Lying and Kissing (27 page)

Suddenly, I caught myself.
What was I doing?!
Was I really trying to change him? To reform a monster? Of course he wasn’t going to change!

But I could see that momentary flicker in his eyes, the glimpse of something better inside. I wasn’t trying to change him. I was just trying to help him be the man he wanted to be. He’d called me his
spaseniye.
Well, this was where I got to choose whether to be his salvation or not.

Luka shook his head at me. “I can’t be weak,” he told me. He picked the man up by the collar and lifted him right off the ground, his feet kicking in the air. He drew back his fist for what I knew would be the killer blow.

“If you want me,” I croaked, tears in my eyes, “you have to not do this.” The words were out before I knew I was going to say them.

Luka turned to me, still gripping the man. His eyes were full of that conflict I’d seen before. He was begging me not to make him choose, because he wasn’t sure which life he’d pick.

I felt the heat trickle down my cheeks. I took a deep breath and stared right back at him, willing him to make the right decision.

Long seconds ticked by...and then Luka tossed the man to the floor like a sack of garbage. He grabbed my hand and towed me to the car, saying nothing. Behind us, I could hear the man groaning and cursing us.

Yuri was standing by the car, looking worried. Luka towed me straight past him and almost threw me into the back seat, getting in beside me. Yuri quickly climbed in and we sped off.

I could hear sirens in the distance. No more than five minutes had elapsed since we’d first pulled up outside the house. The adrenaline was sluicing out of my system, now, leaving me shaky and weak. I glanced across at Luka and saw the blood on his knuckles. I thought I was going to throw up again.

“We should not have left him alive,” muttered Luka in English.

Yuri craned his head around, his eyes wide. “You left him
alive?!”
he asked in Russian. Then a glare from Luka reminded him of his place and he turned back to the road.

“There will be repercussions,” said Luka. “He will want revenge. It would have been better if we’d finished it cleanly. Then they would have been uncertain who was responsible.”

“Who is
they?”
I asked.

“The Ralavich family,” Luka said. “That was Olaf Ralavich’s son.” He drew in a deep breath. “You have made things much more complicated for me.”

I shook my head. “I’m sorry.”

He stared at me, then looked down at his blood-stained hands. “Did I please you?” he said, almost under his breath.

I blinked. “I—Yes,”

“Then it is worth it.”

We stared at one another as my mind exploded in slow motion. I’d made the ultimatum, but it had been a last ditch, spur-of-the-moment thing. I hadn’t thought it would work. It
shouldn’t
have worked, unless….

Unless I really was that important to him.

He suddenly lunged at me across the car, crushing me against the door.

His lips came down on mine and a little groan escaped me as I felt the need inside, the temptation to give into him. My mind was spinning. Everything was happening so fast! My mental picture of who he was,
what
he was, was constantly changing. I couldn’t make up my mind whether he was a monster or not, whether he could be saved or not. And whatever he was, he was my enemy, the man I was about to betray. Whatever he felt for me and whatever I felt for him, that didn’t change.

And it was about to be over anyway...wasn’t it?

I broke the kiss and stared at him, panting. “When we get back to Moscow,” I said, “what happens?”

His eyes gleamed. “You will come back to my apartment.”

He tried to kiss me again, but I dodged out of the way. “Your dad,” I blurted.

He stopped and drew back a little, frowning at me. I knew why. I wasn’t supposed to know what his dad had said. But I couldn’t pretend to be oblivious any more.

“He was polite to me,” I said. “But I know something’s wrong. He doesn’t like me. Does he?”

At first, he looked as if he was going to deny it. Then he looked guilty, then sad. At last, he said. “No. He doesn’t like you.”

And there it was, out in the open. I waited for him to dump me.

“But I don’t care,” he said.

My eyes widened. “
What?!”

He shook his head and his hand cupped my cheek. “I’ve never met anyone like you, Arianna. My father rules our business. It’s time he stopped ruling my life.”

We stared at each other for another second, his eyes burning into mine, and I knew he was serious. He was going to rebel against the only family he had left...for me.

And in that second, I didn’t think about the mission being over or how I was still going to betray him. I just let out a little moan of need and, this time, I launched myself at him. I didn’t care that he was a monster. I didn’t care that he was the enemy. Our lips met and I wasn’t Arianna Scott or Arianna Ross or a fucking CIA agent. I was just Arianna and he was just Luka and nothing else mattered.

His hands slid up the front of my dress and squeezed my breasts, making them bulge up out of the neckline. He growled in lust and released me for a second so that he could unfasten my seatbelt. I swayed in my seat, the sensation of being in a moving car making the fear bubble up inside me. Then he was touching me again and his hands melted all the fear away. His palms were sliding down my sides, down to the hem of my dress, tugging it up. At the same time, he pulled my legs towards him on the seat and I slid, flopping down onto my back.

He pulled my dress up over my panties and I felt his gaze on them, blazing through the thin fabric. I’d worn the white ones. The innocent ones. From his expression, they’d been a good choice. I was the innocent and he was the criminal and he was about to corrupt me.

I suddenly remembered there was a third person in the car. I came back to reality for a second, my head swiveling as if on a stick. Yep, there was Yuri in the driver’s seat. His eyes were fixed on the road, but we were clearly visible in the rear view mirror.

Luka lowered his head and licked my inner thigh, his tongue quick and expert, drawing a blazing symbol there, and I stopped caring.

His hands separated my thighs, pushing them up and back, folding me, and I yelped in surprise, the yell growing throaty when he started to rub me right where I needed it. He pressed close, our faces inches apart, my ankles over his shoulders. He began to stroke my lips through my panties, the fabric rapidly moistening. “You are an angel,” he muttered in Russian. “You don’t know what’s coming, but I’m going to fuck you like a cheap whore.”

I had to fight very hard to look confused. I knew that I should be slapping his face, but the words only made me hotter.

His fingers stretched my panties away from my body and I gasped as I felt the air-conditioned air of the car on my moist flesh. “Careful,” I muttered. “They’re new.”

With a sudden jerk of his hand, he snapped the waistband and tossed them away. “I’ll buy you more,” he said. He was on his knees on the seat, now, my ankles in his hands. He pushed them even further back and then opened them a little. His head dipped and—

I moaned as his mouth came down on my wet, ready flesh, a spasm rippling up from my groin and making me twist and thrash. His tongue covered me in quick, hard licks, dipping between my lips to taste me. I could feel the moisture flooding me there, my own helpless response to his touch.

He pushed his head closer, forcing it between my thighs, the slight grizzle on his cheeks rasping against my sensitive skin. His tongue was tracing each lip in turn, switching between them, drawing the silken flesh with it and stretching it tight. My toes curled and strained in my shoes, somewhere up near the car’s ceiling. I remembered Yuri again and wondered how I looked, with my stockinged legs kicking in the air.

The tip of his tongue found my clit, teasing the hidden bud, swirling around and around it and running up and down either side but never quite lashing it directly, as I craved. He kept me on the edge while he plunged two thick fingers into me, twisting them as they speared deep. I was gasping and panting, my ass grinding against the leather seat, my hips bucking.

His fingers and tongue took me to the very edge and then, just as my climax was swollen and ready to explode, he drew his fingers from me and pushed them at my panting lips. I opened instinctively, staring up at him as he brushed them over my tongue. “I am going to do such things to you,” he whispered in Russian. “If you are my salvation, then I will be your corruptor.”

I tried to remember to frown at him as if confused. Inside I could feel my coming orgasm expand and stretch at his words.
Corrupted.

I watched as he unfastened his belt and rammed down his pants. His cock sprang into view, hard and ready and intimidatingly thick.

He used his elbows to spread my legs wide as he rolled on a condom. One foot almost brushed the passenger seat.
You really do need a lot of leg room,
I thought, dazedly. Then his hands were sliding under my ass, cupping my cheeks. He lifted me—

I groaned as he sank into me in one long thrust, then groaned louder as he went deeper. I panted up at him in disbelief as he slid further—
God!
I hadn’t known he could go so deep! He was hunkering over me, his body almost covering mine, our faces close together. And then the tight curls at the base of his cock were caressing my lips and he was inside me completely.

I stared up at him. He wasn’t even moving, yet, but the vibrations of the car were moving me minutely around him, and that was making me tighten and spasm around his hardness. The leather seat under me was firmer than a bed and that made it feel different, too. Everything seemed more intense—maybe it was the moving car, maybe it was the fact we were properly together for the first time, more than just lovers. But I could feel every millimeter of him, every throbbing vein.

He reached up and traced my lips with a finger, following their shape. Then he started to draw back, very slowly, and the feel of him leaving me made me quiver. Every inch that he moved was a silken caress that left me panting.

I wanted it. But my hands reached for him anyway, gripping his shirt as if to slow him down.

Immediately, he grabbed my wrists, trapping them, bearing them down onto the leather above my head. I started to pant faster, staring up at him with huge eyes, pushing upwards against him. My wrists didn’t budge. Neither did my hips, when I tried to lift them. He had me exactly where he wanted me, spread for him on a firm, leather seat. And now he was going to fuck me.

I could have asked him to stop.

I didn’t.

He slammed back into me, his muscled body huge between my thighs, and I cried out—a high little moan that didn’t sound like me at all. He began to thrust, his biceps bunched and hard, his chest wide and magnificent as he bore down into me. In the window behind him, I saw the reflection of his ass tensing and hollowing as he drove into me, filling me, and I cried out anew. I could see my own legs, too, stockinged and spread beneath him. The maiden, ravaged by the monster. The heat boiled up inside me.

His cock was like a silk-wrapped iron bar inside me, filling every millimeter of available space and then drawing out to leave a void that I immediately needed him to fill again. I began to push against his hands, trying to wriggle a wrist free. Each tiny battle resulted in him tightening his grip a little more, increasing my feeling of helplessness.

I wanted to struggle. But I didn’t want to escape.
God, this is so wrong….

He stared down into my eyes and I knew that he knew. He understood. His eyes gleamed, his thrusts coming faster and harder, forcing me down into the soft leather of the seat and leaving me breathless and shuddering. My climax was twisting as it rose, tightening into a red-hot ball of energy, and I could feel him approaching his end, too, his thrusts growing savage even as I saw his jaw tense. He leaned even closer into me, his mouth beside my ear, and he whispered in English, “You like it like this, don’t you, Arianna? You like being helpless under me.”