BAD APPLE: The Complete Series (Parts 1-5) (10 page)

Misha

It’s been two weeks since I walked into Irina’s apartment and had my guts ripped out.

I adore my angel and have from the moment those golden eyes first met mine and that blush stained her cheeks a soft pink. She’s sweet and kind and so generous of spirit that I could do nothing but like her on sight.

But I lied to her. And yet she did not lie when she said that I had held myself and my emotions back from her while taking and demanding more from her.

I am a cheat. I stole from her more than a building. I took her heart, one I purposely set out to win, and gave nothing in return but my body. It is wrong and she deserves so much more than that.

But I have nothing to give, save for my body and the small intimacies I have allowed. My heart is long gone, buried beneath the earth with the only female I have ever truly loved.

What could I say or do to convince Irina to remain with me when I cannot lie to her again?

Nothing.

And therein lies my biggest obstacle, because even though I know I have no right to go after her again, I will. I need her light to warm the darkness I live in, and I need her laughter to fill the emptiness within me.

I just have to figure out how to do this without hurting her more.

***

Nik

The feel of his sweat-covered chest sliding over mine is the worst and best thing in the world. I love every dirty minute of his mouth sucking my nipples to hard points, and I love the almost painful way he fills my sex before his hips still and he grins down at me wickedly.

Vadim Novac…just his name makes my sex clench around his girth as I stare up at him, totally at his mercy as he continues to torture me, thrusting into me in a measured rhythm that gets me closer to my peak before stilling.

He’s been at it for a good hour now, driving me crazy with need, making me moan and beg for release—one I know he will not give me unless I invite him into my heart.

“Please, Vadi. Oh God, please,” I beg, twisting beneath him for friction—anything to still the incessant throb between my legs.

Vadim is the master of seduction, a dark god when it comes to sex, and so experienced that he’s held me in thrall since that very first moment, tying me to him in such a way that I now crave him with an intensity that scares me to death.

This is more than sex and more than love. He owns me on a cellular level and revels in that ownership like the bastard he is. And this bastard wants answers from me. He wants me to betray Ri’s trust because that freaking brother of his is so foolish, he still doesn’t get it.

What’s so fucking hard about realizing that he needs to tell her that Mina isn’t his long-lost love back from the dead or whatever?

              “Tell me what’s going on and I will give you everything you want, my darling,” he murmurs, making me scream in agony as he pulls out of me and trails his mouth lower, laying those full lips over my clit again.

“Vadi! No, oh yes, please no,” I wail as his tongue leaves my swollen, throbbing nub and travels lower, through my wet slit, coming to rest at my entrance.

“Tell me all, my love, and I will make this little sheath explode in ecstasy,” he croons, flicking the very tip of his tongue into me before licking back up.

I’m trembling and so desperate for release after an hour of being built up and pulled back from the precipice. I hate sweating, despise the dirty slide of perspiration over my skin, and yet as he holds himself over me again and pushes his slick chest against mine, all I feel is love, devotion, and a need I haven’t been able to deny since that first touch.

“Baby, please don’t do this to me,” I plead as he slowly inches back into me, letting me feel every touch of his thick, long cock.

The pleasure is maddening when he pulls back out, his gaze trained between my legs before treating me to another torturously slow invasion.

My sex pulses in the most delicious way and I’m almost insensate by the time he stops and sits back on his heels, smiling down at me again.

“You have to promise me you won’t…ah, stop, Vadi.”

“I make no promises I cannot keep. Speak. Please, for God’s sake speak, Nikita,” he snarls when my sex spasms wildly around him, sucking at his length the way I would with my mouth.

I can’t hold out anymore, God help me. I can’t watch him torture us both for another minute. He’s as wild for climax as I am, perhaps more so because I’ve done the one thing Vadi can’t abide. I’ve held a part of me away from him.

“She’s pregnant.”

His slow smile is hot and wicked and I almost smile myself when the hard edges leave his face and I once again see the easy, happy Vadim staring down at me.

“Thank you,” he whispers, coming back down to kiss me reverently, his hips pushing his cock deeper, more firmly into my trembling core.

I’m so grateful that I don’t hold back my cries when he starts loving me with strong, hard thrusts that have me careening into a climax that steals my breath and sanity.

When he starts coming too, filling me with his essence, I come again, screaming out my love and need. He’s never said the words, never committed himself in that way, though he’s been tireless and demanding in his need to hear me say them.

Sometimes I think he never will.

He collapses beside me and rolls to his back, putting a few inches of space between us.

Vadim Novac is a dominant male, one who controls everything around him while fooling all with that carefree attitude of his.

He controls me in a way that is soul deep. I submit to his every sexual desire—anytime, anywhere, and however he wants me. He controls my every mood with nothing more than a look and that strange light in his eyes.

He owns me—body, heart, and soul.

And I know that I may never own him as he rolls from the bed and walks into the bathroom, his muscular buttocks clenching with every step. It’s only when the door closes and I hear the shower turn on that I allow the tears I always shed after to flow free.

I wonder if Ri feels this pain too, if anther Novac owns another defenceless woman. And I wonder if escaping them intact is even possible for us.

By the time the water shuts off, I have myself collected enough that he sees nothing but my smile as I rise and stride past him, my need to wash him off now, the way he always does me, driving me more than the tears that are locked deep inside me.

“Nikita, my woman?”

I ignore those gentle words and dive into the shower, almost panicked as I grab the soap and lather between my legs. I love the man, but it’s a fool’s errand, no matter how tenderly he treats me or how happy we are together.

He’ll never open himself to me, just as I fear Misha will never open himself to Ri.

I can handle this and still survive. I’ve survived my family and the shit they put me through since I was old enough to understand that they’re criminals with no conscience, and I survived when they gave me to a man I loved with girlish innocence but soon learned to fear.

I know how to fool myself and keep something back, no matter how much it hurts. I just pray Ri can too, or that the man she loves is capable of loving her back.

“Nikita?”

His voice has that demanding air again—that harsh authority I can’t ignore. It makes me ache with lust in a way I shouldn’t, and I turn to him as I leave the shower, accepting the towel he holds out with a raised brow.

“I will ensure that Misha makes her happy. You have no need to fear for your friend.”

“It’s not her I fear for, Vadi. Are you leaving?”

The question’s a silly one, and one that he doesn’t like me asking. His only response is a nod of his head.

He never stays, never holds me or cuddles. Just dominant sex and then a cold bed.

He kisses me, though, before grabbing his jacket and striding out. I guess that’s my answer.

Irina

I’m wishing for death as I bolt to the bathroom and fall over the toilet, my entire body wracked with painful explosions of last night’s dry toast and sweet black tea.

I feel wretched from a stomach virus that one of those rat-bastard customers of mine must have carried in.

After I almost lost my weight in faeces a few days ago, I finally buckled and went to the doctor, afraid that my baby would be hurt by the illness. I cried so hard when the doctor told me I wasn’t pregnant at all. They had to give me a shot and call Tatiana to come get me.

              It’s a stupid to feel this depressed when weeks ago I was cursing the thought of a baby, but I do. As if something priceless has been stolen from me. I had even started talking to my belly and really getting into this whole pregnancy thing like it was the best thing that had ever happened to me.

I was so happy after a while that I’d even considered calling Misha and telling him. Thank God I didn’t, because it would have hurt worse feeling like a fool as well as a failure.

I haven’t been to work in three days, and poor Tat is sworn to secrecy about this till I can work up the courage to admit that the test was a false positive.

Another, lighter spasm hits me, making me dry-heave because my stomach is completely empty. I scream again, only this time it’s the product of fear as I feel arms wrap around me and a cold cloth hit the back of my neck.

“Hush, angel. Shh, let me care for you.”

Each stroke of his hands through my hair feels like heaven, and the sweet, tender crooning in Russian has me relaxing as the violent tremors leave my body exhausted, sweating, and limp.

I don’t struggle as he tenderly helps me rinse my mouth and brush my teeth, and I  lean into him as he strips us both and pulls me into his arms before the steam of a shower I didn’t notice running pours over us both.

Misha holds me the whole time he bathes me, his strength seeping into me with every stroke of his hands, his fingers messaging my tense muscles.

By the time I’m clean, toweled, and tucked back under the covers, I feel…alive again. I feel as if I can breathe now that he’s here, and I realize that no amount of time or anger can change the fact that I love this man.

              “Ah, angel, you are so ill with this little one. I do not like this,” he murmurs, bringing me swiftly back to reality as those words sink in.

              “I’m not…I, uh…the test I took produced a false positive, Misha. The doctor confirmed it days ago,” I manage to choke out finally, the renewed disappointment hitting me hard.

I’d been excited about a little blue-eyed, blond boy with his father’s stubbornness and a penchant for mischief like his uncle Vadi. Now that dream is gone, ripped away every time I puke or writhe with cramps brought on by my body trying to flush the illness out.

Misha smiles and shakes his head.

“Do not tell me these lies, angel. I know—”

“It was a false positive. I had blood and urine tests done four days ago. I got my period, too.”

“But…”

His disappointment is evident as I pull myself up to the headboard and sigh deeply, feeling a million years old all of a sudden.

“Is that why you’re here? You thought I was pregnant?”

“I am here because my wife is driving me crazy! I cannot allow this to continue any longer,” he snarls, taking my face in a gentle grip as those eyes bore into me. “You are mine, angel. My woman. My lover. I have never needed a woman more in my life, never thought to allow one to cage me this way, but you do. You’ve made me desperate for you. I thought you were carrying my child, and it gave me hope that I had some hold on you, even one so fragile.”

I should not find those words sweet or be fighting the need to giggle when he looks down at me with a pout and shakes his head.

“I need to explain something to you, and perhaps…you will find it within your heart to forgive me my stupidity, Irina.”

He’s never been uncertain or hesitant, and I very much doubt there’s been a day in his life that he ever felt those emotions, but just seeing those things in him whenever he tried to speak to me after I left makes me believe that I may not like his answers.

“When I was younger I fell in love with the daughter of a rival family. Mina…she was beauty personified,” he says quietly, shaking his head ruefully when my eyes narrow and my lips firm. “She looked like a dark-haired doll and had this little tinkling laugh that reminded me of my mama’s.”

              “Okay, so she was gorgeous and laughed like a pixie. Move on already.”

My tone makes him chuckle and I barely resist the urge to kick him when he starts talking again. I feel like crap and my stomach is roiling with whatever liquid is still left in me, but I clench and ignore the sweat popping up all over my body, needing to let him finish.

“We became friends and met each other in secret, stealing moments here and there to be together. For two years I loved her, cherished her, and told myself that we were meant to be. And she told me that, too. She swore to me that we were soul mates, that she loved me, couldn’t live without me. I was a fool, though—blinded by her beauty and the lies she fed me. She meant only to be with me to escape her family and rub it in their noses that she was with the enemy.”

The jealousy is completely gone now as he laughs bitterly and rises, stalking to the window and looking out, his tense back the only thing I see. I feel petty when he finally turns back to me and smiles bitterly.

“And still I loved her. I convinced myself then that I could make her so happy that she would love me. I was young, foolish, and high on the promise of all the plans I had made for my life. See, I was not content to take over Papa’s business and run the families. I wanted my own mark on the world, my own achievements to define me. I was going to earn my own way and build my empire, brick by brick, with my own two hands.”

That determination is something I find most attractive about him. Vadim once told me that Misha spent sixteen hours a day working construction and bar jobs to save enough to start his first venture, and I respect that. I relate to that.

              “You did it. You got what you wanted and you exceeded even your own expectations,” I say when the silence drags on, reminding me that we’re both still trapped in this awkward place of doubt.

“I did. I was relentless in my need to succeed and prove to Papa that I could make it without his money,” he says, taking a seat in the corner, his lip curling slightly. “Mina did not agree, though. She did not want to be the wife of a poor laborer or the fiancée of a struggling businessman. She had been raised to wear only the finest clothes and the most outrageous gems. She was a princess of one of the leading Russian crime families.”

God, I can’t believe I was actually jealous of that greedy hag. I may not be doll pretty or have porcelain skin that artists and photographers rave about, but I am so much more than that vapid troll will ever be worth. I have a heart.

              “She left you?” I ask, my brow wet, body shaking with the need to run to the bathroom.

Misha’s eyes are glacial when he finally looks back at me and nods, his mouth tightening.

“Mina is not what you would call constant. She flitted in and out of my life for months before Mama lost her temper and called her father and mother. Once Kosta knew of our relationship, he made her an offer she could not refuse and that was that.”

I need to ask him so much more, but the pain I can’t contain anymore has me doubling over and falling from the bed in my haste to get to the bathroom.

What happens next is not something I ever wanted my husband to have to witness. I close the door behind me and then hear him pounding on it, demanding entrance.

By the time the last, excruciating drop leaves me empty, I feel like hell and I’m pretty sure I’m dehydrated. I flush the toilet, empty a can of deodorizer, and hobble out, straight into Misha’s chest.

“You are too ill for too long. This I do not like,” he barks, sweeping me up and into his strong arms.