He’d expected her to want more than Saturday night—they always did. And the sex they’d had had been...troubling. He’d known it while it was happening. He’d known it in between, when he’d found himself talking of things he never, ever talked about. He’d known it when he’d opened his eyes to watch her tiptoe from his room on Sunday morning, and had discovered he wanted her to stay.
He knew it now, remembering her sweet, hot mouth against his tattoo as if she’d blessed that snarling representation of the monster in him. As if she’d made it sacred, somehow. The moment he’d seen her, he’d expected she would try to leverage that, take it from him somehow. He’d planned to make it clear to her she had to go—before she could try.
But she claimed she wanted to ignore him. He should have been thrilled.
He told himself he was.
“I’m sorry.” Her voice was carefully blank when she finally spoke, to match the expression on her face. “Did you say you needed a date?”
“I did.” It occurred to him that he was enjoying himself, for the first time since he’d looked up and seen her standing in that conference room, in clear violation of all his rules. “There is a Christmas ball in Prague that I must attend in a few weeks, and it will go much more smoothly with a woman on my arm.”
These things were always better with a date, it was true. It didn’t matter who it was. The presence of any date at his side would repel most of the vulturelike women who always circled him like he was fresh meat laid out in the hot sun, allowing Nikolai to concentrate on business. And in the case of this particular charity ball, on Veronika—who had only this morning confirmed that she and her lover would attend.
Because Nikolai had realized, as he looked at her in the light of the streetlamps and thought strategy instead of containment, that Alicia could very well turn out to be the best weapon yet in his dirty little war.
“I’m certain there are hordes of women who would love nothing more than to fill that opening for you,” she said, with none of the deference or courtesy he was used to from his subordinates and dates alike. There was no reason on earth he should find that intriguing. “Perhaps one of your many assistants has a sign-up sheet? A call list? Maybe even an audition process to weed out the lucky winner from the multitudes?”
He’d told her he liked sweet and biddable, and he did. But he liked this, too. He liked the way she talked to him, as if it hadn’t occurred to her that she should fear him like everyone else did. It made him want to lick her until all of that tartness melted all over him, and he didn’t want to examine that particular urge any closer.
“Something like that,” he said. “But it’s all very tedious. All I want is a pretty dress, a polite smile. I don’t have time for the games.”
“Or the person, apparently,” she said, her voice dry. “I’m sure that’s very rewarding for whichever pretty dress you choose. But what does this have to do with me?”
Nikolai smiled, adrenaline moving through him the way it always did before a tactical strike. Before another win.
“You want nothing to do with me.” His voice was a silken threat in the cold night. “Or so you claim.”
“You’re right,” she said, but her voice caught. “I don’t.”
“Then it’s perfect,” he said. “It’s only a handful of weeks until the ball. We’ll allow ourselves to be photographed on a few dates. The world will think I’m smitten, as I am very rarely seen with the same woman more than once. More specifically, my ex-wife will think the same. And as she has always greatly enjoyed her fantasy that she is the only woman to have any power over me, and has never been one to resist a confrontation, it will put her right where I want her.”
She stared at him. “And where is that, exactly?”
“Veronika and I need to have a conversation,” Nikolai said with cool dismissal. “Hopefully, our last. The idea that I might have moved on will expedite that, I think.”
“How tempting,” she said after a moment, her voice as arid as that look in her eyes. “I’ve always aspired to be cold-bloodedly used to make another woman jealous, of course. It’s truly every girl’s dream. But I think I’ll pass.”
“This has nothing to do with jealousy,” he said impatiently. “The only thing left between Veronika and me is spite. If that. I’m sure you’ll see it yourself at the ball.”
“Even more appealing. But still—no.”
“Your whole office saw me stare at you today.” He shrugged when her eyes narrowed. “They could hardly miss it. How much of a leap will it be for them to imagine that was the beginning of an infatuation?”
“But they won’t have to make that leap.” Her eyes were glittering again. “I’ve declined your lovely offer and we’re going to ignore each other.”
“I don’t think so.” He watched her take that in. Knew she didn’t like it. Found he didn’t much care if she was happy about it, so long as she did it. “I’m going to take an interest in you, Alicia. Didn’t you know? Everybody loves a romance.”
“They won’t believe it.” Her voice sounded thick, as if the idea of it horrified her, and he was perverse enough to take that as a challenge. “They won’t believe someone like you could get infatuated at all, much less with me.”
He smiled. “They will. And more to the point, so will Veronika.”
And he could kill two birds with one stone. He could dig into this attraction, the unacceptable intoxication this woman made him feel, and in so doing, strip away its power over him. Make certain he never again felt the need to unburden himself in such a shockingly uncharacteristic manner to a total stranger. At the same time, he could use Veronika’s smug certainty about her place in his life against her. It was perfect.
Alicia stared back at him, so hard he thought he could hear her mind racing.
“Why bring any of this into the office at all?” she asked, sounding frustrated. Panicked, even. “If you want me to go to this ball, fine. I’ll do it, but I don’t see why anyone needs to know about it but us. No unlikely romance necessary.”
“And how will that work?” he asked mildly. “When pictures of us at that ball show up in all the papers, and they will, it will look as if we were keeping our relationship a secret. As if we were hiding something. Think of the gossip then.”
“You said you’re not an actor,” she said. “Yet this seems like a very elaborate bit of theater.”
“I told you, you’re a distraction,” he replied, almost gently. He wanted to show her what he meant. To bury his face in that crook of her neck. To make her quiver for him the way he knew he could. Only the fact he wanted it too much kept him from it. “I don’t allow distractions, Alicia. I neutralize them or I use them for my own ends.”
“I don’t want to be in any papers.” Her voice was low, her eyes intense on his. It took him a moment to realize she was panicked. A better man might not have enjoyed that. “I don’t want pictures of me out there, and certainly not with you.”
“There’s a certain liberty in having no choices, Alicia,” he told her, not sure why it bothered him that she was so opposed to a picture with him. It made his voice harsher. “It makes life very simple. Do what I tell you to do, or look for a new job.”
Nikolai didn’t think that was the first moment it had occurred to her that he held all the power here, but it was no doubt when she realized he had every intention of using it as he pleased. He saw it on her face. In her remarkable eyes.
And he couldn’t help but touch her again then, sliding his hand over her cheek as he’d done before. He felt the sweet heat of her where his fingertips touched her hairline, the chill of her soft skin beneath his palm. And that wild heat that was only theirs, sparking wild, charging through him.
Making him almost wish he was a different man.
She wore a thick black coat against the cold, a bright red scarf looped arou
nd her elegant neck. Her ink-black curls were pulled back from her face with a scrap of brightly patterned fabric, and he knew that beneath it she was dressed in even more colors, bright colors. Emerald greens and chocolate browns. She was so bright it made his head spin, even here in the dark. It made him achingly hard.
She is nothing more than an instrument, he told himself. Another weapon for your arsenal. And soon enough, this intoxication will fade into nothing.
“Please,” she whispered, and he wished he were the kind of man who could care. Who could soothe her. But he wasn’t, no matter what he told her in the dark. “You don’t understand. I don’t want to lose my job, but I can’t do this.”
“You can,” Nikolai told her. “And you will.” He felt more in control than he had since she’d slammed into him at the edge of that dance floor, and he refused to give that up again. He wouldn’t. “I’ll be the one infatuated, Alicia. You need only surrender.”
She shook her head, but she didn’t pull her face from his grasp, and he knew what that meant even if she didn’t. He knew what surrender looked like, and he smiled.
“Feel free to refuse me at first,” he told Alicia then, his voice the only soft thing about him, as if he was a sweet and gentle lover and these words were the poetry he’d told her he didn’t write. As if he was someone else. Maybe it would help her to think so. “Resist me, if you can. That will only make it look better.”
* * *
“I won’t do it,” Alicia told him, hearing how unsteady her voice was and hating that he heard it, too. Hating all of this. “I won’t play along.”
“You will,” he said in that implacable way that made something inside her turn over and shiver, while that half smile played with the corner of his hard mouth as if he knew something she didn’t. “Or I’ll have you sacked so fast it will make your head spin. And don’t mistake sexual attraction for mercy, Alicia. I don’t have any.”
“Of course not,” she bit out, as afraid that she would burst into tears right there as she was that she would nestle further into his hand, both impulses terrible and overwhelming at once. “You’re the big, bad wolf. Fangs and teeth. I get the picture. I still won’t do it.”
She wrenched herself away from the terrible beguilement of his touch then, and ran down the street the way she should have at the start, panic biting at her heels as if she thought he might chase her.
He didn’t—but then, he didn’t have to chase her personally. His words did that for him. They haunted her as she tossed and turned in her sleepless bed that night. They moved over her like an itch she couldn’t scratch. Like a lash against her skin, leaving the kind of scars he wore in their wake. Kitchen knives and bullets.
Do what I tell you to do.
Alicia was appalled at herself. He could say terrible things, propose to use her in some sick battle with his ex-wife, and still, she wanted him. He was mean and surly and perfectly happy to threaten her—and she wanted him. She lay awake in her bed and shivered when she thought about that last, simple touch, his hand hot despite the chill of the night air, holding her face so gently, making everything inside her run together and turn into honey.
Because that fool inside of her wanted that touch to mean something more. Wanted this attraction between them to have more to do with that vulnerability he’d shown her than the sex they’d had.
Wanted Saturday night to be different from that terrible night eight years ago.
He wants to use you, nothing more, she reminded herself for the millionth time, punching at her pillow in exhausted despair. It means nothing more than that.
But Alicia couldn’t have pictures of herself in the tabloids. Not at all, and certainly not in the company of a man who might have been called a playboy, had he been less formidable. Not that it mattered what they called him—her father would know exactly what he was. Too wealthy, too hard. Too obvious. A man like that wanted women for one thing only, and her father would know it.
He would think she was back to old tricks. She knew he would.
Alicia shuddered, her face pressed into her pillow. She could see that awful look on her father’s face that hideous morning as if he stood in front of her the way he’d done then.
“He is a married man. You know his wife, his children,” her father had whispered, looking as deeply horrified as Alicia had felt.
“Dad,” she’d managed to say, though her head had pounded and her mouth had been like sand. “Dad, I don’t know what happened.... It’s all—I don’t remember—”
“I know what happened,” he’d retorted, disgust plain in his voice and all across his face. “I saw you, spread-eagled on the grass with a married man, our neighbor—”
“Dad—” she’d tried again, tears in her voice and her eyes, afraid she might be sick.
“The way you dress, the way you flaunt yourself.” He’d shaken his head, condemnation and that deep disgust written all over him. “I knew you dressed like a common whore, Alicia, but I never thought you’d act like one.”
She couldn’t go through that again, she thought then, staring in mute despair at her ceiling. She wouldn’t go through it again, no matter how infatuated Nikolai pretended he was. No matter what.
He was going to have to fire her, she decided. She would call his bluff.
“No,” she said, very firmly, when a coworker ran up to her the following day as she fixed herself a midmorning cup of tea and breathlessly asked if she’d heard. “Heard what?”
But she had a terrible suspicion she could guess. Ruthless and efficient, that was Nikolai.
“Nikolai Korovin expressly asked after you at the meeting this morning!” the excitable Melanie from the PR team whispered in that way of hers that alerted the entire office and most of the surrounding neighborhood, her eyes wide and pale cheeks red with the thrill of it all. “He grilled the team about you! Do you think that means he...?”
She couldn’t finish that sentence, Alicia noted darkly. It was too much for Melanie. The very idea of Nikolai Korovin’s interest—his infatuation—made the girl practically crumple into a shivering heap at Alicia’s feet.
“I imagine he’s the kind of man who keeps an annotated enemies list within arm’s reach and several elaborate revenge plots at the ready,” Alicia said as calmly as possible, dumping as much cold water on this fire of his as she could, even though she suspected it wouldn’t do any good. “He certainly doesn’t like me, Melanie.”
The other woman didn’t looked particularly convinced, no doubt because Alicia’s explanation flew in the face of the grand romance she’d already concocted in her head. Just as Nikolai had predicted.
“No, thank you,” Alicia told the emissary from his army of assistants two days after that, who walked up to Alicia as she stood in the open plan part of the office with every eye trained on her and asked if she might want to join them all for a meal after work?
“Mr. Korovin wanted me to tell you that it’s a restaurant in Soho he thinks you’d quite enjoy,” the woman persisted, her smile never dropping from her lips. “One of his favorites in London. And his treat, of course.”
Alicia’s heart hammered in her chest so hard she wondered for a panicked moment if she was having some kind of heart attack. Then she remembered how many people were watching her, much too avidly, and forced a polite smile in return.
“I’m still catching up from my trip,” she lied. “I’ll have to work late again, I’m afraid. But please do thank Mr. Korovin for thinking of me.”
Somehow, that last part didn’t choke her.
By the end of that week, the fact that ruthless and somewhat terrifying billionaire Nikolai Korovin had taken an interest in Alicia was the only thing anyone in the office seemed able to talk about, and he’d accomplished it without lowering himself to speak to her directly. She felt hunted, trapped, and she hadn’t even seen him since
that night on the street.
He was diabolical.
“I believe Nikolai Korovin wants to date you, Alicia,” Charlotte said as they sat in her office on Friday morning, going over the presentation for their team meeting later that afternoon. She grinned widely when Alicia looked at her. “I don’t know whether to be excited or a bit overwhelmed at the idea of someone like him dating a normal person.”
“This is so embarrassing,” Alicia said weakly, which was perhaps the first honest thing she’d said on the topic all week. “I honestly don’t know why he’s doing this.”
“Love works in mysterious ways,” Charlotte singsonged, making Alicia groan.
Everybody loves a romance, he’d said in that cold, cynical voice of his. Damn him.
“This is a man who could date anyone in the world, and has done,” Alicia said, trying to sound lighter, breezier, than she felt. “Why on earth should a man like that want to date me?”
“You didn’t drop at his feet on command, obviously,” Charlotte said with a shrug. Only because he hadn’t issued that particular command that night, Alicia thought sourly, fighting to keep her expression neutral. “Men like Nikolai Korovin are used to having anything they desire the moment they desire it. Ergo, they desire most what they can’t have.”
* * *
Alicia hadn’t been so happy to see the end of a work week in years. She hated him, she told herself that weekend, again and again and again, until she could almost pretend that she really did. That it was that simple.
“I hate him,” she told Rosie, taking out her feelings on the sad little boil-in-the-bag chicken curry they’d made for Sunday dinner with a violent jab of her fork. It had been two blessed Nikolai-free days. She couldn’t bear the thought of what tomorrow might bring. “He’s incredibly unprofessional. He’s made the whole office into a circus! Nothing but gossip about him and me, all day every day!”
Rosie eyed Alicia from her side of the sofa, her knees pulled up beneath her and her blond hair piled haphazardly on her head.
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