Her Russian Brute: 50 Loving States, Idaho (4 page)

“
Y
ou like that
, Ivan? Like how I give good blowjob?”

“
Da
,” Ivan answered, carelessly fisting the hair of the girl sucking his dick while his restless gaze scanned the room.

He soon spotted a tall, red-haired woman in a tight pink dress standing between the men and women’s bathrooms. She was texting and looked bored. He’d change that.

Ivan deliberately stared at her until she finally looked up from her phone. Her mouth formed into a little ‘o’ when she realized whose eye she’d caught—and what was being done to him by another beautiful woman while he stared at her.

“Go faster,” he commanded, guiding the head of the woman sucking him off. His eyes stayed on the redhead, he jerked the other girl’s head up and down on his dick until he felt the familiar tingle at the base of his spine.

The fight or the fuck, as his cousin Boris said. Most nights, Ivan chose the fight. But nights like this were the best of all. Earlier that evening he’d sealed his position as the EFC’s official heavyweight champion of the world. And now…

He pulled his cock out of the young woman’s wet mouth… And now he was about to jizz all over one pretty blonde’s face, while a redhead in a pink “fuck me” dress watched. A second later, the blonde’s face was covered with his load. She smiled up at him, her long tongue sweeping sensually across her mouth. Painting the perfect dirty picture.

Too bad it was wasted on him. He was already zipping up his pants and heading over to where the redhead still stood, her mouth partly open.

“Come here,” he said, roping one arm around her small waist and pulling her to him. He motioned to one of his guards, who being well trained, automatically handed him a small vial.

“Hello, baby,” he said to the redhead with a grin. Then he dipped his head close into her neck, using her long, red extensions to cover the bump of cocaine he took from the vial. His next fight hadn’t been scheduled yet and regardless, it would be a good six to eight months before he had to undergo another drug test. Plus, his chances of getting hit with a random drug test before the cocaine left his system were almost nil. Between his fame and his family name, the EFC officials wouldn’t dare.

Yet he wasn’t surprised when his cousin Boris appeared soon after Ivan took the bump.

“You should be more careful with that substance,” Boris told Ivan, looking around the nightclub with bored, hooded eyes. “Your soft EFC would ban you from fighting if they ever found out.”

Boris was, as far as Ivan knew, a never-defeated old school underground fighter. As such, the EFC was far too glitzy for him. Give Boris a basement and an illegal betting ring, and he’d show you exactly why everyone called him The Russian Beast—inside the boardroom and out.

Ivan, however, liked the glitz and glamour that came with being a world-renowned pro-fighter. The glitz, the glamour,
and
the girls. Oh, how he liked the girls.

It showed how much he respected Boris that instead of spinning the redhead into the nearest wall to take her dress up on its invitation, he slapped her ass and told her to wait for him back in VIP.

“You can rest your mind, Boris. I was careful,” he said when she was gone. “No one saw.”

“I saw, Ivan,” he pointed out. “And in any case, it does not matter. You know they can test randomly at any time.”

“I am in Russia. My homeland. No one would dare.”

Boris could have argued this point, but they both knew Ivan was right. Instead, he said, “I am going now. It is late.”

“It is not that late,” Ivan countered. “And you are the one throwing this party for me. Do not be like Alexei. Stay! Fuck some girls!”

Boris only looked around the room as if it were filled with rotting fish and not scores of Russia’s most beautiful woman. “I have early morning. I will see you on Monday for training.”

Business, training, and fighting. That was all Boris ever cared about. What a bore his cousin was. Ivan wondered if he’d ever cut loose and had any fun. Maybe back in his twenties when he had that beautiful black pet the rest of the family disapproved of?
Probably not
, Ivan thought with a mocking sneer.

Truthfully, Ivan loved his cousin and respected the hell out of him. But Boris wasn’t good for much more than training and dark, brooding looks.

“Okay, go. Be boring,” Ivan said with a grin. “I will fuck enough girls for both of us. And I will make sure to take care of some business, too…”

Then he cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled out: “Who wants to interview to become a Rustanov pet tonight?”

The room full of beautiful women erupted in a cheer.
Da
, he was back in his homeland after a grueling world tour. A place where every young Russian woman knew that becoming a Rustanov pet was the golden ticket to a life full of beautiful clothes, opulent travel, and whatever other luxuries she might imagine—including a few she couldn’t.

Ivan headed over to his VIP lounge and had his dick buried in the redhead before his cousin was even out the door.

He turned to a huge mirror in the Moroccan-themed nightclub to watch as he fucked this latest girl. It was like staring at a piece of moving artwork. He was beautiful. She was beautiful. What could be more aesthetically pleasing than to watch them go at it together?

He smiled at his image in the huge mirror, only to recoil. A monster stared back at him.

“Sir?”
it said.
“Sir, are you awake?”

Ivan sat up in his bed with a sharp inhale. He immediately reached up to touch his face, only to have his heart sink when his hand found the scars. They never featured in the dreams of his old life—at least not until the dreams transformed into a nightmares.

One side of his face was still that of the beautiful heavyweight fighter everyone had cheered for. The other was…ugly, red, mottled flesh.
Da
, on the other side of the dream, Ivan was still the man he’d once heard a local refer to as, “The Russkie Monster.”

More knocking. “Sir? It’s Gregory. May I come in?”

A whispered expletive fell from Ivan’s lips. What did the man want?

“I asked not to be disturbed.”

“I know, sir, but it’s getting rather late. The access road will be closing soon, and…” He hesitated before saying the next thing, as if he was finding it hard to believe himself. “And…I believe there’s another human—I mean another
person
—on the property. And sir…I’m, ah…sensing it’s a female…”

W
hat the freaking heck
?
Sola wondered as she crept into the outbuilding.

She’d thought of going straight up to the front door after the driver dropped her off at The Thirsty Wolf. But a quick chat with Lorraine at The Thirsty Wolf quickly changed her mind.

“Rumor is the Russkie’s keeping your daddy in the outbuilding behind the big house. If it was me looking for my kin, I’d go straight there instead of trying to deal directly with that bastard and his turncoat servants.”

Technically, Lorraine was an older woman in her 50s or 60s. But she had a craggy, wind-worn face and a strong edge to her that let Sola and probably anyone else who came into this establishment know she wasn’t someone to be messed with. And though Sola didn’t actually see a shotgun, she could sense one lurking just behind the scratched up bar.

The bar itself, though small and dark, had a certain vintage charm. A simple wood framed mirror took up most of the back wall, and was surrounded by a cluster of old seventies wolf paintings with several pairs of what looked like handmade snowshoes thrown into the mix.

Eclectic, to say the least. The kind of place the hipsters at ValArts would love, even though this place wasn’t trying to be ironic with its décor. There was a handwritten chalkboard menu in the midst of the wall decor. Supposedly they were offering lamb stew as the main course tonight. But no one had taken Sola’s order. Or even offered so much as a drink since she walked in and gingerly sat down on one of the rough, carved oak barstools.

Instead, Sola felt the eyes of every patron on her back, and the bar became silent as a stone until Lorraine came over to speak with her.

“Have you tried going up there on your own yet?” Lorraine had asked with a frown.

“Nope, she just got here,” answered one of the bar patrons behind her.

Sola glanced over her shoulder to see a man in a short-sleeved plaid button up. He nodded toward the bar’s single front window. “Saw her get off the shuttle myself.”

“Well, at least we don’t have to add assault to the Russkie’s list of offenses, I guess,” Lorraine grumbled. Though she didn’t sound at all as pleased about this as Sola imagined she would.

Meanwhile, everyone in the bar continued to stare at them. No, not at them.
Her
. Just Sola. And Sola couldn’t help but think of every horror movie she’d ever seen set in small remote town, just like this one.

Suppressing a shiver, she told Lorraine, “Um, I just need directions to where my father is being kept. Then hopefully we can get out of here.”

“I can give you directions,” Lorraine answered, “But if you’re serious about rescuing your dad, your best bet is to break him out of that cage. Don’t bother going up to the big house. Especially seeing as how the main road is scheduled to close in less than two hours from now.”

“I already seen the sheriff headed down there,” the man by the window called out helpfully.

Lorraine nodded. “So you have to hurry. And you definitely don’t have time to argue with that Russkie bastard. Here, I’ve got just the thing for you…”

Lorraine bent down behind the bar and came back up with a skeleton key. It was old and slightly rusted with a two-pronged bit.

“My grandpappy used to tend the stables up there back when the Wolfson family still kept horses for getting around town. This is a skeleton key and he told me it could open the lock of every building on that property.”

Whoa
, Sola had thought, taking the key. She was definitely not in California anymore. She couldn’t even imagine a structure with locks so old that a skeleton key worked on them. With the eyes of all those people on her, Sola had decided to take Lorraine’s advice, and now the key felt heavy as hell inside the pocket of her tweed jacket.

The trip up the smallish hill to the main house overlooking the town had been an effort and a half. She must have burned at least a few thousand calories trekking up the snow-covered road towards the huge manor and then around that to the collection of buildings in the back. There was an old barn, which she imagined housed the horses Lorraine had mentioned earlier. There was also a charming little cottage, and a few other structures. But she immediately sensed the small, dull red building with its iron door was the place she was looking for, and she headed toward it.

After unlocking it with the skeleton and then putting considerable effort into yanking the heavy door open, she was confronted with a pitch-black interior and a deep cold unlike anything she’d ever known. Literally. She’d grown up in Guatemala and California, and she was fast discovering that her hoodie, tweed jacket, and faux raccoon hat ensemble wasn’t nearly enough to handle the frigid air inside the building.

Shivering, she turned on her phone’s flashlight, only to go even colder when she saw the row of floor-to-ceiling cells lining the back wall.

“Brian?” she called out softly, hoping like hell he wasn’t anywhere near this cold, dank place. But no such luck.

“Sola?” a wobbly voice called out from the cell on the back wall, the farthest one from the door. “Is that you?”

She ran to the cell and found Brian huddled on the floor on top of what looked like a very large doggie bed. He was wrapped in a thick, wool blanket and dressed a lot more warmly than her in a flannel cap, gloves, a down parka, and hiking boots. But still…

“Brian, oh my God! Who did this to you?”

“Someone bad. Sola, you have to get out of here. Before he finds you. I don’t know how you found me. In fact, I’m wondering if you’re a hallucination, but just in case you aren’t, dear girl, I beg of you…go. Go now!”

“What? No way! You actually think I’d leave you here? Look, I’ve got a key and you’re coming with me!”

She tucked the phone under her chin and went to work, placing the skeleton key in the lock. It was hard going. Her hands shook with cold and she really had to shove in the key, putting her whole arm into turning the heavy lock.

But she managed in the end.

“C’mon,” she said, flinging open the cell door and rushing in to help the older man to his feet.

“What happened to your face?” Brian demanded when he got a closer look at her.

“I’ll tell you in the car. Your rental is parked at the bar. Do you still have the keys?”

“Yes, they’re in my pocket. Thank goodness that brute didn’t take them.”

Yes, thank goodness
, she thought, guiding him out of the cell and toward the main door. But she was well aware that whatever monster locked Brian in that cage was still lurking around on the property.

“We’ve still got some time before the road closes, if we move fast we can—”

She’d turned to glance back at Brian who was slowly shuffling behind her. And walked right into a hard wall. So hard, her bruised face screamed in protest as she stumbled backwards, almost losing her footing completely.

“What the…?!”

She raised her phone flashlight to look up…then up some more.

A man stood there. So huge, she immediately knew who he was. And why Lorraine called him the Russkie Monster. He had to be six-foot-five—maybe even taller. He had long, crazy wolfman blond hair. It looked like it hadn’t been combed in days. Maybe not ever. And he reeked of what smelled like a semi-permanent cologne made up of sweat and alcohol. Half his face was mottled and red, like it had been covered in Freddy Krueger make-up, but on closer examination, she could see it wasn’t make-up. No, definitely not make-up.

So that was why they called him a monster. He stood there, looming over her, larger than life. And breathing fast and hard.

Like a beast awoken.

He raised some kind of old timey oil lamp, and Sola squinted against it’s sudden light.

“Who are you?” the monster demanded, his voice little more than a dark snarl. “And what are you doing here?”