Alexei: A Mafia Love Story: Dark Erotic Romance (2 page)

They were in an alleyway behind the club, and there were three cars parked nearby, all expensive models from what she could see. The closest was a limousine, and she was somehow unsurprised when the man opted for that, waiting until one of his companions had opened the back door before tossing her in carelessly. She hit the bench seat and rolled slightly, her knees hitting the floorboard, but that actually worked in her favor. It allowed Tara a little momentum and to get somewhat on her feet. She waited until the man had slid into the car, the door closed behind him, before she rushed him. Her intent was to hurt, and to knock the breath from him, and she collided heavily, planting her head in his solar plexus.

He grunted, but didn’t seem as incapacitated as she had hoped. Her feeble plan had been to render him immobile and then what? Had she planned to scrabble over him, open the door, and hobble away on her zip-tied ankles? It was a feeble plan, but at least she hadn’t laid down and just accepted her fate.

He cursed, and she didn’t recognize the word, but she certainly heard the quiet anger underneath it. She expected him to retaliate by either hitting her, or perhaps even just shooting her right then, but instead, Alexei—that was what the other man had called him before being shot, she remembered suddenly—spun her around in his arms and held her on his lap.

His arms confined her against him in a parody of a lovers’ embrace, and she struggled to escape. She was twisting against him, trying to find some leverage to push herself away, but she froze when she realized his cock was growing hard against her ass.

“Please keep struggling,
lisichka
. It feels very good.” He spoke with an obvious accent, but his English was clear enough to be coherent and easily understood. She didn’t know what
lisichka
meant, and she probably didn’t want to know either.

For the moment, she forced herself to remain immobile, not wanting to provoke a physical reaction from the man about to kill her. It would be bad enough to be murdered, and she’d like to skip being raped beforehand.

“What is your name, American girl?”

Ridiculously, she thought of the line of dolls that her sister had liked and admired, the type that had usually been out of their budget. She clamped her mouth shut, refusing to engage him, and not wanting him to know of her connection to Tonya.

As though he had read her mind, he chuckled softly. “I don’t know your name, but I know you are related to Tonya Noland. You look like a much hotter version of her, and you come to the club to check up on her like a mother hen. You are too young to be her mother, but that doesn’t keep you from acting like one.”

She stiffened, her breath leaving her in a ragged exhalation as she realized this man knew all about her, or at least enough to know her weak spots. “Don’t hurt my sister.” And he thought she was more attractive than Tonya? Yeah, right. What bullshit.

“Ah, she speaks.”

“Please. Tonya has nothing to do with this.” He nodded, and she could feel his chin brushing against the back of her head when he did so.

“I agree. This is between us.”

She didn’t like how he said
us
. It implied a level of intimacy that just did not exist. But she was hardly in a position to argue with him, and she was no doubt imagining things due to the terror of the situation. “Would you please just let me go? I won’t say anything to anyone.”

He chuckled, and he sounded genuinely amused. “Of course you won’t.” His tone was mocking. “There are two kinds of people in this world,
lisichka
. There’re my kind of people, and there are yours. My kind of people follow the code and shut their mouth, and they can keep secrets that aren’t theirs. Your kind feels the need to interfere with everyone. You might intend to keep your mouth shut, but your ridiculous conscience will weigh on you, and soon you’ll talk yourself into doing the
right
thing. You’ll be convinced you must report this horrible murder you’ve seen even if it disrupts your entire life and endangers your sister. You’re the upstanding citizen-type, and you can’t be trusted.”

In her anger, she forgot what response she was eliciting by struggling, and she renewed her attempts to escape. “I can’t be trusted?” She dug her elbow against his rib. “I’m not the murdering criminal here.”

His arms tightened firmly around her, and his hand pressed against her stomach, keeping her anchored against him. “If you were, it would solve our problems. There is no solution that I can think of at the moment, short of shooting you. That is undesirable, so you will become my guest for a time.”

She shook her head, trying to escape even as his cock hardened fully against her, and she was aware of him beginning to thrust lightly against her. His hands on her hips were holding her in place, and she realized he was no longer completely anchoring her arms at her side. He was too busy dry-humping her.

With perhaps more courage than common sense, she flung herself off his lap, ending up on the floorboard. Tara banged her head against the door in the process, and blood spilled down her forehead in a hot stream. She blinked as drops obscured her vision, still cursing and hitting out at him even as he bent to pick her up and put her back on his lap.

He squeezed her just hard enough to hurt, but it was the only way he would have gotten through to her. She had to grudgingly acknowledge that when she fell still.

“Stop fighting me. Let me see your head.”

She sat quietly, enduring his fingers stroking over her face as they probed lightly around her wounds and the spot where she had hit her head. A second later, he pressed a clean cloth from the minibar against the area, and she couldn’t hold back a little whimper.

“Don’t be a baby,
lisichka
.”

“I’m not a baby. That hurts.” She glared at him, but couldn’t fight back curiosity. “What is
lisichka
?”

He smiled gently. “Little fox. With that bright red hair and those flashing brown eyes, you remind me of a
lisich
. It makes me curious to know how much rubbing it would take to get past your aggressive veneer and find the sweet pussy inside.”

She flinched at the word, but not because the crudeness had shocked her. What was shocking was how her nerve endings responded to the way he spoke the word. The way he said it was sexy as hell. She couldn’t really be attracted this man, could she? She had seen him beat and murder someone tonight, and that was before he had kidnapped her. He wasn’t a good person, so shouldn’t that have precluded her from finding anything about him attractive?

He went on as though the moment hadn’t occurred, his voice turning brisk again. “The bleeding should stop soon, and I don’t think you have a concussion. Behave and be a good girl, and you will avoid future pain.”

She turned her head to look at him with incredulous eyes. “You expect me to behave and be a good girl? You’re fucking kidnapping me, and you’re probably going to end up killing me. You’re out of your mind if you think I’m going to cooperate or make this easy on you.”

He sighed, looking put out. “Of course you won’t,
lisichka
. You will do your best to make life difficult for me, I have no doubt.” Either he didn’t believe she could actually do that, or he was unconcerned, because he leaned back in the seat and pulled her into his arms again, insisting she hold the cloth herself.

With her hands occupied keeping her blood from flowing everywhere, she had little choice but to sit still and be quiet. She was aware of his erection pressing fiercely into her lower back now that they had shifted positions. She thought about asking him if that was his common reaction to all his kidnap victims, but she didn’t want to draw attention to it.

“I’ve seen you before.”

She nodded, unsurprised, and not just because he had already mentioned her visits to the club. She had always felt watched when she went there, and it must have been his eyes on her. She had been convinced it was the owner of the club, and that seemed to be him.

“You don’t come for the pussy dancers, so why do you come to my club so often? For your sister?”

She nodded jerkily. “To look after my sister. She shouldn’t be at your sleazy establishment, especially since she’s a recovering heroin addict. I’m trying to look out for her and take care of her.”

He nodded, his chin rubbing against the back of her head. “Believe it or not,
lisichka
, we have something in common. I too watch out for my family, protecting my younger brother and my father. It’s an admirable trait to find in someone, and it’s one of the many beautiful things about you.”

She stiffened, determined to reject the compliment, though she couldn’t pretend like it didn’t warm her slightly. It was a nice change to have her tendency praised rather than have someone complaining about her overprotectiveness. Hoping she might be able to get through to him and make some sort of connection, she asked, “What do you protect them from?”

His reply didn’t do anything to soothe her or give her hope. “From our world, but mostly, I protect them from myself.”

She shivered at the answer. “Are you that dangerous?”

His fingers moved through her hair in a soothing fashion. “You know the answer to that,
engel
. You’ve seen what I do.”

“Just call me Tara,” she snapped, sick of all the endearments.

“Tara.” The way he said it suggested he was tasting her name, savoring it as he would the finest vodka, and searching for all the nuances and subtleties within. “That’s a nice name, but I think you will always be my little fox instead.”

She shifted on his lap enough to be able to glare at him, though it caused an uncomfortable tugging in her scalp. He hadn’t released his hold on her hair, and he showed no sign of doing so as she wriggled around to look at him. “I’m not your anything, and don’t forget it.”

“Sweet, naïve Tara, don’t you understand how things have changed?”

She shook her head as his face came closer to hers. “Stop.”

He ignored her, his lips almost brushing her own. “I own you now, Tara Noland, and I can do whatever I want with you. It would be better for you to enjoy the experience rather than to keep fighting me. I don’t wish to hurt you, but I won’t accept open defiance.”

Tara struggled to hide her fear, and the disconcerting surge of arousal that accompanied his words. What the hell was wrong with her? It hadn’t been that long since she’d gotten laid, even if her last boyfriend had been lacking in the orgasm-giving department. “I’ll never stop fighting you, you gangster.”

“
Bratva
,” he said with little expression. “I am the
Sovietnik
and acting
Pahkhan
of our city. There are few would go against me, and none who would do so for the sake of you. I’m offering you the chance to be my pampered pet,
lisichka
.”

She glared at him, almost daring him to close the distance between them and press his mouth to hers. She’d bite his fucking tongue off if he tried it. “I’m no one’s pet. I’m a person, and I have rights. You can’t just do this sort of thing.”

He laughed, clearly amused by her naïveté. “I’m Alexei Varnakov, leader of the
russkaya mafiya
in our city, and you are nothing to me or compared to me. You are what I want you to be, and right now, I want you to be silent.”

She opened her mouth to make a smartass response, not even really caring what she said as long as she made a point of responding, but his mouth was on hers then. He swallowed any attempt she made at speaking, his lips sealed to hers, forcing her to accept his kiss.

If she were honest with herself, there wasn’t a whole lot of force involved, other than her trying to force herself not to respond. Despite her earlier resolve to bite his tongue if it came anywhere near her mouth, she found herself yielding to his questing appendage when it swept inside her mouth, kissing her deeply and branding her as his. The kiss was like a mark of possession, and though she bristled at the gesture, an annoying part of her purred in pleasure at being labeled as his.

Her own reaction spurred her to shove against him, letting the bloody cloth fall between them and unconcerned about rivulets of blood still streaming from the cut on her head. She tried to slap him, but with her hands bound together, all she managed was to smack against his cheek with little more force than a love tap. “Don’t ever touch me again like that.”

He glared at her as he grabbed her hands, forcing them back to her lap and holding her still. It was clear his intent was to break her resistance and to prove a point when he brought a hand to her button-down blouse and ripped the buttons open carelessly. They flew off and scattered, a couple hitting the interior with little plinking sounds, before her shirt gaped open to reveal her bra.

“No more bras. From now on, you wear what I tell you to wear and what I’ll provide. From the behavior you’re displaying, you’ll have no clothing to start with. You have to earn each piece you get, Tara. You need to learn who owns you now, and you need to maintain respect.”

“You can fuck yourself, Varnakov.” Tears came to her eyes when he wrenched open her bra, the elastic biting into her skin before it broke. Her breasts were bared to his gaze, and she expected him to grab her and start touching her lewdly.