Chapter 25 - Iosif
“You know we can’t do that, Iosif.” Trifon’s voice sounds through the speakerphone. His face looks back at me from the phone stuck to the dash, his brow set in a severe frown.
“That’s fucked, Trif. It’s been months,” I bristle. “He came after my wife, and we’re just going to sit around with our dicks in our hands until we find some cold, hard proof?”
“Don’t play stupid,” Trifon fires back. “Driscoll could have given proof. But you killed him.”
He barrels right over me when I open my mouth to argue.
“And it’s fine. You needed to kill him. But this is bigger than your vengeance. It’s bigger than any one person’s. That’s why we haven’t just put a bullet in Viktor’s head. He is a Zakharov.”
Translation: There is more than one of them.
Cut one head off, and another grows in its place.
It doesn’t staunch my aggrieved exhale, or the glare I aim out the windshield. “I fucking hate this, Trifon.”
“I’m not exactly jumping for joy, either, bratishka. But this is how it has to be now.” He sounds exhausted. It incites a measure of guilt. I forget sometimes—I think we all do—how hard it must be to be the level-headed one all the time. To be the head that wears the crown.
I don’t envy my brother’s power. I never have. This is one of many reasons.
For now, I know I have to give in.
“Leo said he’s following a lead on one of the masked men,” I offer, a peace offering. A piece of good news, to counter the cloud of bad.
Trifon smiles, worn out but warm. “And Val renegotiated a truce with the Genovese.”
“And I’m about to make the love of my life very, very happy today,” I add, my own grin peeking through.
Trifon nods through the screen. “Then don’t keep her waiting. All of this means nothing without someone to share it with.”
Once upon a time, I hadn’t understood how my brothers could bring a normal, regular, run-of-the-mill woman into our world.
I watched Trifon do it, and then Valentin.
I’ve seen Trifon love us, and how much it sometimes costs him, and then have a child with Yulia anyway.
It all seemed insane to me. I’d always been insane in a different way.
But—I think, as I pull up in front of The Great Escape—I get it now.
Sometimes, you just need a purpose for all of it.
***
“You’re early!” Janella accuses.
She turns around so fast that her skirt is left swirling around her legs. I don’t even make it through the door before she’s in my arms.
“I should go off for a week more often,” I tease, kissing her cheek before I have her off her feet. As if I can stand to be away from her this long. I’ve been going out of my fucking mind for days.
I could spin her in circles for hours just to earn the bright burst of laughter that spills from her cherry red lips.
But she always makes me set her down on her feet. Even if she never lets go of my hand, using it as a leash to pull me behind the counter with her, the inventory no longer at the forefront of her mind.
“Oh, don’t you dare,” she threatens, trotting on my foot like she doesn’t weigh ninety pounds soaking wet.
I shoot her an amused smirk. I reach out and cradle the side of her neck. “It would be a lose-lose situation anyway,” I say.
“Does that mean there’s still no sign of Viktor?” Janella asks, nuzzling up against me. Her hands slip around my waist, locking behind me.
We have no secrets between us these days,
“None since the gala.”
She nods, processing that. It doesn’t surprise me when, a beat later, she looks up at me adamantly and insists, “But you will. I know it. He’s a person, and we all slip up from time to time.
Maybe the universe will trip him up and make him fall in love with the wrong person, too. Seems to happen a lot in this circle.”
“Oh?” A grin threatens my lips. “Is that what you call falling in love with me? Slipping up?”
Janella bobs her head from side to side. “I mean, there was some slipping.”
“Oh yeah?” I pull back from her, stealing her hands from behind my back and bringing them to my face. “Now that sounds like something I want to hear more about.”
“Of course you do,” she giggles. “All this time later, and you’re still fishing.”
“Humor me.”
“What will you give me if I do?” she barters, delight bright in her golden-brown irises. They mesmerize me effortlessly.
“Anything,” I promise her, unafraid of the word and what it carries.
“Kisses?” she asks.
Her prompt is inspiring.
“Kisses,” I agree. With a devilish smirk painted on my lips, I urge her back into the kitchen. Considering what I have planned, there’s a delicious symmetry at play.
If there’s anything I know about my girl, it’s that she’s a sucker for symmetry.
I place a kiss on the side of her neck, feeling her shiver. “Get talking, Mrs. Yuri.”
“The first time I really felt something was in that changing room,” she murmurs, her hands tangling in my hair already. “Do you remember?”
I nod against her warm skin. “Valentino.”
“You looked at me like I’d set you on fire, and I don’t know that I’ve ever felt more powerful. Which is funny, in hindsight, considering I’d been in the process of being strangled by an overpriced dress.”
My lips drift down the long column of her throat, counting freckles like stars to make wishes on. I draw constellations with my tongue.
Keep going.
“I slipped a little every time we fought,” she admits, her breath hitching when my teeth nip at her collarbone.
“Some would call that very unhealthy,” I joke.
A fist in my hair pulls my head from between her tits. I’d object, but she slips her shirt right over her head and keeps arguing without missing a beat, “That’s not true. I’ve read that the sign of a long-lasting relationship is when you can fight as well as fuck.”
“Well, we can definitely do that,” I smirk, looking her over slowly. Her nipples pebble beneath the lace cups of her bra. The heavy mounds heaving with her quickening breath.
Just the sight of her is enough to make heat pool between my hips.
“Done fishing?” she prods, her nose wrinkling.
Her sass never fails to make my cock throb. This is no exception.
“With you? Never.”
I take my hands off of her to shove my jacket from my shoulder, fingers already making quick work of my buttons. Her hands slip in between mine to help. I return the favor, snapping her bra off and tossing it to the side.
She shoves my pants down my ass. Kicking my shoes aside, I step out of them.
I kiss her hard, pulling her body into mine with force. Her palms flatten against my chest. Her eyes flutter shut.
“Iosif,” Janella rasps in want. My hands catch at her hips, itching to lift her around my waist.
“Wait.” It kills me to say it. To even remember why it’s so important.
She lets out a whine in protest, a sound that goes straight to my cock. Soothing her, my hand cups her breast, kneading her. “Just a second. Grab my jacket.”
“Do we really need protection?” Janella asks impatiently, her lips at my neck, sucking at a spot she knows drives me fucking crazy. An immense heat spreads from the spot to the tips of my fingers.
My hand comes down on her ass, spanking her in admonishment. “Nell,” I demand.
Her throat bobs with arousal, and she sinks to her knees. She thrusts my jacket toward me, eyes flashing, and everything else falls to the wayside for me to lean over and kiss her pouting mouth.
“I wanted to give you a present first.”
“An orgasm is a present,” she argues, letting me help her to her feet.
I can’t help but laugh at my insatiable wife. We’re a matched fucking set, aren’t we? Polarizing each other, except for when we don’t.
I dig into my jacket and pull out the thick, cream document I’ve been carrying around for months. I don’t want to wait another second. She doesn’t deserve to have to.
Janella takes it from me, bewildered. “What?”
“Open it and see.”
I already know what she’ll discover—the deed to the café, “The Great Escape”, owned by one Mrs. Janella Yuri. It leaves me with nothing but opportunity to look at her face—the way her emotions surge, from shock to joy to trepidation. Like I’d suspected they would.
Her eyes shine with overwhelm, her bottom lip quivering until it’s caught between her teeth. “Wait, really?”
“It’s always been yours,” I confess, head bending to seal my lips to hers. “I just wanted you to believe in yourself first.”
She kisses me back with renewed vigor, pressing back against my every ministration. In a few swift movements, I have her hitched around my waist, her back flush against the over-door.
The deed flutters to the ground, forgotten for now.
Good enough for me.
“This,” Janella whimpers, “feels familiar.”
“Does it?” My eyes darken, hand grazing down her feverish body to run my fingers along her slit, matching the breath that hitches in her lungs without thinking about it. I press two fingers inside of her. She lets out a high-pitched moan at the intrusion. I could come to that fucking sound alone.
I have to grit my teeth and force down my own arousal, thumbing at her sensitive nerves while I curl my fingers deeper inside her.
She’s so fucking wet.
“Oh, God,” she breathes, her hand grappling for my cock. She strokes me in quick stripes, saliva pooling in her mouth and pulling back to drip it between us. My head drops to her chest, lips wrapping around a hard bud, sucking until she’s crying out. “Iosif… Iosif, I need you inside me—”
Her cunt clenches around my fingers. The muscles in my legs clench tightly with an anticipation that rises from somewhere in my stomach, causing my cock to harden all the more. Impossibly. Painfully.
I can never get enough of her. I can’t touch her enough, feel enough of her, or get close enough to her to ever be wholly satisfied. Not that it stops me from trying.
My head dips to her swollen cunt, sliding my tongue along the same lines my fingers had made and laps at her. My fingers are working into her harder and slower all at the same time.
The way she whimpers is enough to rattle my spine.
I need her bursting at the seams, where I like her best. I need her so close that she’ll have to try and hold back later—and that’s where I get her.
Only then do I splay her out on the same table I first made her mine. With an arm wrapped around her, I let her line me up to her core and pull her into me.
The sheer heat of her is the greatest homecoming.
Janella’s nails dig into my shoulders, and her breaths come in ragged, erratic huffs until my eyes lock on hers. Searching them, long enough for her to plead, “Don’t fucking stop, baby,” just like the first time.
I draw her legs over my shoulders, aiming my thrusts where I know she needs them, where I’ve learned to make her lose it. Because this just isn’t lasting long, is it? Not round one, at least.
My hands roam her tits, pounding into her harder and harder.
“Fu—” I start, unable to finish the profanity that boils from the heat burgeoning between our bodies. My forehead falls against her chest, rapturously lapping at her sweat-slick skin.
“I’m going to fucking come,” I groan, hipbones snapping over and over against the curve of her ass. “Come with me, Nell.”
I could never get sick of the look on her face right before her climax seizes her. The shock of it, shattering to pleasure that leaves her shuddering, gasping, clutching at me like I’m the only thing that could hold her through this.
I hold her back just as tightly.
And I’m never letting her go.
*****
THE END