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

  “Seatbelt?” I say when Yuri starts the engine without putting on his own belt. He stares like I’m speaking ancient Sumerian. Then he grins and shakes his head and buckles up. I look straight ahead and hide a smile. My heart jumps with an odd lightness, and my fingers claw at the sides of my jeans like a nervous teenager on a first date.

  Yuri pulls the Jeep out of the lot and cruises down three empty streets before taking the on-ramp to the freeway. He’s a very controlled driver, it occurs to me when I see how he settles down to a speed that’s five over the limit. Controlled but on the edge.

  “There’s a unmanned landfill on the edge of town,” Yuri says after we drive in silence for a while. I glance over at him and try to tell myself that common sense dictates I’ll be left dead in that dump too. Why wouldn’t I? He has to be considering it, right?

  “That’s where you dump all your bodies?” I say, my tone high-pitched and sing-songy.

  He laughs from the side of his mouth. “There have been no bodies for a few years. But I scoped out the place when I moved to the city.” He taps his head. “Always keep a plan in your head, you know? Have the plan ready before you need it. People don’t think straight when the adrenaline pumps, you know?”

  “I know,” I say as the adrenaline pumps in me so hard my boobs shake. I feel Yuri opening up almost like he’s decided to simply answer all my question like it really is a confession. Does that mean he’s already decided to kill me, so it doesn’t matter what I know? Is that what the Goddess wants for me? To take a sinner’s confession and then leave this earth behind and take my place with the angels? Is that my fate? Is this my destiny?

  He glances at me, his gaze flicking to my bosom and then up along my neck. He turns back to the road, but his gaze leaves its mark. I felt him darken when he looked at me. He knows he has to kill me. But he hasn’t done it yet, which means something.

  Probably just means he’s pondering whether to fuck you before or after killing you, comes the thought as I glance at his swollen crotch and notice that he’s peaked like a mountain in his jeans. He still hasn’t bothered to put on his shirt, but now I wonder if that’s just planning for what he knows must happen. No sense getting my blood on his shirt.

  Slowly the fear creeps into me, but I’ve been scared before and I tuck the fear away like I’ve learned. Yuri is right—people don’t think straight when the adrenaline’s pumping, and adrenaline is just the chemical word for fear. Control your fear and you control your chemistry, control your body, control the situation.

  “You said it’s been a few years since you killed someone,” I say when I calm my fear and refocus on my task from the Goddess. “Tell me about the last one.”

  Yuri whips his head toward me, his green eyes fiery and narrow. “Who asks questions like that? Who wants to hear about horrible things? Dark things? Violent things?”

  I shrug and stay calm. “If you did those things then I want to hear about them. They’re part of the burden you carry.” I look at him as my heart swells with a warmth I can’t understand. It’s a feeling of love, that overwhelming, all-encompassing sort of love that I know comes from the Goddess herself, is the expression of the divine itself. “Telling me about it will ease some of that burden. We can share the load. That’s the whole point of a confession. It’s the reason holy women and men who take confessions must train for years in solitude.”

  Yuri snorts like he doesn’t believe me. But I hold my gaze firm, and when I see the deep lines around his eyes ease up as he relaxes slightly, I know I’m chipping away at the block of stone that’s his heart. Emboldened that I’m on the path to why I’ve been put here with Yuri, I say the words again.

  “Tell me,” I whisper. “I won’t judge you. Try me, Yuri. Test me. See for yourself. Judge for yourself.”

  He furrows his brow and shoots a puzzled look at me. Then he takes a long breath and lets it out slowly as a truck carrying chicken-cages rolls past us. “Six years ago I did my last hit for the Bratva. Tulsa, Oklahoma. The Bratva had been doing a big push into the middle of the country, the mid-sized cities, even the smaller towns. Mostly street-financing and protection business. A rancher had borrowed big to finance his cattle ranch. The cattle got sick and many had to be put down by the government health department.” He sighs and shakes his head like he actually gives a shit even though I can guess what happened next and I know it wasn’t his first and I know it probably won’t be his last.

  “So you killed him?” I say, keeping my tone even.

  “Killing him doesn’t get the Bratva paid,” he says, his own tone even but grim. He keeps his gaze on the road, but I feel the coldness in his eyes. “I was ordered to kill the man’s son. Kid was eighteen and technically an adult, but still a damned boy. I did it but it killed that edge in me. I was never the same again. Was never able to do the dark jobs again, the jobs that make you rise in the Bratva.” He chuckles but it’s dry and harsh. “I would have said it broke me, but I was broken long before that. Hell, maybe I was born broken.” He chuckles again and looks over at me. “How’s that for an excuse? Born broken. Hah. Yes. I like it. That’ll be my excuse when I stand at the gates of heaven and ask to be let in!”

  My heart shudders and I stare in horror at this tattooed man who’s driving me along with a dead body to the city dump. “Heaven doesn’t have gates,” I manage to say. “It’s open to anyone who chooses to be saved.”

  Yuri looks at me and back at the road without saying anything. He takes the next exit towards the landfill. There’s a processing station and a large shed with three silent garbage trucks in the lot. Nobody’s around and I wonder what day it is. I glance at the sun, which is moving lower in the sky. It doesn’t tell me what day today is. Perhaps it’s the day I die.

  “Stay here,” Yuri says, stopping the truck at the edge of the lot and peering towards the two dark buildings. Nothing moves and there’s no sound. Yuri gets out and leaves the driver’s side door open as he circles around to the back and drops the truck’s rear gate. I notice he left the keys in the ignition. That doesn’t fit if he’s a meticulous planner, a details man.

  Neither does that, I think when Yuri carries the body past the front of the truck and I see through the dried blood caked on the dead man’s neck and face. This wasn’t an execution-style kill. This was personal.

  Just like this is personal, comes the thought as I look down at myself still alive and breathing. Yuri disappears into the gaping hole of the landfill. He emerges several minutes later, bare chested, breathing hard, and stands in the sun and stares at me. His eyes are very green, like a forest lake reflecting the trees. There’s no peace in those eyes, though.

  “It’s peaceful here,” I say when Yuri makes his way back to the truck and stops outside the open driver’s side door. He bends and peers in at me and nods.

  “Graveyards always are,” he says with a half-grin. I smile back and his grin breaks wide. “Why haven’t I killed you, Yasmin?”

  The question doesn’t scare me . . . and that scares me. “Because I haven’t chosen to die yet,” I say.

  He frowns. “Who chooses to die?”

  “Everyone.”

  Yuri slides his heavy body into the seat and notices the keys in the ignition. He rubs his jaw and looks at me. Then he starts the engine and slams the door shut. “I remember,” he says as we circle the lot and head west, directly into the sun. “That is the Ravarnian belief in death. That we all choose our own deaths.” He smiles. “Many have chosen to die by my hands. Why do you think that is?”

  I shrug. “Some want the experience of a violent death. Others want to inflict violence by creating guilt in you.” I look at him. “Guilt is pain just like a knife-wound or a bullethole.”

  Yuri chuckles. “That’s pretty deep, yah? They teach you that in nun-training?”

  I shake my head and smile. “Not really. But I learned it anyway.”

  “What do you have to be guilty of?”

  My thighs tighten and I squeeze them t
ogether and look out the window. Whose confession is this, I wonder.

  “Mother Supreme said I am not a virgin,” I say without looking at Yuri. I feel his eyes on me, sense his body tighten. My heat rises in that way it did back at the club, and I close my eyes and try to push away that vision of seeing myself under Yuri, being taken hard and deep as Mother Supreme watches with her gray eyes shining, her thin lips tight. The image burns like the sun on my face, and I’m wet and restless and in the vision Yuri comes in me with a roar and when he turns I see him as a scarred demon with bloody talons for hands and cold emeralds for eyes. His cock is heavy and dark, his seed milky and thick, his balls heavy like sandbags.

  “How the hell does she know?” he says.

  I blink myself back to the real world. “She looked,” I say softly.

  Yuri snorts. “You can’t tell by looking. There are a hundred reasons a girl can be broken down there.”

  “Broken? That’s what you call it?”

  A shadow passes across his face even though the sun is directly on us. “That’s what we all called it in the business,” he says. “You break it, you buy it, we used to say when we were selling the girls.”

  I stare as my heart sinks and my throat tightens. I force myself to swallow. I remind myself that this is a test, that I have to listen to everything without judging him. Every sinner gets a chance to confess. That’s why we train. That’s why we’re here. That’s why I’m here.

  “Is that what you do at your club?” I say, unable to hide the tremble in my voice.

  He shakes his head. “Bratva got out of the business in America. Too risky with the FBI and the death penalty and all that. Besides, the market for girls is better overseas. In Russia the business is very good now that some are very rich and others are very poor.” I stay quiet as he looks at me. I wonder if he’s assessing how much I’d have fetched on the open market. Not much, considering I’m already “broken.”

  “Why is the Bratva running a stripclub out here in Salt Lake City?” I say after a few minutes of silence.

  “It is their way of punishing me with pain worse than death.” He turns and winks. “Worse than guilt even.”

  I smile. “That’s a bold statement, Mister. Guilt is so bad that religions have survived for thousands of years just to ease its pain. What’s worse than guilt?”

  “Humiliation.”

  I look down at my crotch and bite my lip. I wonder if Yuri’s right. Mother Supreme’s accusation humiliated me even though it was false. I wasn’t guilty of anything but I was still ashamed of something. I look at Yuri and touch my neck as I think about how we met and why we met and what we have to learn from each other, what we have to teach each other.

  We pull off the highway and Yuri cruises to the club and parks the truck on the street outside the front door. He turns off the engine and looks at the club door with the Now Hiring sign and looks back at me, leaning on the steering wheel.

  “You came here looking for a job?” he says. “Of all the places on earth . . . hell, of all the jobs on earth . . .”

  “I danced in Vegas for years,” I say, clearing my throat straightening my top. “I can dance.” I speak firmly, say it like I need to say it, like I need to prove something. A frown cuts across my face when I see Yuri glance at my breasts and my hips with the cold eye of someone used to assessing women like meat in a butcher’s window. I hate him, comes the thought, and it comes with a fierce coldness that makes me think I could kill him just for looking at me like that even though a thousand men have looked at me like that . . . and paid cold hard cash for the privilege.

  We get out of the truck and walk to the club and stand outside the front door and look at each other. It feels strange and otherworldly: Yuri like a tattooed demon with dried blood on his hands even after washing; and me a defrocked, deflowered nun with wet panties and a cold hatred in her heart that came suddenly.

  Yuri unlocks the door and pulls it open and looks at me. I bite my lip and look back at him. My crotch tingles as the smell of the club drifts out to me. It stinks of floral body spray and chlorine disinfectant, and I wonder if I’ve been drawn back to this life in the way the mystics of the old religions wandered the land seeking their own truth.

  Maybe my truth was not to be found within the convent walls, I think as I step past the threshold and into the dark, cool interiors like I’m walking into the beast’s belly. Yuri steps in behind me and closes the door and locks it. Then he yanks off the Now Hiring sign and tosses it clattering to the floor. He strolls to a circular booth and slumps down on the dark red leather that’s smooth and well-creased. He pats his muscular thighs and gestures with his head.

  “Job interview,” he says, grinning wide and slapping his thighs again with his blood-stained palms. His green eyes shine like that demon in my dream, and I glance at the locked door and then at the broken man summoning a broken woman.

  “There’s no music,” I say, touching my hair and wetting my lips. Yuri claps his hands three times and the speakers crackle to life. I laugh when I realize it’s an old Russian rock band that I used to listen to as a brooding teenager whose Mama was smoking herself to a black death. Do I feel guilty for that? My butt tightens and my calves tense up as I rise on the balls of my feet. I’m feeling the beat, sensing the rhythm, moving to the music. Again I wonder if my truth lies in the darkness of these clubs, in the shadows and not in the light. Perhaps I was born “broken” down there, just like Yuri said. Perhaps I was destined to dance dirty, to tempt and tease. Perhaps I always knew that. Perhaps that’s why I ran to that convent. Maybe I was scared of my fate. Terrified of my destiny.

  Or maybe it was guilt, I think as I move closer to Yuri and he looks up into my eyes and then down at my bouncing breasts, my swaying hips. He places his hands firmly against my sides, and I see him get hard and big beneath me. The music is loud, the Russian sounding harsh and dangerous, the bass hitting heavy, the drums pounding hard. Yuri’s hands slide around to my ass and he pulls me closer as I dance like a serpent to the tune. I’m wearing a regular blue bra with mismatched green panties that are torn near the waistband, they’re so old. I wish I hadn’t tossed all my g-strings and sequined tops. What was I thinking packing up and heading to a fucking convent? Did I think I was a character in a fairy-tale? Stripper saves herself by becoming a nun? Seriously?

  My head spins as Yuri undoes the button of my jeans and slowly lowers the zipper. I feel the cool air swirl around my navel and down near the wet front of my panties. I don’t know what he’s doing. I don’t know what I’m doing. If this is a test of my faith then am I passing or failing?

  “It has been a long time since a woman made me want to do this to her,” Yuri whispers, his breath warm against my belly. He leans in and I gasp when his tongue teases my navel. He looks up at me and runs his tongue up along my body, pulling my top up as he does it. “A bloody long time, Yasmin. The need in me is very strong now.”

  He pushes my top up over my boobs and sniffs the warm space down my bra. My nipples harden beneath the satin, and my panties are so wet it’s like I peed myself. Yuri holds my top up over my boobs and inhales the scent of my cleavage. I see his heavy shoulders move up and down as he breathes harder and harder until he’s snorting like a bull about to charge, a beast about to pounce. The music is louder than ever, the song goes on forever, the guilt expands in my breast like dark water bubbling from the bottom of a well.

  I look down at Yuri as I think about what he just said to me. “A long time since a woman made you want to do what to her?”

  He looks up at me, his green eyes dark and shining, the scars crisscrossing his cheekbones, running like valleys along his forehead. “Do everything to her. Take her so completely she will never forget it. Claim her so she sees my eyes in every other man’s face, feels my power in every other man’s thrust, tastes my seed in every other man’s kiss.”

  I gasp as he opens his mouth wide and sucks my left breast through my bra. He keeps his mouth there and
slowly, powerfully tears my top down the middle until it hangs in tatters on my shoulders. He grasps my right breast firmly, kneading my globe and then pinching the nipple so hard I scream. Then he pulls back and grabs my bra underwire and snaps it like a rubberband.

  My boobs hit him in the face and he’s all over them as I writhe and thrash and claw at his hair and arch my neck back. The guilt washes over me like a rainstorm, but it feels intoxicating and I swallow my spit and lick my lips and groan out loud when the sinner’s rough lips close around my bare nipple, his fingers now sliding down the open crotch of my jeans.

  “That is what we did in the old days,” he growls thickly between my breasts as he pushes my jeans and panties down over my hips. “Ivano and me, when we were running the girls.”

  “What?” I mutter, my eyelids fluttering as I smell the warm aroma of my cunt rise up as my panties go down. I feel a sickness in my throat as his words form pictures in my mind, images that make me want to scream. “I thought you said the Bratva isn’t in that business.”

  “Not anymore, no,” he says. “But ten years ago it was big business.” He chuckles. “And Ivano and I were big in the business.”

  I look down at him, blinking when I see my naked breasts shining with his saliva. I try to pull away but he’s holding me firmly by the hips. My jeans and panties are down to my thighs, and I gasp when I see him staring at the dark curls of my triangle. I want to pull away, run away, break away, but I don’t do it. I remind myself of my duty, my test, my trial. Did I think this was going to be easy? Did I think I could look into the darkness of this man’s soul without risking losing myself in it? There’s a reason I’ve been chosen as Yuri’s savior. Everything in my life has prepared me for Yuri, to face the worst of him and forgive him for it.

  So bring it on, Mother Goddess, I think as I look down past my shining flesh and into Yuri’s gleaming eyes.