He didn’t take the bait and instead changed the subject back to my dad. “When Leon hears you’re in town he’s going to come looking for you.”
Fine. If he was so set on talking about this, we could talk about it. “Let him. It will only lead to more disappointment for the man.”
“Are you going to let him meet Juliet?”
A bitter taste coated my mouth. “I wasn’t even going to let you meet Juliet. What makes you think I would let him meet her? He’s an addict and a scumbag. I’ll do whatever it takes to keep her away from him.”
“I think you said the same thing about me.”
I shot him a sidelong glare. “Careful, Wesley. You’re skating on thin ice with me already.”
A warm hand moved over my back, sliding down until it rested on ass. His lips pressed a trail of kisses over my bare shoulder. “Oh, yeah?”
“Yeah.” But the breathlessness in my voice ruined my threatening façade.
His teeth sunk into the side of my throat, quickly soothed by the heated touch of his tongue. His mouth moved up to my ear, nibbling and kissing and all in all driving me crazy. His hands landed on my hips, pulling me back into the impossibly hard length of him.
“I, er, heated up some food for you,” I squeaked. I tried to organize my thoughts and get a grip on all the reasons I was keeping my distance from him, but they were slipping through my fingers.
“We’ll eat it later,” he rumbled against my ear.
He spun me around and my butt hit the counter. My hands landed on his shoulders, staying him. I jerked my head toward the hallway. “Frankie,” I whispered desperately. “Juliet!”
He made a dismissive noise against the hollow of my throat. “I kept my distance till we found her, Six. She’s here. She’s safe.”
I stood up straighter. “That was so thoughtful of you,” I said in a dry tone. “Our daughter had been kidnapped and you were able to keep your hands to yourself for a whole twenty-four hours.”
“It’s been longer than twenty-four hours,” he reminded me.
“Not by much—” My sentence ended on a gasp when his hand found its way under my sweatshirt and up to my breast. He slipped it inside the cup of my bra and squeezed, brushing his thumb back and forth over my nipple.
His other hand tugged at the waistband of my shorts, pulling them down over my hip on one side. His free hand played with the seam of my underwear and I shivered at the barely-there touch.
He lifted his head and stilled me with a dark look. “I’ve been starved for you, Caroline. For five years, I have been desperate for you, famished. And now you want me to wait?” He rolled my nipple between his thumb and forefinger as if proving a point.
My thoughts bumped into each other, trying to make sense of what he’d said. “Not wait. But what if we took things slow? Eased into this?”
The hand at my waist dipped lower, between my legs. My underwear was still in place, but the thin layer of protection didn’t seem to matter with his expert touch burning through my entire body until it was a blazing fire of want and need and desire.
“Is that what you want?” he asked without removing his wicked fingers from either place on my body.
I shook my head—no. I didn’t want to wait. Or go slow. Or stop. This was Sayer. He had been famished for this for five years? He wasn’t the only one.
There had been no one but him.
It had always been him.
Sensing my hesitation his mouth crashed down on mine, annihilating whatever caution I had left. His lips consumed mine, tasted and licked and bit while his hands moved over my body, building and building and building the fire inside me to a frenzy.
He moved my panties to the side and plunged his fingers inside my most intimate place, pushing and pressing and sliding until I dropped my head on his shoulder and gave in to the inferno only he could stoke.
His other hand tugged at my nipple, a bite of pain only increasing the pleasure his other hand was orchestrating. I clung to his shoulders as the rest of my body became wobbly and unsteady. He pulled back just long enough to tug my sweatshirt off, tossing it somewhere behind him.
But then he was right back over me, his hand disappearing again, diving deeper, adding a second finger to an already overwhelming touch. His head dipped and he lifted my breast to take it in his mouth. His tongue flicked over my nipple, teasing at first, moving slowly. Then he sucked the entire thing into his mouth and I let out a cry, bucking against his hand.
He quickly picked me up, wrapping my legs around his tapered waist. I grabbed the sides of his face to balance and took his mouth in a long, delicious kiss as he carried me to the couch and tossed me onto the cushions.
The falling and landing sensation was so familiar my heart kicked with the memories of all the times we’d done this before. Lazy Saturdays when we spent the entire day inside, wrapped up in each other. After late night events when we were too greedy and impatient to make it all the way to his bedroom. After a near death experience with the Italians. Once when we’d barely escaped the DC police after a heist.
We’d made love on this couch as many times as in his bed.
Yet this time was still different, still notably unlike any time before. For one, our bodies had changed. I wasn’t twenty anymore. I’d had a child. I’d become a woman in the time we’d been apart. Yes, my boobs were bigger, but I also had a few stretch marks. My thighs weren’t lithe and tight anymore. Everything about me was… softer.
On the other hand, Sayer was nothing but hard muscle. He loomed over me, all biceps and abs and dark desire. His hands moved over my bare stomach, taking hold of both my underwear and shorts and yanking them off in one fell swoop.
Then he was over me, settling his knees between my thighs and tugging my legs around his waist again. Only it was much more intimate now that I was mostly naked and lying down.
“This is where you belong,” he murmured between wet kisses along my collarbone, his body pressed against mine, heating me from the inside out. “With me. Only with me.”
His possessive words pushed me beyond the ability to think. I wrestled his t-shirt over his head, and then moaned when his bare torso rested against me. God, had anything ever felt better than his skin against mine?
Together we got rid of his sweatpants and boxer briefs. “I can’t think straight when I’m around you,” I growled at him, blaming him and worshipping him all at once.
He made a sound of approval and spread my thighs wider, stretching them until I was completely bared to him. His fingers found my core again. He tortured me by moving impossibly slowly. In and out. In and out. Until my nails had dug into his shoulder blades and I was a panting, heaving mess of pleasure.
“Sayer, please!” I gasped, knowing I couldn’t last another second without him inside me.
“You’re mine, Six.” I nodded against his neck. He removed his fingers and pressed the part of him I needed most to my entrance. “Say it.”
“I-I’m yours.”
He plunged inside of me, sinking deep, with force. My legs tightened around his hips and my back bowed. “Oh god!” I cried.
That’s when he started to really move. He thrust into me in time with my gasping breaths. The spiral started low in my belly and spread through me, heating and tightening and tingling.
“Don’t stop!” I ordered him.
He lifted his head, a half smile on his beautiful face. “Never,” he promised, pushing in deeper, reaching the place I needed him most. My head tipped back, my eyes fluttering closed. “Fucking beautiful,” he murmured. “And you’re all mine.”
That was all it took to push me over the edge. Everything inside me tightened all at once, shooting fireworks off behind my closed eyelids. He swallowed my cries with a kiss, curling my body toward him and increasing the pleasure in impossible ways.
When I came back down, he was still moving leisurely, pulling every last drop of sensation out of my body. He hovered over me, braced by his strong arms, watching me
.
I smiled up at him. “That was amazing.”
“Because you’re finally where you belong, Six. It feels good because this is how it was always meant to be.” He pressed another lingering kiss to my lips before he stood up, disappearing into the bathroom to clean up.
I stayed on the couch not moving. My thoughts were already racing again. Had he meant with him? Or in the bratva?
A flashback of earlier this afternoon invaded my mind. What secret was Sayer keeping from me? Why hadn’t the bosses punished him? Or killed him?
Why couldn’t I say no to this man that was keeping so many secrets from me?
The answers were too terrifying to entertain.
I threw my arms over my face and decided tomorrow I would do better. I would keep my distance. I could learn to tell Sayer no— at least until he spilled his secrets. And I would get the pakhan what they needed so Juliet, Frankie and I could disappear again.
For good this time. And whether or not Sayer came with us? That was an impossible question to answer at the moment.
Maybe tomorrow, I would be able to finally sort through my feelings for him and figure out what they were. Maybe… I wasn’t holding my breath.
Chapter Ten
Sayer
Ten Years Ago
“Kid!” Dymetrus hollered from across the room. He was talking to me. I was eighteen, had a place of my own and they still called me kid.
Most everybody in the brotherhood had a nickname. I supposed Kid was mine. They’d tried other ones of course, I’d just beat the shit out of whoever had come up with them.
I didn’t want to be known as anything but my name. Yeah, I used aliases when I had to, but for the most part I wanted everybody to know who they were dealing with. They needed to know my name. They needed to remember who they were speaking to.
The bosses didn’t have nicknames. Nobody called them by catchy pet names or referred to them as anything but who they were. Roman Volkov. Aleksander Volkov. Dymetrus Volkov.
And that’s how they could speak to me. Sayer Wesley.
Although that left room for everyone to call me Kid—at least everyone I couldn’t beat up. Specifically, the bosses.
I stalked over to Dymetrus, ignoring the girl he had on his lap and the one giving him a shoulder rub. I had just dropped something off at his house not four hours ago and his wife had insisted I eat lunch before I left. I liked Tatiana. She was the kind of woman I respected, the kind that didn’t take any shit, the kind that would tie her husband’s ball sack into a knot if she saw how he was behaving now.
Maybe I’d even help her.
What kind of man couldn’t be faithful to his wife? They’d said vows. They’d made lifelong promises. They had children together. Did that mean nothing?
That’s how I knew I would be a better leader. I could keep a fucking promise. And I wouldn’t trade in something as meaningful as marriage for a quick lay by a girl I could care less about. These women meant nothing to this asshole. He’d toss them away when he was done with them and grab for others.
During my years with the syndicate, I’d learned two very important lessons. First, men in power lost the ability to think clearly. Money corrupted. Power poisoned. They became slaves to their base desires. And when they’d been without consequences for long enough, those desires turned them into monsters.
The second thing I’d learned, when a man was at the top of a world like this, when he’d accumulated enough power and money and influence to rule his kingdom, he had to put into place certain boundaries for himself to stay in check. He couldn’t give into his sordid passions and selfish whims constantly or he would lose that kingdom to lesser men. The wife he chose was the single most important partner he had in the entire game.
When you had power like that, marriage wasn’t just a box to check off. It wasn’t just a means to make heirs, it was the partnership required to stay at the top.
Dymetrus had a good wife. If he’d pay attention to her for three seconds, he’d see that she was loyal to him, she took care of their children and she would keep him aligned with his goals if he’d let her. Instead, he was drunk from feeling untouchable.
Only one day someone would touch him. Someday, they would bring him to his lowest and he would look up from the ground and realize he’d pissed his money and power away on cheap tricks and cheaper girls.
“Yeah?” I asked, my insides curdled by the sight in front of me.
I wasn’t sure if he heard the disgust in my tone or if he realized what a spectacle he was making, but his jovial demeanor sobered, and he pushed the girl off his lap. “We’re tattooing her tonight. Roman wants it done before the other families start to notice her.”
A humorless laugh fell out of my mouth, unchecked. “She’s not going to defect to another family. She’s bratva. I made sure of it.”
Dymetrus looked around, dropping his head and his voice. This was somewhat of a sensitive subject because of the nature Caroline Valero had become bratva. “Not until she has the tattoo.”
The brothers didn’t want the information to become public based on her father. Leon was a gambling-addicted loser, but that hadn’t stopped him from making it clear he didn’t want his little girl in the Russian mafia. His choice and her choice had been taken away when she lied to the pakhan one night five years ago.
Both Caro and her dad were willing to accept the consequences for her actions based on the events of the night. But if they ever found out that her clandestine mistake with Roman had been expertly arranged by me, there would be problems.
Caro had never wanted to be bratva. She’d never wanted this life. And if she found out she’d been tricked into it, she would leave.
The brothers would never let her go. They treasured her value as an expert thief and unfathomable con. Not only that, they would never risk letting one of the other families have her.
That brought us to tonight and the tattoo that proved her loyalty. We all had one. I’d gotten mine when I was thirteen.
What the brothers didn’t realize is that I would never let Caro leave. Tattoo or not, she belonged to me and I wouldn’t let anything change that.
“Give her another year,” I bargained. And after that year, I would plead for another extension. And another. Until she could choose the pain for herself.
“Roman wants it done tonight.”
The girl giving Dymetrus a massage dropped her hands and scurried away. She apparently knew what his tone meant. I wasn’t that smart. “I said no. She’s too young.”
“You think you own her, kid? You think I need to go through you to get this done? This was a courtesy to you and you’ve done nothing but piss me off.”
I held up my hands, a sign of surrender. He was right. And I couldn’t afford to lose his courtesy. Especially when it came to Caro. “I don’t own her. You do.” The lies burned on my tongue, but I hid my disgust. Like hell they owned her. But it was all part of the game, the long con. “If you break her now, she’ll be useless to you later. She’s here because she doesn’t know she has other options… other families. You see what I’m saying? Don’t piss her off. Keep her happy long enough that she never realizes there are other options for her.”
He ran a hand over his jaw, rubbing roughly at the scruff he’d let grow out. “What do the Irish think of her?”
“They don’t know it’s a her yet,” I told him openly. “They know you have someone special, but they’re guessing it’s Atticus.”
Dymetrus spit on the floor of his club. “Fuckin’ Atticus.”
Atticus was a loose cannon. The pakhan could barely contain him now and he was only getting worse. It was good that the Irish, at least the ones in charge, believed our thief was him. Let them come after the crazy one.
The bigger man lifted his head, a decision clear in his eyes. “All the more reason to brand her tonight.”
“She’s not a fucking horse.”
He stood, barely sparing me a glance. “This from the kid who a
ll but bought and paid for her.”
“Careful, old man.”
His assessing glance of my skinny six-foot-two frame was less than favorable. “No, son, you be careful. Don’t forget who you’re speaking to, lest I teach you a lesson and remind you. Despite your place in the brotherhood, you still report to me. You still report to the Volkov. The fox gets tattooed tonight. End of discussion.”
I clenched my jaw together, grinding my teeth in an effort to keep my mouth shut. Finally, I managed to nod.
Dymetrus smiled, enjoying his win. “Now because I’m a nice guy and because I fucking like you, I’m going to let you be there. You can hold her hand or whatever shit you do that makes her happy. But keep your mouth shut or Leon will have both our heads.”
“Yeah, if he can pull himself away from the poker table long enough to care.”
Dymetrus laughed a knowing sound. “I had Fat Jack take him to a fight tonight. He won’t have a fucking clue.”
I couldn’t help but smile. The only reason the pakhan kept Leon Valero around was for his daughter. But it never made sense why they coddled him so much.
Apparently we all bent over backward to keep Caro happy. Everybody but Leon.
“Now, go get her,” Dymetrus ordered.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” I groaned, glaring at the bastard. “That’s the real reason you’re letting me be there tonight. You’re too chicken shit to tell her yourself.”
His eyes narrowed. “Watch your mouth when you’re talking to me.” Then his face split into a grin again and he admitted, “But hell yeah, that’s the only reason you’re here. If I make her mad she’s likely to steal the deed to my house and kick my family out on the streets.”
I rolled my eyes at his insane fear. “I’ll be sure to tell her who sent me then.”
He turned to one of the girls in the room and waved his hands at me. “Asshole kids, am I right?”
She giggled unsurely. She couldn’t tell if he was going to laugh or rip my head off with his bare hands. Honestly, I couldn’t either. So I left.