Chapter 4
Four
Laila
T hey are Russian mobsters. Bratva. I’ve seen them on TV. There’s not much they don’t have their hands in from what I’ve heard. My mother rages about my stepfather being furious over them taking control of Seattle. Which in turn leads to him beating her. There’s no number of words I can say to get her to leave the man. I barely got away, but she doesn’t even try.
I shove the depressing thoughts from my head as we leave the shimmering lights of New Orleans behind us. For twenty-five minutes I was held prisoner between Bastian and Dante. Each took turns kissing me slowly at first and then hotter and deeper until all three of us were panting. Streetlights gradually faded and became trees, and the darkness was only penetrated by the BMW’s high beams.
Now, we are on the outskirts of New Orleans in an elevator on the way to the third floor of The Society with my heart racing and my panties drenched. The one named Dante with long black hair and silver eyes stands at my back. His hands are on my ass holding me up while his friend, Con, sucks the tip of my tongue between his lips.
I didn’t get a good look at anything as I was ushered through the doors. Other than being located on an old plantation with sprawling lands and draping willow trees I saw on the drive past the front gate, I’m left in the dark about what the famous The Gilded Key Society actually looks like.
Maybe I can sneak out later and take a look around. Right now, I’m wrapped around Con’s middle while their third friend warms me with his body heat from my left. He’s a bit of a multi-tasker, teasing my nipples as he switches between kissing and biting my neck.
Which is all fine. I’m fine. It’s all good. Except for the fifth person in the elevator with us.
The hostess has her eyes staring forward and her hearing is apparently selectively switched off. Because there is no way she can actually stand there with her stack of papers and not actually hear these three men growling over me.
“Don’t worry about the hostess. She’s paid to ignore us.”
Bastian’s rough voice is close to my ear and gives me instant goosebumps with how the low rumble of his voice affects my libido. Which is a whole new world of sensations for me to explore. Lips are back to devouring me and I lean a little more into Bastian’s hungry mouth.
But what I really notice is how turned on I am and how fearless I feel in their embraces.
The elevator dings.
“Welcome to Room Seventeen.” Our hostess steps from the metal box into a luxury suite.
Gleaming hardwood floors spread out in front of us with a few elaborate rugs strategically placed. There’s a leather couch pushed up against one side of the wide-open space with a small kitchen to the left of us. Though fully modern there’s still an old-world vibe to the original wood walls and terraces I spot through open balcony doors.
Right outside the elevator doors, there is a small table and that is where my focus lands.
I expect Con to set me down, but he keeps me in his arms and follows the older yet beautiful woman to the small table a foot inside the suite.
“Set her down here, please.” This lady looks more like a working madam than a hostess. She doesn’t put up with anyone’s bullshit and rightly so.
A pen is shoved into my hand and Con grunts at the lady’s briskness. My feet are placed on the floor. With kiss-swollen lips, messy hair, and lip gloss smeared over my chin I do the only thing I can do. Smile and listen.
She points to a thick leather bound book that appears well used. I pick up the heavy tome.
“You need me to sign this?”
“If you want to stay on the premises you will need to sign, yes.” The hostess takes in my motorcycle boots, daisy dukes, and crop top, but it’s not judgment radiating from her visual caress.
It’s…envy?
If she knew the inner me. The one I keep buried and hushed, she would judge me then and I wouldn’t blame her. I judge myself all the time.
“Is this necessary? We paid for this suite. We bring who we want. Fuck your book.” Bastian is at my back, his arm coming around my middle protectively. I catch his intention a second before he goes to snatch the Society’s book out of my hands, I jerk it away just in time.
“It’s okay, Bastian,” I reassure him. The feel of his hard cock pressing into me has me willing to sign with the devil right now. No amount of needing to put my name in whatever book they have for the Society will stop me. I’ve come this damn far. I am not about to let my inner fears win this time.
I’m not hallucinating his protective stance nor the way his already deep voice turns into a growl of discontent.
It seems Bastian doesn’t take away the same thing I do and thinks of her looking at my less-than-ritzy attire as a snub.
“If you bring a guest from outside The Society said guest must sign that she is clean and healthy. And as a guest of the private suite, she must agree that any sexual act performed here is of her consent. If she wants to stay, she signs the book, Sir.”
All that with one swish of my name in ink. Hmm.
I like the balls on this lady.
Bastian looks like he’s going to throw out the hostess for only doing her job. While I have never heard of them killing the help, I would hate to be the cause of them changing their MO. Then again, who knows what they have done behind closed doors? The crimes they’ve committed, the people they’ve…taken care of?
I can’t go down that road. All the rumors swirling around their names are circumstantial at best.
Another thick arm wraps around me and my inner wanna-be lawyer zips her lips and lets the dirty angel side of me out to play.
“What do you say, moy neyinnyy? ” My innocent.
“ Moy neyinnyy, ” I repeat. The consonants feel hard on my tongue while the vowels roll smoothly.
Con eyes me as I repeat after him, but his next words are meant for the lady with the book. “She’s clean.” Con has met the end of his patience.
“You vouch for her?”
“Fuck, woman. Yes.”
That’s Dante this time.
This hostess deserves a freaking gold medal for her ability to withstand the wall of frustration from these three. The invisible aura of power wafting off them makes it hard to breathe. But this chick plows through their attitudes like she’s cutting smoke with a samurai.
“Good Lord! Stop talking about me like I’m not in the room. Yes, I’m clean. I’m a virgin so yeah, nothing evil going on down there.” I take the pen and make it a point that my name can’t be read easily. Since I can exactly get a copy of the page I sign, I take my phone out and snap a picture.
Thirty seconds later she’s on the elevator, eyes pinned to the floor as the door swooshes together. What a fucking circus ride.
Behind me, I feel the burning gazes of three men lasering my ass. In these shorts, there’s not much left to the imagination. I turn. Will they send me on my way now? There’s a lot a man can do to a girl and not take her virginity. I’m not sure why he kept his abuse limited to anal, but my stepfather never does anything without a plan. Probably to hide the evidence of his crime.
I didn’t stick around to ask. The day after graduating high school I was out of there and I have never been back. Not that my mother hasn’t pleaded with me to return every single day for the past four years.
“ Ty byl prav. Devstvennitsa. ” Dante drops his hands to my hips, and I’m spun around, falling into his arms. He’s wearing a small grin that is nothing short of predatory.
“Yes,” I say breathlessly. “I am a virgin. I don’t look like your typical stereotype virgin, huh? The kind of girl that looks sweet, wears pink lipstick, and shows just enough cleavage to hint at great breasts under hideous clothing. Since you’re not saying anything, I’m going to take that as one of two things. You either don’t punch V-cards or when you take a virgin you prefer them weak and unable to fight back as you pop that cherry.” I stick my finger just inside my mouth and pull my finger out in a way that makes a loud “pop”. I shrug, cock a hip, and level all three with a look of indifference.
“Sorry, boys. Sweet isn’t my style. I know what I want. Question is, are you three the ones who are going to give it to me or not?” Look at me being strong. Fuck yeah!
Dante’s steely eyes haven’t left my mouth since I started talking. The way he’s bracing all his weight on his right foot with the other kicked out a bit like he’s waiting for me to try and make a run for it has me itching to see how far he will chase me.
Sometimes I am too much. Even for myself.
“I didn’t mean to drop the ‘V’ word, but it’s true. Should I follow the help and show myself out or are you guys scared of a little hymen?”
I feel them trying to peel my layers back with their hard gazes as Arabelle does. With her, it doesn’t piss me off, but these three are starting to dig into my nerves. Panic starts to create waves through my body. Only lots of practice of shoving down my emotions helps calm them enough that I don’t melt into a puddle of goo on their pretty hardwood flooring.
“You understand us? You speak our language.”
Of all the things, that is the last question I expected from Dante.
“Yes.” No. Well, not as much as I might lead them to believe. I had to take a second language in college. In fact, I took all the classes I could manage without going brain-dead from overload. Anything to keep from having to go home on holidays and vacations.
To him .
I shove out the darkness creeping over this moment. He can’t have this. This time is my time.
The silver lining of all those studies is now I’m four years into being a criminal lawyer and can speak English, Spanish, and enough Russian to get me into trouble.
Con skewers me with a hard look. I have a feeling not much passes him by. “What were you just thinking?”
Shuddering with instant humiliation, I take a step back and mentally run through the quick glance I had of the place when we stepped off the elevator.
He reads my moves. “Don’t do it, malyshka . Now answer me.”
“Make me,” I taunt.
“Laila.”
Those amber eyes. Con is all about the warning. He expects his word to be followed.
Mmm. “The way you say my name,” I husk, barely recognizing this inner vixen coming to the surface.
“Not another foot. Or you will be sorry.”
This one has such dark eyes I can practically see my soul reflect back at me. Bastian’s voice drips with an unspoken dare I can’t resist and do exactly what he warns against. Dark hair falls over a smooth forehead making him look more dangerous.
“ Malen’kaya ptichka. Don’t push us. The result will scare you.”
Little birdie.
Dante’s silver eyes shimmer with wicked intent. “Is that a promise, Russian?” His hair hangs loosely around his shoulders and begs for me to slip my fingers into it as I ride him from above. My pussy clenches and releases at the idea.
Their forbidding warnings drip high-octane fuel directly on the embers of my libido. I’ve known for a long while there’s something wrong with me. There has to be, right? There is nothing a head doctor or bottles of pills can fix. I’ve tried. That doesn’t change the fact that lurking deep inside is something that calls to all the bad in this world and draws it near.
My stepfather. The professor who locked me in his office and tried to get a blow job out of me for a passing grade on my financial project junior year.
These men. An aura of danger follows them everywhere they go and here, alone with them it seems to only grow.
I take a step backward.
The energy in me seems to attract a kind of darkness that has no cure. At least I don’t think so. What I am doing tonight is something I haven’t tried before and that is to meet my twisted side and see what she might like. Maybe I can purge the evil out of me by feeding her. Sister Martha said sometimes I need to walk through the fire to be cured.
They are my fire. My villains. For one night I want to live with my demons and see if I can withstand their judgment when the sun rises.
I take another step in reverse, earning me growls. Large shoulders roll and sway with their synced movements toward me. Their muscular bodies bulge and flex as they lumber closer. Standing shoulder to shoulder they’ve effectively cut off one exit, leaving me only one direction to run.
Is the door to my left to the bedroom or bathroom? Is there a second floor to this place? The impossibly high windows say there just might be. I chance a quick look over my shoulder. Oh. Now that is something. My hair fans over my shoulder and it catches all three of their gazes.
They’re ready for the hunt. Can I get up the stairs before they catch me?
“Don’t.”
Another step.
“Don’t what, Con?” Wicked intent curls my lips and it lures the hungry beasts in them to the surface. Eyes the color of gold bore into me.
I turn, hit the stairs, and run until the burn in my thighs screams for me to stop. I only push harder and run as fast as my legs will move. Adrenaline pumps into my veins and I go a little faster still.
Three sets of expensive shoes are almost silent on the hardwood, but I hear them as I curve around the spiral staircase and come to a dead stop on the landing.
Three doors. Fuck! Which do I take? There are no labels of any kind. They are all dark wood with crystal doorknobs.
“ Malen’kaya ptitsa , where do you think you are flying off to?” One hunter taunts, while the other two chuckle darkly. The rich, masculine sound reaches for me and nearly steals my will to escape.
Little birdie.
Breathing harshly, I spring forward just as hands brush through my tumbling hair. My heart pounds and my chest tightens to the point drawing air in actually hurts.
I reach for the first door.
Locked. I dash to the next only to find it locked too.
Their dark chuckles wreck my body from the outside in.
“ Leti, malen’kaya ptichka. Letat’. ”
Fly, little birdie. Fly.