Not Just the Boss's Plaything(20)

"Access and obedience," he said, very distinctly, and was rewarded with    the faintest tremor across those lips, down that slender frame. "When I    want you, I want you-I don't want a negotiation. Just do what I tell   you  to do."

He could hear every shift in her breathing. The catch, the slow release.    It took every bit of self-control he possessed to wait. To keep his    distance. To let her look away for a moment and collect herself, then    turn that dark gaze back on him.

"I want to be very clear." She leaned forward, putting her elbows on the    table and keeping her eyes trained on him. "What you're telling me,    Nikolai, is that every woman pictured on your arm in every single    photograph of you online has agreed to all of these requirements. All of    them."

He wanted to taste her, a violent cut of need, but he didn't. He waited.                       
       
           



       

"Of course," he said.

And Alicia laughed.

Silvery and musical, just as he remembered. It poured out of her and    deep into him, and for a moment he was stunned by it. As if everything    disappeared into the sound of it, the way she tipped back her head and    let it light up the room. As if she'd hit him from behind and taken  him   down to the ground without his feeling a single blow.

That laughter rolled into places frozen so solid he'd forgotten they    existed at all. It pierced him straight through to a core he hadn't    known he had. And it was worse now than it had been that first night. It    cut deeper. He was terribly afraid it had made him bleed.

"Laugh as much as you like," he said stiffly when she subsided, and was    sitting back in her chair, wiping at her too-bright eyes. "But none of    this is negotiable."

"Nikolai," she said, and that clutched at him too, because he'd never    heard anyone speak his name like that. So warm, with all of that    laughter still moving through her voice. It was almost as if she spoke    to someone else entirely, as if it wasn't his name at all-but she  looked   directly at him, those dark eyes dancing, and he felt as if  she'd shot   him. He wished she had. He knew how to handle a bullet  wound. "I'll  play  this game of yours. But I'm not going to do any of  that."

He was so tense he thought he might simply snap into pieces, but he    couldn't seem to move. Her laughter sneaked inside him, messing him up    and making even his breathing feel impossibly changed. He hated it.

So he couldn't imagine why he wanted to hear it again, with an intensity that very nearly hurt.

"That's not one of your options," he told her, his voice the roughest he'd ever heard it.

But she was smiling at him, gently, and looked wholly uncowed by his tone.

"If I were you, Nikolai," she said, "I'd start asking myself why I'm so    incapable of interacting with other people that I come up with    ridiculous rules and regulations to govern things that are supposed to    come naturally. That are better when they do."

"Because I am a monster," he said. He didn't plan it. It simply came out    of his mouth and he did nothing to prevent it. She stopped smiling.    Even the brightness in her eyes dimmed. "I've never been anything else.    These rules and regulations aren't ridiculous, Alicia. They're    necessary."

"Do they make you feel safe?" she asked with a certain quiet kindness he    found deeply alarming, as if she knew things she couldn't possibly    guess at, much less know.

But this was familiar ground even so. He'd had this same conversation    with his brother, time and again. He recognized the happy, delusional    world she'd come from that let her ask a question like that, and he knew    the real world, cynical and bleak. He recognized himself again.

It was a relief, cold and sharp.

"Safety is a delusion," he told her curtly, "and not one I've ever    shared. Some of us live our whole lives without succumbing to that    particular opiate."

She frowned at him. "Surely when you were a child-"

"I was never a child." He pushed back from the table and rose to his feet. "Not in the way you mean."

She only watched him, still frowning, as he crossed his arms over his    chest, and she didn't move so much as a muscle when he glared down at    her. She didn't shrink back the way she should. She looked at him as if    he didn't scare her at all, and it ate at him. It made him want to  show   her how bad he really was-but he couldn't start down that road.  He had   no idea where it would lead.

"Why do you think my uncle tried to keep me in line with a kitchen knife? It wasn't an accident. He knew what I was."

"Your parents-"

"Died in a fire with seventy others when I was barely five years old,"    he told her coldly. "I don't remember them. But I doubt they would have    liked what I've become. This isn't a bid for sympathy." He shrugged.    "It's a truth I accepted a long time ago. Even my own brother believes    it, and this after years of being the only one alive who thought I  could   be any different. I can't." He couldn't look away from her dark  eyes,   that frown, from the odd and wholly novel notion that she wanted  to   fight for him that opened up a hollow in his chest. "I won't."                       
       
           



       

"Your brother is an idiot." Her voice was fierce, as if she was prepared    to defend him against Ivan-and even against himself, and he had no   idea  what to do with that. "Because while families always have some   kind of  tension, Nikolai, monsters do not exist. No matter what an   uncle who  holds a knife on a child tells you. No matter what we like to   tell  ourselves."

"I'm glad you think so." Nikolai wasn't sure he could handle the way she    looked at him then, as if she hurt for him. He wasn't sure he knew   how.  "Soft, breakable creatures like you should believe there's nothing    terrible out there in the dark. But I know better."





 CHAPTER SIX

THAT WAS PAIN on his face.

In those searing eyes of his. In the rough scrape of his voice. It was    like a dark stain that spilled out from deep inside of him, as if he  was   torn apart far beneath his strong, icy surface. Ravaged, it dawned  on   her, as surely as if that ferocious thing on his chest rent him to    pieces where he stood.

Alicia felt it claw at her, too.

"I'm neither soft nor breakable, Nikolai." She kept her voice steady and    her gaze on his, because she thought he needed to see that he hadn't    rocked her with that heartbreakingly stark confession, even if he had.    "Or as naive as you seem to believe."

"There are four or five ways I could kill you from here." His voice was like gravel. "With my thumb."

Alicia believed him, the way she'd believed he'd be good in bed when    he'd told her he was, with a very similar matter-of-fact certainty. It    occurred to her that there were any number of ways a man could be    talented with his body-with his clever hands for pleasure, with his    thumb for something more violent-and Nikolai Korovin clearly knew every    one of them. She thought she ought to be frightened by that.

What was wrong with her that she wasn't?

"Please don't," she said briskly, as if she couldn't feel the sting of    those claws, as if she didn't see that thick blackness all around him.

Nikolai stared at her. He stood so still, as if he expected he might    need to bolt in any direction, and he held himself as if he expected an    attack at any moment. As if he expected she might be the attacker.

Alicia thought of his coldness tonight, that bone-deep chill that should    have hurt, so much harsher than the gruff, darkly amusing man she'd    taken by surprise in that club. Who'd surprised her in return. She    thought about what little he'd told her of his uncle meant for the boy    he must have been-what he must have had to live through. She thought    about a man who believed his own brother thought so little of him, and    who accepted it as his due. She thought of his lists of rules that he    obviously took very seriously indeed, designed to keep even the most    intimate people in his life at bay.