Run (Run Duet #1) (12 page)

Povikov would love to open his mouth and tell him about the whore he was shacked up with, how I was lower than
nothing
, and he could get a woman just as beautiful—if not more—for him from the mother country and she would be a certified virgin. They could make their babies, eat caviar, and drink expensive champagne while Shaw climbed the ranks in his father’s organization.

“Where are you?”

I glanced down at Shaw and gyrated against him with a small smile. “I’m here, baby. I’ve been here the whole time.”

He stared into my eyes as he brought me to a much-needed orgasm. My kegel muscles squeezed around his dick and he flooded me with his own cum as he thrust into me several more times.

Shaw leaned over into the backseat as I maneuvered myself off his lap, and sat back down in my own seat while cupping my sex. Otherwise, I’d have a mess on the leather seat that was currently being collected in my hands. He grabbed the shirt he’d worn earlier that day and gave it to me. I placed it between my thighs, grabbed the jumbo pack of baby wipes I’d bought in Nashville at a quick trip to the grocery store and handed him one while I used several to clean my hand and my vagina.

Afterwards, I slipped back into my jeans—sans panties—and arranged them until I was comfortable in them.

Shaw handed me his wet wipe. I grabbed it and rolled down the window, throwing them out of the car.

“You shouldn’t litter,” he said to me though he sounded anywhere but here.

“Yeah, I know but I’m not going to hold on to our bodily fluids in soiled baby wipes until we get to a gas station and there’s no designated garbage bag.” I chanced a turn toward him but he’d lit a Camel, and had begun driving again on the highway, his current speed seventy and climbing. “Fine, I’ll donate some money to this stretch of the highway or to the highway patrol in this great state of Mississippi.”

Shaw dragged on his cigarette, exhaled moments later and glared at me. “You know, you’re not that great of a liar, baby. Stick to what you’re good at.”

What the fuck was that supposed to mean? I wouldn’t dignify him with a response as I folded my arms against my chest. Regardless what happened between us it was going to be a long ride the rest of the way to New Orleans.

I
didn’t want to think about the silence that could have been cut with a knife the rest of our trip to New Orleans.

Liv wasn’t that huge of an enigma to me—I’d changed her diaper when I was three and she was two for God’s sake. I also knew the usual suspects when she was trying to keep something from me.

For two years while I was at Walpole, I had no idea she was strippin’ to make ends meet. Usually her own conscious wore down on her and she ended up tellin’ me what I wanted to know but that wasn’t the point.

This time, she was scared.

Of what, though?

She must have thought I was an idiot. I had been to enough strip clubs, including the one she’d formally been employed by. It was one of the reasons why I was so angry when I found out she worked there, I knocked out an Aryan Guerilla Brotherhood guy and almost started a race riot since the Black American Legion and the United Mayan Nation joined in. Not only that but the Russians and the Irish—who refused to belong to the Aryans despite being white due to protection they mostly received by the amount of Irish-American guards while the Russians paid off the guards to keep others away from the Bratva. No one would have fucked with the Russians in Walpole anyway; the moment an inmate saw those two stars on their backs, they usually turned and walked the opposite direction. I had to earn my two by beating the Aryan to death that resulted in me spending a week in solitary confinement.

The man I’d always thought was my father patted me on my back. “You’re part of the two most powerful groups in prison, son. Use it to your benefit.”

“Did Mom . . . ever tell you?”

He laughed out loud as he dragged on a cigarette. We walked the yard, just the two of us. “Fuck no. Povikov called me . . . it was one of the rare times I was out of prison for more than eighteen months. I was so angry I blew up one of his Russian clubs. There were a couple of casualties but he made me pay. A few days later, I was pulled over by the cops and they found a kilo of cocaine in my car. Weren’t mine—I didn’t have that kind of money and The Baker never trusted me after three strikes at Walpole. Didn’t matter. Still got twenty years to life with eligibility for parole in 2020.”

I could still remember that conversation like it was yesterday. The same as the visit I received from my real father the day I was released from Walpole.

“What do you plan on doing now? You can go back to slingin’ small quantities of dope like the niggers and the rest of those lousy, downtrodden micks you hang with or . . . you can move up in my organization. You’ve got your stars, you’re my son—I want you to have the life that the rest of my family lives. But . . . you have to get rid of that whore.” Povikov glanced at me with cold, icy blue-gray eyes.

“Liv isn’t a whore, Papa—”

“Do you want to see the footage, son? Of her naked with your brothers—one with a cock in her ass while the other she sucks off. Hell I even fucked her in the ass since she refused to give up her vaginal virginity. She said it was someone special. Not that I give a shit . . . a hole is a hole. She is not wife material—”

“Listen, she did what she had to do and I’m the last one to judge her. I’ve fucked so many women it’s disgusting. She always stood by my side because she knew how much I loved her. More than any woman I have ever been with. Papa, I’m in love with her—if anyone is better, it’s her. She’s superior to me in every way I can think of. She has a degree from Boston University and now, she’s being pursued by high profile companies. She could never be on my level. Not even if she gave a million blowjobs and let you all pull a train on her ass. I won’t give her up for anything, not even to have all the money and power of ‘officially’ becoming a Povikov. Take it or leave it, Pops.”

Though I should have been afraid of this man, I wasn’t. For all his talk about micks and niggers, his mistress was a well-dressed, drop-dead gorgeous mixed woman who acted as his “liaison.” She was half-Russian through her mother’s side and half-British of Jamaican descent on her dad’s side. He couldn’t imagine what she had gone through growing up in Russia but Povikov had saved her. They had two children together though both were under the age of ten and he kept her well taken care though out of sight if Yelena was anywhere near.

Povikov had confessed to me that he loved my mother very much and even tried to get her to run away with him. He was so love drunk by her he would have said anything. However, my mother being the proud Irish woman she was wouldn’t even entertain a proposal to a man by the likes of him. She looked right through him, and still ended up marrying the man I would think was my father for most of my life.

If that was the conflict Liv was worried about—and I’d bet dollars to donuts that was what had her all on edge and bothered—then she had nothing to fear.

I had been in love with the woman since I was old enough to know what love was. There was no one else for me. If she’d ended up a crack whore or hooked on Oxy, I would have still been with her because her body was just a shell of a soul that was pure, honest, and good. She had my heart wrapped in her hands for so long, I’d stopped remembering when it beat just to keep me alive. Now it beat for her, and I would do anything I had to do if it meant I’d never lose her.

We arrived in New Orleans late in the evening, too late to do anything but check into La Pavillon Hotel in the French quarter, peel our clothes off and go to sleep. I slept in the buff and so did Liv. She hadn’t really spoken to me except in yes and no answers for the past four hours. This shit had to end now.

“What’s going on with you? I mean one minute you’re fine and the next, I feel like I’m fuckin’ persona non grata here. Did I do something?”

She turned toward me in bed. It wasn’t completely dark from all the people still having fun outside while we’d curled up like a couple of old biddies who’d decided ten o’clock was a great time to go to sleep.

“Everything doesn’t have to do with you, Shaw. I’m just thinkin’, that’s all. I made it this far and I just might lose everything before we get to our destination. You know how heartbreaking that would be for me?”

His crystal blue eyes seemed to glow as they stared into mine. “Yeah, I do but we can’t keep doin’ this to one another. Let’s not allow communication—or lack of—tear us apart. I want to know what you’re thinkin’ about. If it’s got anything to do with what you did at Povikov’s high-end meat market, just forget it. He told me the day I got out of prison that I could work for the family but I would have to dump you.”

Her breath hitched before she started breathing faster, riding the edge of a panic attack that would no doubt seize her at any moment. “Surely . . . he didn’t . . . he didn’t tell you . . .
everything
. You wouldn’t be here. I know you, Shaw.”

I grabbed her wrists and pulled her toward me. “No, you only think you do. And yes, he told me everything. The anal sex, the trains, pretty much how he humiliated and degraded you along with his kids to prove you were a whore and not capable of my love and affection.”

I sighed and let go of her wrists before I wrapped my arms around her body. “Liv, they could have done all that and more yet do you see me goin’ anywhere? If it makes you feel better, I’m not big on anal sex. Not with a man or a woman. I like my sex simple. Eating you out, you giving me a blowjob and fucking your sweet, tight pussy. I might slip a couple of fingers up your ass but it’s not really a place I want my dick to enter.”

She kissed my nose, “And why is that, Mr. Shaughnessy—or have you changed your last name to Povikov?”

“I tried a lot of anal sex during my teens. Good, little pious Catholic girls who wanted to keep their virginity for marriage but did any and everything else. Two- thirds the time, some bitch would defecate on me as soon as I pulled out. Now, just because it was the fairer sex who did it, it still stunk and it wasn’t an ideal situation for me—hopping in the shower to wash feces off of me. The whole experience turned me off.”

Liv laughed so hard, I thought she was going to piss the bed. Just as I thought she was calming down, she’d laugh again. Her face was literally purple by the time she got done and was able to be somewhat serious again.

“You have to clean yourself out before anal sex, Shaw. Not you—the one who will be the receiver. I learned all about that before your Pops made me his family’s anal whore. If I shit on anyone, it would have been a bullet to the brain so I was very careful and followed instructions to a ‘T.’ I have never had a bowel movement on anyone during or after anal sex.”

“Why didn’t I know that?”

“Pick up a few gay male friends that aren’t into scat play and you’ll be amazed at what you find out. A couple of the dancers were pre-op transsexuals, they informed me what to do. They wanted to become women because they had boyfriends they loved very much. Their significant others could see past the physical and love them for them. I always thought it was so refreshing . . . so beautiful. It’s bad enough you’re trapped in a body you don’t want but to find someone who completely accepts you as you are is just—I don’t know—amazing.”

I pulled her closer into my embrace until our faces were inches apart from one another. “Liv, I accept you for everything you are. Your past doesn’t define our future, and I’m willing to run with you forever if we have to just to be with you. Nothing Povikov said to me changed my mind. I don’t want some peasant girl from Mother Russia—I want you. Fucked up yet with the soul of an angel—honey, that’s you. The only woman I could ever
depend
on to be there for me. No matter what I did, no matter how many times I tried to push you away, you were always loyal. The kind of love you and I have for one another can’t be bought or exchanged. It didn’t change when he told me what he
forced
you to do for money, and nothing you can say about it will change it now. You understand that?”

Her eyes glistened with tears I knew she would never allow in a million years to fall but she pushed her soft lips against mine and I held onto her like a life preserver. In a way, she was the shore I could always swim to no matter how deep or overwhelming the water became. She was my beach, and I was her ocean, ever coming back to her again and again without preamble, without hesitancy. I couldn’t live without this woman and that was the honest to God’s truth. I wouldn’t want to live if we weren’t together. I was willing to do any and everything just to have her in my arms everyday and her body next to me every night. Yeah, not so alpha male, right? But I loved her with all my heart, body and soul. If anyone should kill me, I wished it be her so she was the last face I saw before I plunged into a Heaven, Hell or whatever existed on the other side that I could honestly say I didn’t believe in.

Without Liv, I was nothing.

A shell of a man, the detritus of a bad home environment with two amoral parents that didn’t really care about me until I became useful, and could provide income. A drug dealer and manwhore, fucking anything that was attractive and promising them sweet surrender knowing that was a promise I didn’t mean. How could I when I felt Liv’s twisted veins from a gorgeous, unique rose wrap around my heart even tighter the more I lied?

Now was the time to prove to her that I’d always loved her and nothing or no one could ever change that.

I kissed down her neck, which arched for me. Somehow, she ended up beneath me but there was no way I would put my body weight on her when I outweighed her by more than seventy-five pounds. I continued sweet kisses until I reached her breasts, which were peaked by hardened nipples. My mouth wrapped around one and sucked as I played with the other with my fingers. Pressing hard with my thumb and forefinger, duplicating the same pleasure I did with my mouth. I bit her nipple hard but not enough to draw blood before I licked it like a tasty morsel and her body arched further against mine.