“What happened to you?” he ground out, raising a hand to my breast, his fingers skimming the bruises. “Who did this?”
“It happened at the club after I took the Euphoria,” I said in a small voice. “Someone grabbed me from behind.”
“Did he do anything else? Touch you anywhere else?” His voice was deceptively calm but rage poured off him in waves like it was a physical thing.
I knew what he was asking and I shook my head, shivering. “No. Just this. It was my own fault. I shouldn’t have—”
“This was not your fault. It was mine for not being here and taking better care of you. Mine for always being pulled away on Consortium business and leaving you alone. Mine for not keeping you safe.”
“It’s bad enough you have a security detail following me everywhere except the bathroom. You can’t expect to watch me every minute. It’s creepy and it’s weird,” I shot back, suddenly nervous. “Besides, sometimes things just…happen.”
“Not to things that belong to me.”
“I’m not a thing you can own,” I retorted.
I may as well have been talking to myself at that point because, just like that, he was gone. His mind had flown to the CN-net and all I had left was a shell. He was still alive, but for all intents and purposes, he was no longer with me. His mind could travel the CN-net faster than anyone’s, sniping information, searching down leads, gathering data. It was one of many things I’d never be able to do. I didn’t have the t-mods. I couldn’t load my thoughts into the CN-net and participate in that online world the way most of the population could. It hadn’t really bothered me until now—moments like this when he was completely gone from me.
I didn’t know what to do when he got like this—especially not when he had one hand on my breast and loomed over me. Disturbing, and it freaked me out. When I tried to wriggle away, he was back, his blue eyes focusing on me with laserlike intensity. Then he bent and lifted me until my legs were wrapped around his waist.
“Alexei, what happened? What did you do?”
“It’s been dealt with” was all he said as he carried me to my bedroom.
“How?” I had an idea of what he’d done—gone through the club’s security AI, analyzed all the CN-net avatars whose citizenship chips had been scanned that night, broke into memory blocks to search for anything involving me until he found who’d attacked me. No doubt he’d already located the responsible party and sent chain-breakers to deal with him.
Alexei said nothing, setting me on the edge of the bed instead. He disappeared, and when he came back, he carried a handful of skin-renewal patches.
“Alexei, please. Tell me what you did.”
He knelt before me, tearing off pieces from of the first patch and smoothing them over the cuts and abraded skin on my knees. Seconds later, I could feel the tingle of new skin graphing over the damaged areas.
“You already know,” he said, looking at my hands and applying patches there as well. Then my elbows because apparently I’d spent my evening falling over every single pebble on Mars. “You’re mine to protect. Mine to keep safe. You were assaulted. You could have been raped. If you hadn’t gotten away, he would have done just that and thought nothing of it. Just blamed the Euphoria. Claimed you were willing because you didn’t say no. If I could, I would rebuild this world so nothing could ever hurt you. Since I can’t, I deal with the threats the only way I know how.” He examined the bottoms of my feet now, smoothing skin patches there as well.
“Is he still alive?”
He finished with my feet and his blue eyes met mine. “Not for much longer.”
My eyes widened. “You can’t kill a man because he touched me!”
“He wanted to do much more than touch, Felicia.” He set the unused skin renewal patches on the floor. “I’m perfectly aware of how unhinged I sound. I would fail a One Gov rationalization test were I to take one now. Unfortunately for both of us, you make me irrational. I lose all common sense where you’re concerned. A threat to you existed. I dealt with it.”
“Even if he intended something worse, it didn’t happen. You can’t kill him for that.”
“I disagree. To protect you, I would do that and more. This is what the Consortium created and turning off that conditioning is difficult.” He paused, caressing my cheek. “I won’t kill him, but I will destroy his life. Ultimately, he will end up killing himself, which is the desired outcome so it doesn’t really matter.”
My mouth opened, but I was speechless. What kind of comeback was I supposed to have for that? How had we gotten so far away from normal?
“I’m sorry I’m scaring you,” he said, and he looked sorry too as he knelt on the floor in front of me, his head bowed and hands at his sides. “If you want me to leave, I will.”
“I just want you to be a regular guy and for us to not have conversations like this.”
“I’m trying, but I may still do things you won’t like because, for the Consortium, that is who I have to be. It’s difficult to be one thing for you and something else for them. I’ll make mistakes. You’re not my conscience, but I need you to help me. I need you so much I would destroy this world if I lost you.”
He looked so miserable and pained, I had to reach out to him. I may not like what he’d done, but I also couldn’t let him go because of it either. My fingers brushed his hair from his face and tilted his head so I could see his eyes. I knew I should be angry and afraid, but seeing him like this undid me. He was undoubtedly one of the most powerful men in the tri-system yet he needed me. Only me.
“I need you too,” I whispered. “I don’t want to go back to that part of my life where you weren’t in it. Just…ease up on the death threats. Notify One Gov instead of whatever it is you planned. Don’t kill anyone for me. Don’t do anything that might drive us apart.”
“Never. I would never do that.” He paused, slipping away from me again and back to the CN-net. A moment later, he murmured, “One Gov is on their way to apprehend him.”
I let out the breath I’d been holding. “Thank you.”
“Pazhalsta, but I’ll be watching him and will deal with him as I see fit if I think it necessary. That’s the best I can promise you.”
What could I say to change his mind? Probably nothing. “Okay. I guess that’s fair.”
He rose up from where he knelt and his lips met mine. Slow, soft, and gentle, the kiss was little more than a brushing of lips. No part of his body touched me other than his mouth, the kiss a caress on its own.
To my surprise, he pulled back. “Would it be best if I left?”
I had to salvage this situation, afraid it might become a hurdle we couldn’t overcome. In answer to his question, I leaned back on my elbows, spreading my legs in invitation, putting myself on display. I couldn’t imagine behaving like this for anyone but him. His eyes went where I intended and stayed there. “I haven’t seen you in over two weeks. What do you think?”
The hesitancy turned into something else. He said something softly under his breath in Russian I didn’t catch. “I think we’ll be ordering dinner in tonight,” he said.
He stood and stripped off his clothing faster than I’d ever seen anyone move, throwing his T-shirt on the floor and somehow pushing off his pants and boots all at once. As always, I couldn’t help but admire his body. He was perfect, all sculpted and defined muscle that felt like warm granite under my hands. His broad shoulders and deep chest tapered down to a lean waist and a set of abs I could probably do my laundry on. His arms and legs were also heavy with a chiseled muscle that begged my touch—hands, mouth, with whatever part of me that could reach him. Lastly, my eyes were drawn down to his penis, fully erect and swaying slightly under its own weight. It was beautiful yet daunting, unnerving me with worries that, just like everything about him, it would be too much for me.
However, what really caught the eye were his tattoos. Done in blue-black ink, they might be considered works of art if you didn’t know how he’d earned them. The Ma
donna and child over his heart said he’d been born into the Consortium. The spider on his neck marked him as a thief. The crucifix on his chest signified he would never betray the Consortium and loyalty to death. High up on his right bicep, I’d once thought it a rose, but in reality it was dozens of tiny skulls shaped in the outline of a rose, meaning time in prison and also murder. He’d killed many times, and it was likely a number that would horrify me. The dragon around his waist and coiled down most of his left leg meant he was in the Consortium’s grip for life. Last were the stars on his knees and both shoulders proclaiming him 1vor v zakone: thief in law and a ruler of the criminal underworld. He was the pinnacle of organized crime. And while the Tsarist Consortium took pains to show One Gov and the tri-system it had shed its ancient roots, the tattoos proclaimed some of the original element remained.
Before I could finish looking, Alexei tumbled me into the bedsheets. I found myself on my back, repositioned up the bed, him over me. Rather than kiss my lips, he ran his mouth over my body. My throat, my shoulders, along my arms and hands, then my breasts and stomach, to my thighs and lower—every part of me was kissed and licked and caressed with his mouth until I was an aching ball of need. His touch was worshipful as he whispered how much he needed me, how important I was to him, that I was the only thing in his world that mattered. He’d never been so gentle before, never so reverent. I was on fire from those kisses, lost in him and begging him to take me because I needed him too. I couldn’t live without him. Didn’t want to live if he wasn’t in my life.
An infinite amount of time later, he took pity on me. His body was poised over me and he held himself up on his elbows. He kissed me deeply, groaning into my mouth while his tongue danced with mine. Then with torturously slow movements, he pushed into me. I felt stretched and filled, crying out with relief after having been so long without him. My legs went around his waist and I dug my heels into him, trying to get him closer, faster. He wouldn’t be rushed. Instead he continued his excruciating glide, making me feel all of him as he settled deep inside me. My eyelids fluttered closed at the sensation and I arched against him, begging him with my body, letting him know what I needed.
When he went utterly still, I opened my eyes to find him looking down at me, his blue eyes dark with want. The muscles in his neck were tightly corded as he strained to hold back rather than give in to what our bodies demanded.
“Say it,” he whispered hoarsely, bracing himself on one forearm and fisting my hair. His other hand gripped my left hip hard enough to bruise as he fought to keep me from bucking against him and snapping his control. “I want to hear it. Please, Felicia.”
“I love you. I don’t know how to do anything else but love you. All I want is you. Oh gods, Alexei, no one but you!”
The hand on my hip moved, changing the angle until my hips canted up against his. He finally began to thrust in the powerful, fluid strokes I wanted that stole my breath away. My awareness of the world disappeared under the speed and urgency of his movements. In and out he went, the friction wonderful and overwhelming, pushing me past anything I’d felt with him before. His lips were on mine again, his tongue thrusting in a rhythm that matched his hips.
The orgasm hit so hard, I thought I was dying. I screamed into his mouth and clung to him. Felt his body jerk in response, and his hold tighten on me as his hips slammed into me. A heartbeat later, I felt him coming, his body convulsing with savage force. He roared his climax, greedily using my body and wringing every last bit of pleasure from both of us.
He rolled to the side then, moving so his weight didn’t crush me. I found myself sprawled on his chest, my face against his throat. Both our hearts were racing, each of us breathless. I felt him twist my hair in his hands, using it to lift my head so our eyes met. For a long time, we simply looked at each other. I’d never experienced a moment with another person that felt so intense or weighted with potential.
“Move in with me,” he said. “I don’t want us separated any longer. I never wanted it, but you needed time and now I don’t want another sol apart from you.”
And because it seemed that easy and I wasn’t sure why I’d resisted in the first place, I nodded. “Okay.”
He smiled, making my heart swell. He eased me aside and climbed out of bed. Then he cleaned us up, and resettled the sheets around me. Before I realized it, he pulled on his clothes and crouched by the bed.
“I was in such a hurry to get to you, I left some things dangling,” he murmured, kissing my forehead.
“Did everything go okay with the mines? Did you find out why they’re collapsing?”
“That’s not something I want to bore you with. Certainly not right now,” he said, drifting in for another kiss.
Somehow that didn’t seem like the right answer, so I tried again. “But it went okay?”
“There were some unexpected issues, but it’s fine.”
“You don’t make it sound fine.”
“It will be,” he assured me. “For now I want you to rest and let the renewal patches do their work. I’ll be back shortly with takeout.”
I nodded. “Okay. I’ll be here.”
“I would hope so,” he teased, brushing fingers through my hair. “I could get used to this agreeable Felicia.”
“Don’t worry. It won’t last. We’ll be fighting again soon enough.”
“Until that happens, I plan on enjoying this immensely.” He pressed a kiss to my lips before standing. “I love you. I’ll be back soon.”
It wasn’t until he’d left that I realized he never said if he’d been on Phobos. And even though he was safe and I’d told him I loved him, nothing had changed. The unease in my gut that said something big and life-altering was heading my way hadn’t disappeared. If anything, it was worse.
Chapter Five
My brush with Euphoria took more out of me than I realized, so Alexei convinced me to close up shop for the rest of the week. While he was right, the idea hadn’t thrilled me since it meant I might fall behind in my payments to him. When I mentioned that, he looked at me like I’d lost my mind before gazing at me thoughtfully.
“I suppose you could make it up in other ways,” he suggested. It was later that evening after he’d returned and he was pulling my thigh up higher on his hip so he could thrust leisurely into me.
I stalled him with, “I still have to pay Lotus. She’s rescheduling all my appointments and she feels just as awful as I do.”
“Pay her? I’d like to strangle her for taking you to Red Dust. Mannette Bleu as well.”
“If you’re not here and I want to go out, I will. You’re away a lot and I’m not a shut-in.”
“That changes as of tomorrow.”
I wanted to ask what he meant by that, but he drove into me forcefully and refocused my attention until my train of thought was utterly derailed.
I slept most of the next sol with Alexei there when I needed him, be it to feed me or something more. I wasn’t sure what he did while I slept. Worked via the CN-net probably, since I don’t think he left my condo. Having him there was nice, although I wished I was awake enough to enjoy it.
By Thursday, or Deimosol, I felt more like myself so I agreed when he suggested checking out a resort in Apolli. I could have gone back to work, but playing hooky with him was more fun. We hadn’t been together like this since The Martian Princess. I’d heard great things about Apolli, the resort town located at the base of Apollinaris Mons—one of the midrange mountains on Mars. There was skiing, or you could lie by the pool, which was definitely more my speed. Alexei mentioned he had Consortium business there that would take a few hours so we were killing two birds with one stone. The Consortium had invested heavily in the area, building Apolli into a tourist destination to rival Olympia. Presumably he’d be looking into that though I didn’t ask. When your boyfriend headed what many believed was a multiplanet crime syndicate with aspirations to replace One Gov, you tended to ask questions only when you really wanted answers.
I knew Alexei believed One Gov was corrupt and bloated, no longer focused on the interests of its citizens. He felt it held the human race back instead of letting us leap forward and some of the current programs constrained humanity. Though I agreed things needed to improve, did I want him to overthrow One Gov? If I was honest with myself, not really.
Sometimes I wondered how much we changed each other. Was he toning down his more radical views because he knew I couldn’t support them? Was I altering my stance on technology and genetic modifications because of who he was? And how did my luck gene play into events? Was it modifying things to…To what? To have its own advantage, whatever that was? I shuddered, afraid of the implications.
Since Mars only had one space elevator docked to Space Station Destiny and no high-orbit flights, it was about a six-hour flight-limo ride from Elysium City to Apolli. I mostly slept when I wasn’t catching up on my shims. I ended up either deleting them or forwarding any work-related ones to Lotus. A couple had to do with the family picnic with a special reminder to bring the cards and my potato salad. Also, Celeste wanted to know if I had a “plus one” because she needed numbers. Ah, the joys of dealing with family.
Fuck. Family. I sat up with a start. Gods, how could it have slipped my mind?
Alexei was alert beside me. “What’s wrong?”
“I forgot to tell you what else happened at Red Dust.”
“That can happen with Euphoria. Short-term memory loss is one of the side effects we want to eliminate,” he said, reaching out to stroke my hair and pull me back against him. I settled into his chest, my head on his shoulder, his arm slipping around me. I squirmed as I tried to get comfortable. He chuckled, amused as I struggled.
“Problems?”
I poked him in the stomach, meeting a solid wall of hard muscle. “Sometimes snuggling with you is like trying to cuddle a rock.”
He laughed at that. “I believe that’s the first time I’ve heard this particular complaint. Would you like me to do something different to accommodate you?”
The Chaos of Luck Page 7