Not Just the Boss's Plaything(15)

"There's a certain liberty in having no choices, Alicia," he told her,    not sure why it bothered him that she was so opposed to a picture with    him. It made his voice harsher. "It makes life very simple. Do what I    tell you to do, or look for a new job."

Nikolai didn't think that was the first moment it had occurred to her    that he held all the power here, but it was no doubt when she realized    he had every intention of using it as he pleased. He saw it on her  face.   In her remarkable eyes.

And he couldn't help but touch her again then, sliding his hand over her    cheek as he'd done before. He felt the sweet heat of her where his    fingertips touched her hairline, the chill of her soft skin beneath his    palm. And that wild heat that was only theirs, sparking wild, charging    through him.

Making him almost wish he was a different man.

She wore a thick black coat against the cold, a bright red scarf looped    around her elegant neck. Her ink-black curls were pulled back from her    face with a scrap of brightly patterned fabric, and he knew that   beneath  it she was dressed in even more colors, bright colors. Emerald   greens  and chocolate browns. She was so bright it made his head spin,   even here  in the dark. It made him achingly hard.

She is nothing more than an instrument, he told himself. Another weapon    for your arsenal. And soon enough, this intoxication will fade into    nothing.

"Please," she whispered, and he wished he were the kind of man who could    care. Who could soothe her. But he wasn't, no matter what he told her    in the dark. "You don't understand. I don't want to lose my job, but I    can't do this."

"You can," Nikolai told her. "And you will." He felt more in control    than he had since she'd slammed into him at the edge of that dance    floor, and he refused to give that up again. He wouldn't. "I'll be the    one infatuated, Alicia. You need only surrender."

She shook her head, but she didn't pull her face from his grasp, and he    knew what that meant even if she didn't. He knew what surrender looked    like, and he smiled.

"Feel free to refuse me at first," he told Alicia then, his voice the    only soft thing about him, as if he was a sweet and gentle lover and    these words were the poetry he'd told her he didn't write. As if he was    someone else. Maybe it would help her to think so. "Resist me, if you    can. That will only make it look better."                       
       
           



       

* * *

"I won't do it," Alicia told him, hearing how unsteady her voice was and    hating that he heard it, too. Hating all of this. "I won't play   along."

"You will," he said in that implacable way that made something inside    her turn over and shiver, while that half smile played with the corner    of his hard mouth as if he knew something she didn't. "Or I'll have you    sacked so fast it will make your head spin. And don't mistake sexual    attraction for mercy, Alicia. I don't have any."

"Of course not," she bit out, as afraid that she would burst into tears    right there as she was that she would nestle further into his hand,   both  impulses terrible and overwhelming at once. "You're the big, bad   wolf.  Fangs and teeth. I get the picture. I still won't do it."

She wrenched herself away from the terrible beguilement of his touch    then, and ran down the street the way she should have at the start,    panic biting at her heels as if she thought he might chase her.

He didn't-but then, he didn't have to chase her personally. His words    did that for him. They haunted her as she tossed and turned in her    sleepless bed that night. They moved over her like an itch she couldn't    scratch. Like a lash against her skin, leaving the kind of scars he   wore  in their wake. Kitchen knives and bullets.

Do what I tell you to do.

Alicia was appalled at herself. He could say terrible things, propose to    use her in some sick battle with his ex-wife, and still, she wanted    him. He was mean and surly and perfectly happy to threaten her-and she    wanted him. She lay awake in her bed and shivered when she thought  about   that last, simple touch, his hand hot despite the chill of the  night   air, holding her face so gently, making everything inside her  run   together and turn into honey.

Because that fool inside of her wanted that touch to mean something    more. Wanted this attraction between them to have more to do with that    vulnerability he'd shown her than the sex they'd had.

Wanted Saturday night to be different from that terrible night eight years ago.

He wants to use you, nothing more, she reminded herself for the    millionth time, punching at her pillow in exhausted despair. It means    nothing more than that.

But Alicia couldn't have pictures of herself in the tabloids. Not at    all, and certainly not in the company of a man who might have been    called a playboy, had he been less formidable. Not that it mattered what    they called him-her father would know exactly what he was. Too   wealthy,  too hard. Too obvious. A man like that wanted women for one   thing only,  and her father would know it.

He would think she was back to old tricks. She knew he would.

Alicia shuddered, her face pressed into her pillow. She could see that    awful look on her father's face that hideous morning as if he stood in    front of her the way he'd done then.

"He is a married man. You know his wife, his children," her father had    whispered, looking as deeply horrified as Alicia had felt.

"Dad," she'd managed to say, though her head had pounded and her mouth    had been like sand. "Dad, I don't know what happened.... It's all-I    don't remember-"

"I know what happened," he'd retorted, disgust plain in his voice and    all across his face. "I saw you, spread-eagled on the grass with a    married man, our neighbor-"

"Dad-" she'd tried again, tears in her voice and her eyes, afraid she might be sick.

"The way you dress, the way you flaunt yourself." He'd shaken his head,    condemnation and that deep disgust written all over him. "I knew you    dressed like a common whore, Alicia, but I never thought you'd act like    one."

She couldn't go through that again, she thought then, staring in mute    despair at her ceiling. She wouldn't go through it again, no matter how    infatuated Nikolai pretended he was. No matter what.

He was going to have to fire her, she decided. She would call his bluff.

"No," she said, very firmly, when a coworker ran up to her the following    day as she fixed herself a midmorning cup of tea and breathlessly   asked  if she'd heard. "Heard what?"                       
       
           



       

But she had a terrible suspicion she could guess. Ruthless and efficient, that was Nikolai.

"Nikolai Korovin expressly asked after you at the meeting this morning!"    the excitable Melanie from the PR team whispered in that way of hers    that alerted the entire office and most of the surrounding  neighborhood,   her eyes wide and pale cheeks red with the thrill of it  all. "He   grilled the team about you! Do you think that means he...?"

She couldn't finish that sentence, Alicia noted darkly. It was too much    for Melanie. The very idea of Nikolai Korovin's interest-his    infatuation-made the girl practically crumple into a shivering heap at    Alicia's feet.

"I imagine he's the kind of man who keeps an annotated enemies list    within arm's reach and several elaborate revenge plots at the ready,"    Alicia said as calmly as possible, dumping as much cold water on this    fire of his as she could, even though she suspected it wouldn't do any    good. "He certainly doesn't like me, Melanie."

The other woman didn't looked particularly convinced, no doubt because    Alicia's explanation flew in the face of the grand romance she'd  already   concocted in her head. Just as Nikolai had predicted.