Deal with the Devil : A Dark Mafia Marriage of Convenience Romance (Brides and Sinners) (Astoria Royals Book 4), page 11
I bend in half, my butt sticking out toward my husband. Peeking at him between my calves, I see him smiling. A little too much.
I flit across the floor in leg lifts and hops. Ending in a twirling tornado of a dozen pirouettes followed by a row of leaps in a tight circle, my legs easily spread wide.
Lachlan moves to the middle of the dance floor on the other side, softly clapping.
I smile and find myself directly across from him. Feeling silly, I say, “Stand right there.”
He wiggles his big feet in big shoes into the varnished floor, being playful.
I kick off my back right leg and barrel toward him. His eyes go wide, and when I leap, his giant arms catch me. I’m so high up, it’s dizzying. I’ve never had a catch partner so tall. But I’m not afraid.
Lachlan lowers me as I slide down his body. He’s warm, and the friction is electric. When our heads come together, he kisses me. Deep and sultry.
“I like this,” he rasps. “I didn’t think I’d like this so much. The way you kiss me, like your mouth was made for me. You taste so sweet and soft. That I can be delicate and not brutal, like the world I live in when we’re in this bubble.” He releases me, and his eyes go dark. “It’s easy to become heartless and lose touch with humanity. I… I was facing that, you know. Going to the dark side completely.” He easily opens up to me.
“I watched Maksim go mad.”
“It’s called bloodlust. It’s got a chokehold on Maksim for sure. That and all the drugs he’s polluting his body with. I know people think I’m insane.” Lachlan scrubs a hand down the back of his neck. “There’s one central focus to our world. We protect my brother, Kieran. That includes his reputation. He expects me to do my job ruthlessly, but I can’t be unhinged. I want to be feared, not despised and considered inhuman.” His voice goes emotionless. “I never planned to get married.”
My breath sticks in my lungs. “Never, ever?”
“No.” He peers down at me, his lips twitching. “I wanted to be a priest.”
Shocked, I say, “Really?”
He was the altar boy not named in the article. He was there when the boy’s father accused the priest. He was there when that man died.
Then the priest died, too.
Lachlan’s hand strokes my throat, and I feel so utterly at his mercy. “Really. Not marrying came with the life I originally wanted.”
“That meant you planned to go your whole life without sex, too?”
“Aye,” he says easily, but his fingers tighten around my neck.
“And I guess when you decided you would not be a priest—”
“I didn’t decide. It was taken from me. I was sent away.”
“To where?”
“Too many questions, little wife.” He brushes his mouth over mine. “My past is dark and brutal. You’re sunshine and goodness. Don’t concern yourself with my past. Just worry about today and tomorrow.”
Yesterday, I was almost forcibly married to a man who beat me. Today, I woke up married next to another man, who killed him.
What in the world will tomorrow bring for me?
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Katya
I sleep in Lachlan’s bed again. Turns out he’s a fan of The Big Bang Theory like me. We laugh at the same punch lines. The guy has a wicked sense of humor. He’s smart, too.
When a movie previews after the show, I say, “I’ve been wanting to see that. Can we watch it?”
“Of course.” He sits lazily on his California King, shirtless with black sweatpants. God, he’s beautiful. Even with the scars all over his body. So very male and strong. I feel so safe with him.
“Thank you,” I say, getting up. “I’m going to make popcorn.”
Balor dropped off a new phone for me, and I ordered microwave popcorn from the app Lachlan uses to get his groceries. One of Lachlan’s guards picked it up and left it on the doorstep. I microwave the popcorn and bring it back to the bed. Sitting up with his warm ivory, damaged skin, Lachlan looks perfect against the rough texture of the tufted, black leather headboard.
“Are you okay with me eating in your bed?” I ask him, holding the bowl in front of me.
“Are you a messy eater?”
“No,” I answer quickly. “Will you be mad if I drop a few kernels?”
A dark eyebrow arches into his forehead. “You’ll have to test me.” His voice is laced with carnal temptation.
I climb in and playfully drop a few on the bed. “Oh, no! Sorry.”
“Bad girl.” He picks up a dropped kernel, but instead of putting it back in the bowl, he pops it into his mouth. He teases me with those full lips folding in the snack. Before I can pick another bite, he reaches in, and I think he’ll eat that, too. But he lifts it to my lips. “Open for me, little wife.” His deep voice pulls at my core.
I do and let him drop the popped corn on my tongue.
He growls. “Show me that tongue again.”
I chew and swallow. “What?”
He picks up another piece of popped corn. “Open.”
Feeling bold, I slide my tongue out. The bowl is pushed aside, and he pulls me under him. His knees spread, creating a pocket for me to lie under him without being crushed, but I’m fully caged. He tugs down the thin strap of my tank top, exposing a hard nipple. I gasp when his lips close around the aching nub.
“You’re fucking sweet,” he groans into my skin.
“That feels so good, Lachlan.”
Saying his name, lifts his eyes to me. “Your face looks like it’s healing.” He strokes my sensitive cheek. “Good.”
The ointment I’ve been putting on my lip has sped up the healing process and the ice packs I rotate on my eye and cheek have brought the swelling and bruising down. “I like the way you look at me.”
“I like the way you look at me. With no fear.” He lowers his mouth to me and sips from my lips. “Is this okay?”
“It’s so okay.”
Low and throaty, he says, “You like kissing me?”
“I do.” I let him devour me, and it gets wild, like a pack of firecrackers going off all at once. His velvety tongue strokes mine in a carnal rhythm. Somehow, I know what to do, to kiss him the way he wants. Even how to close my mouth around his tongue.
His eyes fly open, and he squeezes my hips. “What time do you need to be at school tomorrow?” he asks with his hard length rubbing against me.
I know I told him, but he’s got a lot on his mind. “Nine a.m. We’ll need to leave here around eight.”
He glances at the clock. It’s coming up on ten p.m. “I’ll need more time than that.”
He rolls back, but keeps our hips touching. At one point, he puts his arm around me, feeding me on and off.
When the movie starts, he gently kisses my forehead. “I really like kissing you, and I want more of it. I want all of you, Katya.”
I never thought I’d feel like this, considering how I ended up in Astoria…
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Katriane - Age 12
“Sommes-nous déjà là, maman?”
“En Anglais, ma petite fille.”
“Are we there yet, Maman?” I grip the car’s headrest from the backseat where we’re both sitting to see out the front window.
“Soon. Do you remember I told you to be a good girl today?”
“Oui.”
“Yes, Katriane. Yes. You must speak English from now on.”
“Yes, Maman.” I learned English from my tutor, but Maman and all our servants speak French.
“Soon you will learn Russian,” Maman mutters, a shaking hand in front of her mouth.
“Russian?” I glance at her.
“Oui,” she whispers, then looks out the window suddenly. “Here! We are here.”
The driver slams on the brakes. “Ma’am, we have a problem.”
He signals for her to look out the windshield. At a gate in between two tall stone columns, three men in suits approach the car carrying guns. They must be fake. Who walks around carrying guns like that?
“Let me handle this.” Maman rolls down her window.
“This street is private property, Miss. Tell your driver to turn around,” a man with sunglasses says, pointing his gun at the ground.
“Is that thing real?” I ask, but Maman quickly shushes me.
“It is very real, child.” The man looks inside the car and stares at Maman’s legs.
Maman is beautiful, and many men pay attention to her. “I’m here to see Alexei,” she says, pinching her skirt upward.
“Pakhan Koslov is busy.”
“Tell him it is Loria.”
“Ma’am, he does not see people without appointments.”
“I have something better than an appointment.” Maman unbuckles my seatbelt and lifts me onto her lap. “I have his daughter.”
My heart jumps into my throat. “Que, Maman?” She told me my papa was in heaven.
“Shhh, Kat.” She squeezes me. “What is your name, guard? I will get in touch with Alexei. He has enemies in this city, yes? I bet they will grant me an audience. Do you want to be the man who turned his daughter away, only to be handed over to an enemy?”
“Maman,” I whisper, and her fingers tighten around my waist even harder. “You’re hurting me, Maman.”
The man looks at me, and when our eyes lock, he steps back. He speaks into a microphone at his wrist, like I’ve seen our guards back home in Troyes use. I don’t understand what he’s saying. The words sound rough, and his voice is deep.
Must be Russian…
He drops his hand and opens Maman’s door. “Come with me, Miss. You and the child. Tell your driver to leave.”
“No problem,” the driver mutters, pinching his collar.
“Hold my hand and do not say a word, Kat,” Maman hisses at me as the guard helps her out of the car.
The driver opens the trunk and more men wearing suits and carrying guns take our luggage. I glance around and beyond the now-opened gate, a paved driveway curves up a hill like the yellow brick road in The Wizard of Oz.
Father. Whoever lives here is my father? I’m so confused.
Maman holds my hand and walks with her head held high, past even more men with more guns. She’s so beautiful with her long dark hair always brushed and styled so nicely.
I hear static as we walk by more guards as they frantically whisper into walkie talkies. They don’t look at Maman. They gawk at me. We climb the steep hill toward the massive house for what feels like forever. Pretty pink trees line the upper part of the driveway, and white flowers sit in painted boxes beneath every window.
More men in dark suits stand in front of a majestic house made of stone. I’m amazed at how big it is. Long, really. Tan and brown with fancy windows and black shutters go on forever. A man in a white suit steps out from behind the long line of men in black suits.
He doesn’t smile and doesn’t look at me. His eyes are glued to Maman. I peek up and see she’s smiling. But I don’t think she’s happy. Her hand is sweaty in mine and crushing my fingers.
The man wearing white yells at the guards, and they scatter down the lawn to where we walked from. Maman keeps strolling, but the man we’re here to see holds up his hand.
“Loria.” He says her name harshly. “You shouldn’t be here. My wife…”
“Your wife is dead.” Maman bows her head. “My condolences.”
The man’s eyes land on me. “Who is this?”
“This is your daughter, Alexei.”
I feel dizzy. Maman told me so many times Grandpapa was all the father I needed. But lately, he and Maman have been arguing. Then two days ago, one of the maids started packing all my clothes into a suitcase.
“Do you know how many shlyukhas tell me this?”
“You dare to call me a whore? In front of our daughter? You told me you loved me. That I was the only woman you—” She stops talking when the man takes a step toward us.
“Quiet. My daughter is in the kitchen having lunch.”
“Your other daughter. Katriane is your daughter, too.” Maman smooths her dress. “I learned I was pregnant months after you…you told me it was over.”
“You could have at least given her a Russian name.”
She holds my hand against her chest. “Call her Katya. She’s only twelve, Alexei. Here is her birth certificate. I gave her your last name and listed you as the father because you are her father.” She shoves a brown envelope at him.
Guns click all around us when Maman touches him, but he screams something to them in that yucky language, and they back off.
“What do you want, Loria?” He pulls her close to him, and I shudder with fear when she gasps.
Maman drops my hand. “We are here to live with you.”
I tug on her dress. “Maman?”
“Shhh, Katya.” She winks at me. “Alexei, I gave you time to mourn the wife you had no love for. A wife you were forced to marry at eighteen.”
“You make dangerous presumptions.” The man who Maman says is my father lets her go and looks at me, clutched to her skirt. Our eyes lock, and he’s the meanest man I’ve ever seen, but a few seconds later, his eyes soften on me. “Yulia!” he yells over his shoulder.
Still clutched to my mother’s hip, an older woman in a gray dress appears on a covered porch.
“Da, sir?” She curtsies to him.
He speaks to her in that language I don’t understand. Whatever he’s saying draws a shock of surprise on the gray woman’s face. “Bring the child inside the house.”
Maman relaxes and gives me a little push. In French, she says, “It is all right, Katriane. He accepts you. We’ll be fine now. We’re home.”
The man makes squinty eyes at her like he understands what she’s saying.
“Come with me, little girl.” The woman named Yulia reaches for my hand.
“Go, Katya,” Maman stresses the strange name again.
Yulia’s hand is warm and envelops mine. When we go inside the house, it makes me dizzy, it’s so big. Scary large pictures line the walls of a hallway. It smells funny, too.
“I want to go home.”
Yulia holds my chin. “I think you are home, child. Your mother is leaving now.”
“Que?” I spin around and see the man in white dragging Maman by her arm down the driveway. “Where is she going?”
The man in white shoves her in a car, yelling something at her. And then the car drives off.
She’s leaving me!
“Maman!” I scream and break away, my fingers slipping through Yulia’s tight hold. I make it out of the house and run down the hill, but I trip and skin my knees.
A man in a dark suit picks me up. “Privet, kid. Be careful.”
“Laissez-moi passer!” I scream for him to let me go, but he grabs me and pulls me back up the hill.
Yulia hurries to me. “Take your rough hands off that child. Oh goodness. She is hurt. Give her to me.”
The man in the dark suit lets me go, and Yulia pulls me against her chest. She’s soft and smells sweet. Like sugar. “She left me! Maman left me. Is she coming back, miss?”
“Yulia. Call me Yulia.” She holds me, shushing my tears. “Perhaps she will be back tomorrow. Come now, let me look at your cuts.” Yulia brings me back inside the house and into a bathroom. “Your name is Katya?”
“Katriane,” I say with emphasis on the r.
“Français?”
“Oui.”
She speaks French to me as she tells me it will be all right, that no one will hurt me here. She cleans my wounds, the strange smelling liquid cooling my cut. But then a wicked sting makes my legs kick.
Yulia smiles at me and steers me out of the bathroom. In the hallway with the scary pictures, her lips go flat seeing the man in white who waits for us. The nice woman holds me against her chest. She says something to the man in that other icky language. When he reaches for me, Yulia, holds me tighter.
He barks something to her, and she releases me a second later. Yulia bows her head and scurries off. I’m terrified to be alone with this man.
He stares at me, his eyes narrowing to slits. His cold fingers slide under my chin as he turns my head from left to right. “A doctor is on the way.”
“My…my knees are fine, sir. That woman—”
“Not for your knees. To test you.” His hand sweeps across my cheek. “You look much like my mama. Still, I need to be sure. Come, I will introduce you to your sister.”
“Sister?” I squeak, asking him. “I have a sister? How old is she?”
The man in white glares down at me. “Fourteen. How old are you?”
“Twelve, sir,” I say on a painful swallow.
His eyes slip closed, and he pinches his jacket’s lapel where Maman shoved papers into his pocket. “Follow me.” He steers me deeper into this massive scary house. “Are you hungry?”
“Um. No, sir.”
He stops and stares down at me. “You may call me Papa.”
“Wha… Why, sir?” I feel like this is a bad dream.
“Because I am your papa, as your mother said.”
Maman, where is she? I’m afraid to ask, afraid of everything, so I just whisper, “Okay, sir.”
The man walks ahead, and I follow him through twists and turns in the huge house. I don’t know how I’ll remember my way around. We turn a sharp corner, and there’s a wide staircase with red carpeting like I’ve seen in movies. Is that what this is? Am I on a movie set?
When the man climbs the stairs, the whooshing of his pant legs drowns out any sound I would make following him. It takes him a moment to realize I’m not behind him. I can’t move.
“Child?” The man stares curiously at me from over his shoulder.
“Maman said I do not go upstairs in a stranger’s house.”
“I am not a stranger. And this is not a strange house. I am your father, and you live here now.”
I feel dizzy. How can this be happening? Yesterday I woke up in my bedroom in Troyes, the sun shining and birds chirping, eating my favorite breakfast with Grandpapa, the person I loved with all my heart after Maman. Now, I’m stuck in darkness with a strange language and smells. I don’t like this. I don’t want to be here.
