Saving the Sinner (Curvy for Keeps Book 9) Read online

  And clarity comes in the form of a thought. An answer to my own question.

  “The most sacred duty of a Ravarnian nun is to forgive,” I whisper as I think back to those long hours of silent study and deep reflection. “To forgive without judgment. That is the true test of faith, the hallmark of a nun. To forgive and not to judge. Never to judge. That’s the test, isn’t it? Can you look upon the face of a sinner and not judge him? Can you smile and meet his gaze with warmth even though his actions strike you colder than death? Can you step into hell and not lose yourself? If so, you have found heaven.”

  My own words strike truer than the sermons of any prophet, and although I know it’s stupid at best and insane at worst, I find myself following that trail of blood like the little girl following the breadcrumbs through the dark woods of fairytales and myth. My common sense screams stop but I don’t stop. Before I know it I’m in the kitchen, and there, near the loading dock at the back, stands the bare-chested sinner, his hands dark red with blood, his eyes green like the devil’s.

  His body is adorned with more designs than the dome of the prayer hall, and in just a brief look I know he is Bratva. I recognize the star with a circle around it on his left pectoral. Sometimes these men would come to the Vegas club where I danced, but mostly they kept to their own clubs.

  He hasn’t seen me yet, and I watch him like I watch a dream. He works fast and methodically, and I watch as he rolls the dead man onto a thick plastic sheet and pulls the translucent shroud closed. Then he stands and looks down at the cocoon of plastic-wrapped meat. He digs into his jeans pocket and pulls out something shiny. It’s a silver chain. He looks at it and holds it out like he’s about to drop it onto the dead man. Then he closes his fist around the chain and shakes his head and looks down. When he looks up again I’m shocked to see tears rolling down his hard, lean face.

  “Forgive me, Mother Goddess,” he whispers, his green eyes fixed on the ceiling, his hands clasped chest-high in front of him, that silver chain shining from between his blood-streaked fingers. “I have killed one who was like a brother. I am a sinner like no other, and although I have never before asked your forgiveness, I ask it now. I don’t know why I ask for it after so many remorseless murders, but here I am before you. Will you forgive me? Will you save me? Will you . . . will you love me?” He swallows and stares at the ceiling like he’s waiting for an answer. Waiting for a sign.

  Waiting for me.

  So I step out of the shadows and into the light, and when the man turns and stares wide-eyed like I’m the Goddess herself, it feels like I just stepped out of my life and into a dream.

  “Yes,” I whisper, answering all his questions with one word that feels truer than anything in my life. “Yes.”

  Yes, I will forgive you.

  Yes, I will save you.

  Yes, I will . . . love you.

  4

  YURI

  Yes.

  Yes, I will forgive you.

  Yes, I will save you.

  Yes, I will . . . love you.

  The silver chain burns like fire in my blood-soaked palms as I stare at the woman who must be an angel or perhaps a vision of the Goddess herself. She’s bathed in light that seems brighter than the dim bulbs along the loading dock, and her voice is so soft and gentle, so pure with truth, so untainted by deceit that it’s all I can do to stay standing and not fall to her feet and sob like a boy.

  We stare at each other like neither of us is sure if the other is real. Then she blinks and suddenly I’m pulled back to the situation and my brain kicks in and my common sense tells me that this woman is in hip-hugging blue jeans and a dark green top that can’t hide her hefty curves and strong hourglass shape. Immediately I connect the dots and now I know she saw the sign outside and walked around to the side door, which must have been open because Grigori is an oversized idiot and he slams it closed so fucking hard that the latch doesn’t catch sometimes.

  I feel the cold metal of Ivano’s gun tucked against the small of my back. I could put one between her eyes and dump her body with Ivano’s. I look into her big brown eyes as I think it, and immediately I know I can’t do it.

  I’m done for, I realize when I meet her soft gaze and look away because I don’t want to see the judgment in her sweet, pretty eyes. Maybe it’s decades of carrying the weight of my sins that’s all coming out now, but I’m done for. I was always broken in a way, but never in this way. Now the break has gone all the way through. I’m done for.

  But I still have to do something, and so I do the only thing I can.

  “Down on your knees,” I say, calmly reaching to my waistband and pulling out Ivano’s silver gun. The safety is on and I hold it casually by my side. I tap the gun against my thigh and gesture with my head. Slowly she goes down to her knees, one at a time. Then she exhales and closes her eyes. The glow still radiates from her, and the way she’s kneeling makes it look like she’s praying, like she’s prayed before, spent hours on her knees.

  “Are you alone?” I say.

  “Yes,” she says. Her voice shakes and I see the fear in her brown eyes. A moment ago there was no fear but now there it is. She’s human, after all. That’s a shame. It means I will have to kill her.

  You should have killed her already, Yuri, I think as my thumb strokes the metal safety on Ivano’s gun. The longer she lives, the more she sees, the more she knows. This is a one-way ticket for her and for you. Pull the damned trigger. You’re already on your way to hell. This will only get you there faster.

  My hand shakes like it never has as I raise my weapon and try to aim. She doesn’t look at the gun. She looks at me, and those eyes hit me harder than a bullet. I lower my arm and rub my scarred chin with the barrel. There’s a moment where I consider putting the cold barrel in my mouth and releasing the safety and ending it all. But something in her eyes pulls me away from that thought, and I shake my head and glance at Ivano’s corpse and look at her again.

  “What’s your name?” I say quietly.

  She swallows and blinks up at me. “Yasmin.” She blinks again and swallows harder. “What’s yours?”

  I frown at the question but answer it anyway. Won’t mean shit when I get over myself and finish her. “Yuri,” I say gruffly.

  She flinches at the name. Her eyes dart to my hand—not the one with the gun but the other hand. The one with the silver chain of the Ravarnian religion. Does it mean something to her? How can it? I glance at her neck and see that she wears a chain too. I can’t tell what it is from here.

  “You’re Ravarnian,” she says simply. “I am too.” She looks down at her neck and reaches for the chain. She holds the pendant to the light and I see the sign of the Mother Goddess of the Ravarnian faith.

  I think of what Ivano said about a Ravarnian revival out here in Utah. “You know Ivano?” I say, thinking about the Mother Supreme contacting Ivano for donations or something like that. Did Ivano say he’d be here? Did the Mother Supreme send this woman here to solicit more money? If so, what happens if Yasmin never returns? Who else do they send? The police? The Bratva? Warrior-nuns wielding scimitars?

  Now the possibilities make me nervous. I do my work for the Brava but keep a low profile doing it, choosing as far as possible to live on the edges of the law instead of far outside it like in the old days. For years I kept my head down like a leopard in the night, waiting for my moment to strike, to scratch that festering itch.

  An itch that should have been satisfied when I put a bullet in my brother Ivano.

  So why does it feel like killing Ivano was only the beginning of some plan I do not understand yet, I wonder as Yasmin sits on her knees like a virgin waiting to be sacrificed or saved, waiting for me to make a choice. Why does it feel like there’s a bigger plan unfolding here? A plan not designed by a human mind.

  A plan called fate.

  A plan called destiny.

  “Is that Ivano?” she says, glancing at the body. Her gaze lingers but there’s no fear or disgust in h
er eyes. Instead there’s a childlike innocence on her face, that wide-eyed look that contains no judgment. She’s seen death before, and it doesn’t bother her. She blinks and looks up and into my eyes. “Why did you kill him?”

  The question startles me to where I break a smile. Only an idiot would answer and admit that I did in fact kill him. But then again, it’s pretty fucking obvious, isn’t it? And besides, what difference does it make? She’s already dead. There’s no other way. So what difference does it make what she knows? It all dies when she dies.

  Now suddenly my heart leaps at the strangest thought. Hell, if I have to kill her anyway, then I can say anything to her without worry, can’t I? Like a confession! Why not? Hah! Why the hell not?!”

  “I killed him because I loved him,” I say, shifting my boots on the floor and touching my cheek. The scar from my first kill is smooth like a speedbump now. I stroke it and smile. “Do you understand?”

  She shakes her head. “No. Help me understand.”

  Again I see that innocent, free-free look in her eyes. But where earlier I thought it was like that of a child experiencing the wonder of the world, now I see that it’s not quite the same. This woman isn’t a child. She isn’t clueless about the evil and darkness in the world. She’s just gotten to the point where she doesn’t judge it. Who is she? Am I insane to think she’s the Goddess walking the earth, testing the worst of her sinners, offering salvation in the form of a curvy angel who’s already got me to lower my gun and lower my guard and open up in a way I never have even to myself?

  “You can’t understand,” I say, stroking my scar and shaking my head. “I’m not sure I understand it myself.”

  “Perhaps explaining it to me will help you understand.”

  “What is this, a confession?”

  “Do you have anything to confess?”

  I glance at the man I murdered and grin at her. “I think you can judge that for yourself.”

  She shrugs. “It’s not my place to judge.”

  “You’re a good liar,” I say. “But everyone judges.”

  “I never lie,” she says. “And I don’t judge. I’ve been trained not to judge.”

  I chuckle. “Trained? By whom?”

  Her expression doesn’t change. “By the Goddess. Her teachings. Her way.”

  I rub my eyes and grin like I’m going mad. “What are you, a fucking nun?”

  She hesitates. “Yes,” she says finally, touching her hair and shifting on her knees. “Well, almost. Sort of.”

  “How is someone just sort of a nun? It’s like being sort of dead. Or sort of pregnant. You can’t be in between. It’s one or the other. Black or white. There’s no fucking shades of gray here. So which one is it? Are you a nun or aren’t you?”

  Yasmin puffs out her cheeks and rolls her eyes up at the ceiling like she’s considering her answer carefully. “Yes. I am.” She looks back at me, and I know she’s lying. I know what a liar looks like. I see one in the mirror every fucking morning.

  “Perhaps you’ve got something to confess too,” I whisper, licking my lips and swallowing my spit. The syrupy taste of vodka still tingles against my throat, and I let my gaze take in Yasmin’s curvy hips and heavy breasts as I lick my lips again. I’ve been around bare breasts and naked ass so much I barely even notice a woman these days, but this woman is getting me hard in a way that makes me feel horny in that light, exciting way it used to be before the darkness.

  For a moment I imagine stepping up to her and grabbing the back of her neck and pushing my cock into her mouth, my thick shaft parting those red lips, my hips driving forward until I’m balls deep down her throat. My cock throbs with a lust so raw I wonder if this is part of the test, if the Goddess is tempting me to see how depraved of a sinner I truly am, if I will violate a woman of the cloth, force myself on a nun, fuck the Mother Goddess herself to prove that I cannot be saved, cannot be forgiven, cannot be loved.

  “Of course I have something to confess,” she says. “Nuns go to confession every week.”

  I pause as my cock strains in my pants. My muscled body is tight and rippling, and I see that she just looked at my heavy pectorals and swallowed hard. I took my shirt off so it wouldn’t get soaked in Ivano’s blood, but now I want to take my pants off before they get drenched with my semen. Again that depraved need rises up like a hooded serpent, and I grit my teeth and tighten my fists, feeling the gun in my right hand, the silver chain in my left.

  My mouth twists in a strange smile as I hold up the two objects in my hands and look from one to the other. Then I look at the kneeling nun and shake my head in disbelief. That feeling of this being part of the Goddess’s plan gnaws at me from the inside, and I shake my head again and bite my lip. The Goddess is asking me to make a choice, isn’t she? So fuck it. Make the choice, Yuri. Make the damned choice, you sinner.

  And so I reach around and slide the gun back into my waistband.

  Then I loop the chain around my neck. It clicks and locks on the first try, and I narrow my eyes and focus my full attention on this curvy nun who should be dead but instead is about to take my confession.

  5

  YASMIN

  “I must confess, I’ve never done this before,” I say.

  Yuri grunts and wipes the sweat from his well-lined brow. He’s got strong cheekbones and a very angular jaw. There’s a brutal symmetry that runs all the way from his forehead down his rock-hard, brutishly muscular body. It draws my gaze down along his center-line, past his massive pectorals and sculpted abdomen, to that devilishly tight V of his haunches that lead to a crotch that bulges obscenely large through his black jeans.

  I gulp as a wave of heat passes along my own line of symmetry, and I tighten my thighs as I feel a dampness in my crotch. I touch my neck and blink and look away as that heat washes over me from the bottom up until my cheeks flush and my ears burn and my forehead beads with clean perspiration even though the air is dry.

  Am I being tested by the Goddess, I wonder as I realize I’m aroused, pure and simple. It shocks me and it shames me, surprises me and scares me. A lot of the girls in Vegas would talk about how sexy they felt all dolled up as men panted over their bodies, how it made them horny to pinch their own nipples and tease those men into shoving twenty-dollar bills down their g-strings for another dance, a hundred for a private booth and a hand-job, a few hundred for a blowjob in the back rooms. I never judged it, but I never understood it either. It was just a job to me. I was never ashamed of my curves or overly self-conscious about being a big girl, but I certainly never got wet and warm when dancing for some guy.

  So what’s happening here, I wonder as I watch Yuri’s broad back tighten as he lifts Ivano’s dead weight up and carries it to the black Jeep that’s pulled up to the loading dock. The muscles on Yuri’s back are like a pit of snakes, thick and roiling under the yellow light of the bulbs. I blink hard and then gasp out loud at a terrifying image of Yuri’s back flexing like that as he pumps into me from behind. It’s almost like I saw the image from outside my own body, from above. Is that the Goddess showing me my future? Is that the Divine Mother showing me what’s already in my mind?

  Showing me my own sinful thoughts.

  My cunt clenches as Yuri slams the rear-gate shut and turns to me so fast I gasp again like he can see my secret, smell my scent, taste my taint. My throat tightens as I imagine Mother Supreme’s judgmental eyes, hear her stern voice accusing me of being filthy, unclean, dirty like the devil herself. It gets to me even though I know judgment lives inside your own mind, that we are our own harshest judges, that there is no other judge but our own darkness, our own shadow, our own guilt.

  Whether or we earned that guilt.

  Whether or not we deserve that judgment.

  “Get in, Yasmin,” he says, gesturing to the Jeep with his head before looking at his hands and then striding over to the stainless-steel industrial sink. He twists the tap all the way on and the steam rises along with the hiss of the water-jets. I watch
as he soaps himself to the elbows and scrubs himself down like he’s done this before. Then I walk to the loading dock and take the metal stairs down to the truck and stop at the passenger side door.

  It’s only now that I realize it’s still just the afternoon. I don’t know if it’s the darkness of what I just saw that makes it feel like night or if it just feels like I lived an eternity in the last few minutes. Maybe it’s both.

  “Where are we going?” I say when Yuri comes out into the sun and pulls down the loading dock cover and locks it. He’s still bare-chested, but he’s got a black t-shirt in his hand now. His chest looks bronze in the sun, and his tattoos flash black and green and gray with hints of red and blue mixed in some of the artwork. He squints up at the sun, and I notice the deep lines around his eyes and forehead. He’s carrying some guilt, I decide. How much of it has he earned? How much does he deserve?

  Yuri jumps off the loading dock and lands on his feet. He moves surprisingly quick for a big man. Almost like an animal. Even his scuffed leather boots are silent like paws as he pulls open the door and gets into the Jeep. He looks over at me through the window. It’s only now that I realize we’re outside and I could run. Sure, we’re in the private back lot of the club and it’s deserted as hell and probably no one would even hear a gunshot. But I remember one of the dancers in Vegas once telling me that it’s actually very hard to hit a moving target with a handgun, and so if I was ever in a bad situation with a man with a gun, I should choose running over getting into a car with him.

  “If a guy with a gun tells you to get into his car, it’s not gonna end well for you, sister,” she’d said while spritzing some bodyspray on her boobs and pinching her nipples so they got red and pointy for the mainstage.

  My own nipples feel hard and pointy under my green top, and although that girl’s advice seems strangely prophetic right now, I find myself sliding my big butt into the cool leather seat. I look at Yuri and then down at myself. Then I reach for the seatbelt and buckle up. Maybe I’ll be dead in an hour, but it won’t be from a car crash.