19. Viktor
19
VIKTOR
I held Irina close to me, wishing I could feel all of her luscious, soft skin. Until she could stand steadier, I would keep her upright. Nuzzling her neck as I caught my breath, I tugged the cups of her bra back up to contain her huge tits. She shivered under my touch, still so hazy from coming hard with me. It felt like a crime to cover her up at all, but if someone came by and saw her, gagged and her shirt wide open, I’d want to murder them.
Irina was mine.
She had wanted to give her virginity to me, no one else. I felt like a fucking caveman, a god, a rabid lover who could rut her all over again. She chose me, not anyone else. Me.
My dick was still in her where we were glued together by our combined cum. And I made no move to pull out of her as I forced her shirt back together, fastening whatever buttons were left. She was hardly decent, but nothing was revealed.
Slowly, hating that I had to end this, I slid out of her and tucked my wet dick back into my pants. Then as I turned her around, I made sure her skirt flapped down and stayed in place.
I watched her as I loosened the knot in the tie that I’d used as a gag for her. Wearing suits and ties wasn’t something I did often. After this gig was up, when I wouldn’t need my cover anymore, I wouldn’t think about ties again.
This tie, though, was now my favorite. I removed it fully from her face and tucked it into my pocket to savor later. The scorching hot memory of what we did would take a long time to fade. And this tie was my trophy, my collectible to commemorate it.
She heaved out a deep sigh, staring at me. Before she could speak, I heard the sounds of people walking nearby.
Fuck.
I kissed her, to keep her quiet. But no one passed us by. No one entered this aisle.
“Let’s get out of here before we’re interrupted again,” I said, not really joking about how Jessica had just popped in that one day.
I spoke too soon, though, because the sounds of people walking in a closer aisle came next.
Irina opened her eyes wide with panic, then stepped away from me. “I’m going to go to the ladies’ room.” She set her teeth on her lower lip. “Just to clean up the best that I can.”
I held in a growl at the thought of my cum dripping out of her. If we were somewhere more private, I would’ve pushed it back into her tight little hole.
After one more kiss to her forehead, I watched as she walked off to clean up in the bathroom.
And that was the last I saw of her.
It shouldn’t have taken me so long to figure it out. She’d bolted after Jessica caught us red-handed in an awkward and compromising position with Irina on my desk, her legs spread wide. And it seemed that she’d bolted again.
I wanted to be mad, but deep down, I couldn’t be. She wasn’t running off because she wanted to put distance between us. I didn’t think that was it. I suspected she was such a flight risk because she didn’t know how else to act afterward.
I shouldn’t have let her go.
I should’ve walked her there. Hell, I should’ve helped her clean up even if it was in the women’s restroom in the library.
When it came to Irina, I was constantly caught up between what I should and shouldn’t do. Now that I’d crossed a huge line of should and shouldn’t with her, I couldn’t care as much about being careful or walking delicately around her, as though she were forbidden.
For half of the next week, though, that wasn’t an issue. She went into hiding again, or so it seemed. Her absence was noted at my English History class, and without her there, it just wasn't the same. I had no reason to be there, pretending I was lecturing without her there to listen. Without her being there for me to watch her expressions and wonder what she was thinking.
“She didn’t come to the poetry class either,” I told Rurik near the end of the week when I was curious whether he’d seen her.
“Maybe something is going on with Igor?”
His guess didn’t fill me with any comforting hope. I was concerned about her, but I couldn’t distinguish whether I felt like that because I wanted her again or if I anticipated something happening, like an attack from the Petrovs. My mind ran a mile a minute when I thought about her. That was how much more she’d gotten under my skin from just that one time we’d fucked in the library.
I took the initiative to try to follow her some more, checking in at the public places on campus where I’d seen her before. Going to her apartment seemed like the next best step, but I would save that as a last resort. Cameras would mark my presence there. While Irina was ignorant of who I was, someone watching the Petrov footage would be able to match me to whatever latest image someone might have on file of me somewhere. Like the Baranov organization, the Petrovs had access to hackers and expert IT servicers.
After I worked out one evening—another attempt to find her, in case she was there in that skin-tight gear while she did cardio—I got a call from one of the contacts I’d spoken with in Moscow.
“What the fuck?” I whispered to myself as I looked at the number, catching my breath from a run on the treadmill.
Of all people to call me, over a month since I’d left…
“Hello?”
“Hey, Vik,” Timber answered. I never did get a solid explanation for what seemed like a cheesy, ridiculous nickname. Maybe it was an inside joke. It was irrelevant, but what he was calling to tell me wasn’t. “I might have an update for you.”
“Oh?” I’d been so focused on Irina and this current assignment that was a much-needed break from the whorehouses that I’d completely dismissed that cold case about Sonya. I, like so many others, had figured she was long gone. Dead.
“It looks like there’s been activity in that account you were asking about.”
I wiped my brow, stepping off the machine and leaving to have this call in private. “Really?” I had to wonder if the fact that I was recently in Moscow and asking around had triggered something to pop up or be revealed.
“Yeah. A withdrawal that couldn’t be traced, but then almost the same amount put right back in.”
“Hmm.”
“I have a couple of guys looking into it, but like I said before, if anyone is behind this and it’s not just a bunch of coincidences, this isn’t the work of an amateur.”
“I agree, Timber.” The only leads that Oleg had ever received about the disappearance of Sonya and Boris’s mother were loose trails of money that were hidden under layers of identities. Shell corps had him guessing for years who might have been behind the two women's disappearance—if anyone was behind it at all. Some, like Eva, believed that they’d just run away and hidden from the Baranov family, wanting out of the Mafia life and to be free like ordinary citizens.
Giving up on finishing this workout, I left and listened to the scant details Timber had to offer me. After I showered, I called Oleg to see if he wanted to meet up. I’d give him these updates as they came. That was only right.
He agreed to see me uptown, so I made the drive there. The further I got from the campus, the further from Irina, the more this longing and anxiousness settled in and took root. I couldn’t be this smitten over her already. I couldn’t be this desperate for the young virgin I’d fucked in the library. I wasn’t some new lover, an idiot who would fall for the first pussy, the first woman who’d pay attention?—
Whoa. Wait a second. Fall for?
“Forget about it,” I muttered as I drove. I shook my head, amused by the way my thoughts were going. I was not falling for my target. I refused to admit that my feelings were getting too deep where the enemy was concerned.
“It’s just sex.” And I, more than many others, should be able to respect the difference between something like true intimacy and physical fucking. I’d immersed myself in the world of sex, managing whorehouses. My view of sex had been dulled. Yet, my opinions and nagging thoughts about Irina challenged me to wonder if I’d stumbled upon something different and something so real with her.
It's just because of the danger and mystery attached to all of this. If she were just a random twentysomething wandering into the whorehouse, I wouldn’t have paid any extra attention to her.
I winced as I parked, hating the sensation that I was lying to myself.
Right?
Shelving my thoughts about Irina, I went into the warehouse where Oleg was supervising a couple of men torturing a Cartel member who’d been caught snooping around our warehouse, planting listening devices. In an office on an upper level, with one-way mirrored windows so we could look out at what happened down below, I faced the Boss.
He listened, always attentive and sharp, as I updated him about this fresh call from Timber.
“In other words,” he summed up without any strong emotion, suggesting he was tired of the lack of answers, “nothing new.”
“Sounds like it.” I shrugged and put my hands in my pockets.
“Thank you for updating me.”
“No problem.” While it would’ve made more sense for Timber to just contact Oleg himself, we maintained my role as a middle man to insulate both sides. Not just anyone could call or speak with Oleg Baranov. He was too powerful to be that accessible.
“I’m glad you had a chance to drive in and speak with me,” he added, giving me a curious look. “Not too busy following the Petrov girl today?”
I shook my head. There was no way in hell I would tell him that I had followed her recently, like in the library before I gagged her and fucked her. “She’s been lying low lately.”
“I’m not surprised.”
I furrowed my brow, instantly alert for what he could know.
“I was curious about what you said about that night when the Ilyin men were trying to capture her at that gathering.” He stared at me, serious and pensive. “So curious that I asked around about any chance the Ilyins might want to cause a diversion for Igor Petrov.”
I nodded. “I considered that as well.”
“Or if they wanted to provoke him by taking his only daughter.”
Again, I nodded in agreement. Those thoughts had hit me as well.
“What I heard is more surprising, though.” He cleared his throat then continued in his raspy smoker’s voice that wasn’t helped by his love of cigars. “It sounds like Igor Petrov is promising Irina in marriage to one of the Ilyins. Andre Ilyin, perhaps.”
I’d seen that fucker on campus, too. He had to be watching her, maybe motivated to do so because he thought he’d be marrying her.
I tensed, immediately loathing the possibility of Irina being married to… well, anyone. I’d claimed her virginity. She’d shown interest in me. The thought of her with any other man filled me with rage.
“Any thoughts on that?” Oleg asked, not judging, not fishing for anything.
I must have gone silent for longer than I’d realized. Fuming and trying to accept the gravity of this news, I blinked and searched for a response.
I had too many thoughts about Irina being promised in marriage to anyone. I couldn’t handle the image of another man even touching her. Being this possessive over her was another shouldn’t when it came to my rights with her, but I couldn’t help it.
She’s mine.
My target. My enemy. My obsession. Irina Petrov was too damn perfect for me to envision her belonging with anyone else.
I furrowed my brow, knowing I had to give him an answer, one that wouldn’t lower his faith or respect for me after an admission that I’d slept with the enemy. He wouldn’t be bothered if I’d slept with her for the sake of seducing her and manipulating her for intel, but he wouldn’t be on board with my wanting more intimacy with her for the sake of feeling complete.
“Do you trust that word?” I hated how defensive and combative I sounded. “Do you believe that he would arrange for her to marry one of them?”
He pursed his lips. “Marrying his daughter into the family of his enemy?” He shrugged. “It happens. It has happened, but it is usually in the case of surrender. Or a ploy for something else to be gained in the transaction.”
His words lingered on my mind long after I left. During the drive back to my apartment, I acted on this new urgency to make sure that couldn’t happen.
Irina would not marry a fucking Ilyin. She couldn’t be displaced from me .
Calling Rurik was my first step. But he wasn’t convinced my plan was wise.
“You want me to distract the Petrov guards from her so you can do what ?” he asked.
“Get her guards away from her so I can take her.” I hadn’t stuttered.
“Take her… to question her?”
“No. Just to have her. I—” While I knew better than to open my mouth to Oleg and say that I wanted her, I wasn’t as guarded with Rurik, with a brother. “I want her secure away from the influence of her father’s men.”
“Okay…” He still didn’t sound convinced.
It was past time for me to ask her about what Igor Petrov was up to. I had to be more direct. No more Professor Remi seducing his naughty student. It was time for me to be Vik, the lover who didn’t want her to be given to someone else, the man who was daring to hope she couldn’t be stuck on the side of the enemy forever.
I couldn’t dismiss her as only the enemy. Not when she helped Eva escape. Not when she had yet to act like she was committed to her father or family.
Because I couldn’t stand the thought of her with someone else, I had to get her somewhere I could ask her the hard questions and get to the bottom of what her father was planning—with or without her help.
As soon as Rurik got her guards away, I’d track her down and get down to all these questions she owed me answers for.