From Russia With Fangs Read online

  Viktor inhaled deeply, and she knew he could smell her the moment his eyes flashed glacial blue. He rutted against her, grinding his rock-hard cock against that damned red dress.

  Holy. Hell. The hot bright edge of her anger made way for the more welcome, ripe sensations of want and need. Her nipples pebbled inside her bra, brushing against the material and sending little darts of pleasure to her heart.

  Viktor’s eyes didn’t leave hers, even as he lifted her wrist to his lips, nuzzling, leaving his scent on her. Her knees melted against his as his tongue laved over the skin there. As she slid down the walls, his hands dropped and flexed around her hips, pulling her to him. She stretched up to meet his mouth, unleashing years of frustration and yearning on Viktor, which he gladly absorbed.

  Irina scraped her fingers over his close-shorn head, greedy for yesclosermoreharderhot. Irina rubbed her thighs together, desperate for the friction that would ease the vicious ache inside her. Breathing hard, Viktor broke away from her kiss and dragged her panties down to her knees, trailing his fingers back up over her thighs. He cupped his hand over her throbbing heat, ghosting his thumb over the hood of her clit, but pulling away before she could register more than a maddening spike in her pulse.

  Biting his bottom lip, he propped her against the wall, tugging at her skirt, rucking it up around her hips. Her breath caught as he ghosted those fingers over flesh that was already dripping for him.

  He ran the tip of his nose up her collarbone, leaning away from her so he could see her tawny eyes the moment he plunged two fingers between her thighs. His mouth covered hers, catching the shriek she let loose. She panted against his lips, knees buckling as he pumped slowly into her. Irina clutched at his shoulders, fighting for the strength to stay on her feet.

  Viktor slid his free hand around her ass cheek, hitching her thighs around his hips as he pressed her back against the wall. His fingers worked her over, stretching her out, spreading her juices over her lower lips. He circled her clit with his thumb, making her buck against him, chasing the pleasure he gave her. He pressed light, quick kisses down her neck to her collar, dragging her bra down and lightly biting at the soft, round curve of her breast. Irina threw her head back, smacking her head against the wall, tearing at his jacket with her nails.

  Everything inside of Irina seemed to clench at once, drawing a tight line of pleasure from her breasts to her pussy. It was almost embarrassing how quickly he could bring her off, but it had been so long since she’d had anything resembling an orgasm that came from someone else touching her. She needed this more than she needed the breath that kept her upright. Her eyes went wide, staring into Viktor’s at the first flutters around his fingers. The expression of awestruck gratitude on her face made his eyebrows rise. Irina’s lips parted and a long keening moan escaped, “Oh, God!”

  He smashed his mouth against hers, swallowing her cries as she pulsed around his hand over and over. When he felt her quiet, he gently moved his fingers away from her, tilting his forehead against hers as he set her on her feet. She straightened his jacket, relishing the warmth of his breath on her cheeks. Slowly, almost shyly, she rose on her toes and kissed his red, wet mouth.

  “Oh, for the love of fuck.”

  At the sound of another woman’s voice, Viktor turned, throwing his arms back over Irina, caging her in against the wall. Viktor growled, only relaxing slightly when he saw that the intruder was Galina. She had her arms crossed over her ample chest and her expression was supremely annoyed.

  “You fucking reek of him, Rina. What were you thinking? I mean, I don’t blame you for hopping on that train, but at your husband’s funeral? That’s a little tacky. Not to mention there’s a fucking werewolf cabal out there who will smell that mess under your dress.” Galina turned on Viktor. “And you, you fucking moron. I know why she’s not behaving rationally, but you’re supposed to be thinking with something other than your junk.”

  Viktor only looked slightly ashamed, glancing over his shoulder at Irina as if he only just fully grasped the danger they’d put themselves in. Galina rolled her eyes. “There’s a break in the receiving line, go out the back way, get my car and bring it around. I’ll take the merry widow here and meet you at the employee exit.”

  Viktor nodded, smoothing Irina’s dress over her bared breast. Galina batted his shoulders. “Damn it, cut that out and get out of here, you hormonal dumbass.”

  Huffing at her, Viktor very deliberately slid his slick fingers into his mouth and walked out of the closet. Galina rolled her eyes, but refrained from smacking him again. Dazed, Irina slumped against the wall, pulling her skirt back into place.

  “Rocked your world, did he?” Galina asked dryly.

  Irina nodded, her mussed hair falling into her eyes. “Why are we going home?”

  Galina checked to make sure her sister’s dress was relatively respectable and pushed her hair back into its bun. “Because, again, you fucking reek of Viktor, at your husband’s funeral, no less. Did—did he scent you? Holy shit, Rina. I mean, I don’t give a fuck, but it’s going to raise some eyebrows. Mama Anya might actually rip your throat out. So we’re going to get you home and showered off before anyone notices.”

  Galina took Irina’s arm and led her to the door. “Try to sag against me and look all lost and devastated, which considering the sexy times I snatched out from under you, shouldn’t be too difficult.”

  “That’s so mean,” Irina sighed, letting her weight fall on her sister more than was probably necessary.

  “It really is.” Galina opened the door, shutting it firmly behind them and leading them past the restrooms and the employee offices. Just near the exit, they spotted a little blond boy, a third cousin from the Volkov side of the family, coming out of the “family lounge,” the long, narrow spit of space occupied by two soda machines and a sprung moss-colored couch. Galina pulled a twenty out of her purse and waved it at him. “Go to Ilya Sudenko and tell him that Galina had to take Irina home because she’s taken ill.”

  The little boy nodded eagerly, snatching the bill out of Galina’s hand. “What if I can’t remember all of it?” he asked. “Another twenty might help my memory.”

  “I don’t know whether to smack you or hire you, kid,” Galina muttered, dragging another bill out of her purse. “Now get out of here before I decide to feed those to you.”

  The boy grinned, tucking his loot into his jacket pocket before running down the hall to deliver the message. “Greedy little Volkov,” Galina muttered.

  Galina managed to get Irina into the car without a repeat of the closet scene, but it took threatening to pistol whip Viktor with his own gun if he didn’t go home and clean up. She shoved Irina into the passenger seat of her car and screeched out of the parking lot before Viktor could jump in the backseat.

  “I can’t believe I just did that,” Irina murmured, her fingers still pressed to her tingling lips. “I just left my own husband’s funeral because I got finger fucked in the coat closet.”

  “Well, it definitely wasn’t the reason I thought we would make our early exit from Sergei’s funeral, but it wasn’t boring.”

  Irina groaned, covering her face with her hands. “And I’m not even sorry. I’m going to hell. What if he tells someone? What if he tries to hold this over my head?”

  “I don’t think Viktor’s the bang ’em and blackmail ’em type. Come on, Rina,” Galina sighed, turning toward Irina’s gated community. “We’re going to take care of this. We’re going to make you feel better.”

  “How?” Irina sighed. “How can you possibly make me feel better right now?”

  “Franny and I are going to get you high,” Galina told her. “Really, really high.”

  4

  Widow’s Weed

  IT WAS A TESTAMENT to Galina’s discretion that she didn’t tease Irina about her “grieving strategies” once Franny joined them at the house. Of course, the fact that Galina was afraid to say anything in front of Irina’s best friend in the world also
drove home exactly how stupid and dangerous her little liaison in the coat closet had been.

  Irina’s rapid descent from a well-behaved volk zhena to a woman who frottaged her bodyguard at her husband’s visitation frightened her. What the hell had she been thinking? If they’d been found, Viktor would have been ripped apart and Mama Anya could have demanded any number of unpleasant punishments for her. Viktor was dangerous and not just in the “trained killer” way, but in the “makes Irina’s panties spontaneously melt off” way. She needed to put some distance between the two of them. She needed to find a way to get back behind the wall she’d built around her emotions over the last five years…and hide…from the guy who had given her the first orgasm she’d ever had without benefit of batteries.

  No problem.

  She ripped off her scandalous funeral dress the moment she arrived home, tossing it into the fireplace as she passed through the living room. “I’m burning that thing!” she shouted as she jogged up the stairs.

  “Already on it!” Galina called, tossing a match into the fireplace.

  When she came back downstairs, face scrubbed clean of makeup, wrists scrubbed of Viktor’s scent and wearing an old Seahawks jersey, Franny was sitting at the table and neatly rolling a fat joint. She sealed the tip with a kiss and waved it in front of Irina’s face.

  “I don’t know if this is a good idea,” Irina said. “For one thing that was an awfully phallic gesture, so I don’t know if I want to smoke your surrogate penis.”

  “Rina, lighten up,” Franny told her. “I have been trying to get you to smoke since college. This is going to be funny as hell.”

  “I never smoked in college because I had to go home every weekend to my family of werewolves, who will smell this shit from a mile away.”

  “Oh, just blame it on me,” Galina told her, holding up a lighter to help Franny get the joint going. “Everybody will believe it. Besides, you’re thirty years old—if you want to get high, you should be able to get high.”

  Irina looked to Franny, who was puffing for all she was worth, sucking the smoke into her mouth to form a perfect O. “She looks just like my sister, but she talks like someone who was raised by a completely different family.”

  “Just inhale and shut up,” Franny said, holding the joint to Irina’s lips. Reluctantly, Irina wrapped her lips around the paper, drew a breath deep into her lungs…and coughed like she was about to lose a lung.

  “Dear, sweet baby Jesus,” she wheezed, sucking in another draw. She held it and let the heat roll through her chest. Grimacing, she handed the joint off to Galina, who hit it without hesitation and didn’t seem to have the same inhaling issues that Irina had. Irina finally released the smoke, hacking and coughing.

  “Is this good weed?” she asked. “I can’t tell.”

  “It’s pretty good.” Franny’s voice was odd and wheezy around the breath she was holding.

  “You never stopped doing this, did you?” Irina marveled. “How do you get away with this and keep your dental license?”

  “The guy I buy my weed from does the random drug testing for the state dental board. And because I know that we’re dealing with varying metabolisms, I brought special brownies for milady,” Franny slid a nine-by-thirteen pan of chocolate frosted deliciousness across the table to Galina. It would contain twice the normal amount of hash oil to combat Galina’s high metabolism.

  “Are these what I hope they are?” Galina squealed.

  Franny nodded solemnly. “Yes, they are.”

  Two hours later, Galina was on her second order from Hunan Palace. Immediately after finishing the entire pan of brownies, Galina had called the Palace and ordered all of column A for delivery. She’d finished it, not sharing so much as a scallion pancake, and then called to order all of Column B. Irina and Franny were forced to forage for munchies among the sympathy fruit baskets and sweets that had been delivered by concerned neighbors.

  Nik showed up while the Hunan Palace delivery guy was hauling in the second load of bags from the car to find the ladies sprawled around the kitchen, surrounded by the carnage of their epic junk food smackdown. Their favorite brother was tugging at his tie and looking especially exhausted. “Papa sent me to check on you. I’m starving.”

  Nik attempted to grab a crystal prawn from one of the recently unloaded little paper cartons. Galina snatched it out of his grasp, growling. “You’re not going to share?”

  “I ate an entire pan of Franny’s pot brownies. I’m hungry,” Galina half-snarled, half-whined as she scarfed down another prawn.

  “There were special brownies? And you didn’t save me any? You bitch.”

  “And I’m not even sorry,” Galina told him, her smug voice muffled by prawn.

  Nik wrapped his arms around Irina, who was plowing through a bag of nacho cheese Doritos and piece of chocolate babka. “Wow, you smell like weed,” Nik said, nose wrinkling. “A lot of weed.”

  “I got a lot high,” Irina told him, grinning lazily. “It was Galina and Franny’s idea. They are a very bad influence on me. Always have been.”

  “And we’re not even sorry,” Franny said, toasting the sentiment with a peanut butter-smeared Oreo.

  The doorbell rang. Everyone looked at Galina. She shrugged. “I don’t think I ordered anything else. Maybe the delivery guy forgot something.”

  Galina dragged herself off the counter, taking a carton of fried rice in each hand. Before she left, she speared her brother with a look. “If you so much as touch a bite of my lo mein, you will draw back a nub.”

  “She means it,” Franny said, holding up an arm with a curved red impression near her wrist. “I tried to take a pot sticker.”

  “She warned you,” Irina told her.

  “I was over-confident,” Franny sighed.

  “So, what was with your sudden and dramatic exit from the funeral?” Nik asked. “Were you afraid that it was becoming too understated and dignified?”

  Irina’s eyes went wide and she almost choked on her cake. She started hacking and coughing loudly and Franny pounded her on the back. “Some people just can’t hold their smoke,” Franny told her.

  “Yeah,” Irina wheezed. “And I’m fine, Nik, really. I just had to get out of there before Mama Anya took a swan dive into the grave.”

  “It was more of a half-gainer,” Nik muttered, taking a handful of chips.

  “You’re kidding,” Franny snorted.

  “It took three of us to haul her out of the grave by her cankles,” Nik told her.

  “Please tell me that someone will be loading that onto YouTube,” Franny said, her eyes bright and glassy with THC and schadenfreude.

  “Sadly no,” Nik sighed. “By the way, as your lawyer, I have to inform you that the Seattle PD would like to question you again, and go over your statement about Sergei’s shooting.”

  Irina shrugged, digging into her babka. “What else can I tell them? I didn’t see who shot Sergei. All I saw was Sergei’s shoulders as he dragged me behind him, and then he hunched over.”

  “It’s a fishing expedition, sweetheart. To be honest, I don’t think they’re really that interested in the death of a minor Sudenko foot soldier,” Nik told her. “I think they’re hoping that they can get you in the hot seat and you’ll be so distraught that you’ll let some extra information slip.”

  Irina found the notion vaguely insulting, but buried her conflicting feelings of irritation and guilt in sugary pastry. “Can’t you just tell them that I’m too mad with grief too leave the house? Make me out to be Miss Havisham, only more groomed.”

  “I guess I can work with that, despite the scarlet woman funeral get-up, which was thoroughly documented by the police surveillance van outside of Kandinsky’s. However, I suspect that they also got your abrupt departure before the burial, so it could all balance out. As distasteful as it is, I’m going to need you to play up the tragic widow bit when law enforcement personnel are around. Got it?”

  “I will be both wretched and tear-sta
ined,” Irina swore, giving a version of the Girl Scout pledge hand signal that involved above-average babka crumb dispersal.

  “Where the hell is Galina?” Nik wondered.

  “I’ll bet that bitch ordered pizza and didn’t even tell us,” Franny griped.

  “Calm down, I’ll go check on her,” Nik said, walking into the hallway, grabbing Franny’s wine glass on his way out. He ignored her gasp of indignation.

  A few seconds later, Nik’s nervous voice called, “Hey, Irina, you got some flowers.”

  “Holy shit,” Irina breathed when she saw the eruption of heavily scented lilies and orchids making its way into her kitchen. “Well, if there’s a lily shortage along the western seaboard, we know why.”

  When she realized that Andrey Lupesco’s dark-haired, boulder-sized bodyguard, Konstantin, was standing in her kitchen, looking at all of them like they were escapees from a mental institution, Irina pulled nervously at her jersey and yoga pants. She wasn’t used to being seen in her grubbies by the “help.” And she certainly wasn’t used to being high as hell around them. This was just not her day.

  “They’re from Andrey Lupesco,” Galina supplied, filling the awkward silence with her inappropriately gleeful voice.

  Irina cleared her throat and straightened her shoulders, regal as any queen despite the clothes and the empty Pop-Tart box in her hand. “Please send Mr. Lupesco my thanks. The flowers are lovely.”

  “He’s sorry he missed the opportunity to speak to you at the funeral. He was hoping to pass on his condolences personally.” Konstantin’s dark eyes darted toward Galina, who toasted him with a carton of lo mein. Irina frowned in confusion, but was smart enough not to comment on the exchange.

  “Well, I’ll be going,” he said, inclining his head to the ladies. “Mrs. Volkov. Miss Sudenko. Mrs. Volkov’s friend.” Franny giggled like a schoolgirl and waggled her fingers at him. Konstantin inclined his head to Galina.