Chapter 33 Laszlo
Laszlo
Seeing my name carved into her skin, so thoroughly mine, is a high that hardens my cock further. She is soaked, drenching my cock as she comes all over it. I slam into her again and watch the tremor run through her body.
“Khoroshaya devochka,” I mutter, gripping her hip hard enough to leave another mark. Good girl.
She tries to turn her head, trying to look back at me, and I fist my hand tighter in her hair and force her to hold still while I give her exactly what she asked for.
My name is on her skin. My cock is buried in her cunt.
My wife is wrecked under me and still taking every brutal thrust like she was born to survive me.
It does something unholy to my head.
I drag my palm back over the fresh cuts on her lower back, careful enough not to damage what I just did, rough enough that she gasps and clenches around me again.
“Fuck,” I hiss.
She is so wet now that every stroke comes with that filthy sound I know I’m going to hear in my sleep for the rest of my life.
Her thighs shake. Her back arches. She is trying to hold herself up and failing, and I love it.
I love that she trusts me enough to fall apart like this.
I love that she wanted my name on her body.
I love that she gave me that without flinching.
I hook my arm around her waist and haul her up against my chest, keeping myself buried deep while I hold her there. Her back presses against me, and I feel every shudder that goes through her.
Her head falls back against my shoulder. I press my mouth to her neck and keep moving, slower now, deeper, drawing out what I already tore from her. She is breathing in broken little gasps, every sound going straight under my skin.
I slide my hand up from her waist to her throat, not closing it, just holding her, feeling the wild beat of her pulse under my palm. She covers my hand with hers at once. That does me in more than anything else tonight. Not the trust. Not the surrender.
The choice.
She chooses me.
I turn my face into her hair and let that settle somewhere dangerous and permanent inside me. My pace falters. The edge hits hard and sudden, and I bite down on the side of her neck as I go over, holding her tight against me while the last of my control tears loose.
For a few seconds, I can’t do anything except breathe.
She goes soft in my arms, pliant with exhaustion, and I ease us both down carefully, keeping her on her side while I pull the duvet over her bare body. Her hair is a mess. Her skin is flushed. My name sits angry and fresh on her lower back, red and clean and fucking beautiful.
I brush her hair away from her face and look at her for a long second. Galina’s eyes are closed, her mouth parted, her breathing still uneven. She looks wrecked in the best possible way. Sated. Marked. Loved.
Mine.
“I want your name on me,” I whisper.
“Now?” she whispers back wearily.
“No, rest now, Galina. I want it done properly.”
Her eyes open, and she searches my face. “A new tattoo? Where? You don’t have much space left.”
I snort. “I can always find space for you.”
“Just don’t say on your cock because the healing time for that… let’s just say I’m not a patient woman.”
The laugh that escapes me is soft, quiet, but completely genuine. “I wouldn’t dare make you wait.” She hums, half asleep, and curls closer under the duvet. “Good. Because if you put my name somewhere stupid, I’ll mock you for the rest of our lives.”
“Our lives,” I repeat quietly.
Her lashes lift again. “You sound surprised.”
“I’m getting used to it.”
“You’d better,” she murmurs, voice drifting. “You’re stuck with me now.”
“Fuck, I hope so.”
That earns me the faintest smile before her eyes close properly.
I lie beside her and watch her breathing even out.
My hand rests low on her back, careful of the fresh cuts, feeling the heat of her skin under my palm.
Possessive satisfaction settles in me, dark and absolute, but under it sits something else.
Peace, maybe. Not clean. Not soft. Nothing in my life ever is. But real.
I should sleep.
Instead, I stay awake for a while, looking at her face in the low lamplight and thinking about the fact that I nearly lost this before I had even learned how to live with it.
My wife.
The words still hit like a blade sliding home.
I drift in the hazy place of amazing sex and knowing my wife is safe in my arms when the phone buzzes on the bedside table.
I’m instantly alert as Galina mumbles something in her sleep and turns over. I snatch it up, sitting up and see an unfamiliar number.
“This had better be life or death,” I growl quietly, answering it.
I hear the sounds of a fight going through the phone, and it drags Galina out of her slumber.
“Voronov,” Viktor’s voice is rough, but calm through the speaker. “Get your arse down to the club. Now.”
He hangs up.
“Club?” Galina mutters, then her eyes shoot to mine. “Zolotoy Rezerv.”
“Stay here,” I say, already moving towards the clothes I stripped off in the bathroom.
“Not a chance,” she says. “This has to do with Yelena.”
“How do you know?”
“I just do. You said trust my gut instincts.” She is out of bed and moving towards the dressing room to grab some clothes.
“You are not coming,” I state.
“Oh, yes, I am, and you can’t stop me,” she says, pulling on jeans and a long-sleeved top. Socks and boots are next.
“Galina—”
“Don’t even try it,” she says, pushing past me, looming in the doorway, shirt half undone. She snatches up her blade and the gun, holding it out to me. I take it from her and shove it in the holster at my back as I continue to do up my shirt buttons, my glare firmly on her. “You stay here.”
“No. End of discussion. She is my cousin. This is going sideways. Fast. You need me there, even if it’s just for her or the kids.”
I stare at her for one hard second and realise two things at once.
One, she is right.
Two, I fucking hate that she is right.
“Get your coat,” I say.
Her expression changes instantly. Not triumph. Focus.
She nods once and moves fast. I drag on my jacket, then grab a second gun from the drawer and shove it into my pocket.
My phone goes in next. Keys. Knife. Everything where it should be.
By the time I turn, she is back with her coat on, and her hair dragged into a rough tie, face still flushed from sleep and sex, eyes sharp as broken glass.
I catch her wrist before she reaches the door.
“What?” she says.
“If this goes bad, you stay behind me. If I tell you to leave, you leave. No fucking argument.”
Her jaw sets. “If Yelena is in danger, I’m not—”
“If I tell you to leave,” I repeat, quieter now, “it means I can’t protect you and deal with what is in front of me at the same time. So you go. That is not me dismissing you. That is me keeping my wife alive. Understood?”
She holds my gaze for a beat, then nods.
“Good,” I say, and let her go.
We move fast.
The house wakes around us the second we step into the corridor. Yuri is already coming up the stairs, gun in hand, and stops dead when he sees us both dressed.
“Car,” I say. “Now. Get Grisha.”
He nods once and moves.
Galina keeps pace with me all the way down. No questions now. No argument. Just that sharp, focused silence she gets when fear and purpose fuse into one thing. It suits her far too well.
Grisha barrels in through the back hall, already armed, Dmitri on his heels. Both take one look at my face and stop wasting time with unnecessary words.
“Zolotoy Rezerv,” I say. “Now.”
Grisha’s eyes flick to Galina, then back to me.
“She’s coming.”
Grisha just nods and moves.
Galina and I climb into the back of the Range Rover, and Grisha fires up the engine. Dmitri and Yuri follow as we hit the streets, heading for the infamous Zolotoy Rezerv club that I haven’t even had a chance to visit yet, with everything else going on.
“Do you think he’s bringing her through the underground network?” Galina murmurs.
“I think whatever is going on, it has definitely gone sideways. I’ll reserve judgement.”
“Probably wise,” she says and sits back as we hurtle through the deserted streets of London to the club that was handed to me as part of Galina’s dowry.
The club comes into view behind a line of black cars and harder men.
Zolotoy Rezerv sits dark from the street, apart from the low gold wash over the entrance and the red glow at the side alley that leads to the private access point. It looks closed to anyone who doesn’t know what it is. To me, it looks like trouble.
Grisha brakes hard at the kerb.
I’m out first, one hand on the gun at my back, the other already reaching for Galina before she can move too far without me. She takes it for exactly half a second, then slips free to keep pace on my left.
The front door is open.
Bad sign.
I look at Galina with my finger on my lips. She nods and sticks close, her knife gripped in her hand, ready to use. I have no doubt she will cut any fucker who comes within arm’s reach of her.
The lobby of the club is plush, except for the two men bleeding out on the floor. I don’t recognise either of them, but that’s not surprising. I approach slowly, gun levelled.
“Care to tell me why you’re bleeding out on the floor of a club that has my name on it?” I ask one of them.
“They’re his men,” Galina hisses. “I recognise them from Christmas dinner last year.”
I don’t need much more than that. I put a bullet in each of them and end their misery before either one can grunt out an explanation.
“Jesus,” she murmurs.
“Is your ID wrong?”
“No,” she grits out.
“Then pack it up for later and move on.”
Her eyes meet mine for a second, but then she nods, and we keep moving, following the trail of blood and silence deeper into the club.
Galina stays where I told her, close enough that I feel the heat of her at my side. “You ever been here?” I ask her.
“No,” comes her reply, which isn’t helpful. We are flying blind.