Not Just the Boss's Plaything(33)

He scowled at her, and she laughed again.

"Relax," she said, in that calm, easy way that simultaneously soothed    and inflamed him. "I'm seducing you, Nikolai. You don't have to do    anything but surrender."

"You are not seducing me," he told her, all cold command, and she    ignored it completely and started toward him as if he hadn't spoken. As    if he hadn't said something similar to her what seemed like a lifetime    ago. "And I am certainly not surrendering."

"Not yet, no," she agreed, smiling. "But the night is young."

"Alicia." He didn't back away when she roamed even closer, not even when    he could see her nipples poking against the thin material of her  shirt   and had to fight to keep himself from leaning down and sucking  them  into  his mouth, right then and there. "This is the first time in  my  life  I've ever done the right thing deliberately. Some respect, I  beg  you."

Her smile changed, making his chest feel tight though he didn't know what it meant.

"Tell me what the right thing is," she said softly, not teasing him any    longer, and she was within arm's reach now. Warm and soft. Right  there.   "Because I think you and I are using different definitions."

"It's leaving you alone," he said, feeling the stirrings of a kind of    panic he thought he'd excised from himself when he was still a child.    "The way I should have done from the start."

She eased closer, her scent teasing his nose, cocoa butter and a hint of    sugar, sweet and rich and Alicia. He was so hard it bordered on  agony,   and the way she looked up at him made his heart begin to hit at  him,   erratic and intense, like it wanted to knock him down. Like it  wouldn't   take much to succeed.

"You vowed you didn't want to sleep with me again," he reminded her, almost savagely. "Repeatedly."                       
       
           



       

"I'm a woman possessed," she told him, her voice husky and low, washing over him and into him. "Infatuated, even."

He remembered when he'd said those same words to her in that far-off    stairwell, when her scent had had much the same effect on him. Her dark    eyes had been so wide and anxious, and yet all of that heat had been    there behind it, electric and captivating. Impossible to ignore. Just  as   she was.

Tonight, there was only heat, so much of it he burned at the sight. And    he wanted her so badly he was afraid he shook with it. So badly he   cared  less and less with every passing second if he did.

"I've never had the slightest inclination to behave the way a good man might," he began, throwing the words at her.

"That simply isn't true."

"Of course it is. I keep telling you, I-"

"You've dedicated your life to doing good, Nikolai," she said, cutting    him off, her voice firm. "You run a foundation that funds a tremendous    amount of charity work. Specifically, children's charities."

"I'm certain bands of activists would occupy me personally if they could    pin me down to a single residence or office." He glared at her, his    voice so derisive it almost hurt, but he knew he wasn't talking to her    so much as the demons in all the corners of the room, dancing there in    his peripheral vision. "I take money from the rich and make it into  more   money. I am the problem."

"Like Robin Hood, then? Who was, as everyone knows, a great villain. Evil to the very core."

"If Robin Hood were a soulless venture capitalist, perhaps," Nikolai    retorted, but there was that brilliant heat inside of him, that terrible    thaw, and he was on the verge of something he didn't want to face. He    wasn't sure he could.

Alicia shook her head, frowning at him as if he was hurting her. He    didn't understand that-this was him not hurting her. This was him    trying. Why was he not surprised that he couldn't do that right, either?

"You help people," she said in that same firm, deliberate way, her gaze    holding his. "The things you do and the choices you make help people.    Nikolai, you do the right thing every single day."

He didn't know what that iron band was that crushed his chest, holding him tight, making everything seem to contract around him.

"You say that," he growled at her, or possibly it was even a howl, torn    from that heart he'd abandoned years ago, "but there is blood on my    hands, Alicia. More blood than you can possibly imagine."

She stepped even closer, then picked up his much larger hands in hers.    He felt a kind of rumbling, a far-off quake, and even though he knew    there was nothing but disaster heading toward him, even though he    suspected it would destroy him and her and possibly the whole of the    city they stood in, the world, the stars above, he let her.

And he watched, fascinated beyond measure and something like terrified,    that tight, hard circle around him pulling tighter and tighter, as she    turned each hand over, one by one, and pressed a kiss into the center   of  each.

The way she'd done for the creature on his chest, that she'd called pretty.

She looked up at him again, and her dark eyes were different. Warm in a    way he'd never seen before. Sweet and something like admiring. Filled    with that light that made him feel simultaneously scraped hollow and    carved new.

Shining as if whatever she saw was beautiful.

"I don't see any blood," she said, distinct and direct, her gaze fast to    his. "I only see you. I've never seen anything but you."

And everything simply...ended.

Nikolai shattered. He broke. All of that ice, every last glacier, swept    away in the flood, the heat, the roaring inferno stretching high into    the night, until he was nothing but raw and wild and that look she  gave   him took up the world.

And replaced it with fire. Fire and heat and all of the things he'd    locked away for all those bleak and terrible reasons. Color and light,    flesh and blood. Rage and need and all of that hunger, all of that  pain,   all of that sorrow and grief, loss and tragedy. His parents,  taken so   young. His brother, who should never have had to fight so  hard. The   uncle who should have cared for them. The army that had  broken him down   and then built him into his own worst nightmare.  Veronika's lies and   Stefan's sweet, infant body cradled in his arms,  like hope. Every   emotion he'd vowed he didn't have, roaring back into  him, filling him   up, tearing him into something new and  unrecognizable.                       
       
           



       

"You have to stop this," he said, but when it left his mouth it was near    to a shout, furious and loud and she didn't even flinch. "You can't  be   kind to a man like me! You don't know what you've done!"

"Nikolai," she said, without looking away from him, without hiding from    the catastrophic storm that was happening right there in front of her,    without letting go of his hands for an instant or dropping her warm    gaze, "I can't be anything else. That's what you deserve."

And he surrendered.

For the first time in his life, Nikolai Korovin stopped fighting.





 CHAPTER NINE

NIKOLAI DROPPED TO his knees, right there in front of her

For a moment he looked ravaged. Untethered and lost, and then he slid    his arms around her hips, making Alicia's heart fall out of her chest,    her breath deserting her in a rush. She could feel the storm all around    them, pouring out of him, enveloping them both. His hard face became    stark, sensual. Fierce.

It all led here. Now. To that look in his beautiful eyes that made her    own fill with tears. A fledging kind of joy, pale and fragile.

Hope.

And she loved him. She thought she understood him. So when that light in    his eyes turned to need, she was with him. It roared in her too,    setting them both alight.

He pulled up the hem of her T-shirt with a strong, urgent hand that    shook slightly, baring her to his view, making her quiver in return. And    that fire that was always in her, always his, turned molten and  rolled   through her, making her heavy and needy and almost scared by  the   intensity of this. Of him. Of these things she felt, storming  inside of   her.