Chapter 17 Blood & Other Stains #2
With her legs trapped by the clothing still wrapped around her calves, as well as the clothing bunched around his, and his upper body out of reach, all she could do was take it.
And that was what she’d wanted. She could easily have let her eyes roll back as the sensation crashed over her with every beautifully brutal stroke of his cock, but she refused.
She refused to not watch the pleasure on his face and the way he fought to hold out when it was clear he was already near his limit.
Otto had always been gorgeous to her, but in that moment, as he stared back at her and ground himself as deep as he could possibly go, they may as well have existed on another plane. He became something otherworldly to her.
He let out a growl, shoved her shirt up, then her bra, and bent himself almost awkwardly over her.
Somehow the angle drove him deeper—or at least harder—inside her, and he took one of her breasts into his mouth as both of his hands settled over hers.
He threaded their fingers, tortured her nipple, and she swore he grazed her cervix.
Her world exploded, a sprinkling of pain bursting into euphoria as the orgasm tore a scream from her throat. She pinched her thighs tight against him and dug her nails into the backs of his hands, desperate to hold him close, to keep him with her forever.
He smothered the cry of his own release with her breast as his cock kicked inside her and his body shuddered.
His tongue moved almost lazily over her nipple again, and several more seconds passed before he released it from his mouth.
He didn’t lift his head from her boobs, though the angle had to be hell on his spine.
Evelina blinked up at the ceiling, realizing her vision had blurred again. Shit. I am not going to cry over an orgasm, let alone from a quickie. Did that even count as a quickie?
“Fuck,” Otto groaned, “I just want to pick you up and carry you to the nearest bed without pulling either of our pants back on.”
Her lips twitched and she bounced her knees lightly against his hips. “I had a hard enough time with other women looking at you when you were fully clothed and not mine. Sorry, handsome. I don’t feel like killing all the maids.”
Otto finally lifted his head and relaxed his grip of her hands, adjusting to hold his weight off her as one thick brow curved up his forehead. “Run that all by me again?”
She blinked innocently up at him. “Chto?”
His lips lifted in a slow, delightfully wicked grin.
“You know ‘what’, brat.” He tucked a hand under her back and sat her upright as he eased back, allowing himself to slip from her with the movement.
He stilled for a beat, glanced down, and when his eyes crashed back to hers the heat had flared fresh within them. “Oops. We spilled.”
The laughter came out of her so unexpectedly that it dragged a couple of tears along for the ride, and it felt good.
Otto helped her clean up a bit and redress, and Evelina was standing off to the side and frowning at the blood on the floor when another knock sounded from the door. She wasn’t at all surprised when Otto reached immediately for whichever of the guns he’d put at his back.
Someone cleared their throat on the other side. “Ma’am.” It was Artem.
Evelina raised a brow at Otto. She shouldn’t have been teasing him, but she was still feeling lighter and wanted to embrace it while it lasted.
He let his hand fall from the weapon and tipped his head.
“Come in,” she called to Artem.
Artem stepped into the office, closing the door behind him, and paused again. He blew out a sigh. “Tolya told me, but … damn. I’m sorry I wasn’t here for that.”
Evelina shook her head. “We knew Viktor would be less than thrilled with me.” She carefully angled between the sizable, darkening splotch of red and the other stain she was absolutely going to ignore that still glistened on the floor directly in front of the desk, making her way around to the tall chair at the back.
It seemed like that was where she should be sitting if it was time to be doing professional things.
Objectively, as it was Artem, they could move to the set of more comfortable chairs. But she kind of just wanted to toss them out alongside the throw rug they sat on, despite that no blood actually marred them.
Otto followed behind her and put his back to a wall, blocking no one’s line of sight but keeping himself close.
At some point, they were going to have to take a moment to discuss and re-evaluate roles.
She trusted him most and did want him at her back, but she did not want him forever slotted to the role of staff and subordinate.
She wanted him as her partner. She wanted him to do what he did hopefully because he desired to, with perhaps more awareness as to when his survival also became relevant.
But now is not the time.
She blew out a breath and waited for Artem to swing one of the chairs around, drop it carelessly over the blood, and settle in.
She willed herself not to blush and kept her hands in her lap.
“I’m the one who should be apologizing. You said earlier you had something I needed to know, and I’ve had so much going on I didn’t process that.
” She waved a hand pointlessly. “Which hasn’t exactly lessened, either. So, you first. What’s your news?”
Something that might have been surprise flashed across his eyes, there and gone.
Evelina patted herself on the back at the notion she might be learning some portion of his expressions.
Artem settled into the chair, arms hanging over the shorter edges of the armrests, and obliged her.
“Last night, my crew had been scheduled to pick up a weapons shipment one of our regular suppliers was bringing in. It’d been in the works for weeks, nothing out of the ordinary.
Except when we rolled up, the scene was a little too quiet—the kind that gets your guard up. ”
Evelina nodded. She may not have field experience, but she knew what he meant.
Just like she understood what he’d already said and feared what was about to drop.
She hadn’t been ignorant to the dark side of her family’s business since she was a young girl, and she knew well that weapons were one of their more important commodities.
Sometimes they traded off what they received for a higher cut, sometimes they kept them to resupply or bolster their own stock.
Weapons were constantly in demand in their business, after all.
And that was what made her nervous.
Artem continued, speaking calmly, but also quietly, “We should’ve been met by a crew of four, minimum. They should’ve had one or two trucks, depending on the vehicle’s size. We were expecting a dozen crates, each loaded with guns. I have a list of specifics.”
“Forward it to me,” Evelina said. It would be easier to have a reference than to try and remember that type of detail.
Artem nodded. “What we found instead was nothing—almost.” His brow furrowed.
“There was one crate, the lid just resting on top. And inside was one of the guys from the crew we were supposed to meet, with a hole between his eyes.” He reached inside his coat pocket and extracted a piece of torn-off notepaper. “This was paperclipped to his collar.”
Otto pinched the obviously bloodied paper from Artem’s grasp, stepped slightly back, and read it aloud. “To, chto bylo tvoim, teper’ moye.”
Evelina let her head drop back against the tall headrest of what had once been her father’s chair.
What was yours is now mine.
“So, Pyotr’s sabotaging the entire clan in his efforts to thwart me, and he’s not even hiding it now.” There was no one else with motivation to leave a message like that, least of all for the only brigadier who’d outwardly sworn loyalty to her.
“I don’t know what else there is for us to think,” Artem said, his tone grave. “The boy has been suspiciously invisible today.”
That was quite suspicious. More than Artem yet knew, and she did need to remedy that.
Otto silently set the stained paper down on the desk and moved back into position.
Evelina glanced at it, then returned her focus to Artem. “Is there more?”
Artem shook his head. “Not especially. I took the note for obvious reasons, and in the interest of unnecessary complications, we left without touching anything else. Who or how many others on our contacts’ side may have known we were the ones they were supposed to meet, I can’t say.
We had a mutually non-specific agreement.
But I doubt very strongly that Pyotr left the rest of the delivery crew in better shape, so that bridge is burned, regardless. ”
“And now Pyotr and whomever is supporting him has an upgraded supply of weaponry.”
“And that, yes.” Artem’s lips twitched. “On the bright side, I hear he’s just recently lost his newest brigadier.”
Otto grunted. “Interesting. I did just get a new gun.”
The men exchanged weird, bonding chuckles and Evelina felt herself smiling as if she were a part of the moment. Am I? Bozhe moy, I might be.
The moment passed, and Artem’s expression sobered.
“Regarding the sweep upstairs,” he said.
“The body in your bedroom is definitely Chek. Looks like they left him to bleed out on your sofa. I’m afraid the entire suite is as trashed as the front space you saw.
We’d need a more detailed comb-through to identify any pieces not destroyed.
” His gaze flicked between them. “We found that pass-through you mentioned in the closet, and unfortunately, the other room was hit, too. Although not as thoroughly. And no dead bodies were left behind.”
Evelina nodded as a sort of numbness crawled up her chest. It was the information she’d expected.
It was a huge problem, because where the hell was she supposed to sleep if both hers and Otto’s rooms had been thrashed?
Then there was Chek. A man she’d never met, never even seen the face of, who’d died because he liked her in some way more than her bastard cousin and been assigned to stand in front of an empty room.
Or, arguably, who’d died because she’d been too stupid to remember the danger suddenly posed by the closet passage.
When the numbness wore off again, she’d surely feel worse about that.
Otto spoke while she was still attempting to process. “We’re gonna need those bags I dropped in the hall.”
“I brought them down, actually,” Artem replied, jerking a thumb toward the door. “Just wasn’t sure how much blood had spilled in here.”
Right, because that’s pretty much all— Evelina clapped a hand to her face so hard, so fast that it practically echoed through the room. Pinpricks of pain only sharpened the fresh tears threatening to fall.
“Lina?”
Her throat swelled. “Mamma’s boxes,” she said on a gasp, speaking through her hand.
She sucked in a breath and willed herself to cling to some edge of composure.
It helped that Otto pulled her hand from her face and into his grip, but she needed information from Artem this time, so she made herself look outward.
“There were— I had two boxes. Small, dirty, old shoeboxes. They were in my closet on a low shelf. They were my mother’s … her memories. Did you find them?”
This time, what she saw on Artem’s face could only have been sympathy, and she was suddenly not so sure she was glad she was learning to read him in the slightest. “I’m sorry, ma’am. I didn’t see anything like that.”
Her heart lurched and her gaze snapped over to where her purse hung precariously off the coat rack.
She didn’t truly even remember Otto peeling it off her and draping it there, but he had to have.
And now, forever more, the three photos and single letter inside—the ones she’d brought to share with that useless PI—were all she had left of her mother’s nearly forgotten history.
It felt like failure all over again.
Her phone chose that time to ring, buzzing obnoxiously through the sudden and oppressive silence.
Evelina cut a look to the device that rested on the side of the desk, but all that showed on the screen were the unhelpful words Private Caller.
And she didn’t frankly care who it was, because in that moment, her heart was finding one more way to break.
The only person she could imagine answering a phone for was already next to her.
Otto rocked back on his heels, looking toward the phone. “Sure you want to miss that?”
“You can answer if you want. I don’t … have the energy.”
It occurred to her, as Otto lifted the phone, that it could be Pyotr calling from a new and blocked number. Objectively, she did need to talk to that shitstain. But she’d rather do so when she felt stronger, which in itself left her conflicted.
Thinking of Pyotr made Evelina realize she still needed to tell Artem about Kat.
Otto’s hand moved to her shoulder as he spoke into the phone, having already stood and connected the call. “I’ll give her your message if it’s worth her time.”
Artem chuckled quietly. It was so much the opposite of any reaction her father would have had if he’d heard Otto speaking like that to literally anyone without instruction.
Otto’s grip suddenly tightened, conveying unexpected urgency. “Wait.” He paused, but his next words were not for the caller. “Lina,” he said, dropping back to a crouch and holding the phone to her. “You’re gonna want to take this.”
Evelina blinked at him, confused at his uncharacteristic insistence.
“It’s about your aunt.”