I come with her, the intensity of her passion bleeding onto me, into me, through me. The moment I explode inside her, I slow down, leaning in and kissing her lips. She murmurs words against my mouth, her arms and legs wrapping around me.
“This pussy is mine tonight,” I growl. “Say it.”
“It’s yours,” she says back. “All yours, Daddy.”
I wake up alone.I feel her absence before I even open my eyes.
I reach over as I wake and feel the empty space. The sheets are as cold as ice. Shit. Did she… leave?
I sit up and look around my darkened room for a few seconds. She really isn’t here. Damn, don’t tell me she just fucked me and left?
I get out of bed and put on my boxer shorts. The moment I step out into the hallway, I hear the sound of glass clicking in my study down the hall. A strange wave of relief settles into me as I make my way there.
When I open the door, she’s standing there in nothing but my dress shirt from earlier this evening. She’s standing at the drink caddy, a glass of one of my liquors in one hand. She looks up at me through her tousled hair and smiles.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t want to wake you.”
I walk over to her and grab her by the back of the neck, kissing her hard. She leans into me, sucking gently on my lips and tongue. Her mouth tastes like my good scotch.
“You shouldn’t go exploring in the home of a gangster,” I say as our lips part. I start making my own drink. She watches as she sips from her glass.
“I’m kind of glad I stopped at your study, actually,” she says. “This place is huge. I’m afraid I’d get lost.”
“This house is small compared to some of the other bosses’ I’ve known,” I say to her. My drink made, I take her hand and lead her to the couches by the fireplace. It’s not cold enough tonight for a fire, but I start one anyway. With the press of a button, the fire roars behind the glass gate.
“The Ivanovs, for example,” I say as I sit next to her. “Their Pakhan had an estate the size of a couple of football fields.”
“Pakhan… ? Boss?”
I nod. “Pyotr Durov. His gang was… thousands deep and probably hundreds of years old. They used to run this territory years ago.”
“Used to? What happened to them?”
I pause. It’s kind of strange that I even mentioned them tonight. Or maybe not so strange. They have been on my mind lately.
“Remember when I told you that my wife was killed by a stray bullet?” I ask, and she nods in response. “Durov was responsible. He attacked my family during my daughter’s fifth birthday party.”
“Oh, my God,” she whispers.
“The funny thing is that I don’t even remember what it was that I’d done to cross the line with him. Maybe we were getting too big for our britches. Who knows? All I know is that one sunny day, he sent an army of his men to slaughter us all.” I take a drink and throw her a bitter smile. “He failed. Mostly because someone saw them coming and my men and I were able to act quickly.”
I pause as the memory comes back to me. Still feels like a wound that won’t close. Talking about it makes me feel like I’m poking it with a stick.
“It was right before we were about to bring out the cake,” I go on. “Every kid in the neighborhood had to have been there. A few of my guys I was really close to were there. It was about as normal of a day as it could have been. The sun was even out.” I swish the drink around in my glass. “It was a great party right up until the bullets started flying.”
She doesn’t speak. In this light, she almost looks ethereal. The glow from the fireplace catches her ash colored tresses and makes it appear angelic.
“Anyway,” I tell her, “afterward, a decision was made to answer the attack, so we did. We launched a campaign against them all.”
She frowns a little as confusion passes over her eyes. “You talk about them in the past tense. Do you mean… ? Well, are you saying that you wiped them out?”
I nod. She stares for a few moments in incredulous silence. “You said there werethousandsof them. You killed them all?”
“They killed my wife, Ember. Some wars can be resolved through talk. Sometimes, even the exchange of property or assets will do it. Not this. There’s no coming back from that kind of offense.”
She looks away and down at her drink. I can feel the apprehension coming off her.
“And here is our crossroads,” I say. “Once again, your ‘good girl’ sensibilities are called into question.”
