From Russia With Fangs Read online

  “Oh come on, Galya, don’t exaggerate,” Irina chided, sounding genuinely amused for the first time since Galina arrived. “Your tits are perfectly nice, but they’re not awesome.”

  Galina chucked a pierogi at her sister’s head. “Eat your carbs, smart ass.”

  Irina swept her head sideways, dodging the flying pierogi, which smacked against the wall and exploded into a shower of dumpling innards. Irina rolled her eyes, but picked up the fork and took a small bite.

  “I’ll clean that up later,” Galina assured her. “So are you fucking Viktor yet?”

  Irina sucked in air and potato, lodging the pierogi in her windpipe and collapsing against the table in a fit of coughing. Galina smacked her sister on the back until Irina could breathe again.

  “Damn it, Galya, that’s not okay,” Irina wheezed, gulping water down her abused throat. “Why am I choking so much lately?”

  Galina shrugged, resuming her destruction of the lasagna. “I’m just curious. I mean, a few days ago, I caught you wrapped around that man like stripes on a barber pole, and today, I come over to find that he’s moved in with you. Are you completely insane, or just suffering some sort of PTSD bonding trauma because he was with you when Sergei got shot?”

  Irina scowled at her. “No, I’m not fucking Viktor. In fact, he’s made it pretty clear that what happened at the funeral was a crazy mistake and we can never let it happen again. And the only reason he’s moving in is because it was the only way to keep Papa from moving an entire brute squad into my house. He trusts Viktor.”

  “He trusts the guy who has been knuckle-deep in his baby girl?” Galina asked, eyebrows arched. “Why?”

  Irina shrugged. “No clue. And more importantly, why do we have to refer to it like that?”

  “Because it amuses me that sweet, perfect little Irina completely lost it at a public event and got semi-naked in a coat closet.”

  Irina gritted her teeth, but stayed silent. She didn’t know why, but being referred to as “sweet” by two of her family members in one day was suddenly infuriating. She was more than some simpering, obedient little girl. She was more than the golden child, the dependable one, the sunny Pollyanna, the ever-flowing font of support and sweetness. She needed more than the pitying looks and pats on the head while they shooed her out of the room so they could have important werewolf conversations.

  But none of this was Galina’s fault. Her baby sister would rather saw her tongue in half than hurt Irina, so as usual, Irina swallowed the angry words rising in her throat and smiled her way through the fury.

  “I don’t know what happened,” Irina said quietly. “It was a sort of madness that just took over my brain. I needed something and Viktor gave it to me. But it won’t happen again. I promise, Galina. You won’t have to clean up my mess again.”

  “Oh, hell, Irina, I don’t care,” Galina snorted. “I was only upset because of the high probability that you could get caught by almost every werewolf we know. If you want to bone Viktor in every room of your house, I will gladly give you a lady fist-bump. But be smart about it. Don’t get caught, and don’t fool yourself into thinking you have any sort of romantic future with someone who works for Papa. He’s not in the same layer of our particular social cake and you know how seriously people take that shit around here. Papa would lose serious face. And before you get all indignant, there’s a difference between a wolf at Sergei’s level working for Papa, and a packless Beta who does Papa’s dirty work. Viktor seems perfectly jumpable, but he is not boyfriend material.”

  “I wasn’t even thinking about it like that,” Irina muttered into her plate.

  “Petulant is not your color, Rina,” Galina said, nudging her gently, her eyes softening.

  Irina nodded.

  “You’ll find somebody,” Galina assured her. “You’ve done your time as the unhappy Stepford wife. You deserve to be happy, Irina. You’ll meet someone nice and normal—who is not a sadistic, skank-banging asshole. You’ll meet someone who deserves you. I want that for you.”

  Irina didn’t have the heart to tell Galina that Papa might be lining up a decidedly not-normal, not-nice guy for her already. So she picked at her food, taking a small bite of cheese.

  “It could be worse,” Galina snickered. “In some of the shifter cultures, your mother-in-law would be allowed to pick your next suitor. Can you imagine the winners Mama Anya would pick for you?”

  Irina started choking again, her eyes watering. Galina huffed out an irritated breath and slapped her on the back as Viktor came running into the room, his cheeks pink from the chilly Ranier wind. He glared at Galina, blue eyes flashing and lifted Irina from her chair, his arms around her waist in the Heimlich position. Irina yelped at the shock of his cold hands on her skin.

  “I’m fine!” she cried, slapping Viktor’s chilly hands away. “I’m fine!”

  “What did you do?” Viktor growled at Galina.

  “I expected her to be able to chew by herself?” Galina said dryly. “A position you’re taking over, now that you’re living-in.”

  Viktor winced at Galina’s use of the word “position.”

  “Are you all right?” he asked Irina, who was glugging down water like it was going out of style. She nodded.

  “So, Viktor, how do you feel about being my sister’s new roomie?” Galina asked, her tone teasing.

  “Oh, I couldn’t be more thrilled,” Viktor said dryly. “But I figure it’s better that it’s me than the jackasses Mr. Sudenko could assign to your detail.”

  Irina glared at him, but he ignored the heat in her gaze.

  “Now, if you ladies are confident you can finish your meal without choking, I’m going upstairs to unpack.”

  “I think we’ll be fine, Viktor, thank you,” Galina simpered sweetly.

  Viktor nodded sharply and walked out of the kitchen.

  “He will have you naked and spread-eagle on the washing machine in less than two days,” Galina told her.

  “I hate you,” Irina wheezed.

  “With the spin-cycle.”

  “Jerk.”

  Irina took the coward’s way out on the first night Viktor shared her house. She dashed for the stairs. She didn’t even wish Viktor good night. She didn’t ask him if he needed extra towels or blankets or anything to make the guestroom more comfortable. No doubt Papa had already given him permission to take whatever he needed from her linen closet.

  Avoiding each other became their pattern over the next few days. They seemed able to time their movements like clockwork, Irina moving from one area of the house just before Viktor walked into it. Irina would sneak down to the kitchen in the morning to make a pot of coffee, leaving enough for Viktor. By the afternoon, the pot was drained and cleaned. The same with meals. She would make lunch and leave a foil-wrapped plate for Viktor, but leave the kitchen before he arrived to eat it.

  Slowly, but surely, she was weeding her husband from her house, making it her own. She sent the box of Sergei’s photos and mementos to Mama Anya, because she was not a heinous bitch, thank you very much. The uncomfortable modern furniture was hauled away from the living room. She worked in areas of the house where Viktor wouldn’t go, purging the office of Sergei’s presence, clearing the clothes from Sergei’s side of the walk-in closet.

  Irina reclaimed her time, her meals, the way she dressed. While the red wardrobe remained in her closet, in the event she needed to leave the house, she almost exclusively wore the yoga pants, slouchy cardigans and T-shirts Sergei had abhorred. She ate foods that Sergei had “forbidden” from their home because he disliked the smell, like movie butter microwave popcorn and garlic bread.

  She wallowed in the privacy of having her own bedroom, to shower or linger over her hair for however long she wanted without worrying about getting in Sergei’s way. She was able to sleep without being woken up in the middle of the night by her drunk husband stumbling into the room, stinking of expensive booze and cheap perfume. She reveled in making her own choices, even i
f it was with little things—what she ate, what she wore, when she went to bed. In the larger picture, these things meant very little compared to the strings her father pulled in her life, but it felt good to make some decisions for herself.

  More often than not, Irina stayed in her room, reading, e-mailing Ivan about issues with the shop, watching old movies that had bored Sergei. The bed she’d shared with her husband was stripped of the old sheets—which Galina had gleefully burned in the backyard fire pit—and re-outfitted with a new mattress and a sinfully soft set of Egyptian cotton sheets that had been a “just widowed” gift from Franny. She slid into bed every night, acutely aware of how alone, yet not alone, she was in her own house.

  Rooming with Viktor was a bit like living with the Phantom of the Opera. She knew he was there somewhere, lurking, but would only make himself known if she was in danger. She knew how easily she could slip down the hallway and climb into Viktor’s bed. And her pride, her fear of rejection, was the only thing that kept her under her own sheets.

  Unfortunately, pride hadn’t passed the memo to her sex-starved body. She was always aware of him, of his location in the house. It was if she could feel his restless wolfish energy curling around her, trailing against her skin, no matter where she was.

  But one morning, half conscious, she padded into the kitchen to start the coffee, and there was Viktor, sitting at her kitchen table, cleaning a gun. Wearing nothing but a wife-beater that showed off the way his arm muscles bunched and flexed as he worked. Irina’s mouth went dry. She was suddenly self-conscious about the shapeless sweater she wore over her Smurf pajama pants.

  “Morning,” his voice rumbled and Irina made a squeaking noise she hoped counted as a response.

  Viktor didn’t even look up at her, his brows furrowed in concentration over his task. After so many days of avoiding him, being confronted by Viktor’s presence and the way his woodsy scent seemed to fill her head, felt like being hit by a truckload of pheromones. She stood frozen, watching his hands move over the metal. Watching his fingers stroke the barrel and manipulate the safety catch was somehow the sexiest thing she’d ever seen. Every click of metal against metal seemed to reverberate through her body, making her nipples tighten.

  This was definitely not a normal response.

  Irina ignored the flood of warmth between her thighs as she moved toward the counter to make coffee. This was some sort of insane side effect to her trauma, she told herself, which she had avoided processing through ruthless spring cleaning. She needed to come. More than she had in years, she was seized with the need to release all of the pent up sexual energy undulating through her body. It was as if all of the orgasms she’d been denied over the years of her marriage had merged within her and now threatened to boil up through her like lava. Her skin felt too hot and too tight, like she would burst out of it at any moment, a new and depraved creature in search of a mate. She squeezed her thighs together, shifting, trying to find some relief.

  Nope, it appeared that doing a bizarre variation of the horny Macarena in one’s kitchen did not undo years of sexual frustration.

  “Um, I’m going to go take a shower while the coffee brews,” Irina said, giving an exaggerated yawn.

  Viktor raised an eyebrow, watching her scamper out of the room.

  At least he hadn’t commented on the fact that Irina had showered before bed the previous night.

  Irina practically bolted up the stairs, stripping out of her sweater as she made the landing and slamming the bedroom door behind her. He would smell it. If she did what was she about to do, he would smell her from a mile away. The shower. The shower was actually a brilliant cover. It would cover the sound and scent.

  She shrugged out of her clothes, tripping over her pajama pants and falling flat on her ass. “Ow!” she muttered. “Man down.”

  Irina stumbled to her feet, praying that Viktor hadn’t heard that from downstairs. She raced to the enormous red-and-black tiled shower Sergei had custom designed and cranked the rain-shower faucet and the wall-mounted sprayers. Anything to make extra noise. Stripping out of her clothes, she stepped under the spray without waiting for it to warm up, barely registering the sting of the cold against her heated skin.

  Moaning softly, she rubbed her fingers against her swollen lower lips, afraid to touch her clit directly and come off like a firecracker. She gasped as her fingertips slid over slick, wet folds. She was so fucking sensitive. Had she ever been this strung out before in her life?

  Irina ran her free hand over her breast, almost afraid to touch the diamond-hard nipple. Nearly wincing, she slipped her fingers in soft circles around her clit, teasing, testing how much she could stand. And given the way her hips bucked, it wouldn’t be much. She tilted her head back against the showerhead, panting into the water. The spray kissed its way along her skin, a dozen imaginary lovers trailing their lips over her body.

  She tried to keep her mind open and empty, but images kept falling into her mind’s eye like slides. Viktor, standing over her in the coat closet. The look on his face as he watched her come. The way he’d licked his fingers as he walked away from her, as if he couldn’t get enough of her taste.

  She carefully pressed two fingers into her ripe pussy. Even without the water, she would have been wet and hot and ready. Circling her thumb around her clit, she leaned back against the cool tile of the shower and hissed. Experimenting, she pumped her fingers, chasing the sensation of her fingertips brushing against her sweet spot. Her hips bucked and dodged, the water sluicing down her skin. She rubbed at her clit, working to match the movement with her fingers working inside of her.

  She could feel it building, so quickly, like a train ready to carry her down the tracks to ruin. In the corner of her mind, she could feel a sort of panic rising at the speed of her response. She’d never come this quickly before. Was there something wrong with her? Had Sergei’s death finally pushed her off the deep end?

  A coil of pressure tightened between her pussy and her nipples, like a bowstring being drawn. Her mouth fell open as she felt her flesh stretch and pulse. She smashed her hand over her mouth to muffle the sound of her groans. Her pace quickened, desperate now, and she curled her fingertips forward to massage her spot. And in her ecstasy, there was only one name she could call.

  “Viktor,” she panted. “God, Viktor!”

  She slammed her head against the wall as her orgasm ripped through her, her pussy clenching around her fingers over and over as her body seized. Her free arm slapped out against the wall to help keep her balance as her legs buckled underneath her. Unfortunately, she knocked the shaving mirror off of the wall and sent it clattering to the floor. Her eyes flew open at the noise, giggling to herself and clapping her balancing hand against her mouth.

  She couldn’t believe she’d done that. She’d jilled off with a super-smelling, super-hearing werewolf in the house, with his name on her lips. It was like she had the humiliation equivalent of a death wish.

  She shook her head, stifling her laughter as she reached for the fragrant vanilla-scented shower gel she kept in the shower caddy. She had to change the scent of the room now, which was probably filled with clouds of Irina-scented steam. She squeezed a more than healthy dollop of gel onto her loofah and worked it into a lather, waving it around the shower stall like a brazier full of incense.

  A soft knock sounded at the bathroom door.

  Fuck.

  “Irina?” Viktor’s voice rumbled through the wood.

  Maybe if she just stayed quiet and pretended not to be in the room, he would go away.

  “Irina?”

  Double fuck.

  “Yes?” She cleared her throat and began scrupulously scrubbing her hands with body wash.

  “I heard a noise, are you okay?”

  She called over the sound of the water, “Just dropped something. I’m fine.”

  Irina shut off the water and grabbed for a fluffy red towel, then sprayed a healthy amount of Chanel No. 5 around to mask whatever
Viktor might be able to smell. She heard him chuckle, then try to mask his amusement with a cough. She wrapped the towel around her head in an attempt to smother herself, but no dice. Her will to live and humiliate herself again was too strong.

  “All right then,” he said. “I’ll be downstairs, just case you ‘drop something’ again.”

  Irina let go of the towel, pressing her hands over her face, stifling an embarrassed howl.

  Triple fuck.

  Post-shower, Irina had slipped back into her comfortable jeans and a red sweater, but had decided to wait until her cheeks returned to a nice, non-lobster color before facing Viktor again. Three hours later, she was still upstairs, puttering around in her room, trying to come up with some plausible explanation for her behavior this morning. Unfortunately, most of them involved going off of serious psychotropic medications, which she didn’t think was any more flattering than “super-horny and raring to go.”

  It was nearly lunch-time, and Irina’s stomach was growling after being denied even so much as her morning coffee. Still locked in her debate over going downstairs or having Galina deliver a pizza to her bedroom window, she heard Viktor call, “Mrs. Volkov, you have a visitor,” from the stairwell.

  Irina peered over the railing and saw Ivan standing in her foyer. She grinned at the familiar sight of Ivan’s tall, almost gawky frame and his shock of strawberry blond hair, the same reddish bronze shade as her own. At the shop, they’d joked about putting a “Powered by Gingers” sign in the window, but they were sure no one in the Russian werewolf community would find it funny.

  Irina nearly flew down the steps to greet a familiar, non-judgmental face. She could not mistake the low growl sound in the base of Viktor’s throat as Ivan pulled her into a lingering, but completely platonic, hug. Ivan was like the little human brother she’d always wanted, funny and sweet, without the bullshit werewolf masculinity issues to cloud up their interactions. She ignored the growl, as did Ivan.