The Master

by Kresley Cole

  Everything had been going so well until then. On a back bench, I'd sat in Maxim's lap, with our fingers intertwined. We'd talked about Rebecca's recent drug use (about four more hours to roll, Becks), and how little I'd had to drink (champagne was dead to me), and how little he'd had to drink ("I'm a wingman. I hear these positions are to be taken seriously"), and how much his brother had relaxed now that Natalie was officially his.

  Well, for a while, he'd been relaxed. Yet as the night wore on and Natalie continually teased her groom--with little glances and not-so-secretive touches--it became clear that Aleks was ready to get to the consummation of his marriage.

  Now, as he knelt before Natalie to remove her garter, the desire between the two could be measured on a Richter scale. His hands shook with anticipation as he tugged down the creamy lace band.

  Maxim and other single men had gathered. The swaggering devil winked at me. If I'd been single with no worries, I probably would've swooned. Now it was everything I could do to smile back.

  When Aleks slingshot the garter over his shoulder, I watched it as if it were a Hail Mary pass. Slo-mo . . .

  Maxim caught it--because of his height advantage.

  Jess bustled me to a chair. "Come on, mami and Maks!" I sat with the bouquet in my lap, and he knelt before me. Everyone crowded around, clapping and laughing.

  All too happy to place the garter on me, Maxim appeared very lusty himself.

  "Look at that, he's about to get to first base," Jess said. "You won the girl this round, Russian. But you better take care of her. I have a Taser, and I don't know how to use it!"

  When he smoothed my dress up my legs, his gaze darkened even more, and his hands began to shake no less than his brother's had. As his touch ascended, Maxim murmured, "Do you think fate's trying to tell us something?"

  Heart. In. Throat. I stiffened against him.

  He could read me so well, and knew something was up. He secured the lace above my knee, then smoothed down my dress. As would be expected, he smiled at me.

  For the first time ever, he'd given me his fake smile. . . .

  CHAPTER 33

  "Will you please talk to me?" I asked Sevastyan shortly after we took off for Miami.

  After we'd made love last night, I'd basically passed out, exhausted from maintaining a happy facade. I awakened briefly in the night and found him at the window, staring out into the dark, seeming to look at nothing. But that muscle had ticked in his jaw, and I could swear he'd looked . . . wounded.

  I didn't think he'd slept at all. At the breakfast reception, tension had emanated from him. He'd been distant and stiffly courteous, that fake smile in full force.

  "You've hardly spoken to me today, Maxim."

  "I have a lot on my mind."

  His phone rang, and without a word to me, he answered. I gazed out the jet's window, waiting for another chance for us to talk. One call turned to two, and then to five. I couldn't understand the words, but I had an uneasy feeling he'd been talking about me.

  I retired to the cabin, lying down. Instead of making love on this bed again, we stood on opposite sides of a new rift.

  My body was still exhausted, and my mind felt sluggish, as if I were shaking off the effects of one of Jess's drugs.

  Maybe all this new stimulation had been too much for me. For three years, I'd lived as a social hermit, then I'd been thrust into a crush of new people. I'd gone from broke and scraping pennies to a shopping spree worth half a mil. I'd been abstinent, then glutted with sex. I'd been convinced I might not live to see my thirties--much less remarry--then I'd fallen in love with a man who wanted everything from me.

  Confused, I slipped off to sleep. Nightmares of Edward overwhelmed me.

  In one, he was covered with blood--mine--creeping closer to me. I stood frozen in place, unable to force my body to run--my only defense. In the background, I heard those ugly, wet sounds Julia had made as she'd strangled on her own blood. Again and again, I struggled to escape, begging Edward to leave me alone, but he kept stalking closer, vowing to me, "I will BUTCHER you! I will cut you into pieces while you live!" My body jolted on the bed. I shot awake, sucking in breaths. Had we just landed? Why hadn't Maxim awakened me?

  Once we began taxiing on the runway, I went to the lavatory. I'd never had nightmares about Edward this bad. Had I flown right back to him?

  I washed my face, peering into the mirror. The relaxed woman I'd beheld days ago was gone, replaced by the Cat I'd seen for years.

  When I rejoined Sevastyan in the cabin, I drew back at his expression. His tension had morphed--into seething anger.

  I'd never seen him so furious. "What's happened? What's going on?" He could hardly look at me. That fury was for me?

  I was in love with him, and he couldn't look at me.

  He shot a vodka, saying nothing. His knuckles were white on the glass, that muscle in his jaw ticking.

  In a daze, I followed him off the jet into the limo, though he acted as if he could've left me there on the tarmac.

  We hadn't even gotten under way before he'd downed his first shot from the Bentley's bar. Here we were, back in sunny Miami--and it felt like the Arctic in here. He took another call, his tone clipped. We were closing in on the hotel before he hung up the phone.

  "Maxim, I don't know what's happened with us, and I need you to explain it to me," I said. The divider was cracked, and Vasili could hear everything, but I didn't care.

  "I told you I have a lot on my mind. We'll discuss it later." Everything about his demeanor said: Back off.

  "You're putting walls up between us. Please don't. Talk to me."

  "Very well." He poured another steep vodka. "Marry me."

  "Que?" I couldn't get enough air.

  "I want you to marry me. Today."

  I was about to throw up. This wasn't happening.

  "I'll take that as a yes. We'll go directly back to the airport and fly to Las Vegas." He said something to Vasili, and the man began to slow the car.

  To turn around.

  I shook my head. "G-go to the hotel."

  "Give me a reason."

  "I've only known you for two weeks."

  "Are you sure there's no other reason?" he demanded.

  "Why are you being like this?"

  He snapped something to Vasili, and we resumed our course to the hotel.

  Sevastyan turned his infuriated gaze to me. "You didn't even consider the possibility of marrying me. Not for the briefest second, did you? Last night, when you caught the bouquet, you looked miserable about it. When I placed that garter on your leg, your body stiffened against me as it never has before."

  "Everything was too . . . it was a lot to take in over one weekend. As of Christmas Day, I thought we would be parting on the twenty-eighth."

  He gave a bitter laugh. "You've got your claws all in me, and you're looking for the door! You have never even imagined a future with me."

  "No, that's not what I meant." How to explain? I'd known I was going to have difficulty revealing my past to him. Now, freaked out and emotional, I could barely find words. "It's just that . . . things are complicated."

  "I'll bet they are."

  "What does that mean?"

  He waved that away. "I just told you I'd marry you. A woman in your position should've been tempted."

  "My position." As someone who sold sex.

  "But then, the problem with all my wealth is that I come with it!"

  This argument had taken me completely off guard. Because I'd lowered my guard with him.

  "What the fuck was I thinking? I told you there'd be no one else. That you were with me. I confided things I've never told another soul." The pain in his eyes rocked me. "And I don't even know your real name. I expected things from you I shouldn't. I can't force you to change."

  "You want me to change?" I couldn't disguise the hurt in my voice. "How?"

  "For instance, when I inform you that I'm a former hobbyist, you might mention to me that you are a former esc
ort. Just a thought."

  I rubbed my temples. "I don't understand any of this. I don't know where it's coming from." Maybe he regretted revealing his past. I believed talking to me had eased something in him--but it still would've had to hurt, to leave him raw. Was I getting the backlash from that? "Why are you coming at me like this?"

  "You shouldn't have let me believe you were attainable if you aren't. You let me believe you could be won."

  "What are you talking about?"

  "You lied about that and so many other things. You looked people in the eyes, and the words danced from your tongue. You deceive better than a politician."

  My confusion was turning to anger, my foggy mind clearing. "I get your mistrust. I have reasons not to trust others too. But you need to understand something."

  He shot his glass. "Can't wait to hear this."

  "I have never--from the first sentence I uttered--lied to you."

  The fury in his eyes almost had me shrinking back into my seat.

  "I told you never to deceive me! I've revealed why I will never tolerate it. Yet you keep doing it."

  "When? Name an instance!"

  "I nearly believed you when you told me you had no other man! You met my gaze and assured me you didn't--yet you told your friend that you were involved with another."

  "What friend?" Had he misunderstood something I'd said over the weekend?

  "Last week, I bugged the penthouse for my meetings. I quite enjoyed your conversation with Ivanna."

  I gasped, reflecting over what I'd said. I'd talked to her about the belt, about walking around in this lust-fueled haze, fantasizing about his body. That conversation had been private--and humiliating! My face flushed with embarrassment, which just made me angrier.

  "Did you think I wasn't aware a phone got to you? I allowed it in. Later that night, I listened to the recording."

  "Then you knew I never tried to trap you with a pregnancy! And you didn't tell me? Just like I thought! You wanted to keep me there--to keep treating me like a deceitful prostitutka! So you could do whatever you wanted with me. You amused yourself with me. You played with me. With my life."

  We pulled up to the hotel. Vasili hurried out of the car around to the door, but then he just stood there.

  "Just like you played me!" Sevastyan snapped. "You made me believe you felt something for me. So I decided I would win you from him--I would spoil you, immersing you in my world, while removing you from his. I thought I'd had success until your reactions last night. Now I know that I can't simply will this to happen. Your heart's taken. By Edward. You're in love with him."

  I could feel the blood leaving my face. Sevastyan had said Edward's name out loud. I had the impulse to cross myself. "H-how?"

  "On the plane, you said his name in your sleep! Moaned it!" He knocked back another vodka. "I now know what you sound like when you fuck the man you actually do give a damn about."

  Had I said anything else? The need to run overpowered me. My gaze flitted to the door handle.

  "Even before the recording confirmed it, I knew you had another. I knew every time you stared off at nothing that you were thinking of him. When you took that goddamned picture for the escort site, you were thinking of him."

  Sevastyan was right. I had been.

  "When you were with me--you fucking moaned for him." He was about to shatter his glass. "But then you warned me all along, didn't you? You told me I wanted you more than you wanted me."

  He inhaled, as if to rein in his rage. "All of this is moot. I don't have to trust you or win you. I merely have to pay you. Shouldn't we settle accounts before you come up?"

  "Don't do this." He was breaking my heart.

  "Do what? Will a 'donation' of fifteen thousand a day suffice? Or twenty?" He popped open his briefcase, revealing stacks of wrapped hundreds. With a snide look, he said, "Perhaps Edward is expecting you to return flush with cash? Do you two have that kind of arrangement?"

  Some invisible force was punching me in the stomach, like a fist. It had to be, because I couldn't breathe.

  "Come now, ask me for your payment, little girl."

  When I thought about how close I'd come to revealing to him all my secrets--breaking the rules that kept me alive--I grew queasy. I hadn't learned the lessons I'd paid so dearly for. "I was planning to tell you everything today, to trust you! Gracias a Dios, you showed your true colors--yet again--before I could say anything. You're the only one here who's betraying trust! Go back and review your creepy tapes. I--never--lied."

  Shaking with fury to match his own, I took off my string of pearls and threw it at Sevastyan. "You don't want me more than you want your old ways. You aren't ready to cast them aside for me. So I've got no time for you. I'm leaving, and this time you won't stop me."

  In a bored tone, he said, "Enough with the theatrics. You won't leave."

  "Oh, I won't?" I nearly ripped my earlobes to get the earrings out. "You are always so wrong about me. Do you know why? Because you have never given me the benefit of the doubt. Not from the first minute I met you. You always expect the worst of me. ALWAYS." I threw the earrings and almost flung my purse at him but somehow had the presence of mind to stop myself. I'd need what was left of that pin money to get a cab back to my apartment.

  I would use the seven grand in my safe and get out of town, as I'd always planned. After my exam tomorrow, I'd take the first bus heading west. I'd put this man behind me--just as I had my husband. I reached for the door.

  My leaving seemed to baffle him. "All you have to do is ask for your gifts. Hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth. No escort would walk away from that."

  As I exited the car, I said, "Watch me, cabron."

  "Fucking ask me, Katya, and they'll be yours." Just like that first night, he kept talking, still engaging me. "Or is your pride going to get in the way?"

  I glared at Vasili standing next to the car, then leaned down to tell Sevastyan, "You have no idea about my pride, Russian. It burns so bright, I hope it fucking blinds you." I slammed the door and strode away. With each step my shoulders went back, my chin up.

  Going forward? Rule number seven would be never to fall in love.

  CHAPTER 34

  On the long ride home, I hardly registered the glaring sun, the swaying palm trees, the warmth after Nebraska.

  The second I'd gotten into the cab, I'd taken out my phone and stared at the screen, wondering if he would contact me. To kill time, I'd sent Ivanna a voice message and then a text. I needed to tell her good-bye anyway.

  That had been a while ago--strange that she hadn't tried to call. Shouldn't she be dying for scoop?

  What would I tell her about Sevastyan? Was I making the right decision with him?

  During my time at the hotel, I'd worried that I would grow used to hooded blue eyes and mind-blowing sex, and my infatuation with him would spiral out of control.

  Check. Check. Check.

  I might put Sevastyan behind me, but I was never going to get over him. Though I'd easily shed my regard for Edward, it wouldn't happen with Maxim. With a sinking feeling in my belly, I recognized that I was always going to love him.

  Me jodi. I was so screwed.

  Was I ready to write him off totally? How would I feel if he'd groaned another woman's name in sleep?

  Now that I'd had some time to cool off, I wasn't as outraged about him playing me. He'd never lied to me per se, and he had started treating me better after eavesdropping on my conversation. He'd tried to win me.

  But nothing could excuse how callously he'd treated me today. I merely have to pay you. Clearly, he hadn't gotten over the fact that I was an escort.

  As I closed in on my dismal neighborhood, my need for survival rose to the fore, drowning out my spiraling emotions. I never would have taken Sevastyan's gifts (not even my red scarf), but I shouldn't have left my ten grand in the closet. Mierda!

  Wait, Anthony still owed me! I pulled up his number and rang him. An assistant put me straight through.


  "Cat! Great to hear from you!"

  "Hey." We'd never actually spoken, even in the midst of his selling me to Sevastyan. "I need to come by and get the money I earned."

  "What money, darling?"

  Was he joking? "For all my outcall hours. Plus the twenty-five hundred I'm due for my phone number."

  "Oh, honey, I've already invested it for you! Got you lined up with a photographer! A legit one. He'll make you look like a million dollars."

  It is not a problem. "Anthony, you can get my pay back, a quick refund. I need it now."

  "No can do. But if you're short of dough, I've got a French millionaire in town who loves Latinas. He's a huge tipper. A shade raunchy, but he pays for his raunchy ways, you know what I mean--"

  "You son of a bitch! Get my money back!"

  His voice dropped. "You better be nice to Uncle Anthony, girl. Especially since the Russian's well ran dry. At least for you."

  "What are you talking about?" He couldn't know Sevastyan and I were over.

  "He just got done scheduling someone else."

  "Wh-what?"

  "Five minutes ago. He booked the one he'd wanted in the first place."

  Ivanna. Stunning, glamorous, sensual Ivanna. Who ticked every one of Sevastyan's boxes.

  "The Russian was as determined to have her as he'd been with you. He's definitely through with you, darling."

  I didn't know whether to scream--or cry. Sevastyan had gone back to his old ways, the PhD was at it again. Former hobbyist, my ass!

  Did I believe he had felt something for me? In his own way, yes. He'd probably requested Ivanna just to hurt me, or to amuse himself at my expense. He was still scheming and coldhearted! Fuck him!

  Oh, wait, that was Ivanna's job. No wonder she hadn't called me back. Would he stick to the script with her? Or would they enjoy the pool and champagne?

  Anthony said, "So let's talk about the French guy--"

  Without another word, I hung up the phone. That invisible fist had returned, punching me even harder. I doubled over, gasping to the cabbie, "Stop here."

  Anthony called back. Then he texted about that date. And again! He thought he had the right to burn up my line? The asshole was using my dire straits to lure me deeper into hooking!

  As the cab rolled to a stop, I glared at my still buzzing phone. It'd been in Sevastyan's possession for over a week. Business of information? He'd probably placed some kind of tracker in it.