16. Carina
CARINA
He didn’t dismiss me.
He didn’t laugh at my idea.
None of them did.
Even though I would never want to be excluded from men making plans, I left Maksim to go upstairs to bed. They’d move on my proposal to set up a sting targeting my brother, but they had shifted the discussion to following up on that drive-by attempt at the handoff today.
I didn’t need to hear what happened there. I could already assume. Dean and the other Volkov men would show no mercy and kill those who’d tried to play dirty on that small-stakes deal.
Exhaustion tugged at me as things seemed to fall into place.
My brother had abandoned me here, and the punch of that still ached.
Arturo hadn’t contacted me. He’d banished me from the Cartel. Cut from my home and the legacy of power I wanted to keep strong in honor of my mother and father, I felt cast adrift. Lost and discarded.
I went into the room I shared with my husband, the man who was supposed to keep me from ever feeling lost or ungrounded.
“It’s not the same,” I whispered to myself. “It would never be the same.”
Losing my family and my heritage wasn’t a hole that a new future could heal over.
All that happened today was another step toward showing Maksim and his brothers and cousins that I wasn’t here as a spy.
How could I be a spy when my brother wanted nothing to do with me?
When he was probably moving the Cartel’s alliance so far from anything our father had arranged in his lifetime?
A long shower didn’t dispel this gnawing ache in my stomach. Going to bed and closing my eyes didn’t erase the worry about what was going on with this conviction that I was caught between two worlds.
In the morning, I woke up to find Maksim in bed next to me.
Shifting to face him as he rested, I sighed heavily and wished it weren’t so complicated.
That I could accept him and this Bratva family without the guilt of feeling like I was forsaking what my father would have wanted from me.
Of course, I would’ve married. My father would’ve been more careful in choosing my husband, rather than how my brother jumped at the first chance of getting rid of me.
But my father also had to be rolling over in his grave at how his son was screwing this all up, siding with corrupt enemies who couldn’t really care about investing in trade agreements.
Before I could get up and look forward to a grueling workout to vent these emotions bottling up inside me, he woke up and pulled me closer. I hadn’t realized he was that close to waking up.
He didn’t speak, simply hauling me closer until I was draped over him. His lips brushed over mine as he held the back of my head, ensuring that I wouldn’t attempt to leave him in bed.
Seconds of heat built into torrid moments of fiery need.
Soft presses of our mouths escalated into our parted lips and dueling tongues.
I ground down against him as he placed his big hands on me.
One on my back and the other on my ass. All to pull me toward him and so that I couldn’t miss the bulge of his erection.
I retreated for air, panting and marveling at how quickly, how fully, he could bring me into lust like this. Sliding my legs apart more, I pressed my hips down against him to grind over that big, thick cock I wanted so badly.
“Thank you.”
I blinked, not expecting that.
“Thank you for helping us with what you shared last night.”
I swallowed, feeling that twin sensation of elation and guilt.
If I helped him and the Bratva to stay strong, was I forsaking my father and the Cartel?
Or was I just trying to stop my brother, the only one who had to be reined in?
If my father were alive and still in charge, he’d have his priorities straight.
He wouldn’t see the Bratva as enemies and would want to help them.
That was what I thought I was doing too.
“I appreciate your expressing loyalty to me.”
And giving up on my Cartel?
Homesickness struck, but with the desire coursing through my veins, I took the easy way out of even thinking about how badly I wanted what wasn’t there anymore.
The Cartel compound and villa weren’t my home.
My father and mother weren’t alive.
This hard, strong, and warm man was all I could focus on regardless of how I felt torn in two. This deep feeling of peace and bliss that he could give me would mend that rift right now.
I kissed him and hoped he couldn’t tell how conflicted I felt.
“You’re mine, Carina,” he said when he nudged my nightgown up so there would be no barrier between us. “My wife, my strategist.”
I moaned at the drag of his dick under my pussy. He was framing his expression as ownership, and I refused to ever be owned. But like this, before I could crawl up a little more and sink down on him, I had to confess that I was. I was his—like this.
“Your idea confirmed that the Hernandez Cartel is linked to Gregori’s network.”
I froze, watching him as he confirmed that connection. How he could even think, let alone speak, when his dick was posed at my entrance was beyond me. “What?”
He kissed me deeply, twining his fingers in my hair as he rocked his hips up to encourage me to wrap around him.
“Elena looked into the Hernandez money trails. They are linked as intermediaries to Gregori’s network.”
I waited to take his cock.
“We reached out to your brother about that shipment, but he hasn’t replied yet,” he added.
Which neither confirmed nor denied whether he was working with Gregori by going with them as a buyer.
“But this is one step closer to knowing who to look out for.” He kissed me again and rocked his hips against mine with more force to remind me that I was stalling.
“The Hernandez Cartel are working with Gregori.” I tilted my hips and began to slide down on his dick.
He nodded, his face twisted with the agony of my going too slowly.
And my brother might be working with him as well.
“Thanks to your insight,” he said in a pained whisper of need as I took him all the way to the hilt.
I kissed him, receiving what I never thought I’d really have.
Validation.
Trust.
Respect for my input.
This doesn’t seem like it’s only an arrangement anymore.
As I continued to ride him, dragging my body over his as he thrust up into me in sync with how I gyrated on him, I relished that among all the emotional turmoil of having to leave all of my past and know my brother had erred with the direction of the Cartel I still cared about, I might be able to embrace the best of both worlds—finally feeling like a respected and trusted member of operations and a lover who deserved this sweet bliss in his arms.