The Devil's Beauty (Crime Lord Interconnected Standalone Book 2) (13 page)

“God … fuck…”

Her head dropped back. Her hands went beneath her bent knees and she held them apart wide for him.

He didn’t care. He was in heaven. Nothing was pulling him away.

His phone buzzed to life in his pocket. The high pitched shrill made them both jump. Dimitri didn’t need to check the caller ID to know who it was. He pulled it free of his pants, tongue buried in Ava’s pulsating cunt, and passed it straight over to her.

Confusion flickered over her dazed expression, but she accepted the device. She glanced at the screen and her eyes widened, confirming his theory.

“It’s John Paul,” she panted.

He extracted and moved to her clit. “Answer it.”

Her expression was one of pure horror, then dark passion when he suckled on the swollen muscle. She moaned deeply as the phone continued to buzz in her grasp.

“Answer the phone, Ava,” he ordered, raking the sensitive bundle between his teeth.

She answered. Her eyes stayed fixed with his as she brought the phone to her ear, pleading.

“Hello?”

Dimitri couldn’t hear what was being said. He didn’t give a fuck. His only mission was to make Ava come, to make her scream his name and beg him not to stop. If John Paul happened to be on the phone when that happened … well, that was just too bad.

“No, I’m okay,” Ava was saying, visibly struggling to maintain a regular speech pattern while he tongued the tight ring of her opening.

He smirked when she squeezed her eyes shut tight and silently mouthed a series of fucks, a clear indication she was about to come.

“Dimitri?” Her eyes opened and she looked down her body to where he was lazily teasing her clit with the tip of his tongue. “He’s busy. He’s…” Her breath caught. Her body gave a jerk. “He’s … Dimitri…”

He took the phone from her, mashed it to his ear and barked, “She’ll call you back.”

The thing hit the floor somewhere over his shoulder and was forgotten as his entire focus became the woman begging him not to stop. It dawned on him that her sounds of pleasure were for him only and sharing them with anyone, even as a taunt could never happen. He’d always been a greedy, possessive lover, more so when it came to Ava.

“Come for me,
myshka,
” he prompted, stretching her on two fingers. Then a third. “I need to hear you.”

He worked them deep inside her as she practically bowed off the chair in her reckless abandonment. Her thighs quivered. Her toes curled. She gave a strangled sob. Then she was coming. Her body broke and she liquefied around his thrusting digits. The heat of her ran down his wrists and dripped to the carpet. Her pussy sucked in violent throbs that made her clit twitch erratically. He teased the defenseless little bundle until the last tremor had left her and her death grip on his hair had slipped free.

He cleaned her with his tongue, lapping it all up, every last drop, ignoring her weak whimpers of protest. Once satisfied there was nothing left, he raised his head.

She lay in a slumped, discarded heap in the chair. Her knees were sprawled open wide, her top bunched around her naked hips, her panties shoved to one side, revealing her glistening and swollen mound. There was a flush in her cheeks that spoke of a satisfied woman and a smile on her lips that made his cock twitch. Her dusky lashes parted and he was caught in her gaze.

“I missed that,” she whispered. “I’ve missed the feel of you inside me more, though.”

He wanted her from behind with her body bent over the chair, her hair twisted in his hand as he slammed into her like a mad man. That was how he planned to take her. He was already starting to tell her as much, when his phone sprang to life a second time, insistent and demanding.

“Ignore it,” she whispered, her voice low and sultry; the same voice she’d used in the past to give that exact same command.

But it was the sick reminder he needed to draw away. Too much damage had already been caused by his weakness. Reality had worked itself past the urgency of his own needs and had smacked him upside the head.

He jerked back and shot to his feet. He spun away from her. His hand trembled as he lifted it to wipe the dampness from his chin.

What the fuck had he done? What had he been thinking? How could he allow himself to toy with her, knowing what he needed to do? When had he becoming such a sick and twisted bastard?

“Dimitri?”

He heard the chair squeak with the shift of her weight and it speared through him. Loathing and disgust wound around his throat and squeezed.

“Don’t.”

He didn’t face her. He couldn’t. Not after what he’d done. Not after what he would do. As if he hadn’t already made her suffer enough. As if she needed another excuse to hate him.

“That shouldn’t have happened,” he told her, barely in control of his voice. “It can’t happen again.”

The phone had stopped ringing. It lay still and useless on the urine colored carpet. The absence of its sound seemed even louder.

“I don’t understand,” she whispered. “You—”

“I know!” he cut her off, not needing her to remind him that he was the one responsible. “It won’t happen again.”

He couldn’t see her face, but he could feel her pain. It swelled through the room like a tangible force. It curdled inside him like sour milk. It filled him with a wrenching pain that nearly sent him doubling over.

She didn’t say anything. He honestly wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting, a chair upside the head, maybe. But there was only silence, and he almost longed for the chair, because at least then she wasn’t just sitting there in that fucking thing, watching him like he’d torn her heart out. Again.

Christ, how many times was he going to have to break her? It seemed like every time he got anywhere near her, it ended with him being the cause of her pain. But wasn’t that what monsters did? Wasn’t that what his mother had always told him he was good at? Causing pain and suffering to those around him. It was his own fault he hadn’t listened. His fault he’d allowed himself to believe he was ever capable of more. The evidence of his nature, the extent of his cruelty sat in that very room with him, saying nothing yet condemning him for his weakness.

“What happened?” she whispered at last. “Did I—”

“It shouldn’t have happened, Ava.” He turned to her, no longer able to avoid her eyes. “In a few days, you’re going to go back to your life and our paths will never cross again. They can’t cross again.”

She sat ramrod straight, her feet neatly side by side on the ground, her knees touching. She sat as though she were prepared to have tea with the queen.

“Why?”

That question was the reason why he’d left the first time without a word. He hadn’t had an answer for her then and he still had no answer for her now, except the truth and that was the thing he’d sworn he’d keep from her.

By no means was he a coward. Someone in his situation couldn’t afford to be. But leaving her like he had was an act that had haunted him every day since. Some days, the urge to confess it all had nearly driven him mad. He’d lie in bed, hands twisted in the sheets, fighting against himself to keep from lunging out and finding her. But it always came down to answering that question.

Why? Why had he left? Why had he never come back? Why had he hurt her?

He wanted to tell her to go ask John Paul. He’d been the one waiting for Dimitri in the wee hours of the morning, just beneath Ava’s bedroom window. He’d been the one to remind Dimitri of what he was and the destruction he would cause if he didn’t let Ava go. He’d been the one to put all the pictures together and help Dimitri realize there was no future for him, and if he kept Ava, no future for her either.

There weren’t many things he agreed with John Paul about. The man had abandoned him before Dimitri was even born, had turned his back on him more times than Dimitri could count. They were both from the same world, yet John Paul had always seen Dimitri as a wild beast running savage through the streets. As a child, Dimitri had wanted to ask what he’d done, but never did. As an adult, he told himself he didn’t care. Whatever the problems the man had, were his burdens to bear.

But Ava was the thing that brought them to same field of understanding. She was the thing that they both could agree needed protecting above all else. For them, she was that flicker of light at the end of a very long tunnel. That glimmer of hope when all else felt lost. She was their strength, the purpose behind every battle. Their love for her may have been different, but ultimately, it was painfully similar. That was the only reason Dimitri had even considered listening when John Paul told him he needed to stay away.

“Are you really prepared to pull her into your world? Can you really do that to her?”

Dimitri had only been twenty-five, but he’d already had blood on his hands. He’d already stood witness as a man’s life had faded from his eyes because of him. He had already done things he couldn’t change, had destroyed lives he couldn’t fix. And every night, he had left behind the things he’d done and crawled into the warmth Ava offered without question. Every night, he’d change out of blood soaked clothes and let her chase away the day with her endless stories. The beast in him had always calmed the second he’d slipped from his world into hers.

“I’ll protect her,”
he’d told John Paul with all the confidence of a boy unwilling to relinquish a prized toy.
“I can do that.”

John Paul had studied him from the other puddle of darkness the light from her window didn’t reach. His eyes had gleamed the way all eyes in their world seemed to do, with a calculating, watchful scrutiny that left nothing uncovered.

“She doesn’t belong there,”
he’d said.
“She doesn’t belong with you. You will destroy her. You will take away everything that makes her what she is. You will smother her light and there will be nothing left of her, but the same emptiness that fills everyone who comes near you.”

“I would never hurt her,”
Dimitri had insisted.

“You already have, because that is what you do, Dimitri. That is all you are capable of. Your existence is a curse that kills everything it touches. It will kill Ava. It will break her and it will be your fault.”

He smelled of her. The floral scent of her clung to his skin, the taste of her lingered on his tongue. He’d been surrounded by her even then and all he could see when he looked at his hands was blood of the people he’d killed, of the lives he’d shortened. He heard their screams, their pleas for mercy ringing through the gardens. He thought of Ava, sweet, beautiful, pure Ava with her untainted smiles, her unwavering light.

“Let her go,”
John Paul had willed.
“Do it now and never see her again. You must swear to this. You must swear you will protect her from your mother and the monster inside you.”

Dimitri had frowned.
“What about Elena?”

John Paul’s chin had lifted a notch.
“How long before she finds out about Ava? How long before she uses Ava to make you fall in line? How long before she kills Ava to send you a message?”

It was a prodding fear he’d ignored for too long, but standing there, being reminded of his evils, there was no escaping it—Elena. His mother would see Ava as a weakness, a weakness she could exploit whenever it suited her. There would be no hesitation. There would be no guilt or mercy. Ava being John Paul’s daughter would only amplify her cruelty. Watching … making Ava suffer would be joy.

“I…”

What could he say? It was true. All of it. He couldn’t protect Ava. He was powerless against his mother, powerless against himself. What sort of man deluded himself into believing otherwise when the truth was staring at him in the face? He was a monster. Going home and washing it off before climbing into Ava’s bed didn’t absolve him of his sins. It didn’t change the fact that he would leave her arms and do it again.

There was no other choice.

That was the last time he ever returned to the estate. The last time he ever saw Ava. The last time his humanity saw freedom. He turned to the night, to the vast strain of his own destruction and submitted. There was nothing else for him. There was no escape from the life he’d been birthed into, the title forced on him. He was nothing, but a savage, wild beast that would one day be put down.

“Dimitri.”

Cool, tender fingers grazed his cheeks and ripped him from the memory with a brutal force that tore the air from his lungs. He sucked in air and nearly doubled over when it wrenched out of him in a near sob. It would have amazed him how something that happened so long ago could still break him open had he not been folded in Ava’s arms. Her heat engulfed him, tinged just slightly by her earlier arousal. He hadn’t heard her move, but there she was, aligned with him from head to toe as though created specifically to be there, nestled against him.

“What are you doing?” The words choked out of him.

“Making it go away.”

Something in him shattered. The deafening sound of it roared between his ears. It pounded in his chest. It raged around him with a ferocity that left him breathless.

At his sides, his fists twitched. The muscles on his arms flexed. His nerves tingled, an insistent, familiar urge that had him catching his breath in restraint.