by Jacey Conrad
A ripple of energy spread from Viktor’s muzzle and he shifted into a very muscular, very naked human, crouched over her. Irina’s hands were cupped around his shoulders, still stroking what was now bare skin. She only wished it wasn’t so dark, so she could see his tattoos. She hadn’t got a good look at them during the shower debacle.
Irina parted her pink lips to speak, but Viktor pressed a warm finger to her mouth and shushed her quietly. Irina groaned and felt warmth seep into the slick fabric of her tights.
“I smell someone,” he whispered.
“It’s probably just someone who works for my father,” she murmured.
He shook his head. “No, this smells different…”
Viktor’s stance changed to a protective crouch, head up and alert to the noise of any potential enemy. Several moments passed without the expected invasion and he relaxed ever so slightly, the weight of his hips dropping against hers.
Viktor was breathing hard, the warmth of each exhalation feathering over her cheeks. His head lowered toward hers and she licked her lips in anticipation of his mouth. He caught the motion with his eyes and smiled, bumping the tip of his nose against hers, pressing his lips to the bridge, to her eyelids, her chin, her brow. “Rina,” he sighed.
Just as his mouth closed over hers, a less welcome voice bellowed her name from the trail. “Irina!”
Viktor groaned, his head dropping against her forehead.
“Irina, where are you?” Alexei yelled.
Irina made a noise that was a blend of sobbing and laughing, pressing her face into Viktor’s neck. She wouldn’t have come to Papa’s if she thought there were a possibility that Alexei would be here. She scrambled to her feet, crawling out from under the pine boughs. Viktor followed her, shimmying into his jeans as they scanned the tree line for her elder brother. Viktor shrugged into his shirt.
“Follow me,” she whispered.
“Irina!” Alexei roared.
Irina led Viktor in a wide circle, crossing the trail’s curves twice before she reached a point she felt was “safe” and began jogging back toward Alexei’s voice.
“Papa built the trail to have loops of different distances,” Irina whispered as Viktor jogged beside her. “If we stay on this one, we can convince Alexei that we were just on different routes, too far away to hear.”
As she ran, Irina shook pine needles from her hair, while Viktor tried to run and button his jeans simultaneously, which was difficult. But they were presentable and appropriately winded by the time they ran into Alexei, who was pacing on the trail, flanked by two of his biggest thugs.
Immediately, Irina’s hackles rose. Why would he bring them out here, Irina wondered. Why would Alexei feel that he needed protection from her?
She followed her brother’s glassy eyes with their enlarged pupils, his gaze falling on the strong, virile Beta in front of him. The Beta who probably would have smelled strongly of Irina’s arousal, if not for the strong pine scent that clung to them.
“Irina, what around you doing out here?” Alexei demanded, taking in her mussed clothes and bedraggled hair.
“Just going for a run,” she said, smiling cheerfully.
“With him?” he demanded, pointing to Viktor.
“Yes,” Irina said, keeping her tone bored and flat. “Papa insisted I keep a guard with me. I figured, if I have to put up with Vincent—”
“Viktor,” her Beta bit out, catching on to her ruse. His own voice was put-upon and irritated, as if he couldn’t stand another moment in the company of the spoiled Sudenko princess. “It’s Viktor, Mrs. Volkov.”
“Okay, Viktor,” she said, rolling her tawny eyes. “If I was stuck with Viktor here, he didn’t get to go back to the house for his running shoes. Even trade.”
Alexei drew himself up to his full height and sucked in the faint bulge he was getting around his tummy. “If you need to venture out into the woods, you should only go with me or Papa. That is what’s proper. The next time you want to run, you come to me.”
His tone of command grated on her nerves. Who was he to give her orders? Alexei wasn’t the head of the family yet. And she was a grown woman who had been married. How much control over her did Alexei expect to have? The very question set her teeth on edge. But she also knew how vulnerable their position was out here, in the woods, without any of Papa’s staff to witness. Of course, that was the reason Alexei brought muscle.
“Oh, I don’t know if I’ll be running again any time soon,” Irina said, with a dismissive wave. “It’s not as much fun as I remember.”
“Well, maybe we can find something else to do together,” Alexei suggested, looping his arm through Irina’s and tugging her back toward the house. The heat from his body overwhelmed her, making her underarms prickle with sweat. Could his overheated skin be a side effect of Bullet? Or was it just her own discomfort with Alexei pulling her so damn close?
Viktor’s low growl drew Irina’s attention. Over her shoulder, she saw Vasily and Timur close ranks in front of him, preventing him from following closely. Viktor glared at the back of Vasily’s boulder-like head, while Timur was licking his lips and staring Irina’s ass. She scowled at him, and wondered how Alexei had never noticed his buddy’s wandering eyes.
Tired of being blocked off from his charge, Viktor delivered a swift kick to the back of Vasily’s left knee, making him stumble. Timur whirled around to confront him, but when he saw the furious expression on Viktor’s face, bowed his head and bared his neck in submission. Viktor smiled pleasantly as he caught up with Irina, as if they were all out for a lovely stroll in the country. Vasily pushed to his feet, but followed at a greater distance.
Irina tried to gently tug her arm out of Alexei’s grip, but he was so much stronger than her, she couldn’t wiggle loose. “The ballet, would you like to go to the ballet? You used to love it when we were kids, remember? You told Papa you wanted to be a dancer when you grew up. You would have made a beautiful ballerina.”
Irina frowned as her brother rambled. She’d mentioned her desire to be a ballerina once, after the family attended a performance of the Nutcracker, when she was eight. A month later, she’d decided on a career in pony-related veterinary medicine. How the hell had Alexei remembered that? She wasn’t sure Alexei could remember where she’d gone to college or escorting Franny down the aisle at Irina’s wedding to Sergei, but he seemed to be able to recount events from their childhood with perfect clarity. Did he still see her as that little girl? Was that where all of this angst and possessiveness came from?
“Maybe,” she said. “The whole family could make an outing of it, like when we were kids.”
“I was thinking more just the two of us,” Alexei protested as they emerged from the woods to find Nik standing at the entrance to the trail, looking dapper, but uncomfortable, in his dark blue suit. Nik enjoyed the outdoors, but not when he was wearing Armani.
“What would be just the two of you?” Nik asked, none too subtly insinuating himself between Alexei and Irina to give her a hug. Alexei huffed, scowling at being pushed aside.
“Alexei was thinking of going to the ballet. I was thinking we could make an evening of it with the family.”
“I think I would enjoy that,” Nik said, putting his arm around her and leading her toward the house.
“Of course, you would,” Alexei muttered under his breath, much to the amusement of his goons. Viktor looked to Nik and Irina, to see whether they would react to Alexei’s jibe, but they studiously ignored their brother.
“We should call Galina,” Nik said. “You know how she loves the ballet.”
Alexei growled viciously at the mention of his least favorite sibling, but Nik and Irina ignored that, too.
“Irina, maybe from now on you should stick to your treadmill,” Nik whispered, opening the massive front door and nudging her inside.
“Lesson learned,” Irina acknowledged.
8
A Tea Party in Hell
DAYS LATER, Irina sat
at an elegant cherry table at her favorite café, sipping spiced tea and nibbling on her favorite honey cakes.
Papa had an agenda.
He didn’t just ask her to her favorite café for tea and order her favorite cakes without some unpleasant news or a favor to ask. The last time he’d brought her to the Dacha Café and ordered honey cakes without prompting, he’d asked her to explain “the birds and the bees” to Galina before her baby sister left for college. Irina managed to hold it together until she reached Galina’s bedroom, where they both laughed so hard that Galina wolfed out and rolled around on her bedroom floor in a big furry heap.
So she perched on the edge of her carefully embroidered chair and sipped tea, bracing herself for Papa’s latest request. What would it be? Moving back in to the family home? Organizing some nightmare reception to celebrate the opening of his latest barely-legal restaurant? Taking on another friend’s idiot son as an apprentice and let him destroy the other half of the jewelry shop?
Papa lounged back in his chair, handsome as ever in his dark gray suit, completely relaxed, master of all he surveyed, as the fastidious owner of the café bowed and scraped and thanked Ilya for gracing his establishment with his presence. Deep down, her father was a good man, but even Irina knew that a tiny part of him enjoyed this part of the job—being recognized wherever he went and treated like royalty. She wondered how Papa might react to—gasp—waiting in line, or getting bumped to standby at the airport. Thousands of years of werewolf secrecy blown because her father transformed into a giant gray wolf at the American Airlines counter.
Over Papa’s shoulder, Irina saw Viktor standing near the door, keeping watch. She’d expected Viktor to behave differently with her father present, but it still stung a bit to be completely ignored by him. He was polite, of course, but she might as well have been a piece of furniture. He didn’t look at her. He didn’t speak to her unless directed. And he kept a ten-foot bubble of space around her at all times.
Papa didn’t notice. Why would he? He expected cool, professional detachment from Viktor and the three other men standing guard at the café. Irina tried not to take either man’s machinations personally. She supposed they both thought they were doing what was best for her. She was, however, getting pretty tired of making that excuse for people.
Ilya finally waved Yanni, the café’s proprietor away, and sat up in his chair, stirring four lumps of sugar into his tea. She smiled. Papa would always have a sweet-tooth that needed appeasing. One of her favorite memories from childhood was sneaking down to the kitchen at night to find Papa rooting through the pantry for cookies. She would climb up onto the kitchen counter, and wait for him to emerge, cookies in hand. They would both pretend to be shocked to find each other there. And then Papa would buy her silence with cookies, which they would share, while Irina told Papa about her day at school, the latest book she was reading, a boy he would insist wasn’t good enough for her.
It was the only time of day she got her father all to herself. And then, Mama Katrina died, and the nighttime pantry raids came to an end. Papa went into deep mourning, barely able to function. Elena was no help. And Galina was just a baby. Irina took over a lot of responsibility for Galina’s care and overseeing Nik, even though they were almost the same age. And Alexei—
“What is my sweet girl thinking about, that it puts such a frown on her face?” Papa asked, reaching across the table and patting her hand. He nudged a few of the cookies from his plate onto hers, the ultimate gesture of love from a wolf.
“Just thinking of our late-night cookies,” she said, biting into a gingersnap.
Papa smiled, his thick gray moustache twitching. “You always let me have the chocolates.”
“Because you would pout if I tried to give you anything else,” Irina told him.
“Sudenkos do not pout,” Ilya protested, though he was still smiling fondly at her. Behind him, Irina could see Viktor smile, and then tamp it back down into his usual grim expression.
“You look lovely in that color,” Ilya told her, prompting Irina to adjust the topaz silk suit jacket. “It brings out your eyes. Much better than the red, I think.”
“Galina may have gone a little crazy with Alexei’s American Express,” she told him, feeling just a little guilty over the way they’d cackled over her total at Saks. The sales clerk thought they were insane.
Papa looked pained for a second, as if he didn’t like to be reminded of why she’d needed a new wardrobe in the first place. He drained his teacup and Irina poured him another from the fragrant, steaming pot.
“Irina?” he began, stirring more sugar into his cup.
“Yes, Papa?”
“What do you think of young Andreyev Lupesco?”
Irina watched her father, schooling her features into a serene, indifferent mask. It appeared that they had arrived at the point of this little tea party. “He seems perfectly nice, Papa,” she answered carefully.
“Good, good,” Ilya said, relaxing a bit and sipping his second cup. “You might pay a little extra attention to him, the next time we see him.”
Irina frowned and wondered what he meant by “extra attention.” Sparkling conversation? Extended cleavage exposure? A hand-job under the dinner table?
Irina cleared her throat. “All right.”
Papa patted her hand. “It’s important to me, to see you settled. I’m getting older. I won’t always be able to protect you. It would comfort me if I knew that you were married to someone dependable.”
Irina clenched her jaw to keep it from dropping. He was really going to do it. Her husband was barely cold and he was already nudging her toward a new husband? And to do it under the guise of being concerned for her, when Papa was trying to compensate Andrey for the loss of his drugs? Somehow, Irina resented that most of all.
It was unorthodox, even in their pragmatic, fertility-conscious culture, to move on so quickly after being widowed. And frankly, her mind rebelled against the very idea, submitting again, agreeing to what could be the same hell she’d just left. She’d lived with one man who hated her, what would it be like to live with a man who felt nothing for her at all? She was sure Andrey would be a polite and civil husband, but cold, so cold. And he seemed the kind that would expect her to bring children into the marriage, without accepting Irina’s willful nature as her reason for not breeding. What would happen to her if her body refused to accept Andrey’s mating bite, too?
Irina’s gaze shifted to Viktor, who appeared to be staring off into space, pretending to be deaf. Very helpful.
Irina cleared her throat delicately and prayed her sister would forgive her for this attempt at father deflection. “I would think you would be more worried about Galina’s future,” she said. “I’m an old widow, after all. Galina’s got her whole life ahead of her.”
Papa frowned and took a bite of cookie, which took forever for him to chew. Irina suspected subterfuge. “I don’t think Andrey would be a good match for Galina. His Rom sensibilities would clash too much with Galina’s nature. She’s too headstrong, too stubborn. But you? You’re as calm and sweet as a lamb. You’ve always been my good girl. You will soften his edges, make him a more patient, peaceful man.”
Irina wanted to pat Papa’s hand and cluck her tongue. Did he honestly believe that? Her sweetness and obedience hadn’t softened Sergei’s edges. If anything, it seemed to give him permission to be as hateful as he wanted because he knew she wouldn’t strike back. Despite herself, she felt a little sorry for her father if he believed his own rationalizations.
“Not a great comparison, Papa, considering what wolves do to lambs,” Irina murmured.
But Papa didn’t acknowledge that she had spoken. “Galina will marry a biddable son from the old country, a boy who doesn’t mind being bossed around. In fact—” he leaned forward against the table and whispered conspiratorially “—I have a young man in mind, a nice boy from a fine family. They made their fortune in caviar, and we will make a fortune, too, importing that caviar
to the States through our channels, without the tariffs and fees. These Americans can’t get enough of the stuff. Makes them feel rich. He’s here now, visiting, and I have, how you say, set them up on romantic outings around the city. We will announce their engagement before the end of summer, mark my words.”
Irina was almost distracted, imagining Galina’s face when she met Papa’s caviar prince, but a nagging thought gnawed at the corner of her brain. There seemed to be some underlying message that she wasn’t picking up on. Was it that Andrey was good enough for Irina, but not good enough for Galina? That she could be handed off to the same Rom that Papa had disdained for years, but Galina must be saved for better things? Hurt blossomed in her chest, throttling her with its cold force. She took a deep breath through her nose and ground her teeth together.
Across the room, Viktor took a half-step toward the table. She raised her face and caught his eye, giving an almost imperceptible shake of the head. He frowned, but stopped himself, and fell back into position.
“It would do my heart good to know that you are settled with someone who will be able to care for you,” he said, covering her hand in his huge warm paw.
“But I can take care of myself, Papa,” she protested.
“Irinochka, my love, it is not good that you should be unsettled when Alexei becomes head of the family. He would not allow you to marry again. He would not allow you live on your own. He would not…Trust me, this is better. I only want you to be safe and happy.” Papa nudged the last honey cake from his plate to hers, a meaningful gesture from an Alpha. And she tried to see similar kindness in his interference in his daughters’ lives. He wanted both girls settled, out of range, before Alexei took power. That was the reason for this sudden urgency to shove Irina back into the dating pool.