People paid her to protect their lives, so that’s what she did. Yet no one had ever trusted her with anything more. But there was more, wasn’t there?
There was this. There was him.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Alex picked his cuff links up off the black marble of the vanity and clipped them on, his movements sharp and precise. He didn’t look at his reflection in the mirror, only running one hand through his hair. It was still damp from the shower, but fuck it. Conrad was always perfectly presented, but he could take Alex as he came.
Alex grinned at his own dark humor as he turned and strode out of the bathroom. Conrad wouldn’t, of course, be taking him anywhere. This time he’d be the one doing the taking.
Over the past couple of days, he’d perfected his revenge plan. One that would take everything that mattered to Conrad and would, Alex hoped, leave him a sobbing, begging mess at the end of it.
First he was going to let Conrad believe he had all the power at the game, since that’s what got the guy off and would lull him into a false sense of security. It would also give Alex and Katya some time to investigate things for Zac, Eva, and Gabriel, and Alex hoped they would get some important information that would be of use.
Then once that was achieved he would somehow get rid of the other players so it was just him and Conrad, a one-on-one game.
Then Alex would up the stakes. Make the other man hungry. Make him want. Make him so desperate he’d do anything to win. Anything such as putting his own club up for grabs. All his money. His livelihood.
And only then, when he was sure of a win, would Alex beat Conrad, and he would beat him. Make him realize he’d lost everything.
And as the final pièce de résistance, Alex would get out a gun and put it to that fucker’s head and make him beg for the last thing he had: his life. Perhaps he’d put a bullet through Conrad’s brain, like Eva said. Or maybe he wouldn’t. Maybe just the sight of Conrad crying in fear, the way Alex had sobbed when Conrad had bent him over the cold tiles of that bathroom, would be enough.
Whatever happened, one thing was certain. That motherfucker was going down.
Out in the lounge area, Katya sat on the couch, going through the purse on her lap. There was no sign that that was where she slept every night, folding up the blankets and putting them away so no one knew their real sleeping arrangements. He’d tried to get her to swap places so she had the bed, but she’d refused and hell, if she wanted to martyr herself on the couch then he was happy for her to do so.
She was wearing a cocktail dress that looked like a glittering green-gold spiderweb. It left one shoulder bare, the hem ending at mid-thigh, her long, toned legs on show. It was strapless too, her shoulders milky pale against the silk. He’d insisted she wear her hair down and she’d pulled the thick golden waterfall to one side. The colors gleamed in the light, gilt and caramel and deep guinea gold.
Jesus, she was beautiful.
But that didn’t change how pissed off he was with her.
You’re not pissed with her. It’s yourself you’re unhappy with.
Yeah, well, that was true. He should have left the gym after he’d brought her down on the mat and made her come. He should have left while he still had the control. But he hadn’t. She’d made that comment about him being afraid and of course, like the fucking cliché he was, he’d had to prove that he wasn’t.
It wasn’t only that.
No, it wasn’t. Their sparring match, the way he’d mastered her, beaten her, had made him so hard he’d been just about to explode. He’d always avoided strong women, preferring his sex easy to come by and easy to leave, with him having the upper hand. But he’d never realized how erotic it was to take a strong woman like Katya down like that. How intoxicating. And the sweet irony of it was that even lying under him, pinned by him, she hadn’t been beaten. In a way, she’d been even stronger. Because he’d wanted her so damn badly.
Perhaps it had been stupid to point that out to her. To show her how powerful she was. But he’d hated seeing the fear in her eyes as he’d pinned her, knowing what it was like to feel helpless while someone stronger than you held you down. Yet what he’d hated even more was that she seemed to think sexual desire, one of the few things that brought him pleasure these days, that made him feel as if he’d truly left Conrad for dust, was a weakness she had to fight.
I can’t be vulnerable. I have to be strong.
Why did she feel that way? Who had taught her that?
But no, he couldn’t ask those things, couldn’t get close. And certainly not now, just as they were about to leave for Conrad’s game.
Christ, he wished he didn’t want her so much. That everything about her didn’t fascinate him in the way that it did.
She looked up as he stood there, her makeup perfect. Clearly she’d been practicing. Gold glimmered on her eyelids, making the green of her irises even more intense. “So, are we going into this game with you still angry with me?”
Goddammit. Did she even know how to be subtle?
Alex stuck his hands in the pockets of his tuxedo pants. There was no point in denying it, especially since he’d made it pretty obvious by going and hiding in his office again, making the excuse he was working on his game tactics. “Your timing is, as ever, impeccable, Katya mine.”
She ignored him. “Being angry with me is a waste of energy. I’m not your enemy. Conrad South is. Or had you forgotten?”
He scowled at her. “You really think I’d fucking forgotten that, sweetheart?”
She rose to her feet, tall and straight, holding her purse at her side. Her gaze was very direct. “Should I not have touched you, is that what this is about? Are you punishing me for giving you pleasure?”
No. He was punishing her for the way she undermined his control. For the intensity of his desire for her. For her strength and her beauty. Her honesty.
For being a woman he couldn’t let himself have, no matter how much he wanted her.
“Why would I do that?” he said flippantly. “Being angry about an excellent hand job is like getting pissed at your bank account for having a million dollars in it.”
But she just looked at him and he knew she’d seen past his stupid response, just as she always did. “You are worried about this game.” She didn’t say it like it was a question. She said it like it was a fact, and shit, she was right, wasn’t she?
He had his plan, it was true, but he wasn’t relishing the shit Conrad would pull before the moment Alex would have the other man on his knees. And Conrad would pull some shit; of that Alex had no doubt.
Yet he didn’t want to admit he was worried. Like her, he hated revealing weakness.
She had her hand on your cock. She made you come. What’s more revealing than that?
Christ, yes. He knew how vulnerable sex could make you. How exposed you could be. It was why he chose the women he did. Why they never stayed for more than a night.
After Conrad had hurt him, it had taken him six months before he could even bear to touch himself. A whole year before he’d let anyone else touch him. On the night of his eighteenth birthday he’d gotten drunk at one of the Angels’, Gabriel’s motorcycle club’s, parties and taken to bed one of the chicks who’d hung around the bikers. She’d been older, very experienced, knew her way around a man. And Alex was drunk enough that he hadn’t had any flashbacks at all.
That was the night he’d actually lost his virginity–or at least, that’s what he liked to tell himself. Not with Conrad, never that.
From then on, that’s what Alex had wanted. Women who knew what they were doing. Who knew what they wanted from him. And didn’t mind if he was drunk out of his head or high or doing any of the other things he used to help him forget. Until sex had become what it should be–a pleasurable, physical release, not something redolent with shame and guilt and a hundred other emotions that exhausted him.
But Katya … She was different. She wasn’t experienced, at least not in this. She was the innocent and
all this was new to her. These feelings would be new to her too. This was special to her. This mattered.
A strange feeling curled inside him. A sense of yearning. As if he wanted to be able to experience that newness too. Have it be special, have it matter. Not ripped from him along with his innocence.
Christ, even just to have her know him, because no one else did. Not even Gabriel, possibly the only person on the planet he was close to. And sometimes … God, sometimes it was so fucking tiring to be alone. To carry all these secrets around and not share them with anyone. To not share the pain with anyone. To know that the only person who could carry them, who could deal with them, was yourself.
Would it be so bad to let her know?
Well, but who the fuck was he anyway? The boy he’d been nineteen years ago was dead and he’d spent so long being Alex St. James, billionaire playboy, gambler, and club owner, he didn’t even know if there was anyone else under all of that.
Perhaps there wasn’t. Perhaps there was nothing there at all.
Alex made himself meet her steady gaze. “Yes,” he said, speaking the truth. “You’re right. I am worried about the game.”
If she was surprised by the confession, she didn’t show it. She only stared at him a long moment before taking a step toward him and holding out her hand. “If there’s only one thing you take to the game, Alexei, then take this. You can trust me. With your life. With everything.”
The sound of his name in Russian … It went all the way down into the darkness that was his soul. He didn’t like the vulnerable feeling it left in him, yet the way she’d said it and the word “everything” resonated even more deeply. And he found himself reaching for her hand and holding on to it, the warmth of her skin against his.
There was no guile to Katya Ivanova. She didn’t play games or try to manipulate. She was straight up, honest. Honorable. And he could see in the green depths of her eyes that she meant every word she said.
If there was one person on earth he could trust it was probably going to be the woman standing in front of him.
Tell her your plan.
No, he couldn’t. Not yet. It would reveal too much, his anger and his hate. It would reveal how much this mattered, and he wasn’t ready for that. Besides, he’d spent too long trusting no one but himself to give that trust away so easily.
Still, he wanted to give her something. So he raised her hand to his mouth and kissed the back of it. “You’ll teach me those moves, won’t you? The ones that had me on my back yesterday?”
She eyed him warily but didn’t pull away. “Yes. Of course.”
“Good.” He lowered her hand and laced his fingers through hers. “Come, Katya mine. Let’s go fuck a man up.”
* * *
This time when they entered the Four Horsemen casino, the doorman in the foyer betrayed no surprise at all, merely inclining his head as Alex and Katya approached. The doorman didn’t take them through into the bar either, guiding them instead to the elevators.
The doorman, Alex, and Katya went up a couple of floors, the doors opening directly into a large room hung with glittering chandeliers, the walls papered white, thick white carpet on the floor. There was a lavishly appointed bar down the other end, chairs and couches scattered about. And in the center of the room was a large black poker table circled by a rail.
Various people either stood or sat, talking among themselves and quietly sipping their drinks. Hangers-on of the players, Alex guessed. There were a number of others who weren’t, though, women mainly, beautiful and expensively dressed. For decorative purposes only.
There were already a number of men and women sitting around the poker table. Alex had met several of them that night at Conrad’s little reception, but he hadn’t paid much attention to them. Which was unlike him, since studying his opponents was usually a good idea.
You were distracted.
Yeah, he had been. But ultimately those other players didn’t matter anyway. He wasn’t here to beat them. There was only one player who mattered as far as Alex was concerned.
Several of the people at the table looked up as he and Katya stepped out of the elevator onto the raised landing just outside the elevator doors. There were stairs sweeping down into the room, but Alex ignored them for a moment, surveying the room from his vantage point, partly to get a good look around but also partly as a show of confidence.
There were four people already at the table. A much older Chinese woman dressed immaculately in vintage Chanel, her night black hair now mostly silver. Her face still held the vestiges of what must have been a compelling beauty, but the look in her black eyes was completely cold. The woman had only been introduced to him as Mrs. Lau, a powerful businesswoman who’d taken the reins of her husband’s manufacturing empire after his death.
Next to her, closest to Alex, was a powerfully built Arab man in an exquisitely made custom suit. A sheikh from some tiny Middle Eastern country Alex had never heard of. The guy had looked uncomfortable back at the reception and he still did now, leaning back in his chair, a ferocious scowl on his face.
The chair next to the sheikh, at the end of the table closest to Alex, was vacant, but the next one along had a woman sitting at it. A blond American heiress called Christine. She’d introduced herself at the reception, though he hadn’t paid much attention to her, his head too full of Katya to notice. Christine looked like she was in her thirties but could have been any age, since he was sure she’d had some work done. She gave him a measuring look from beneath her way too long to be natural eyelashes, her full red mouth pouty.
Next to her was the scarred mercenary who had also been at the reception. The man’s dark eyes were as cold as Mrs. Lau’s, his expression completely impenetrable. There was something familiar about him that Alex hadn’t noticed before but nagged at him now. Weird.
The seat next to the mercenary was empty, but Alex could see the fifth player standing near the bar, talking on his cell phone. Jason August, a Texan oil baron and walking cliché in his Stetson, his loud voice with its broad vowels ringing out over the room.
Conrad himself seemed to be absent.
“Mr. St. James, if you would take a seat,” the doorman urged, making gestures toward the poker table.
Alex kept his fingers laced through Katya’s as he descended the stairs and approached the table. It wouldn’t hurt to give them a show with his adoring lover, though most of them had already seen him with his arm around her at the Apocalypse reception anyway.
He kissed the back of her hand again, seating himself down one end of the table, in between the sheikh and Christine, the heiress. Katya gave him a brilliant smile before moving down toward the bar. She’d been to enough of his games in her traditional bodyguard capacity to know that spectators were not permitted past the rail that circled the table protecting the players.
Her role for the evening was to see what she could scope out of the game and of the other people in the room. Perhaps talk to the other hangers-on and see what else she could find out. He’d asked her to leave the private gaming room to see what kind of information she could get from the main gaming floor, but she’d refused. Her place was near him, she’d said. To protect him.
That wasn’t going to be a problem of course. Not with what he’d already put on the table in front of Conrad. His clubs. Himself. Conrad wasn’t going to risk losing either of those with an ill-advised attempt on his life.
Alex sat down, nodding at the other players.
“Nice to see you again, Alex,” Christine purred from his right. “Your first time playing in the Apocalypse?”
Tension gathered in his shoulders, but he ignored it, leaning his arms on the table and smiling at the woman as if he were sitting down to a relaxing dinner with friends. “Aren’t we all Apocalypse virgins? I didn’t think you got invited twice.”
“Sure. Ordinarily.” Christine’s blue eyes flicked toward the Chinese woman. “Except if you’re Mrs. Lau of course.”
Mrs. Lau was talki
ng in Mandarin to a man standing at her back, but obviously she heard her name, because she flashed both Alex and Christine an enigmatic look.
“In fact,” Christine said, leaning in close, the plunging neckline of her blue gown giving him an excellent view of very round, fake breasts. “I heard that it’s not really poker that goes on here.”
Alex was careful not to let any reaction show. Instead he kept the smile on his face. “If it’s not poker, then what?”
Christine flashed him a naughty look she must have practiced a hundred times in the mirror. “Could be anything. I know Conrad gets bored. He likes to mix it up a little.”
Oh yeah. He certainly did.
A waiter paused beside Alex and put down a tray containing a crystal tumbler full of clear liquid on the small side table next to his chair. Grey Goose probably. Another of Conrad’s power games. Showing that he knew you and your preferences without being asked.
Alex was tempted to wave away the drink, but that wouldn’t convey the right message. That he didn’t give a fuck.
Instead he leaned back in his chair and raised the tumbler in Christine’s direction. “Here’s to mixing it up then, darling.”
At that moment a door near the bar opened and Conrad walked in.
He was immaculate as always, in a white tuxedo, the black bow of his tie perfectly centered, the red handkerchief he had folded in his breast pocket bright as a spot of blood against the white fabric.
The tension in the room suddenly hiked up, stretching thin and taut.
Alex didn’t move, continued to take a sip from his glass, watching as the other man greeted a few people as he made his way over to the table.
The other players straightened in their chairs while Jason August finally made his way over too, sitting down with a grunt as Conrad stood at one end of the table. Conrad didn’t focus on Alex in particular, his gaze meeting Alex’s for a moment before passing on to the next person. As if Alex wasn’t special in any way.
“Friends,” Conrad said, smiling like he knew things other people didn’t. “Welcome to the Apocalypse. You will find it less of a game and more an … experience.” The smile on his face did not reach his eyes. “This year’s tournament is going to be slightly different in that Mr. St. James down there has convinced me to join the players instead of sitting out like I normally do.” He gave a chuckle, encouraging everyone to smile with him. “He knows I can never resist a bet.”
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