Her Ruthless Russian (Karev Brothers Book 1) Read online

  "Let's just say you aren't my first unexpected visitor this week," Vlad said, holding a bottle out in invitation with one hand as he continued his preparations in the sink. Madison sauntered into the kitchen to join him, taking the offered vodka and helping herself to the only glass. There was nowhere to sit in the kitchen, so she settled for hopping up onto the counter by the sink and pouring herself a drink sans rocks.

  "Oh? What's her name?" she inquired casually.

  "Crafty little lisa," Vlad commented.

  Madison's heart sank, and she set the bottle aside. "Her name is Lisa?"

  "Lisa is the Russian word for 'fox,'" Vlad corrected as he pushed against her thigh to make room. Madison complied, scooting to allow space for his cutting board. She tipped her head back and tossed the drink down in a valiant effort to fight the burn Vlad's touch left with the one in her throat.

  "So… am I lisa because of my hair, or for a different reason you'd care to illuminate?" she asked dangerously.

  Vlad chuckled. "I'm willing to illuminate only one question at a time. If you must know, the last person to visit me was my brother, Maxim. Here," he said, just as Madison opened her mouth to ask another question. He pushed something smooth and salty past her lips, filling her mouth before she could object. "Kielbasa. You will have to tell me what you think of Russian sausage."

  You're a trained killer to the core, Karev. Madison’s face burned at the obvious innuendo. Was this dinner, or was this sexual theater? She chewed the sausage link and refused to state out loud how good it was.

  Definitely a killer, and don't you forget it, O’Connor. He's going to be the death of you if you hang around any longer. What else might he be?

  "Oh, that reminds me! I have something of yours!" she said. Vlad raised an eyebrow, as if to silently inquire what precisely it was that had reminded her in the first place, but Madison ignored his look. She hopped down off the counter and exited his apartment to pop into her own place next door. The movers weren't finished assembling her things yet, but they appeared to be taking a smoke break in the alley outside. Madison sighed with frustration, but didn't bother hanging her head out the window to shout down to them. At least the dinner jacket was still where she had left it, hanging off the back of her desk chair. Madison plucked it up and was just about to turn and go when a piece of paper fluttered out of one of the pockets.

  She paused, scrutinizing the folded note on the floor. It shouldn't have looked familiar, yet it did somehow. Why hadn't she noticed it in Vlad's pocket before? She knelt to retrieve it, peeling it open carefully, her pulse kicking up before she had even consciously recognized the handwriting within.

  It was the note from her father—the one she had delivered to Sergey's office the day before he was murdered, if Vlad was to be believed. And speaking of Vlad…

  The room darkened suddenly. Madison wheeled to find the towering blond man standing in the doorway to her apartment, filling the doorway. He hadn't looked that big inside his own residence. His pale eyes fell to her occupied hands, and a terrible change came over him. Madison backed herself against her desk chair before she understood that she was retreating.

  "You." His expression was thunderous. "You stole it. The note."

  "What?" she asked, perplexed. "What are you talking about? I didn't steal anything! You gave me your jacket; in case you had forgotten!"

  Not that she hadn't tried to suppress her fair share of memories from that night as well.

  "Why do you have this, anyway?" she demanded, tossing the dinner jacket back down and moving into the room as she brandished the note at him. "This was for Sergey's eyes only! This was a private invitation to meet with my father that he asked me to deliver personally for him! Why do you have it now? Unless…"

  She nearly choked on her realization like it was a piece of kielbasa. Vlad's eyes narrowed, as if he couldn't decide if she was putting on a show or not.

  "You can't be serious!" Madison exclaimed. "Do you actually think I'm the one who murdered Sergey? Or do you think that I'm complicit somehow? Is that what this was all along to you? A part of your investigation?"

  It made sudden, dreadful sense: the chance meeting, the repeat visits to her office, the additional security and cameras. Unbelievable that it had taken her this long to figure out. She had been so taken in by him; by a Karev, the enemy literally at her door. The enemy who now stepped fully into her apartment and closed the door, locking it behind him.

  "Do you deny you weren't doing the same?" Vlad demanded. "Why else would a woman with such clear disdain for the business I run agree to dinner with me?" She saw a wicked glint in his eye and braced herself for impact. "Why else would she agree to open her legs for a Russian thug? The transparency in your own motivations is frankly embarrassing, lisa."

  "Go to hell!" Madison shouted. She hadn't meant to pitch her voice so loudly, but she also hadn't expected him to go so low. Then again, the man before her was proving himself to be exactly as described: a Russian thug.

  "I don't need someone like you telling me when and when not to feel embarrassed, and I definitely don't need him doing so inside my own apartment!" she exclaimed. "Believe me; I regret our date as much as you do!" Her eyes darted across the room once more to the dinner jacket hanging off the chair, and she was struck by a terrible inspiration. "In fact, why don't I make it up to you? Since I'm such a designing, manipulative whore, it should be my equal responsibility to help you avoid letting your dick lead you into temptation in the future."

  She darted across the room and snatched the dinner jacket up before Vlad could stop her. The window into the main room of her new apartment was already open, and, serendipitously enough, screenless.

  Without another thought, she threw Vlad's jacket out the window. He rushed forward as she stepped aside; she restrained herself from looking, but thought she heard the telltale 'thump!' of the expensive article landing in the open dumpster below. There were unforeseen perks to living right above the alley after all.

  An ominous silence descended upon the room. The smug smile of victory Madison had been fighting back died on her lips. A siren wailed in the distance to match the one now going off in her head.

  Vlad turned his head slowly. The streetlight outside cast his own expression into a black tableau, until she couldn't see past any of the shadows pooling in his rigid face. She saw his eyes, though. They glowed with quiet fury, until the cool blue of them looked as if it could scorch her to a cinder on the spot. His pupils dilated all at once, and Madison's primal instinct kicked in. She turned to run.

  It didn't occur to her until it was too late that there was nowhere to go.

  Her hand was on the doorknob when he grabbed her waist, and Madison found herself lifted clear off the ground and hauled back into the room. "Let go of me!" she shrieked. He was a trained killer. Anything could happen.

  So of course the unexpected happened.

  Vlad turned her into him forcefully, and Madison struggled against him until the end, throwing shoulders and futile punches that he deflected at every turn. His hands clenched over her shoulders and pressed them down against her sides. If he was going to use them to restrain her rather than kill her then and there, then what…?

  He kissed her punishingly. The heat of his mouth against hers, the aggressive pressure, forced her to bend her head back beneath him to take him all at once. His tongue pushed its way past the seam of her lips, its strength as controlled and honed as any other muscle in his tense, powerful body. She opened her mouth against him with the idea to protest, but of course her hubris only enabled his invasion to succeed. His tongue plunged past her teeth to war with her own; there was no home court advantage here. He had her on the defensive, parrying and thrusting to keep up, engaging when she knew she should be pushing him out to enable a retreat.

  She had never been kissed so aggressively, so thoroughly, in all her life. If this was the male response to being disrespected, Madison thought she could personally afford to throw a few mor
e expensive dinner jackets out the window. When the kiss was as good as the best sex she had ever had, what did that say about the sex that might follow?

  Vlad's hand plunged up her shirt, bypassing the underwire of her bra until she felt the rough touch of his fingertips directly applied to the swell of her breast. He clenched his fingers over the swollen flesh, taking a firm, possessive hold of her. She moaned headily; they broke apart only long enough to share a glance down the length of their joined bodies and take in the sight. Vlad tightened his hold beneath her shirt once more, almost experimentally, and she couldn't help but moan again. She wondered if he counted his experiment a success.

  "No… bed…" she panted. She was surprised Vlad gave her any room to get the words out.

  "Don't need one," Vlad growled.

  She half-expected him to halt the proceedings long enough to invite her over, but apparently even a quick relocation would take more time than they had available to them. This was it, and this was happening now; any hitch in the choreography, and they might never find themselves in a similar situation again.

  They were still adversaries, after all, but they were adversaries with an agenda that just happened to immediately align.

  "Ow!" Madison's back hit the jut of the sink, and her protest was swallowed by another desperate, greedy make-out session to follow the first. Wait, when had they found the time to go into the kitchen? It was like being taken against her will by a tornado: straight out of Kansas and dropped into a new world of complete sensory overload.

  Madison disengaged from Vlad's fervent mouth with a wild gasp, her hand groping behind her blindly to seek purchase. She had to grab hold of something, anything, to keep her supported beneath this force of nature. Her fingers managed to wrap around the crank of the faucet before Vlad dropped his head down between her breasts; she released a flood of water in a gush, the splashdown wetting her back as Vlad's ravening kisses took her from the front. He hiked her shirt up over the swell of her cleavage and made a low noise of approval in his throat when he noticed her brazier was the kind that unhooked in the front. Vlad released it with a snag of his teeth and an artful flick of his tongue.

  Her breasts sprang free. Madison knew she had a nice pair: they were as ivory-colored as the rest of her, round and heavy, and her pink nipples pulled taut from the sudden cold. Vlad raised his mouth from the valley of her cleavage to draw one nipple into his mouth. Madison moaned, her spine arching back toward the water as her body pushed against him for more. The wet, suckling heat of his mouth, in combination with the sweep and flick of his tongue as he teased her into rigid arousal… it felt borderline unbearable, yet she self-destructively craved more. Her very existence threatened to unravel beneath Vlad's questing touches, until all that would remain for the Russian to contend with was a spent shell of one incredibly, sexually-exhausted woman. Was that his motive this time around? Did she care? There were few things in life Madison O’Connor wanted for herself. Vlad Ivankov Karev was currently ranked number one.

  She made a keening, close-lipped noise of pleasure as Vlad drew the tight pearl of one nipple between his teeth. A slight pressure, and she gasped and strained, putting her free hand on his shoulder to hold him off. Her head spun, an intense thrill of pleasure shooting through her, but she had seen just how powerful those teeth of his really were.

  "Trust me," he murmured into her glistening skin. Madison might have laughed, considering how little honesty there was between them, but all she could do was gasp again as he moved to address her neglected left breast. By the time he was finished with her, her chest was heaving with each drawn-out breath as if she had run a marathon. The junction between her legs burned with the memory of how his touch had felt. She needed it now more than ever; Vlad had just ensured himself a repeat invitation.

  The Russian smiled crookedly in the darkness, as if he could read her thoughts. Certainly her body gave enough away that it wasn't a lucky guess what she wanted. He lifted a finger to his lips, signaling her to hush, before lowering his hand to glide it beneath her waistband. The front button of her jeans burst free beneath the invasion, and the masculine thickness of the wrist that followed. His hand vanished completely down her front, and Madison moaned in anticipation. He was picking up exactly where they had left off the other night, granting her body's unvoiced wish that he fulfill the promise his touch had made her.

  Vlad's fingers parted her inner folds and stroked her clit in a come-hither motion. Then he pressed down hard, as if engaging a button whose outcome he knew with a hundred percent certainty. A burst of pleasure rolled through her, from where he pressed; all the way up into the core of her belly.

  "Oh." She heard her own response as if from a distance, like she was watching another woman be pleasured by a man she herself had no right to be with. Encouraged by the noises she was making, Vlad continued to stroke her, deepening the touch of his fingers with each gesture until every nerve within his reach sang out for more. Soon his fingers slid against her with each stroke, slick with her body's natural lubrication.

  "There it is," Vlad murmured as he pressed his lips beneath her ear to whisper, "You want more?"

  Madison's head was spinning. It took her a while to realize that the pounding of her pulse was in-time to a pounding at the door. "Miss O’Connor? You in there?" one of the male movers called. "We're locked out."

  "Good," she growled as she reached up to divest Vlad of his T-shirt. The Russian chuckled, his mouth sliding along her neck.

  It was dark in the apartment, but not dark enough to conceal the rippling musculature of the torso now bared beneath her hands. Vlad wasn't just strong; he was the definition of 'cut.' Every muscle was as sharply defined and convex as if he had been crafted by a master sculptor. Madison ran her fingers along his bunched abdominals, moaning as the man's own fingers continued to work her beneath her waistline. Despite the wan light in the apartment, she couldn't always make out the difference between Vlad's tattoos and the shadows that pooled in the crevices of his unbelievable body.

  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 wi
th 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.