by Lila Dubois
“Go away, Alexander,” she demanded, but the words came out watery.
“You might be hurt.”
“Of course I’m hurt.” You broke my heart, and every time I look at you it breaks again. “I landed on my bad knee.”
“Let me help you.”
“I’m fine.” Alena shifted her weight, preparing to sit so she could take off the shoes, but even that little movement made her hiss in pain.
“Alena, enough.”
“Say that one more time,” she snapped.
“Say that one more time…and what?” He sounded genuinely confused.
“That was a threat.”
Finally he touched her, his hands cupping her waist. “I hesitate to point this out, but you are hardly in a position to level threats.”
“You don’t know that. I might be able to kill you with my bare hands.” Damn it, her knee really hurt. “I work for Interpol, you know.”
Alexander helped her shift off her hands and knees to sit with her back against the legs of one of the dining room chairs.
Alena could have gone for stoic silence, but instead she muttered “Ow” on a continuous loop until she was situated with her legs stuck out straight in front of her.
“You’re an insurance investigator,” Alexander said mildly. “Not a 007. May I?” He gestured at her skirt, which was just long enough to cover her knee.
The fact that he asked was both ludicrous and so gentlemanly that her heart clenched.
“Yes.”
He raised her skirt just enough so he could see her knees. There were pink patches where she’d hit the ground. While he looked at her knees she rubbed the heels of her hands, which were also smarting from their contact with the floor.
Alexander scooted back on his knees and looked at her ankles. “Did you twist your ankle?”
“No, my bad knee gave out. I shouldn’t wear these shoes.”
“Why did you?”
Alena fluttered her lashes. “They’re my come-fuck-me shoes. Maybe I was hoping I could tempt my master into fucking me.” She placed the back of her wrists against her forehead in a dramatic move worthy of the fictional southern belle stereotype.
Alexander was staring at her. “You are…”
“Insane? Spastic? Mean?” They were all things she’d heard before, from lovers. “Yes, well, you’ve gotten a rather large dose of the real Alena. It usually scares them away.
“I was going to say fascinating.”
She bent her good knee, and twisted to unbuckle the ankle strap of that shoe, toeing it off. “Would you mind?” She gestured to the other shoe.
Alexander unbuckled it, his fingers never once touching her skin.
She needed to get out of here, into bed, with some pain reliever and an ice pack. Getting to her feet and up the stairs wasn’t going to be elegant, so she didn’t want to do it in front of Alexander. She could ask him to get her the ice pack, but the problem was he might not be gone long enough for her to limp her way out of here and the last thing she wanted was for him to catch her on the stairs whimpering and being pitiful.
She was still considering the problem when Alexander sat down beside her, leaning up against the chair next to the one she was leaning against.
He loosened his tie, then undid the collar button of his shirt.
“You never told me how you hurt your knee,” he said casually.
“You never asked.” Alena watched him in her peripheral vision.
“Alena, how did you injure your knee?”
“I fell. Though a floor, actually.”
“Through a floor?” His brows went up.
Alena made herself comfortable. The urge to confront him, the cold anger, everything she’d been thinking and feeling just moments ago had faded. It was as if sitting here on the floor with him, they were once more in a stolen moment, a place where the rest of the world didn’t exist. She’d felt the same thing that night when she’d slept in his bed back in Moldova.
“I was a teenager. I was living—secretly—in the attic of this school. It was actually an old mansion that had been turned into a charter school. One day I walked in—I looked like a student after all, and I stayed.”
“This is when you had no home. No one looking after you.”
“Yes.”
Alexander’s hands flexed, fingers spread wide then curling into fists. She watched his hands, but she didn’t know what that meant, didn’t know what meaning she could, or should, glean from that little movement.
“Anyway, I was living up in the attic. It was actually perfect. They hadn’t really remodeled the place above the first floor, and since it was a house, there were full bathrooms, with showers, especially on the second floor.”
“Ah.” Alexander nodded as if he understood, though of course the billionaire I-was-raised-to-be-a-CEO had no idea—
Alena forced herself to stop that thought, because it was both dismissive, and wrong. He may not have ever experienced homelessness, but he had problems, issues—everyone did. And he was emotionally thoughtful and deeply empathetic. It was why he was so worried about her emotional and mental state. It was why he feared his own sexual sadism—precisely because he could anticipate and empathize as to what his actions could make another person feel.
“I’d shower at night, and it would dry out before anyone got there the next morning, plus people rarely came up to that floor. There were some offices, but the place only had stairs, so mostly everything was on the first floor.”
“Why couldn’t you live in one of the rooms?”
“Too risky. Plus I wanted my own space. I started to create a little apartment for myself up there in the attic.
“I put plastic, well, garbage bags I cut open—down over the fiberglass insulation. I figured out really fast that you couldn’t touch that stuff without getting itchy splinters. Do you use fiberglass insulation? The pink stuff?”
“I have no idea.”
She was tempted to make a little rich boy joke, but her earlier realization about his empathy was too fresh.
“The attic didn’t have a real floor, just the wooden frame and the drywall that was the ceiling of the floor below, all of it covered by fiberglass. One day I wasn’t paying enough attention, and though I’d walked through there a hundred, two hundred times, and I knew where to put my feet to make sure I was stepping on wood, that day I forgot.”
“I’m surprised you weighed enough to break through.”
“I heard a crack, sort of felt it give, and thought I’d be okay. I froze, waiting, which was the exact wrong thing to do, because if I’d grabbed on to something, or tried to step up onto the joist I’d missed the first time, I wouldn’t have fallen. But I froze, and a few seconds later it gave way. I fell through the ceiling into one of the bathrooms. I went feet first. I actually landed on my feet, in the tub, but it had a curved bottom. My foot went back, my upper body went forward, and this knee hit the side.” She tapped it.
He winced.
“Oh, it gets worse,” she assured him.
“Worse than falling through a ceiling and breaking your knee?”
“I didn’t just break my knee. I severely hyperextended it. Basically my knee bent the wrong way, snapping my kneecap, putting stress fractures on my leg bones, and tearing up my ACL. It was so messed up when I got into the hospital they actually had to go in from the back, not the front like they normally would.”
Alena carefully shifted to show off the side and back of her leg where the scar was, instead of down the front where anyone who’d had a knee replacement might have a scar.
“Thinking about that makes me feel physically ill,” Alexander said grimly.
“Apparently the only other time my surgeon had seen it was when a soccer player had taken another player’s foot directly to the knee.”
“The mental visuals are…” Again he grimaced.
“Here’s the really gross part.”
“There’s more?”
Alena grinned. “I
lay there for eighteen hours before anyone found me. I’d fallen in the night, and all that night there was no one and I couldn’t move. Then when the kids got there the next day it was too loud for anyone on a floor below me to hear. It wasn’t until after school that one of the custodians heard me, came up, and called 911.”
“My god, Alena.” The words burst from Alexander and he twisted to face her, grabbing her by the shoulders. “You shouldn’t…”
“Shouldn’t have been squatting in an attic? No. Though the punishment seemed a bit harsh for the crime.”
“That is not what I meant.” Alexander’s gaze searched her face. “Have you ever let anyone take care of you?”
She tensed. “I don’t need anyone to take care of me, and if telling you this story, a story I haven’t told anyone except my best friends makes you—”
“No.” He shook her gently. “That’s not…That’s not what I mean, because I mean…”
“Please finish that sentence,” she asked when the silence dragged on too long.
“You’re smiling as you tell me this story.”
“Better laughing than crying.”
“Why? Why do you always turn away when it’s time to cry?”
“I cried right now.” Her heart was beating fast, but she couldn’t quite say why.
“From physical pain. Not emotional.”
“Alexander, don’t do this. Don’t push me to open up. That’s not fucking fair.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re the one who’s pulling away. Putting up walls.”
“I’m not.”
“You are. You acted like…”
He hadn’t let go of her upper arms, and now he squeezed them. “Like?”
Alena closed her eyes. “That night in Moldova, the night Interpol got there?”
“In my bedroom.”
“Exactly.” She looked at him. “You held me. You took me to your bedroom, not a guest room. We slept beside one another, had breakfast and it felt…”
It felt like you loved me.
She wasn’t masochist enough to say it out loud, so she said something that wasn’t a lie, but wasn’t the whole truth. “It felt like we were partners, equals for the first time. It wasn’t about BDSM, at all, and if you bring up the collar I’ll snatch you bald-headed.”
Alexander blinked, then started to laugh. It was a soft, surprised chuckle. He released her upper arms and sat back, once more leaning against the legs of a chair, but then he put his arm around her shoulders and pulled her against him.
“Don’t do this if you don’t mean it,” Alena said almost desperately. “Don’t hold me, don’t be kind, just…don’t.”
“Partners,” Alexander said slowly. “To clarify, not play partners.”
“No. It felt like…you were the one person in the world I could count on. I could tell you anything because we were in it together and no matter how fucked up the situation got, we were going to be okay, because we had each other.”
Alexander was, predictably, quiet for a long time, but he kept his arm around her, and as the seconds became a minute, then two, she relaxed against him. Her knee still hurt, but it wasn’t sharp pain. It was a low throb that was much easier to deal with.
“I felt the same.” His words were low and gentle…loving?
More like wishful thinking.
“I felt like I saw something rare that morning.” There was no hesitation, and each word was so precise she knew he’d probably been planning out what he was saying during the long silence.
“What did you see?”
“You. I saw you. Who you really were, under the…the cloak.”
She huffed out a soft laugh, partially at his verbal reminder of how she’d attracted his attention, and partially because it helped cover up some of her odd discomfort.
“But then I realized I was wrong. Because after everything between us, how could that sense of veracity be real?”
“I don’t know, but it was. At least for me. And when you walked away down by the lake…”
Another squeeze, but this time he followed it up by kissing her hair. “I’m sorry I hurt you.”
“Alexander, what are we doing? Because I don’t want to assume something and be wrong again.”
“You mean between us, not what are we doing on the floor, or in Vienna.”
“Yes. What are we doing?”
Alexander hesitated, and Alena wanted to curl up into a ball and die of embarrassment as she realized how that sounded. What he probably thought: she was fishing for a declaration of love.
Alena sat up, but turned, using her hands to help shift her leg, so she was more or less face to face with Alexander.
“We have a job to do, right?” she asked.
He was frowning, and looked almost worried, but nodded.
“So until that job is done, we’re partners. Can we agree to that?”
“Yes.”
“Perfect.” Alena held out her hand for him to shake.”
Alexander took it, but instead of shaking, he turned her hand and kissed the inside of her wrist.
Alena froze. His lips still on her skin, Alexander looked up, glancing at her from under those pretty long lashes of his.
“If I were a good man, I would not ask this.”
“Ask what?”
The tip of his tongue touched her pulse point. “You have spent several days making it clear to me that you are not suffering any lingering effects of being my BDSM slave, however briefly.”
Her nipples pebbled inside the dress in response to his words.
“I’m glad you finally believe me about that.”
His teeth scraped her skin, the spot where he’d just licked. “I want more from you than for us to be partners because of your job, my duty.”
“Oh?” She was breathing fast and shallow as arousal poured through her.
“I want you…no.” He lifted his head, met her gaze. “I want you back in my bed.”
She was tempted, so tempted, to just say “Yes!”
“Which bed? In a guest room?”
“No. My bed. In my home.”
“And as what? Who would I be in that bed?”
Now he smiled and it was a real, joy-filled smile, with just a hint of wicked at the corners. “You’d be the woman under the cloak. That’s all I want. Just you. The real Alena.”
Chapter 8
He hated this. Everything about it.
Alexander was unaccustomed to decision making processes where he didn’t have final authority. His leadership style relied heavily on respecting the expertise of those who worked for him, and, therefore, relying on them to present only the best possible options to him.
The flip side of that was if he was ever presented with only a single option, no matter how thorough the explanations as to why that was the best or only good option, his people knew that didn’t guarantee he would approve it.
When other people thought there was only a single possible outcome, and therefore nothing to do but acquiesce, Alexander knew better. He knew that there was always a choice.
Now if he could just get Alena and Rolf to understand that, then when he once again told them that the plan was asinine, they would fall in line and either consider a different solution, or come up with one that he found more palatable.
They’d been back in Vienna for two days, and Alena and Rolf were still insisting that this asinine plan of orchestrating Absolon “discovering your sexual proclivities”—as Rolf had put it—was still the active plan.
There were almost too many reasons for him to name as to why he thought this was a bad idea. They ranged from the inconsequential—he had made a personal rule long ago that he would never host any BDSM or Orchid Club event, which was why, though this month’s had been in his home city, he hadn’t been the host. He certainly hadn’t ever planned to host even a small gathering in his house—for far more pressing reasons.
This plan put Alena in too much danger. She’d have to meet with Ab
solon as part of the charade planning process. He raised that objection over and over, and no matter how many times Alena tossed that regal, slightly amused smile his way, a look that said without words that she could handle anything Absolon could throw at her, he worried.
Worried because the plan had progressed to not just a BDSM gathering…but a slave auction.
That had been Rolf’s idea, proposed because otherwise Alena would need to remain with Alexander, acting as his sub, for months, years, however long it took the investigation to reach a point where Interpol was ready to act.
Alexander had almost said that he saw no problem with that. Alena living with him for months…that was a very nice thought.
And the fact that he’d considered it, if only for a half a second, was the reason that, as much as he hated it, using the gala as a way to “end” his relationship with Alena might be the lesser of the evils.
Forcing her to live here with him, just to uphold this story that everything that had happened in the past week was about a relationship gone bad rather than a morally dubious Interpol investigation gone wrong, wasn’t fair to Alena. She had a right to live her life, and even the constant reminders that this was all to stop terrorists were insufficient justification for trapping her, expecting her to give up even more than she already had. It also wasn’t fair to him, but that was a lesser concern.
On the other hand, he was loath to have her pretend, even if it was only for a handful of hours over the course of days, to be his BDSM slave once more. What he’d done to her in Moldova was…
This time, even pausing to think through what he wanted to say wasn’t enough. His feelings were too complex to be quantified by language.
Sitting beside her on the floor of the dining room, listening to the horrific childhood story had allowed him to let go of his certainty that she wasn’t able to think clearly because of how he’d treated her. That had been helped by her almost skewering his cock with her high heel.
But as he let go of that guilt and worry, the need to possess her, the desire to dominate her, came roaring back. Last night he’d carried her to his bed, iced her knee, and then slept beside her. It had been sweet and quiet, the way it had been in Moldova.