Gilded Cage: A Russian Mafia Romance (Kovalyov Bratva Book 1) by Nicole Fox (free novel 24 .txt) 📗

I can see my juices on his fingers just before he slips them into his mouth. When he removes them, his fingers come out clean.

His eyes never leave mine.

They’re swirling pools of lust.

Endless.

Possessive.

Only then does he release my hands. I grip the counter and watch as he unzips himself. My eyes fall hungrily to his cock. It’s a thing of beauty. Hard, long, and cruelly curved.

His eyes meet mine as he lines himself up with my entrance and pushes into me with one hard thrust that has me crying out.

I have to hold on tight because he rams into me so hard, I nearly come apart at the seams.

His body feels harder and stronger than the marble beneath me. I cling to him with all the desperation of a woman who knows she’s about to fall.

Sweat drips down between my breasts as he fucks me, his body slamming into mine so hard that the sound bounces off the walls in echoes.

My back arches as my pussy begins to clench…

Until, all at once, I burst.

I come so fast I’m not prepared for it. Definitely not expecting it, which is why I moan so loudly I’m pretty sure I can be heard above the music in the club.

But the dark stranger doesn’t care. He doesn’t stop.

He just keeps fucking me, his thrusts getting faster and faster.

Until he explodes, too, hardly a minute after me.

I feel him unleashing inside me. I’m just drunk enough not to care.

When he’s fully spent, I collapse into him. I can hardly breathe. The air in this tiny, cramped bathroom is thick and steamy.

He leans against me, the stubble of his jaw grazing my cheek.

We’re both panting heavily, but he gets ahold of himself faster than I do.

My legs are still wrapped around his waist when he pulls back, his eyes penetrating into mine.

“My name is—”

“No!” I blurt before he can tell me. “Please, no.”

I shake my head. I’m thinking of Miguel. Of Cesar. Of Mattias and Felipe and all the countless people that have come into my life, only to leave again in blood and tears—or, worse, in a coffin.

“Please,” I whimper. “No names.”

His eyes cloud over for a second before he regains composure.

Then he nods and moves back. I can feel his seed seep out of me and I feel an inextricable sense of loss.

I watch him zip himself back up. The top buttons of his henley shirt are open, revealing more inky tattoos across his collarbone.

I want to trace them with my fingertips. Explore the rest of his body.

The stranger’s gaze flickers over me for a few short seconds.

Then, he turns and walks out of the bathroom without so much as a backward glance.

I exhale. My breath comes out in short, shuddering bursts. I’m oscillating between tears and giddy euphoria, overwhelmed and shocked.

I have no idea what that was. No idea what came over me.

I’m not sure about much in life, but I know one thing for sure now: that is what sex is supposed to feel like.

Too bad I’ll never see him again.

8

Artem Four Months Later

THE PORT OF LONG BEACH—LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA—MIDNIGHT

“Why is it that whenever we’re on a stakeout, you’re fucking sleeping?” I demand.

Cillian O’Sullivan sighs and opens one eye to glance at me scornfully.

My best friend has feathery blonde hair that he keeps a few inches too long and baby blue eyes.

It’s ironic, really. He has an all-American, boy-next-door vibe going for him despite the fact that he’s Irish through and through.

“Because this isn’t a fucking movie,” he replies. “It takes a while for the action to get started and I need—”

“Your beauty sleep,” I finish, rolling my eyes. “If the point was to improve your appearance, I would start by shaving the pubes off your face.”

At that, Cillian sits up and looks at me with mock hurt. “Are you knocking my beard?” he asks pridefully.

“If you can even call it that.”

Cillian runs his hand through the scant blonde hair of his chin and checks his reflection in the car mirror.

“I just have to give it more time to fill out. It’s only been four months.”

I snort. “If four months isn’t enough to turn that dead rat on your lip into a real man’s beard, then you’re shit out of luck, amigo.”

“Blow me,” he retorts. Not his most eloquent comeback.

Four months. Has it really been that long?

An image of the girl’s face flashes across my eyes. I see her swollen lips, her matted hair, the rise and fall of her chest as she watched me zip myself up.

I’d walked out of that club bathroom without looking back.

That was four months ago.

“Is it really that bad?” Cillian asks, turning to me.

“You want my honest opinion?”

“I wasn’t aware that you had anything else to offer.”

“It looks like you covered your chin in honey and rolled around the floor of a barbershop.”

“For fuck’s sake, you’re an asshole.”

I chuckle. “You asked. I delivered.”

“I’m going to deliver a fist to your face if you keep it up.”

“That won’t end well for you, Irish boy.”

He scowls and goes back to examining his sparse blond whispers in the mirror. “Girls haven’t said anything,” he comments after a while.

I raise my eyebrows at him. “You don’t pay them for that.”

“Fuck you again. I don’t pay for sex.”

“You’re paying for my drinks tonight, though,” I remind him.

“Goddammit, you’re really holding me to that?”

I chuckle. “Fair’s fair. You shouldn’t make bets you can’t win. And you can’t hit the broadside of a barn with that Glock.”

We’d been to the shooting range earlier that day and I’d gamed Cillian for all the cash in his wallet. True to form, he wasn’t done betting even after taking such a brutal loss.

So when I’d cleaned him out a second time, he’d offered to buy all my drinks next time we went out.

Maybe that’d teach the stubborn bastard not to bet against Artem Kovalyov.

“Fine. You miserable son of a bitch. Where should we go? Decadente? Shangri-La? Oh, how ‘bout The