Page 55 of Devil's Retribution

He kept kneading and teasing me while his other hand caressed my wet, hungry opening, slipping inside and teasing me open further. I felt his head push against me, dipping into my slippery warmth an inch, then drawing back—then doing it again while I squirmed and moaned a plea.

My legs wrapped around him, my back arched as I offered myself. He let out a low groan—and then pushed into me, sinking into me in one long, slow stroke.

I gasped harshly, tightening my legs around him, wrapping my arms around his chest, fingertips braced against his back. He groaned with delight as he sank deeper—then pulled out most of the way and started thrusting in long strokes.

He braced himself over me, his lean, powerful body moving in perfect rhythm with mine as I rose up to take him. He was shuddering constantly—or was that me? Both, maybe. I was too dizzy and turned on to tell.

I had never felt anything this good in my life. I felt all my muscles tightening, nails threatening to break his skin, heels digging into the backs of his thighs as he pounded into me harder and started speeding up. I wanted to cry out for more, but my voice had gone out of control, all I could do was whimper and gasp, low animal noises of pure pleasure.

His hoarse gasps turned into grunts as my pussy tightened around him, his muscles had gone as taut as mine. I heard the clap of our bodies speed faster and faster, he hissed through his teeth, back so tight it felt like I could break my nails on it. The room started to swim in my vision, my eyes closed again as he groaned my name—

I whimpered and then opened my mouth, knowing I shouldn’t scream, shouldn’t make that much noise with Nick down the hall—but then Viktor’s hand clapped over my mouth a moment before my body rocketed over the edge.

I screamed into his palm, pleasure intensifying until it almost scared me. My contractions rocked through my body, lighting me up with ecstasy, again, again, again, until Viktor’s back arched and he thrust in deep. His cock shuddered inside of me as I ground against him reflexively. He barely restrained his own shouts of bliss as he thrust erratically, and then relaxed as the last spasm rolled through me.

He removed his hand and settled over me, laying his head on my shoulder as we collapsed to the mattress and struggled to catch our breaths. I could barely move, it wasn’t just his weight, but a sudden, blissful exhaustion I had never experienced before. Nothing hurt. No fear could reach me in the circle of his arms.

In the quiet of the room, I could hear his breathing steady, and feel his heartbeat slow against my breasts. His body felt pleasantly hot against mine. Then he let out a little, contented sigh and lifted himself off me, gripping the bottom of the condom as he went.

I closed my eyes, bathing in a strange mix of guilt, resignation and bliss. But God, he was good for me, even if we had met in the worst way humanly possible.

I’m falling in love with a killer, was the last thought on my mind as I drifted off. And even that realization made barely a ripple in my deep sense of peace.

Chapter 21

Emma

I fell asleep as a gangster’s captive and tentative ally.

I woke up as a gangster’s girlfriend, deciding that it was time to end the ambivalence and do what was right for myself and my son.

It was crazy early, and Viktor was still asleep beside me. He’d made love to me three times last night, between naps and cuddling sessions and sleepy conversations. Somewhere in the middle of it, he’d called out for Leon, his brother, and I’d spoken to him softly and stroked his hair until he settled down again.

I got up to shower, get dressed, and deal with my hopelessly tangled hair, which had fallen out of its braid somewhere during the night. I was aching in a lot of unfamiliar places, and stiff in even more. I did some yoga on the living room floor to try and get rid of the worst of it, before getting back up to make us coffee.

I couldn’t remember the last time I had felt such pleasure. Certainly I’d never felt it with a man, or even with some of the toys I’d tried. I felt like I’d just learned some big secret of life that I’d been robbed of before, during all those years of bad dates while I’d worked toward my degree.

I could have been bitter about it. I certainly had reasons to be. But instead, I just smiled, and thought about how much fun it would be to make up for lost time with Viktor.

Afterglow was a hell of a drug. It even made me able to cope when my brain woke up enough to remember Viktor’s news from last night. My uncle, the schemer, the murderer. The one who made me and my sister orphans. And all for his goddamn wallet. His bottom line.

It made me want to beat him to death with my bare hands. If there was anyone in the world who had more right to hate him than Viktor, it was me.

I poked through my phone, looking at my day’s itinerary. Tomorrow, I would be dropping into the clinic, one of my colleagues had agreed to take on my patients temporarily, but I knew I had to elaborate further than just saying it was a family emergency that had taken me away for the last two weeks. The story we’d settled on was loosely based on the truth, there had been a shooting near my house, gangbangers. Nick and I were unhurt but had gone to stay with my uncle, who’d then been taken ill. Soon, I would be able to start taking clients again. Nick could go back to school, see his friends, and aside from my new and extremely important side job, and my lover’s occupation, everything would return to normal.

Except that deep down, nothing would. I could never go back to the days before I knew what I knew. I could never go back to thinking of my uncle as a good man—or thinking of Viktor as a bad one. My entire life had gone from black and white simplicity to the million shades of gray that I’d mostly encountered in my professional life.

I heard the coffee pot gurgling and the aroma of coffee brewing permeated all through the penthouse. I went to gather mugs, pour cream into a server, fill the sugar bowl and find the cinnamon and cocoa powder. I felt like being a little indulgent today—and also like I needed more caffeine than usual.

My to-do list was pretty modest. Two more interviews, including one with my uncle’s former head of security. I also had some kind of appointment with Viktor and one of his men about Nick’s genetic testing. Then there were a few more phone calls to try and get control of my uncle’s assets in absentia. Strangely, he hadn’t changed me as his representative and next of kin. It made no sense... until it did, and I felt even angrier.

He hadn’t bothered changing them, and leaving me with power over his stateside affairs, because he thought I’d be conveniently dead by now.

Instead, here I was, still with as much of a backdoor into his life as I’d had back when I had been the only person he could trust. Because I’d been the only one close enough to him who was still alive, and yet I didn’t know what he’d been up to.

He’d trusted me because he’d thought I was stupid. Naive. Tame. Easily tricked into doing what he wanted—most of the time, anyway. Having me be the one with the spare set of keys to everything gave him security as his health started to fail. I’d been proud to be trusted with so much.

But now, I was going to betray every inch of that trust, because he deserved it. And because it might just be the only way to goad him into coming home and facing me.