by Megan Hart
Because he hadn’t been able to stop thinking about the taste of her and the feel of her and the sound of her saying his name, and now faced with the reality of her, there was no way he could go back to the kibbutz. All he had to do was tell the council that he was going to cash out his contract and move back home, because the thought of being away from her again was unbearable. All he had to do was run toward and not away.
The heat he’d been trying to ignore all evening flared between them. Neither of them moved, but they didn’t have to. He could feel the tension from all the way across the room. He swept his tongue over his bottom lip, remembering the flavor of her. Wishing he could forget, but knowing he wasn’t going to. Not tonight, anyway. Maybe not ever.
“Why are you staying, Nikolai?” She gave him that head tilt, that up-and-down look that drove him crazy.
Niko took a step closer, getting off on the way she drew in a breath. At the darkness growing in her eyes as the pupils dilated. “Unfinished business.”
“Funny thing, that unfinished business,” she murmured. Her lips parted. She shifted, her fingers gripping the countertop as she settled her feet wider apart.
By the time he got to her, they were both reaching for the other. He couldn’t hold back the groan when he kissed her. Laughing, she covered his mouth with her hand.
“Shhh.” She did let him pull her closer, his hands cupping her ass cheeks. “You don’t want anyone to hear.”
“Definitely not.” He nuzzled at her neck, nipping. It was his turn, then, to cover her mouth with his fingers to stifle a noise, but only for a few seconds because he had to get his mouth on hers again. “I’m starving.”
Alicia let her head fall back so he could mouth her throat again. “We just ate.”
“Not for dinner. For you.”
She looked at him. “Careful, Nikolai. You’re going to make me think you like me a little.”
He palmed her ass again, kneading. Then slipped his hand between her legs to press her there. “I think we’ve already established that I like you more than just a little.”
She rocked against him, her fingers curling in the front of his shirt. Her back arched as she offered him her neck again. Whatever she meant to say eased into a mumbled moan.
“I want you,” Niko said. “I want you so fucking much . . .”
The fall of footsteps above them pushed them apart. Alicia turned to the sink to fake rinsing a dish. Niko put the lid on a plasticware container of leftovers. Nobody came downstairs, and after a minute or so, both of them started laughing.
“It’s worse than in high school, waiting to get caught making out on the couch,” Alicia said.
“I never worried about getting caught. I never had a girlfriend.”
She made a face. “Not one you brought over here, anyway. Don’t tell me you and Deb Smith never got hot and heavy in her rumpus room.”
“What about you and Mike Taylor?” Niko took her by the hips and pulled them together again, one ear cocked for sounds from upstairs.
“What about him?” Alicia gave him a coy smile. “What makes you think he and I were an item?”
“Because he used to brag about it in gym class.” Niko frowned at the memory. “Used to piss me off.”
Her jaw dropped. “Ew, gross, no! He did? Oh, yuck. What did he say?”
“Just that he was taking you out.” Niko’s lip curled.
Alicia swatted at him. “And what . . . you were jealous?”
“Maybe.” He gave her a steady look, watching the way her smile softened. “I did think he should have kept his mouth shut about you. I remember that.”
“We never did more than kiss,” she told him. “And only then a couple of times. If I’d known you cared—”
“What? What would you have done?” he asked when she broke off.
Alicia shrugged and linked her fingers behind his neck. “I don’t know, to be honest. It wasn’t like I thought you and I would date or something. Back then. We just had a thing.”
“A thing. Like we have a thing now?”
Her smile didn’t quite all the way reach to her eyes. “Yeah.”
“This thing,” he said in a low voice. “This unfinished business.”
“What happens, do you think, when it’s finished?”
Niko had a feeling it would never be finished between them. It had been more than twenty years in the making. What would he do without this desire that, once sated, would surely disappear? What would he do without the thoughts of her that he turned to when he needed to remember he was capable of feeling? Where would he run to then?
“I think that’s a much longer conversation,” he said finally.
She bit her lower lip for a second. “Why can’t we have it, then?”
He said her name, meaning for it to push her away, but it only pulled her close to him again. The kiss went on and on, and he lost himself in it and her, trying hard not to be that guy, the guy who took advantage of someone who wanted something from him he knew he couldn’t possibly provide . . . but he failed. Of course he did.
“We can’t do this, Alicia.”
When they were younger, it had always been her older sister who’d pushed the boundaries and crossed the lines. Alicia had been the one to hold back. To follow the rules.
Obviously, she’d changed.
“Why not?” she challenged. “Why can’t we do this?”
Niko sighed. His fingers tightened on her hips. He wanted to let her go, to step away and put some distance between them to make it easier to deny the heat still palpable between them.
“Because we can’t.”
“You’re not going to stick around. You’re going to fix some things around here for your mother until you can’t stand it here anymore, and then you’ll be back off into the world, having your adventures.” She sounded only the tiniest bit bitter. “So why can’t we do this thing we both want to do, at least for the time you’re here?”
“You were married to my brother.”
Alicia snorted soft laughter. “Who was in love with my sister.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Niko said. “It doesn’t make this right.”
“You had me first,” Alicia told him boldly. Bluntly. She stood on her tiptoes to offer him her mouth, brushing her lips over his before pulling away when he tried to kiss her back. “Everything about this is messed up, Nikolai, believe me. I get it. But you can’t tell me that you want me and then not follow through. It’s not fair. More than that, it’s cruel. Is that what you want? To be cruel to me?”
He shook his head, then pressed his face to the side of her neck. Holding her close. Breathing against her skin. “No. That’s not what I want.”
“What do you want?”
It should’ve been easier to tell her. He’d thought about it so much over the years, after all. Yet words failed him, as they almost always did. All he could do was scrape his teeth along her throat to make her moan again. He pushed his hand between her legs, pressing against the heat there.
“This.”
“Then take it,” Alicia whispered into his ear. “Take all of it.”
Footsteps overhead pushed them apart again as they both breathed hard. The sight of her nipples outlined against the thin fabric of her shirt made his mouth go so dry he had to swallow hard. His cock ached, confined in the denim.
“Niko?” Galina called down the back stairs, her voice getting closer. “Is Allie still here?”
“Just leaving,” Alicia called. “We finished the dishes.”
The door at the bottom of the stairs creaked. Galina peered out. She’d wrapped herself in a silk kimono, her hair piled on top of her head. She had her pack of cigarettes in one hand.
“The hinges need to be oiled,” she said.
Niko frowned. “Okay, I’ll get right on that.”
Galina shrugged and moved past them to go out the back door, where the brief flare of her lighter lit her shadow through the glass. Alicia turned her head to look where Galina
had gone.
The line of Alicia’s neck and the curve of her shoulder made Niko turn away so he could get himself under some kind of control.
“I should go,” Alicia said.
Niko nodded. “Yeah. I guess you should.”
She made no move to leave, though her gaze cut again to the back door. The soft mutter of Galina’s voice talking on the phone meant her attention was on that, not them, but even so, Niko wasn’t going to risk another embrace. He walked her to the front door, though, where he did pull her close when it looked as though she meant to leave without another kiss.
“This is crazy. You know that,” he said against her mouth.
“Maybe we can’t help it,” she whispered. Her eyes flashed in the dim light of the front hallway. “Would that make you feel better? Thinking that you can’t stop yourself? Would it give you an excuse?”
He could stop himself. He didn’t want to. He was saved from answering, though, at the sound of his mother’s shout.
“Niko!”
They both turned at the sound of his mother’s voice. He sighed. Alicia laughed.
“I’ll see you,” she told him, and let herself out the front door.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Theresa had spent a good portion of the past few days putting this deal together, and she had to admit, it was one of the best she’d ever come up with. Making connections was a skill, one she’d had to rely on more than ever since . . . well, if this all worked out, none of that other stuff would matter. She pushed aside all that to look over the packet she’d printed up. The lists of agreements and concessions for each party, the responsibilities and, most important, the payout. She grinned. This was going to work. It was all going to be okay.
“Ilya?” She knocked lightly on his door and stepped through, looking around the room. “Oh. Wow.”
“Galina insisted on taking back the master,” he said from his place on the sagging double bed.
Theresa looked over the yellowed posters of sports figures and cartoon cats and racing cars. “Uh-huh. Okay.”
Ilya sat up, looking irritated, but then he laughed. “Okay, you caught me. I’m still a really, really big fan of Garfield.”
She moved farther into the room, looking for a chair and finding only the bed to sit on. She took a spot at the foot, laughing self-consciously at the bed’s sudden creaking protest. “Yikes.”
“Right?” He bounced, making it squeak. “What a pain in the ass.”
“Listen, I brought you something. I was going to talk to you and Allie at the same time after dinner, but she’s busy.” Theresa had overheard the soft murmurs of conversation between Allie and Niko in the kitchen but hadn’t wanted to risk walking in on them if they were doing something they didn’t want anyone to see. She slid the thick white envelope, his copy of the offer, across the bed to him. “So I brought this for you. The two of you can talk about it together and get back to me.”
He shifted closer to take the envelope. “What is it?”
“It’s an offer. To buy the quarry. And Go Deep.” Theresa cleared her throat. “I work with Diamond Development Corporation. They want to put in a hotel with a water park and make some improvements—”
“Allie knew about this?”
“I gave her the official offer a couple days ago. Yes.” Theresa nodded. “That’s part of what I’ve been doing here in town—”
“Talking to Allie behind my back?” Ilya stood and tossed the envelope onto the bed toward her. “What are you doing, ganging up on me? What the hell, Theresa?”
She frowned and gathered the loose papers that had started to come out of the envelope. “Of course not. Don’t be ridiculous.”
“My grandmother died,” Ilya said through clenched jaws. “She’s dead, Theresa. And you’re using that as a way to get me to agree to get bought out by some bunch of corporate pricks who want to rip apart everything I’ve built and turn it into some . . . what, some kind of amusement park?”
“It wasn’t like that!”
His fists clenched at his sides. “No? Pretty convenient that you showed up just in time, huh?”
“I came to pay my respects, and I would have done that, anyway,” Theresa said. “I told you, I make connections—”
“And you just happened to be making this one?”
She paused to swallow hard, keeping her voice neutral so it didn’t shake. The truth was she hadn’t planned any of this to take advantage of his grief, but of course she had taken advantage of the information he’d given her when he didn’t realize what, exactly, he was revealing. He’d told her Go Deep was struggling. It hadn’t been hard at all to look up the records to find out how much.
“It was . . . it just worked out that way.”
“They sent you after me? Figured you had an in or something, because you knew me?”
For a moment, the truth rose to her lips. That she’d put this together on her own because it had looked like the way out of a very deep and very dark pit she was in. What came out instead was not the truth.
“I’m only doing my job, Ilya.”
“I’m not interested in selling. I told the last guy that.”
“I’m not aware of any previous offers, and this doesn’t have anything to do with that.”
“I’m not interested.”
Theresa’s chin went up. Her shoulders straightened. “It’s not only your decision, is it? Allie has a say, too.”
“So,” he said in a cold, flat voice, “why don’t you go on and talk to her about it? For now, get the hell out of my room. Go enjoy sleeping down the hall, unless now that you’ve figured out I’m not going to give you what you want, you have no reason to hang around here anymore.”
He would not be sympathetic to her situation; she was not going to tell him that she had no other place to go right now. Instead, she gathered up the papers and left, closing the door behind her.
In the room that had been Babulya’s, she looked at the small weekend bag holding her clothes, some toiletries, a few other odds and ends. Her phone lit up from where she had set it to charge on the nightstand. The message was from Wayne.
Figures, she thought as she thumbed the phone screen to read what her ex-boyfriend had to say. It was a deadline for her to get her stuff out of his garage. Terrific.
She was so screwed.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Then
Jennilynn hadn’t come home last night.
She was supposed to be home by eleven, but Mom and Dad had gone to bed around ten. Alicia was the only one who’d waited up, listening for the sound of a car in the drive or the front door opening. Jennilynn had been out after curfew before. Sneaking in through the window, giggling and hissing at Alicia to be quiet even though she was the one making all the noise. The stink of beer and smoke on her clothes. She’d come home late, but at least she’d always come home.
“Girls!” her mother hollered down the hall. “C’mon, you need to get up or you’re going to be late for school!”
The very last thing in the world Alicia felt like doing was getting out of bed. She’d stayed up for hours last night, first angry because she knew, just knew, that the second she fell asleep, her sister would be stumbling into the room, waking her up. Then later, about three in the morning, the anger had turned to anxiety. Alicia had tossed and turned, sleeping fitfully.
Something was going on with her sister, and Alicia didn’t know what to do about it.
She should do something about it, right? Jennilynn might be a pain in the ass, but she was still Alicia’s sister. If she was in some kind of trouble, something she couldn’t get out of on her own, then Alicia had to help her. When Alicia was failing math two years ago and didn’t want to tell their parents, Jennilynn was the one who convinced her to get a tutor from the school, so that by the time their parents found out how poorly she was doing, Alicia already had the solution in place.
This felt like something so much worse than a bad grade. Alicia wanted to blame Ilya for
it. In the past year or so, the friendships between all of them had changed and shifted, and it had a lot to do with the fact that he and Jennilynn had this on-again, off-again weird thing going on between them that neither of them would admit to. Alicia wanted to make this Ilya’s fault, that her sister started drinking and smoking dope and staying out all night and coming home with love bites on her in places that Alicia could barely imagine getting kissed. She knew, though, that whomever Jennilynn was staying out late with, it was not Ilya.
It could be the guy from the party, the one who brought the beer. It could be any number of guys, Alicia thought with a sudden, fiercely painful throb of anxiety and jealousy. The ones Jennilynn met at the diner. The ones who drove trucks and smoked cigarettes and paged her weird messages. Her sister had become the sort of girl that all the guys liked, and Alicia . . . was not.
She thought of Nikolai.
Kissing him was one of the worst things she’d ever done, and she couldn’t stop thinking about it. Months had passed with neither of them speaking of it. Worse, though, was how it seemed they were no longer even friends. No more joking, no more teasing, no more pranks. If they had to be near each other, he looked right through her as though he’d never met her instead of knowing her for most of his life, even instead of a girl he’d kissed at a party when they were both a little drunk. There were times when Nikolai made Alicia feel like she might lose her mind with fury, but the loss of this friendship had sunk deep and aching all the way to her bones, and it wouldn’t go away.
If she’d known kissing him was going to change everything, would she still have done it? She couldn’t be sure. All she knew was that now everything was going wrong, and she couldn’t seem to stop it.
She didn’t want to get out of bed, but if she didn’t get up, their mom would come in and see that Jennilynn wasn’t there.
Maybe for once they’d see that she’s not perfect.
No matter how mad she was, Alicia wouldn’t rat Jennilynn out, not on purpose. It was an unspoken pact that they’d always have each other’s backs. Jennilynn had been taking too much of an advantage of it lately, but there was a small good point to that.
