Not Just the Boss's Plaything(8)

He was better off blank. Ice cold and gray, all the way through.

The day after Veronika left him, Nikolai had woken bruised and battered    from another fight-or fights-he couldn't recall. He'd been shaky. Sick    from the alcohol and sicker still with himself. Disgusted with the   holes  in his memory and worse, with all the things he did remember. The    things that slid without context through his head, oily and barbed.

His fists against flesh. His bellow of rage. The crunch of wood beneath    his foot, the shattering of pottery against the stone floor. Faces of    strangers on the street, wary. Worried. Then angry. Alarmed.

Blood on a fist-and only some of it his. Fear in those eyes-never his.    Nikolai was what grown men feared, what they crossed streets to avoid,    but he hadn't felt fear himself in years. Not since he'd been a child.

Fear meant there was something left to lose.

That was the last time Nikolai had drunk a drop of alcohol and it was the last time he'd let himself lose control.

Until now.

He didn't understand this. He was not an impulsive man. He didn't pick    up women, he picked them, carefully-and only when he was certain that    whatever else they were, they were obedient and disposable.

When they posed no threat to him at all. Nikolai breathed in, out.

He'd survived wars. This was only a woman.

Nikolai looked at her then, memorizing her, like she was a code he    needed to crack, instead of the bomb itself, poised to detonate.

She wore her dark black hair in a cloud of tight curls around her head, a    tempting halo around her lovely, clever face, and he didn't want any    part of this near-overpowering desire that surged in him, to bury his    hands in the heavy thickness of it, to start the wild rush all over    again. Her body was lithe and ripe with warm, mouthwatering curves that    he'd already touched and tasted, so why did he feel as if it had all    been rushed, as if it wasn't nearly enough?

He shouldn't have this longing to take his time, to really explore her.    He shouldn't hunger for that lush, full mouth of hers again, or want  to   taste his way along that elegant neck for the simple pleasure of   making  her shiver. He shouldn't find it so impossible to look at her   without  imagining himself tracing lazy patterns across every square   inch of the  sweet brown perfection of her skin. With his mouth and then   his hands,  again and again until he knew her.

He'd asked her name, as if he'd needed it. He'd wanted her that much,    and Nikolai knew better than to want. It could only bring him pain.

Vodka had been his one true love, and it had ruined him. It had let    loose that monster in him, let it run amok. It had taken everything that    his childhood and the army hadn't already divided between them and    picked down to the bone. He'd known it in his sober moments, but he    hadn't cared. Because vodka had warmed him, lent color and volume to the    dark, silent prison of his life, made him imagine he could be   something  other than a six-foot-two column of glacial ice.

But he knew better than that now. He knew better than this.

Alicia's eyes fluttered open then, dark brown shot through with amber,    almost too pretty to bear. He hated that he noticed, that he couldn't    look away. She glanced around as if she'd forgotten where they were.    Then she looked at him.

She didn't smile that outrageously beautiful smile of hers, and it made    something hitch inside him, like a stitch in his side. As if he'd lost    that, too.                       
       
           



       

She lifted one foot, shaking her head at the trousers that were still    attached to her ankle, and the shoe she'd never removed. She reached    down, picked up the tangle of her bright red shirt and lacy pink bra    from the pile on the floor of the car, and sighed.

And Nikolai relaxed, because he was back on familiar ground.

Now came the demands, the negotiations, he thought cynically. The    endless manipulations, which were the reason he'd started making any    woman who wanted him agree to his rules before he touched her. Sign the    appropriate documents, understand exactly how this would go before it    started. Nikolai knew this particular dance well. It was why he  normally   didn't pick up women, let them into the sleek, muscular SUV  that told   them too much about his net worth, much less give them his  address....

But instead of pouting prettily and pointedly, almost always the first    transparent step in these situations, Alicia looked at him, let her  head   fall back and laughed.





 CHAPTER THREE

THAT DAMNED LAUGH.

Nikolai would rather be shot again, he decided in that electric moment    as her laughter filled the car. He would rather take another knife or    two to the gut. He didn't know what on earth he was supposed to do with    laughter like that, when it sparkled in the air all around him and  fell   indiscriminately here and there, like a thousand unwelcome  caresses  all  over his skin and something worse-much worse-deep beneath  it.

He scowled.

"Never let it be said this wasn't classy," Alicia said, her lovely voice wry. "I suppose we'll always have that going for us."

There was no we. There was no us. Neither of those words were    disposable. Alarms shrieked like air raid sirens inside of him, mixing    with the aftereffects of that laugh.

"I thought you understood," he said abruptly, at his coldest and most cutting. "I don't-"

"Relax, Tin Man." Laughter still lurked in her voice. She tugged her    trousers back up over her hips, then pulled her bra free of her shirt,    shooting him a breezy smile that felt not unlike a blade to the stomach    as she clipped it back into place. "I heard you the first time. No    heart."

And then she ignored him, as if he wasn't vibrating beside her with all    of that darkness and icy intent. As if he wasn't Nikolai Korovin,   feared  and respected in equal measure all across the planet, in a   thousand  corporate boardrooms as well as the grim theaters of too many   violent  conflicts. As if he was the kind of man someone could simply   pick up in a  London club and then dismiss...

Except, of course, he was. Because she had. She'd done exactly that.

He'd let her.

Alicia fussed with her shirt before pulling it over her head, her black    curls springing out of the opening in a joyful froth that made him    actually ache to touch them. Her. He glared down at his hands as if    they'd betrayed him.

When she looked at him again, her dark eyes were soft, undoing him as    surely as if she really had eviscerated him with a hunting knife. He    would have preferred the latter. She made it incalculably worse by    reaching over and smoothing her warm hand over his cheek, offering    him...comfort?

"You look like you've swallowed broken glass," she said.

Kindly.

Very much as if she cared.

Nikolai didn't want what he couldn't have. It had been beaten out of him    long ago. It was a simple, unassailable fact, like gravity. Like air.

Like light.

But he couldn't seem to stop himself from lifting his hand, tracing that    tempting mouth of hers once more, watching the heat bloom again in  her   eyes.

Just one night, he told himself then. He couldn't help it. That smile of    hers made him realize he was so tired of the cold, the dark. That he    felt haunted by the things he'd lost, the wars he'd won, the battles    he'd been fighting all his life. Just once, he wanted.

One night to explore this light of hers she shone so indiscriminately,    he thought. Just one night to pretend he was something more than ice. A    wise man didn't step onto a land mine when he could see it lying  there   in front of him, waiting to blow. But Nikolai had been through  more   hells than he could count. He could handle anything for a night.  Even   this. Even her.                       
       
           



       

Just one night.

"You should hold on," he heard himself say. He slid his hand around to    cup the nape of her neck, and exulted in the shiver that moved over her    at even so small a touch. As if she was his. That could never happen,   he  knew. But he'd allowed himself the night. He had every intention  of   making it a long one. "I'm only getting started."