In Fair Brighton Read online

  Vitaly would never even see him coming … or at least that would have been the case if the devil they had all just been speaking of wasn’t currently standing at the arched entrance to the living room, both sets of guards running in shortly thereafter.

  “Where was my invitation to this meeting?” Vitaly asked with malice in his voice. He then strolled into the living room with an air of arrogance and stopped just a few short feet away from where the rest of the party stood.

  Physically, Rome and his cousin resembled each other. Both men were tall, well-built with similar hair and eye coloring, though Vitaly’s eyes were a darker blue, and both had the perfectly sculpted Valentin nose, which was just a little too wide in the nostrils, but that’s where their similarities ended. Vitaly had no soul, Rome thought, no passion or goals save for money and power and he was definitely not a man who could be reasoned with.

  “My apologies, Boris. He said you had requested his presence,” Dmitri, Rome’s father’s bodyguard said. He also explained how he and his men had no choice but to come in when Andrei’s guards decided to follow Vitaly. Both sets of guards were now cautiously inching into the room.

  Boris aimed an angry glare at his nephew. “When I request your presence, you will know it, Vitaly. Do not dare speak to me with disrespect.”

  “But from him,” Vitaly jerked his chin in Rome’s direction, “you tolerate disrespect? Looks to me like the great Valentin assassin is slipping,” he finished, referring to Andrei, who clearly was still breathing.

  Rome mentally cursed the fact that his gun was in the other room. He could have put an end to this feud right here and now.

  “You will not stick your nose into matters between me and my son,” Boris yelled.

  “I demand justice!” Vitaly’s eyes were burning with anger as he drew his gun, too quickly for Rome to speculate if he had been disarmed before entering the house. Apparently, he wasn’t. Vitaly aimed at Andrei’s head, after which, both sets of guards drew their own weapons, leaving hardly any heads in the room without a gun pointed at it.

  Rome saw the fury brimming in Lenny’s eyes, and the guilt nearly choked him. He had brought this back into Lenny’s life, a life finally made peaceful, and the only thing he remained thankful for was that neither Sasha nor Klara were anywhere near. His gut told him this would not end well.

  He had to stop this somehow. “Not here, Vitaly,” he warned. “This is neutral territory. Put the gun down before you do something else you’ll regret.”

  “Regret? I regret nothing except being second to you, Rome. I should be in line to take over the business. Me!” He shifted his focus to Boris, his aim at Andrei’s head never wavering. “I loved you like a father and respected you more than my own father. He was not strong enough to lead our family, and neither were any of your other brothers. Give me the order, Uncle Boris.” He thumb-backed the hammer of the gun. “Let me do what your son was too chicken-shit to do, and then all of our rivals will know who their king is.”

  Rome could practically see the steam rising off his father, the look in his deep-set blue eyes lethal enough to make grown men cower, and yet, when he spoke next, his voice was calm and collected, calculated even in his choice of words. “This isn’t a monarchy, Vitaly. I run a business. If I were a king, you’d be bowing down to me and kissing my feet in gratitude for giving you a position you did not deserve. You have no head for business. And you have no honor!” He shouted his last sentence, and Rome reveled in his cousin’s flinched response.

  Boris held out his hand. “Give me the gun … now!”

  The tension at the start of the meeting was nothing compared to now. The room became too quiet, eerily so. Rome could practically see the indecision warring within Vitaly. He didn’t have many options at this point, and he knew it. If he pulled the trigger, one of Andrei’s guards would take him out immediately.

  Footsteps in the hallway broke the silence right before everything went to shit in a blur. Through Rome’s peripheral vision, he saw Vitaly shift his focus to the entrance of the living room. To his horror, Sasha appeared, her mouth forming a silent O. As if in slow motion, Rome hurled himself at his cousin, but it was too late to stop him.

  Vitaly fired.

  “Aleksandra,” someone yelled.

  Rome wasn’t sure if it was Andrei or Misha, nor did he care at the moment. He ran to her and knelt beside her prone figure on the floor. She was bleeding on the right side of her head. He heard shouting behind him, scuffling sounds, and then another shot fired followed by breaking glass.

  “Sasha, open your eyes, baby … please.” His voice broke on the last word. “Don’t leave me.”

  “Never,” she whispered. Her eyes fluttered open, but Rome’s relief quickly turned to mortification when Sasha shrieked. She practically shoved him down right after she kicked out at Vitaly and missed.

  Vitaly seethed with rage, blood staining his left shoulder, and then he aimed his gun at him and Sasha.

  A single shot made the room go quiet again.

  Earlier, everything had moved in slow motion for Rome, but now time seemed to freeze completely, a photograph of the aftermath. Vitaly was dead, lying in a pool of his own blood, his eyes open, his father’s hand outstretched pointing a gun at Vitaly, finger still on the trigger, Andrei and Misha standing beside him, and the guards seemingly about to spring into action.

  The world began to turn on its axis again when Sasha spoke. “I was so scared it was you he shot.”

  “Aleksandra!” This time Rome was sure it was Andrei’s cry he heard, but he never took his gaze off the precious woman in his arms.

  “She’s okay,” Rome quickly reassured them. The blood was coming from a small scratch on the side of her head she must have gotten when she fell. The bullet Vitaly fired never touched her.

  And then Andrei was there, kneeling beside them. He tenderly put one hand underneath his daughter’s head and one on Rome’s shoulder. “You saved her life. I am forever in your debt.” He looked up at Boris, who was handing his gun back to Dmitri, and added, “And in your debt.”

  “She threw herself in front of my son,” Boris said, his voice thick with emotion. “The debt is mine.”

  Andrei stood, walked over to Boris, and held out his hand for him to shake. “Let’s call all debts paid.”

  A single shot, and the feud between the two families had finally ended.

  Epilogue

  In Fair Verona

  Sasha threw her head back and breathed out a heavy sigh as Rome continued to torture her nipples with his tongue and teeth and then adding suction, sending a direct signal further down. He had just gifted her with an amazing orgasm moments ago from teasing her clit and eating her like a starving man until he practically drove her to madness, and now she felt as if she could come again just from what he was doing to her breasts.

  She needed more, however. She needed him inside her. “Please,” she begged.

  “Please what, sweetness?”

  “Fuck me, Rome.”

  “But I’m not done playing yet,” he teased right before swirling his tongue around her nipple.

  “Ah!” she cried out when he sucked the hard peak into his mouth. He knew exactly what he was doing to her.

  Two could play at that game. Sasha lifted her hips up to rub against his erection, causing him to moan loudly around her nipple. The action made her needier as well, but at least he was just as wound up as she was.

  “You little minx.” He climbed up her body the rest of the way and fused his lips to hers, easing his tongue inside, and Sasha wrapped her legs around his hips, trapping him in place.

  Just when she thought she had won the battle, he began to slide against her slickness and when she was sure he’d plunge inside, he simply rubbed against her inner lips.

  It felt good. She remembered how they had both come that way before, but the ache inside became unbearable after several more passes and she groaned in frustration.

  “All right, my sweetness
,” he said with a smile against her lips. In one swift move, he flipped them over so that Sasha was on top, straddling him. “Have your way with me.”

  She didn’t hesitate. She lifted up and impaled herself on his hard cock. “Mmm.” Finally!

  Rome groaned and thrust his hips upward, going deeper inside and then they both began to move, meeting each other thrust for thrust. He grabbed a hold of her hips while she balanced herself with her palms flat on his muscular chest.

  “Slow down, baby. Not yet.” He sat up, placing himself nose to nose with her, effectively slowing down their pace. “I want to make it last a little more,” he said in all seriousness, all teasing gone.

  She felt her throat constrict with emotion at the tender look he was giving her. God, she loved this man. It had been eight months since the standoff at Lenny’s house, and still, she couldn’t get enough of him.

  Rome kissed her, slow but deep, and threaded one hand in her hair, while the other circled around her back. She slid her hands up his chest and entwined her arms around his neck as their tongues unhurriedly danced together. She rode him slowly now, and when their kiss ended, she kept her forehead pressed against his, their noses touching, breathing each other in as the breeze from the late spring weather filtered into their bedroom.

  She felt her orgasm building slowly, and when it finally hit, she buried her face in his neck and quietly rode out the multitude of spasms. Rome wasn’t far behind. He cupped her ass to hold her in place and came with a loud groan.

  They sat like that for a while, holding each other tightly, still connected, and the only sound in the room was their combined breathing.

  “I love you so much, Rome,” she said when she could finally speak.

  “I love you, too, sweetness.”

  Rome moved to lie back on the bed, taking Sasha with him, and she adjusted herself by stretching out beside him, placing her head on his chest. This was another thing she would never get enough of—falling asleep and waking up in his arms.

  After what happened with Vitaly, both the Valentins and the Poriskovas finally had a truce. More than a truce, actually. They were family now. And the only ones on their current joint shit list were none other than Sasha and Rome for eloping six months ago. Though both families had given their blessing on the union, especially after witnessing their children’s love and selfless devotion to each other, both families had also insisted on a large, grandiose wedding that neither Sasha nor Rome had wanted.

  “They’ll get over it,” Sasha had said on the plane ride over to Verona, the place where she and Rome began, where they started to fall in love, where they married, and even after their honeymoon was over, it became the place from where they hadn’t yet bothered to return.

  Rome had told her he wasn’t worried about his father losing his right-hand man in the business. “He just gained a powerful ally, and both of their enemies would cower even more than they ever had,” he had assured her.

  Sasha also had a feeling her father would be easing up on her a little with sending his guards to protect her, knowing that the former Valentin assassin was now guarding her permanently, and for the first time since her mother had been killed, she felt as if she could breathe again.

  If only her cousin Rose could find the same kind of happiness she had with Rome.

  “Do you think our cousins will ever stop being stubborn?” she asked Rome.

  Sasha felt the bed shake from his quiet laughter. “I’m placing bets on who will break first.”

  “Stop it.” She lightly smacked Rome on the shoulder, even though she couldn’t hold out laughing with him for long.

  It was obvious to anyone with eyes that Rose and Nik were in love—obvious to everyone but the two of them, it seemed. She just hoped they would soon let go of the past to realize it. After all, at least they no longer hated each other, though Sasha never believed they really ever did.

  Methinks she doth protest too much.

  “I guess we shall see the status of things next weekend when they get here,” Rome said.

  Sasha was looking forward to it. She missed her cousin, and she had to admit that Nik and Matt, Rome’s brothers from other mothers, as he liked to call them, were growing on her, too. Almost daily phone and video calls and occasional visits from Rose, were enough to keep them close since she had first left Brooklyn over ten years ago, but it didn’t beat catching up with her in person. And since Nik would be coming as well, perhaps a little nudge wouldn’t hurt.

  “I can almost hear you thinking, sweetness. It’s so loud.”

  “Sweet little ole me?” she asked a little too innocently.

  “Rigging the bet in your favor is cheating,” he said as he tapped her on the nose.

  Sasha climbed on top of him and straddled him. She brought her face very close to his so their noses were almost touching. “The only thing I’m betting on is us … forever.”

  “Always and forever,” he said back to her right before he kissed her passionately.

  Their love was able to heal some of the wounds their families had inflicted on each other, and Sasha had never been more grateful.

  The End

  www.elenakincaid.com

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  EVERNIGHT PUBLISHING ®

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