Owned by the Russian Mafia Boss: A Mob Romance (32 page)

And it was true.

Charley tensed as the woman rose. Here it was. The seemingly harmless English woman was going to attack, and Charley was defenseless.

Instead, the woman whispered a thank you and hurried from the house. A voice inside Charley’s head wondered if maybe she was seeing threats at every turn.

“But it’s not like I don’t have good reason,” Charley snapped at herself.

“Ms. Barns?” Charley whirled around to see the English woman standing in the doorframe. “You have a package out here,” she said quietly before ducking her head and leaving.

A package? There was no mail today. She followed the woman out and glanced down at the box. It wasn’t addressed.

“What the hell is this?” she muttered. With a sigh, she grabbed it and brought it inside.

Cautiously, she opened it. A brand new baseball bat nestled inside the box along with a manila folder. Trembling, she pulled out the folder and opened it.

It was an application for a position as a roommate.

Name: Anton Mankovich

Date of Birth: July 27, 1974

Occupation: Freelance Consultant

Criminal Background: Suspected for multiple crimes, investigated, and cleared.

Marital Status: Depends

Slowly, Charley flipped through the pages. There were pages and pages of background history and references. Without even looking up, she knew that he was watching her.

“You have a nasty habit of following me,” she said softly without looking up.

“I apologize,” Dmitri said formally as he materialized from the corner of her living room. “I was concerned when I discovered you were looking for a new roommate.”

She sat the application on the table and straightened her shoulders. Every nerve in her body was aching to touch him, but she couldn’t. She’d gone three weeks of not hearing a peep. She wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of jumping into his arms.

“My last roommate failed to pay rent, and her deposit check bounced. Something about her assets being frozen,” Charley said as she crossed her arms.

“I checked out that last woman myself. There was no reason for you to send her away. She has impeccable credit, great references, and she had plenty of money,” Dmitri said quietly.

Charley met his worried gaze with defiance. “I didn’t like her glasses.”

“Her glasses?” he asked with a lift of his eyebrows.

“Yes. They were too thick. It was impossible to see her eyes.”

He stepped closer to her, and she immediately took a step back. His saw the move and stopped. “Charley, you can’t live your life afraid.”

Trying to seem nonchalant, she shrugged. “It looks like I still have an opening. I’ll review your application and get back to you. You can see yourself out, Mr. Mankovich.”

“Charley.”

All it took was one word for her stop. Rage filled her, and she turned on him. “Mankovich. I didn’t even know you had a last name. I though you just went by Dmitri. And since that’s not your legal name, you shouldn’t be putting it on your application.”

“If you look through that file, you’ll find everything you need to know.”

“Like what?” She crossed her arm and stared at him. “What did you put in the file? What do you think I need to know?”

Hesitation flashed in his eyes, and she felt a streak of satisfaction. He was on unstable footing. Good. She wanted him to know how she felt.

 “After Ivan’s arrest, I turned myself in. I explained that I was Anton Mankovich, and that I faked my suicide as a teenager to free myself from my criminal guardian. I’m a freelance consultant, and I’m legally cleared.” He cleared his throat. “I would also like to point out that all of Dmitri’s victims had blood of their own on their hands.”

Charley snorted. He thought the fact that his victims weren’t innocent was the headlining factor here. “A freelance consultant?”

“Up and coming businesses. I’m quite successful at it.”

“So you’re wealthy. Why would a wealthy freelance consultant be interested in living with me?”

“A change of pace would be nice,” he said quietly. “Settling down would be nice, too.”

“Settling down?” Charley scoffed. “As my roommate?”

Just like that, the mask slipped away. Charley saw naked vulnerability in his face. When he spoke, she heard the honesty in his voice. “Help me out here, Charley. Tell me what you want me to say.”

“Are you kidding me?” She stared him. “You disappeared. You dropped me off without so much as a word and left me. You really want to know what I want, Dmitri? I want to know what the hell is going on inside your fucking head!”

She’d barely blinked before he’d crossed the floor. Framing her face with his hands, he pulled her in for a bruising kiss. “You want to know what’s in my head? You are. Every time I close my eyes, I see you. Every step I take, it’s toward you,” he hissed.

“That’s not good enough,” she said as she pushed at him.

He captured her wrists and pulled her in for another kiss. If he was trying to convey anything in that kiss, she didn’t know what it was. Charley couldn’t focus on anything except the sizzle of his lips on hers. He leaned her against the side table and pressed his hard body against hers. Lust and desire took control of her body, and she wrapped her arms around his neck to pull him even impossibly closer.

“It doesn’t mean anything,” she murmured even as she grappled at the buttons on his shirt.

“It means everything,” he said huskily as he pressed hot kisses to her throat. She moaned when his hands skimmed under her shirt. She didn’t even need the foreplay. She’d been wet and ready from the moment she’d set eyes on him again.

He lifted her and slid her on the surface of the small table. The lamp on it fell to the floor with a crash, but she barely registered the sound. She wrapped her legs around him and dug her nails into his skin. “Please,” she murmured. “Dmitri.”

“Anything you want. Whenever you want,” he growled. She heard the distinct sound of his zipper and whimpered. In the haze of her lust, she almost forgotten the point she was trying to make. She almost lost herself in the moment.

“Dmitri,” she gasped. She wanted it to stop. She wanted to be strong and tell him to go to hell, but instead, she let him lift her. She shimmied out of her pants and pulled him closer.

“Charley,” he urged as he slid a hand under her bra. Freeing her breasts, he flicked at her nipple as he nibbled on her ear. It was too much. He was too much. Closing her eyes, she wrapped her hands around his hardness and guided him.

She needed to feel him inside her just as much as she wanted to tell him off. Her body would always betray her, and as he filled and stretched her, she came to terms with her need. He was her drug.

It was more than the intense feelings as he thrust deeply inside her. She opened her mouth and bit into his shoulder. He groaned as she suckled on his skin, marking him. She may never have more than this, but by God, she would make sure he remembered her. Every time he saw that mark, he would think of her.

“Look at me,” he murmured. His breath was hot against her skin. “Charley, please look at me.”

Please.
She lifted her eyes and cried out as he moved deep inside her. Her toes curled as he moved over that sweet spot inside her. “Don’t stop,” she cried out softly. If this was going to be the last time she had him inside her, she didn’t want it to end.

“Let go, baby. Please. Just trust me,” he urged her in a strangled voice. He was close. She could tell. And he always waited for her. If she could just hold on a little bit longer….

But she couldn’t. Her body betrayed her, and she threw back her head and screamed his name as her body completely shut down. Wave after wave of pleasure crashed through her, and she barely heard his hoarse cry as he found his own release.

At some point, he’d carried her to the couch. Her muscles were completely limp as she pooled on top of him and waited for her mind to realize what she had just done.

“Tell me that didn’t mean something,” he whispered finally.

Pain gripped her heart when logic finally returned. She wanted to tell him that it meant everything to her, but she was far too proud. Drenched in sweat, she pushed herself to her elbows and stared down at him. “Chemistry, Dmitri. You don’t have to prove chemistry. Good sex, while a great way to relieve tension, isn’t what I’m looking for.”

“I didn’t mean for this to happen,” he said softly as he reached up to frame her face with his hands. “By this, I mean all of this. I never meant to involve you. I never meant to get involved with you. And I didn’t mean to leave you for so long. I’m sorry Charley. I wanted to call you every day, but when I stood in front of you again, I wanted it to be a man you could be with.”

She felt her heart speed up, and it didn’t have anything to do with the fact that he was naked under her. “Your profession was never the problem.”

“But we’d be hiding from everyone, and your life is here. I didn’t want you to have to give that up,” he said softly. “I’m legit. I’ll stay legit.”

“Again,” she said with a hint of irritability. “Your profession was not the problem.”

“Then what? What do you want from me, Charley?”

She rolled her eyes. “If you don’t know, then I can’t help you.”

As she tried to push herself off him, he gripped her arms and flipped them over. He settled on top of her, and intensity flashed in his eyes. “You want me to tell you how I feel about you.”

“That’s not a tall order. If you want this to work, you need to be transparent with me.”

“And you?” Dmitri searched her eyes. “Will you be transparent with your feelings about me?”

Astonished, she stared at him. “Are you serious? My feelings aren’t transparent?”

He smiled. “You talk to yourself, Charley. For the most part, every emotion that you feel is written all over your face. Anger. Irritation. Disbelief. But if it’s an emotion that scares you, you lock it down. If it’s words that could hurt you, you never utter them. Charley Barns, I love you. I’m not afraid of what I feel for you. It came out of the blue, and the only thing I feared was that I couldn’t protect you.”

Hope swelled within her. “You love me?”

He nodded and reached down to kiss her softly. “I know that recent events make it hard for you to trust, but if you trust me, Charley, I promise that I will spend the rest of my life trying to make you happy. Marry me.”

Charley couldn’t help but laugh. “You don’t know how I feel about you, and you’re willing to marry me?”

“Oh, I know how you feel about me.” He smiled wickedly as he reached down and kissed her nipple lightly. “And when you’re ready, you’ll tell me.”

Her body shuddered under his touch. “But you want me to commit the rest of my life to you?”

Dmitri shifted his body so that he could run his hands lightly up her naked hip. “Marry me, Charley. Make an honest man of me. Force me to spend the rest of my life listening to you talk to yourself.”

She squirmed under his touch. “When I marry you, I won’t have to talk to myself, now will I?”

He paused his exploration of his body and stared at her. “Charley?”

“I love you, Dmitri. And I intend to spend the rest of my life making you pay for these past three weeks,” she said as she leaned up to kiss him. A thought struck her, and she leaned back. “Or am I marrying Anton?”

“Anton is my given name. By coming out to the authorities, I had to embrace my given identity.”

 “Well, Anton, it will certainly be fun to explore this new ego of yours, but it doesn’t matter to me what your name is. I fell in love with the man who risked his life to save me. I fell in love with the man who gave up a lifelong obsession to see me safe. I don’t care what name you choose, so long as you are mine.”

“Yours. Forever.” He leaned back down to seal the deal with a kiss, and she could feel the truth in that kiss. Dmitri the Assassin had hidden in the shadows for years, but now she would spend the rest of her life in his arms.

And there was no place she’d rather be.

The End!

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