17. Maksim
MAKSIM
Carina’s openness to viewing her brother as a new connection to Gregori was a breakthrough.
She hadn’t backtracked from this tip that Enrique had given her.
She hadn’t tried to twist anything into her favor, as a way of only favoring her Cartel and not our Bratva.
And the rest of us noticed that shift.
Adrik wasn’t as wary of trusting her and letting her into our inner circle. Even Alexei developed a cynical sense of believing her and staying openminded to what she pointed out.
With time, more of the guards and soldiers would come to see her with the same level of faith that they’d put in Elena after she’d come here.
But it didn’t escape my notice that she was withdrawn in a different respect. Almost as though she’d been struggling with how she’d been sent to marry me with no farewell to the life she’d lived.
In the morning after a late-night planning exercise where we devised another way to test who in the distribution and smuggling industry was changing their loyalties, Lev commented on her seeming glum and more distracted than usual.
“Maybe she’s pregnant?” he guessed.
I shot him a look. “Isn’t that a lame and stereotypical guess?”
He shrugged. “I’m assuming it’s a valid one.”
It was valid only in the sense that Carina and I never used protection. And neither of us could keep our hands off each other.
“She would tell me,” I said.
He arched a brow. “Would she?”
I supposed he was thinking of how Elena had acted differently and more subdued when she knew she was pregnant and hesitated to own up to it with Adrik.
Reminded of how my brother had been so excited to become a father prompted me to wonder how I would react.
I had enough of a headache in the beginning of balancing my responsibilities of overseeing shipments to incorporate the burden of fitting a wife into my life. At least, I had viewed it as a burden.
But a child?
It’d be something else to pull at my attention, but as the concept simmered in my mind, it wasn’t a bad one. Fatherhood didn’t intimidate me as much as marrying had, perhaps because I knew that Carina and I would both be in charge of raising our son or daughter.
Enough. She’s not pregnant. She would’ve said something, and it’s only been two months since she’s been here.
“I would like to think so.” I sighed, watching her with Nikolai and Alexei as they conferred about other ways to test who could be under Gregori’s influence. “I think she’s feeling… stuck.”
“Stuck?” He smirked. “She’s got to be getting used to the idea of being married by now.”
“Not just the marriage.” I rubbed my jaw. “But something more like a displacement. I suspect Arturo didn’t arrange for her to marry me out of any show of good faith between our families.”
He shrugged. “You thought that since the beginning.”
“Yes, but now that I’m picking up on how much she thrives on being valued and how much she seems to enjoy earning the praise for her intelligence, I think she’s realizing how little he valued her.”
“Kind of like how John Morovov used Elena to do the accounting for him.”
“Yes and no. Morovov didn’t even know how to do any bookkeeping. He assumed that aligning with Gregori would be the solution to getting an easy life.”
“Like Arturo might be with the Cartel if he’s shifting that way.”
I nodded. “Instead of ever acknowledging how much Carina knows about the smuggling operations and letting her help him with advice, he got rid of her to have her out of the way.”
He faced me fully, contemplating it.
“From the little she has said, she views Arturo as impulsive and selfish.” I furrowed my brow at the uneasiness that gnawed at me with the thought of Carina being unhappy for so long. “She makes him sound as though he’s not receptive to advice.”
He grunted, shaking his head. It did sound like a ridiculous concept, because it was one we didn’t embrace. Adrik was taking over as the interim Pakhan for my father, but we all worked as a team. Always. None of us would ever let the power get to our heads.
“If Arturo’s lured to go with Gregori’s network and cut out of our trade agreement, Carina would be the person to tell him not to.
She’s too passionate about caring what happens to the Cartel.
She’s proud to call herself a member of the Garcia Cartel.
And I think in her eyes, she views herself as someone who should be an ambassador between our families, with true goodwill and intentions behind this union. ”
“Yeah, that would apply if Arturo isn’t going to the dark side with Gregori.”
“Until we can tell what he’s up to…” I shrugged. I just have to have faith in her and her willingness to really be mine.
That night, though, I couldn’t ignore how sullen she was. How down she seemed to be since Enrique had tipped her off about the Cartel being ruined.
After she showered and went to bed, I cleaned up and wondered how to approach it.
I came out to find her not in bed but sitting in a chair, gazing out the window and too lost in thought for my liking.
“What’s going on?”
She slowly faced me, her expression blank. “What?”
“Why are you acting like someone’s kicking you when you’re down?”
She rolled her eyes and turned to face the window again.
I caught her chin with my hand and redirected her to make eye contact. A fiery sass and stubbornness flared in her caramel eyes, so dark and full of heat at my being more direct like this.
“I’m adjusting to the fact that my brother might be making bad decisions and destroying the family and power I came from.”
You came from the Cartel, but you are mine now. I narrowed my eyes. “You’re so distracted that you’re renewing my concerns that you could be spying for him.”
She shot to her feet, removing my hold on her chin. Pure anger flashed in her eyes now. Her hands stayed in tight fists as she locked her arms to her sides, but she didn’t raise them at me.
There we go.
There’s that spirit I’ve been missing these past few days.
“Are you planning to take all that we’re scheming to him? You want to run home and give him a heads up that he’s in trouble with us?”
“No!” She scowled, showing an uncensored view of how offensive she found my proposition to be. “The Bratva and Cartel are not enemies. They shouldn’t be enemies, and there would be no point in spying for him.”
That’s not the same thing as you admitting you’re not, though.
“Arturo hasn’t contacted me since I left. He hasn’t said a word to me or acted as though I exist any longer.”
Again, that’s not the same thing as saying no.
“He erased me from his life. He’s not looking for anything from me.” She slashed her arm through the air like she could strike the thought from this room.
Still not a straight-up denial.
“You are mine, Carina. You belong to me, to the Bratva.”
She slitted her eyes and exhaled harshly through her nose.
“You aren’t part of the Cartel anymore, not like you used to be.”
A rude huff left her lips. “If you were to ask my brother, I was never a valid part of the Cartel, either, not in making any executive decisions.”
“You see yourself as mine, though? As part of the Volkov family?” I tipped my chin up, looking down my nose at her. “Not part of the Garcia Cartel?”
She nodded, but she didn’t let go of that fire in her eyes.
“You swear your loyalty to me, Wife?”
One more stiff nod as she seethed at me.
“Prove it.”
Now she changed her attitude. Curiosity wiped away the anger and frustration. She arched one brow, not backing up and staying right in my face.
“Prove it,” I repeated. “Prove that you see yourself as mine. As my wife. As my strategist.”
An array of emotions crossed over her face as she seemed to search mine for an answer.
Then as she dipped her chin and almost tricked me into thinking she was playing for a demure and coy look, she lowered.
Crouching. Then kneeling. All while keeping her eyes on mine, she got down on the floor in front of me and tugged my pants down.
I hadn’t bothered with underwear after my shower, and my cock pointed right at her, hard and stiff, a glistening drop of precum leaking from the tip.
It was aimed at her lips, and the sight of her licking them coaxed a roar to build up in my chest.
Without any delay, she wrapped her fingers around my dick and brought it to her mouth. Watching as I disappeared between her lips was the most erotic vision I could have ever imagined. But this wasn’t a fantasy. This wasn’t an illusion.
My wife, the former Cartel princess who hadn’t been appreciated, was on her knees, taking me as far as she could into her hot, velvety mouth.
Sucking hard, she drove me to the brink of coming. Bobbing back and forth, she goaded me to match her rhythm and fuck her wet mouth. Moaning slightly as she stared at me with greedy desire, she demonstrated how she could be defiant yet able to compromise.
As I slid my hands over her head, letting my fingers sink into the thick glossiness of her hair, I tried to pace myself and not come too soon.
Like this, she was irrevocably mine.
I owned her body.
I maintained her loyalty.
Yet, as I reveled in the triumph of possessing her, I had to dismiss the fleeting, nagging insistence that I didn’t have all of her.
Not her heart.
And as I came, shooting my cum into her throat, I growled and knew that this pleasure she gave me was only the next best thing.
I wanted all of her.
Including this fantasy that she could love me.
This isn’t an arrangement.
It hasn’t been one at all.
Her throat worked as she strained to swallow every drop I gave her. Her eyes watered at the stretch of her mouth around my girth.
Before she could get desperate for more air, I pulled out and lowered to guide her to lie back. I was famished for her. I was starving for the sounds of her as she came.
Crawling toward her, I parted her legs and dipped my face down to her cunt, revealed under the lift of her nightgown.
I might not know how to earn her love.
But I could at least show her this—by making her feel good and sated—that she could trust me with her heart.
If she could be brave enough to let me close to it.