An Obsession with Vengeance (Wanted Men Book 3) (29 page)

“Yes, but my story is a rained-out trip to Disneyland compared to yours. How long were you in that awful place?” she asked, moving the conversation along as a good girl should. He appreciated that.

“Two years.”

It sounded as if she hiccupped as she walked over to finish what he’d left in his glass. “I’m sorry, but your father was an asshole,” she rasped through the straight vodka burn, shuddering to make it clear she wasn’t used to it.

He had to chuckle. “Graduation day came along, and I’d just headed out on my hike home when—”

“Your hike?”

He paused, and felt the air around him crackle with sudden tension. “Yeah. I didn’t have a ride waiting for me at the gates like the others. Mine came a mile down the road. Truck pulled up, guys shot me with a tranquilizer dart, threw me into the back, and brought me to that cell I told you about before, where I spent the next three months.”

She just stared at him. “I’m . . . at a loss. I don’t know what to say. What you’ve been through . . .” She shook her head. “This may come out sounding patronizing, but I’m so proud of you for overcoming such horrific experiences, Maksim. I’m also a little bit alarmed that you’ve told me about them,” she rushed on with an uneasy chuckle. “But at the same time I feel oddly privileged that you trust me not to share with anyone else. Or maybe you know I have no one to share with. No wonder you like control, huh? Wow. Um, I’ve been wondering how you got out of that place? That cell. And I never thought I’d ever say this, but I hope you killed somebody. A lot.”

How was he not supposed to like this bloodthirsty little thing? “Vasily and his men had that privilege. Vasily also had my father put down for his part in it, which bothered me for some time because I never got to ask him why he’d done what he had to me.”

She lifted the decanter and poured a couple of fingers of vodka. After carefully replacing the stopper, she brought it over, pressing the glass into his hand. “Maybe that’s for the best. Could be his answer would have been worse than not knowing. What if he’d had no answer?”

He took a drink and turned away to contemplate that for a moment, never having taken that angle with it before.
Boris always was an asshole.
He remembered one of the guys who’d picked him up outside the Academy saying that. The guy had also said more throughout Maksim’s captivity that led him to believe he’d known Maksim’s father pretty well. So maybe Boris had just been an unhappy fucking asshole that never should have had kids.

The lights outside glittered . . .
No
, Maks thought, narrowing his eyes. It was snowing.

His breath jammed at the feel of Sydney’s arms coming around him. He swallowed a groan when the softness of her breasts met his back, and then her cheek cuddled in between his shoulder blades. And she held him. He watched the snow fall and allowed her to offer him comfort because he didn’t want to hurt her feelings by pushing her away.

But he would.

Soon.

Bringing Sydney and Andy to the house the following day never did happen. Other shit did. In fact, so much of it came at the organization within that twelve-hour period that Vasily had to call Gabriel in with a crew to pick up the slack. Though, to be fair, the Koreans causing all the trouble had been attempting to infiltrate many of the operations the Moretti family were burying, so they actually had somewhat of a stake in the goings-on.

Maks stood in the Brighton Beach warehouse, blood dripping off Angelina’s curve. The two men in front of him had caused some grief today. They were responsible for landing one of Gabriel’s boys—a longtime enforcer—in the infirmary at Vasily’s house. Vito was being operated on by the Tarasovs’ MD, and it didn’t look good. Another enforcer had ended up in the morgue, and Gabriel was en route to inform the man’s wife and two daughters. All over some prostitution houses that were all but defunct anyway.
Fuckers.

“I no tell you where device is,” the guy in Maks’s grip ground out in broken English, his eyes wild. They’d admitted to having planted an explosive device in one of the run-down houses currently being shut down, but the guy had refused to give up which one or where in the house it was. “But I find your woman. I fuck her pussy till she bleed out.”

He spit up into Maksim’s face, but because he was on his back, it fell onto his own as if it were raining. Knowing he wasn’t going to get anything more—there were some men who just wouldn’t break—Maks buried his blade until the concrete floor prevented him from pushing any farther. Third threat against Sydney today. Or, he corrected, against her replacement. Because she would be replaced.
Soon
, he vowed as he’d done the last two times this thought cycle had passed through his head.

A shrill scream blocked up his ears, and he saw what looked to be a pinkie land near his shoe. He glanced over to see Micha put his ear to their other captive’s mouth, listen for a moment, and then straighten. “If I had a daughter, she’d be on her way to one deserted fucking island right now after hearing some of the shit these guys threaten. It’s always about the women.” He then rattled off the address to one of the houses in question, which happened to be in the Bronx.

Vincente, who’d been silently observing from the shadows, disappeared out the door with a swish of his coat.

“Wait!” Maks yelled. “Go with him,” he said to Micha. “I’ll take care of this. And goddammit—be careful disarming the fucking thing if you find one.”

Casting him a droll look for the unnecessary warning, Micha followed after V.

Getting to his feet, Maks considered killing the guy now missing his tea-drinking finger, but he thought better of it when he remembered the knife handle he’d seen protruding from Vito’s eye socket. Lucky the Korean hadn’t favored a longer blade; otherwise there would have been no point in attempting to save Gabriel’s enforcer at all.

And speaking of tea, had Sydney drunk any of hers? He’d seen the fancy little box on the counter in her loft and another empty one on top of the blue box that had sat next to the garbage. Obviously a favorite. Was she having a cup right now?

A nudge to his shoulder had him swinging around, his blade whizzing through the air before he knew what he was doing. Thank Christ Vasily’s reflexes were as well-honed as Maks’s. He hopped back as if he were a fucking cat and saved himself from receiving one hell of a boo-boo across the chest.

“Maksim! For Christ’s sake, get your fucking head out of your ass!” Vasily’s fist connected, slamming hard into the right side of Maks’s chest.

“I’m sorry. Fuck, Vasily. I’m—”

“Distracted. I get it.” He nudged the blood-splattered toe of his shoe into the Korean’s leg, at the same time, wiping at the trickle of blood coming from his own rather crooked-looking nose. It looked as though someone had gotten close enough to deal a blow hard enough to break it. “I saw Vincente and Micha leave. They got their location?”

“Yeah,” Maks answered distractedly. “Where was Dmitri when you got tagged?” he added with a mix of curiosity and anger. Vasily’s personal
byki
rarely allowed anyone close enough to their Pakhan to allow for an injury.

“He was dealing with the other two in the quad we came up against.”

Four at once and all he had was a broken nose?
Nicely done
, Maks thought, still shaken that he’d nearly added to Vasily’s injuries with what could have been a lethal slice. After moving over to the row of sinks that had at one time been used to wash chicken parts before packaging, he cleaned his blade; washed his face, hands, and chest; and couldn’t wait to get to either the club or the apartment to have a hot shower. An image of Sydney, naked, flawless skin gleaming as rivulets of water ran over her breasts and down her flat stomach and navel to drip between the bare lips—

“. . . have to bruise your balls for you to pay attention, Maksim? Are you fucking with me here? Or are you seriously that far gone?”

He met his Pakhan’s incensed stare and didn’t know what to say. Another apology? How many could he offer?

“You need to take care of this, son.” Vasily winced as he tried again to straighten his nose. “I don’t care what you do at this point. Just as long as it gets your head back in the game, I’m okay with it. Now go. Get out of here before I pistol-whip you for jeopardizing our safety by coming out in the frame of mind you’re in.”

“Are you going to be—”

“Go! I’ve had a broken nose before. I assure you—I’m capable of dealing with it.”

It wasn’t often shit got to the man, but Maks could see Vasily had had it. He shrugged back into his shirt and left without exchanging a word with the four men lining the hallway outside the interrogation room, one of them a grim-looking Dmitri.

He was still cursing when he slammed into Rapture thirty minutes later. His muscles were screaming with tension, his groin aching, his head pounding. He wanted a shower, a fuck, and some sleep. In that order. And he planned on having it all. Enough of this bullshit. Abstinence. What the fuck for? So he could be so far in his head about a woman that he’d almost knifed the man who meant the most to him?

Fuck it.

After showering in record time, he threw on some sweats—knowing he wasn’t going to be wearing them for long—and stepped into the club. Standing in the shadows, he looked to where his dancers usually lingered around a booth in the corner and met the eyes of four of them before deciding on one. He crooked his finger and felt jack shit in the way of anticipation when her expression brightened and she skipped over. He slipped his arm around her anyway, cupped her ass because it was expected, and disappeared into the back hallway and then his office, closing and locking the door behind them.

Sydney stood at the end of the bar and felt a chill enter her body. It wasn’t an I-need-a-sweater type of thing. More an I-think-you-should-call-me-an-ambulance. Her heart felt as if it had stopped. That would explain the sensation. No more blood running through her veins.

She forced herself to turn and face Thing One and saw he was tapping on his phone. Her hand came up to stop him, the appendage feeling numb. “Are y-you texting Maksim?”

He nodded once. “To tell him we are here.”

She shook her head and feared she might vomit. “No. I’m suddenly feeling so ill. Please. Can we just go back to the apartment? I shouldn’t have bothered him.”

She had only because she’d been getting snatches of some damn alarming conversations all day and had thought to come by to make sure everything was okay. She’d been alone since before dinner because they’d agreed that morning that Andrew, even though he’d missed school, could attend the sleepover he’d been pestering her about. She was sure it had only received a pass because the family that was hosting wouldn’t be known to anyone who might be watching them.

After studying her for a moment, Thing One motioned her to the door without a word and shuffled her back into the SUV. Thing Two didn’t bat an eyelash. He just waited for them to put their seat belts on and drove away from the curb.

Sydney sat there, alone in the dark backseat of the Explorer, and wondered at the power behind this thing ravaging her. She wanted to cry, vomit, scream. She wanted to unsee what she’d just seen. She wanted to go back these past weeks and not do any of what she’d done. She’d have taken back every smile, every touch, every nice word she’d wasted on the man-whore who was no doubt inside that willowy brunette right now. Loving her with his body. Murmuring dirty things to her while he pleasured her.

She sat up straighter in her seat and stiffened her spine so she’d stop shaking.
He doesn’t have this power over me. He doesn’t.
She had no right to feel this because she’d known who he was right from the very beginning.

God, she was so fucking stupid.

So, so stupid. How could she have let her guard down? How could she have let him in?

CHAPTER 18

Two hours later, after having made yet another round of calls to his boys now stationed anywhere Luiz had told him Eberto might show, Maks blew into the safe house as though a gale force wind was at his fucking back. He shrugged his coat and suit jacket off—yes, he’d put on his goddamned street clothes again, and being reminded of that small fact added to his ire.

“Go.”

Sydney’s guards for the day grabbed their coats and fucked off so fast it would have been funny had he not been ready to tear his own skin from his body. A deep-seated yearning for relief was all he knew.

No sound preceded his Aussie flying into the room, wide-eyed, silver-blonde hair flying behind her. His grand entrance had obviously brought her running. She came to a screeching halt when she saw him, and the look of utter loathing that entered her eyes was as infuriating as it was confusing.

“Where’s Andy?” he growled.

“You said it was okay for him to go to that sleepover.”

And that cool reserve was back in her tone. Her accent, as much as he fucking loved it, made it worse, made her sound austere and condescending. He wasn’t having that right now. Not one fucking bit of it.

The longer he looked at her, at how utterly lovely she was, at how tiny she really was in comparison to him, the more he couldn’t deny his overpowering need to have her submit to him. He had to have her. Which was why he’d come. It swallowed everything else: his reasons for abstaining, his fear, the self-protective laws that he lived by. His word—which Vasily had canceled out by telling him to do whatever he must to get the fuck back in his head! Humiliating. What he’d almost done to his Pakhan because of his fixation with this woman crashed through his head once more. As did Vasily’s disgusted dismissal.

As Maksim started forward, he was reminded of the painting in his office. He was the demonic beast just then. Sure felt like it by the expression that came over Sydney’s face when he drew close.

She tripped over herself to move back, coming up against a low bookcase filled with old-school encyclopedias not found in homes anymore. “What are you doing? Get your hands off me!” she snapped when he laid his palms on her upper arms.

He stroked her, feeling the fragility of her bones beneath her chilled skin. Christ, he would be so careful with her. More careful than he’d ever been with another. Just not tonight. Her eyes were red rimmed. “Can’t do that.” He felt completely out of control of even his own thoughts and reactions and observations. His brain activity was erratic and made no sense. “You’ve done this to me. Now you can suffer through what it’s brought to your door. My attentions.”

She jerked sideways, wheeling around to face him after she’d put a few feet between them. “I don’t want your tired attentions.” Her finger came up to point in his face in that way most men hated. “How can you even do this without dying of shame? What kind of person are you? Did you honestly think I’d accept you? You were just with another woman!”

That brought him up short and he faltered. The antipathy—and more interesting, the shimmer of pain—in her eyes blasted him. How the fuck did she know about his dancer?

“I wasn’t with another woman,” he ground out.

A harsh, biting laugh shot out through the sneer that twisted her mouth. “I watched you summon and leave with her, Russia. Your hand rushing her along by squeezing her ass. Please don’t insult me by lying about something I saw with my own eyes.”

“You were at the club?”

“Yes.” The word cracked out like a whip.

“Why?”

“None. Of your. Fucking. Business.”

Rather than lose his shit in the face of her insolence and blatant disrespect, something else registered with him. She was furious. Hurt. Jealous?

“I brought her into my office, attempted to do the usual, and it didn’t happen.” Saying the words brought his temper back to where it had been an hour ago when he’d had to send the brunette off without a story to share. “I couldn’t fuck her!” he shouted, startling Sydney into a jump. “You’ve made it so I can’t even get hard for another woman. I kissed her; she touched me—because I couldn’t bring myself to touch her, goddammit—and fuck-all happened. I wanted to prove to myself that this isn’t really happening, that you aren’t that deep in my head, but it
is
, and you
are
.” He stepped forward and slammed his hand down on the bookcase, knowing that by attempting to verbalize it he still wasn’t making sense. “You’ve gotten control of what my fucking body does, and that isn’t sitting well with me, Sydney. So you know what?” He rushed her, grabbing her by the arms to pin her to the wall, pushing his hard, aching cock into her firm navel. “You’re going to take care of it now. You’re going to take me down because I can’t fucking concentrate on what I should be concentrating on because fucking is all that’s in my head. Fucking you. I nearly knifed my Pakhan tonight because of you!”

She was staring at him, her lips parted slightly, eyes wider and a darker purple than he’d ever seen them.

“What, no gloating? I’d have thought learning this would double the size of that fucking horse you sit on.” He knew that was unfair. Knew what he was saying and doing was unwarranted and verging on behavior he’d swiftly cut someone else down for. But he couldn’t stop. She was inside him, and he didn’t know how to deal with that. “To know you’ve done this to me. To know I have become obsessed with you, the way my goddamn
kryshas
recognized before I did. I laughed it off back then, thinking it was impossible.” He put his nose to the skin of her neck and inhaled deeply. His entire body strained, hungering, at the dark-forest scent that permeated and locked on to his every cell. “It wasn’t. And I am. And I fucking hate it.”

He fucking hated it.

He did.

Sydney’s mind reeled at what she was hearing. For hours now, she’d made herself sicker and sicker imagining what Maksim and that beautiful woman were doing. Yet now he was telling her they’d done
nothing
? That he’d tried, but because she wasn’t Sydney, he hadn’t been able to follow through? Hadn’t been able to touch her? He’d kissed her, though, and grabbed her ass, and that made Sydney see red. As much as she didn’t want it to, that ate at her like acid. He shouldn’t have done that. If he’d needed a release or whatever he’d been going for, he should have come to
her
!

What? Are you crazy?

Apparently she was. “I’m insane,” she whispered. And grabbing her Russian’s beautiful head between her hands, she dragged him up from where his forehead was leaning on the wall and attacked his mouth with hers. She wanted the memory of his kiss with that other woman gone, replaced with a memory of him kissing her. Only her.

His dark groan had her body liquefying.

This is wrong
, she thought in the back of her mind.
I shouldn’t do this with him. For so many reasons, not the least of which is he could be lying!

She pulled back and shivered around the rumble of warning that rose in his chest. “Are you lying to me, Maksim?” she panted. “Are you only saying these things to get to me?”

He looked her right in the eye and did a damn fine job of reassuring her. The almost-adolescent description was what made her believe him.

“I couldn’t touch her because something inside my goddamn chest felt off at even the thought. It was heavy and . . . tight and unfamiliar. When she kissed me and ran her hands across my stomach, I wanted to shove her away rather than bring her closer. My fucking lip curled, Sydney. Even the way she smelled was wrong. Too sweet. She was too big. Her hair too dark. Her voice and words too plain.” His hand splayed across her chest, his thumb trailing softly over her collarbone. “Everything about her was wrong because nothing about her was you. Goddammit, does that make any sense to you at all?”

She melted. “Makes perfect sense.” She had no trouble remembering all the comparisons she’d made during the past months when every man she saw came up lacking next to this one. She swallowed the fear trying to climb her throat—pushed aside the you-shouldn’ts and the what-are-you-doings?—and gave in to this. She rested her forehead against his and accepted the connection he was offering. “How about I help you out with your concentration problems?”

His closed fist slammed hard on the wall above her head. “Don’t fuck with me.”

She licked her twitching lips. “I was sort of hoping you’d fuck with me.”
Don’t be so forward
, her modesty screeched. Right. She didn’t want to appear as if she were begging for sex, even though her body coming alive suddenly had her wanting to beg him for sex.

“I . . . can’t hold back anymore. Are you sure you’ll be able to take it? Because I’m riding the edge here. I know I’ll regret it later, but this first time won’t be warm and gentle—not that I’ve ever done warm and gentle,” he admitted, looking confused that he might want to. “I’m going to fuck you. I’m going to own you. And it won’t be something you’d have ever shared with Emily over coffee on a Sunday morning.”

His mention of Emily, recognizing that they’d been close enough to have shared sex stories, did something to Sydney’s heart. His dirty words did something to her body. She felt a wave of pure pleasure ebb and flow between her thighs as her core readied.

“After hearing that, I’m pretty sure I’m now ready enough to take just about anything,” she whispered, wondering if he would always affect her so easily.
A few sweet and naughty words from him and I’m putty in his hands.

His eyes blazed as he ground out some nasty-sounding curses in Russian and held her against the wall with his body while grasping the hem of the white tank she’d changed into. He yanked down the neckline, slipped his fingers into the cups of her white lacy bra, tucked them beneath her breasts to offer them up, and she was in his mouth, his fingers pinching and his tongue rolling around her nipples. All in under three seconds.

Oh, shit.
She was shocked, excited, and a little uneasy, all at once. Which made her giggle and gasp and squirm and moan.

“That’s it, princess,” he said against her flaming skin. “If you’re feeling it, I want to hear about it. Nothing held back. Understand?”

She was already having a hard time understanding anything around what he was doing to her. Her hand found the back of his head, and she held him where he was. Her own head hit the wall behind her, and her hips rolled, rubbing herself just right across the hard length of his erection.
More.
Something tightened inside her, coiling, waiting to go off. Further noises came from her throat that weren’t approved by her brain.
How mortifying.
It was as if the soundtrack from a porno was playing through her.

Maksim growled, sucking hard on the underside of her left breast for a moment, making her cry out in pleasure. He turned them, and then she was falling, the long chaise longue meeting her back. He began speaking, half in Russian, half in English.

“Need more . . . something-something . . . getting critical . . . something-something . . . need to eat . . . something-something . . . tell me if I scare you . . . something-something-something.”

He drew back and pried her legs from around his waist to jerk her leggings and socks off. Her panties were torn from her body, and then she was spread wide and her hands were reaching for an anchor. She once more cried out when his hot mouth met her throbbing core.

“Fucking beautiful,” he rasped, lapping at her. He released her thighs, and she heard rather than saw him rip open his shirt. He was naked from the waist up in the next instant, and Sydney’s gaze rushed down to roam over tight muscles, gorgeous ink, and supple skin. So did her hands, anywhere she could reach, which was sadly only from his shoulders up. But the sight of his mouth on—

He sank his tongue deep and then traded places with his fingers so he could concentrate on her clit, and she practically howled. He pumped into her hard, fingers curving up, nibbling and biting her thighs and sucking at that bundle of nerves. She exploded in no time, her spine bowing, muscles clamping down as her first climax ripped through her.

Maksim worked her through it, murmuring things in Russian, but gave her no time to recover before he was standing and stripping the rest of their clothes off. Dazed, she watched as he ripped open a condom he’d procured from his pocket, presumably, slid it down his beautiful form, and then reached for her. Lifting her as though she weighed nothing, he carried her over and plopped her onto her ass on the cool wood of the dining room table.

“Perfect height,” he explained, gripping his shaft at the base.

Dying to slow him down so she could participate, she put her palm on his tight, rolling abs and held him back. She leaned to the side so she could at least take in the perfection of his massive, deliciously naked body. “Mmm . . . this is perfect,” she praised, stealing the opportunity to slide her palm down until she could grasp that very, very special part of him. She encircled his girth and squeezed, feeling almost resentful of the latex barrier now separating their skin. She’d felt him last time they’d been together but hadn’t gotten the chance to see it. She was looking now.