But she didn’t. She couldn’t.
She ached for him. In a way she was very much afraid—with that little thrill of dark foreboding that prodded at her no matter how she tried to ignore it—would be the end of her. But she couldn’t seem to make it stop.
“Nikolai,” she said when she couldn’t stand it any longer—when she wanted to reach over and touch him, soothe him, and knew she couldn’t let herself do that, that he wouldn’t let her do that anyway, “if you were truly a monster, you would simply be one. You wouldn’t announce it. You wouldn’t know how.”
A different expression moved across his face then, the way it had once before in the dark, and tonight it broke her heart. That flash of a vulnerability so deep, so intense. And then she watched him pack it away, cover it in ice, turn it hard and cold.
“There are other things I could do with my thumb,” he said, his voice the rough velvet she knew best. Seductive. Demanding. “That wouldn’t kill you, necessarily, though you might beg for it before I was done.”
But she knew what he was doing. She understood it, and it made her chest hurt.
“Sex is easier to accept than comfort,” she said quietly, watching his face as she said it. He looked glacial. Remote. And yet that heat inside of him burned, she could feel it. “You can pretend it’s not comfort at all. Just sex.”
“I like sex, Alicia.” His voice was a harsh lash through the room, so vicious she almost flinched. “I thought I made that clear our first night together. Over and over again.”
He wanted to prove he was the monster he said he was. He wanted to prove that he was exactly as bad, as terrifying, as he claimed he was. Capable of killing with nothing more than his thumb. She looked at that cold, set face of his and she could see that he believed it. More—that he simply accepted that this was who he was.
And she found that so terribly sad it almost crippled her.
She got up and went to him without consciously deciding to move. He didn’t appear to react, and yet she had the impression he steeled himself at her approach, as if she was as dangerous to him as he was to her. But she couldn’t let herself think about that stunning possibility.
Nikolai watched her draw near, his expression even colder. Harder. Alicia tilted her head back and looked into his extraordinary eyes, darker now than usual as he stared back at her with a kind of defiance, as if he was prepared to fight her until she saw him as he saw himself.
Until she called him a monster, too.
“Do you want to know what I think?” she asked.
“I’m certain I don’t.”
It was a rough scrape of sound, grim and low, but she thought she saw a kind of hunger in his eyes that had nothing to do with his sexual prowess and everything to do with that flash of vulnerability she almost thought she’d imagined, and she kept going.
“I think you hide behind all these rules and boundaries, Nikolai.” She felt the air in the room go electric, but she couldn’t seem to stop herself. “If you tell yourself you’re a monster, if you insist upon it and act upon it, you make it true. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy.”
And she would know all about that, wouldn’t she? Hadn’t she spent eight long years doing exactly that herself? That unexpected insight was like a kick in the stomach, but she ignored it, pushing it aside to look at later.
“Believe me,” she said then, more fiercely than she’d intended. “I know.”
His hands shot out and took her by the shoulders, then pulled her toward him, toward his hard face that was even more lethal, even more fierce than usual. His touch against her bare arms burned, and made her want nothing more than to melt into him. It was too hot. Too dark.
And he was close then, so powerful and furious. So close. Winter and need, fire and longing. The air was thick with it. It made her lungs ache.
“Why don’t you have the good sense to be afraid of me?” he said in an undertone, as if the words were torn from that deep, black part of him. “What is the matter with you? Why do you laugh when anyone else would cry?”
“I don’t see any monsters when I look at you, Nikolai,” she replied, winning the fight to keep her tone light, her gaze on his, no matter how ravaged he looked. How undone. Or how churned up she felt inside. “I only see a man. I see you.”
His hands tightened around her shoulders for a brief instant, and then he let her go. Abruptly, as if he’d wanted to do the opposite.
As if he couldn’t trust himself any more than she could.
“You don’t want to play with this particular fire,” he warned her, his expression fierce and dark, his gaze drilling holes into her. “It won’t simply burn you—it will swallow you whole. That’s not a self-fulfilling prophecy. It’s an inevitability.”
Alicia didn’t know what seared through her then, shocking and dark, thrilling to the idea of it. Of truly losing herself in him, in that fire neither one of them could control, despite the fact there was still that panicked part of her—that part of her that wished she’d gone home and done her laundry that night and never met him—that wanted anything but that. And he saw it. All of it.
She had no idea what was happening to her, or how to stop it, or why she had the breathless sense that it was already much too late.
“Get your coat,” he growled at her. “I’ll take you home.”
Alicia blinked, surprised to find that she was unsteady on her own feet. And Nikolai was dark and menacing, watching her as if no detail was too small to escape his notice. As if he could see all those things inside of her, the fire and the need. That dark urge to demand he throw whatever he had at her, that she could take it, that she understood him—
Of course you don’t understand him, she chided herself. How could you?
“That’s unnecessary,” she said into the tense silence, stiffly, and had to clear the roughness from her voice with a cough.
She straightened her top, smoothed her hands down the sides of her trousers, then stopped when she realized she was fidgeting and he’d no doubt read the anxiety that betrayed the way he did everything else.
“You don’t have to take me home,” she said when he didn’t respond. When he only watched her, his expression brooding and his blue eyes cold. She frowned at him. “This night has been intense enough, I think. I’ll get a taxi.”
* * *
The ride across London—in the backseat of Nikolai’s SUV with him taking up too much of the seat beside her because he’d informed her a taxi was not an option—was much like sitting on simmering coals, waiting for the fire to burst free.
Not exactly comfortable, Alicia thought crossly. And as the fever of what had happened between them in his penthouse faded with every mile they traveled, she realized he’d been right to warn her.
She felt scorched through. Blackened around the edges and much too close to simply going up in flames herself, until she very much feared there’d be nothing left of her. A few ashes, scattered here and there.
Had she really stood there thinking she wanted more of this? Anything he had to give, in fact? What was the matter with her?
But then she thought of that bleak look in his beautiful eyes, that terrible certainty in his voice when he’d told her what a monster he was, and she was afraid she knew all too well what was wrong with her.
“You can go,” she told him, not bothering to hide the tension in her voice as they stood outside the door that led into her building in a narrow alcove stuck between two darkened shops.
Nikolai had walked her to the door without a word, that winter fire roaring all around them both, and now stood close beside her in the chilly December night. Too close beside her. Alicia needed to get inside, lock her doors, take a very long soak in the bath—something to sort her head out before she lost whatever remained of her sanity, if not something far worse than that. She needed him to go.
She dug for her keys in her bag without looking at him, not trusting herself to look away again if she did.
“I’m fine from here. I don’t need an escort.”
He didn’t respond. He plucked the keys from her hand when she pulled them out, and then opened the door with no hesitation whatsoever, waving her inside with a hint of edgy impatience.
It would not be wise to let him in. That was perfectly clear to her.
“Nikolai,” she began, and his gaze slammed into her, making her gulp down whatever she might have said.
“I understand that you need to fight me on everything,” he said, his accent thicker than usual. “If I wanted to psychoanalyze you the way you did me, I’d say I suspect it makes you feel powerful to poke at me. But I wouldn’t get too comfortable with that if I were you.”
“I wasn’t psychoanalyzing you!” she cried, but he brushed it off as if she hadn’t spoken.
“But you should ask yourself something.” He put his hand on her arm and hauled her into the building, sent the door slamming shut with the back of his shoulder and then held her there in the narrow hall. “Exactly what do you think might happen if you get what you seem to want and I lose control?”
“I don’t want—”
“There are reasons men control themselves,” he told her, his face in hers, and she should have been intimidated. She should have been terrified. And instead, all she felt was that greedy pulse of need roll through her. That impossible kick of this jagged-edged joy he brought out in her no matter what she thought she ought to feel. “Especially men like me, who stand like wolves in the dark corners of more than just London clubs. You should think about what those reasons are. There are far worse things than a list of demands.”
“Like your attempts to intimidate me?” she countered, trying to find her footing when she was so off balance she suspected she might have toppled over without him there to hold her up.
“Why don’t you laugh it off?” he asked softly, more a taunt than a question, and she had the wild thought that this might be Nikolai at his most dangerous. Soft and deadly and much too close. His gaze brushed over her face, leaving ice and fire wherever it touched. “No? Is this not funny anymore?”
“Nikolai.” His name felt unwieldy against her tongue, or perhaps that was the look in his eyes, spelling out her sure doom in all of that ferocious blue. “I’m not trying to make you lose control.”
“Oh, I think you are.” He smiled, though it was almost feral and it scraped over her, through her. “But you should make very, very sure that you’re prepared to handle the consequences if you succeed. Do you think you are? Right here in this hallway, with a draft under the door and the street a step away? Do you think you’re ready for that?”
“Stop threatening me,” she bit out at him, but it was a ragged whisper, and he could see into her too easily.
“I don’t make threats, Alicia.” He leaned in closer and nipped at her neck, shocking her. Making her go up in flames. And flinch—or was that simply an electric charge? “You should think of that, too.”
And then he stepped away and jerked his head in an unspoken demand that she lead him up the stairs. And Alicia was so unsteady, so chaotic inside, so unable to process all the things that had happened tonight—what he’d said, what she’d felt, that deep ache inside of her, that fire that never did anything but burn hotter—that she simply marched up the stairs to the flat she shared with Rosie on the top floor without a word of protest.
He didn’t ask if she wanted him inside when they reached her door, he simply strode in behind her as if he owned the place, and the insanity of it—of Nikolai Korovin standing there in her home—was so excruciating it was like pain.
“I don’t want you here,” she told him as he shut her door behind him, the sound of the latch engaging and locking him inside with her too loud in her ears. “I didn’t invite you in.”
“I didn’t ask.”
He was still dressed in black, and that very darkness made him seem bigger and more lethal as he walked inside, his cold gaze moving over the cheerful clutter that was everywhere. Bright paperbacks shoved haphazardly onto groaning shelves, photographs in colorful frames littering every surface, walls painted happy colors and filled with framed prints of famous art from around the world. Alicia tensed, expecting Rosie to pad into view at any moment, but the continuing stretch of silence suggested she was out. Thank God.
“It’s messy,” she said, aware she sounded defensive. “We never quite get around to cleaning it as we should. Of course, we also don’t have a household staff.”
“It looks like real people live here,” he replied, frowning at one of Rosie’s abandoned knitting projects, and it took her a moment to understand that this, too, was a terribly sad thing to say.
That ache in her deepened. Expanded. Hurt.
Alicia tossed her keys on the table in the hall, her coat over the chair, and then followed Nikolai warily as he melted in and out of the rooms of the flat like a shadow.
“What are you looking for?” she asked after a few minutes of this.
“There must be a reason you’re suicidally incapable of recognizing your own peril when you see it,” he said, his eyes moving from place to place, object to object, taking everything in. Cataloging it, she thought. Examining every photograph the way he did every dish left in the sink, every pair of shoes kicked aside in the hall, and the spine of every book piled on the overstuffed bookshelves. “Perhaps there are environmental factors at play.”
He moved past the kitchen off to the right and stood at the far end of the hall that cut down the middle of the flat, where the bedrooms were.
“And what would those be, do you think?” she asked, her voice tart—which felt like a vast improvement. Or was perhaps a response to what had sounded like the faintest hint of that dark humor of his. It was absurd how much she craved more of it. “Fearlessness tucked away in the walls like asbestos?”
Nikolai didn’t answer her, he only sent one of those simmering looks arrowing her way down the hallway, as effective from a few feet away as it was up close. And almost as devastating.
Alicia blew out a breath when he opened the door to her bedroom, the aftershocks of that winter-blue look shifting into something else again. A kind of nervous anticipation. He looked inside for a long moment, and her heart raced. She wished, suddenly, that she’d had the presence of mind to prevent this. She didn’t like the fact that he knew, now, that she favored all those silly, self-indulgent throw pillows, piled so high on her bed, shouting out how soft and breakable she really was. They felt like proof, somehow—and when he looked back at her it was hard to stand still. To keep from offering some kind of explanation.
“A four-poster bed.” It could have been an innocent comment. An observation. But the way he looked at her made her knees feel weak. “Intriguing.”
Alicia thought she understood then, and somehow, that eased the relentless pulse of panic inside.
“Let me guess.” She leaned her hip against the wall and watched him. “The faster you puzzle me out, the less you think you’ll have to worry about losing this control of yours.”
“I don’t like mysteries.”
“Will it make you feel safe to solve whatever mystery you think I am, Nikolai? Is that what this is?”
The look he gave her then did more than simply hurt. It ripped straight down into the center of her, tearing everything she was in two, and there was nothing she could do but stand there and take it.
“I’m not the one who believes in safety, Alicia,” he said softly. “It’s nothing more than a fairy tale to me. I never had it. I wouldn’t recognize it.” His expression was hard and bleak. Almost challenging. “The next time you tally up my scars, keep a special count of those I got when I was under the age of twelve. That knife was only one among many that drew my blood. My unc
le used the back of his hand if I was lucky.” His beautiful mouth twisted, and her heart dropped to her feet. “But I was never very lucky.”
He stood taller then. Almost defiant. And it tore at her. She felt her eyes heat in a way that spelled imminent tears and knew she couldn’t let herself cry for this hard, damaged man. Not where he could see it. She knew somehow that he would never forgive her.
“Don’t waste your pity on me.” His voice was cold, telling her she’d been right. No sympathy allowed. No compassion. He sounded almost insulted when he continued, as if whatever he saw on her face was a slap. “Eventually, I learned how to fight back, and I became more of a monster than my uncle ever could have been.”
“We’re all monsters,” she told him, her voice harsh because she knew he wouldn’t accept anything softer. Hoping against hope he’d never know about that great tear inside of her that she could feel with every breath she took, rending her further and further apart. “Some of us actually behave like monsters, in fact, rather than suffer through the monstrous actions of others. No one escapes their past unscathed.”
“What would you know about it, Alicia?” His gaze was cold, his tone a stinging lash. “What past misdeeds could possibly haunt you while you’re tucked up in your virginal little bedroom, laughing your way through your cheery, happy life? What blood do you imagine is on your hands?”
And so she told him.
Alicia had never told a soul before, and yet she told Nikolai as easily as if she’d shared the story a thousand times. Every detail she could remember and all the ones she couldn’t, that her father had filled in for her that awful morning. All of her shame, her despicable actions, her unforgivable behavior, without garnishment or pretense. As if that tear in her turned her inside out, splayed there before him.
And when she was finished, she was so light-headed she thought she might sag straight down to the floor, or double over where she stood.
“Everyone has ghosts,” she managed to say, crossing her arms over her chest to keep herself upright.
Nikolai turned away from her bedroom door and moved toward her, thrusting his hands into the pockets of his trousers as he did. It made him look more dangerous, not less. It drew her attention to the wide strength of his shoulders, the long, lethal lines of his powerful frame. It made her wonder how anyone could have hurt him so badly when he’d been small that he’d felt he needed to transform himself into so sharp, so deadly a weapon. It made her feel bruised to the core that he’d no doubt look at her now the way her father had....
Not Just the Boss's Plaything Page 10
