Not Just the Boss's Plaything(32)

Alicia let out a sigh and tossed the paperback aside, sinking back    against the soft feather pillows and scowling at the billowing canopy    far above her.

She wasn't the too-drunk girl she'd been at twenty-one any longer-and in    fact, she'd never been the shameful creature she'd thought she was.   Had  she tripped and fallen into any other man on that dance floor that    night, she would have offered him her embarrassed apologies and then    gone straight home to sort out her laundry and carry on living her  quiet   little life.

But it had been Nikolai.

The fact was, she'd kicked and screamed and moaned about the way he'd    forced her into this-but he hadn't. She could have complained. Daniel    was a CEO with grand plans for the charity, but he wasn't an ogre. He    wouldn't have simply let her go without a discussion; he might not have    let her go at all. And when it came down to it, she hadn't even fought    too hard against this mad little plan of Nikolai's, had she?

On some level, she'd wanted all of those tabloid pictures with their    suggestive captions, because her fascination with him outweighed her    shame. And more, because they proved it was real. That the night no one    knew about, that she'd tried so hard to make disappear, had really,    truly happened.                       
       
           



       

She'd tasted him in that shiny black SUV, and she'd loved every moment    of his bold possession. She'd explored every inch of his beautiful body    in that wide bed of his. She'd kissed his scars and even the monster  he   wore on his chest like a warning. And he'd made her sob and moan  and   surge against him as if she'd never get enough of him, and then  they'd   collapsed against each other to sleep in a great tangle, as if  they   weren't two separate people at all.

All of that had happened. All of it was real.

All of this is real, she thought.

Alicia picked up the paperback romance again, flipping through the    well-worn pages to her favorite scene, which she'd read so many times    before she was sure she could quote it. She scanned it again now.

Love can't hinge on an outcome. If it does, it isn't love at all, the    heroine said directly to the man she loved when all was lost. When he    had already given up, and she loved him too much to let him. When she    was willing to fight for him in the only way she could, even if that    meant she had to fight every last demon in his head herself. Love is    risk and hope and a terrible vulnerability. And it's worth it. I    promise.

"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....