Moskva (2 page)

New York City - the past

The brightly colored curtain on Mikhael Nazarov's bedroom window glowed pure white as lightning flashed above the city. He counted, waiting for the thunderous boom that must follow. When he reached six, the window rattled.

On the last lightning flash, he had reached a count of eight. The storm was moving closer and growing in intensity.

Soon she would come, his Alina, her phobia driving her out of her bed and into his as it had done since he was fourteen and she was eleven.

Only she wasn't eleven anymore. She was nineteen, her body deliciously ripe with a woman's curves, her hips and thighs providing a thick and muscular base to support the heavy, full breasts that jutted from her chest. The innocent, small pucker of her mouth had turned equally voluptuous, the pale mauve lips meant to be bruised with a man's kisses.

She was everything he desired and the only woman truly off limits to him.

Dmitrey Rodchenko, the crime boss who was his stepfather and Alina's papa, already detested the sight of Mikhael. In the eight years since he had forced the widowed Kata Nazarova to marry him, Dmitrey had tried every trick he could devise to send her son away.

Now Kata was dead and the only thing keeping Mikhael in Rodchenko's home was Dmitrey's public image and the lure of one girl -- the old man's illegitimate daughter.

Floorboards squeaked in the hall outside his room. Mikhael closed his eyes and prayed that she wouldn't knock.

He knew she would. Rodchenko and his demon son, Dima, were out of the city for a few days to formally introduce Dima as the heir apparent of the old man's criminal empire. Most of the household staff would be in bed except for a few guards who were supposed to be at posts scattered around the three-story townhouse but were likely clustered around a table playing cards and drinking from the old man's walk-in wine cooler.

A soft knock fell against the wooden door. Mikhael rolled his lips, quelling the temptation to answer. Let her think he was sleeping, he prayed. Let her go back to her room.

The sky lit up again, the whole room glowing. A heartbeat later, thunder so loud he jerked upright cracked the sky.

Alina threw the door open.

"Please, Mishka." Trembling, she stood at the threshold to his room, her long white gown lit on one side from the lamp at the top of the stairs that remained on all through the night.

She had left her room without a robe. The light turned the fabric of her nightclothes semi-transparent, teasing him with the curves beneath the cloth and the dark outline of one nipple and pubic hair.

He fell back against the mattress and brought his arm up to cover his eyes. He did not need the temptation of Alina's body against his, did not need to feel her shaking with fear, the thin linen shift covering her no guard against the heat she generated.

"Go back to bed, little sister," he said, forcing his lips to shape the words signifying a kinship that had never existed, at least not in his mind.

She had always been his Alina, but Dmitrey Rodchenko was not truly his stepfather. The man never claimed him as such. An he claimed Alina as daughter in name only.

Illegitimate, forced on her teenage mother, Alina had been left to rot in the same Rodchenko-run whorehouse in which she had been born.

"The storm is moving fast," he coaxed. "It will be out by the harbor in a few minutes."

"It won't," she protested, quietly closing the door and walking over to his side of the bed.

His arm still shielded his eyes. Grabbing his hand with both of hers, she lifted it up, forcing him to look at her as another flash of lightning brightened the room. Her arms trembled as she braced for the oncoming clash of thunder. When it came, she let out a small squeak and dropped his hand.

"Don't be cruel, Mishka," she begged, hugging herself. "I hardly sleep anymore as it is, not since Kata..."

Trailing off, she knelt next to the bed, her head resting lightly on the mattress. "I'm sorry."

Forgetting his reason for wanting Alina out of the room, he reached over and stroked at her head. She was apologizing for mentioning his dead mother so soon after the woman's demise. It was inconceivable to the girl that he missed Kata no more than she did.

Why should he? Kata Nazarova had been his beloved mother. Kata Rodchenka was someone else -- a woman who had stopped living, stopped mothering, a prisoner who forgot that the man calling himself husband was her jailer. And she had forgotten that Mishka was her son, the child she had vowed with her heart and her womb to protect.

Sliding toward the center of his bed, he tugged lightly at Alina's hair. She lifted her head, saw the space he had opened up and climbed onto the mattress. He pulled the blanket up around her, the inside of his wrist unintentionally grazing the point of her nipple.

She stopped breathing at the contact, restarted only after he had the blanket all the way up to her chin.

Let the storm pass quickly, he prayed.

For months they had been dancing around their growing attraction to one another. It would not be long before everyone started to notice. Dima, her demon half-brother, had long accused Mikhael of lusting after the girl, even when carnal desire had played no part in his love for her.

Now Dima was criticizing everything Alina did, threatening to send her to work with her mother if she didn't stop acting and dressing like a slut -- his demented mind warping his perception of the outfits her father clothed her in.

"You're shaking," Alina said, turning on her side and planting one dainty palm against his bare chest. "Have I infected you with my fear?"

"No," he rasped.

Rage made him tremble. Nothing about Alina was slutty. Dima was only blaming her for his twisted desires.

What would the bastard do if he knew Alina had visited Mikhael's room while he and his precious papa were in Atlantic City?

Grabbing hold of Alina's hand, he rolled onto his side to face her.

"You can't stay and you can't come back."

Feeling her flinch, he cursed himself for his harsh tone. But soft words wouldn't work with the girl. She'd find a way to talk him out of the command if he sugar coated it. She could talk him into almost anything, but not this time. Her safety, even her life, depended on it.

"Why?" she asked, her voice cracked and trembling.

"Don't be dull," he answered sharply. "Do you think your papa will save you if Dima wants to send you away? And what do you think Dima will do before that? You know where you will go, why shouldn't he break you in first?"

She tried to free her hand from his grip but Mikhael held on tight in his anger. Relenting, she relaxed into him, her body wracked by silent sobs she was too proud to voice.

Damn it, he should have let her go when she tried to pull free. Now her soft curves were molding around his arm and against his chest. The heat of her body penetrated his. He could smell the mix of berries that scented her shampoo and made his mouth water.

He tugged his hand away and tried to slide to the far side of the mattress.

"We can leave," she whispered, stopping him cold. "The two of us together."

He could leave. He had already taken steps to clear the way. That he was still in Rodchenko's house was only because the man would lose face among the other bosses by tossing out his dead wife's son so soon after the funeral.

Mikhael lingered because of Alina and a need to earn as much money as he could before he escaped Dmitrey's influence.

"I can't keep you safe," he answered after a long pause. "Not yet."

Keeping her safe would require new identities, ones created by someone outside of the Russian mafia that polluted the entire Atlantic seaboard. That took money and connections he didn't have. Hell, he had no connections beyond a name at the FBI, some aggressive crime fighter whose assassination Papa Rodchenko had been toying with a few weeks before.

She answered with a soft snort. "You don't want me any more than my mama or papa."

Another snort, this one loaded with hurt and her own quiet anger. "It seems only Dima wants me."

Sitting up, she swung her legs off the side of the bed, ready to leave despite the storm raging on. "You're leaving without me, aren't you?"

He wanted to lie, to say he was staying and that he'd do whatever was necessary to get the old man to keep him inside the family. But lying would only make her hurt that much more when he left.

Reaching across the mattress, he snagged her hand before she could stand.

"The storm's not over."

"It will be out by the harbor soon." She looked at him over her shoulder, the room too dark for him to see her face. "You said so."

"Stay." He didn't want her to leave, not like this, not thinking Dima was the only one who wanted her.

He was not the monster her half-brother was. He loved her beyond the desire he felt for her. She had been his only true friend all these years of living in New York, the family he'd known for the first thirteen years of his life left behind in Russia after his father's death.

"Stay," he repeated, drawing her close, his lips parting to claim her mouth in their first real kiss.

New York City - the past

Alina melted into the kiss, heat erupting in her chest and stomach. Her hand slipped free from Mishka's to drape her arms over his shoulders. He cupped her face, his palms and the tips of his fingers callused from the work her father had him perform at the docks for so little pay.

That same work packed his already big body with muscles. She ran her hands from his broad shoulders to the thick biceps. Her nails dug into the unyielding flesh as a moan slid from her mouth into his.

She couldn't remember how long she had waited for this moment, how many times she had brought herself to a silent, straining climax in her cold and lonely bed knowing he was just a few doors down.

When Mishka started to pull away, his hands unclenching from the sides of her face, she clung to him.

"Don't stop," she whispered breathlessly.

All the heat that had warmed her torso sank to the valley of her hips, a throbbing ache building as she sought to wrap her arms around his neck and keep him from pushing away.

He wanted this. She was as certain of his feelings as she was of her own. For more than a year she'd seen flashes of the same intense look on his face that she had recognized as lust in other men. Only, with Mishka, the hard need was tempered by something delicate and fragile that kept her from fearing his desire.

"Don't you love me?"

"Yes," he groaned and buried his face against her neck. "On my life, I love you."

Knotting her fingers in his yellow-gold hair, she pressed closer to him. Forgotten was the storm with its crashing thunder. Only the lightning was acknowledged as it bathed them in its fleeting brightness.

She kicked at the blankets, hungry to see his bare chest and strong arms the next time the storm illuminated the room. When they were free of the bedding, he pushed Alina onto her back, his hands wrapping around her wrists, her fingers unthreading as he pushed her arms above her head and covered her body with his.

Mishka planted a row of kisses against the sensitive flesh of her neck. Squirming, she pushed up against his weight, frustrated that he had her pinned down, the pace of his ardor slowing so quickly she feared he would pull away.

"Don't stop," she begged, hips thrusting upward. "Don't ever stop."

"Love," he said, rasping the word in Russian. "We can't..."

Feeling the hard jut of his cock against her soft underbelly, she knew they could. His body already willed it so.

He stopped moving, his hands still holding her arms captive as he rested with one cheek pressed against her chest. Her needy, throbbing flesh couldn't convince him. She didn't think her tears would either.

"You'll leave and it will be someone else I don't want, someone papa orders me to marry or..."

She wouldn't say the little devil's name, not when her body was in a fevered pitch, the pulsing ache between her legs making her thighs wet.

Could Mishka smell her need? Did the musk of her sex cling to his nose as it clung to hers?

"I love you," she pleaded. "I need it to be you. You don't have to promise you won't leave later."

Only half of what she said was true. She loved him. But she wanted his promise, prayed that if he took her he would have to stay. Her body began to shake and jerk, the pain of his stopping triggering an emotional breakdown.

His head bounced lightly against her breast from the violence of her movements. His arm brushed innocently against her swollen nipple. She softly cried out at the contact. Having him against her, hard where she was soft, her flesh sensitive to the barest contact between them, was an exquisite torture she never could have imagined.

"Mishka, please. It hurts so bad."

His hands whipped down the bed at her tearful begging. Finding the hem of her nightgown, he shoved it up over her hips. His hand burrowed between their bodies, locating the split of her thighs and the silky divide of her labia. He squeezed the plump flesh, his mouth returning to her neck to suck and kiss and bite.

The painful need between her legs grew, doubled, then doubled again. Her ass rocked against the hard mattress. She tried to part her thighs, to ease his access to all the raw and weeping flesh hungry for his touch.

Her hands and forearms wrapped around his head, caressing and squeezing at his skull. Her chest pushed upward, her breasts heavy with the request that he suck and kiss at them with the same intensity as he did her neck.

Groaning, Mishka slipped lower down. As his head passed her belly button, she shimmied the nightgown up and off.

"Here," she urged, uncertain of his destination and wanting his mouth on her aching nipples and his cock buried inside her.

Elbows pressing at her sides, she pushed her breasts up toward his mouth, offering him his choice of feasting on either one. Lightning from the still raging storm filled the room just as his tongue darted out to wet his top lip.

She moaned seeing the tip. Her legs spread at the sight, her thighs pressing at his hips in a silent coaxing.

"Alina--"

Choking on her name, he surrendered to her offering. His mouth latched around one pouting nipple. Each hand seized a breast, squeezing and pushing them together, his cheeks rough with the day's growth of a young man's beard. His breath blew hot against her skin to singe the nearest nipple with its heat.

Feeling the hard press of his cock as it strained against his underwear, her hands pushed between their bodies. The maneuver pressed her breasts closer together, the added pressure teasing a whimper from her throat.

Mishka groaned at the sound, his body shaking with hers.

Sensing the intent of her questing hands, he lifted his hips and shucked off the underwear. He surfed forward to lick a slow line up her neck as her fingers wrapped around his hard shaft. She gasped at its dimensions, earning a rumbling growl as he bit lightly at her chin.

His big hands grabbed her hips as she stroked at him. His fingers pressed in, dimpling the flesh. A shudder running through him, he abandoned one hip and seized a handful of her hair. Their lips touched and then his tongue thrust inside her mouth.

He withdrew, bit at her lip, tugged it as far as it would stretch.

"Fuck," he growled, ending the kiss and burying his face against her neck.

His hand left her hair, glossed down her arm to find one ripe breast. Squeezing, he roughly held it in place despite her squirming so that his mouth could latch onto the nipple. Then his fingers zipped down to dust her hands off his cock.

He released the nipple with a pop then held her arms down against the bed as he kissed a line from the valley of her breasts, over the curve of her belly, then down to the silken hair covering her mound.

"Mishka..."

She didn't want him to stop, but fear of the unknown turned her muscles tense. She had heard the maids talk about a man having his mouth against a woman's sex, their words more vulgar.

Eating her...

Would it hurt?

"Wh-what are you doing?" she whispered.

"Tasting you," he rasped. "Making you ready."

How could she be more ready than she already was? Her body wept its juices, the muscles down there contracting rhythmically to push out a steady flow.

"You'll like this," he promised, spreading her labia and settling his mouth over that same sensitive spine with its absurd little dangling hood that she stroked sometimes when she was alone in her room.

Was that it? Was he going to use his tongue as she used her fingers?

A moan tore from her throat, her entire body tingling from the quiver of need that rolled in waves from between her legs.

Chuckling, Mishka took his first taste, the tip of his fleshy tongue curling to tickle the underside of the hood, then running a few circles around it before finishing with a hard flourish up the spine.

She jerked and he did it again.

On the third teasing circumnavigation of that sensitive button, he slid a finger inside her. She began to vibrate. Nothing had penetrated her their before. Whining, she pushed against him and was rewarded with a second finger. She squeezed at the digits, whined some more as he licked up and down her sex, stopping to nibble until the vibrations slowed and her hips strained upward in a quest to reach her release.

He strained with her, forcing his fingers into an unyielding V despite the tight muscles that pushed in retaliation. Gently he thrust back and forth, fingers twisting. He sucked and slurped at her swollen clit, shook his face side to side when he had the sensitive dangle trapped between his firm lips.

"Mishka...Mishka..." she murmured. Her hips turned wild. She grabbed his head, held his mouth pressed tight against her flesh as her insides sucked and twisted around his fingers. "Oh, yes. Please..."

He sucked hard at her entreaty, his fingers growing rough in the way they twisted and pushed. She could feel them spread so wide inside her, knew his cock would make her feel even fuller with its fat girth.

Turning his head, Mishka bit at one plump labia before covering her clit again, his fingers racing in and out. Then his thumb replaced his tongue, rubbing over and over the swollen spine as lower down his fingers plunged and circled, thinned and thickened, methodically scraping against the soft, swollen tissues that convulsed around them as he went in, out, deeper and deeper until her hips bucked high and froze, her lush body shaking with its climax.

She collapsed against the mattress, the dance of nerves between her thighs and in the aching tips of her breasts making her wiggle and squirm along the bed. Mishka pressed her legs apart, his weight transferring to his knees as he crouched in front of her.

His fingers wrapped around his cock, guiding its fat crown to where her muscles danced the hardest. He pushed forward, her flesh slow to yield. She stopped panting and held her breath for long stretches as her body strained to accept him.

"Slow," he groaned to himself.

His teeth dented his bottom lip as he fought for control. Her muscles fought back, tried to push him out with their tightness even as she whimpered and mewled to have all of him inside her.

Her fingers wrapped around his biceps, the nails digging deep enough to pierce his skin.

The contraction that his mouth and hands had caused still pulsed inside her. He waited, bracing himself for when they contracted outward then pushed when they retreated and the resistance fled with them.

Halfway in, he lost the battle to slowly conquer her flesh. He plunged forward, his weight settling against hers. Alina winced once then ardently squeezed her thighs against his hips.

This is what it felt like to be his woman, to be full of him, stretched to the point she didn't know whether she wanted to cry in pain or scream in pleasure.

Pleasure, definitely pleasure.

Her hips began to rock and bounce against his. With his face buried against her neck once more, he groaned. His body tilted to one side. He pushed her opposite thigh outward, his hand gripping and squeezing.

He took up a slow but building rhythm of thrust and retreat, thrust and retreat. She chased after him with each in and out, her voluptuous frame rolling in sensuous waves. Their bodies dipped and climbed in unison, pushed on and up so that every sensation multiplied as it bounced hot and slick between them.

Mishka was the first to lock in place. Alina lifted her hips to meet him, her plump mound grinding furiously at the hard muscles of his stomach, the circle getting tighter and tighter until she froze, the soft, swollen tissues continuing to suck and milk at his cock, coiling and knitting around its thick, jerking length as he spilled inside her.

Together, they collapsed.

A smile curling her lips, Alina reached for Mishka just as lightning illuminated the room one last time, the storm almost completely past.

Seeing no matching smile on his face, she pulled her hand back.

What had changed so quickly?

"You cannot stay," he said, patting around the pillows to find her nightgown. "You'll fall asleep, we both will."

He handed her the gown. She kept her arms folded against her chest, refusing his unspoken order for her to get dressed and leave.

"Kiss me good-bye, at least," she whispered when he continued to hold the fabric for her to take.

"No. You'll get me to let you stay just a few more minutes, then a few more."

Dropping the gown, he cupped her cheek, his thumb stroking softly across the surface.

"We have to be careful," he cautioned. "We live one day at a time at your father's will."

He glanced at the clock to find the hour well past midnight. "He returns this morning from his trip, the little devil at his side. They can't find you here. Neither can their spies."

Alina snatched at her gown, sat up and jerked it onto her body. Mishka moved behind her and gently tugged her hair free from where it was trapped beneath the collar. His lips pressed against the back of her neck for one fleeting second before he repeated his warning.

"Each day, we decide by our actions -- survive or die."