Poisoned Empire (Dashkov Crime Family #2)

Chapter 1

one

SEVERAL WEEKS LATER

“Fuck,” I nearly scream as he pistons his hips savagely, rotating them at just the right angle that has me seeing stars. “Matthias, please.”

There I am. Begging again. Screaming his name into the wee hours of the morning like a debauched whore. And I don’t think I would have it any other way.

“Come for me, Krasnyy,” he growls in my ear, the sound emanating low in his chest, causing my pussy to clench around his thick length.

A hand fists my curls, roughly pulling my head back.

My neck is now completely exposed to his roving lips that nip and suck at my skin.

There is no doubt in my mind that he is leaving marks behind; bold statements that tell the world who I belong to.

Him.

Possessive bastard that he is.

It should bother me. That primal possessiveness. I’m not his property. But in this moment, I can’t bring myself to care about anything other than the sheer pleasure he is wringing from my body.

I feel his hand come down between us, pinching my clit roughly, and I have no choice but to do exactly as he commands.

“Matthias!”

His name is a screamed prayer as the world around me shifts and lights dance across my vision like fireworks against an inky-black sky.

My body writhes beneath him, and I am only partly aware of his completion as he curses lowly in Russian, pumping into my soaked, convulsing heat a few more times before collapsing on top of me.

Matthias braces himself on his elbows, chest heaving, his tattooed skin slick with sweat. He is careful to keep his full weight off me as he buries his face in my neck, struggling to compose himself.

The only time I ever see the cold, calculating mafia boss fall apart is in our bed. Or on his desk. In the shower… there is a sense of power knowing I can cause a man like Matthias to come undone with just the touch of my hand. My mouth.

“Fuck, Red,” he whispers before collapsing on his back next to me, dragging my body against his. We fit perfectly. Like two broken halves of the same tarnished coin. I come to relish these tender moments that take place when it is simply the two of us.

My husband has grown less cold with me around the men of his inner circle, but out there, in the harsh reality of his world, there is still a distance he is forced to maintain.

Out there, among the wolves, he holds on to the hard-ass mafia Pakhan persona.

It is a part of him I know he will never be able to let go of.

That doesn’t mean he hasn’t softened behind closed doors and started to remove the stick up his ass.

I’m not na?ve enough to believe I could ever truly change him.

Just like he can’t change me. We are both products of our upbringing, and there is no reconciling that.

I understand the cold exterior will never truly melt away.

It can’t. Not if he wants to maintain control.

We live in a world that seeks out vulnerabilities and preys on them like vultures circling a carcass in the desert.

In this house, Matthias can be affectionate. Well, as affectionate as he can be since I am still betting good money that he is, in fact, part cyborg.

Out there, however, he emits a measure of control that often has me wondering if at times that is the actuale ruse.

Who is the real Matthias?

The man who holds me in his arms each night after sexing me within an inch of my life? Or the tin man he plays out there in the real world.

It doesn’t escape my notice that Matthias winces as he moves to get more comfortable.

The shootout last week still has a lingering effect.

The harsh colors of the bruises on his left side have begun to fade into a garish yellow, and despite his protests, I know his ribs are still giving him trouble.

He isn’t used to being hindered, and the attack on his motorcade wasn’t something he’d predicted.

There is regret in his eyes each time he takes in my own bruised and battered body. The marks on my chest from the seatbelt are nearly faded, and my eye is almost healed. My cheek still pains me when I chew, but none of these things bother me.

Not really.

I’ve suffered pain before.

The nightmares are the real problem. Which is why Matthias has me chanting his name in near reverence at two in the morning. The nightmares plaguing me now are different. Because the universe seems to think that piling up even more therapy-inducing incidents in my life is a great fucking idea.

Karma’s a bitch, and I’m not even sure what I did in a previous life to deserve this shit.

The only difference is that I’m no longer alone to deal with the overwhelming darkness of the past. Now, he is there alongside me, like a steady beacon thrumming in the murky blackness that threatens to devour me whole.

Some might call him a knight in shining armor.

He is anything but.

Matthias is right when he says he is a monster.

My monster.

The one who keeps all the other monsters at bay.

“You’re quiet, Krasnyy.” Two large, ink-covered, calloused fingers find purchase beneath my chin.

He gives me no choice but to look him in the face.

The man is devastatingly handsome. Outrageously so.

His stormy eyes peer into mine, eyebrow raised in curiosity as he stares at me, drawing out the deepest secrets that linger within the depths of my soul.

All without having to say a word.

“These last few days, I could hardly get you to keep quiet, especially with your sister around,” he teases. “Did I finally fuck it out of you?”

An unladylike snort escapes my lips at his bluntness. A trait I find common among most of his Russian comrades. “You wish.”

Then I sigh. “It’s nothing.” I try my best to dismiss it, but he isn’t letting it go. His eyes turn hard, his grip on my chin tightening at my lie.

“Ava.” The warning in his voice is clear as day. I’d be a fool to ignore it. A small part of me wants too though. To challenge that tone, but I’m far too exhausted. Instead, I let out another dramatic sigh, which causes his deliciously kissable lips to upturn slightly at the corners.

“I just keep… dreaming,” I whisper, mostly to the dark because talking to him is kind of hard. Not going to lie. Matthias is a man who wants to fix everything. It’s in the way he is built. The need to protect and slay is woven into the fabric of his DNA.

Or programmed into his software if I keep up with my cyborg theory.

His idea of protection is making the problem disappear, and sometimes—well, sometimes that isn’t possible.

Like now.

“Nightmares?” he whispers as the hand tucked around me gently caresses my naked side.

“That and—” God, this is difficult. Matthias is accustomed to death.

He’s grown up with it. To take a life, to see a life snuffed out—it is nothing to him.

Just another day at the office. How do I tell a man who’s grown up knowing nothing but violence that the deaths of the men who attacked us haunt me?

That even though they would have killed him and taken me, it still feels…

wrong. “I don’t deal with death like you do. I don’t enjoy it. I’m not used to it.”

There. I said it.

Matthias releases my chin, settling back into the mountain of pillows behind him, the arm now stretched behind his head comfortably.

I feel oddly bereft at the loss of his touch on my chin.

His hand around my waist still circles casually, but there has been something more intimate about being made to face him.

His silence now, when I want nothing more than to hear the deep timber of his voice, unnerves me. The only sound in the ridiculously large room is the sound of our breathing. Mine still panting, my body thrums like a live wire, always anticipating.

He has that effect on me. His touch on my skin constantly leaves a trail of electricity in its wake that never seems to wear off.

I think maybe I have offended him. That at any moment, he will get up and leave.

Or maybe even ask me to. Then again, in the little time I’ve known my new husband, I haven’t once seen him become offended.

Livid?

Fuck yeah.

But offended?

Never.

My Uncle Dante once said only weak men get offended. Powerful men let it pass. And Matthias is undoubtedly strong.

“I wasn’t always like this, malyshka.” He lets out a long, heavy breath, his gaze never wavering from the ornate ceiling.

Something tells me it makes it easier for him to speak.

“I was never really innocent. Not growing up with a man like my father, but there was a time when violence wasn’t who I was or who I wanted to be. ”

“What happened?” My voice is small. I am afraid that if I speak too loudly, I will snap the thin thread of openness he is displaying to me, and he will once again shut me out.

I don’t want that. I want him to be open with me.

He knows everything about me, whether I like it or not, and I know practically nothing about him.

“You have to understand something, Red,” he whispers to me.

“I was eleven when my father chucked me onto the cold streets of St. Petersburg with nothing but the clothes on my back. Every day I fought for food, clothing, shelter. The streets could be violent, but no one had ever tried to actively kill me. I’d been in my fair share of scrapes, but for the most part, kids were off limits.

Even to the desperate people on the streets.

“I was thirteen when I was first attacked by a kid not much older than me. Maybe fifteen or sixteen. At the time, I was taking shelter beneath a bridge with a few other kids my age, runaways mostly. Foster kids forgotten by the system. I got no warning. No time to think about what was happening. No training. He just came at me. A large knife in his hand, hacking and slicing. When I look back at it now, his moves, like mine, were sloppy. Untrained. But to a thirteen-year-old boy, he looked like an assassin.”