All The Way

by Tricia Jones

  “He was prosecuted and went to jail.”

  “And the other one? With the wife and children?”

  “We managed to destroy the evidence that linked him.”

  Relief shimmered through her. It was bad enough that she’d wrongly implicated Niko, without having the added guilt of putting that innocent man and his family in jeopardy.

  As the nausea turned to self-condemnation, she wanted the ground to open up and suck her into oblivion. Her actions had been reckless, thoughtless and, it seemed, wholly unfounded. “I’m sorry. I should have tried to talk to you before speaking with Lawson. I couldn’t bear if that poor man had gone to jail.”

  While he inclined his head, accepting the apology, his eyes flashed. “What about me, Grace? Or am I still not absolved of guilt?”

  “I said I’m sorry…”

  Before she knew what was happening his hands shot to her shoulders. He looked deep into her eyes and even in the darkening night she could see the simmering fire in their blue depths. “Do you still believe I am not to be trusted?”

  “I could ask you the same question. Why was it so hard to tell me that? Even now, when it concerns Leah, you tell me nothing. You go off with your covert phone calls, meetings with Vadim and God knows who else, yet you keep me in the dark.”

  His jaw went tight as he held open the passenger door. “Then it seems we both remain prisoners of the past.”

  As she slipped into the passenger seat, she mulled over his words and tried to accept that the past would always be a wall between them, that he would never really forgive her and perhaps she would never entirely trust him.

  Chapter Nine

  They drove back to the hotel in silence as Grace mulled over his words. Seeing as he had told her what happened two years ago, she considered offering an olive branch. Maybe, after what she’d done, she owed him that. “Tomorrow, when I meet Leah and Pavel, will you come?”

  “I hardly think I’ll be welcome.”

  “Perhaps this would be a good time for you and Pavel to find some common ground. You could talk. Maybe he really is different now.”

  He glanced at her. “Not that different.”

  “You grew up together, he’s the closest to family you have. Isn’t it at least worth trying?”

  “No.” A muscle jumped along his jaw. “It’s too late.”

  Grace dropped the subject and they fell into an uneasy silence again. Back at the hotel, Nikolai disappeared into his own room. Since he’d left the door open, Grace assumed he’d be back. She went to the French windows and threw them open, inviting the night air. Compared to the artificial air from the a/c system, the naturally balmy atmosphere felt more comforting.

  Nikolai came back carrying brandy in two fat crystal goblets. He joined her on the terrace and offered her a glass. She met his gaze. “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “I don’t just mean for the brandy. Thank you for telling me what you did.”

  He inclined his head, then sipped his drink.

  Tension she didn’t realize she’d been holding, released like a dam. “I never wanted to hurt you like that. It probably sounds ridiculous under the circumstances. I had to think of Leah. I know you think I baby her, but I don’t know how else to be.”

  She moved forward and placed her glass on the ledge. He came to join her, turned and leaned back against it. “Leah was never in any danger from me.”

  “I know that now, but at the time I couldn’t think straight. I never planned to be involved with anyone, had decided not to be until Leah was old enough to live her own life. That night we met in the bar? In Geneva? I’d just come from my father’s bedside. He was at a private clinic run by a friend of his.”

  “I thought your parents died in a car accident.”

  “My mother did. My father was severely injured. The prognosis wasn’t good but he wouldn’t accept it. Hence the clinic. I visited him a few times but he never wanted me there. All he wanted was Leah. He made me promise to look after her, to make sure she was taken care of. He made me swear to it. On the way back to the airport I got a call to say he’d died.” She took a sip of brandy to calm her suddenly jumpy stomach. “I felt so wretched, so alone, all I wanted was to get home. Then we were snowed in and I…didn’t want to be alone anymore.”

  Without speaking, he ran his fingers lightly down her arm, prompting her to continue. “I thought I wouldn’t see you again after that night and it was nice shrugging off everything just for a few hours. Being someone else for a while, anonymous. I didn’t expect…didn’t want it to go anywhere. Then you… Incidentally, how did you find me?”

  He only smiled, as if the question needed no answer.

  Sounds of the night echoed from beyond the balcony; insects, the occasional hum of a car engine in the distance. Niko turned and relaxed his forearms on the balcony ledge, the action making his muscles pulse. As her own pulse picked up, Grace had to look away.

  Despite the subject matter, it was lovely being together, just talking and...sharing. They’d spoken more intimately in the last couple of hours than they had in six months. It felt so good Grace didn’t want it to end. She wanted to find out more about his life before he shut down again.

  “Do you have other family?”

  “Perhaps, somewhere. They matter little to me.”

  “Why?”

  He shrugged. “No-one came forward when my parents were killed. My aunts, my mother’s sisters, made no contact.”

  She couldn’t imagine how that frightened little boy must have felt. All alone. “But you had Viktor and his wife.”

  “Da. They were good to me. When Elena died I grieved as much as for my own mother.”

  “How did she die?”

  “Her heart was always weak.”

  He’d lost so many people, she thought. So many cuts to the heart. Because it felt right, she laid a hand on his arm.

  He looked down, but said nothing. She thought he might move away from her, but then he looked at her and she glimpsed a tenderness, a vulnerability that made her heart leap. “I’m sorry.”

  “For what?”

  She shrugged. “I’m not sure. It just seems that there’s always something I should apologise for.”

  As she went to take her hand away, he covered it. “Tell me what makes you happy, milaya.”

  It was the last thing she’d expected him to say. “I don’t know. It’s not something I’ve given much thought to. I want normal things, I suppose. My job, my sister. Friends. A family. Someone to share my life.”

  “Grace.” He turned, taking her hands in his and looking at her fingers as if they held the answers to life’s questions. “I wish I could give you those things.”

  She smiled, wishing with all her heart he could, too. “The truth is, we simply don’t mix. Oil and water.”

  He looked at her, long and steady. “We mix.”

  The moment was so charged, Grace didn’t even attempt to resist when he lowered his mouth to hers. The soft, brief kiss set everything racing inside her. Her body responded as if it remembered every touch, every brush of lips and she was long past fighting it.

  “I want you,” she said without guile. “There’s been so much we haven’t been honest with each other about, this shouldn’t be one of them.”

  Lifting her hands to his lips, he kissed her fingers. “The demands I made are no longer on the table, Grace. You owe me nothing.”

  With that simple statement any reservations she might have been harboring crumbled. Vanished. She knew the score and she wanted him to know she did. “It doesn’t have to mean anything,” she lied as she moved in to him and lifted her arms to circle his neck. “For either of us. This is only for tonight.”

  With his hands on her hips, he drew her in. “For old times’ sake?”

  “If you like.” She raised her chin and touched her mouth to his.

  He caught her bottom lip between his teeth, let his hands drift to her backside. “Let’s see if
I remember what you like.”

  “You’re off to a good start.”

  The breath left her lungs as his mouth crushed down on hers. He reached down and caught the edge of her top, releasing her mouth to pull it up and over her head. He looked down at her breasts spilling from simple white lace, as his hands ran down over her hips.

  Grace felt a flutter of nerves. “I never worked out if you were a butt or breast man.”

  “Where you’re concerned, there is no preference.”

  Holding her tight around the waist, he lifted her so she could wrap her legs around him. Back inside the room he carefully lowered them to the bed. He snapped the clasp on her skirt and lowered it, revealing matching lace panties. With trembling hands she lifted the edges of his cotton shirt, then busied herself undoing his buttons. Her fingers felt clumsy, but the heavy pull of his breathing spurred her on.

  As she worked his buttons, he ran his hand over her ribcage, under the curve of her breast, across her nipple. She gasped into his mouth.

  “It seems I still remember.” His voice was so low it was barely audible.

  “Hmm?”

  “What you like.”

  Vaguely, she wondered if he could do anything to her that she didn’t like, but then his hot mouth closed around her bra-covered nipple and all her thinking ability went out the window.

  For long, desperate moments she allowed herself to sink into the sensation until, desperate to have her hands on his hot, muscled flesh, she pushed the shirt from his shoulders, her fingers brushing the inch long scar on his shoulder.

  He unhooked her bra, threw it to the side, then kissed his way down her body. He moved over her breast, her nipples, drawing one tight bud into his mouth, suckling and nibbling with his teeth until she felt she’d go mad. He continued down. Across the curve of her hip, over her stomach, down to her lace panties. He kissed her where heat flared, using his hands to ease her thighs apart.

  She tried to lift her head and shoulders, to coax his mouth back to hers, but he hooked his fingers each side of her panties, drew them down and tossed them aside. She wanted to feel the warmth of his body covering hers, but he knelt between her legs.

  “Niko…”

  “Let me touch you.” His fingers danced close to the heat. “Let me kiss you.”

  She wanted the fast release of it. Wanted to ease the tension that had built between them. She couldn’t bear that he would caress her, stroke her, make her want things she had no right to want. Those things he could never give her. If it was over quickly, she could put it away again, forget about it. Forget about him.

  “I want to take it slow,” he said gruffly. “I want you to remember everything I do to you. Every touch…” She jerked as he brushed his fingers up the inside of her thighs. “Every kiss…” She arched as he touched his mouth, ever so slightly, to her mound. “Every stroke…” She bit her bottom lip as his finger slipped inside her. “You’ll remember it all, angel.”

  She had not the slightest doubt of that. Being with Nikolai had ruined her for any man who followed. She had invited one man into her bed since Niko, she’d gotten the quick release—the type she so craved now—but it had been nothing memorable.

  This would be.

  Even now, as Niko came to lie on top of her and ran his hand down her trembling body, she knew. She would add this night to every other night she’d spent with him—and remember it always. Store it in her mental book of most precious memories to pull out when she was at her lowest. Except the memories would make her feel more wretched, because with them came the knowledge that she once held in her arms the one man, the only man, who had ever claimed her heart.

  Push it away, Grace told herself as Niko kissed his way along her jaw, down her throat, over her collar bone. Don’t think about it. There would be plenty of time for that later. After.

  The last fragments of her melancholic musings disappeared as his mouth closed over her nipple. Grace arched as he mouthed her gently at first, almost too gently, unbearably so. Then he increased the pressure, working her nipple into a hard, tight bud. Closing her eyes, she reached for him and brushed her fingers over his closely cropped hair.

  He rolled his tongue around her nipple, flicking it this way and that, almost carelessly, until she moaned softly. As the drag of heat in her lower abdomen increased in intensity, she opened her legs. If he didn’t enter her soon, she’d bloody well explode.

  Niko lived up to his promise of taking it slow, seeming in no hurry as he moved down her body. The chill of his absence whispered over her breast, contrasting with the flames gathering between her legs. His hands were a little rough as he pressed his palms to her thighs and drew her legs wider. The light touch of his hot tongue against her clit made her cry out and he responded by pressing down firmly against her thighs, anchoring them open as she bucked and tried to escape the torture. With ruthless purpose he pushed her harder, until she feared she might pass out from the agonizing pleasure. As her head swam, he used his mouth and gave her what she wanted.

  The release came hard and fast and Grace clung on, gripping the sheets as he continued his relentless torment.

  She peaked, spinning into freefall as he moved over her and drove himself hard inside her. Anchoring himself with one hand, he used the other to push up her right knee, sinking deeper as Grace clung to his shoulders. Her upper body rose from the bed as she tried to pry him closer. She wanted to feel the heat of his chest against her breasts, his breath joining with hers as they climaxed together. The way they’d done so many times before.

  Yet this time was different. He was different. Before, there was always passion, but never closeness. Now he made love to her with a single mindedness. He made love to her.

  She knew from the way his eyes darkened as he thrust into her. Over and over. Hard and deep. This time he looked at her, really looked at her. Yes. It was different. Before, he’d mostly kept his eyes closed as he came, snatching in a few heaving breaths before rolling off her. But now…

  He watched her through heavy lidded eyes, chest heaving as he found his own release. His jaw tightened, but still those eyes focused intently on her.

  Having difficulty with her own breathing, Grace ran her hand leisurely over his back feeling the warmth and strength of his muscles beneath. Unwilling to break the intimacy of the moment, she gazed up at him and let a slow smile spread across her lips.

  She might have missed the slight frown, the sharp intake of breath, but she felt so in tune with him at that moment it hit her like a hammer. She sensed his withdrawal even before he lifted himself off her and strode naked into his own room.

  Well, so much for togetherness, Grace thought as she lay there staring at the ceiling and still trying to steady her breathing. So much for closeness. It was her fault for reading more into the moment than was actually there. Thinking, hoping, that they might, at last, share more than the physical.

  Why did she always wish for the impossible when she was around him?

  Annoyed with both of them, she sat on the side of the bed and wondered what in the hell happened now. Chilled, she crossed her arms over her bare breasts, then stood and went to the window. The bright, balmy day had given way to night and dark clouds gathered in the distance. How appropriate, Grace thought as she turned toward the bathroom.

  In the shower, the warmth of the water calmed her and seeped into her chilled muscles. If she scrubbed hard enough she might just wash off the scent of him. Except she feared it had permeated into her very soul. She would always feel him, scent him. It would be impossible to do otherwise, so why even try and fight it?

  As she dried herself with one of the hotel’s large fluffy towels, a wretched ache had settled in her stomach that had nothing to do with rich food and full bodied wine. Okay, so she was an idiot to go to bed with him again and she would suffer the consequences, but damned if she’d act like a lovesick moron. She’d made her choice and she wouldn’t regret it. Old times’ sake, he’d said. One last screw for old ti
mes’ sake. Well, screw him.

  Let him go off and brood. If he regretted what they’d shared that was his problem. He could shove it.

  Resigned to reality, and determined not to wallow, Grace stepped back into the bedroom. The air left her lungs at the sight of Niko, naked and stretched out on her bed, the tented sheet barely covering his hips.

  “I prefer to sleep alone.” She put a chill into her tone as she walked around the bed and snatched up her clothes.

  With languid flair, he drew down the sheet on her side of the bed. “We’re not finished.”

  “Oh, we are.” She stood there, painfully aware of his hot gaze moving down and up the length of her towel-clad body. “If you’re not going to move, I’ll take your bed.”

  Before she could blink, he shot up, grabbed her wrist and pulled her down on the bed. As she tried to right herself, he rolled on top of her. “If you think once will do it, you’re mistaken. We’ve not even started.”

  She glanced at the hard wall of his chest, the way his shoulders bunched as he held her down, and saliva pooled in her mouth. In the moonlight, the sight of his hard, lean body vanquished her resistance and she reached out and ran her fingers lightly over his pectorals. But annoyance still simmered at the way he’d left her alone even as she basked in the glow of her stupid deliberations and she raised her chin.

  “What? You’ve decided you want me to pay up after all? So much for me not owing you anything.”

  He smiled, tugged at the towel until her breasts were revealed to him. “Don’t insult us both with your protestations. You still want me.”

  She pouted a little for effect, but her own desire had hit fever pitch, driving away the remnants of her irritation. “I have enough control to not always indulge in the things I want.”

  “Liar.” He dropped his mouth to her breast and laved his tongue over her nipple. “You mean you don’t want this?” His tongue found the other nipple and subjected it to the same delicious torture. “Or this?”

  With one easy movement he fully relieved her of the towel until she lay naked beneath him. His mouth traveled over her; wonderful open mouthed kisses and strategic strokes of his tongue.