“You either love him or you don’t, Alicia,” she told herself then, a hushed whisper in her quiet room.
And she did.
Then she took a deep breath to gather her courage, swung out of the high bed and went to prove it.
* * *
Nikolai sat by the fire in the crimson master bedroom that dominated the far corner of the hotel suite, staring at the flames as they crackled and danced along the grate.
He wished this wasn’t the longest night of the year, with all of that extra darkness to lead him into temptation, like one more cosmic joke at his expense. He wished he could take some kind of pride in the uncharacteristic decision he’d made instead of sitting here like he needed to act as his own guard, as if a single moment of inattention would have him clawing at her door like an animal.
He wished most of all that this terrible thaw inside of him wasn’t an open invitation for his demons to crawl out and fill every extra, elongated hour with their same old familiar poison.
He shifted in the plush velvet armchair and let the heat of the fire play over his skin, wishing it could warm him inside, where too many dark things lurked tonight, with their sharp teeth and too many scenes from his past.
He hated Prague, happy little jewel of a city that it was, filled to the top of every last spire with all the joyful promises of a better life even the Iron Curtain had failed to stamp out. Anywhere east of Zurich he began to feel the bitter chill of Mother Russia breathing down his neck, her snow-covered nails digging into his back as if she might drag him back home at any moment.
It was far too easy to imagine himself there, struggling to make it through another vicious winter with no end, dreamless and broken and half-mad. Feral to the bone. In his uncle’s bleak home in Nizhny Novgorod. In corrupt, polluted, snowbound Moscow with the equally corrupt and polluted Veronika, when he’d been in the military and had thought, for a time, it might save him from himself.
Or, even sadder in retrospect, that Veronika might.
Being in Prague was too much like being back there. Nikolai was too close to the raw and out-of-control creature he’d been then, careening between the intense extremes that were all he’d ever known. Either losing himself in violence or numbing himself however he could. One or the other, since the age of five.
He could feel that old version of him right beneath his skin, making him restless. On edge.
Then again, perhaps it wasn’t Prague at all. Perhaps it was the woman on the other side of this hotel suite even now, with her dark eyes that saw more of him than anyone else ever had and that carnal distraction of a mouth.
He was in trouble. He knew it.
This was the kind of night that called for a bottle of something deliberately incapacitating, but he couldn’t allow himself the escape. He couldn’t numb this away. He couldn’t slam it into oblivion. He had to sit in it and wait for morning.
Nikolai scowled at the fire while his demons danced on, bold and sickening and much too close, tugging him back into his dirty past as if he’d never left it behind.
As if he never would.
A scant second before Alicia appeared in his door, he sensed her approach, his gaze snapping to meet hers as she paused on the threshold.
He almost thought she was another one of his demons, but even as it crossed his mind, he knew better. Alicia was too alive, that light of hers beaming into his room as if she’d switched on the lamps, sending all of those things that tortured him in the dark diving for the shadows.
She’d changed out of her formal attire and was standing there in nothing but an oversized wide-necked T-shirt—a pink color, of course—that slid down her arm to bare her shoulder and the upper slope of one breast. Her curls stood around her head in abandon, and her feet were bare.
Nikolai’s throat went dry. The rest of him went hard.
“It’s below zero tonight,” he barked at her, rude and belligerent. Desperate. “You shouldn’t be walking around like that unless you’ve decided to court your own death, in which case, I can tell you that there are far quicker ways to go.”
The last time he’d used a tone like that on a woman, she’d turned and run from him, sobbing. But this was Alicia. His strong, fearless Alicia, and she only laughed that laugh of hers that made him want to believe in magic.
When he looked at her, he thought he might.
“I’ve come to your room wearing almost nothing and your first reaction is to talk about the weather and death,” she said in that dry way of hers, and God help him, this woman was worse than all his demons put together. More powerful by far. “Very romantic, indeed. My heart is aglow.”
Nikolai stood up then, as if that would ward her off. He didn’t know which was worse. That she was standing there with so much of her lush brown skin on display, her lithe and supple legs, that shoulder, even the hint of her thighs—naked and smooth and far too tempting. Or that teasing tone she used, so dry and amused, that set off brushfires inside him.
His body felt as if it was someone else’s, unwieldy and strange. He wished he hadn’t stripped down to no more than his exercise trousers, low on his hips, the better to while away a sleepless night at war with himself.
There was too much bare flesh in the room now. Too many possibilities. He could only deny himself so much....
He scowled at her, and she laughed again.
“Relax,” she said, in that calm, easy way that simultaneously soothed and inflamed him. “I’m seducing you, Nikolai. You don’t have to do anything but surrender.”
“You are not seducing me,” he told her, all cold command, and she ignored it completely and started toward him as if he hadn’t spoken. As if he hadn’t said something similar to her what seemed like a lifetime ago. “And I am certainly not surrendering.”
“Not yet, no,” she agreed, smiling. “But the night is young.”
“Alicia.” He didn’t back away when she roamed even closer, not even when he could see her nipples poking against the thin material of her shirt and had to fight to keep himself from leaning down and sucking them into his mouth, right then and there. “This is the first time in my life I’ve ever done the right thing deliberately. Some respect, I beg you.”
Her smile changed, making his chest feel tight though he didn’t know what it meant.
“Tell me what the right thing is,” she said softly, not teasing him any longer, and she was within arm’s reach now. Warm and soft. Right there. “Because I think you and I are using different definitions.”
“It’s leaving you alone,” he said, feeling the stirrings of a kind of panic he thought he’d excised from himself when he was still a child. “The way I should have done from the start.”
She eased closer, her scent teasing his nose, cocoa butter and a hint of sugar, sweet and rich and Alicia. He was so hard it bordered on agony, and the way she looked up at him made his heart begin to hit at him, erratic and intense, like it wanted to knock him down. Like it wouldn’t take much to succeed.
“You vowed you didn’t want to sleep with me again,” he reminded her, almost savagely. “Repeatedly.”
“I’m a woman possessed,” she told him, her voice husky and low, washing over him and into him. “Infatuated, even.”
He remembered when he’d said those same words to her in that far-off stairwell, when her scent had had much the same effect on him. Her dark eyes had been so wide and anxious, and yet all of that heat had been there behind it, electric and captivating. Impossible to ignore. Just as she was.
Tonight, there was only heat, so much of it he burned at the sight. And he wanted her so badly he was afraid he shook with it. So badly he cared less and less with every passing second if he did.
“I’ve never had the slightest inclination to behave the way a good man might,” he began, throwing the words at her.
“That simply isn’t true.”
“Of course it is. I keep telling you, I—”
“You’ve dedicated your life to doing good, Nikolai,” she said, cutting him off, her voice firm. “You run a foundation that funds a tremendous amount of charity work. Specifically, children’s charities.”
“I’m certain bands of activists would occupy me personally if they could pin me down to a single residence or office.” He glared at her, his voice so derisive it almost hurt, but he knew he wasn’t talking to her so much as the demons in all the corners of the room, dancing there in his peripheral vision. “I take money from the rich and make it into more money. I am the problem.”
“Like Robin Hood, then? Who was, as everyone knows, a great villain. Evil to the very core.”
“If Robin Hood were a soulless venture capitalist, perhaps,” Nikolai retorted, but there was that brilliant heat inside of him, that terrible thaw, and he was on the verge of something he didn’t want to face. He wasn’t sure he could.
Alicia shook her head, frowning at him as if he was hurting her. He didn’t understand that—this was him not hurting her. This was him trying. Why was he not surprised that he couldn’t do that right, either?
“You help people,” she said in that same firm, deliberate way, her gaze holding his. “The things you do and the choices you make help people. Nikolai, you do the right thing every single day.”
He didn’t know what that iron band was that crushed his chest, holding him tight, making everything seem to contract around him.
“You say that,” he growled at her, or possibly it was even a howl, torn from that heart he’d abandoned years ago, “but there is blood on my hands, Alicia. More blood than you can possibly imagine.”
She stepped even closer, then picked up his much larger hands in hers. He felt a kind of rumbling, a far-off quake, and even though he knew there was nothing but disaster heading toward him, even though he suspected it would destroy him and her and possibly the whole of the city they stood in, the world, the stars above, he let her.
And he watched, fascinated beyond measure and something like terrified, that tight, hard circle around him pulling tighter and tighter, as she turned each hand over, one by one, and pressed a kiss into the center of each.
The way she’d done for the creature on his chest, that she’d called pretty.
She looked up at him again, and her dark eyes were different. Warm in a way he’d never seen before. Sweet and something like admiring. Filled with that light that made him feel simultaneously scraped hollow and carved new.
Shining as if whatever she saw was beautiful.
“I don’t see any blood,” she said, distinct and direct, her gaze fast to his. “I only see you. I’ve never seen anything but you.”
And everything simply...ended.
Nikolai shattered. He broke. All of that ice, every last glacier, swept away in the flood, the heat, the roaring inferno stretching high into the night, until he was nothing but raw and wild and that look she gave him took up the world.
And replaced it with fire. Fire and heat and all of the things he’d locked away for all those bleak and terrible reasons. Color and light, flesh and blood. Rage and need and all of that hunger, all of that pain, all of that sorrow and grief, loss and tragedy. His parents, taken so young. His brother, who should never have had to fight so hard. The uncle who should have cared for them. The army that had broken him down and then built him into his own worst nightmare. Veronika’s lies and Stefan’s sweet, infant body cradled in his arms, like hope. Every emotion he’d vowed he didn’t have, roaring back into him, filling him up, tearing him into something new and unrecognizable.
“You have to stop this,” he said, but when it left his mouth it was near to a shout, furious and loud and she didn’t even flinch. “You can’t be kind to a man like me! You don’t know what you’ve done!”
“Nikolai,” she said, without looking away from him, without hiding from the catastrophic storm that was happening right there in front of her, without letting go of his hands for an instant or dropping her warm gaze, “I can’t be anything else. That’s what you deserve.”
And he surrendered.
For the first time in his life, Nikolai Korovin stopped fighting.
CHAPTER NINE
NIKOLAI DROPPED TO his knees, right there in front of her
For a moment he looked ravaged. Untethered and lost, and then he slid his arms around her hips, making Alicia’s heart fall out of her chest, her breath deserting her in a rush. She could feel the storm all around them, pouring out of him, enveloping them both. His hard face became stark, sensual. Fierce.
It all led here. Now. To that look in his beautiful eyes that made her own fill with tears. A fledging kind of joy, pale and fragile.
Hope.
And she loved him. She thought she understood him. So when that light in his eyes turned to need, she was with him. It roared in her too, setting them both alight.
He pulled up the hem of her T-shirt with a strong, urgent hand that shook slightly, baring her to his view, making her quiver in return. And that fire that was always in her, always his, turned molten and rolled through her, making her heavy and needy and almost scared by the intensity of this. Of him. Of these things she felt, storming inside of her.
Her legs shook, and he kissed her once, high on her thigh. She could feel the curve of his lips, that rare smile, and it went through her like a lightning bolt, burning her straight down to the soles of her feet where they pressed into the thick carpet.
And then slowly, so slowly, he peeled her panties down her legs, then tossed them aside.
Alicia heard a harsh sort of panting, and realized it was her.
“Solnyshka,” he said, in that marvelous voice of his, darker and harsher than ever, and it thrilled her, making her feel like the sun he thought she was, too bright and hot to bear. “I think you’d better hold on.”
He wrapped one strong arm around her bottom and the back of her thighs, and then, using his shoulder to knock her leg up and out of his way, he leaned forward and pressed his mouth against her heat.
And then he licked into her.
It was white-hot ecstasy. Carnal lightning. It seared through her, almost like pain, making her shudder against him and cry out his name. She fisted her hands in his hair, his arms were tight around her to keep her from falling, and she simply went limp against his mouth.
His wicked, fascinating, demanding mouth.
She detonated. Her licked her straight over the edge, and she thought she screamed, lost in a searingly hot, shuddering place where there was nothing left but him and these things he did to her, this wild magic that was only his. Theirs.
“Too fast,” he rumbled, from far away, but everything was dizzy, confused, and it took her a long breath, then another, to remember who she was. And where.
And then another to understand that he’d flipped them around to spread her out on the deep rug in front of the fire.
“Nikolai,” she said, or thought she did, but she lost whatever half-formed thought that might have been, because he was taking up where he’d left off.
He used his mouth again, and his hands. He stroked deep into her core, throwing her straight back into that inferno as if she’d never found release. Soon she was writhing against him, exulting in how he held her so easily, with such confident mastery, and used his tongue, his teeth, even that smile again, like sensual weapons.
Alicia arched up against him, into him. Her hands dug at the carpet below her, and his mouth was an impossible fire, driving her wild all over again, driving her higher and higher, until he sucked hard on the very center of her heat and she exploded all around him once again.
When she came back to herself this time, he was helping her up, letting her stumble against him and laughing
as he pulled her T-shirt over her head, then muttering something as he took her breasts in his hands. He tested their weight, groaned out his approval, and then pulled each hard, dark nipple into his mouth.
Lighting the fire in her all over again. Making her burn.
He picked her up and carried her to the bed, following her down and stretching out beside her, sleek and powerful, tattooed and dangerous. He’d rid himself of his trousers at some point and there was nothing between them then.
Only skin and heat. Only the two of them, at last.
For a while, it was enough. They explored each other as if this was the first time, this taut delight, this delicious heat. Alicia traced the bright-colored shapes and lines that made up his monster with her tongue, pressed kisses over his heart, hearing it thunder beneath her. Nikolai stroked his big hands down the length of her back, testing each and every one of her curves as he worshipped every part of her equally.
He didn’t speak. And Alicia kissed him, again and again, as if that could say it for her, the word she dared not say, but could show him. With her mouth, her hands. Her kiss, her smile.
They teased the flames, built them slowly, making up for all those lost weeks since the last time they’d touched like this. Until suddenly, it was too much. They were both out of breath and the fire had turned into something darker, more desperate. Hotter by far.
Nikolai reached for the table near his bed and then rolled a condom down his hard length, his eyes glittering on hers, and Alicia almost felt as if he was stroking her that way, so determined and sure. She could feel his touch inside of her, stoking those flames. Making her wild with smoke and heat and need.
Alicia couldn’t wait, as desperate to have him inside her again as if she hadn’t already found her own pleasure, twice. As if this was new.
Because it felt that way, she thought. It felt completely different from what had gone before, and she knew why. She might have fallen hard for him the night she met him, but she loved the man she knew. The man who had saved her from a prison of shame. This man, who looked at her as if she was a miracle. This man, who she believed might be one himself.
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