The Player (Chicago Bratva 8)

I laugh and pretend-race to the bedroom. “I’m already impressed.”

When we reach the bed, he catches my hands and pulls them both to his mouth to kiss. “I’m the one who’s impressed. Nadia–you’re free now. You’re standing on your own. I’m just here to admire you.”

I reach up to kiss him. “You’re the one who got me here.”

“No.” He stops my lips. “You got yourself here. It’s all you, Peaches.”

I unbutton his jeans. “No, you.”

He laughs and divests me of my jacket. “No, you.”

“You.”

“You.”

Piece by piece, we strip each other of clothing, and Flynn maneuvers me to sit on the bed and pushes my knees wide, dropping to the floor between them. He licks into me, parting my flesh with the tip of his tongue, circling my most sensitive parts.

I manage to stay present, not allowing my mind to associate anything from my past with this moment now. Not allowing the ugliness back in the parking lot to crowd in this room.

This is a space for Flynn and me. Just the two of us. And right now he’s showing me just how capable he is at bringing my body to life. Heat rushes between my legs. My internal muscles squeeze and lift. He penetrates me with his tongue, uses the tip of his nose against my clit.

I catch the back of his head and urge him to my clit, and he sucks there as he slides two fingers inside me. I come almost immediately, but I want more. I want the real thing.

“Flynn.” I push him away and crawl back on the bed. “Please.”

He climbs over me with a condom in hand, his brown eyes dark with desire. “Fuck, I missed you, Nadia.” He drops kisses across my collar bone and into the hollow of my throat. He kisses down between my breasts, then latches on to one nipple, sucking hard enough to wring another mini orgasm out of me.

Then he’s inside me, moving with a rhythm we find together. The kind of motion where I can’t tell where his body stops and mine starts. We’re one unit, riding into the sunset together.

It’s perfection.

Glory.

It’s power and love.

When it becomes too much for me–when I need to have it all wholly and completely, I wrap my ankles behind his back and pull him in harder.

He braces on one hand and shoves in with force, sinking deep into me with each thrust.

“Da…da!” I scream and come.

Flynn picks up his rhythm and pumps another dozen times to find his own happy ending.

When he blankets my body with his, his panted breath mingling with my own, we nuzzle into each other. He slows his rhythm to an unambitious rock, and we melt into the mattress. Into the covers. Into each other.

“I love you,” he murmurs, brushing my cheek with the back of his fingers.

“I love you so much, Flynn Taylor. You’re everything.”

“No, you,” he murmurs, kissing along my cheekbone.

CHAPTER 17

Flynn

Saturday night Nadia comes with me backstage at Rue’s, which has an even longer line of people waiting to get in than the past two weeks.

Nadia tries to occupy her usual spot in the wings, but I angle her toward the side stairs. “Tonight I want you in the audience. Is that cool? I have a surprise for you.”

“Oh.” She’s nervous, understandably.

“Oleg saved you a spot right up front, and he won’t let anyone touch you. Not even a bump–he promised. Look–Adrian and Kat are there, too.” I point to the place just in front of the apron of the stage. There are no longer tables and chairs on Saturday nights–we pack the house too full, but Oleg, Adrian, Nikolai and Maxim have made a wall with their bodies protecting their women in front of the stage. Sasha, Kat and Chelle are there, laughing and sipping their drinks.

“Can you do it?”

Nadia gives me a little nod. I can see her mind is working hard, but I think she’s going to be all right. Showing up at Rue’s after what went down that night was surreal for both of us. I don’t want to say that pulling the trigger and ending a life didn’t change me. It did.

But I’m not gonna overthink it, either. That guy was the lowest of the low. What he did to Nadia is unforgivable. Hell, he tried to take her back into captivity again last night! He deserved what he got.

Besides, if Nadia and I didn’t pull the trigger, Adrian would have. The outcome would’ve been the same.

My soul is tainted now, but I would paint it a hundred shades of black if it meant freeing Nadia from the prison of her past.

Adrian texted my phone yesterday and again today to ask if Nadia was okay, but otherwise didn’t say anything about what happened. Of course, he wouldn’t put anything about it into a text message or even speak of it by phone, anyway.