Russian Lullaby Read online

  She glanced down. His half-aroused cock glistened with their combined fluids and twitched weakly. She looked back at his face and saw the glint of passion still burning in his gaze.

  “I’m not finished with you,” he promised, rolling her over to stroke her between the legs with his hand. “You have more orgasms left to give today.”

  “I don’t think I do.” The words ended on a sigh which turned into yet another moan.

  “You do,” he asserted and leaned over and down to suckle on a breast.

  A few minutes later he proved himself right. A few minutes after that, he reduced her to a hot screaming mess as he made love to her as thoroughly as he knew how. Four hours later, he released her to take a shower, but then joined her beneath the hot spray to show her what delights could be found with the aid of water. Finally, muscles quivering and mind blown, Gia wobbled downstairs to the kitchen and tried to think of something fairly quick and simple to make for supper.

  She made scrambled eggs and toast. If Vitaly was going to keep this up, they’d be going through a ton of eggs and bread, because her ability to think after a marathon session of vigorous sex absolutely incapacitated her brain and turned her arms and legs to soft rubber. It didn’t help that she couldn’t take a step without a telltale soreness reminding her of what he’d done to her and how much she’d enjoyed it…and how much she wanted to do it again.

  God, she’d turned into such a horny slut in so short a time.

  After their makeshift supper, Gia excused herself to check her email to see whether Jeremy had sent over a draft report. No such luck. She returned to Vitaly, snuggling next to him on the sofa while he watched sports. Having utterly no interest whatsoever in sports, she sat for several minutes with her legs curled beneath her. His arm wrapped around her and she basked in the warmth his body radiated and in the clean male scent of his skin.

  Practically unbidden, her hand rose and splayed over his heart, feeling the steady thump-thumping beat beneath the heavy pectoral muscle. Then she started petting him, her hand sneaking through the placket of his shirt to touch the bare skin beneath the crisp, curly hair. He glanced down at her, but her eyes were closed and her mouth curled in a knowing little smile. It pleased him that she would initiate intimacy with him, although he’d never allow her to control their play in the bedroom. He leaned his head back to continue to watch the game, although he wasn’t really paying attention to it any more.

  Gia’s other hand strayed across her body to rest lightly over his fly. She felt him quicken beneath the quiescent warmth of her hand and absently began to stroke the rapidly swelling flesh. With a quick twist of his fingers, Vitaly unbuttoned the waistband and unzipped the fly to free the turgid length of him.

  “Suck me,” he said as her hand lightly stroked the delicate skin.

  “Hm?”

  “Suck me.”

  He gasped as she bent down and obliged. Absolutely no longer paying attention to the game, he enjoyed her oral ministrations for a couple of minutes, then pulled her off him. With dexterous practice, he stripped her and settled her on his lap.

  “You’re wearing too many clothes,” she purred as she ground her pussy against him.

  Cloth ripped and buttons popped as he tore off his shirt and flung it away. A quick shove had his pants pooling around his ankles. With one hand he cupped the back of her head to hold her for his kiss and with the other he positioned his swollen cock at her entrance. She rose and slid down over him, moaning into his mouth as he impaled her. Her hips rocked over him; his hips rocked below her. His hands clamped over her hips to guide her movement, to hold her where he wanted her as he drove up into her body. Once again the air filled with the thick, wet sounds of vigorous sex punctuated by breathy moans and guttural grunts until she keened her climax and he let loose a shout as raw as he jetted thick, hot cream into her body.

  Gia found herself draped across Vitaly’s chest, lungs heaving as she gasped for breath. Suddenly she realized that they were seated on the sofa in view of a large picture window and anyone passing by could peer inside and see them naked, entwined, obviously engaged in conjugal relations. She turned her face to his chest, pressed her sweaty forehead against the perspiring skin, and groaned.

  “What is wrong, moy sladkiy?” Vitaly asked, feeling her body tense.

  “We’re in view of the entire neighborhood,” she muttered. “Who knows who’s seen us?”

  He grinned at her shyness and modesty, which he considered positive attributes in a good wife. Reaching behind him, he pulled an afghan that lay folded across the top of the sofa and spread it over their bodies.

  “Now we are covered,” he said as the blanket settled in place.

  She looked at it, fingered the intricate stitches. “This is beautiful. Who made it?”

  “Olivia crochets. She gave this to me several years ago when I was indisposed.”

  “Indisposed? Like sick?”

  “No, indisposed like recovering from a bullet wound.”

  “A bullet wound!”

  “Giancarla, you’ve seen me, you’ve seen my scars.” He voice was at once indulgent and reproachful as he stroked a hand up and down her back beneath the blanket.”

  “I know, Vitaly. I know. I just don’t like to think about it.”

  He tilted her head back with a finger under her chin and pressed a gentle kiss on her lips. “You know what I am. You cannot forget.”

  “It’s not that I forget, it’s that I don’t want to acknowledge it.” She turned her head away and shifted on his lap. His wilted penis slid from her body and she sighed at the loss of its warmth and fullness within her. “My dad left the mob because he didn’t want any part of it. I never intended to be the child of his who went back to it.”

  “Sometimes what we intend matters little in the course of our lives.”

  “How did you get involved in the Russian mafia, Vitaly?”

  He sighed and supposed that he owed her his history. A wife had a right to know her husband.

  “I was an orphan, one of hundreds, thousands even. Life in the orphanage was…hard. We fought for everything: food, water, baths, clothes, blankets, shoes. We formed gangs, small brotherhoods who looked out for one another, supported each other.”

  “It sounds a lot like a Lord of the Flies situation. Barbaric.”

  “I do not know this ‘Lord of Flies,’” he said with a small shrug, his accent thickened by old memories. “As soon as I could, I left. I joined the military, accepted their training, became a medic. I entertained grand hopes of becoming a doctor, skilled and respected. The army took advantage of my skill with blades and drugs and turned me into a killer. Eventually, my term of service expired and I had nowhere to go and a reputation for brutality.”

  Gia turned her face back to his chest and kissed him above the place where his heart beat. The tender gesture reminded him he still had a heart and that it now beat for her.

  “I found new employment with the Bratva. Like the military, they, too, soon recognized my capabilities and, unlike the military, they valued it with bigger and bigger bonuses. I acquired more responsibility and eventually was given to Maksim.”

  “What do you mean ‘given to Maksim?’”

  “The Bratva is much like the military with its rules and camaraderie. Unless one is high ranking, one is moved from place to place like a pawn on a chessboard. The choice is to follow orders or be killed. I have found the Bratva to be both more disciplined and less rigid than the army.” He kissed the top of Gia’s head, inhaling the herbal fragrance of her hair. He made a mental note to keep her stocked in that brand of shampoo; he liked it. “But there is usually only one way to leave the Bratva and I have no plans to die yet.”

  “Die?”

  “It is not so unlike your grandfather’s Italian mafia.”

  “So we’re stuck.”

  “We will make the best of our fate.” He shifted beneath her, spread his legs which spread her legs even more widely as she still spraw
led across his lap. He rolled his hips, his recovering cock seeking her pussy like a well-aimed missile. “Lately fate has been very kind,” he added and slowly pushed up into her.

  She moaned as he filled her. The hand stroking her back dipped low, teased the puckered opening of her anus. She gasped. He delved lower, gathered the slick cream of their copulation and drew it up to lubricate her back entrance. She gasped again has his fingertip penetrated her, easing its passage with their lubrication, and setting up a shallow rhythm that kept time with the slow pump of his cock. That time he made love to her slowly, tenderly, until they both sighed from orgasms that rolled through them with all the steady, inexorable power of an incoming tide.

  At this rate, he thought with masculine satisfaction, his wife would be a mother before a year had gone by. Maksim would, no doubt, use that for endless fodder for ribald humor. Olivia would likely treat the baby as a grandchild.

  Exhausted, they fell asleep on the sofa. As usual, Vitaly’s disciplined body woke first. He gently disengaged himself from Gia’s limp body, but not without first licking a pert nipple just to see it tighten in response. He drew the afghan over her and padded naked upstairs to the master suite for a shower and fresh clothing. He had begun cooking breakfast when Gia finally woke.

  Momentarily disoriented, she quickly got her bearings and retrieve her glasses from the end table where Vitaly had placed them during their first bout of living room sex. Glancing beneath the blanket, she hissed at the marks his mouth and fingers and left on her body, showing his possession of her. She blushed to remember how they got there, how much she had liked it.

  Really, if not for the last week, she would have thought herself frigid for all the disinterest she’d shown in the opposite sex and in romance in general. Her fingertips lightly ran down her chest and belly, tangled in the curls shielding her mound, dipped lower. She sighed, closed her eyes, and let her fingers play.

  Vitaly looked up from the waffles he was making and immediately realized what his little wife was doing. His dick immediately sprang to attention. He removed the latest batch of waffles and turned off the waffle iron. On silent, bare feet he crossed the kitchen and joined her in the living room. With intense stealth, he kneeled before her and raised the blanket. He slipped underneath it and, placing both hands on her thighs to hold her open, aimed his mouth at her already wet pussy. She squealed and her sticky hands clutched at his hair as he feasted on her and quickly reduced her to quivering, helpless pleasure. She cried out, rewarding him with a fresh gush of hot honey that he eagerly lapped up.

  Finally, while her lungs heaved and she shuddered with aftershocks, he raised his face shiny with her juices and said, “Do not touch yourself without permission, Giancarla.” He stroked her slit, up and down, then inserted two thick fingers inside her. “This is mine. Your pleasure is mine to give.”

  She grunted as he pumped his fingers, then crooked them to tickle the g-spot and catapult her into another screaming orgasm. He pulled his fingers from her body and sucked her honey off them.

  “Take a shower and get dressed. You’ll be late for school.”

  She blinked her passion glazed eyes and rose on wobbly legs. Clutching the afghan around her naked body, she staggered upstairs to bathe and dress. It would be a freaking miracle if she could concentrate at all on that day’s lectures.

  She had time to wolf down one waffle before Vitaly shooed her to the car and drove her class. Twice her professors called her name to get her attention. Twice her classmates sniggered with naughty amusement. But her professors did not ask Vitaly to leave the classroom; they’d learned that he would obdurately refuse and none of them had the gumption to attempt force.

  “Hey, Gia,” Jeremy greeted her with a bright smile and a nod, carefully avoiding touching her as her thuggish husband looked likely to wallop him for so much as laying a finger on her backpack. He almost commented that she looked extra pretty that day, sort of glowing, but immediately decided against doing so. Vitaly Synvolka intimidated him for obvious reason. The thug might not be as smart as he was, but a high I.Q. had never prevented him from being pummeled. “I got that rough draft done last night and emailed it to you. Have you had a chance to look it over yet?”

  “Thanks, Jeremy. No, I haven’t, but I’ll do so today. We’ve got a little time; it’s not due until Thursday.”

  “Yeah. I never understood why so many people wait until the last minute to write their papers. It’s a lot less stressful to get it done with a bit of extra time.”

  “Good thing we think alike on that.”

  “Yeah. So, no lab today?”

  “Nope, we’re finished with lab work until the next assignment.”

  “Cool. I was hoping we’d maybe get to work with actual, you know, marine life.”

  “You can’t go swimming with the dolphins in Ohio, Jeremy.”

  “Nah, that’s too trite. I’m more interested in rivers and streams. Have you ever seen a hellbender salamander?”

  “No, I can’t say I have.”

  Jeremy’s eyes brightened and he smiled broadly. “I found one last summer. I’m a counselor at a nature camp for middle school kids and we went salamander hunting. I found this absolutely terrific specimen. It was huge! They’re endangered, you know.”

  “No, I didn’t know. But that’s a good area of study, Jeremy. Ohio’s chock full of creeks and rivers.”

  “Yeah. Most of them are used like open sewers or ditches.”

  “You’ll do a lot of good with bringing our waterways back to health. I know you will, Jeremy.”

  He glowed at her praise and confidence in his ability to make a positive difference in their small world. Vitaly’s chest swelled with pride at his Giancarla’s kind words and generous spirit. Perhaps the nerdy little pipsqueak would make a difference merely because Giancarla had given him the confidence to pursue his idealistic dreams.

  It made him want to spread her body beneath him again and fuck her until she melted with delirious pleasure.

  The two students parted and Vitaly escorted her to lunch at the grill in the student union.

  “I’ve got to pick up my grade from Dr. Cormier after lunch,” she said and pursed her lips. “I don’t have a good feeling about that.”

  “Don’t worry,” Vitaly reassured her. “We have already decided what to do if he gives you a failing grade, since you won’t allow me to just kill him.”

  Gia spluttered and choked. After coughing to clear her throat, she glared at Vitaly and hissed, “Don’t even joke about that.”

  Vitaly met her scowl with a calm gaze. “I wasn’t joking.”

  She frowned and shook her head. “I don’t know what to do with you, Vitaly.”

  “Yes, you do, but you can’t do it in public.”

  Her gaze flew back to his face and that time he grinned at her. That time he was joking. Maybe. Sort of.

  She squirmed in her seat, aware of a throbbing between her legs.

  “You are so bad.”

  His grin widened. His inattention cost him. Her squirming saved her.

  Glass shattered. Gia gasped and gurgled as a red wound blossomed on her chest. She toppled over. People screamed and scattered.

  “Gia!” Vitaly shouted and threw himself to the floor beside her, knees crashing into shards of tempered glass. He ripped off his shirt, wadded it up, and pressed it over the bullet wound that spurted blood. “Call 911!” he yelled even as one bloody hand dug into his pocket to retrieve his phone.

  He kept pressure on the wound, murmuring encouragement to his wife to stay with him as her blood pooled on the floor. Sirens and flashing lights soon heralded the arrival of emergency crews who quickly took over and hustled Giancarla Bonetti Synvolka to the hospital. Vitaly rode in the ambulance, refusing to be parted from her.

  They arrived, with emergency room doctors and nurses taking over the seeming chaos and wheeling the gurney into an operating room.

  “You can’t go in there, sir,” one of the nurses sai
d, pushing against his chest.

  He glared at her, but she held her ground.

  “I’m sorry, sir, you cannot go in there.”

  “She’s my wife.”

  “I’m truly sorry, sir. We’ll let you know what happens with her. But right now she’s in good hands and you’ll just have to trust medical staff to do everything they can to save her.” She gestured toward the waiting room. “Have a seat. We’ll let you know something as soon as there’s something to tell you.”

  Dejected, Vitaly accepted defeat. He wasn’t a doctor; he had no authority in the hospital. He trudged to the waiting room and settled heavily into a chair and absently realized that he still held his phone in his bloody hand. He dialed.

  “Da, Andrupovich here.”

  “The bitch shot my Giancarla.”

  “Montoya?”

  “Da.”

  “Oh, Vitaly, that’s most unfortunate. Where are you?”

  “In the hospital’s emergency waiting room.”

  “We’ll be there.”

  Several minutes later, Maksim and Olivia arrived, flanked by Pyotr and Gennady. Other waiting room occupants took one look at the formidable men and prudently moved out of their way.

  “What happened?” Maksim asked, keeping his usually booming voice low and private.

  In clipped syllables, Vitaly reported the shooting.

  “Did you see her?”

  “No, but I did see the flash of a scope. You’ll find it on the rooftop of a dormitory building across from the student union.”

  “Tough angle. Good shooting,” Gennady commented.

  “Are you sure it was Montoya?”

  “No one else would want to harm Giancarla.”

  “We have to take care of this quickly or her grandfather will get involved.”

  Pyotr’s naturally pale complexion turned ashen. He’d witnessed what Giuseppe Maglione’s people would do upon the capo’s order. It made the Ukrainian thugs look positively civilized. And he had a greater range of influence than did Maksim.

  “Will she come after Cecily and Latasha?” he asked, determined to protect his plump, sexy cook and her skinny, sharp-tongued friend whom Bogdan and Iosif seemed to admire.