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

  The Mother Supreme blinks and shakes her head twice really fast like she doesn’t understand. Then she frowns and looks at me hiding behind Yuri. She sighs and chuckles and crosses her arms over her flat chest. “I see. You want to pretend for your little whore.” She smiles menacingly sweetly at me and looks back at Yuri. “That’s very nice, but we don’t have time for that. It’s been six months now, and the girls are getting restless. They’re asking questions about what happens when they become nuns. They want to know where they’ll be sent on their missions. I can’t stall any longer. You and Ivano need to agree to take delivery of the girls so we can place them and then clear the convent and prepare for next year’s crop.”

  I stare at Yuri’s tattooed back as the Mother’s words make me dizzy. This must be hell, comes the thought again. They say hell is like a crazy dream but all bad, all wrong, all sick and twisted. You create hell from your own guilt, your own shame, your own sin.

  Yuri’s back broadens as he takes a slow breath. His fists tighten and his knuckles crack, and I glance at the back of his head as my mind tries to put the pieces together. Next year’s crop? What happens to this year’s crop? What kind of business would Mother Supreme be doing with Ivano?

  Ivano and Yuri.

  And now I step back away from Yuri, the blood chilling in my veins, the air leaving my lungs. “Yuri,” I whisper, backing farther away as my torn top flips open and my breasts hang down like an obscene dream. “You and Ivano were . . . you were going to . . .” I’m stammering as the words don’t come. But the connections are coming, and I look at the Mother Supreme in her street clothes with her gray hair in a neat bun, and I think about the inspections and the fanaticism about virginity, and I wonder if the whole Ravarnian revival out here in Utah was a masterful plan to bring young virgins out here to be brainwashed. How else in today’s America do you get dozens of willing young virgins who are weird enough and gullible enough to leave their homes and join a cult in Utah? It’s brilliant, I decide, marveling at the beautiful madness of this hell that my mind has conjured from my guilt.

  Then I shake my head and smile when I realize that I’m one of those weird and gullible idiots.

  “You aren’t Ravarnian at all, are you?” I say to the Mother Supreme. “Are you even a nun?”

  She snorts. “None of you girls are nuns, honey. I’m in the recruitment business. Been doing it for decades—though this is my best plan yet.” She looks at Yuri. “Last year I met Ivano through an old Bratva acquaintance. He said he was looking to get into the business. But he wanted virgins only—and no kidnapping or captivity or any of that stuff. He wanted girls who could be brainwashed, molded, bent and then broken.” She shrugs. “I said that sounds like what religion does to people. Maybe I should start one to recruit some of these brainwashable bitches.” She shrugs again and chuckles. “I was joking, but Ivano went quiet for a long time and then he said he was born Ravarnian. He told me about the old religion which only ordained nuns—all of whom had to be virgins. We talked about reviving it out here in the middle of Utah, land of cults and crazies. He funded me quietly, without the Bratva knowing. Said they wouldn’t approve, that it was too complicated and risky, that they were doing well with drugs and assassinations and loansharking and all that.” She takes a breath and looks at Yuri. “But he said that if I managed to pull it off, to bring women here and indoctrinate them, make them think they were nuns on some holy mission, he’d take them off my hands and manage the final sales.” She narrows her eyes at Yuri. “I pulled it off, Yuri. The girls will be ready in a month. Now it’s time for you and Ivano to take care of the rest. I’ve done my part. Now it’s your turn. A deal is a deal, Yuri.”

  “I had no deal with Ivano and certainly not with you,” says Yuri, turning when he feels me backing away from him. “Ivano said nothing about it to me!” he roars at me, his eyes wild, his face peaked.

  “Liar!” shouts the Mother Supreme from the shadows. She almost spits at Yuri, and I swear her tongue is forked like the devil’s. Sure. Why the hell not. “Ivano said he was flying in this morning! He said he would meet with you and that I was to come here later in the day! You’re a damned liar!” Now she looks at me and her eyes narrow to slits. “You!” she rasps. “He’s doing it for you. To hide the man he really is.” She snorts at Yuri. “Why? Because . . . what, you love her? You think she loves you? Are you as gullible as these air-headed, starry-eyed idiots who sit and smile at the convent walls with folded hands? Now, where’s Ivano?”

  “Ivano is not here,” Yuri says coldly, turning back to the Mother and clenching those fists that look strong enough to crush brick. He stretches his neck and calmly advances. “But I will take you to him. Come. I will take you to him.”

  “No!” I shout, racing to Yuri and grabbing his arm. He pulls away from me without turning, and I stand and stare at his broad back as he moves closer to the Mother.

  Her face pales and she takes two steps back before turning and making a run for the door. But just as she gets there, the door swings open and hits her right in the face, sending her tumbling backwards. Her bun opens up and her gray hair frizzes out like a fan as she falls down hard. There’s a massive man standing in the doorway. He looks at the Mother Supreme and rubs his big square jaw and mutters something in Russian.

  “Grigori,” says Yuri, exhaling and rubbing his eyes. His shoulders heave as he laughs. “For once your clumsiness comes in use. Watch the blessed Mother Supreme in case she wakes up.”

  Grigori grunts and stands over the silent Mother, one foot on either side as he stares down at her like he’s taking his orders very literally. Yuri looks back at me with a grin. Then he loses the grin when he sees my face.

  “Ivano said nothing to me about it,” he says quietly. He holds out his hand but I don’t take it. This whole thing is wrong. How could I have even started to believe that it might be right? How could I have believed this man could be saved?

  “So Ivano just showed up out of the blue this morning?”

  Yuri frowns and rubs his jaw. He shakes his head. “I invited him to visit,” he says.

  “Why?”

  Yuri’s frown cuts deeper. “To kill him. I said come visit your brother. It has been too long. You are a big man in the Bratva, but don’t forget the small men, I’d told him.”

  I step closer, squaring my shoulders and looking him in the eye. “Why did you kill him?”

  He shrugs and scratches the back of his head. “I . . . cannot say exactly. The strange truth is, I have ached to kill Ivano for years even though I loved him and hated him like you do a brother. The urge has festered in me like a sickness. I dreamed of it. Fantasized about it. Yearned for it.” He shakes his head and begins to pace. “Perhaps because we always competed, always tried to outdo each other. He won the race to the top of the Bratva. I lost. Perhaps it is my own guilt about what we have done that made me want to kill him. Perhaps I believed that killing him would kill some part of myself. Perhaps I blamed him for making me the sinner I am. Perhaps I wanted to rid the world of Ivano as a service, as atonement. I cannot explain in words. Only in feelings. Only in action. I did it from that quiet place in my heart, you know?” He shrugs again, rubs his head again. I get the sense he’s puzzled. Confused about his own motives. “I swear it, Yasmin. Ivano said nothing. Perhaps he was waiting until he was sure the Mother Supreme could pull it off. Perhaps he had decided not to bring me in on the deal. Perhaps he was about to set up a meeting when I called him and invited him here.” He stops and looks at me strangely. “Yes. He did say it was strange that he thought of me for some business but then by coincidence I called him before he called me!” He bites his lips and looks at me with an excitement that makes me want to believe. To believe what I already believe even though it is the surest sign of a fool. “It was the Goddess’s divine plan,” he says hoarsely, reaching up and fingering that bloodstained chain hanging around his neck. “Ivano, me, you . . . we are all Ravarnians. Perhaps this is the Goddess doing he
r work. After all, you showed up here by coincidence, did you not? So maybe it wasn’t just dumb luck. Maybe it was fate, Yasmin. Destiny.” He smiles and his shoulders relax. “Divine intervention. Divine coincidence. All of us drawn together by fate, by destiny, by our own paths to divinity. That is the only explanation.”

  “The only explanation? Really? I thought I was the hopeless nun, not you!” I laugh—just once. What he said about why he killed Ivano rings strangely true. I’d felt it when I first saw Yuri, when he was praying to the Goddess like a forsaken sinner. But still, how can I believe him? After all, I was gullible enough to believe Mother Supreme. Hell, the fact I’m even debating this with myself proves how gullible I can be! No wonder Mother Supreme was able to pull this off so far! I wouldn’t be surprised if after the final vows the girls are sent on “missions” to tend to wealthy older men! Mother Supreme could convince them of it. Why not? After all, ten minutes ago I’d convinced myself that I loved Yuri!

  “I love you, Yasmin,” he says as I stare at his outstretched arm, his palm upturned and open. I look into his eyes and then up at the ceiling, perhaps past the ceiling. Is this the final test of my faith, I wonder. How can I know?

  “Give me a sign,” I whisper to the Goddess as my heart beats hard within my breast. “If you’re really talking to me, if I really am one of your faithful, if I really do serve you, then give me a sign, Goddess. Give me a fucking sign!”

  I stare up at the ceiling like an innocent fool waiting for the sky to open up and music to descend from the heavens. But just as I’m about to give up, to give in, to walk away, I’m distracted by a choky, gurgling sound from my left. I turn and gasp, reeling and covering my mouth when I see the big man Grigori clutching his throat and staggering and stomping around like a wounded giant.

  Blood pours through his fingers from a long slit on his throat, and I blink and then gasp again when I see Mother Supreme flat on her back, holding up something rectangular and metallic, the sharp edge red with Grigori’s blood.

  The words Now Hiring are scrawled on the blood-stained metal.

  The bloodstained sign.

  My sign.

  Her sign.

  I glance up at the ceiling, not sure what to think. But I’m distracted again, this time by a sickening crunch and a muffled sound that makes me reach for my own neck in horror. I turn and stare. In his death-throes, as he stumbled and spun through the room, Grigori just stomped his big boot on the Mother Supreme’s throat, squishing her windpipe like a sausage, breaking her neck with that sickening crunch. The Mother drops the sign and dies with her eyelids wide open, eyes upturned towards the Goddess.

  Dead silence falls across the room. Yuri and I look at each other dumbfounded. There’s no explaining what just happened. No way to make sense of it. No way to speak of it.

  We just have to accept it.

  We just have to feel it.

  We just have to love it.

  Then, as if Yuri just got the Goddess’s message himself, he shrugs, raises his hands above his head, and claps three times. The speakers crackle to life, and music rains down on us from the heavens in the form of a Russian heavy metal guitar riff and incomprehensibly growled lyrics.

  And Yuri strides up to me, still bare-chested like he’s been all day, blood from heaven knows how many on his hands, sins that nobody can count in his heart. He comes up to me, takes me by the hand, and leads me up on the center stage.

  Then, under the hot lights and deafening music, surrounded by blood and sin, we dance.

  We dance like children in the rain.

  As the Goddess watches, we dance.

  8

  YURI

  “You know I have never danced on my own stage before?” I say through a breathless grin as I pull Yasmin to me and kiss her on the lips before spinning her away. “There is something about being under these lights. Perhaps I understand why you girls like it sometimes.”

  Yasmin laughs like a little girl, and my eyes go wide when she spreads her arms out and her torn top hangs open and her breasts spin out with her motion. My cock hardens and I want to watch but cannot keep away. I yank her back into me and kiss her hard on the lips. We’ve been dancing for what feels like hours, and that comment about being on stage is all we’ve said to each other.

  I dip her and look past her boobs and out at the empty club, wondering if everything that just happened really happened. Yes, it did, I think when I see the blood and smell the death. I grin and spin Yasmin again. She is outside herself, I know. Lost in religious ecstasy like the dervishes who dance for days, the monks who chant for weeks. I glance up at the ceiling and nod at the silent Goddess who speaks through events and actions, coincidences and connections.

  And the connections are clear, are they not, I think as I pull her back and kiss her again. This time I don’t let go, and soon my tongue is in her mouth, my hands on her ass, my hardness grinding into her holy, blessed mound that’s my altar, my truth, my fucking salvation.

  “You taste so good,” I growl, licking her lips and sucking her chin. I drag my tongue down her neck and ravage her breasts until I’m panting and she’s moaning. Then I pull her down to the smooth glass floor of the stage. Her jeans are already half open, and they’re gone in moments. She raises her head and looks at me. I grin and nod, backing up and sitting on my ass. I pull my boots off and get out of my jeans. I wear no underwear.

  “You don’t wear underwear?” she says as I rise to my knees and push her thighs apart. My cock is heavy like a log hanging over a river, and I look down at her red slit glistening up at me from her dark forest of curls.

  “You say it like that is the most unbelievable part of your day,” I growl, fisting my shaft and groaning as a thick bead of pre-cum drops onto her belly, just below her perfect little button. “I don’t like to stifle my balls. The heat is bad for them.” I glance down at my mammoth balls and shrug. “Also, they are too big, as you can see.”

  “I can’t see,” she teases. “Bring them closer.”

  I grin in surprise. Then I move up, straddling her body as I go forward on my knees. Both of us lose our smiles as I circle her nipples with my cockhead and coat her red buttons with my oil. She gasps and looks into my eyes. Then she blinks and looks at my cock before reaching out and taking hold of it.

  Her grip is hesitant and tender, and I shake my head and show her how to grip me tight. “See how I get harder when you squeeze? Ah, fuck. That’s it. Yes. Perfect.”

  She looks up at me as I move back and forth until she understands how good it feels. Soon she’s jerking me off with an innocent delight, and I lean over her and support myself with my left hand and stroke her hair with my right. She’s got blood in her hair and I don’t know whose it is but of course it doesn’t matter. We’re clean as newborns, I think as we smile at each other and I tease her lips until she opens for me.

  “Round out your lips and cover your teeth,” I say softy as I push myself an inch into her mouth and stop. She’s so warm and wet I almost black out. My vision blurs as I go another inch into her mouth, and when I feel her gag and then figure out how to keep her throat open, I groan and push myself balls deep.

  Her throat constricts but I hold myself there and she relaxes. Her eyes are wide and she’s breathing hard through her nose. I smile down at her and nod. I can’t fucking talk. All my strength and focus is on not exploding in Yasmin’s sweet, warm mouth. If I come I know I won’t stop until she fucking drowns. Besides, my seed is for her virgin pussy, not her tight little throat.

  So I thrust twice more just so she knows how to handle me when I want her to suck me off all the way. Then I pull out of her and move back down along her body, kissing her all the way down the center-line. She’s a quivering mess when I get to her dark triangle. I press my face into it and breathe deep of her clean musk. I have to clench my jaw to not come all over the stage. Somehow I hold on, but I won’t last long. This nun is bringing out the beast in me. This woman is bringing out the man in me.


  So I lick her until she’s dripping like a waterfall in spring, and then I rise and reach between us and guide my cockhead to her opening. I hold myself there and look into her eyes. What I see startles me.

  Because I see myself in her eyes. Reflected clear as day in her big brown pupils. I blink and study my own face. I look different. Fewer lines, almost like her forgiveness is erasing the notches that my sins marked upon my face. It makes no sense but I see it clearly. Then I blink and it’s gone, and immediately I push into her, open her wide, spread her dark little mouth, enter her untouched little hole.

  9

  YASMIN

  He enters me and I know I’m a virgin because I feel something pop, feel something tear, feel something split. I don’t know if it’s in my head or between my legs, but it doesn’t matter. He’s in me and I’m his now. Perhaps I was always his, I think as I groan and arch my neck back and spread my thighs wide and look up at the ceiling and smile.

  Yuri slowly pushes himself all the way deep, and I feel every inch of him opening up my walls from the inside. I’m so stretched it hurts, but it’s the good kind of pain and Yuri is being gentle in a way that I know is taking restraint and control. I look down at his tensed back of intertwined-snake muscle adorned with tattoos that look alive with color that I swear wasn’t there before. I can see the scratches on his shoulders from where I broke the skin earlier, and I smile and touch them. Yuri grunts and flexes inside me, but he keeps it slow and controlled, restraining what I feel is something beastly and powerful simmering beneath the surface, burning in those big balls that were just up against my chin.

  My pussy clenches as Yuri pulls back and then drives into me again. This time he goes a bit harder, and I whimper when he goes in all the way. He raises his head and looks at me. I nod and he smiles and kisses me.