Page 167 of Ruthless Rustanovs
“More,” she moaned into his lips. “Need more.”
“I do not want to hurt you, Sola,” he answered, as he continued to gradually ease himself in. “As much as I want inside of you, I will not hurt you.”
But he was hurting her. Her body ached for him now.
Ached so bad, his care felt like the worst, most painful teasing.
But then, finally, he was all the way inside.
Their eyes locked, and he once again brought his large hand up, this time placing it alongside of her face, his thumb wiping away tears she didn’t know had fallen from her eyes.
Because she wanted him. Because she didn’t want him to stop. Because she couldn’t make herself stop.
He took her against the wall, his strokes slow and demanding, as the scent of their combined sexes filled the room. He took his time with her, making her slicker and slicker, using her desire to go in deeper and deeper.
“I do not want to hurt you,” he said again. It was more a declaration than an explanation. “All I have wanted to do is hurt people for so long, but not you, Sola, not you…”
He’d somehow taken full command of not just her body, but her mind. How else to explain what happened next? The way she exploded into stars, glowing with the most romantic opera music as her body milked and milked Ivan’s dick.
How else to explain the fierce tug on her heart when he whispered into her afterglow, “No, Sola, I will not stop. I do not ever want to stop. I cannot…I cannot…”
He cut himself off, his body going tight as he flooded into her.
How else to explain their failure to realize he wasn’t wearing a condom, until her pussy was drenched with the flood he’d released in her.
“I’m on the pill,” she whispered when they were back in his bed. Lying side by side, both exhausted and dazed by what had taken place downstairs. “But the hookers…”
“Girls my cousins sent here. I never touched them,” he answered before she could continue. “I have not touched a woman in years. I am clean.”
“Why would your cousins send you hookers?” she asked.
“Because before the accident, this is what I would have wanted. The fight or the fuck. And I cannot fight anymore…”
“Because it would be too dangerous with your face?”
“Because if I started punching another man, I would not stop. I no longer have it in me to fight only for fun and money as I used to. It would be too dangerous for others if I went back. Even my cousin Boris believes this.”
Sola swallowed, processing what he’d just told her. Knowing she should leave it at that, but having to ask, “And your face? Do you mind telling me how it happened?”
There was a long moment of silence. So long, she thought maybe he’d fallen asleep.
But then he told her a story…one that filled her heart with sadness.
The story of a spoiled fighter who cared nothing for anyone but himself…
until his parents and sister died in a car bombing.
One he’d narrowly escaped. The story of how that fighter became a killer, for reasons even Sola could easily understand.
“When I was killing, I felt like I had purpose,” he told her in the shadows of his room.
“But without the killing, I only felt dead. I could not abide those girls my cousins sent. Did not touch them, because I was too dead inside. I have not done anything like that since coming here to live. Have not wanted any woman until you showed up like big surprise.”
The story of how he became a recluse who lived far from his homeland in the mountains of Idaho, sat between them in the darkening room for a long while after. Sola didn’t know how to respond, and Ivan seemed to be done talking.
But then Sola suddenly found herself sharing the story she’d only ever told Brian, Eddie, and Anitra. Everyone else, including Scott, thought her father died of an infection. Which was technically true. But now she told Ivan everything Scott didn’t know.
Ivan lay there in the dark with Sola, not touching her, but listening to the story she told about her life from before.
About how her father had been adrift and depressed after her mother died in an accident at the factory where they both worked in Guatemala.
The factory fired him, perhaps in an effort to distance themselves as far from the tragedy as possible, and her father was suddenly out of a job and without legal recourse.
He was unable to find work due to his cleft palate.
So he packed up his young daughter and took her on a harrowing trip up north.
They fix people like you up there, he’d been told by friends who knew about such things.
Those friends were right. Her father eventually found an organization that would fund the surgeries needed to fix his palate.
And once that was done, he got another job.
Not a good job. Washing dishes in the cramped and dingy kitchen of a Chinese restaurant in San Francisco.
But as he told his young daughter, this job was much better than the one he’d had back home.
Better pay and nicer bosses—plus the opportunity for Sola to grow up happy, educated, and well-fed.
“We shared an apartment half the size of this room with my dad’s sister, Ximena, and like fifty million cousins,” she joked to Ivan in his gigantic bedroom. “But we were happy.”
But then her father’s workplace was raided, and three months later, he was deported without his daughter back to Guatemala. He died soon after of a fever, but Sola was convinced it was actually of a broken heart.
He could hear the love she still carried for the man who’d died too soon as she said, “Papa couldn’t read or write, but he did manage to call me once before his death. The last thing he ever said to me was ‘Be good, Marisol. Be safe. Stay away from those dangerous boys.’”
She explained to Ivan, “I was fourteen. He was scared for me. Any father would be.”
And Ivan, who’d never been the least bit curious about the girls he’d slept with before, found himself asking, “How about this aunt he left you with? Did she not take care of you after this?”
“As much as she could,” Sola answered. “Aunt Ximena had kids of her own, and even a few grandkids. To her, I was just another mouth to feed. I think she was relieved when I got into ValArts and moved to Southern California.”
Sola sighed beside him, her voice tinged with sadness.
“I get it. I mean, undocumented life is hard in America, and there were so many of us in that apartment. I just don’t think she had it in her to be sentimental about me leaving and never coming back.
Still, she did what she could, and I try to send her money whenever I can.
I’m allowed to work at the college, even though I’m undocumented, and Brian and Eddie barely charge me rent.
When you think about it like that, I’m one of the lucky ones, really. ”
One of the lucky ones…no “lucky” was not a word Ivan would have chosen to describe her life. “Brian and Eddie? This is the couple you live with? One is old drunk and the other is…sick?”
They weren’t touching, but he could sense her stiffen beside him.
“They’re more than that,” she assured him. “Brian is a brilliant director, and he’s been good to be me. He took me under his wing and taught me everything I know about stage direction. And Eddie—he inspires me…”
She went quiet for a long while, before confessing, “I was going to drop out of school, you know. My dad always told me to follow my heart, and I knew from the first time I saw a staged play that my heart was in the performing arts. But it was so hard going to ValArts. All those rich kids, partying and getting high all the time. Being totally okay with taking unpaid internships, because Mommy and Daddy were paying for everything, anyway. At one point, it felt less like I was following my heart, and more like I was being stupid. But then Eddie got sick, and that’s when I got it—really got it.
I might not be rich or an official U.S. citizen even, but everyone has one thing in common: just this one life to live.
And I didn’t want to waste mine. Honestly, I don’t know how I’m going to make my dreams come true, or even what I’m going to do after I graduate, but I know I have to try.
I know my father and Eddie would want me to try.
So that’s what I’m doing. That’s how I’m living. ”
For moments after she was done with her story, Ivan could only lie there in awe of her. Her resilient spirit and all she had overcome to get to where she was today—only to have a Russian monster come along and ruin it all.
“This is why you do not want to be with me in this way now,” he said in the dark, feeling exactly like the scum he was. “You worked very hard to get to your last semester at school and I took away everything you worked for in just one night.”
She didn’t respond to his comment, but she didn’t have to. Her silence was confirmation enough.
He was Ivan Rustanov. Throughout his life, he’d been given anything and everything his heart desired.
He’d been offered his first sip of expensive vodka at age 12, his first female companion at age 15, his first super sports car—the original Marussia B1—before he was legally allowed to drive.
In his life, nothing had been denied to him, not even revenge for his family’s death.
But this small girl humbled him, made him feel for the first time in his life, that he was undeserving, of this life he’d been given, or this angel who’d somehow found her way to where he’d been hiding away from the rest of the world.
“I’ll fix what I have broken,” he vowed, reaching across the distance that separated them. He pulled her onto her side to face him and once again pushed the curls out of her face. “When the snow melts, I will make this right. I promise you this on my name.”
She looked at him, her brown eyes wide with surprise. “Wow, you don’t have to do that. I was just telling you my story because you told me yours.”
“Sola, understand what I am saying to you now,” he said, tipping her face up towards his. “I take care of you now. I have done this thing to your life, and you will let me fix it.”
“But—”
He cut her off with a kiss. Not wanting her protests, but needing her mouth.
Besides it was already decided. He might not deserve Sola, but Sola would get everything she deserved.
He would not rest until that happened.
And suddenly, just like that, Ivan’s life—which seemed to have hit a dead-end only a few weeks ago—once again had purpose.