The Life (9 page)

“Until he can do it for himself,” she said, knowing he wouldn’t.

Again, a silence overtook the office, surrounding the couple in its smothering grip. At least Anton hadn’t shut her out like she assumed he would when the discussion went a little deeper than he would normally let it. Even so, Viviana could tell by the tightness in his clenching jaw, and the fire burning behind his eyes that he was unhappy about her way of confronting him.

Viviana wasn’t sorry in the least.

“You know girls can’t join, right?” Viviana asked, smiling just a little when Anton’s gaze narrowed at the wall. “So if we ever have a daughter, you can’t expect there’s going to come a day when she’s been hardened enough to turn her emotions off. She’s going to come home crying to her daddy when some mean girl takes a bite out of her. What’s her daddy going to do, pay off a child with dolls and makeup?”

Anton didn’t say anything, but the slight curve of his lips told his wife he was listening.

“Take Roman, for example. A girl in third grade took scissors to my braid because I wouldn’t give her my sparkle pen. His fix was to tell me to go to school the next day and do the same to her. The school didn’t like that, but his eye for an eye thing was bred as deep as it could get.

“That goes for your wife, too,” she said, meeting his gaze. “You can’t expect me to turn off everything because you might go ballistic over the fact that I shed a few tears. I don’t want to, either. Newsflash, Vanessa isn’t the first girl I’ve gone toe to toe with about the way I was raised or live. Girls in high school, particularly, were hell. Privileged little bitches who thought their daddies weren’t fucking around on their mommies with high priced escorts, or that their mommies weren’t snorting scripts behind their daddies’ backs. But oh, because
my
daddy had a rap sheet, that made me something else entirely.”

Viviana scoffed. “Fuck them. Girls aren’t like boys, Anton. We can’t go a couple of rounds in the dirt, bloody up a nose, and be done with it like you can. There’s a whole different set of rules in a woman’s world and you …” she said pointedly, her hand reaching up to tap his jaw, “have to learn to play by them, too.”

“And you considered what happened with Vanessa a battle won, then?” he asked, appearing skeptical.

“Sure. I didn’t run away. She didn’t see me cry. There was no satisfaction in it for her, even if she thought there was. After all, I would be the one attending the next study group and she wouldn’t have the balls to show, regardless if she was invited back or not. Yes, Anton, that is a battle won.
Without threats and bribery.”

Anton’s lips curved with one of his wicked grins. “I didn’t threaten her. I simply admitted what I could have done.”

Rolling her eyes, Viviana guffawed at his genuine enjoyment over the situation. “You’re horrible, you know that?”

“You love it.”

Viviana leaned forward and tilted her head up to kiss the line of Anton’s cheek before resting her head into the crook of his neck. Immediately, his arms wrapped around Viviana’s shoulders in response. They stayed locked in that comfortable, quiet embrace.

“So, a daughter, huh?”
Anton asked with a dark chuckle.

“That’s what you got from all of that?”

“No, but that’s what I liked the most,” he confessed. “Well, minus the whole girls making her cry thing. I promise nothing on that front, by the way. She’d be little, and cute as hell, and mine, and …
fuck
. I would kill somebody, I know it.”

Giggling lightly, Viviana poked at his midsection with her fingers. The truth of the matter was he hadn’t promised her a damned thing when it came to Vanessa. Regardless, she was sure the next time something like this happened, Anton might actually consider how she handled the
situation first before he jumped in. But, who was to say? Her husband was a fickle man with constantly changing temperaments. Loving her only made it worse, not that he complained.

“Can we at least wait until this one is out of my body before we start talking about more, Anton?”

“But you are guaranteeing Demyan a sibling?”

“I’m guaranteeing that it’s a definite maybe.”

“We’re not …
hardened
, not like you think,” Anton said after a moment, his tone growing softer. At her confused stare, he shrugged. “The boys—ones who join the brotherhood or don’t. We’re not little machines, baby. But at some point, there comes a time where you’re not facing kids on the playground anymore. You’re standing up against a whole different set of issues. It kind of jumps out on you, then. Emotions fuel us when we’re younger, sure, but then it changes and a boy has to realize that it’s better if emotions don’t get brought into it at all. That way, no one knows where to hit out at next.”

“Like me for you?”

Anton leaned down to catch her frown with his mouth in the softest kiss. “Just like that. Unfortunately, I’ve been failing at times, hence my earlier disagreement with Kalvin. You do the worst kinds of things to me, Vine.”

“You love it.”

“Damn right. Even if it kills me.”

Anton realized the mistake in his words quickly.
That, or Viviana’s fear must have been written all over her torn expression. It wasn’t a heartbeat later before his mouth was pressing down gently to hers. Her fingers fisted into the shirt he wore, drawing him in closer, needed him safer. Falling into the kiss, her stress eased slightly, but it still wasn’t enough.

“You know I wouldn’t ever let that happen, right?” Anton asked, his breath tickling along the line of her tightly drawn lips.

Viviana’s heart was beating a staccato rhythm, hard, fast, and skipping beats by the second. Where his earlier words had been harsh and scarily honest, so were those. Horribly so. And hell, she would take her husband being locked up for a quarter of a century so long as she could fucking speak to him, even see him.

Death didn’t offer that.

“Sometimes I think it’s better if I don’t wonder at all,” Viviana whispered.

Giving her an understanding nod, Anton smiled grimly. “For the record, if the next time something like this occurs and it happens to be a man who makes my pretty wife cry, all bets are off, baby.”

Well, Viviana knew it was pointless to argue with him over that one. Instead, she settled for tapping her palm to his chest and pretending like he was spewing his usual nonsense. Unfortunately, there was no hiding the shiver crawling up her spine at the knowledge that Anton absolutely would follow through on his promise.

Needing to distract them both, and wanting to lighten up the situation, she managed to say, “And anyway, we can’t afford for you to be running around the city bribing every girl who pisses me off to move away, Anton.”

“It wasn’t that much. Morals, remember? I think Vanessa thought the less she took, the easier on her conscious it would be.”

“How much?”

Anton’s body loomed over Viviana. She leaned back using her palms to keep her balance. While his mouth did the sweetest exploration of her pulse point, his tongue striking out to lick every few inches, she mewled. It was clear he was trying to deflect her attention to something different, and it was working.

“Stop it,” Viviana whined. “Tell me.”

With Anton’s lips brushing up to her jaw, he said, “It was a bit. Seven figures.”

“Jesus!” Viviana gaped for a minute, not even wanting to know the number that rested in front of all the zeros. “Again, we can’t afford for you to be paying off every person I dislike.
Not that it isn’t a nice sentiment or what—
no
,” she muttered, cutting herself off abruptly with a shake of her head. Obviously his mouth on her skin was making her lose sanity, considering now she was seeing his bribery tricks as sweet. Something wonderful pulsed between her thighs as his hands danced up under her skirt. “It’s not a nice sentiment at all. That’s like, three and a half of my new Bentleys.”

Because he just had to buy her yet another one after her first was ruined by a bomb.

Anton cleared his throat. “Try about six.”

Every muscle in her body froze. Anton made a noise of discontent as he removed his wandering hands before placing them to the desk and leveling her with a stare that challenged, chastised, and apologised all at once. She didn’t quite understand how her husband was able to do that shit, but he did.

“Viviana …”

“
Th-that’s—”

“A lot of money.
I’d pay it again.”

Behind his words, she knew he was telling her something else, too.
Money. It was a topic nether of them brought up very often because they didn’t have to. Between her parents’ estate after their deaths and the money Nicoli had left for Viviana in trust, she sported a cool thirty-two-point-two mil, half of which was tied up in stock.

Did she need to go to university? No, but she wanted to.

Could she do practically whatever she wanted with her money and life? Sure, but Viviana hadn’t figured out what it was that she wanted to do, yet. Her having wealth gave her the time to work it all out. Anton kept his exact figures quiet.

“How much money do you have?” Viviana asked. “You know, so I can be sure when I divorce your ass in the future.”

Anton’s eyes widened before he scowled at her playfully. Viviana knew she was in trouble, but she bet it’d be terribly fun for her. Again, she found herself bent back to the desk as his frame hung over hers, his head tipping to the side in that hunter’s way of his.

“Divorce me, huh?”

Anton’s hands slipped back up her skirt, a hot palm lying flat to the seam of her sex, making Viviana gasp in a lungful of hot air. “Here?”

“We fight hard and fuck harder, remember? Let me, let me, let me,” Anton chanted, coming down to nip at her bottom lip. He glanced down at furniture she rested on. “How long has it been since I fucked you on my desk?”

Viviana couldn’t remember, actually. “Um …”

“Too long, then,” he stated.

As he skimmed her cotton panties down around her thighs before pulling them off her ankles, Viviana asked, “You’re not going to tell me how much money you have, are you?”

Anton grinned sinfully.
“A lot.”

“Wait,” she pleaded when his hands spread her legs wide. “Just … wait for a minute.”

“My God, what?” Anton growled low, the stress echoing loud and clear. “I want to be buried balls fucking deep in you right now, not chatting about my money.”

“You brought it up.”

“Forget that I did.”

“But … but … shit.”
Viviana moaned, letting his fingers stroke the seam of her pussy. “That feels fantastic.”

“
Mmhmm.” Anton hummed throatily, teasing the entrance of her sex with those skillful fingers of his. “I’ll get it feeling even better if you just zip those lips.”

“But—”

Anton’s fingers stopped and his gaze burned with impatient desire. “What do you want, baby? Fuck, or talk—your choice. I’ve got about ten minutes before that idiot comes back here to apologize.”

“How do you know he’ll be back?”

Viviana let him slide her hands back further on the desk before he popped open all the buttons on the blouse she wore. The black satin bra was pushed to the side as Anton cupped her tender breast, his thumb rolling over her peaking nipple until her blood sang.

“This is nice,” Anton told her, gazing down on her exposed body. “All on display, baby.
Every fucking inch of you.”

“How do you know—
”

“Because Kalvin is not an idiot, and he’s afraid of me.”

“Huh.”

“Your choice,” he said, sporting a suggestive smirk. “Fuck or talk.”

Chapter Six

The cell phone inside the desk buzzed with a pre-set tune that told Anton the caller was the brigadier who had barely made it out of his office alive. At the raise of his wife’s brow, he rolled his eyes and decided to take the call.

“Both,” Anton heard Viviana say as he reached to open the top drawer on his desk.

“Both?”

Yep
, he thought,
fuck the call.

Kalvin could make his way back to apologize in person, as he should have done in the first place.

“I know you’re a man and everything, but surely you can do two things at once.”

Halting the slow thrusts of his one finger inside the wet walls of her pussy, Anton groaned appreciatively under his breath. He could feel the sensitive tissues flexing around the intrusion of his digits as he turned sharp on her and slammed a second finger in without warning. The lovely, heady scent of her juices teased him. Already, he wanted to be on his knees for her, tasting the sweet fluids of her sex as she came from his touch.

No other person on earth could make Anton get down on his knees.

“Fuck.” Viviana moaned a sound that reverberated straight to his gut and cock. “Is that a no to multitasking, then?”

More than anything, he loved when his wife turned a little sarcastic and combative. It turned him on like nothing else. Just his cock alone was throbbing under the black slacks he wore, but every other inch of his body thrummed with the need and want to take her hard and fast.

Viviana knew what she was doing to him, no doubt about it.

“What happened to my wife today?” Anton asked, teasing the words along the line of his wife’s throat as she tilted her head back. The taste of her flesh on his tongue was positively immoral. Sweet as heaven and as tantalizing as sin. “Barging into my office like she owns the place. Throwing a tantrum. Demanding answers. Questioning what I do with
my
money. Testing my patience every step of the way, Viviana. Being a goddamn little
brat
.”

To punctuate his words, he added another finger to Viviana’s soaked core, allowing his thumb to flick up and press harshly along the hood of her clit. Spreading his fingers on the withdrawal, Anton stretched her sex, wanting to make her feel full and opened for only him.
Shuddering with the sexiest cry, Viviana clenched around his digits.

“An-Anton.”
Viviana stuttered over her words and air. When her legs opened so fucking wide, giving him the sexiest view of his fingers sinking into the slick flesh of her sex, he knew she was close. “Oh, God, please …” Without warning, he pulled away, withdrawing his fingers completely from Viviana’s pulsing pussy. “
No
!”

Chuckling, Anton hooked her shaking legs around his hips as he took in her frustrated, flustered appearance.

“Being a brat,” he repeated darkly. “Perhaps my brigadier was right, baby.”

“W-what?”

“Maybe I should yank on your leash a bit harder.”

Anton didn’t miss the sound of her fingernails scratching against the oak wood of the desk as her tiny hands balled into fists. Indignant, Viviana huffed as she glared at him with her teeth bared.

“Would you like that?” Anton asked mischievously, lifting a brow in contemplation. “If I put you in your place a little more and made you understand who the boss really was here?”

“Oh …” Viviana drawled the word out coyly, her pretty pink lips curving into a sneer. “I think we both know who that is,
Boss
.”

Anton couldn’t hide the satisfied grin overtaking his features. “We do, huh?”

“Yep, and she goes by
Mrs
. Viviana Avdonin, now.”

“Oh, you evil—”

Anton’s words were cut off by something silver catching the line of his peripherals. Glinting under the lights in his office, the smooth metal had his more wicked desires raging. Those handcuffs represented something entirely different to Anton.

Like freedom and the loss of it. The very first time he’d experienced it had been in those cuffs. Locking his wife down with the same restraints that had once been used on him had Anton’s dick twitching.

Anton said nothing as Viviana worked the button and zipper on his slacks, tugging down the fabric around his thighs before her hand slipped into his boxer-briefs. She pumped his shaft with a rhythm that was sure to make him ache if she kept it up. A smile played at the edges of her mouth.

“You’re thinking a little too hard about something up there. I can smell the smoke.”

Whatever worries Anton might have had about trying the handcuffs on his smartass wife disappeared out the window. When he reached for the restraints dangling off the side of a lamp on the desk, Anton heard Viviana’s breath hitch. “I won’t if you—”

“I know. I just haven’t ever noticed them before.”

Anton laughed deeply. “Sentimental, baby. They were from my very first arrest.”

Viviana stared at him before she burst into giggles. “That’s so inappropriate it shouldn’t even be cute.”

“Cute?”

“Very,” Viviana said.

Anton felt his nerves grow under her attention. “Fuck, stop looking at me like that. Like I said, it’s sentimental, baby. A part of my history, okay?”

“So you kept them on your desk?”

Anton rolled his eyes. “Stop judging me. Besides, they’re about to come in real fucking handy to fix up that attitude of yours.”

Viviana’s bottom lip was drawn in between her teeth. Desire swam in brown eyes as she hooked her legs around his hips and dug her heels into his back. When her hand squeezed painfully snug around his cock, Anton nearly came on the spot.

“Get on with it, then. Teach me a lesson, Boss.”

“You asked for it, baby.”

Catching her wrist with his one hand and pulling the other from within the confines of his boxer-briefs, Anton pinned Viviana’s arms behind her back. He forced her to lean backwards as he inclined over her beautiful body. With her hands secured tightly in one of his, he grasped at the handcuffs as he kissed a line up her jaw to her mouth.

“Tell me you have keys for those,” she mumbled against his mouth.

Anton chuckled. “And if I don’t?”

Viviana blanched. “But—”

“Of course I do. Relax.” When she did, he kissed the corner of her mouth noisily. “Thank you. Now, let me finish here.”

The desk was made in the old fashioned style with drawers on either end for maximum capacity, though Anton rarely used any. Mostly, the piece of furniture rested in the office for the
significance of its age and the people who used it before him. Those unused drawers were about to come in handy.

Hooking the chain that connected the cuffs together around a knob, Anton went about sliding the shackles around each of his wife’s wrists. Tightening the restraints so they hung loose but still snug enough that she’d feel the metal bite against her flesh should she pull forward, Anton was satisfied with his work.

Standing straight, Anton admired the view of Viviana restrained. Her thighs opened, her skirt up, and sex exposed. Glistening folds that were pink and swollen, her flesh flushed from top to toe, black hair fanned out over her trembling shoulders … Hell, she was downright fucking beautiful.

Viviana squirmed under his gaze. “Jesus, you’re just …”

“What?” Anton asked, surprised at the throaty tone his voice had taken on.

“Looking at me.”

Because Viviana was rounded with the life of his child, Anton knew she sometimes felt awkward about her appearance. He completely fucking refused to feed into that nonsense. Her hips had widened, her midsection swelled, and she wore her dresses a little longer than he liked sometimes. She had the best damned legs he’d ever seen. But it only served to fuel his yearning for her more. What Viviana’s body could do for him—what it
did
do—drove Anton crazy every single moment he was near her.

“Yeah.”
Anton let his stare travel up her figure once more. “But there’s something missing, baby.”

Viviana recoiled, seeming hurt. “I—”

“No way. I don’t want to hear a bad thing come out of that mouth. I just want to see all of you.”

Popping open the clasp holding her bra together between the cups, Anton freed Viviana’s breasts. With both hands, he cupped the mounds that were so heavy and hot from her pregnancy. Viviana arched into his hands, a whimper falling from her lips as he tweaked her reddened nipples between his forefingers and thumbs.

“Easy,” he warned.

“I shouldn’t have agreed to this.”

Anton smirked, enjoying the dirty look she shot him with.

“Oh, but this is great for me, Vine. Otherwise, you’d be up against me, and he …” Anton said with his hand rolling over her midsection, “would be in the way. That’s not fair to me. I want to see your pussy when I fuck you, watch your eyes roll, and your toes curl. This is
so
much better.”

“Well hurry up with it, then. After all, you’re going to have an apology to accept, remember, Boss?”

Fuck, he loved that word in her mouth, all demure and sweet.

“Who’s to say he’s not already downstairs waiting?” Anton asked.

Viviana stilled and he took the chance to slide his boxer-briefs down enough to free the steel-hard length of his cock into a waiting palm. Sliding the tip of his cock along her wet slit, Anton watched as attempted to roll her hips towards his body. The restraints keeping her wrists looked tight stopped her from moving very far without metal biting against her skin and tugging at her pulled back shoulders.

“He probably is.” Anton grinned with a lift of his eyebrow. Loud noises in his office tended to travel over the empty floor of the club, and Viviana wasn’t one to be quiet when he fucked her. “He likely assumes I’m up here making sure my wife understands her place, giving her a proper
chitchat about it all. So, do both of us a favor, Viviana, and make sure he hears me doing just that loud and fucking clear, huh?”

Mischief glinted in her eyes when they met his. “Will do, Boss.”

*

With her palms resting precariously close to the edge of the desk, Viviana curled her fingers around the smooth side of the wood to get a decent grip. Anticipation twisted her stomach into knots, her heart beating like a wild drum out of control. Anton’s smooth as velvet voice carried through the room to caress her senses while he rubbed the length of his erection through the lips of her soaked pussy once more.

“Are you okay?” Anton asked, eyeing her shoulders.

She could feel the strain the position was putting on her back, arms, and shoulders. The sweetest burn licked at her joints, the lovely bite of metal against her wrists as she shifted with a shrug left her feeling slightly out of control and entirely vulnerable. She didn’t mind being at her husband’s mercy—the only mercy he did grant was to her, anyway.

“Great. Promise.” By the grin he sported, Viviana thought it’d be safe to work his nerves a little more. Nothing made her husband hotter than when she irked his jealous tendencies. “Hurry up and fuck me before I get serious about that future divorce.”

“Vine,” he growled, the noise originating from somewhere deep in his chest.

She tried to look innocent when she blinked back at him. But, the warning in Anton’s grip that was suddenly stretching her thighs wider apart, his fingers digging deliciously rough into her tender skin to make her feel the sting and want in that grasp …

“You couldn’t fucking
divorce me if you tried, baby. I wouldn’t
let
you.”

Her heartbeat pulsed between her legs. The fake innocence was lost. She smirked up at him instead. “What kind of husband refuses to discuss money with his wife? That’s sure to lead us right off a cliff eventually, Anton.
Doomed from the start.”

“
Nuh-uh,” he replied indifferently.

She opened her mouth to speak, to poke at his green monster that was never hidden quite as well as he thought it was. Her words were cut off by a sharp inhale of air slicing through her throat as the tip of his cock finally found heaven and home. With three short, sharp thrusts, each one stretching Viviana’s sensitive tissues, causing her inner muscles to flex and shudder to accept his swift intrusion, he was seated inside her sex.

There was nothing quite like the way Anton filled her fully, how he took her so easily. Their bodies molded together like puzzle pieces separated from counterparts for far too long. It was a sweetened mix of delirious and perilous. The way every inch of her skin seemed to hum with electricity and life, how her nerves snapped and burned. Everything seemed to blink away, lights faded, and worries disappeared when they loved.

Viviana’s voice was a whine pushing through thickened air. “
Oh
.”

Saying anything else was impossible. Her throat constricted around something building. The throbbing in his shaft responded to every beat of Viviana’s stuttering heart. Squirming against the handcuffs keeping her in place, she wanted him to move so she could think again.