It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen: the human body as a moving work of art. The music swelled and ebbed as the ballerinas jumped and floated, weightless as ghosts.
And I couldn’t concentrate on any of it because of what Luka was doing under my skirt.
“Someone will see!” I told him in a harsh whisper.
He smirked, as if that amused him. His fingers pressed a little more insistently and I groaned under my breath. And parted my thighs.
We were in a private box. A box the Malakov family actually owned, that sat empty between performances no matter how full the theater was. Apparently, Luka’s dad, Vasiliy, used to take his mother here when she was alive. Now, it was used by Luka and his current girlfriend.
And now that was me. Not another willowy Russian model with laser-straight blonde hair, but a pale, awkward girl with hair you might charitably call chestnut and a body that was too heavy on the hips to be slender, but not curvy enough to catch a man’s eye.
Not most men’s, at least. Luka, for some reason, had claimed me for his own. And he was currently demonstrating his ownership by means of his hand between my thighs. The tips of his fingers were strumming up and down along the opening of my lips. I could feel myself moistening beneath my panties.
We’d been back in Moscow just one day. I was a gangster’s girlfriend. A moll. If it was even appropriate to call Luka a gangster. Kingpin suited him better, given that he was about to take control of most of the gun trade into the US.
I knew I needed to contact Adam—urgently. But when we landed in Moscow, we’d gone straight back to his penthouse apartment for more sex and then fallen asleep, tangled in the sheets. Today, we’d lounged around the place, never apart for more than a few minutes. I didn’t dare try to call Adam from the bathroom. If Luka overheard….
Then, this evening, he’d told me to dress up for the ballet. I was in one of the dresses I’d been given at the boutique, a long black number with a loose skirt and tiny beads of jet glistening blackly across the bodice. It was sexy but sophisticated and Luka had made approving noises when he saw it, and when he’d slid his hand into the high slit that run up one side of the skirt. But then he’d shaken his head. “It needs something else,” he told me.
And then he gave me the necklace.
It was made up of hundreds of squares of shining silver, joined at the edges to make a shimmering snakeskin pattern that flowed like liquid as it followed the shape of my neck. It was just a few squares wide at the sides and back, but flared out to eight wide at the front. He fastened the chain around my neck and I gazed at it in the mirror. It was starkly beautiful and clearly expensive without being showy. Miles away from the bling people associated with new-found Russian wealth. But then Luka and his dad had had more time to get used to it than a lot of people.
As I’d run my fingers over it, unease had coiled and twisted in my stomach. First clothes, now jewelry. I was being seduced by him. After the violence of the gun deal and the savage beating he’d given Ralavich’s son, now he was showing me the other side of his life. The one spent cruising in cars with tinted windows and in private jets. The one where we partied at the finest clubs in Moscow, or went to the ballet or the opera. The one where everyone feared us.
I’d felt it when we’d walked into the theater. People turned and looked and then pretended to be looking at someone else. Others scurried ahead of us to open doors or quickly stepped aside to clear a path. It felt like being a princess. An evil princess. One who could order you killed with a tilt of her head. I knew Luka would do it for me in a heartbeat—he had both the physical strength and the hardness in his soul. He had killed, plenty of times, and he’d do it again.
Unless I could stop him.
It was crazy. I’d been sent to Moscow to take down a monster and, instead, I was trying to tame him. As if that was even possible. As if I could give him back his soul—and, even if I could, as if that would make a difference to Adam. He was still going to demand that the Russians put Luka in jail for the rest of his life. Luka thought I was his salvation, but I was going to be his downfall.
And he was going to be mine. I could feel myself being drawn into a world I barely understood, one where my own lust ran out of control. Women are meant to be scared of men like Luka. I was still scared of him, on some level. And yet, at the same time, I wanted him to—
Pin me.
Tear my clothes.
Hold me down as he—
I dug my fingernails into my palms to bring myself back. I’d never felt anything like it, before, this need to let him...take me. Whenever I thought about it, I flushed red and squirmed inside, ashamed of myself. And yet whenever he touched me, whenever he even looked at me in that way, I just went weak inside.
It was getting to be about more than sex, between us. I could feel the feelings deepening and branching, spreading out to every part of me and digging in deep. I knew he trusted me now, more than he ever had his previous girlfriends. He really liked me...maybe more than liked. And that was even more dangerous than the physical side of it. I already felt as if I was being torn in two. What would happen when the time came to leave, to run out on him leaving some fake note apologizing for running away? What about when the police vans came for him a few hours or a few days later and he guessed it was me? It wasn’t the retribution I was worried about—I’d be safely back in Virginia, by then. It was the knowledge that he’d hate me for the rest of his life.
If I was smart, I’d distance myself as much as I possibly could. I’d keep the sex vanilla and try to remain passive, staring up at the ceiling and faking my orgasms. I’d remind myself of what he was and act, instead of going with my true feelings.
But I couldn’t do that. Being with Luka had woken things inside me, things that hadn’t functioned since the day of the crash. Things I thought were broken forever. I felt as if I was a statue made of ice, and he was made of flame. The closer I got, the more my frozen heart melted. But if I got too close, if I stayed too long, I’d melt completely and be lost forever.
Luka’s fingers began to move faster, stroking me through my panties. He’d used the slit at the side of my dress to gain access to me, pushing it up until the top of my stocking was showing and then sliding his arm over my thigh and between my legs. I could feel his dinner jacket and the cold silver of his cufflink against my inner thigh. As he stroked faster, I began to writhe on the padded seat, my ass tensing. “Stop!” I whispered. “Someone will see!”
I glanced around. The audience below us couldn’t see us, but there were other boxes to our left and right. My lower body was hidden by the wall that ran around the edge of the box, but I was exposed from the waist up. Every expression, every soft sigh was public.
Luka glanced at me with a look that I was getting to know well. A challenging look, one that meant say ‘stop’ again if you really mean it....but you don’t, do you? And I did the same thing I always did, faced with that look. I turned to warm taffy and then liquid inside and dropped my eyes.
He gave me one of his smirks and began to rub faster. I could feel my panties growing sticky and then wet. I couldn’t help myself. I began to circle my hips, grinding my pelvis to meet him. I bit my lower lip and tried to focus on the ballet, determined to maintain control. I couldn’t...not here!
His fingers slid around the edge of my panties and touched naked, slippery flesh and I knew I was lost. I tried to sit bolt upright, eyes glued to the dancers. Watching as their partners lifted them high in the air and then dropped them down—
Deep—
I gripped the arms of my seat and stared as the dancers pranced and spun across the stage—
Back and forth—
Mouth firmly closed, I panted through my nose as they—
Circled. Pirouetting around and around. Faster and faster and—
I felt my eyes widen as the orgasm thundered through me. My ass lifted off the seat and then pressed back into it, hard. My legs trembled, my heels hammering on the floor. In the box next to me, a man turned and frowned at me.
...and I went still.
“Almost silent,” Luka whispered in my ear. “I’ll have to try harder, next time.”
***
On the way back to the apartment, I sat nestled against Luka’s side, my head on his shoulder. Being in a car, especially with the freezing weather outside, still unnerved me. But it no longer triggered me as it had done before I’d come to Moscow. There were no flashbacks. Maybe I’m cured.
I dared to hope.
We were most of the way home when Luka’s cell phone rang. He looked at the screen and then turned from me slightly, maybe unconsciously, and spoke in a low voice I could only just hear. He didn’t know that I could understand Russian, so why was he going to such lengths?
Then I heard my name. He was talking about me...and I had a pretty good idea who with.
He ended the call. “My father,” he said apologetically. “I said I was with you...now he wants us to come over.”
“Now?” I asked. It was already late.
“Now.”
***
Vasiliy’s house had once been the home of some duke, a residence well outside from the city before Moscow had expanded and almost swallowed it up. It stood alone on a hilltop, old and grand and subtly distant from everything around it.
At the bottom of the hill there was a guard house where, even though Luka was family, the underside of our car had to be checked for bombs. The road itself snaked around the hill, its hairpin bends making it impossible to go faster than ten miles an hour. That gave Vasiliy’s guards plenty of time to get ready if someone sped past the guard house.
The first floor of the house itself had no windows, just solid slabs of heavy stone. Good in the olden days for keeping peasants with pitchforks at bay and now equally useful against rival crime gangs. No one would be allowed to hurt Luka’s dad.
“He barely leaves,” muttered Luka to me as we approached the house. “Except for really big deals.” He shook his head. “It’s sad. He’s almost a prisoner here.”
When we got inside, even Luka got a pat-down. “In case someone strapped a bomb to me, and blackmailed me into walking into the house,” he explained. He looked ridiculous, standing with his arms outstretched as the much smaller bodyguards patted his chest and back. It would have been funny if it hadn’t been so completely terrifying. How much fear do you have to live in, for your own son to become a potential threat?
And then the guards turned to me. “Lift your arms,” said one.
Luka shook his head. “That’s not necessary.”
“You know the rules,” he was told. The guards looked almost apologetic...but firm.
I nodded my consent.
Two sets of hands worked quickly and efficiently over me. They were professional about it, not copping a feel. But that didn’t change the fact they were both men—big, ex-military men, almost sandwiching me between them as they checked me. It was difficult to hold still, especially when it came time to check my chest and one of them ran the backs of his hands over my breasts. I could see Luka glaring at them.
They stepped back and nodded respectfully to me. I grabbed Luka’s hand and, together, we walked inside.
The first floor must have been the servants’ quarters originally and it seemed to serve much the same purpose today. I caught glimpses of guards sleeping in bunks and rooms that seemed to be filled with nothing but racks of guns and body armor. God, he’s got an army protecting him. The walls and floor were bare stone.
It was only when we reached the top of the stairs and entered the second floor that the house suddenly changed. Here, it was all wood paneling and ornate windows (though I suspected the panes had been replaced with bulletproof glass). And coming down the wooden staircase from a higher floor was Vasiliy himself.
He was dressed in a suit again, but this time a little more casually than when we’d met in the old factory. His crisp white shirt was unbuttoned at the neck and he’d discarded his jacket and tie. With his ramrod posture and sheer height, he cut an imposing figure as he strolled down the stairs, whiskey glass in hand.
First, he greeted Luka, kissing each cheek. Then he turned to me. “Arianna,” he said slowly, as if testing the name. Then he gripped my arms and kissed each of my cheeks, too. I caught my breath as he did it. It wasn’t just the knowledge that he hated me, underneath the false welcome. It was the size of him, the strength of his fingers as he held my arms.
“I have figures I need you to look at,” he told Luka, speaking in English for my benefit. His eyes never left my face for a second. “On the screen in my study. You know the way.”
Luka looked doubtfully between the two of us. He was being sent away so that his dad could talk to me, and we both knew it. I nodded to him that it was okay, even though I was terrified. I couldn’t let Luka fight my battles for me.
“Come,” said Vasiliy, slipping an arm around my shoulder. And he led me deeper into the house.