Maim.
Kill.
Destroy.
Yes, Vaughn was going to want to do all those things if Anastasia’s stalker should prove to be the man who had just walked so jauntily away from their hotel suite.
After delivering another white lily accompanied by a threatening card?
It was a distinct possibility when none had appeared so far today. Not in Anastasia’s dressing room at the theater, nor in their suite earlier when they returned to the hotel to change before going out to the Volkovs’.
“Was that Sergei we saw just now?” Anastasia winced.
“Yes.”
Her eyes were wide. “Do you think he could have delivered another flower to our hotel suite?”
It warmed him that Anastasia now so easily accepted they shared those rooms. “Possibly. Please do as I say and just stay inside until I return.” Vaughn didn’t move until he was sure Anastasia, after one last bewildered glance in his direction, had closed and locked the door.
Vaughn was then free to hurry down the hallway in search of the man who had been upsetting her—deliberately?—for weeks with the gifts of those unwanted flowers and cards.
It was also a stark reminder of the reason he was here in the first place. Yes, he now knew Anastasia was his mate, and he wanted to consummate that relationship as soon as possible—he needed to do that, for his own sanity—but he was also here to protect Anastasia from a stalker.
Despite Vaughn’s haste in following the other man, the hallway was empty by the time he turned the corner. Closed door after closed door ran the length of the corridor, and Vaughn had no idea which room was the one he was looking for.
He took out his cell phone and scrolled down to one of the numbers he had added earlier today.
Antipov answered the call after only two rings. “Don’t tell me, you’ve locked yourself out of your room again,” he murmured with indulgence.
“Not that I’m aware of, no,” Vaughn rasped.
“Romanov?” Antipov’s tone instantly changed to sharp query.
“I need the number of Sergei Rusikov’s hotel room,” he snapped impatiently.
“Why?” the company director barked back suspiciously.
“Just give me the fucking room number,” he grated between clenched teeth.
“Not until you tell me why you could possibly want to know the number of Sergei’s hotel suite at almost midnight?”
Slash.
Rend.
Decimate.
Vaughn was currently having trouble maintaining control of the dragon clawing inside him to be set free.
If Vaughn allowed that to happen, then he doubted there would be a single part of this hotel not destroyed by his dragon’s anger at whoever was attempting to frighten their mate.
Much as this delay galled Vaughn, he doubted Sergei, a man obviously totally self-confident as the male principle of The Turov Ballet Company, would be going anywhere in his immediate future. Besides, the other man had no idea that Vaughn had seen him possibly leaving Anastasia’s suite.
“Okay, give me your room number,” he bit out evenly. “We’ll discuss this further once I get there.”
It surprised him immensely to realize that the room number Antipov now gave him was the one next to Anastasia’s.
Chapter Eight
Anastasia stood frozen in the bedroom doorway, unable to comprehend what she was seeing.
The room was in total chaos.
The bedcovers had been taken off both beds and the mattresses upended.
The wardrobe door was open, but no clothes still hung inside because they were all strewn about the floor. Most of them were so badly ripped, they were unrecognizable as the garments they had once been.
The precious pairs of ballet shoes she’d brought with her from Russia had been pulled apart and lay in pieces, the matching ribbons removed and shredded and now lying nearby.
Her bras and briefs, usually folded neatly and stored in the drawers of the dressing table, were amongst that heap of ruined clothing.
Her toiletries were no longer in the bathroom, but added to the mess on the floor of the bedroom. Her bottle of shower gel lay empty on the floor. Likewise, the bottle of her favorite perfume. Beside that lay the tube of toothpaste, squeezed empty and dropped amongst the chaos that had once been Anastasia’s belongings.
Several items she recognized as being the small keepsakes she’d managed to buy during the tour, now smashed or broken in some other way.
She sank weakly to the floor in the doorway as her knees gave way, too shocked to cry.
She’d never owned very much beside the clothes she used to practice ballet, and a few outfits she could wear when she wasn’t practicing. She had brought all of them with her from Russia. But now each and every piece of clothing, things that she’d worked so hard to have the money to buy, was either ripped into pieces or otherwise destroyed.
Anastasia felt as if she had been violated along with them. Not physically, but emotionally.
Someone had deliberately entered the suite with malicious intent while she and Vaughn were out for the evening and proceeded to rip Anastasia’s life into as many shreds as her clothing was now in.
Seeing the teddy bear, left outside the orphanage with her twenty years ago, also ripped into pieces, the stuffing strewn about the floor, was the final blow.
She had remained unaffected throughout the delivery of those white lilies.
Had tried to overlook the fact that the messages on the cards that accompanied those flowers were becoming nastier and nastier.
After all, they were just flowers and words.
But this…this was a direct assault on everything that was Anastasia. On everything she owned.
Had owned.
Because she doubted that a single one of the garments on the floor was salvageable. Those that weren’t ripped beyond repair were covered in shower gel, perfume, and toothpaste.
A sob caught in her throat as she gathered up the remnants of the brown bear and held it to her chest.
Someone had wanted to destroy her, and they had succeeded. Probably beyond their wildest dreams.
Vaughn, not in the best of moods to begin with, frowned heavily when Anastasia didn’t open the door in answer to his knock. Not the first time, or the second.
Instead, he used his own keycard to open the door and step inside. Anastasia wasn’t waiting for him in the sitting room, but she had left the lights on, thank goodness. She must have become tired of waiting for him to return and decided to go to bed—
Every muscle in Vaughn’s body froze as his enhanced hearing picked up on the sound of someone breathing shallowly and unevenly. As if it was an effort for them to breathe at all. Anastasia’s perfume of oranges and honeysuckle was also overlaid with the smell of fear.
Vaughn strode rapidly down the hallway to where the bedroom door stood ajar. Anastasia was a crumpled and pale-faced figure in the doorway, her pupils dilated until her eyes looked almost completely black. She held something pressed close to her chest. Beyond her was a chaos of clothing and bed linen that covered every inch of the bedroom carpet.
Vaughn didn’t hesitate to bend down and gather her up into his arms. He cradled her limp body against his chest as he carried her through to the normality of the sitting room. He continued to hold her tightly against him as he sank down on the couch, Anastasia sitting on his thighs.
He pulled back slightly so he could look down at her. “Are you hurt?” he probed gently. “Anastasia, answer me please,” he pleaded huskily at her silence.
She drew in a long and ragged breath. “I’m not hurt,” she answered woodenly.
Vaughn breathed a sigh of relief. “Was it like this when you came into the suite?”
“Yes.”
“But there was no one else in here?” He cursed himself now for not coming with her and checking that it was safe.
“No.”
Vaughn’s concern for her was deepening by the second. He�
��d seen people like this before. So traumatized by shock, their emotions had simply stopped, leaving them a blank shell.
“Anastasia, please talk to me,” he said. “Whatever you’ve lost here tonight, I’ll replace it. Anything. Everything.” He grasped her shoulders when she didn’t respond. “Anastasia, please talk to me.”
She drew in a deep breath to her starved lungs. “You can’t replace all the hard work it took for me to buy those things in the first place.”
“I can buy you more.”
She shook her head. “You can’t replace this, when it was the only personal item left with me at the orphanage twenty years ago and all I have to show that I once had a mother who cared enough to give me a stuffed bear.” Her knuckles showed white as she gripped the tattered pieces of what Vaughn now realized was once that precious teddy bear.
“Does it have a name?”
“Just Bear.”
“I can repair it for you,” he assured softly.
She blinked, some of the focus returning to her gaze as she looked at him. “Some things remain broken beyond repair.”
Vaughn remembered the gentleness and caring of his own mother. No one could have asked for a more loving mother.
Anastasia’s life had been so very different from his own. Her mother had abandoned her as a baby, with only the teddy bear as a reminder of her existence. The clothing and ballet shoes that had been destroyed, along with the emptied toiletries, could all be replaced. But not this teddy bear.
Had whoever did this known that?
Had they deliberately targeted the one thing most likely to destroy Anastasia?
But why?
What could they possibly have to gain from hurting Anastasia so grievously?
Vaughn could think of only one thing.
And only one person who stood to gain from Anastasia’s almost comatose state.
“Did Irina Boyarova know we would be out of the hotel this evening?” he prompted gently.
“Irina?” Anastasia repeated woodenly.
“Did your ex-roommate know the two of us were going out to dinner this evening and the suite would be empty?” he persisted.
With Anastasia too emotionally upset to dance, Irina Boyarova would be promoted to dancing the principal role.
From the performers Vaughn had known in the past, actresses and dancers, he knew that they had all been capable of stepping on and over any obstacle that stood in the way of their achieving the success they hungered for, including people.
With Anastasia incapacitated, Irina, as her understudy, would literally be able to step into her ballet shoes.
Anastasia frowned as Vaughn’s words finally penetrated the fog of pain that had held her in its grip since the moment she’d seen the destruction of all her belongings, most especially her precious bear. Her emotions still felt numb, but at least she was capable of the feeling of touch now.
Of becoming aware that she was currently sitting on the hardness of Vaughn’s thighs, the steely strength of his arms holding her securely against his chest.
Her breathing once again became ragged and shallow, but it was for a completely different reason than earlier. Being this close to Vaughn, able to feel his heat melting the cold shock that had held her in its grip since standing in the doorway of the destroyed bedroom, she was also aware of a return of her earlier arousal.
Her want, need, for Vaughn to make love to her.
To now also help her forget that someone had wanted to hurt her so badly they had destroyed everything that was precious to her.
But perhaps not everything?
Anastasia had no way of explaining how she felt, except that, in a very short space of time, Vaughn had come to be more important to her than anything else. She felt a closeness to him that was more than she had ever felt for any other human being.
It was as exhilarating as it was frightening.
It was a fine distinction, but to care for someone rather than about them could, and probably would, lead to heartache. It was one of the reasons she had never allowed herself to become attached to any of the other children in the orphanage or when she was sent to the ballet school.
Anastasia had seen it happen to too many other people. The allowing of caring, love, to enter the heart, only for the person they had those feeling for to leave them, breaking or taking the other person’s heart with them.
If Anastasia only liked people and didn’t allow herself to ever love them, then she couldn’t be too hurt when they left.
With Vaughn, that didn’t seem to matter. The connection she felt to him from the first was too strong to deny.
“Could Irina have done this?” Vaughn asked again.
“No,” she answered without hesitation. “Irina doesn’t want the limelight or the hard work of being prima ballerina. Her goal is to find a rich husband so that she never has to dance the ballet again,” she added at Vaughn’s doubtful expression.
“I thought she was involved with that Lev guy? They certainly looked friendly enough this morning.”
Anastasia grimaced. “Lev is a bit of fun for Irina during the tour, nothing more.”
“Does he know that?”
“I presume so.” She shrugged. “Did you find Sergei earlier and ask him what he was doing walking down the hallway outside this suite?”
Vaughn gave pained a grimace. “Did you know that Antipov’s hotel suite adjoins this one, and that your esteemed dance director and the male principal of the ballet company have been lovers since shortly after the European tour began??”
Had Anastasia known that? She had known both men were gay, but had she known Leonid and Sergei were in a relationship? In truth, it wasn’t something she’d given a lot of thought to because, frankly, it was none of her business. Her avoidance of emotional entanglements was her own choice. She didn’t expect that to apply to other people.
“You look as if you’ve been made aware of it now,” she teased Vaughn’s slightly impatient expression.
Vaughn was now more aware than he needed to be in regard to Antipov and Rusikov’s relationship. He had spoken to both men after the company director had insisted on telephoning his lover and asking him to return to his hotel room so the two men could answer his questions together.
Sergei had been his usual flirtatious self with Vaughn, despite the fact his lover stood only feet away, when he confirmed what Antipov had already told him. The two men were in a relationship and had been for months.
That relationship, and Sergei’s presence in Leonid’s suite this evening, would seem to rule out Sergei being Anastasia’s stalker.
But further questioning of Antipov and Sergei had presented Vaughn with another alternative.
He just had no idea why or what could have been the motivation for those actions.
But he would.
For the moment, his prey, totally unaware of Vaughn’s interest, wasn’t going anywhere.
Besides, Vaughn’s brother Viktor would be arriving tomorrow, at Vaughn’s request. After his brother had commenced the blood tests, he could take over questioning the suspect, if necessary, while Vaughn remained with his mate.
Right now, Vaughn’s priority was to get Anastasia another suite in which to spend the night, possibly in another hotel.
Chapter Nine
“Do you have someone watching us while I’m guarding Anastasia?” Vaughn snapped his impatience with the man seated in the driver’s seat of the black Range Rover.
Nikolai gave a dismissive shrug as he glanced in the rearview mirror at Vaughn and Anastasia sitting together in the back of the vehicle. “Why, did you see someone following you?”
Vaughn hadn’t, even with his dragon’s enhanced senses. Worrying as that was, Volkov hadn’t actually answered his question. “Are you having us watched?” he repeated in a hard voice.
“How else would I have known, and found you, at the other hotel so quickly?” the other man confirmed without apology.
“Did it occur to you that maybe
going to a different hotel was so that you, or anyone else, couldn’t find us?”
All humor faded from the other man’s expression. “If someone is being threatened in Gregori’s city, then it’s my business,” Nikolai stated.
“I’m perfectly capable of ensuring Anastasia’s safety. In any city,” he added pointedly, knowing the other man was fully aware of how dangerous a dragon shifter could be once they found their mate.
“Of course, you are,” Nikolai acknowledged. “But, having now met and spent time with Anastasia, Gregori is also concerned for her safety. To that end, he asked me to arrange for a team of our own men to provide her with extra protection.” He gave Anastasia another glance in the driving mirror. “I have to admit, as I have similar fraternal feelings of protectiveness toward her, I’m more than happy with that arrangement.”
Jealousy reared its ugly head. No other man was allowed to care about his mate. “You’re old enough to be her father, not a brother!”
“And you, my friend, are old enough to be her great—”
“I’m not your friend!” Vaughn prevented Nikolai from finishing that revealing statement. But it was true. In age, Vaughn was old enough to be a twenty-year-old’s great-grandfather many times over.
Nikolai gave an unconcerned grin. “Friend or not, the two of you are spending the night at my house, I suggest you learn to live with that.”
“You—”
“I know and respect the hell out of the Pendragon brothers, and they’ve vouched for you,” the other man rasped in warning. “But I don’t know you. Until I do, you’ll be watched. After all,” Nikolai’s expression softened to mockery. “I can’t leave you and your dra—”
“Don’t—”
“It’s very kind of Nikolai and Daisy to offer us a bed for the night,” Anastasia cut in firmly, no doubt tired of listening to their bickering. “Isn’t it?” she prompted Vaughn at the same time as she placed her hand on his tense thigh closest to her.
Vaughn placed his hand over hers, pleased she had initiated the contact.
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