Infernal: Bite The Bullet (15 page)

My thighs flexed to granite as the tip of his
tongue flicked at my clit with fast, confident strokes. His growl vibrated
through my sex and my ears rang with the moans and wild curses falling from my
own lips. His fingers curled inside me right as he sucked me between his teeth
and my hips jacked up off the bed.

He didn’t miss a beat. Mounting the crest of my
climax, I felt his knees depress the mattress. His cock replaced his fingers,
so much bigger, pushing past the tight, pulsing threshold of my sex, and the
thick, stretching penetration tipped me over the edge. He thrust, balls deep,
grunting pleasure as he slapped his thighs up against my ass, and I came hard around
his iron girth, gripping him in the rhythmic, clenching contractions that left
me mewling his name.

He fucked me relentlessly, pounding deep into me,
over and over, bracing my trembling knees wide while my orgasm stretched on,
riding the waves of intense friction. And I wanted nothing more than to lay
back and watch his magnificent form through the haze of my own ecstasy: hips
pumping, muscles flexing in a corded, sweat-sheened display of unrestrained
masculinity.

I tilted my pelvis, taking him deeper, kicking my
hips into his every thrust. I pushed up my top and gifted him the sight of my
fingertips pinching the hard, dusky peaks of my nipples. He rewarded me with a
bass groan of appreciation that triggered another orgasm, deep in my core.

God I’d lost count. I’d lost myself in this
beautiful man. I looked into his eyes, wild with passion and restrained
intelligence, and he held my gaze, even as his face tightened with the strain
of imminent release.

Logic took a back seat to my all-encompassing need
to finish what we’d started.

“Come inside me,” I commanded, hoarse with my
desire for him. For the little sense it made, some primal part of me wanted all
of him, deep inside me, branding me as his. I curled a hand around his nape and
dragged his mouth down on mine. His restraint showed in every muscle and it
only made me want him more. I wanted to watch him lose it.

“I want this,” I whispered, biting at his lower
lip.

“Ah fuck, Neva.”

He moaned and his surrender was a thing of beauty,
his powerful body shuddering above me as he buried his surging cock in my
clenching depths. I wrapped my arms around his broad back and clung to him.

The tears came fresh, streaming down my cheeks,
not tears of grief, but catharsis. This arrogant, unapproachable man, my avenging
angel, my strength, and my weakness, had let himself go in my arms, and I never
wanted the moment to end.

Of course it couldn’t last. The sweat hadn’t dried
on Konstantyn’s skin before he reverted to type. In one lithe move he abandoned
me to the cooling sheets and sat at the edge of the bed.

His muscular back flexed as he scrubbed a hand
over his nape and swore in Ukrainian. For the first time, I got a close-up view
of the tattoo I’d tried to photograph at the club.

My hand hovered close to his skin, but his back
was even more scarred than his chest, and that gave me pause. In the end, my
fingertips barely feathered over the image of the winged serpent, but the touch
registered.

“Do you know what it means?” He asked, without turning
around.

“You said it was the insignia of Dante’s elite
troops?”

Konstantyn nodded his assent. “The snake eating
itself symbolises the eternal cycle of life and death.”

“And the triangle, with the line and dot?”

“Is the alchemical symbol for blood.”

“Eternal blood,” I mused.

“Yeah, something like that.”

“One of the men in the photographs had the same
tattoo,” I whispered.

“Alexei,” he said. “We trained together in Kiev.”

“He didn’t have this part though,” I said, tracing
the Cyrillic writing across his shoulders.

“No, that is mine alone. You know what that
means?”

“Faithful unto death,” I replied.

He turned his head to me, and his brow twitched
up. “You read my language?”

“No. I, ah, I Googled it.”

He huffed a laugh, but his head sagged on his
broad shoulders.

“Come back to bed?” I whispered.

He cradled his tight-cropped skull in his big
hands and shook his head.

“This was a mistake,” he said.

“Then why don’t I regret it?”

“We should not have –”

“I’m on birth control, if that’s what you’re
worried about.” Tentatively, I rested my hand on his bicep. At least he didn’t
flinch, I thought, though I doubted this man was the type to cringe away from
anything. “No nasty surprises in nine months time, I promise.” I tried to make
my voice sound light, when in truth, his sudden coldness was contagious, and I
shivered.

He turned to me with a scowl on his face. “You
think I would not want a child, a wife?”

The burning sincerity in his eyes rendered me
speechless.

“I didn’t mean... I –”

“Look at this,” he said, slapping a palm to the
inverted cross branded into his forearm. “Loyal unto death. I am not a free
man. Dante owns me.”

“But you said yourself, he’s dying. Couldn’t we
just wait it out?”

“And what of my sister? What of the others. Would
you wait it out, knowing Daniel could still be alive?”

Heat flared in my cheeks. I’d do anything to bring
my brother back. Anything. My gaze fell and I plucked at the rumpled sheet,
wondering when spending time with this man had eclipsed my appetite for revenge.

Konstantyn stood and stared out the bedroom
window. “You must see. Dante will not hesitate to use you to get to me. He will
make me choose between you and Mariya. That’s what he does.” I could see the
lines of tension rippling his naked form.

“I told you I wrote Mariya a letter once,” he said
quietly, “I never told you why I never sent it. It was in the early days of our
training. Dante found the letter. In the middle of the night, he dragged me and
the other trainees from our beds and lined us up against a wall, wearing
nothing but our underpants. We were only boys, with peach fuzz on our chins and
balls, and heads full of wet dreams about becoming real soldiers.

He asked us, “When you meet an opponent who is
stronger than you, smarter than you, better armed than you, how will you bring
him to his knees?”

Of course, thinking it was what he wanted to hear,
we said we would make it our business to be the strongest, the smartest and the
best armed.

I still remember his ugly laughter right before he
grabbed between my legs. Laughter, and the most blinding pain imaginable as he
twisted my testicles until I thought he would geld me with his bare hand.

“If you want to bend a man to your will, this is
how you do it,” he said.

Another twist and my knees buckled under me. I hit
the floor, crying like a baby. “And if the man has no balls, then you target
the next best thing. You identify his vulnerabilities, and you squeeze the life
from them until your opponent has no choice but to yield. Do you understand
me?”

He paced the line and asked the other boys what
would stop them falling to their knees as I had. Afraid to speak, they covered
their genitals with their hands.

“Mothers, brothers, sisters, lovers,” he spat.
“They hang off you like dangling testicles, ripe for plucking by your enemies.
You have to cut them off. When you have no loose ends, when you care for
nothing and about no one, then nobody can touch you.”

Dante produced the letter and thrust it into my
hands. “Do you understand,” he said, “or do I need to demonstrate on the rest
of your snivelling bunk-mates too?”

I tore up the letter. I’d learned my lesson, and I
never wrote to Mariya or my mother again. Loyal unto death doesn’t have to mean
my death, Neva. This thing between us, it never happened.”

I closed my lids on the stinging tears that
threatened. “Sure. If that’s how you want to play it.”

Maybe he could conveniently press the delete
button on what we’d shared, but for me, the intimacy felt indelible as the ink
in his hard, unfeeling skin.

“I must get to work on the location where your
brother was found,” he said.

“Yes, of course,” I said, scraping my hair off my
forehead and climbing out of the bed. “Just let me get my clothes back on.”

He stood there with his back to me as I scrambled
to cover the lower half of my body, but even fully dressed, I felt emotionally
exposed against the ice-wall of his rejection.

“I need a minute,” I said, shutting myself into
the bathroom.

By the time I mustered the courage to come out, Konstantyn
was already hunched over the laptop, pulling up websites that showed London’s
subterranean infrastructure in the kind of minute detail I imagined was
strictly the realm of MI5 classified information.  

“Are you hungry?” I asked, attempting to channel
my useless energy into something constructive. “I can order pizza.”

Brows drawn together in concentration, he nodded,
but his eyes never left the screen as he zeroed in on his target.

“Pepperoni?” We both said it at the same time and
I flashed him a grin. He looked up from the laptop and winked at me.

God it felt good to break the ice that had formed
between us.

Hiding the blush on my face, I grabbed the menu
from the refrigerator door. “I’ll have to call from the fixed line in my
bedroom. Some arrogant bastard decided it’d be a good idea to toss my cell
phone in the Thames.”

His rumbled laughter followed me into the bedroom,
and a pathetic, feminine part of me wished the man would follow too. His smell
lingered on my sheets, and I sprawled across the bed, remembering for a moment
how it had felt to have Konstantyn’s weight settled between my thighs, his skin
against mine.

Dismissing the fantasy, I cradled the handset
between my ear and shoulder while I dialled the number on the menu. The guy on
the other end was distracted, hollering orders across the din of the bustling
restaurant. He kept me on hold for what seemed an eternity before finally
taking my order. On a last-minute impulse, I added a couple of beers, and tried
not to think too hard on my motives for wanting to get Konstantyn the right
side of drunk.

“They don’t sell vodka, sorry,” I shouted
cheerfully.

“What kind of country is this?” I heard Konstantyn
mutter.

I had to spell out my address and phone number
before I finally hung up and ambled back into the living room. “There’s still
some Bailey’s in the refrigerator,” I said, teasing.

He was gone.

The laptop, the gun, the pillowcase of evidence
I’d left at his feet, all gone.

Not even the couch held onto the indent of his
weight.

It was as though he’d never been there in the
first place.

“Konstantyn?” I called, but somehow, even before
I’d visually scanned the rest of my small apartment, I knew I was talking to
myself. He had a presence that filled a room, one that was no longer evident in
mine. I rested my hands on the still damp cotton of the neatly-folded towel
he’d left on top of my washer-dryer, and exhaled roughly.

He’d said it wasn’t safe for him to stay, and I’d
known all along he’d insist on going alone, but I’d expected something, a goodbye
at the very least.

Then the doorbell buzzed, crashing through my
silent thought, and I almost leapt out of my skin.

Part of me wanted it to be him, but logic said it
was just the pizza. Funny how my appetite had deserted me, just like Konstantyn.

Mining my pockets for cash, I flicked on the black
and white video display. That’s when I noticed Konstantyn had left the gun
sitting on the little shelf where I usually put my mail. Had it been
deliberate, or simply an oversight? He didn’t seem the kind of man to make
mistakes.

God, where he was going, he should have taken it.
The thought of him facing those people unarmed tied my insides in knots. My
hand hovered over the weapon for a moment. I’d never fired a bullet in my life,
and accidentally shooting the pizza delivery guy would be a complication too
far in my already screwed-up life.

The rain was lashing down hard, and I took pity on
the poor kid huddled under the umbrella with his armful of boxes. I recognised
the insignia of the pizza company on his cap. Everything checked out, and so I
slid back the catch to open the door.

The umbrella snapped shut, showering drops over
the threshold, and the pizza delivery guy smiled at me.

“Don’t I know you?” I frowned as he thrust the
boxes into my waiting arms. He definitely wasn’t the regular guy. Where
Konstantyn was brutally handsome, this man’s features were almost angelic,
though the symmetry of his face was marred by a drooping left eyelid. With
golden hair and chiselled features, only the fine lines at the corners of his
eyes betrayed his age.

Tiny hairs prickled on the back of my neck.

“I met you at Daniel’s funeral,” I said. “You’re the
man from the train.” He was Daniel’s friend, the one who’d told me about the audition,
right before my mother launched herself at him in a psychotic rage.

His smile widened and he took a step forward,
crowding me into the hallway. Only then did I notice what he was stepping over.
On my doorstep lay a spotty kid, drenched by the rain, and wearing the red and
blue nylon jacket of the pizza company. His neck was twisted grotesquely, his
open, lifeless eyes staring up at me in frozen surprise.

The pizza boxes tumbled from my hands.

“You’re Dante,” I whispered hoarsely.

He lifted the ridiculous baseball cap from his
head and let it fall. His blond curls and the shoulders of his tailored black
suit were jewelled with raindrops.

“And you are very astute, Miss Raines,” he said,
in an accent that was both foreign and impossible to place.