by Alison Aimes
But tonight she couldn’t find her rhythm.
It had been a full day since Alexi had said he would see her in thirty minutes and never shown up. Or returned any of her texts since.
She knew he wasn’t in a ditch somewhere. His staff had confirmed that much. But they’d given her little else.
Sure, there was likely a reasonable explanation for his sudden radio silence. One she’d hear sooner or later.
But the small, dark part of her that hadn’t wanted to let Alexi stay the weekend in the first place was busy saying I told you so. Lecturing her all over again on the dangers of letting someone in.
All day she’d waited. Wondered. Cared—in a way she never had before.
It terrified her.
She’d told him things she’d told no one else. Trusted him with the ugly details of her past that could ruin her shot at the CEO position if they got out. Let him matter. Knowing all the while he was her rival. Knowing all the while his first priority was to someone else.
Which was why, reasonable explanation or not, next time she saw him she really had to find the strength to end it. Before she let herself become any more vulnerable. Before she ended up even worse off than the pitiful girl she’d been with both Francoise and Russell. Fragile. Dependent. At someone else’s mercy all over again.
It just wasn’t worth the risk.
“You run as fiercely as you do everything else.” The rasp of a familiar voice swelled from the darkness.
She skittered to a stop.
Her security guard’s hand moved to his gun. Since the fire, they’d all gotten twitchy, especially with Paul and Don Pierson still missing.
“It’s okay. I know him.” She laid a firm hand on her guard’s forearm. “Thank you for your help, but I’d like a little time alone.”
“No, ma’am.” Rob’s hand remained on his holstered gun, his narrowed gaze locked in the direction the voice had come. “I can’t leave you.”
“I’ll be fine.” The words formed before she’d fully thought them through. She hoped to God she was right. “I insist.”
“You’re the boss.” Exasperation evident, her less-than-happy bodyguard pressed a pager into her palm. “Keep that handy in case you change your mind.”
“Will do.” She watched the darkness swallow him before she turned back around, her heart beating fast.
A wide-shouldered figure emerged under the nearby streetlamp.
The light cast Alexi’s face in a soft glow that also showcased low-slung shorts and a damp, white exercise shirt clinging to every sweaty, muscular, glorious inch of him.
The spark of need inside her flared to a firestorm.
Which made her chest wind even tighter. “How’d you know where to find me?”
“I do my research, Armageddon. You know that better than anyone.”
“Is everything okay?”
“It is now.” He let out a low, rough sound as his head snapped up, his eyes colliding with hers.
Her lungs squeezed.
So much agony. It gutted her. Chased away every sound intention. “What happened?”
“Lena.” His answer was a raw whisper.
“Is she okay?”
“She flat-lined twice.” He rubbed at his chest again. “But she’s stable now.”
She’d experienced Alexi Kazankov the business shark as well as the raw, unleashed sex god and the protective Neanderthal. But she’d never glimpsed the vulnerable man beneath—until now.
It cracked her stupid heart wide open. “I’m glad she’s okay.”
“For now.”
“Do…do you want to talk about it?”
“No.”
She ignored the brief stab of hurt. “I understand.”
“Do you?”
“I think I do.” She took a cautious step in his direction, the way she’d approach any wounded creature. “You feel guilty even being here right now.”
Pain flared in his gaze. “Yes.”
But he was here anyway. Unable to help himself. Drawn to her. Just like she was to him.
She advanced another small step. “I’m not sorry you’re here. I’m glad.”
He shook his head. Looked away. A muscle ticked in his jaw.
He’d been strong for her once. Known exactly what she needed. She was determined to be the same for him now. “It’s okay, Alexi. I really do understand.”
Shifting restlessly, he plowed a hand through his hair. Even with the distance still between them, she could sense the violence of his emotions.
It was several long heartbeats before he spoke. “The first thing I thought after I found out Lena was okay was how badly I wanted to be with you.”
His confession floored her.
“I missed you today, too,” she admitted.
His gaze tangled with hers, as intense and raw and unapologetic as ever. “I shouldn’t have, but all I could think of was feeling your skin against mine. Drawing your scent into my lungs. Wrapping your thighs around me and driving deep.” He took a step closer. “Forgetting everything else and coming alive. The way I only do when I’m with you.”
Her heart stuttered and then floated out of her chest.
For a man like Alexi, to admit his need was probably as comfortable as swallowing a sharp knife. But here he was. Scared shitless, grieving, desperate for solace—and he’d come to her.
Her. The woman who been told a million times she was only good for one thing. Who’d been useful to the first man in her life as a pretty face and a punching bag. Who’d been useful to her second as a trophy and a nurse.
But not to this man. He was here because of her strength. Because she’d lived his pain and survived it. Experienced the same anguish and fear of watching someone you loved dying, helpless to do anything. She knew how badly it ate at you. She understood words couldn’t do a damn thing to ease the agony.
Sometimes you just had to escape for a little while. Lean on someone else. Lose yourself in someone else.
“I’m here,” she told him, letting the last of her defenses crumble. “We can forget together. Come alive together.”
His gaze darkened to near black, his stare tracing from her running shoes past her jogging shorts and T-shirt up to her lips. “If you’re going to run, you better do it now.”
Excitement shivered along her skin. “And if I’m in the mood to be caught?”
“Even better.” He opened his arms.
She didn’t even hesitate.
Sprinting forward, she leaped. Her mouth claiming his as he wrapped his arms around her and carried her backward into the trees.
Pure and total insanity with no outcome but disaster in sight, and yet she couldn’t stop if she wanted.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
“That smells amazing.” Clasping the soft gray sheet, Lily dragged herself upright until she was sitting against the headboard, stomach rumbling.
Alexi had taken her to his apartment last night. A gorgeous, two-story penthouse right on the park with soaring views, steel and glass as far as the eye could see, and not a single unnecessary knickknack to mar the uncluttered landscape. No personal pictures, either.
Not that she’d gotten to explore much. She’d made it two steps inside—mouth dropping open at a place that made her expensive apartment seem like a hovel—before being swept into impatient arms by a scowling man who told her she was taking too long.
They’d made it to his bedroom and ridiculously giant bed two seconds later. Where they’d burnt a ridiculous number of calories last night and earlier this morning.
And she couldn’t regret it.
Even with the small voice in her head shrieking she’d crossed the point of no return.
“Omelets and coffee.” Smile warm and wide, and far less shadowed than the night before, Alexi sauntered shirtless toward the bed with the breakfast tray in hand, his boxers riding low on his hips, revealing the very carved, mouthwatering ridge of his abdomen and the V at his hips.
That familiar tug of
need swelled in her belly.
Even now she was desperate for him all over again.
“I like it when you look at me like that.” His voice was a low, husky growl.
Her cheeks flamed. The man had a big enough head—in every sense—she really didn’t need to be making it worse. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
His eyes lit up at the challenge. “No, huh?” He swaggered closer—and then stilled, his expression shifting to one of frustration. “Damn it.” His hold on the tray tightened. “I really want to dump this tray and touch you like I want.” He blew out a breath. “But we need to talk.” He shook his head, muttering. “Now I’m one of those guys who says we need to talk.” His narrowed gaze found hers. “You really are Armageddon.”
She would have been amused by his outrage if her heartbeat wasn’t beating a million miles an hour, the prospect of talking as terrifying to her as it was to him.
But the fact was they’d put this off long enough.
“You’re right.” Tucking the sheet around her, she braced herself. “Let’s talk.”
Heat-filled eyes bore into hers. “Last night changed things. Again.”
“I know.” But to what? Clutching the sheet, she sat up straighter and decided it was time to stop shying away from the most difficult truth. “Tell me why you have a look in your eyes that says no matter how much last night changed things or how much you don’t want to hurt me, you’re going to do it. Even if it means hurting yourself, too.”
He swallowed hard. “I always knew you were too perceptive.”
The silence stretched.
He took the time to put the tray down.
“I have to go back a bit.” There was an edge to his voice that hadn’t been there before. “To Anastasia.”
“I suspected as much.”
He moved to the window, the muscles of his back bunching as he gripped the back of his head and stared down at the street below. “I fell hard for her, but looking back, it’s clear the major thing that drew us together was shared pain. I had a violent bastard for a sperm donor and hers was a ruthless American con artist who’d seduced her mother, stole her family company, and refused to acknowledge her as his.”
Lily drew in a sharp breath. Hearing it aloud was harder than she thought it would be.
“It’s because of him she’s dead.”
“What?” Sugar biscuits. That bombshell sent her lurching upright. “No. Russell might have been many things, but he wasn’t a killer.”
After all, it took one to know one.
Turning around, Alexi pinned her with a bitter stare. “He killed her with indifference, with years of casual rejection and contempt, with message after message that a string of clients and resort properties and two American sons mattered more to him than one illegitimate daughter.”
Her heart ached for Anastasia. And for the man standing in front of her who’d clearly loved Russell’s daughter very much.
“I’m so sorry.” She knew what it was to feel unloved. To have no place or person who would fight for you. But, then again, Anastasia hadn’t been exactly like her. “But she had you. Better than any worthless father.”
For a long while, the faint blare of traffic horns was the only sound.
Until, finally, Alexi spoke, his wide shoulders framed by the blue sky in the window beyond, as if he carried the weight of the world on them. “I wasn’t enough.”
The admission was simple. Spoken in a casual voice. But the tone didn’t fool her.
Here was the crux of Alexi Kazankov.
The missing piece that, true or false, drove him to be ruthless and single-minded in all he did. A small splinter of pain that had embedded in his chest when he was a young man and, despite being coated over by a hard shell of arrogance and ruthless control, had burrowed deeper and deeper over time.
He believed he hadn’t measured up.
No wonder he was determined now to succeed at everything he did.
Unable to hold back any longer, she tumbled head over heels. Her whole self plunging straight into the abyss, smacking straight over the edge into love.
Because in that moment, she gleaned what she hadn’t before. He might not know it, but Alexi Kazankov needed her as much as she needed him. Not just for a night. Or to lose himself in lust. But for the long term.
“You’re more than enough,” she insisted.
“Not for Anastasia. Not for Lena, either. I couldn’t save Lena’s daughter for her. I couldn’t keep her from getting sick herself. I couldn’t replace the life or the respect or the legitimacy or the family she lost. The only thing I can do for the woman who took me in as if I was her own is give her the only piece of family legacy left—the company that was her birthright.”
Lily’s heart slammed against her ribs, her love for him expanding until she couldn’t breathe.
Closing her eyes, she tried to find some sense of where to go from here. To find a way past the terrible irony that the very reason she loved him was the reason he could never choose her.
“And you’re telling me this now, why?” she asked. “Because you’re hoping this information will affect my plans, right? Make me want to give you the company—and ensure you don’t have to trample me underfoot yourself.”
“Yes.” He didn’t even hesitate.
“Another form of ruthlessness?” Bitterness laced her voice.
“Look at me. This isn’t a game.” Big hands closed around her shoulders and pulled her to the edge of the bed, straight into his arms. “It’s not about tactics or maneuvers. I’ve never brought anyone to my place before, Lily. This is different. You and me…it’s different. I’m hoping you trust me, trust what’s happening between us, to realize this isn’t about winning at all.”
“I do.” But it still didn’t erase the thin thread of unreasonable anger that pulsed inside at the notion that even without his saying it aloud she was being made to choose. That falling in love might mean the woman she’d scratched and clawed to become was swallowed up once again.
His gaze bore into her. “That company birthright is all Lena has left of her family, of the legacy she wanted for Anastasia, but it’s not as simple for me as it once was. I still want it for her. But not if it destroys you. The last thing I want is to be the instrument of your destruction. You need to trust me on that.”
Could she?
If she sold Alexi the company, she’d be breaking not only a promise, but one of the main stipulations of Russell’s will. She’d be out. She’d have failed.
But to go on as she had…to do nothing to right a potential wrong and continue to capitalize on an injustice was unacceptable as well. Even more so when it came at the cost of hurting Alexi and those he cared about.
Either way, it felt like she would lose. Big time.
As if he sensed her fear, Alexi pulled her close, his cheek resting against her hair. “Fight with me, solnyshko. Don’t give up now.”
For the first time in a long while, Lily wasn’t sure fighting was the answer. But giving in and giving up didn’t sound good, either.
Lord, she loved him. Loved his strength and his arrogance and the very intensity that was threatening her well-laid plans.
“Okay.” She took a breath. Squeezed him back. “Where do you think we go from here?”
He blew out a shuddered breath. As if he’d been holding it this whole time. “Meet Lena.” He squeezed her hand. “Judge for yourself. Make the choice yourself. Maybe together the three of us can find a way out of this mess. It comes down to trust.”
Terror mixed with hope. Trust wasn’t her forte. Trust hadn’t worked out for her in the past.
But she’d leaped already, straight over the edge. All that was left was to see where she’d land.
“Let’s do this.” She cradled his jaw in her hands. “I would be honored to meet the woman who took such good care of you all those years.”
The look in his eyes removed the last of her wariness. “You won’t be sorry.”
Maybe. Maybe not.
He wanted her. No question. Cared for her, too. But enough? She had no idea.
Then his mouth slanted over hers and everything else but his taste and touch was forgotten.
Even the breakfast tray.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
“Come on, big boy. Keep up.” Hand clasped in his, Lily dragged him down the hospital corridor as if there was an IRS auditor at their back.
His respect for her only grew.
This had to be hard and weird and awkward on a million different levels. He knew, too, all she risked.
Yet here she was. Brave as ever.
Which made him, the guy who’d never felt bad about a deal in his life, walk slower than he should have past the rows of beeping machines and closed doors. Because, for the first time in his life, winning felt a hell of a lot like losing.
They reached room 114. He paused, his hand on the door. “You sure?”
She tipped her chin. “I was born ready, Neanderthal.”
He really did love her fire.
His free hand met the cool metal of the door. This was it.
“Can I speak with you a sec?” Morales’s voice sounded from down the corridor—almost as if he’d been lying in ambush.
Alexi swiveled toward his friend—and caught the grim look on his face.
He squeezed Lily’s hand tighter. “I’ll find you after,” he told the man.
“Now would be better.” Morales shifted his weight from one leg to the other, his gaze never quite lighting on Lily.
“If you have an objection to my being here, have the balls to say it to my face.” His ex-rival’s chin was firmed in that stubborn tilt that always got him hot.
For the one hundredth time, Alexi wondered how the hell he’d ever underestimated her.
“Duly noted,” said the stranger who’d taken over Morales’s body and almost sounded nice. “But it’s not about that.”
“Fair enough.” Lily was all polite smiles and Southern charm once more. “I’ll wait down the hall. Call me when you’re ready.”
Alexi gripped her hand tighter. “No. We’ll hear together.” He owed her that at least.
Morales didn’t look too happy. “Together?”
