"Don't lie to me."
I blurt it out before I can stop myself. "Are we going to be okay? Safe? Both of us?"
He presses his mouth to my cheek, then my nose, then the corner of my mouth. "Yes. I promise you that."
"I feel like you have all the control here. All the power. And I have none of it."
The darkness in his eyes swallows me whole, and I don't look away from it this time.
"Did you notice the bald man downstairs? Tattoos across his scalp. Missing his left eye."
I get a small head rush at the whiplash of the subject change. I rack my brain, sifting through the blur of faces—but yes, actually, I remember him. "Yeah? What about him?"
"Pyotr. One of our best smugglers," Slava says. "We run him through Mexico every three months for product. He swallows more than should be humanly possible and walks it straight through customs, smiling the whole time. If something happened to him—or to Dima and Yuri, the two men flanking him during your initiation—it would cripple the supply chain for months."
"O-kay," I say slowly, no idea where this is headed, and not sure I want to find out.
"The older man. First to kneel for you." That one I remember without effort. I nod.
"Grisha. He still knows smuggling routes into this country that date back to the nineties. Routes no one can memorize but him. He is one of the most valuable men in this organization."
"And, and—what's the—"
I trail off, genuinely lost now, watching his face for some kind of clue. Why is he telling me any of this?
Then he reaches down, pulls the pistol holstered against his hip, checks the safety, and sets it flat in my open palms.
I’ve never held a weapon in my life. "These are just some of our best assets. I’ll tell you about the others later. Pyotr. Dima. Yuri. Grisha. Take out those four men and you weaken the Bratva. No one in this building would stop you. No one would even raise a hand against you. Not one of them would dare."
My mouth goes bone dry.
"Are you insane? Telling me to go kill your own men?"
"I'm not telling you to do anything. I’m just bringing to your attention how much power you have.”
My hands are shaking hard enough that I set the gun down on the blanket between us. "You'd really let me do that? Just to prove some point?"
"I'd let you do far worse than that, little butterfly." Something unreadable moves behind his eyes. "I'd hand you every gun in this building and every name in it. Anything but letting you go. There's nothing I wouldn't hand you other than a world without me."
Chapter Twelve
SLAVA
"Ahhh," is the first thing my girl says when she wakes up.
I’ve always loved doing this to her. Once she finally got past the worries ofwhat if I taste bad?andwhat if I kick you in the face?, she started enjoying it just as much as I do.
She’s lying on her side, her knees tucked up to her chin. It’s a perfect position, giving my tongue access to taste everything from her tight little asshole to her perfect clit.
I press a kiss to her asshole, and she reaches back, grabbing my hair to guide me back to her clit. She loves getting her crack licked, even if she’s too shy to admit it. I don’t mind. I’ll gladly give her the illusion that I’m forcing her if it takes away her shame and lets her fully enjoy it.
I lick everywhere from her soft labia to her clit, sucking it into my mouth hard enough that she screams. And when I add swirls of my tongue into the little vacuum I’ve created? Her eyes roll to the back of her head, and she shouts my name so loud it almost makes me come right in my sweatpants.
It wouldn’t be the first time she made me do it, either.
"Slava! It’s too much..." she croaks out in her beautiful morning voice.
I laugh against her pussy, kissing her ass cheek before diving right back into her asshole as she shrieks.
