Not Just the Boss's Plaything(26)

"I know you feel that I abandoned you," Ivan said after a moment, in his    own, painful way. "That everyone did, but in my case, over and over,    when you were the most vulnerable. I will always wish I could change    that."

Nikolai couldn't take any more of this. Ice floes were cracking apart    inside of him, turning into so much water and flooding him, drowning    him-and he couldn't allow this to happen. He didn't know where it was    heading, or what would be left of him when he melted completely. He only    knew it wouldn't be pretty. For anyone. He'd always known that. The    closest he'd ever been to melted was drunk, and that had only ever  ended   in blood and regret.

"It's only been two years, Ivan." He tried to pull himself back    together, to remember who he was, or at least pretend well enough to end    this conversation. "I haven't suddenly developed a host of tender    emotions you need to concern yourself with trampling."

"You have emotions, Nikolai. You just can't handle them," Ivan corrected    him curtly, a knife sliding in neat and hard. Deep enough to hit  bone.   His eyes were black and intense, and they slammed into Nikolai  from   across the globe with all of his considerable power. "You never  learned   how to have them, much less process them, so your first  response when   you feel something is to attack. Always."

"Apparently things have changed," Nikolai shot back with icy fury. "I    wasn't aware you'd followed your wife's example and become no better    than a tabloid reporter, making up little fantasies and selling them as    fact. I hope the tips of the trade you get in bed are worth the loss  of   self-respect."

"Yes, Nikolai," Ivan bit out, short and hard. "Exactly like that."

Nikolai muttered dark things under his breath, fighting to keep that    flood inside of him under control. Not wanting to think about what his    brother had said, or why it seemed to echo in him, louder and louder.    Why he had Alicia's voice in his head again, talking about sex and    comfort in that maddeningly intuitive way of hers, as if she knew, too,    the ways he reacted when he didn't know how to feel.

Did he ever know how to feel?

And Ivan only settled back in his chair, crossing his arms over his chest, and watched Nikolai fall apart.

"I'm the thing that goes bump in the night," Nikolai said through his    teeth after a moment or two. "You know this. I've never pretended to be    anything else."

"Because our uncle told you so?" Ivan scoffed. "Surely you must realize    by now that he was in love with our mother in his own sick way. He   hated  us both for representing the choice she made, but you-" He shook   his  head. "Your only sin was in resembling her more than I did."

Nikolai couldn't let that in. He couldn't let it land. Because it was    nothing but misdirection and psychological inference when he knew the    truth. He'd learned it the hard way, hadn't he?

"I know what I am," he gritted out.

"You like it." Ivan's gaze was hard. No traces of any guilt now. "I    think it comforts you to imagine you're an irredeemable monster, unfit    for any kind of decent life."                       
       
           



       

You make it true, Alicia had told him, her dark eyes filled with soft,    clear things he hadn't known how to define. It's a self-fulfilling    prophecy.

"You think it yourself," Nikolai reminded Ivan tightly. "Or did I misunderstand your parting words two years ago?"

"If I thought that," Ivan rumbled at him, "I wouldn't think you could do    better than this, would I? But you don't want to accept that,  Nikolai,   because if you did, you'd have to take responsibility for  your  actions."  He held Nikolai's gaze. "Like a man."

I only see a man, Alicia had told him, her dark gaze serious. I see you.

But that wasn't what Nikolai saw. Not in the mirror, not in Alicia's    pretty eyes, not in his brother's face now. He saw the past.

He saw the truth.

He'd been nine years old. Ivan had been off winning martial arts    tournaments already, and Nikolai had borne the brunt of one of his    uncle's drunken rages, as usual.

He'd been lucky the teeth he'd lost were only the last of his milk teeth.

"I can see it in you," his uncle had shouted at him, over and over again, fists flying. "It looks out of your eyes."

He'd towered over Nikolai's bed, Nikolai's blood on his hands and    splattered across his graying white shirt. That was the part Nikolai    always remembered so vividly, even now-that spray of red that air and    time had turned brown, set deep in the grungy shirt that his uncle had    never bothered to throw out. That he'd worn for years afterward, like a    promise.

His uncle had always kept his promises. Every last one, every time,    until his nephews grew big enough to make a few of their own.

"Soon there'll be nothing left," his uncle had warned him, his blue    eyes, so much like Nikolai's, glittering. "That thing in you will be all    you are."

Ivan hadn't come home for days. Nikolai had thought that his uncle had    finally succeeded in killing him, that he'd been dying. By the time  Ivan   returned and had quietly, furiously, cleaned him up, Nikolai had    changed.

He'd understood.

There was nothing good in him. If there had been, his uncle wouldn't    have had to beat him so viciously, so consistently, the way he had since    Nikolai had come to live with him at five years old.

It was his fault his uncle had no choice but to beat the bad things out.

It was his fault, or someone would have rescued him.

It was his fault, or it would stop. But it wouldn't stop, because that    thing inside of him was a monster and eventually, he'd understood then,    it would take him over. Wholly and completely.

And it had.

"Nikolai."

Maybe Ivan had been right to sever this connection, he thought now. What    did they have between them besides terrible memories of those dark,    bloody years? Of course Ivan hadn't protected him, no matter how  Nikolai   had prayed he might-he'd barely managed to protect himself.

And now he'd made himself a real family, without these shadows. Without all of that blood between them.

"Kolya-"

"I can't tell you how much I appreciate this brotherly talk," Nikolai    said, his tone arctic. Because it was the only way he knew to protect    Ivan. And if Nikolai could give that to him, he would, for every bruise    and cut and broken bone that Ivan had stoically tended to across the    years. "I've missed this. Truly."

And then he reached out and cut off the video connection before his    brother could say another word. But not before he saw that same,    familiar sadness in Ivan's eyes. He'd seen it all his life.

He knew it hurt Ivan that this was who Nikolai was. That nothing had changed, and nothing ever would.

Ivan was wrong. Nikolai was changing, and it wasn't for the better. It    was a terrible thing, that flood inside him swelling and rising by the    second, making all of that ice he'd wrapped himself in melt down much    too quickly.

He was changing far more than he should.

Far more than was safe for anyone.

He knew he needed to stop it, he knew how, and yet he couldn't bring    himself to do it. At his core, he was nothing but that twisted, evil    thing who had earned his uncle's fists.                       
       
           



       

Because he wasn't ready to give her up. He had a week left, a week of    that marvelous smile and the way she frowned at him without a scrap of    fear, a week of that wild heat he needed to sample one more time before    he went without it forever. He wanted every last second of it.

Even if it damned them both.

* * *

Alicia stood in a stunning hotel suite high above the city of Prague,    watching it glow in the last of the late-December afternoon, a storybook    kingdom brought to life before her. Snow covered the picturesque red    rooftops and clung to the spires atop churches and castles, while the    ancient River Vltava curved like a sweet silver ribbon through the  heart   of it. She listened as bells tolled out joyful melodies from  every   side, and reminded herself-again-that she wasn't the princess in  this   particular fairy tale, despite appearances to the contrary.