The Bratva’s Locked Up Love by Jagger Cole

12

Quinn

The man on stage groans,his fingers flying over the fretboard of his guitar. The solo howls through packed crowd at The Line as June and I watch with rapt attention.

Okay, this Jason guy is good. I mean, really, really good. And I supposed June’s right; he’s attractive, just not my type at all. He’s kind of got that skinny emo Johnny Depp look going on, with long dark hair hanging down over his guitar and face.

His face, which right now is definitely what June likes to call “sex face”—that look guitar players get when they’re shredding on stage. It’s that kind of semi-orgasmic look with the mouth half-open.

Like I said, it’s not my thing at all. June, meanwhile, is eating it up.

I turn to grin at her, just staring with moony eyes at Jason up on stage. I don’t know the Nashville music scene nearly as well as she does. But I know this guy and the band he’s playing with are way more popular than the acts that usually play at The Line. No offense to my friend, who plays here regularly.

But apparently, the venue they were supposed to play at tonight had some flooding issues with a busted pipe, so they moved here. And the place is packed because of it.

The song ends with a howl from the lead singer. The crowd erupts, June and I included. I’m grinning from ear-to-ear; from the music of course. But also because I am seriously getting my drink on. I’m not doing keg stands or anything, but a margarita and a half in, I’m feeling fucking fantastic.

“Thanks a lot, you guys! Fuck yeah Nashville, baby!” The lead singer, whose voice is great but who looks like a complete douchebag, flashes devil-horns at the crowd as he and the band loosely bow. Then they turn, and they’re off the small stage, heading right out the side door.

I turn, smirking as I watch June’s eyes follow Jason out like a puppy watching its human leave for work.

“You, uh, wanna go say hi?”

“What?! No!” She whirls, red-faced and biting her lip. “No. God no.”

I smirk. “Are you sure?”

“Yes, I’m sure,” she snaps awkwardly. She groans, pouting. “God, he’s so hot.”

“So…”

“No, no way. He already said yes to recording for my demo. I am not going over there and embarrassing myself into him backing out.”

“Want me to pass him a note?”

She rolls her eyes and flips me off as I giggle. But then she grins at me.

“I’m so glad you had tonight off.”

“This is fun. I needed fun.”

“Girl, I’ve been saying that for years.” She grins. “Okay, here’s the plan. We get one more drink here, then head to Skull’s Rainbow Room—Boots and Thieves, that new rockabilly band I was telling you about are playing tonight. Then we hit up the diner for cheesy fries and wrap it up with a chick flick at my place. Deal?”

I scrunch my face up. It all sounds fucking amazing. But I have the night off, not the next three nights.

“I do have to work in the morning.”

She groans. “So?”

“So I think this is my last drink tonight.”

June pouts. “Duuuude, c’mon! One more! Or just come see one song at Skulls?”

I’m about to give in, when my phone buzzes in my back pocket. I freeze. It’s not my phone-phone. It’s my new one. The shitty, twenty-dollar clam-shell flip phone. And there’s only one other phone that has its number.

I pale, swallowing as I pull it out. Sure enough, the number calling me is the phone I gave to Maksim. I roll my eyes. Yeah, “gave.” Or smuggled.

“Who’s—wait what phone is that?”

I frown and quickly hide it away. “Nothing!” I blurt quickly. It’s too quickly, because June is instantly on me.

“Who’s calling you on a sketchy burner phone?”

I swallow. “It’s nothing. I just have to take—”

Her face lights up. “Quinn fucking Coolidge! Is that a fucking booty call?!”

I cringe as people around us turn to leer and grin at me.

“No,” I mutter under my breath. “But I do have to get this. It’s a work thing,” I half lie.

June rolls her eyes as the phone keeps buzzing in my hand.

“A work thing? Are you a drug dealer now?”

I groan. “Look, I’m just stepping outside so I can hear. Be right back.”

I don’t wait for her response. I just push through the crowd as I answer the call before I lose him.

“One second,” I mutter as I stumble out the front door. I move away from the crowd. My pulse thuds as I bring the phone to my face again.

“Is everything okay?”

Five minutes later,I’m tingling everywhere. I’m blushing. Good fucking lord, I’m giddy. I shouldn’t be any of these freaking things. Not with him. Not because of him.

“Hey,” I tap June on the shoulder.

She turns, smirking at me. “You organize the drop okay?”

I frown. “Huh?”

“Got your guys on the scene in case shit goes bad?”

“What…” I groan and roll my eyes. “Right, drug dealer.”

She grins at me. “Hey, if the burner phone fits…” June cocks a brow. “So… you gonna go see him?”

“Okay, what language are you speaking tonight?”

She laughs. “Your booty call, bitch.”

“Not a booty call.”

More like a prison-crush call?

“Yeah, no, I’m sure your important doctor job just had to call you on a 1997 coke-dealer burner phone at eleven PM.”

“I mean, I am on-call—”

“Ahah!” She crows. “Busted!”

“What—”

“You’re not on-call, and we both know it. You’ve been drinking. You don’t drink when you’re on-call, girl.”

I wither under her amused smirk.

“I’m just… gonna go.”

She rolls her eyes. “Fine. Keep your secrets from your best friend in the world. Ditch me on our date night.” She sighs dramatically. “Such is the life of a doctor’s wife…”

I laugh as I hug her. “It’s late anyways. I honestly do have to be at work early tomorrow.” And I do: I’m taking an inflamed appendix out of a member of Al Qaeda at eight-thirty. How’s that for a Wednesday morning…

June pouts, but she nods. “Alright, alright. I get it.”

“Have some cheesy fries for me?”

She grins. “Nope, they’re all mine now.”

“Evil.”

“Stick around next time.”

I laugh and hug her again. But the pull of the conversation still waiting on the phone pressed to my hip is calling me. Tugging me away.

I say goodnight to June and make her promise to text me when she’s home. Then I step back out onto the street. I bring the phone to my ear and start babbling to the last man on the planet I should be even talking to right now. Because he’s a fucking prisoner at a secret prison. Because he might be insanely dangerous. Because he’s fucking gorgeous, and he makes me lose my fucking mind.

So of course, I immediately accidentally slam my shin into a fire-hydrant I never saw.

Shocking that I’m perpetually single, isn’t it?

“Hey can you hang on?I just gotta change into PJs.”

I drop the phone to my bed. My heart is pounding. My eyes are wide as I just stare at it.

Holy fuck, what am I doing?

I dart to the bathroom and yank off my top and my jeans. My bra and panties follow before I stare at my reflection in the bathroom mirror.

No really; what the fuck am I doing? I mean for real. This isn’t right. This is literally breaching national security measures. I’m almost sure I’m breaking serious, federal laws here. I’m on a burner phone, talking to a dangerous, volatile inmate inside a maximum-security black site prison complex. And I’m doing so because he turns me on like no one ever has before.

And I’m flirting with him. A lot. Not good. Or, I think I’m flirting? So far I’ve just been a chatty-mouth and managed to bang into shit on two different occasions over the course of ten minutes while talking to him.

On second thought, that might not be flirting at all.

I slip back into the bedroom. I blush when I stare at the phone… as if he’s physically in the room with me, seeing me naked. I quickly pull on a tank top and cozy sleep shorts, teetering on my feet as I do so.

I’m drunk. Not wasted or anything, but I’m feeling it. I’m tipsy. My judgment is impaired. Clearly.

I gulp water from a glass on my beside table pick up the phone again. I find myself grinning as I sit on the bed and lay back across the duvet. What the fuck, am I the giggling schoolgirl from a John Hughes movie?

But no. I am not Molly Ringwald. And this is not Judd Nelson’s Bender from Breakfast Club that I’m talking to. This isn’t the “rough around the edges but sexy bad boy” from a teen comedy movie.

This is a savage killer. He could be a terrorist for God’s sake; a mass murdered. For all I know, the fact that he’s been so nice and charming to me is part of a master Hannibal Lecter plan to use me. To have me twisted around his finger. To turn me to mush so he can make me dance like a puppet.

I clear my throat. Before I can riddle myself with more questions and uncertainties, I just blurt back into the conversation.

“Okay, back.”

“Welcome back.”

I grin. “So, anything fun going on over there?”

Maksim chuckles a dark, edged laugh that makes my core flutter.

“Oh, lots. They’re having a marathon of MASH re-runs.”

I laugh. Then we go quiet. We’re both aware of how weird this is. We both know this is against the rules, majorly.

“Why did you give me a phone, Doctor?” He growls quietly, addressing the forbidden elephant in the room.

“Quinn,” I whisper. “Just call me—”

“We should not get that personal.”

My teeth drag over my lip. “And why not?”

“You know why not. You’re a smart woman.”

“I don’t see why—”

“Quinn,” he growls.

I sigh slowly.

“I wanted to make sure you were okay. They wouldn’t let me video monitor you, so I improvised.”

“You broke the law.”

“Are you of all people really going to lecture me on that?”

He chuckles. “One of us is a storied career criminal. The other is a highly intelligent, brilliant young surgeon. You shouldn’t be risking anything for me, Quinn.”

“It’s not for…” I blush. “It’s my job to make sure you’re okay. The powers-that-be are hindering my ability to do my job, that’s all.”

“The bank wasn’t letting me withdraw millions of dollars, so I improvised,” he grunts.

I roll my eyes. “Keep being a dick and I’ll come down there and take that phone back.”

“That a promise?”

I blush deeply. Yep, I’m officially flirting, with a criminal. I’m so fucked.

“Do you need anything?”

“My freedom would be nice.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” I say with a smile. Then I frown. “Are you a terrorist?”

He chuckles. “No.”

“Jihadist?”

“I was kicked out of the Russian Orthodox Church when I was eleven. So, no. I don’t think religious holy wars are my thing.”

I smirk. “Neo nazi?”

“I am Russian.”

“Yeah—”

“Russia lost twenty-seven-million people to the Nazi’s in World War Two, and we’re taught to never forget that in school,” he says with a wry chuckle.

I smile. “So, that’s a no.”

He laughs quietly. “No, Quinn. I am none of these things.”

“Then why are you—”

“I have no idea but…” he growls to himself.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

We’re silent for a minute. My eyelids are so heavy as I lay across my bed.

“This is nice.”

I startle, blushing. “What?”

“This. Talking. I don’t talk much to people. I don’t… what’s the word.” He chuckles “Chit-chat.”

I laugh. “Well, you’re very good at it.”

“Like the movies, da?” He snickers, lapsing into a bit of Russian.

“Totally. Just like the movies.” I laugh. “I was literally just thinking the same thing. Like a teen comedy.”

He chuckles. “Are you writing in your diary about the big scary man making trouble for you at work?”

I snort. “Absolutely. Are you talking with your varsity football friends about the nerdy science girl who stitched you up after the game?”

He laughs, and it makes me smile.

“We are Pretty In Pink, right here.”

I laugh loudly. “You’ve seen Pretty In Pink?”

“I have seen all of the movies of John Hughes.”

I giggle. “That’s hilarious. So we can play the part. Football jock, nerd. That’s us.

“I think this is the part where we are supposed to laugh about how opposite we are.”

“I think we have.”

He chuckles. “Perhaps we have.”

“No, this is the part where I ask what you’re wearing to the prom we’re going to together for a bet or a dare or something.”

Maksim snickers. “I am very fashionable right now. I am wearing bright orange badly fitting pants.”

I howl in laugher. While flirting. With him.

“Tux on top?”

“Nothing on top, I was working out.”

I swallow. My mouth dries. The image of his bulging muscles pumped from his workout, his skin glistening with sweat, tattoos rippling…my face burns.

“And you?” He grunts quietly. “What are you wearing, Quinn.”

I blush even deeper. “To prom?”

“Da.”

“Well, I’m not sure what I have that matches orange badly fitting pants.”

He laughs.

“What do you think I should wear?”

“I like you in skirts.”

My face burn with heat. “Oh do you, now?”

“Yes,” he growls.

I swallow, flushed. “Thanks,” I say quietly. “Guess I’ll wear that.”

“That would please me.”

I tremble as we both go silent again.

“What are you wearing now?”

I gasp quietly at his thick, rough voice. Heat pools between my thighs. I shouldn’t answer this. I should have hung up twenty minutes ago. Fuck that, I never should have given him a goddamn phone at all. And now we’re down the rabbit hole.

“A white tank top and pink pajama shorts,” I blurt before I lose my nerve.

I hear his breath hiss quietly. It brings a throb to my pulse and a clenching of my core. I can hear his breath. And I can hear mine too.

“What else,” Maksim growls thickly.

I close my eyes, my face burning.

“Nothing else,” I whisper.

He groans. I throb.

I fucking want him.

“Nothing?”

I shake my head. Every inch of me is tingling with need. With an aching desire. With a forbidden lust that could engulf me in flame.

“No,” I murmur.

“And I thought you were a good girl, Doctor,” he growls.

“And what makes you think I’m not,” I whisper back. Flirt-mode engaged to the max.

“Good girls wear panties.”

My heart skips. My pulse throbs as my breath catches in my throat. Heat surges inside of me.

“Well maybe I’m not as good as you think I am,” I whisper.

“Maybe I’ll have to check next time I see you.”

My jaw drops. My face burns with heat. I’m panting, throbbing all over.

“Yeah.”

I cringe. Yeah? Fucking seriously? That’s my freaking response to that absolute panty-melter of a line from him? I cringe as we go silent.

I swallow. “Yeah,” I whisper again. “Maybe you will.”

He groans quietly. We both know we’re way over the line here.

“We should hang up,” Maksim growls.

I nod, saying nothing out loud. I don’t trust my mouth right now.

“You shouldn’t tell a man like me these things, Quinn,” he says quietly.

“Why not?”

He groans. “You know why not.”

“I don’t—”

“Because it makes me want things I cannot have in this place,” he snarls.

I tremble, raking my teeth across my lips. My nipples harden under my tank top. My pussy throbs with heat.

“Like?”

He growls. “Quinn…”

“Tell—”

“Like you,” he snarls. “It makes me want things like you.”

I close my eyes, biting my lip. There it is. There’s me walking off the deep end.

“I-I need to go.”

“Yes, you do,” he hisses.

“Goodnight,” I blurt.

“Goodnight, Quinn.”

I hang up. I’m throbbing everywhere. My hands push under the shorts, and my fingers slip through the slick wetness between my thighs. I moan, gasping into the darkness as I rub my clit fast and hard.

I think of him. I imagine him taking me, pinning me to the bars of his cell, and claiming all of me. I imagine him bending me over and taking me from behind, his hands all over me, leaving possessive marks on me.

I gasp, grinding my hand between my legs. My body tenses and quivers. My arousal leaks all over my fingers. I pretend it’s Maksim, muscles and tattoos rippling as he pounds me into the bed—those piercing dark eyes captivating me as he fucks me.

With a cry, my whole body arches and wrenches on the bed. My orgasm crushes into me, and I bury my scream in the pillow as I come hard.

I’ve gone off the deep end. And there’s no going back now.