Kissing My Killer Page 8

  The image the men’s words had conjured up in my mind. The idea of the gorgeous, soft-skinned Gabriella up on a podium in Soblazn, her innocence the perfect counterpart to the seediness of the place. The men had been drunk idiots, but they were right about one thing: she had the perfect stripper body, with her full natural breasts and flaring hips. Thinking about her stripping, revealing that glorious body inch by inch...it was the definition of purity corrupted.

  And it had me hard as a rock in my pants. Just like the thought of fucking her.

  Her innocence was utterly captivating and it made me fiercely protective of her...but the dark parts of me wanted to see her spread and arching under me, hear her calling out my name as I buried myself in her. I wanted to knead those silky-soft breasts until she begged for my mouth and then stroke the hardened nipples against my lips. I wanted to take this angel and make her into my own, personal succubus.

  And that’s exactly why I had to keep my distance. She was too fucking tempting for me to ever stop, once I got going, and I couldn’t drag her down to my level.

  And that’s why the next half hour was going to be exquisite torture.

  I pulled up outside the baths. “We’re here.”

  You would never find the place if you didn’t have the address. There was no sign, just a plain wooden door in a nondescript stone building that must have been a hundred years old. I led Gabriella inside, through the maze of different businesses. She stared at them as she passed: dressmakers and cell phone repair companies and people riveting Gucci logos onto handbags.

  We went down two flights of stone stairs, the street noise fading away and the air growing steadily warmer and moister. When I opened the next door, the temperature rose by a good ten degrees. An unsmiling woman with ferociously red hair looked us up and down from behind her desk.

  “We’re here to see Vadim,” I told her. “Tell him it’s Alexei.”

  The woman stomped off down a corridor and I heard her speak to someone in Russian—probably Vadim’s bodyguard. She returned a moment later and nodded. “You know the way?”

  I nodded and led Gabriella by the hand. I’d noticed that I’d started to do that—take her hand whenever we were moving together, even when it wasn’t strictly necessary.

  We went through a door and the temperature shot up again, to the point where clothes started to feel uncomfortable. We were in a small tiled room lined with big metal lockers—there couldn’t have been more than twelve in total. A basket of white towels sat in one corner.

  I turned to Gabriella. “Okay,” I said. “Take off your clothes.”

  Gabriella

  I stared down at the tiles beneath my feet. They were a complex mosaic of black and white swirls and looked very, very old. “Um…”

  “It is rules,” said Alexei. “Sorry.”

  I wondered if he was really sorry. He looked sorry, but in the car I was sure I’d seen a hint of something else. A flash of raw lust at the thought of seeing me naked. All the moments we’d shared so far came back to me: his hand on my wrist, in the coffee shop; him on top of me, in my apartment; the way he’d been so protective of me, in the strip club.

  He took his jacket off and I saw the holster he wore underneath. I gulped—I’d known it was there, but seeing it was still a shock. I’d never even seen a gun, in real life, until he’d pointed one at me, but Alexei just took the holster off and laid it in his locker like it was nothing at all. Then he rolled up his pants leg and there was another holster there, with another gun. Jesus. I just stood there staring like a moron. I could see faint hints of his Bratva tattoos through his shirt—and then, as he started to unbutton it, the harsh, black ink of them. He’s so completely different to me. He lives in a whole different world. I knew I was staring and I could feel he was aware of it, the tension building and building. I wanted to say something, but I had no idea how to even process something like this.

  And then something happened that I could react to, a chance to delay things: he took out his phone.

  “That’s your phone?” I blurted.

  He turned and frowned. “What is wrong with phone?”

  It was an ancient Nokia, a thick block of plastic with actual buttons you pushed and a one inch screen. “Please tell me it’s a retro-cool thing.” I stared at his uncomprehending face. “Oh God—it isn’t, is it?”

  He shrugged. “It is simple. I like simple.”

  I took my own phone out of my purse. “But new phones have cameras. And apps! And email and... I can even track this on my laptop, if it gets stolen, and find out where it is. What do you do if you lose that?”

  He looked blank. “Buy another one.” Then he nodded at my clothes. “You should get undressed.”

  I swallowed. So much for delaying things.

  The idea of him seeing me naked terrified me. I barely knew him! And yet, at the same time, it sent a scarlet ribbon of heat twisting down my body, finishing at my groin. I glanced around, but there were no cubicles, nowhere to hide.

  I settled for turning my back. I opened a locker and concentrated very very hard on the empty interior as I began to take off my clothes. My sweater, first—that was easy enough. I mean, I wouldn’t even be wearing that if it wasn’t so damn cold outside. I stripped it off over my head and put it in the locker.

  Next, my blouse. Well, he’d already seen me in my underwear, back at the motel. So I unfastened it all the way and took it off. Then my sneakers and socks. Then, with shaking hands, I unfastened my jeans and bent to push them down my legs. I folded everything up and put them in my locker, surprised to find I was a little light-headed. I probably straightened up too quickly.

  Now I was about to cross a line. This was the most of me he’d seen.

  I reached back and felt for the clasp of my bra. Usually not a problem but—dammit, it was stuck—why wouldn’t it—

  Warm hands suddenly took the straps from my fumbling fingers. My whole body went tense. The hands effortlessly unclipped the bra clasp and then retreated.

  I swallowed. “Thank you,” I said in a strangled voice. Every beat of my heart seemed to reverberate throughout me, as if I’d turned into one giant kettle drum. The vibrations filled my ears and throat, shuddered outward through my breasts to ache and tingle at my nipples. They throbbed downward through my legs and back up to my groin, leaving me trembling.

  I hooked one shoulder strap off me, then the other. I held onto the bra until the last possible moment and then tossed it into the locker along with everything else. And then I was standing there topless, my back to Alexei. How much can he see? I wasn’t certain. My breasts are on the large side so they weren’t hidden completely by my body. Even if I was precisely angled away from him, he could probably see some side boob.

  I glanced down at my panties—simple black briefs. I hooked my thumbs into them and—

  He’d stopped moving.

  Sometimes, you aren’t aware of a noise until it stops. I realized now that I’d been hearing little movements and rustles of clothing behind me...but now they’d suddenly ended.

  He was standing there, watching me.

  You don’t know that.

  Yes I do.

  My heart seemed to speed up ten-fold. I was panting and I couldn’t pretend it was just due to the heat and humidity. I felt drunk on adrenaline, every square inch of revealed skin throbbing, so much more alive than ever before. I felt like—

  I felt like one of the strippers, back in the strip club. Stripping off for men.

  Stripping off for my man.

  I can’t do this. I wasn’t that sort of woman. I can’t just—Not with a man I barely—

  And then I remembered that I had to. And if I didn’t have a choice...well, that was okay, wasn’t it?

  I bent at the hips, nowhere near as graceful as one of the strippers and very aware of how my breasts swung forward and hung down. I slid my panties down my legs—

  --I heard an intake of breath behind me—

  --and stepped out of
them. I could feel his eyes on me, roving up my naked calves, up my thighs, up between my legs—

  I knew I had to do it fast, or I’d never do it. I spun around to face him.

  And realized I’d made a colossal error: I’d been so busy obsessing about taking off my clothes that I’d forgotten that he would be naked, too.

  The first thing I saw was—no, not that. Not yet. I’d just turned around and my eyes were staring right at his chest. I’d glimpsed it when he’d taken that shower but now there was no half-closed shirt to get in the way. I could feast my eyes on those broad, powerful muscles, a solid wall of strength. His pecs flowed into massive shoulders. I thought of cannonballs: not just the shape of them but the heavy, hard mass. If you’d made a statue of Alexei, you would have had to cast it from iron. It was the only material that could possibly do him justice.

  His tattoos were fully visible, now: the vicious-looking scorpion, the delicate rose and that big, muscled bull. Then those rows of hard, piano-key abs with the deep center line between them, defined but also big. The broadness of his chest made his waist look small by comparison so it was only when you got up close to him, as I was now, that you appreciated how big he was all over.

  All. Over. My eyes dipped down below his waist and—

  My brain went fzzt and refused to process, skipping to his legs.

  He didn’t look like an underwear model. He was too big, too sturdy—he looked as if he’d crush an underwear model into the mud. He reminded me more of photos I’d seen of soldiers: muscles that were actually used for something, thick and hard and powerful. His calves seemed as big as my thighs—he looked as if he could stand firm in a hurricane.

  And then I’d reached his feet and my gaze went automatically back up to—

  O. M. G.

  My first thought was that he was big.

  My second thought was: that doesn’t make sense, because it looked as if he was only halfway hard.

  Then my brain put those two together and it very nearly went fzzt again.

  His cock was hanging down the side of one of those marvelously strong thighs. The skin was a soft tan, just a shade darker than the rest of him. The head was a blunt-nosed, purple-pink fruit hanging ripe at the end. Ripe and...swelling.

  The shaft was thickening and hardening, right before my eyes. Hardening as he looked at—

  I looked up into his eyes. There wasn’t a trace of embarrassment or guilt there. He was far past that. He held my gaze for a second and then I saw his eyes drop and rove over my naked body and I imagined his cock hardening and hardening, lifting to press against that washboard stomach. I didn’t dare look down at it again. My whole body was throbbing and pulsing, the tension between us building towards a screaming, nerve-shredding peak. I wanted to run and hide; I wanted to hurl myself at him and feel his hard body against me...inside me—

  Alexei drew in a shuddering breath and twisted away. “We should go,” he said. And turned towards the door, plucking a towel out of the basket on his way. His ass was tight and hard, dimpling hypnotically as he walked.

  I hurried after him, grabbed a towel and tried to brace myself for whatever was next.

  Alexei

  Jesus, she’s naked. I could feel her right behind me, hear the slap of her bare feet on the tiles, smell that intoxicating scent. As we stepped through the door into the actual baths, the temperature rose again to stifling levels, but it barely registered next to the raging, thrashing heat inside me. All I wanted to do was turn, grab Gabriella and slam her up against the tiled wall. I wanted to kiss her so hard we both forgot what I was, then spread her thighs and make her mine.

  And I knew that all of this was on show—at least, if I turned around. She’d already seen how hard I was for her and soon she’d see again. My cock was harder than I ever remembered it being before. God, I needed her.

  The walls here were tiled and wet with steam. The lights were low and it was so quiet we could hear our own breathing. Before us was one final door and it was quite different to any we’d gone through before. A simple oblong of dark wood planks as old as the building—old, and very small. The top of the door barely came up to my shoulder. It wasn’t a good seal, either—steam and heat was billowing out around the edges, which was why the whole place was so hot. A glass door with a rubber seal would have done a much better job and saved a huge amount of energy, but that wouldn’t be traditional...and Vadim Andreyev was all about tradition.

  I took a deep breath, swung open the door to the steam bath and ducked inside.

  Vadim had run things from Russia for many years before finally making the move to the US. Originally, he’d come here for cancer treatment after years of cigars had left his lungs infested with creeping darkness. Then, cancer free and having secured one of his nurses as his latest mistress, he decided that perhaps the US wasn’t so bad after all. Now he flew back and forth, king of a good chunk of Little Odessa and a significant chunk of Moscow. His wasn’t the most powerful Bratva group, by any means. But they were the best connected. Vadim had made his fortune by doing deals, not burying his opponents, and he knew everyone and everything that went on.

  He sat hulking in the darkness, on the big tiled bench at the rear of the room. He was almost spherical, not fat so much as rounded—when he wore a pin-striped suit, his back looked like a globe complete with longitude lines. His body was still powerful—he’d been in the army, many years ago, and had the strong shoulders and chest to show for it. Still good-looking, too, though he was in his late fifties now and his hair was almost completely silver.

  Like me, he was utterly naked, his tanned body shining with sweat. The room’s only lights were a handful of dim bulbs above our heads, which turned the scene into a mixture of deep black shadows and gleaming flashes of skin. Steam hissed from ancient copper pipes somewhere near the floor, the air so saturated with water that moving felt like swimming.

  Vadim pinned me with a gaze as soon as I entered. “Artur called and said you needed to see me—something private and urgent.” His gaze fell to my cock. “I see now what he meant,” he deadpanned. “But I do not play for that team.”

  Three sides of the room were lined with benches. I sat down carefully on the bench to Vadim’s right, easing myself onto the scalding tiles.

  Gabriella entered, holding her towel uncertainly in front of her.

  Vadim shook his head. “The towel is for mopping your brow,” he told her, demonstrating. “There are no clothes in here, no secrets.”

  That was indeed the tradition in these places, but these days his words had another meaning. With everyone naked, it was impossible for anyone to wear a wire or sneak in a camera. Vadim had conducted most of his business meetings in the steam bath for years. He boasted that the constant steam was the secret to his youthful looks.

  I nodded to Gabriella that it was okay. Her throat bobbed visibly as she gulped. Then she lowered the towel and my hands gripped hard at the front of the bench—

  I’d drunk in her appearance in the changing room but now it was even better. The dim lighting painted her pale, soft body in light and shadow, accentuating its curves and highlighting the textures. I could see the silky-smooth skin of her breasts and the delicately crinkled skin of her areolae. I could see the soft curve of her stomach where it hollowed around her navel and the firm swell of her hips and ass as she turned towards the bench to sit down. I was transfixed.

  Vadim was, too. His eyes were all over her, and followed her to the bench. When she was finally sitting down across from me, he said, “Now I can see why you are…”—he nodded again at my cock—“what did we used to call it in the army? At full readiness. Who is this enchanting lady?”

  Gabriella’s breasts rose and fell as she panted, unused to having to work so much just to breathe. “Gabriella.”

  Vadim nodded respectfully and then turned to me and said reproachfully, in rapid-fire Russian, “You’d better be fucking this one, Alexei.”

  I mumbled something non-committal an
d shrugged, hoping Gabriella didn’t guess what he was saying.

  Vadim sighed. “Youth is wasted on the young,” he said. Then he switched to English for Gabriella’s benefit. “So why am I being visited by two such visions of youthful vigor?” He beamed at Gabriella and she broke into a shy smile. There was a reason Vadim had women flocking around him, even at his age. He was old enough that I didn’t mind his flirting with her, but I knew that having her sitting there, naked, was going to make it difficult for me to focus.

  I did my best. “Do you know anyone called Seventeen?”

  Vadim frowned, suddenly serious. “I know one man who goes by that name.”

  Gabriella leaned forward excitedly. Her breasts swayed and bounced and my cock throbbed almost painfully. “A human trafficker?”

  Vadim shook his head. “No. A competitor to you, Alexei. A killer.”

  He hadn’t said the word unkindly—it was simply what I was. But the word still seemed to echo around the tiled room. I saw Gabriella tense and her fear drove an iron spike into my heart.

  “Who does he work for?” I asked.

  “Mostly, Konstantin Gulyev.”

  I drew in my breath.

  “Who?” asked Gabriella.

  Vadim turned to her and spoke kindly. “You know who Luka Malakov is?”

  “Loosely,” she said. She glanced down for a moment and I could tell she was thinking about her uncovered breasts. “Alexei’s boss’s boss, in Moscow?”

  “Correct. Konstantin is the equivalent—a rival who controls most of St. Petersburg. Like Luka, he spends some of his time here in New York.”

  Gabriella nodded, absorbing it all. The movement made her long brown hair dance and sway and I caught just the faintest hint of her scent, carried on the steam-filled air. I had to grip the bench to keep from launching myself across the room at her.

  “Who does Seventeen answer to?” I asked. “And where is he?”

  Vadim waved his hand dismissively. “Last I heard, Seventeen was with some two-bit gang that Konstantin uses for dirty work. They’re run by Petrov Denakin, here in New York...but I don’t know where.”