Page 12 of Pregnant By the Russian Pakhan

A memory of how he’d needed to kill Dmitri because of Alena resurfaced, and anger tightened his insides. Once again, a woman had betrayed him. Once again, he was going to have the blood of his own men on his hands because of a woman.

Damn all women to hell and back, he thought angrily. But then he remembered his mother, killed in her prime when she’d been nothing but good through and through. Her only offense had been that she was his father’s wife. She was killed when he was only twelve, and even her corpse had never been recovered. But he could still remember her warm hugs and a kitchen that smelled constantly like cookies.

Fine, Mikhail thought. Maybe not all women ought to be damned, just a certain redhead who had unwisely chosen to go against him for Dostoevsky.

He would find Mira and he would exact his pound of flesh if it was the last thing he did!

Chapter 9 - Mira

“He’s been asking for you.” The quiet, whispered words made Mira’s heart thud in her chest. She almost jumped out of her skin with excitement as she spun around to face Sarah, the only female servant she ever allowed to enter her room in the entire villa owned by her father.

He? Mikhail? As soon as the thought trembled through Mira’s mind, Sarah’s confused look registered, and disappointed realization dawned.

Of course, what had she been thinking? Mikhail wouldn’t ask for her here, because he didn’t know where she lived or who she was. And even if by some wild chance he did know who she was, he still wouldn’t turn up at her doorstep asking for her. He would be too busy running for the hills.

With a sigh, Mira returned her contemplation to the scene beyond her windows. It was a no-brainer that the he who Sarah referred to was the sixty-something-year-old man who she’d been watching as he cavorted like a teenager.

Her father was in an unusually joyful mood today, Mira thought as she peered from behind her curtains at the scenario out in the gardens. Her father was nuzzling the cleavage of one of his many women and laughing riotously as her huge bosom swallowed up his grinning face.

“Did he say why he wanted to see me?” she asked Sarah.

“No he just, um, grunted at me to go fetch you,” Sarah replied quietly.

Of course. He had yet to understand that Mira wasn’t a piece of furniture to be fetched or told to stand quietly in the corner while his lecherous friends ogled her.

Sarah cleared her throat timidly at Mira’s continued silence. “Um, he may have meant right away, ma’am.”

“Shouldn’t I at least give him time to finish?” Mira asked bitterly, nodding toward the scene below.

Sarah’s quiet reply sounded pained. “He already um…finished, ma’am. This is just…uh, afterplay.”

Mira sighed inwardly. Her father had the virility of a man half his age. He’d been known to fuck any of his legion of women in the open garden, by the pool, anywhere really, as long as he thought Mira wasn’t in the house.

She would have to go downstairs now, she supposed. No use mortifying poor Sarah more than she already had.

Her gaze drifted to a picture on her wall. It was a happy painting of a couple entwined in a passionate kiss on a beach with the sun washing over them. The painting had always struck her because of how real and lifelike it seemed.

But now, something about their intimate pose reminded her poignantly of her night in Mikhail’s arms. Unbidden, her nipples beaded into hard points as she recalled Mikhail’s lips on them.

She sighed as she looked down at her nipples, now visible against the thin cotton of her blouse. She had sternly ordered herself to forget Mikhail and his knowing gaze and expert hands. But try as she might, she couldn’t get her body to obey her. It seemed to have a mind of its own.

In the two weeks since their one-night stand, her entire body had been quivering with need for him.

Which is pathetic when one considers it objectively, she thought. I’m not even sure Mikhail is his real name. Plus, there are millions of people in America. How would I ever find him again?

Chicago was heavily populated. She stood zero chance of seeing him ever again, even if she returned to the same club.

“Which is a good thing,” she assured herself grimly as she jerked away from the windows and headed downstairs for another showdown with her father.

Lately, it seemed that every time she clapped eyes on him, they had hurtful words to say to each other. He always either wanted to bend her to his will or to let her know just how poorly he thought of whatever decision of hers he didn’t approve of.

Mira was dressed casually in a pair of white shorts, a pink halter top, and white flip-flops with her long red hair streaming down her back in cascading waves. But she didn’t care much for her appearance; she was too upset about the prospect of another fine morning which was about to be ruined by a yelling match with her father.

As she bounded into the lounge where her father was currently enjoying his half-naked, very buxom, flavor of the month, Mira kept her face as studiously blank as possible.

She made certain to make a clatter as she went toward them, knocking down a vase and pretending to stumble over a chair. She could have seriously hurt herself trying to give the old coot warning that he had company, she thought later with wrath.

Lazily, he released his lover and let her slide to her chair before turning the blast of his brilliant gaze on his daughter.

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