“I believe I will,” Alicia agreed.
She spent the rest of the afternoon torn between panic and dread. She attacked all the work on her desk, like a drowning woman grasping for something to hold. Every time her phone rang, her heart leaped in her chest. Every time she heard a noise outside her office door, she tensed, thinking she was finished.
Any minute now, she’d be called up to Daniel’s office. She could see it spool out before her like a horror film. Daniel’s secretary would message the salacious news to half the office even as Alicia walked to her doom. So not only would Alicia be dismissed from her job because of a tawdry one-night stand with a man most people would have recognized and she certainly should have—but everyone she worked with and respected would know it.
It would be as it had been that morning her father had woken her up and told her what he’d seen, what she’d done—but this time, far more people would know what kind of trollop she was. People she’d impressed with her work ethic over the years would now sit about imagining her naked. Having sex. With Nikolai. She felt sick even thinking about it.
“I warned you!” Charlotte said as she stuck her head through the doorway, making Alicia jump again. A quick, terrified glance told her that her supervisor looked...sympathetic. Not horribly embarrassed. Not scandalized in the least. “I told Daniel you were on a call that ran a bit long, so no worries there.”
“Thank you.” Alicia’s voice sounded strained, but Charlotte didn’t seem to notice.
“Nikolai Korovin is very intense, isn’t he?” Charlotte shook her head. “The man has eyes like a laser beam!”
“I expect he doesn’t get interrupted very often,” Alicia said, fighting for calm. “I don’t think he cares for it.”
“Clearly not,” Charlotte agreed. And then laughed.
And that was it. No request that Alicia pack up her things or don a scarlet letter. No summons to present herself in Daniel’s office to be summarily dismissed for her sexually permissive behavior with the fiercely all-business CEO of their new celebrity partner foundation. Not even the faintest hint of a judgmental look.
But Alicia knew it was coming. She’d not only seen the way Nikolai had looked at her, but now that she knew that he was Nikolai Korovin, she was afraid she knew exactly what it meant.
He was utterly ruthless. About everything. The entire internet agreed.
It was only a matter of time until all hell broke loose, so she simply put her head down, kept off the internet because it only served to panic her more, and worked. She stayed long after everyone else had left. She stayed until she’d cleared her desk, because that way, when they tittered behind their hands and talked about how they’d never imagined her acting that way, at least they wouldn’t be able to say she hadn’t done her job.
Small comfort, indeed.
It was almost nine o’clock when she finished, and Alicia was completely drained. She shrugged into her coat and wrapped her scarf around her neck, wishing there was a suit of armor she could put on instead, some way to ward off what she was certain was coming. Dread sat heavy in her stomach, leaden and full, and there was nothing she could do about it but wait to see what Nikolai did. Go home, hole up on the couch with a takeaway and Rosie’s usual happy chatter, try to ease this terrible anxiety with bad American television and wait to see what he’d do to her. Because he was Nikolai Korovin, and he could do whatever he liked.
And would. Of that, she had no doubt.
Alicia made her way out of the building, deciding the moment she stepped out into the cold, clear night that she should walk home instead of catching the bus. It was only thirty-five minutes or so at a brisk pace, and it might sort out her head. Tire her out. Maybe even allow her to sleep.
She tucked her hands into her pockets and started off, but had only made it down the front stairs to the pavement when she realized that the big black SUV pulled up to the curb wasn’t parked there, but was idling.
A whisper of premonition tingled through her as she drew closer, then turned into a tumult when the back door cracked open before her.
Nikolai Korovin appeared from within the way she should have known he would, tall and thunderous and broadcasting that dark, brooding intensity of his. He didn’t have to block her path. He simply closed the door behind him and stood there, taking over the whole neighborhood, darker than the sky above, and Alicia was as unable to move as if he’d pinned her to the ground himself.
She was caught securely in his too-knowing, too-blue gaze all over again, as if he held her in his hands, and the shiver of hungry need that teased down the length of her spine only added insult to injury. She despaired of herself.
If she respected herself at all, Alicia knew with that same old kick of shame in her gut, she wouldn’t feel even that tiny little spark of something far too much like satisfaction that he was here. That he’d come for her. As if maybe he was as thrown by what had happened between them as she was...
“Hello, Alicia,” Nikolai said, a dark lash in that rough voice of his, velvet and warning and so very Russian, smooth power and all of that danger in every taut line of his beautiful body. He looked fierce. Cold and furious. “Obviously, we need to talk.”
CHAPTER FOUR
FOR A MOMENT, Alicia wanted nothing more than to run.
To bolt down the dark street like some desperate animal of prey and hope that this particular predator had better things to do than follow.
Something passed between them then, a shimmer in the dark, and Alicia understood that he knew exactly what she was thinking. That he was picturing the same thing. The chase, the inevitable capture, and then...
Nikolai’s eyes gleamed dangerously.
Alicia tilted up her chin, settled back on her heels and faced him, calling on every bit of courage and stamina at her disposal. She wasn’t going to run. She might have done something she was ashamed of, but she hadn’t done it alone. And this time she had to face it—she couldn’t skulk off back to university and limit her time back home as she’d done for years until the Reddicks moved to the north.
“Well,” she said briskly. “This is awkward.”
His cold eyes blazed. He was so different tonight, she thought. A blade of a man gone near incandescent with that icy rage, a far cry from the man she’d thought she’d seen in those quieter moments—the one who had told her things that still lodged in her heart. The change should have terrified her. Instead, perversely, she felt that hunger shiver deeper into her, settling into a hard knot low in her belly, turning into a thick, sweet heat.
“This is not awkward,” he replied, his voice deceptively mild. Alicia could see that ferocious look in his eyes, however, and wasn’t fooled. “This is a quiet conversation on a deserted street.”
“Perhaps the word loses something in translation?” she suggested, perhaps a shade too brightly, as if that was some defense against the chill of him.
“Awkward,” he bit out, his accent more pronounced than before and a fascinating pulse of temper in the hinge of his tight jaw, “was looking up in the middle of a business meeting today to see a woman I last laid eyes upon while I was making her come stare right back at me.”
Alicia didn’t want to think about the last time he’d made her come. She’d thought they were finished after all those long, heated hours. He’d taken that as a challenge. And he’d held her hips between his hands and licked into her with lazy intent, making her writhe against him and sob....
She swallowed, and wished he wasn’t watching her. He saw far too much.
“You’re looking at me as if I engineered this. I didn’t.” She eyed him warily, her hands deep in the pockets of her coat and curled into fists, which he couldn’t possibly see. Though she had the strangest notion he could. “I thought the point of a one-night stand with no surnames exchanged was that this would never happen.”
“Have you had a great many of them, then?”
Alicia pretended that question didn’t hit her precisely where she was the most raw, and with a ringing blow.
“If you mean as many as you’ve had, certainly not.” She shrugged when his dark brows rose in a kind of affronted astonishment. “There are no secrets on the internet. Surely you, of all people, must know that. And it’s a bit late to tally up our numbers and draw unflattering conclusions, don’t you think? The damage is well and truly done.”
“That damage,” Nikolai said, that rough voice of his too tough, too cold, and that look on his hard face merciless, “is what I’m here to discuss.”
Alicia didn’t want to lose her job. She didn’t want to know what kind of pressure Nikolai was prepared to put on her, what threats he was about to issue. She wanted this to go away again—to be the deep, dark secret that no one ever knew but her.
And it still could be, no matter how pitiless he looked in that moment.
“Why don’t we simply blank each other?” she asked, once again a touch too brightly—which she could see didn’t fool him at all. If anything, it called attention to her nervousness. “Isn’t that the traditional method of handling situations like this?”
He shook his head, his eyes looking smoky in the dark, his mouth a resolute line.
“I do not mix business and pleasure,” he said, with a finality that felt like a kick in the stomach. “I do not mix at all. The women I sleep with do not infiltrate my life. They appear in carefully orchestrated places of my choosing. They do not ambush me at work. Ever.”
Alicia decided that later—much later, when she knew how this ended and could breathe without thinking she might burst into panicked, frustrated tears—she would think about the fact that a man like Nikolai had so many women that he’d developed policies to handle them all. Later. Right now, she had to fight back, or surrender here and now and lose everything.
“I assure you,” she said, as if she had her own set of violated policies and was considering them as she met his gaze, “I feel the same way.”
Nikolai shifted, and then suddenly there was no distance between them at all. His hands were on her neck, his thumbs at her jaw, tipping her head back to look up at him. Alicia should have felt attacked, threatened. She should have leaped for safety. Screamed. Something.
But instead, everything inside of her went still. And hot.
“I am not here to concern myself with your feelings,” he told her in that rough velvet whisper. That fascinating mouth was grim again, but she could almost touch it with hers, if she dared. She didn’t. “I am here to eliminate this problem as swiftly and as painlessly as possible.”
But his hands were on her. Just as they’d been in the club when he’d told her to run. And she wondered if he was as conflicted as she was, and as deeply. What it would take to see that guarded look on his face again, that vulnerable cast to his beautiful mouth.
“You really are the gift that keeps on giving, Nikolai,” she managed to say, retreating to a sarcastic tone, hoping the bite of it might protect her. She even smiled, thinly. “I’ve never felt happier about my reckless, irresponsible choices.”
He let out a short laugh, and whatever expression that was on his hard face then—oddly taut and expectant, dark and hot—was like a flame inside of her. His hands were strong and like brands against her skin. His thumbs moved gently, lazily, as if stroking her jaw of their own accord.
“I don’t like sharp women with smart mouths, Alicia,” he told her, harsh and low, and every word was a caress against her skin, her sex, as if he was using those long fingers deep in her heat. “I like them sweet. Soft. Yielding and obedient and easily dismissed.”
That same electricity crackled between them even here on the cold street, a bright coil that wound tight inside of her, making her feel mad with it. Too close to an explosion she knew she couldn’t allow.
“What luck,” she said, sharp and smart and nothing like soft at all. “I believe there’s a sex shop in the next street, filled with exactly the kind of plastic dolls you prefer. Shall I point you in the right direction?”
He let go of her as if she’d burned him. And she recognized that dark heat in his gaze, the way it changed his expression, the things it did to that mouth.
“Get in the car, Alicia,” he ordered her darkly. “I have an aversion to discussing my private life on a public street, deserted or not.”
It was her turn to laugh, in disbelief.
“You have to be crazy if you think I’m getting back in that thing,” she told him. “I’d rather get down on my hands and knees and crawl across a bed of nails, thank you.”
She knew it was a mistake almost before the words left her mouth, and that sudden wolfish look on his face nearly undid her. It was impossible, then, not to picture herself down on her hands and knees, crawling toward that ravenous heat in his winter eyes she could remember too well, and could see right there before her now.
“I wasn’t thinking about sex at present,” he said coolly, and even though she could see from that fire in his gaze that he’d imagined much the same thing she had, she felt slapped. Shamed anew. “Why? Were you?”
It was time to go, Alicia realized then. It had been time to go the moment she’d seen that SUV idling at the curb. Before this thing got any worse—and she had no doubt at all that it would.
“It was lovely to finally meet you properly, Mr. Korovin,” she said crisply. She put a faint emphasis on the word properly, and he blinked, looking almost...abashed? But that was impossible. “I’m sure your partnership with the charity will be a huge boost for us, and I’m as grateful as anyone else. And now I’m going home, where I will continue to actively pretend none of this ever happened. I can only hope you’ll do the same.”
“You didn’t tell me you worked for a children’s charity.”
She didn’t know what she’d expected him to say, but it wasn’t that, with that sting of accusation. She eyed him warily. “Neither did you.”
“Did you know who I was, Alicia?” Nikolai’s face was so hard, his gaze so cold. She felt the chill suddenly, cutting into her. “You stumbled into my arms. Then you stumbled into that conference room today. Convenient.” His eyes raked over her, as if looking for evidence that she’d planned this nightmare. “Your next stumble had best not involve any tabloid magazines or tell-all interviews. You won’t like how I respond.”
But she couldn’t believe he truly thought that, she realized when the initial shock of it passed. She’d been in that bed with him. She knew better. Which meant he was lashing out, seeing what would hurt her. Eliminating problems, as he’d said he would.
“There’s no need to draw out this torture,” she told him, proud of how calm she sounded. “If you want me sacked, we both know you can do it easily. Daniel would have the entire staff turn cartwheels down the length of the Mall if he thought that would please you. Firing me will be a snap.” She squared her shoulders as if she might have to sustain a blow. As if she already had. “If that’s what you plan to do, I certainly can’t stop you.”
He stared at her for a long moment. A car raced past on the street beside them and in the distance she could hear the rush of traffic on the main road. Her breath was coming hard and fast, like she was fighting whole battles in her head while he only stood there, still and watchful.
“You’re a distraction, Alicia,” he told her then, something like regret in his voice. “I can’t pretend otherwise.”
“Of course you can,” she retorted, fighting to keep calm. “All people do is pretend. I pretended to be the sort of woman—” She didn’t want to announce exactly what she’d been pretending for eight years, not to him, so she frowned instead. “Just ignore me and I’ll return the favor. It will be easy.”
“I am not the actor in the family.”
&n
bsp; “I didn’t ask you to play King Lear,” she threw at him, panicked and exasperated in equal measure. “I only asked you to ignore me. How difficult can that possibly be? A man like you must have that down to a science.”
“What an impression you have of me,” Nikolai said after a moment, his voice silken, his eyes narrow. “I treated you very well, Alicia. Have you forgot so soon? You wept out your gratitude, when you weren’t screaming my name.”
She didn’t need the reminder. She didn’t need the heat of it, the wild pulse in her chest, between her legs.
“I was referring to your wealth and status,” Alicia said, very distinctly. “Your position. The fact you have armies of assistants to make sure no one can approach you without your permission. Not your...”
“Particular talents?” His voice was mild enough as he finished the thought for her. The effect his words had on her, inside her, was not.
But then he leaned back against the side of his car, as if he was perfectly relaxed. Even his face changed, and she went still again, because there was something far more predatory about him in this moment than there had been before. It scraped the air thin.
“I have a better solution,” he said, in the confident and commanding tone she recognized from the conference room. “I don’t need to fire you, necessarily. It will serve my purposes far better to use this situation to my advantage.”
Alicia could only shake her head, looking for clues on that face of his that gave nothing away. “I don’t know what that means.”
“It means, Alicia,” he said almost softly, a wolf’s dangerous smile in those winter eyes if not on that hard mouth, “that I need a date.”
* * *
He could use this, Nikolai thought, while Alicia stared up at him as if he’d said that last sentence in Russian instead of English. He could use her.
A problem well managed could become a tool. And every tool could be a weapon, in the right hands. Why not Alicia?
Not Just the Boss's Plaything Page 6
