Chapter 50
fifty
He is holding himself back again.
The monster inside. The one that tells him to take me and fuck me until he’s proven to me who owns me.
Him.
Heart and soul.
It’s foolish of me to give him so much when I doubt I will get a return on my investment. Sometimes that is just how life plays its cards.
“Ava.” My name is a pained groan on his lips. His voice thick, eyes darkening as he stares into mine. Conflict dances across his stormy gray irises like clouds just before the rain.
I touch his lower lip with my thumb, surprised at how soft it is, so different from the pleasant roughness of his three days scruff.
Matthias doesn’t wince or pull back as I gently caress the split on his lower lip.
He is a beast after a battle and wired from the adrenaline rushing through his system. But I don’t care.
I want all of him.
He is watching me carefully. Looking for signs of unease or apprehension. He won’t get any of that from me.
Lacing my hands behind his neck I whisper my plea. “Just touch me, Matthias. Don’t think.”
I rest my ear against his defined chest and listen to the steady, dependable beat of his heart as I wait for him to make his move.
My patience is rewarded when he places one hand on my hip so that he is holding me, his fingers hesitant as he squeezes me tightly, his fingertips digging into my flesh, thumbs grazing the waistband of my pajama shorts. He presses me forward, gently, as if he is afraid he will break me.
I’m not so easy to break.
I let the line of my body meet his, and even through his all-consuming warmth, a shiver bubbles down my spine, my nipples hard against the thin fabric of my silken top.
He isn’t moving nearly fast enough for me. Finally, when I can no longer stand the anticipation and tension that winds tight around us, I lean on the tips of my toes and bring his head down so I can press my lips against his.
Matthias growls, low in his chest, the vibrations running straight to my already soaked core.
With a burning need and deep unsatiated hunger, he devours my mouth with his. Taking control.
“This isn’t going to be slow, Red,” his gravelly voice, low in my ear hardens my nipples further until I am sure they will tear right through my silken top. “I’m going to fuck you and you’re going to take it like the good girl you are.”
Breathless and wanting, all I can do is nod.
“Words, Krasnyy,” he warns.
“Yes,” I whisper breathily.
Desire pools in his eyes. Oh, he likes that.
In mere seconds he has me stripped of my flimsy pajamas. Hands on my waist, he twists me, and my stomach hits the black-glossed lacquer of our dresser. He forcefully bends me over the pristine wood, my coming down on its top, scattering the few trinkets on top.
His hand connects with my ass, and I let out a long, sultry moan.
“Yes, what?”
Biting my lower lip, I remain silent.
Another smack and then another.
“Yes, what, Red?”
“Yes sir.” I gasp when his hand comes around to pinch my clit.
“Good girl.” I preen under his praise.
Matthias enters me with zero hesitation and tenderness. I cry out at the force of his aggressive thrust, but he doesn’t stop and I don’t want him to.
He’s savage and unrestrained as he thrusts in and out of my wet heat, filling me wholly and completely.
His hand buries itself in my hair and pulls, eliciting a whimper from my lips as my back is forcibly bowed, the move pushing him deeper inside of me.
“Matthias,” I cry out his name as the sharp pain of his unrelenting thrusts drives through me harder and rougher. Can you bruise a vagina? Is that a thing? If it is, I am sure as hell going to have one tomorrow. “I want to feel all of you.”
The pain begins to fade into a steep euphoria. Unadulterated desire clenches inside of me, the coil in my belly tightening more and more.
His free hand snakes around to my throat, cutting off my air as he uses me for his own pleasure. I want him to use me to work off the devil lurking underneath his skin. The one he often tries to hide.
He once tells me I didn’t need a knight in shining armor.
He was right.
I need a monster and as the sharp edges of bliss roll through my veins, so potent I can barely think, I know he was right.
Rest for me is fitful that night as I lie in the bed Matthias and I truly bonded in. It is the place he and I both put everything on the table. The day he told me that I never needed a prince charming. That a monster would do.
He was my monster.
A monster I would do anything to get back.
Every night is the same. Visions of him dance through my dreams. Memories of our time together. Each time I wake with my hand between my legs, I wonder if there will ever be anyone else or if I am doomed to lust after a man buried six feet under.
A soft reminiscent sigh falls from my lips as I push away the fading desire left by my dreams and ready myself for the day.
There are several files that still need to be decrypted, but Mark has made headway on hacking into the Wells Fargo mainframe to find the owner of the mysterious bank account number.
Bank account numbers are assigned based on availability and branch locations.
The sixteen-digit account number originated from a branch based out of Boston.
A creeping sensation slithers up my spine when he informed me of the account’s origins.
There is only one person I know who would have a bank account that originated in that city.
My grandfather.
Libby did her research into Seamus McDonough not long after she encountered him with Elias. The dates go back nearly a year, right after I ran away. Her notes state that she suspected we were somehow related.
The most disturbing part?
My sister managed to link him back to my mother’s abduction.
Unable to acquire Katherine Moore’s case number. Managed to hack crime scene photos, but the evidence has obvious signs of tampering as does the coroner’s report. There are things that aren’t lining up and they all lead back to the man with the silver cross. Detective on case…
Full stop.
It is her final note on the subject, and it isn’t even finished.
“Have we gotten any packages in from the Portland police?” I ask Maksim. He is usually the one who deals with deliveries.
“Nyet,” he answers in Russian. They have taken to saying small words in Russian here and there to assist me in learning the language. Small step, Vas said, to help me connect with the men and women I command.
Not that all of them speak Russian. There are more than a few Italians and Greeks in the mix, too.
“Spasiba,” I murmur, dejected at still not having the shipment the woman promised me.
It has been nearly three weeks since she told me she would send the documents and released evidence over and there is nothing.
When I tried calling the precinct again, they told me she wasn’t in. Vacation or something like that.
I am calling bullshit.
“What did you order?” Vas queries, his eyes not moving from his cell phone as Maksim drives through the compound and away from the administration building.
“Case file and evidence from my mother’s murder,” I admit with a sigh. “She was supposed to send it three weeks ago and now she is on vacation.”
“Stinks of something foul.”
I nod my head in agreement.
“She mentions that there were some big names who had a hand in my mother’s case file,” I think back to the phone conversation I had with her. “She doesn’t say who. Just that the detective on the case, Jonny Morelli, was as dirty as they come.”
“Why would they send you the files on an open case?”
“According to her the case is closed.”
“Did they ever find out who did it?” Maksim eyes me through the rearview mirror.
“Well—no.”
Now that he points it out, I don’t remember anyone being arrested and charged with my mother’s murder. Nothing. If that is true, how did they close the case?
“Stop the car.”
Maksim growls as he slams on the brakes. Vas grunts, his phone flying from his hands, his body jolting forward with the force of the stop.
“What the fuck?”
My eyes drift out the window as we speak, landing on the capacious grass courtyard that sprawls across one part of the compound. It is eleven in the morning, and it is already crawling with people.
Not just any people. Kids.
Teens to be more exact.
They are dressed in workout gear and paired off in groups of two or three.
“Why the hell aren’t they in class?” I snap, throwing the door of the car open and stepping out.
“Ava…” Vas calls, but I slam the door on him before he can finish his sentence. “Wait.”
Fucker gets out of the car.
I survey the scene before me with a fearful trepidation I have never experienced before.
Pain zings across my chest, heart lurching as I imagine the innocent faces of the children before me dying in a war they have no right being a part of.
The students are focused, our sudden halt not even registering on their radar as they dutifully perform maneuver after maneuver.
Roman, their instructor, calls them out.
Some of them I recognize as ones Kiernan and Seamus drilled into me when they first taught me to defend myself.
The longer I watch, the more complex and dangerous the moves become.
“What are you thinking?” I hiss at Vas when he comes to stand beside me.
“They’re training,” he says, pointing at the obvious. “We’re readying them for war.”
“They’re children.”
Vas shakes his head sadly. “They haven’t been children for a very long time, Ava. You should know that.”
He is right.
I do know that. Most of them grew up just like me and Matthias. There is no doubt in my mind that some of them endured much worse.
“They need to focus on their grades and graduating,” I reprimand harshly. “Not being forced to learn how to fight in a war they don’t belong in.”