Page 40 of Hateful Vows

THIRTY

ALEKSEI

“ W here’s Dante?” I ask Irina when I reach the Italians’ headquarters.

She barely looks up before answering, looking like the businesswoman she is in a burgundy silk dress that fits her curves perfectly. She wouldn’t have it any other way.

“He left for Ireland. We think one of his men might be the traitor we’re looking for, so he followed.”

“Did he take enough men?”

This time she looks up, a satisfied tilt of her lips. Coming from her, it’s almost a smile and it makes my heart jolt in my chest. I’m not someone who asks about someone else’s well-being. That’s the problem between us; Irina knows me probably better than I know myself.

“Tino and five of his soldiers,” she supplies.

“That’s not nearly enough.”

“Careful, Lyosha , I’m going to start thinking you care.”

And there it is.

We haven’t spoken about what happened. She might have convinced herself it was just sex but nothing that could ever happen between us would ever be just sex . We have too much history, too much pent-up frustration and unsaid words to be as primal as fucking each other for the sake of fucking.

“I do care,” I tell her.

She scoffs before looking down her nose at me.

It doesn’t matter that she is seated and I’m standing.

When Irina Ventura sends you a scathing look like she is right now, you better pray she doesn’t find you to reap your soul.

I never cared before. I never dared to look too closely at her violent tendencies and how they mirror my own.

Now all I want to do is stare and bathe in the blood she’ll spill. Even if it’s mine.

“You never did, before.”

“Is that what you think? That I never cared about you, or for you?”

“You were very good at pushing me away.”

She purses her lips like the memory hurts her still, then shrugs haughtily.

She would have me believe the conversation bores her and it doesn’t matter but as much as she knows me, I know her.

Every crease of her brow, every slant of her lips, the color of her clothes and how she doesn’t realise how much they’re telling of her inner turmoil.

Black when she’s at ease, dark shades of red when something bothers her, and brighter when she has something to prove.

She’ll reserve blue for contempt and disinterest.

I round the desk and glide a finger on her soft cheek, goosebumps following the trail of my digit, before tilting her chin up so she can meet my gaze.

“I protected you. The further away from me, the less of a target you were for my father.”

“I could have defended myself.”

I tilt my head, the old argument a litany I’ve heard before. I glide my thumb on her lower lip and she parts them for me. “Now? Of course. At sixteen? Unlikely. I did what I had to do to keep you safe and I’m not sorry. But I am sorry it bruised your heart, malyshka .”

She gasps at the pet name. Allowing myself to use it stirs a desire a decade old inside me. It comes out roaring and ready to raze everything we’ve been to the ground. Forging us anew.

“I’m not ashamed of the scars that bear your name on my body and face, malyshka . They remind me every day that I protected you, that you escaped the monster because I took his rage for you. I know they offend you, but I wear them with pride.”

She grasps my wrist and presses a tender kiss to the pad of my thumb. Her eyes shimmer with something vulnerable, so unlike the Irina I know. Dante’s influence is all over her but this time, I don’t mind. She’s glowing and I just get to bask in her presence.

“They don’t offend me,” she says. “I just wish you’d never had to suffer because of me.”

I bend down to hover over her lips. “I’d do it all over again for you.”

Then, I succumb. I kiss her, her soft lips yielding to me. She stands and wraps her arms around my neck, clutching me to her like it would hurt her to let go.

My hands press at her back and hip, holding her closer in a bruising grip. But it’s not enough. With her, it’ll never be.

She opens for me and I taste her sweetness on my tongue, delving into her mouth to get more of her.

Kissing Dante was as easy as breathing, but kissing Irina—without him being there as a guardrail for our folly—is a revelation, it’s more intimate than anything else we’ve done.

It’s the missing piece that finally, finally makes me whole.

I frame her face, owning her mouth and never coming up for air. Who needs it when I can have her taste in my mouth, her love on my tongue?

We move in sync as I set her up on the desk and step in between her spread thighs.

The slit in the skirt isn’t enough to allow me to press against her heated centre, so I take the knife I know is strapped at her thigh and cut it off her body, giving me full access.

It ends up in tatters on the mahogany desk, leaving the infuriating, beautiful woman in front of me in nothing but a thin silk bra and panties.

“Hey!”

“Please, malyshka . I’ll get you a new dress but I might die if I don’t feel you,” I retort and grind my length against her clit through her thin black panties.

Irina paws at my shirt, breaking the buttons with impatience before raking her nails down my chest and abs, making me shudder. We devour each other, our kiss another battle neither of us want to lose.

“I’ve dreamt of your lips for so long,” I say, panting in her mouth.

“Aleksei.”

My name on her lips is a plea, a desperate cry.

One I need to answer. I frame her face with my hands, slide them alongside her delicate throat, her arms, her stomach, her thighs.

Anywhere I can reach, I feel the softness of her skin.

I pepper kisses alongside the column of her throat as my deft fingers remove the bra, inhaling deeply and filling myself up with that perfume that drove me mad for more than a decade.

“Dante’s not here,” she murmurs when my lips are back on hers, her frantic hands removing my clothes. My trousers and boxers fall to my ankles and I step out of them before I answer.

“Why don’t we record it for him, then?”

A slow, bright grin takes over her face and shocks my system. I swallow hard, in awe of how much I feel for this woman, especially when she smiles at me like I can give her everything she desires.

“You’re diabolical.”

“I learnt from the best.”

Cock rock hard, I fish my phone from the trousers on the floor and set it up to give Dante the perfect view of me ruining his wife.

With a cock-hungry look and a lick of her lips, Irina opens up her legs again in invitation.

I don’t hesitate. Not ever again.

With reverence the moment deserves, I step in between her spread legs. I lick my lips, then take one of Irina’s peaked nipples into my mouth while I pinch the other. She arches against me, letting out a loud sigh.

As she braces herself on her hands behind her back, I take my time to explore every inch of skin, learning the patterns of her desire. For me. She wants me. She’s always wanted me.

I should have killed him sooner.

The thought is a violent intrusion, one that fuels my arousal, making me ravenous for her.

I drop to my knees under her watchful gaze. Irina’s eyes have darkened, the brown irises eclipsed by her blown pupils.

“You’re perfect,” I say.

My devotion is on the tip of my tongue as I glide it up her thighs, pulling the poor excuse of underwear down her legs with my teeth.

“You look so good on your knees for me, Lyosha .”

“That’s where I’ll always be, malyshka . If you let me.”

Her cheeks turn a pretty shade of red as she discards her heels and sets her feet on the desk.

“Fuck.”

I grip her thighs to anchor myself, loving the way she gasps and whimpers at the force of my grip.

Then, I devour the woman I’ve been obsessed with for years, taking my fill, licking and sucking and never stopping.

It doesn’t matter to me how many times she comes, her taste on my tongue is my new favourite drug.

“You taste so good,” I say, mindless and dazed. I praise her. Call her mine. The sounds she makes overwhelm me and I grip myself, stroking in tandem with the rhythm of my tongue on her pussy.

“Aleksei, I’m gonna come.”

“If you think that will make me stop, think again.”

I dive back in, renewing my efforts to give her all of me as she releases her hold on her pleasure and comes on my tongue, legs spasming around my ears and fingers raking my skull like she wants to punish me for making her feel so good.

I don’t let her fully come down from her orgasm. Standing on unsteady feet, I lift Irina by the waist and take her to the floor with me.

“Sit on my face.”

“What?”

“Sit on my fucking face. Drown me with your cum. Smother me with your thighs. I don’t fucking care to live if I don’t know what it’s like to have you ride my tongue.”

My movements are brisk and urgent. I hoist her up until her cunt hovers over my face.

Then, I pull her down, tongue inside her, moaning against her, gorging on her sweet arousal like that could be my sustenance.

And thank God, my fiercely brazen step-sister knows how to take.

I’m unsure if she braces herself on the floor behind my head or maybe the desk, but she rides me like she’s been doing it all her adult life in her worst nightmares.

My name is on her tongue again, a divine litany she cries out to the heavens just for me.

My cock jerks at the idea of sending the video to Dante.

To watch it again with him next to us. My nose rubs against her clit as she continues to move as she wants it, growing frenzied.

With the sharp rolls of her hips, Irina’s everywhere.

She’s the only person I see, hear, smell and taste, my hands on her ass helping her crest toward a new orgasm.

Just like I’ve seen Dante do, delighted to be the one to do it this time, I rim her asshole with my index finger, never pressing in but sending the signal to her body that I could if I wanted to. And she’d take it with as much delight.

“Oh, Aleksei!”