The pounding went away soon enough, and outside Madison could hear the moving van start. They would be back tomorrow, or never, with her things, but right now she only wanted the satisfaction his body could bring her. She pushed off from the sink, and Vlad withdrew his hand from between her legs to catch her as she jumped and wrapped her legs around him; he was so deft in catching her that he might as well have been anticipating the maneuver.
So this was what it meant to climb a man, Madison thought as Vlad carried her into the bedroom. Well, the new neighborhood lisa was certainly up to the challenge.
The Russian took his temper, his thunder, out on everything that stood between him and his conquest. Her clothes were torn from her as if by gale-force winds, the salvageability of her garments questionable after such roughness, but Madison was all too eager to return the favor. Seeing just how far Vlad’s tattoos extended became more than a passing curiosity; it became an obsession. Her fingers closed over the wolf crest emblazoned on his bicep, wondering if she could draw enough power from it to endure what the animalistic man who wore it had in store for her.
As if on cue, Vlad let out a low growl as he stripped her underwear off. Madison’s inner thighs were painted wet with wanting, but she was too far gone to notice or care about any passing discomfort. The Russian had known exactly what he was doing when he made her ready for him; now, she felt the jut of his own need against the crevice of her ass as he pushed her face-first into the wall. Madison braced herself with her hands, reveling in how immense Vlad’s cock felt as he rubbed himself along the slick valley beneath the small of her back. Could she take it?
“Spread your legs,” he whispered. Their fight from earlier came crashing back, then, and she was reminded of his accusation of how readily she had allowed herself to be vulnerable the first time. In fact, Madison couldn’t even be sure this wasn’t a continuation of that same argument. If she relented now and gave herself over to the wild whims of her body, was that synonymous with losing? Even through the haze of lust her thoughts floated in, she wasn’t sure she could accept those terms.
“For a Russian thug?” She laughed into the wallpaper, before turning herself to face him. “I don’t think so.”
It was a test to see what Vlad would do, and her adversary didn’t disappoint. The Russian snatched a fistful of her hair and plunged his tongue past her mirthful lips, silencing her laughter and drawing a choked moan from her in almost the same breath. He pressed the heat of his naked body against her until he had her pinned against the wall straight as a board beneath him. The hand that didn’t leash her by her hair fell to massage her between her legs once more.
“That’s where you and I disagree,” Vlad growled against her teeth. Before Madison could even think to protest this—they disagreed on everything, after all—she felt the fingers between her legs flare with surprising strength, forcing her thighs apart. She only had an instant to glance down past her heaving breasts to watch as Vlad slipped his engorged length into the space his hand had previously occupied.
Then he surged fully inside her.
The impact of his thrust lifted her off the floor. Madison cried out and hitched her legs up, wrapping them around Vlad’s waist as he pinned her back beneath their joined hips. His hand disentangled from her hair and slammed palm-first against the wall, his other catching her beneath her thigh.
They moved together as one, a fast, driving rhythm that required no discussion or adjustment. This was hardly lovemaking, Madison thought as she gasped beneath him. She was being taken for a prize, debauched and dominated, as if he had planned it from the day they met. Sweat rolled down their heaving frames, beading in her navel and between her bouncing breasts, but even that wasn’t close enough contact for the man who seemed bent on consuming her; he mashed his chest against hers, laying claim to her mouth as he slid in and out of her. Now his hands gripped her on both sides, fingers digging into flesh until she was certain he would leave marks on her as permanent as any tattoo.
He pumped her, filled her, bringing her ever closer to that ultimate agonizing brink. Madison wanted to say something, maybe even to shout it until it echoed in every empty room of her apartment, but all she could do was plead wordlessly for more, her voice rising, catching, and calling for an end to her agony, a release that only he could give her…
And then her quivering legs locked and she was coming, riding every savage roll of his pelvis as if he was a wild steed that might unseat her at any moment. Vlad never slowed his pace, not even when she gave over to a shuddering wail and let her head fall back; his lips, his teeth, found the base of her throat exposed, and he ravished her neck until what remained of her senses fled completely. When he began to jerk himself harder inside of her, she knew he was close; when he came, it was with a Russian oath, and she felt the hot jet of his seed fill her. She took it all, every ounce of it, knowing she shouldn’t, relishing the forbidden nature of giving herself over to his male virility.
Madison woke a half hour later. She hadn’t intended to drowse, but her body ached with delicious exhaustion. Vlad lay beside her, his naked body lounging atop a heap of discarded clothes; she had no way of knowing anymore if they were his or hers. Maybe she hadn’t been so far off-base in calling him a prince in exile, she thought. If ever there was an image of tarnished royalty, it was this sexually-sated son of the mob lying beside her.
“So.” Madison rolled over to face her lover, propping her chin in her hand. “Can I assume I’m off your suspect list?”
7
“It’s just sex, Dmitry.”
Vlad’s brother had stopped pretending to read a while ago; now, he gazed up from beneath the transparent lenses of his reading glasses as if they could lend a similar transparency to the world misrepresenting itself around him.
“You’ve been seeing this girl for almost a month now. Does she know that?” Dmitry asked. “Do you know that?
Vlad wasn’t in the mood to discuss his relationship with Madison O’Connor. It wasn’t the reason he had come to the bookstore today, yet all conversations seemed to keep leading back to her.
“I just said it, didn’t I?” Vlad plucked the cigarette from behind his ear and pushed it past his lips, even though he had no intention of smoking it indoors. Let his brother squirm a bit with the possibility.
“Right. Because honesty is a Mafioso’s strongest point. Excuse me; I’ve been gone so long I’d forgotten.”
Madison valued honesty, Vlad reflected. She also valued his thrusting body behind hers, in front of hers, beneath hers… he would have been worn out if he wasn’t so God damn addicted to the things she could do to him. He didn’t feel like relating to Dmitry that the sex was near-constant, and their time spent together was becoming almost indistinguishable from their time spent apart. It just came with being neighbors who enjoyed each other’s company, Vlad assumed, even though he had no previous experience with an arrangement like this one. If they had dinner together, it was only to rebuild their stamina so they were ready when one of them inevitably pounced; if they quarreled or traded insults, it was only to recharge the air between them with the frenetic electricity that had become the hallmark of their sex life.