Graphic artist Izzy Cornwall fled to Thailand to escape suffocating grief and guilt after her sister’s suicide. As she locks gazes with Aleks, their instant attraction sets her on fire. And the way he looks at her makes her feel what she hasn’t felt in months: that she actually exists.
In the heat of a Bangkok rainstorm, their chemistry steams up what was supposed to be one night of pain-numbing passion. Neither expected that a single encounter would change all the rules, making Aleks the novice, and Izzy the grandmaster. But if Izzy wants his heart, she’ll have to show him that in order to win, sometimes you have to lose.
Warning: Contains one hot, controlling Russian chess master, a heroine who’s more than capable of taking him on in a game of strip chess, and a checkmate to make Kasparov proud.
Enjoy the following excerpt for Black Knight, White Queen:
The man, an Australian tourist, moved his bishop and looked smug. “Check.”
Aleks wasn’t bothered. He’d set up the trap and the Australian had fallen right into it. Reaching out, he moved his knight. “Checkmate.”
The Australian frowned. “Shit. No way.”
Aleks said nothing. There wasn’t anything to say. The evidence was right there on the chessboard.
The guy cursed a bit in the way Australians often did, then reached over the board to shake hands, gracious in defeat.
A few people had gathered around them while they’d been playing, the magnificent view of Bangkok from the hotel’s famous outdoor rooftop bar apparently far less interesting than a chess game. As the Australian vacated his seat, a couple of them looked as though they wanted to play too, but Aleks shook his head and began packing up his board. Playing tourists wasn’t much of a challenge and it did nothing for his game. He’d be playing real opponents in the tournament in a couple of days anyway.
As the crowd drifted away, he gestured to the barman again, and the man poured him another shot of vodka. Good Russian vodka. Viktor’s favourite.
He downed it, but the alcohol did nothing to ease the tightness in his chest at the thought of the old man.
Grief. It’s called grief.
Was it? It had been so long since he’d felt anything he couldn’t be sure. Then again, perhaps it was. Grief was, after all, the usual emotion after someone had died.
Aleks gripped the shot glass then pushed it over the bar for another hit, puzzled with himself.
In order to feel grief one had to care. And Aleks wasn’t sure that he did. After all, Viktor had been just another old man playing chess in Moscow’s Timiryazevsky Park. A man who’d been kind to him on a few occasions when Aleks had been young, but no one that special.
The barman filled up the glass again, and Aleks drank it down, rubbing his chest. But even the third vodka didn’t make a difference to the odd tight feeling. He may as well have been drinking water.
The wind picked up, replacing the scent of exotic flowers, sewage and the hot oil smell of a big city with the heavy, thick scent of rain. Distant thunder rumbled, a warning that perhaps an open-air rooftop bar in the middle of tropical Bangkok was not the best place to be in the rainy season.
Bar staff began to usher people through the tables of the outdoor restaurant situated near the bar, toward the steep, beautifully lit glass staircase that led up from the terrace to the domed elevator entrance.
Aleks pushed away the shot glass and stood.
Lightning crackled across the sky, lighting up the rooftop. This high up, the flash against the clouds was magnificent and prompted a startled gasp from the patrons waiting for the elevators.
Aleks didn’t look. Lightning was lightning. He’d seen it before. Moving toward the staircase, he began threading his way through the now empty tables of the restaurant area.
“It’s incredible, isn’t it?” a woman said in a husky, awestruck voice. “So beautiful.”
Something in the sound of that voice whispered along his nerve endings like the brush of cat’s tail. It made him stop. Made him look.
She stood near the glass balustrade that bounded the roof, staring up at the clouds as if mesmerised. Lightning flashed again like a magnesium flare, illuminating delicate features and an incredible mass of pale silver-gilt hair held back by a purple scarf. Her eyes were wide and in that flash of light, he saw they were blue. A startling electric blue.
He stared, unable to help himself, slowly taking in the rest of her. She wore typical backpacker gear, blue tie-dyed loose trousers and a tight little black singlet that revealed a slender, womanly figure. Clothes that wouldn’t have passed muster with the hotel’s draconian dress code that was for sure. How did she get up here? She was extraordinary. He’d never seen anything like her.