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2
Dmitry
“You smell like a vodka distillery,” Shura had said, as if he were the papa and I his son, before spritzing me with my cologne again. I had laughed, taking another swig defiantly as if to dare him to stop me. It had been funny.
What was it to me if I was drunk for the wedding that I didn’t want?What was it to me if she smelled the liquor on me and knew how unwelcome this commitment was? It was nothing. She was to be my wife; that didn’t necessarily mean she would also be my lover. At least not by choice.
I had thought it was funny right up until the wedding march had started and I’d been forced to look down the aisle to the bride in white marching down it. I had expected a face wreathed in a smile, pretty and unassuming, beaming off of her papa’s arm.
I had expected a woman so sure that when her gaze met mine and saw the discontent, it would wither and pout to try and make me feel bad for it.
I had not expected the vision that had walked towards me. Her petite body was fitted in white lace so tight that it did nothing to hide her ample curves. I had not expected ash blonde hair in such a striking color, that I had to look twice to verify it was actually hair. It was done up in all of those intricate pearl and flower strands resembling spun gold. I had not expected for her dark eyes to glance over me as if I were merely a placeholder—with more disinterest than even I was prepared to show.
She stood tall without wearing heels, but she was still a whole head and a half shorter than me.
I wanted to eat her.
In the most carnal of ways, with her ankles around my shoulders and her head thrown back, I wanted to make her heave with desire as I brought life back into those depthless black eyes. I wanted to sink myself into her until her nails were embedded in my back and those golden-tanned cheeks were flush with the same need that was tearing through me.
The realization had thrown me. So much so that I focused intently on the words of the ceremony so as not to miss my cues. So much so that when I had turned to her, I hadn’t been prepared to see her eyes looking back into my own, a flicker of some emotion behind them, obviously staring.
Noticing me.Good. It was the first step to what I had wanted . . . but it hadn’t been what I thought, and when I kissed her, her lips were just as lifeless as her eyes had been. When I kissed her again outside, I had been trying to revive some of that emotion I thought I had caught back in the chapel. What I had gotten instead was so far from expectation I hadn’t known how to react.
There was emotion; it just didn’t contain any type of desire. Fury lashed out at me from both her words and her eyes, her teeth tearing through my lip before she stormed off. There was no harsh repercussion from me solely because I hadn’t been prepared to be meting one out. She had gone off, getting the driver to take her back tomyhome, before I’d even made it to the car.
I’d had to call a cab to my own fucking house.
To add insult to injury, when I’d arrived, it was to find her locked away in the rooms I’d had prepared for her as a means to try and keep her at arm’s length.
That had been before I’d seen her—before deciding I wanted otherwise. I had paid for such a hasty decision on my wedding night: It was spent alone, with an aching cock and a wife whose icy regard swept through the entire house like a northern wind. Not even my maids dared go near her locked doors.
Suka. Even thinking about it now, the next morning, I was bitter. I paced my kitchen like a caged animal, glancing every now and then towards the stairs as if I were waiting for her to come down them.Maybe I was. I certainly didn’t want to be. The words she’d left me with had been the only show of emotion she’d displayed, but even in her fury she had been something to behold.Maybe especially in her fury.
Fuck. I bit back another curse as I spun away from the counter, grabbing one of the open bottles of vodka off of the bar and uncapping it swiftly. I was in my own home, the day after my wedding. The least she could do was acknowledge that I existed. My lip was still bruised from where she’d torn the flesh, after all. I added a generous helping of vodka to the orange juice I had been drinking, turning swiftly at the sound of footsteps.
Shura didn’t even bother to hide his large grin, his eyes flashing with open mirth at my expense as he came to lean against the counter opposite me. “You look like shit, Dmitry,” he chuckled, shaking his head as I added more vodka to my cup.
“And you look like a nosy bitch,” I grumbled, taking a large swig out of my cup while still glaring at him. “Whatever the fuck you think you know, wipe it from your mind—and stop looking at me like that.” Between the blue balls and the bruised lip, I would likely, very soon end up punching him in the face. Something that was ill-advised. Not only because he was three times my width, and all of it muscle. Not only because he was my best friend. But also, because he was my father’s byki. To injure him unnecessarily would anger my father and raise his blood pressure, something that needed to be avoided now more than ever with his recent heart attack that had apparently prompted my marriage.
A weakness, among the Bratva, was akin to an injury. And like sharks circling the water for blood, the family already as divided as it was, everyone wanted to enter the Pakhan’s ‘weakening’ circle. Everyone was vying for the attention that could elevate themselves and their bloodline. ‘Fortifying the hatches,’ Shura had said the night of my bachelor party. Marriage would bind the families furthest from us closer.
This was how I had ended up married to a Sorokin.
“You’ve gotten no pussy,” Shura cackled, ignoring my withering look in response. “I know, I slept here with your housekeeper last night. Nice ass, nicer mouth. You’ve gotten no pussy, your lip is injured, and you are still butthurt from having to be married at all. But now you want to fuck her . . . so.”
“So what?” I snapped, drinking again and looking up at the ceiling obstinately. I was a fucking torpedo . . . or rather I had been, up until the previous month. I was the future Pakhan. I was Dmitry fucking Koalitsia,any bitch would be lucky to receive my attention.
“So she is no American skirt you talk into bed for a night. She is your wife now, and more than that, your father sent me to remind you that we need her. For more than the pussy you want to talk out of her. Da? You need her for the politics. Romance her. Make things even. Happy wife, happy life, or whatever these American’s say.”
He said it so disinterestedly, shrugging intermittently through his talk and grabbing an apple off of my counter. I eyed him carefully, listening to his words, and also the ones that he wasn’t saying.
“Da,” I sighed, drinking again and leaning into the counter myself. “But that is what my father sent you for? To remind me to make my wife happy?”
“Nyet, not only that,” Shura replied. “Your father also wanted me to let you know that the man we didn’t get . . . from the snitch ring? The one you were targeting. He resurfaced again. Popped up in some security camera talking to a shestyorka with a big mouth.” Shura bit into the apple, looking more seriously at me, despite the fact that he was now talking through a mouthful of food. “Was asking about you . . . schedules, habits, preferences. . .”
I snorted, downing the rest of my drink in one go and sighing expressively. “Da. I got it. Wonderful. No pussy, an icy wife, and now you bring me this—some suka’s after me in retaliation.”
“And all this, the day after your wedding,” Shura joked, pushing off of the counter and tossing me his half-eaten apple. “Handle the wife first. The mark will come to you, then you handle him. I’ll find out what else I can in the meantime.”
