Nikolai: The Complete Collection

9. Nikolai

9

NIKOLAI

J ustine’s cunt clenches around my finger when I growl, “Ignore it.”

I could barely hold back the urge to claim her in a room full of cameras, so you can imagine how potent my cravings are now. It’s the equivalent of putting an addict in a room full of cocaine and telling him not to sample the goods.

It would never happen.

Some of the annoyance heating my blood dampens when Justine cranks her neck back to peer at me. Her eyes are sparked with lust, but that isn’t the only thing firing in them.

There’s also life.

“You want to spin around, but you can’t.” My lips tug into a smirk when she tries to deny my comment with a brisk shake of her head. “The most dangerous lies are the ones you tell yourself, Ангел .”

Her lips twitch in preparation to refute my remark, but a person with an obvious death wish interrupts us for the second time. “Justine? Honey? Is everything okay?” She pauses for a moment, most likely to fix her dentures back into place to stop her questions from coming out with a whistle. “I know you’re home. I heard you...” My cock stirs all over again when Justine’s cheeks redden at the interrupter’s second pause. “Do you want me to call the police? I saw the men entering your apartment. I’m really worried.”

Preferring to keep my whereabouts unknown by my father, I withdraw my hand from Justine’s soaked panties before stepping back, unpinning her from the door.

My voice is rough with endorphins, but it still holds its usual arrogance when I growl, “Get rid of her.”

Justine’s address may be on my house arrest documentation, but Vladimir knows as well as anyone that proof is in the eye of the beholder. He won’t believe I placed myself under house arrest at my defense attorney’s apartment any more than I’m shocked I cooked up the idea. This is the first time I’ve been led by my cock, and look where it’s gotten me?

The teeth marks of my zipper are imprinted in my cock.

When the person responsible for the interlude in our activities knocks for the third time, Justine straightens her clothing before swinging open the door. An old bitty with a headful of silver curls falls forward at a rate too quick for her chubby feet to keep up with.

She doesn’t have far to fall—she’d be lucky to be four feet tall—but Justine saves her from landing on the tiles of the entryway by grabbing the tops of her arms.

“Whoa, careful,” Justine mutters to her guest.

Just as quickly as her guest’s hands shoot up to check none of her ringlets bobbed out of place, Justine has her back on her feet.

The whistle I heard earlier amplifies when the lady I’d guess to be mid to late seventies says, “Sheesh. You had me worried, honey. I wasn’t sure if you had company or if these old girls were playing tricks on me.” She taps on a hearing aid curled around her ear. “It’s been a while since I’ve heard those noises come from this apartment. I honestly couldn’t tell if they were cries for help, or if you were...”

Her words trail off when I fail to stifle my chuckle. I’m not embarrassed she heard Justine’s cries of ecstasy. I am fucking stoked even someone as ancient as her recognizes the moans of a woman in need. If she has the ability, perhaps it won’t take me as long to coerce Justine into a second ‘entrapment’ against her front door.

“Oh, excuse me, young man.” She’s fast, but I don’t miss her quick scan of my body before her eyes rocket back to Justine. They’re even wider than her circled lips. “I best let you get back to it.”

When she pivots on her heels, preparing to exit, Justine slams her front door shut, endangering her life. Archaic old lady or not, nothing will stop me from making Justine mine tonight.

“Oh, no, don’t leave. We’re not doing anything you can’t participate in.” When the elderly lady eyes Justine like she wasn’t born many moons ago, Justine coughs out the most pathetic excuse I’ve ever heard. “I stubbed my toe. It really hurt.” She curls her arm around the interrupter’s shoulders before ushering her into the living room. “We’re long overdue for an official introduction.”

“Are you sure I’m not interrupting something?” Justine’s elderly guest is acting as if she wants to leave, but her bouncing eyes say otherwise. She’s been dying for this moment for months. I guarantee it.

“I’m not a patient man. Make this quick,” I growl at Justine in Russian, eyeing her with the eyes of both a murderer and a desperate man.

Justine’s head bobs half an inch when her guest breaks away from her side. “Oh, dear, are you hurt?”

I’m so shocked when she grabs my face to inspect the wounds my all-in brawl caused, I represent a ублюдок with half a cock. No one handles me without asking, but she’s not really handling me, is she? She is trying to take care of me.

My assumptions are proven accurate when she drifts her eyes to Justine and asks, “Where’s your first-aid kit? If we don’t address his injuries, they may scar.” My zipper stops biting my cock when she returns her eyes to mine. They’re brimming with unhidden admiration, and they make my skin crawl. I may fuck whores, but I still have standards. “We wouldn’t want any nasty little marks ruining such a handsome face.”

When she claps her hands together two times, Justine jumps into action. She races across the living room, forgetting the excuse she used to cover up her cries of ecstasy.

I stop summarizing the many ways I can force Justine’s visitor to take a leave of absence when she mutters under her breath, “Stubbed toe, hey.”

The redness on Justine’s cheeks deepens from her guest’s leering comment, but she continues her mission to fetch the first-aid kit from the bathroom, unwilling to test her ability to think on the spot against a woman as quick-witted as this silver-haired hellion.

In a record-breaking three seconds, Justine thrusts a new first-aid kit into the chest of our interrupter. “Here you go.”

I eye the elderly lady in confusion when her chin hair wobbles along with her pencil-thin brow. Is she requesting me to sit on the couch brushing the back my knees, or are her nighttime suppositories not working as intended? I’m truly unsure. Her angry face is identical to the one Roman makes when he’s constipated.

When Justine mouths a quick, “please,” I realize it’s the former, but before I can act on her request, Justine snatches a cotton ball out of the elderly lady’s hand, shoves me into the armchair with force, then mumbles, “Let me, Ms. Aaronson.”

The burn scorching my face is forgotten when Ms. Aaronson scolds Justine about her rough application of the iodine. “Gentle dabs.”

She displays what she means on a handful of smaller scratches on my cheek before leaving Justine to handle the bigger ones. She’s clearly smarter than she looks. If she had hurt me, unintentionally or not, I don’t know how I would have reacted. Violence is usually my go-to reaction—I punish first, ask questions later—but I don’t see myself facing the same conflict with Justine. I don’t know why. The thought just doesn’t anger me as you’d expect.

“Much better,” Ms. Aaronson praises Justine when she blows on a cut in my left brow I didn’t know existed until now.

I’m going to assume the gash is compliments of Detective Franco guiding me into the back of his unmarked cruiser. I was having too much fun goading him about his sister to worry about a little sting to the forehead.

I watch Justine closely when a ghost-like smile stretches across her face. The woman seated across from me isn’t a wannabe defense attorney or a woman on the verge of a climax. She’s just her—an angel trapped in a void she doesn’t know how to get out of but is still capable of spreading her wings to help others.

As the bright gleam in her eyes lessens their blackness, a faint pink hue creeps across her milky white skin.

“Do you know your smile extends all the way down here?” I brush the back of my hand down the silky-smooth skin high on her inner thigh. My cock aches to sink into her when the faint red coloring inflames from my briefest touch. “As does your excitement.”

I slump into my chair with a laugh when Justine backhands my chest. Her slap is the equivalent of a fairy tap, but the playfulness it arrives with denotes fireworks in her eyes. She’s grappling to reach the top of the food chain, and I’m on the verge of letting her win.

“Unless you want these stabbed in your eye, I suggest you sit still.” She snaps together the stainless-steel tweezers she’s been using to remove slivers of glass from my wounds, unaware they’re the perfect instrument for that exact job.

“Without pain, there is no pleasure.” Heat skates through my body hard and fast when her knees curve inward at my reply.

Although she’s clearly affected by my accurate statement, she maintains a cool head. That might have more to do with the fact Ms. Aaronson is eyeballing our exchange like she’s the head surgeon of my heart transplant.

If she is, she’s wasting her time.

I don’t have a heart.

Once Justine has half a dozen shards of glass sitting in a makeshift surgeon’s dish most people would call a soap dish, she places down the tweezers so she can inspect her handiwork. Her face is whiter than it was earlier, but her eyes remain bright.

She’s halfway through her assessment when Ms. Aaronson thrusts a three-strip of Band-Aids into her face. “Better cover up the wounds to stop any nasties,” she whistles through her false teeth.

I groan as my dick softens. I can feel blood dribbling down my face, but there’s no chance in hell I’ll ever wear a Band-Aid.

When I say that, Justine’s eyes rocket back to mine, stunned by the menace in my tone. “It’s just a Band-Aid.”

“Exactly,” I snap back, my voice one I haven’t used the past hour. “It's a fucking Band-Aid. I don’t do Band-Aids.”

Unaware this is a fight for two, Ms. Aaronson butts in, “If we don’t cover the wound, it will scar.”

I’m about to tell her I don’t give a fuck if it’s capable of healing my black soul, I’m not wearing it, but Justine’s quick rip of the material surrounding the Band-Aid stops me.

Acting oblivious to the threat I know she sees in my eyes, she snags a pen from the coffee table, pulls the Band-Aid out of its packaging, then jots something down on the no longer sterile strip.

When she pivots the Band-Aid around to face me a few seconds later, I forget we have company when I read what she wrote across the brown strip.

Bad boy.

What did I tell you? The good girls always want the bad boys.

Confident she’s subdued the moody beast inside of me, Justine mutters, “Now it’s not just a Band-Aid. It is a kick-ass accessory any man would be proud to wear.”

Although I’m always up for an argument, the fact she called me a man weakens the desire. With most of the men in my industry decades older than me, for years, I was known as ‘the kid.’ That all changed when my knife showed them how much I hated it. I didn’t have a childhood, so how could anyone give me a childish nickname?

Justine sucks in a relieved breath when I jerk up my chin, granting her permission to place the Band-Aid on the gash above my left brow. I don’t usually give in, but there’s a flare in her eyes advising she’ll pay restitution for my agreement before dawn.

It, along with my cock, would have me agreeing to anything.

Once Justine has the Band-Aid in place, I shift my eyes to the mirror on the other side of the living room. I stare at myself, lost as to who is peering back at me. It isn’t the brown sterile strip stretched across my brow deceiving my mind, it is the light in my eyes. They’re usually black pools of death. Tonight is the first time they appeared the color of the coolness that slides through my veins.

My eyes return to Justine when she asks, “Have you never worn a Band-Aid before?” Her voice is low, panicked as to how I will reply.

My racing heart can be seen in the flutter of the pulse in my neck, but its fast beat isn’t necessarily in anger. I’m more confused than anything.

When Justine arches her brow, patiently awaiting my answer, I say, “No, I haven’t. My father believes scars are medals and dressing wounds is for the weak.”

I learned fast not to hide the scars Vladimir gave me as a child, or he would have given me ones I couldn’t hide. Wearing scars on my sleeves saved them from being worn on my face.

“Is that why you wear these with pride? To prove your strength?”

The light in Justine’s eyes fade when I trace my fingertip over a faint scar on her shoulder. It’s larger than the tiny one on her neck and covered with a generous amount of concealer.

“My scars have nothing to do with courage, Nikolai.” Justine closes the first-aid kit with a snap before standing from her seat. “I have them because a man as hideously misguided as your family wanted to teach me a lesson.”

My back molars smash together, but Ms. Aaronson’s thunderous balk keeps my response hidden from Justine. “They were put there against your wishes?”

I stare at Justine, silently begging for her to deny Ms. Aaronson’s claim, to say she wasn’t marked by another. A car accident, a boating incident, a wayward fucking missile, I’ll take any of those excuses over Ms. Aaronson’s assumption she was deliberately hurt. If I find out her scars were manmade, my hitlist will be endless. I won’t just take down the man responsible for her marks, his entire family will become extinct.

Hate so black it scorches my skin burns through me when Justine dips her chin in confirmation of Ms. Aaronson’s question.

Just like me, she was scarred by another.

Just like me, she had her wings clipped.

Just like me, she’ll have her revenge.

I’ll make sure of it.

When the tension hissing in the air becomes too much for Justine to bear, she attempts to dart into the bathroom at the back of her living room. I seize her wrist before she gets one step away from me. I’m barely touching her, but I’m confident she can feel the angry current surging through my veins and the promise it comes with.

We were strangers mere hours ago, but that won’t stop me from protecting her. Friends can become enemies as quickly as a once-stranger becomes your everything.

The brave woman in front of me is living proof of this.

“ Ангел …” I force out through the anger clutching my throat when she yanks her wrist out of my hold before spinning on her heels and sprinting into the bathroom she was racing for earlier.

The brutal bang of the bathroom door startles Ms. Aaronson enough I’m reminded that Justine’s devastation isn’t solely being witnessed by me.

I hate that.

Acting happy when you’re on the verge of breaking is an admirable strength, but I don’t want Justine to act when she’s around me. The only time she’s been honest with herself today was when her juices were coating my palm.

That’s why I’ve been so desperate to get her alone because I knew I had a better chance of lowering the barriers I’m certain she erected years ago if it was just the two of us.

“Oh, dear. I think I made her upset. I should go check on her.”

Ms. Aaronson’s wobbly strides stop halfway to the bathroom door when I rocket out of my chair to block her with my thumping-with-anger frame.

“I think you’ve done enough.” I don’t mean for my voice to come out with the fury it does, but I don’t regret it when it replaces the remorse in Ms. Aaronson’s eyes with fear. It stops her from chasing down Justine and has her at my complete mercy.

Conscious of her earlier threat to call the police, I lower the severity of my tone while bringing out a side of myself I haven’t seen in years—the swooning side.

“Do you know what Justine needs right now?” Ms. Aaronson peers up at me with her big rheumy eyes out in full force. “The type of comfort you can’t get from words. She needs carbs, calories, and c?—”

“Chocolate,” Ms. Aaronson interrupts, grinning.

I was going to say cock, but I’ll go with her reply if it ups the ante of her leaving sooner rather than later.

Ms. Aaronson’s pencil-thin brow pops up along with her index finger. “And I know the exact thing that’ll bring back the rosy coloring to her cheeks.”

Now I’m one hundred percent certain I should have said cock.

I’m reminded the wrinkles on Ms. Aaronson’s face aren’t lifelines when she says, “Pancakes. Pancakes make everything better.”

I almost dip my chin in agreement, but her race for the swinging door that leads to Justine’s kitchen stops me.

“Where are you going?”

“To make pancakes, silly.” The ‘S’ of silly whistles through her false teeth.

I race to catch up with her. “Can’t you make them in your apartment?”

She continues for the kitchen, but mercifully, her shuffles are so slow, her dated hearing aids have no issues picking up my question. “Can’t. Got no sugar or eggs.”

“Then I’ll get you some.”

Her tattered dressing gown floats across the floorboards when she spins around to face me. “It’s too late for that. The local grocer is closed.”

I choke out a laugh. “This is Vegas. Nothing is ever closed in Vegas.”

Her flabby lips twist, but she doesn’t argue with me. It’s for the best. My patience is stretched thin.

“If I can get you the ingredients needed, can you make them in your apartment?”

Why the fuck am I negotiating? She either does what I ask or dies.

I don’t barter.

After banding my arm around Ms. Aaronson’s chubby waist, I guide her to the door—forcefully. “I’ll get you what’s needed, then, if Justine is up for it, she’ll join you for a late brunch tomorrow morning.” Late because Justine and I have more than just the issues of my cock to tackle tonight.

I’m not surprised when the opening of Justine’s front door occurs with the shuffling of an expensive pair of black boots. Roman doesn’t back down as readily as my crew. That’s probably more due to the fact he’s my mentor than a soldier hoping to climb the ranks. He challenges me as much as I grate on his last nerve.

Ms. Aaronson brings out all her tricks when Roman steps out of the shadow covering his face. As she takes in his six-foot frame, cut jaw, and deadly black eyes, she appears more and more like a lady on the brink of climax. When she drags her teeth over her lower lip, my stomach’s cramps have me grateful I skipped lunch.

“Oh, hello there, young man.” She bats her lashes that are as glistening as much as the sweat mustache on her top lip. “What are you doing hiding out here?”

Roman chokes on his spit when I say, “He’s here to take you to the store.”

I can see the fight in his eyes, smell his wish for an argument on his skin, but since he knows better than to second-guess anything I tell him to do, he gestures for Ms. Aaronson to lead the way. “After you.”

She slices her hand through the air, pretending she’s not on the verge of coronary failure before saying, “Sheesh, slow down, young man. I need to get my purse first.”

While wiggling his finger in his ear to ease the damage Ms. Aaronson’s high-pitch squeal caused to his hearing, Roman strays his eyes to mine. He doesn’t speak, but I see the demand in his slit gaze.

I owe him.