Chapter 27 – Ilya
N ow I’d done it. I made the siren mad. I came to her tonight to clear the air and bring the secrets into the open. But then, she’d offered herself to me, and I’d been unable to resist her sweet call.
The storm raged deep in her dark brown eyes. Lightning flashed in those midnight depths as she pushed backward. Even if I fell to my knees, she wouldn’t open up to me. She didn’t trust me yet, and that hurt. But why should she? I was the monster who’d been angry enough to threaten the maiming of a man who was technically an adolescent, when we both knew damn well he would need his fingers to survive in this world. I expected her to ask about her damn fiancé’s safety, to know if she’d paid for his life. It would be so easy to tell her she had but I would take payment again, that I liked her begging on her knees for his life.
Instead, she lashed out over the careless comment I’d made.
“Contrary to whatever you think, I have not spent the last eleven months whoring around,” Isabella snapped, staring daggers up at me. “I learned how to do this from reading blogs on the subject!”
My voice softened. “Forgive me…I misspoke.”
She opened her mouth only to clap it shut.
It was the logical induction to take the facts and draw a conclusion from them. Most learned to be skilled in the art of seduction through practice. Jealousy prevented me from imagining there could be another way.
But…couldn’t she see the agony I was in? The way I would bleed for her? To think I was the only one who felt those lips wrapped my cock was too good to be true. I didn’t dare to hope.
“Thank you, Izzy. That was incredible.” Perhaps a display of sincere praise would soften her wrath.
It seemed to work.
Isabella blinked up at me. The anger ebbed, replaced by a lust drenched haze. She wet her lips. “Um, you’re welcome.”
The innocence showed in that moment, and a rush of heat stabbed my dick. I tucked the still hard erection back into my pants so it wasn’t waving in her face, then I stepped forward to cup her chin in my hand.
Too many thoughts tumbled through my mind, but they had a common theme. I’d been mistaken this whole time. Things were much clearer now. She hadn’t been sleeping around—whatever she did in Chicago was unique. The calculated move to lose her virginity had been with me, the lucky bastard who was messing up this thing with his insane jealousy.
Also, my little siren was silently enduring another torment. The don’s bitch sister was effectively starving her by denying proper sustenance. Something that would immediately be fixed.
I’m sorry I didn’t see it before.
I rubbed my thumb back and forth across Isabella’s cheek as she watched me in silence, waiting for my next move.
But the biggest detail that I’d missed was that she wasn’t in love with her fiancé. It made me want to light up the whole city into a blazing inferno in celebration!
I was just sorry it took me so long to realize it. If Isabella hadn’t dropped that key piece of information earlier this evening…. My jaw tightened reflexively. The destruction that men who knew me feared had been right at the surface, ready to break free today! In the back room, when all I could see was red, and the entire mob was in danger of being slaughtered, Isabella admitted she didn’t choose her fiancé. So I started doing my own research, and as it turned out, I’d made a terrible mistake.
Isabella was a prisoner.
It changed…everything.
Rubbing her hands over her thighs, Isabella pressed her lips into a tight line, pulling away from my touch.
“What is it?” I ground out, snatching my hand back and zipping myself up.
“That’s it?” she snapped. “You’re just going to leave me turned on and frustrated?”
There was always a surprise with this one. After the sum of our encounters, I should have expected that. Instead, I stepped back. I blinked rapidly. Words failed me.
Isabella drew her hands back up her thighs. One stopped at the hot, little apex. The other trailed over the planes of her stomach, up to her breasts. “They hurt, Ilya.”
A purely animalistic sound escaped my throat.
Isabella smiled. She tweaked first the right and then the left.
I fisted my hands. I needed to return to the underboss. While my associate status was still in contention, the scheming rat had dubbed me his bodyguard. Which meant I was disposable to run errands such as returning two violently ill children to the compound with strict instructions to hurry back.
I don’t have time for this. “Get on the bed.”
Isabella scrambled to her feet, tripping over herself as she rushed to obey. Her eagerness sent a stab of heat straight through my groin.
I marched after her, viciously yanking open my fly. “Spread your legs—and hold onto my shoulders.”
This wasn’t going to be a gentle encounter. I wasn’t sure if I was even capable of that. But this definitely wasn’t the time to find out.
Lowering myself over her, I braced myself on the bed and reached between us. Her pussy was drenched.
I groaned as I slid my fingers between the wetness. “I want to taste this.”
The corner of Isabella’s lip quirked. “Why don’t you?”
“Because there are Italians waiting for my bullets,” I ground out.
Fear flashed momentarily through her eyes.
“The Scorso Mob,” I snapped.
She relaxed and then shivered as I rubbed her clit.
Dammit, there wasn’t time for feasting! Our few encounters had always been brief and heated. I swore to myself I would make it so that we would have time, and I could spend hours with my face buried against her, those legs wrapped tight around my head, and make her come over and over until she couldn’t walk.
That was why I was doing all of this. The plan had changed once again. I was going to burn the Rinaldi Famiglia to the ground, so there was no chance they would take her from me when I faked her death and stole her back to my lair in Chicago.
And then I would spend the rest of my damned life showing her just how good it was to be mine.
I pushed my fingers deep into her core, enjoying the way her eyelids fluttered closed. My touch worked in and out, teasing and making sure she was nearly there already. When she was more than ready to take me, I pulled my fingers out as she whimpered in protest.
While I angled myself to her entrance, I brought my fingers, coated in her wetness, to my lips. Her eyes widened as I swallowed them. While the possessive demonstration was for her benefit, the taste was all mine to enjoy.
Fuck me…. There was no way I could wait for the perfect opportunity to devour her. I would have to sneak into her room after the next sunset just to steal another taste.
“Hands on my shoulders and eyes on me,” I growled, shifting so both my arms braced on either side of her head.
The tip of my dick teased her entrance and the moment she obeyed, I pushed the whole length inside her in one hard thrust.
Isabella gasped, swallowing her cry.
I drew back and snapped my hips forward. The pleasure was electric. Each thrust sent another bolt of it through me.
“Let me in,” I demanded, lowering my head to nip at her throat.
Her strangled protest was adorable.
I continued to thrust savagely into her while licking and sucking a path along her throat. “You might hate that I found you, but your pussy fucking loves that I’m back.”
Isabella whimpered. Her nails dug into the muscle on my shoulders.
“That’s it, Izzy. Scratch me. Cut me.” My dick pounded into her tightness, despite the resistance still in her legs. “Do whatever you need to do, sweet siren, but just open for me.”
“I can’t open any more than I already am,” she hissed.
My voice dripped with venom. “You can, so fucking take me.”
She wriggled, moving her arms under me to wrap around my back. Her hips tipped back and legs wrapped around me. What she didn’t quite realize was that by doing that, she’d relaxed.
I plunged deeper than before, stretching and filling every bit of her. A minuscule stab poked the sensitive tip of my dick, but her cries and whimpers, muffled against my flesh, distracted me. I pulled back to thrust in harder. Pain flared across my skin as she marked me.
“That’s it, rusalka, mark me,” I urged, quickening my pace.
I was going to wear her marks proudly for the next few days.
I drove into her with reckless abandon. Her muscles tightened. Our heavy breathing filled the space.
She was so beautiful, such a good fucking girl. And most importantly—mine. All mine. I told her as much in a long, broken string of Russian.
“Look at me,” I demanded.
“Phantom, I—”
“Ilya. It’s Ilya, and you’ll use it when you come,” I rasped.
Those midnight eyes blinked at me. Her lips parted, words on the tip of her tongue.
I cut them off with a sharp command. “Now say it. Say my name.”
Her response was a hoarse, whispered cry. The little monster shattered around me. I dove to taste her release, swallowing the name on her lips.
With one final thrust, I emptied myself deep inside her. Nothing was keeping me from invading every aspect of her life, even this. She could prevent a pregnancy if she chose, but I was marking her womb with my seed, filling her with my essence. If we did create life, she would be long gone before anyone discovered the secret.
Holding her tight, I made a thousand silent promises, brushing my lips over her skin as they poured from my very soul into hers. There was no way hers didn’t hear. The connection we shared made such communication possible.
Much to my regret, I resisted the urge to take another round. There were heads that needed severing and an empire that needed to topple.
I pressed a final kiss on her mouth and pulled back. My dick was drenched in a mixture of us both. I tucked him away, relishing the filthy detail that he would be coated with the evidence while I worked. Eventually, I would have to shower, but that could wait for a little while.
I did, however, wet a clean cloth, and brought that plus a dry one back to the bed. “Spread your legs, Izzy.”
She pressed her lips tight and shook her head.
The flash of disobedience sizzled through my veins. There wasn’t time to properly play with her, to teach her the consequences of even the simplest denial.
I leaned over her, my fingers tugging at her knees. “Open.”
“It’s messy.”
Exactly. What I wouldn’t give to enjoy the evidence of our lovemaking with each of my five senses, including taste, until my primal nature was temporarily sated. “You deny me the sight?”
Her mouth opened and shut. She might have grown up in a mob, but clearly she hadn’t experienced the more carnal arts. That black thought sent a surge of victory through me. She would experience all the filthy talking, all the pleasurable acts with me.
Slowly, she parted her knees.
It was a mess. I had to clench my jaw tight and forbid myself from doing something about it. Any chance of my dick softening vanished. Reluctantly, I pressed the warm cloth against her pussy and draped the dry one over her belly.
“You don’t have to worry about a pregnancy,” the siren confessed, capturing her bottom lip to gnaw between her teeth.
I narrowed my gaze. Her insides were still hot with my seed, and she was shattering the fantasy.
“After our time in Chicago, I went on birth control. I have a copper IUD,” she explained. The sudden shyness was intoxicating enough to sooth the inner beast, who wanted very much to sink into her again.
That explained the barely noticeable pricks when I drove deep.
Her voice turned breathless. “And I’m clean, so you don’t have to worry about that.”
The situation unfolded rapidly from her point of view. The fierce mafia princess might exist in this terrible world, fighting every day for survival, but in this matter, she was innocent.
“I’m good too, rusalka. Don’t add that worry to your plate.” I reached to caress her cheek, and Isabella visibly relaxed, even folding into the touch. “I have to go now. Be a good girl and sleep for me. You won’t be doing much of that in the upcoming nights.”
Isabella pushed to her elbows, brow scrunched in confusion. “You’re taking a big risk coming here.”
Soon it wouldn’t be a risk. The men who’d dared to make her a prisoner would die, and their followers would scatter. I already destroyed her wedding out of spite, it wouldn’t take long to destroy her prison knowing what waited for me when I rescued her. Plus, there was a street war between the mafia families over bad contracts. The distraction would make my own destruction much easier.
What started as a kidnapping now morphed into complete and utter annihilation. Isabella would walk over the ashes, kicking the dust from her boots as we left town together.
I kept that all to myself. Partly, I didn’t want her to do something rash and put herself in unnecessary danger. But also…I didn’t want to hear that she would rather stay in prison than come with a monster like me. Freeing her would be easy compared to convincing her that we belonged with one another. That consideration would be something I had to earn.
And dammit, I would.
As I passed the reading nook, I pointed at the side table next to her armchair. “There’s a sub here. Extra meat for protein. I want you to eat the whole thing before morning.”
The soft gasp made me smile. I smirked into the dark. Her surprise was adorably sweet.
“Elij—I mean, Ilya,” she breathed as I opened the window.
I looked over my shoulder, expecting her to say something about the food. I braced myself for the argument to convince her to eat. I anticipated it being a touchy subject, but I needed her to know how beautiful she was and suck the venom the bitch inflicted on her about her body image from her mind.
Again, my sweet siren surprised me by saying the opposite of what I expected. “Be safe tonight.”
Those words gave me more hope than I deserved. “Always.”