Page 42 of Ruinous Need

LISETTE

THE HEAVY SILK robes that I assume priests wear are everywhere in here. The air reeks of incense.

Every wardrobe I open releases a plume of dust until I think my wedding make-up must be entirely ruined.

Daria locked me in this quiet, dusty storage room while she went back to see what was happening. The giant guard barely even made it out the door with me before he heard more gunshots and ambled back to the altar.

I’m not so sure the wedding’s still on, given the gunshots still echoing through the stone chambers.

The door is locked from the outside, but I pound at it anyway. I don’t want to wait around and have my fate handed to me like a foregone conclusion.

Then the door swings inwards, and I yelp in surprise. I don’t think it’s my efforts that opened it.

I step back, brandishing the gold candlestick that was the closest thing to a weapon I could find in this storeroom. My grip slackens as the scent of saltwater and firewood curls in my nostrils.

He’s dead. It’s not possible…

But it is. The candlestick clangs over the stone floors after it falls from my hands.

His black suit is damp, his face smeared with red, his hair curling at the edges.

He’s a mess. He limps into the room, looking like he carved his way here with a knife and his bare hands. But he also looks good in a way that makes my chest ache as my eyes search every inch of his body, the tattoos curling along his arms and up his neck.

When his eyes crease at the edges, I forget where I am. I’m not in this cursed church any more.

Everything that Semyon did to me can’t erase this feeling.

I’m home.

I cry his name and launch myself into Viktor’s arms.

“My little screamer.” He smiles as he pulls me close to his chest and strokes my cheek. “Living up to your name with that one.”

He’s alive.

Viktor’s living, breathing, standing, though he walks like he’s been injured.His heart pounds in time with my own.

My hands roam over every inch of his skin, searching for injuries. He hisses when I find a laceration on his arm. “You’re hurt.”

“Most of the blood is not mine. That one…” He winces as I trail my fingers over it again, checking how bad it is. “A bullet skimmed past me. It’s only surface deep.”

I’m not marrying Semyon. I can’t be. Not now that he’s here.

“And did you…? Is he…?”

“Semyon?” He cups my face and his onyx eyes crinkle in a smile that tells me everything I need to know. “He’s dead, Lisette. I’m the Pakhan now.”

My heart soars.

Dead.

I’m… Free. For the first time since I was eighteen. I don’t have this marriage to a monster hanging over me.

I clutch Viktor’s jacket and sob against his chest, noticing how much weight he’s lost in the month he’s been away. He’s still solid and comforting, but now he feels lean.

The bulge of every muscle is noticeable. I wonder where they took him. What he’s been through.

I look up at him, noting the way that his face has new scars on it.

It’s still harsh and unforgivingly beautiful, but more human.

He’s grown a beard and his hair is longer, almost flopping in his face again.

Maybe he was aching for me the way I was aching for him.

Maybe we were both changed by that time apart.

He sacrificed a lot to become the Pakhan. He never wanted this. And now he’s done it, for me.

There are so many questions swirling in my mind. I open my mouth to ask, but he speaks first.

“This whole time. I regretted how I treated you, Lisette. I was so scared that I’d lose you that I cut you out of things.”

I try to cling to him, but he pushes me away with his hands on my shoulders.

I wait for the stone disappointment to sink in my stomach as he tells me this is over.

He’s Pakhan now, which means all of that pressure he didn’t want is on his shoulders.

The constricting pressure will mean he can’t love who he wants.

But he cups my face with his calloused hand and takes a deep breath, meeting my eyes with his own so I can see the pain in them and the dark circles above his cheeks.

“I owe you more than an apology, Lisette. I was stupid. I didn’t even try to love you. I didn’t think I could. I was frozen, terrified, because I thought you could never love me back. Not someone who’s done the things I’ve done.”

“I did. I… Do love you.” The words are out of my mouth before I can stop them.

Again. I’m baring my bloody heart to him and he’s looking at me with such pain in his eyes that I simply can’t predict what he’s going to do.

If he chooses someone else… At least he’s alive. I can console myself with that, even if he’s about to stomp on my heart underfoot and grind it into a bloody pulp.

At least he’s holding me, his arms tight around me. I let myself believe it. That he’s not going to let me go. That he came back for me.

“I didn’t know what to do with that. You trusted me, Lisette. You gave me everything. And I…” His voice cracks and he turns his face away.

I pull him back.

“You what, Viktor?”

“I couldn’t protect you. When you needed me. I said I would be there and I wasn’t. If I had listened to you, if I had stayed by your side…”

That night was the worst of my life. I think of it, how I shivered in the cold alone, how I waited for him, convinced that he would return for me even as my limbs froze.

The terrible pain of trying to warm up again, without him, knowing that we might never see each other again. Then thinking he was dead…

“But Viktor, if we had stayed together, we would have been torn apart anyway. And if the Irish had got me, or the Italians.” A shudder runs through me.

“We would still be playing this game. This dangerous game where you have to risk your life to protect me. And Semyon would still be out there, twisting everyone into this pathetic war so he can feel like a king.”

Viktor’s shoulder shakes against me. Now it’s me who gets to steady him, wrapping my hand under his bearded chin and making sure he doesn’t take his eyes off me.

“You did the right thing,” I breathe. “It hurt me. It hurt both of us. But I’m here now.” If that’s enough for him. I bite my lip with doubt.

Tears spill from my eyes, tracing a hot path through the thick layers of make-up that Semyon’s people painted onto my skin.

He rubs his thumb over my lower lip, chewed ragged from my nerves. “What is it, Lisette? I’m alive. I’m here.” His brow creases in confusion as he watches me cry.

I sob again. “I’m glad you’re alive, Viktor. But you’re the Pakhan now. You said, that if you ever were… You’d have to make decisions on everyone’s behalf. That you didn’t want that.”

He shakes his head, slowly, firmly, and tilts my face to meet his eyes. I blubber with tears, ready for the impact of his rejection again. I can never be enough for him.

Not now.

“Then you’re lucky I’m a selfish bastard, Lisette. Because I don’t care if I have to destroy the entire Bratva. We’re staying together.”

He kisses me, softly at first, and then with the irresistible, crushing force that I remember. He pulls me tight against him and rips off the frilly wedding dress that I hate.

It’s such a relief. To be touched by him. To have this craving that I’ve felt for months satiated.

To let myself believe what his touch promises me… A life, with him, forever.

Viktor unpins my hair so that it falls around my naked shoulders and strokes his hand through it tenderly, even as he’s pushing me against the wall and making me feel the bulge of his cock.

“Fuck, Lisette, it’s been so long. I don’t think I can wait.”

“Then don’t.”

He pauses as he pushes the dress to the floor, fingers trailing over my tiny but noticeable baby bump. “Is there something you’ve forgotten to tell me?”

Even as he asks me about my pregnancy, he can’t stop touching me, his fingers exploring my soaked cunt.

“Maybe,” I say slyly. “You did cum inside me, a lot.”

“And it’s a habit I intend to continue,” he growls, sliding a finger to rub over my clit. “I need to hear you say it,” he groans against my neck as he flattens me against the wall so I can feel exactly how hard this conversation has made him.

“I’m pregnant, Viktor. With your baby.”

“Fuck, Lisette.” I feel his cock leap against me and he pushes me harder against the wall, trailing his mouth down the center of my belly and pausing just above my cunt. “You filled with my baby is the hottest thing I’ve ever seen.”

He gives me a devilish smile as he yanks my panties aside and licks me from ass to clit, his tongue spread flat so he catches every drop of my juices. “Did you miss this?”

My cry catches in my throat as he slides a finger inside me and curls.

“Mmm.”

“Use your words, Lisette,” he growls. His breath is hot against my inner thighs.

“I thought about this every day.”

Then Viktor attacks my clit with his tongue, sucking it into his mouth, teasing it with his teeth. Like he’s ravenous to taste me.

I stop holding back.

I don’t care about the noises I’m making. This man’s baby is inside me and nothing can change that fact. Nothing can tear us apart. It doesn’t matter how hard I scream, this man is not going anywhere.

The only one who gets to destroy me from now on is Viktor. And he’s planning to, right now.

“Not yet,” he growls when my body stiffens with the tell-tale tremors of an orgasm. “Hold it, Lisette, I want to be inside that sweet pregnant cunt when you explode for me.”

Then he slams himself to the hilt inside me in one powerful thrust, the movement taking my breath away.

He feels familiar but new. Like every sensation is heightened by his return and by the joyful fact that I’m carrying his child.

He’s not holding back because of my pregnancy, either.

“Yes, that’s my girl.” He’s fucking me so hard that he’s lifted me up, my legs wrapped tight around him as he pounds me against the wall.

I’m being held up just by his cock and the wall.

I claw at his back like a wild lioness released from a cage. In my shrieks of pleasure, in my primal movements, there’s every ounce of the pain I felt during our month of separation.

Viktor’s groan as he finishes isn’t low. It’s loud and animalistic, like he wants the entire building to hear him finish. He digs his teeth into my shoulder as his orgasm continues, leaning with both of our weight back against the wall and pinning my hips down to his cock as he fills me.

I look up at him in awe, feeling dazed, feeling satisfied, feeling amazed at the fact that I’m here again. In his arms. Safe.

Where I should be.

There’s a banging at the door again. It sounds vaguely familiar, as though it happened in the background of what we were just doing. I was so wrapped up with Viktor that I’d pushed it out of my mind.

My face reddens at the thought that people have heard me screaming with ecstasy. In a church, too.

“Oh.” Viktor smirks sleepily and drags his eyes away from me to the door. “I forgot about that.”

Markov bursts in just as Viktor manages to belt his pants together. He disregards our state of undress as though it’s what he had expected to find. If Viktor wasn’t standing right in front of me, Markov would be seeing me totally nude right now.

“Sir, everyone’s still in the church. They’re getting restless.”

He shoots a glance at my frilly dress on the ground, covered in blood from hugging Viktor and ripped from my shoulders by the same man. “Are you sure you want to do this right now? In this state?”

What is he talking about?

Viktor’s eyebrow lifts as he takes in my shocked expression.

“I’m sure. Give us a second,” he says over his shoulder to Markov, who backs away but doesn’t look as surprised as he should be.

“Another plan you haven’t told me about?” I arch my eyebrows and Viktor chuckles, kissing me. He captures his mouth in mine then pulls back.

“Plenty of time for that afterwards,” he says, though his voice is already husky with arousal again.

Viktor shrugs off his suit jacket and unknots his tie, unbuttoning his blood stained white shirt until I can see every inch of the ink staining his sculpted torso. The man is ripped, not just from the gym but from real power and danger.

He smirks knowingly, those black eyes flashing, as he watches the arousal curl in my eyes again. “Soon, little screamer.”

I raise my hand to his face as he tugs my panties back onto my hips and buttons the shirt over my pearl-white shimmery lingerie. The one part of my wedding outfit I was allowed to choose.

“What’s happening, Viktor?”

He finishes buttoning the shirt around my body and rolls back the cuffs so the shirt doesn’t cover my hands. He’s so much taller than me that it fits loose and reaches down to my mid-thigh, like a dress. I take a deep breath of the fabric, which has his charcoal scent throughout it.

Viktor steps back to look at me, tilting his head to the side. He undoes a few buttons and tugs the shirt off one of my shoulders. The neckline is just above my bra, leaving the hickeys he’s just left all over my neck on full display.

Then, trailing his hands down my body like it’s painful for him to stop touching me even for a second, he gets down on one knee.

“Viktor?” I can’t keep the tremors of shock out of my voice.

Taking my hand, he rips off the ring Semyon gave me and tosses it to the ground. The shrill noise echoes through the room. “You don’t need that anymore. But you do need this one.” He replaces it with a simple, diamond-studded engagement ring. My eyes are wide.

I can’t look away from the emotion showing on Viktor’s face, more than I’ve ever seen it. His black eyes are liquid with desire.

His throat bobs before he speaks. “Marry me, Lisette. We’ve got a priest. We’ve got a church full of people.

Five minutes and we’re done and we never have to think about this damned ceremony again.

You never have to plan another wedding or wait around for some asshole to ruin your life.

We can start living our life. Together.”

I clasp my hands around his.

“And you love me? I guess?”

Viktor smiles then, his eyes crinkling at the edges as he runs a thumb over my cheek. “Of course I love you. I’ll never stop.”