AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I feel like such a piece of shit.
I nod. “You’re right.” I wonder if he can hear the lies hidden behind my words. There’s something distant about his expression.
“Trust is important. People who have your back… And family is the best place to start, right?” There’s something odd about his expression as he speaks; something dark. “I had family once,” he says suddenly. His eyes are deep as he turns to look at me. “I had a good childhood… for a while.” The small smile on his lips is so damn poignant. “You wouldn’t think that, growing up in the Bratva.” He shrugs.
"Yeah.” My voice is husky. “I guess.” It’s all I manage to get out. He never told me anything about his childhood or his family before. All I know are the rumors and what Elena told me. I want to push for more, but I know I have to hold back. There are so many thoughts swirling in my mind right now.
“My mother,” he continues and I look up at him. “She was a strong woman. She had to be, to put up with my father. I lost her when I was fourteen.”
“Oh, God, Lev.” I put a hand on his arm. “I’m so sorry…”
He turns those eyes upon me. “It’s the world we live in,Solnishko. There’s no room for fragility,” He strokes a fingertip down my cheek. “But you are not fragile… are you?”
I shake my head, not sure how to answer.
“On the surface, you are so soft.” He tilts his head. “But underneath… I think you are stronger than you know.”
“I don’t feel very strong,” I sigh brokenly, wondering where he’s going with this. “But you are.”
“Not strong enough,” he mutters, looking distant. His jaw clenches. “I wasn’t strong enough to save my mother and sister.” He locks his eyes with mine again and a world of pain swirls in those depths.
“Don’t say that,” I whisper. “You were just a boy.”
His hand lifts to rub at that deep scar that mars his cheek. I rise and run my mouth over the puckered skin, hearing him suck in a breath.
“This…?” I say, pressing kisses against the scar, and he nods. Tears gather in my eyes as I imagine the horrors he must have experienced watching someone take out his family.
“I killed them all,” he says abruptly, his eyes hard on mine. “I made them bleed and ripped their hearts out. I was young and hungry for revenge.”
His words make me shudder, but I can’t hate him for the violence he’s admitting to. If it had been me, maybe I’d have felt the same way. I can sense the pain beneath his gaze, the demons that drove him.
They’re alive in him now.
“I still dream of them, you know,” he murmurs. “Every night, I see their lifeless eyes.” His voice cracks slightly and I know this is as vulnerable as he’ll ever allow himself to be. Tears well in my eyes and then trickle past my lashes as I crumble, weeping for this man who’ll never cry for himself.
“You’re the strongest man I know,” I whisper against his ears, wrapping my arms around him. “What happened isn’t your fault.”
His lips part, but I silence him by placing my fingertips over them. I want to comfort him. I want him to know that he’s not alone. And there’s only one way I know how to do that in a way he’ll understand. Without hesitating, I dip forward and meet his lips with mine.
It doesn’t take long before he starts responding to my kiss. I want to take away his pain. I want him to let go of the guilt and burden he has carried for years.
Lev groans against my mouth as I straddle his thighs, settling over his hips. The need to wipe away his sadness consumes me.
“Solnishko,” he whispers as he releases my lips. I’m lost in those eyes again, lost in the swirling pain I see there. More pain than I’ve ever seen. More than he’s ever shown. He doesn’t need to say the words to let me know he wants to make it go away.
And I know he’d never say it anyway.
When I begin unbuttoning his shirt, the soft murmurs in Russian are unlike the usual onslaught I’ve grown used to. I stop as I pull the crisp cotton down his shoulders, my eyes tracing a path over his torso that my fingers have already explored so many times.
His broad, powerful chest is crisscrossed with pale scars, and puckered marks; a warrior’s body. Among them, a raised welt stretches across his abdomen; a wound that must have almost gutted him. When I trace it, his throat works again, and I know I’m traveling along the path of his story, the one that still has him fighting demons.
More tears well in my eyes as I stroke gentle fingertips along the vicious trail, then close my lips over his again. Warm saltiness streaks down my cheeks to mingle with the sweetness of that kiss as I lower my hands to the top of his pants. He doesn’t resist when I tug them loose, then reach in for the weight of his cock. It hardens almost instantly as I curl my fingers around it, our lips still locked in a kiss that’s growing increasingly frenzied.
Without ceremony, I hike up my skirt and use my free hand to pull my panties aside, rising to slip my bare pussy along his shaft. When I angle the head against my slickness, I feel him tense, and then hiss out a breath as he breaches me.
“Fuck!” he exhales as I slide down the length of him. Goosebumps ripple over my skin as my body stretches to fit around him.
“Oh, God!” I choke out. Normally he’s the one who does the taking, claiming me like he needs to stamp his mark on me. But today it’s my turn. And it’s almost too much.
