit there and talk. I started feeling better about myself. When I went to Club Hollywood, I even told the bouncer about him, and he said he would buy me a drink to toast my luck, meeting such a nice guy.” She laughs bitterly. “Well, forget that. Forget love, forget living my life. I can never feel safe as long as Cataha is alive.”

“I could give you money to move to Moscow,” I suggest. Moscow is almost a twelve-hour drive from where we are. Crime bosses tend to stick to one territory. I don’t think she’ll be in danger from Cataha there.

She shakes her head vigorously, slapping her hands on her knees in frustration. “No, damn it! What about all the other girls like me?”

She’s right. I can’t argue with that.

Sergei lets out a growl of impatience. “I’m done arguing. Darya, I will make you a deal. I will ask Ludmilla if you can work with her at Reforma, interviewing trafficking victims. I will set you up in an apartment in St. Petersburg, so you can get out of this district and far away from Cataha and his men. You’ll be in a building in a good neighborhood, with good security. Take the offer, or I’ll throw your ass out on the street.”

That’s Sergei. Mr. Charm.

“You think Ludmilla will work with you ever again after what you just did to her?” Darya asks in disbelief.

Sergei flashes her a grim smile. “I can be extremely persuasive, I assure you. In the meantime, I am going to have you shown to a guest room, because Natasha and I need to talk.”

The butler leads her away.

I wait until she’s gone, then I grab the vodka bottle from the fancy coffee table and hurl it at Sergei. He slaps it aside and it bounces on the rug.

“Hello, Willow. I’ve missed you.” He flashes me that infuriating smile of his. Like all the pain and misery and humiliation he’s put me through are a big joke to him.

A red tidal wave of rage floods through me, and I grab a fork from the table and lunge at him, screaming without words.

He catches my wrists and holds them.

“Liar! Pimp! Bastard!” I shriek. Tears run down my cheeks.

He moves and effortlessly pins me down on the couch. “I am only two of those,” he says. He straddles me, pinning my hands over my head, and he’s as hard as a rock.

“You told me you were a trafficker!”

“Yes. And I lied, because I did not want you to follow me here. I was trying to save you from your own stubborn, stupid, misguided self.”

I writhe madly underneath him, and I’m horrified to realize that I’m panting not just with effort, but with desire. The familiar pulse of yearning throbs between my legs. “Let me the fuck up!”

“Giving orders? To me? That’s not how this works between us, Willow.”

“There is no us!” I scream so loudly my voice is hoarse.

He brushes my hair from my face with his free hand. “Then why did you come after me? I know you’ve been looking for me ever since you got here!”

His rock-hard cock presses into my stomach. I ram my knees against his back. “Because you lied to me and broke my heart and made me doubt my own sanity! And I needed to know just how incredibly stupid I was for trusting you. I deserve to know the fucking truth!”

“I lied to protect you. Being here, being with me, paints a target on your back.”

I try to arch my hips to force him off me, but somehow I just end up moving my crotch right up against his. Mistake. I feel his cock jerk in response. My whole body is humming with desire now.

“Stop fighting me,” he says calmly.

I go rigid. “Yeah, you like that too much, don’t you? I just won’t move at all, then. Until you get bored and let me the hell go.”

He slides his other hand under my waistband.

“I’ll make you a deal. If you really don’t want me, if you’re not wet, I’ll let you go right now. I’ll give you a ride anywhere you want.”

“Bastard!” I scream as his hand dips lower and he slides his fingers between my pussy lips.

I’m drenched, and I cannot stop my treacherous body from reacting. I suck in a gasp of pleasure as he moves his fingers back and forth.

“What was that?” he taunts me, and moves down to nip my neck. “I didn’t quite hear you.”

“I said…let me…” the word I need is “go”, but I cannot make myself say it. He’s pushing my pants off even as I writhe and fight.

He begins kissing his way down my neck, then bites my nipple through my shirt.

“Oh,” I moan, helpless with desire.

“I’ve thought about you every minute of every day since I left you,” he tells me. He pulls up my shirt and kisses my stomach. “I haven’t been with another woman. And you haven’t been with another man. If you had, I’d have killed him.”

“Let me…go…” I force the words out, choking on them.

“Really?” He releases my hands, stands up, stripping his shirt off. My eyes are drawn to his broad torso, scarred with bullet wounds and knife slashes. His flat belly, the perfectly carved square of his six pack. The dark line of hair leading downward from his navel.

“You sure about that?” He drops his pants and underwear in one smooth motion, and his enormous cock is jutting straight up at the ceiling, with a gleaming pearl of pre-cum on the tip.

I can’t answer. I struggle to drag the words up from somewhere, but all I can do is stare at him as he slides my pants off.

He bends down and kisses my stomach, then runs his tongue along the outer seam of my pussy.

“Tell me to stop, and I will.” He engulfs my clit in his mouth, and I let out a strangled scream. If he stopped right now, I’d murder him.

I don’t forgive him, I hate him, I’m furious with him, but right now I’m limp and helpless beneath his tormenting mouth.

Heat pools inside my lower belly, and I part my thighs for him. His hot, hungry mouth closes over my clit and he sucks as if it’s sweet candy. He varies the pressure, sending thrill after thrill of pleasure up through my body.

Then he stops. “Tell me you missed this,” he commands me, and his hot breath fans my bare, shaved sex.

“I missed this,” I moan, tears of humiliation leaking onto my cheeks.

“I missed it too. Yours is the only face I see when I jerk off.” I hear the crinkle of a condom wrapper.

He moves up higher until he’s on top of me, the head of his cock nudging my entrance.

“Look at me. Look me in the eye.” He’s never had me look at him during sex before.

I’m helpless. I stare up at him, panting with lust, as he forces himself partway in to me.

The look in his eyes is infinitely tender and loving, and I can’t stop crying. My body is shaking with sobs, but I’m still burning up from the inside out with my need for release. I grab his hips, the first time I’ve ever done that, and pull him into me. He lets out a sigh of pleasure. He’s in all the way. I sob as he moves his hips, thrusting in and out, and I keep crying as the pleasure inside me builds and builds until I crash over the edge. I cry as he’s coming, groaning, still looking at me as if he really loves me, as if he didn’t casually destroy my life last year.

He’s still inside me as he lies down next to me and pulls me up against him, and I sob into his shoulder, hating him and loving him so much that I want to die there in his arms.