“You want to run away again,” he all but sneered. “And you hate that I am keeping you here, that I will not let you be the irresponsible girl again.”
Now she really wanted to scream at him. She was responsible. At this point, she was the most responsible person she knew. What would he do, she wondered, if she just told him the truth? Told him his beloved uncle had threatened her. That she left because she had been commanded to. That afterwards, she had considered risking her life to be with him. She had picked up the phone so many times to call him and explain everything, but then all her stuff had been delivered to Layla’s front doorstep in neat boxes, all marked with the same label: “From: Sergei Rustanov To: Eva St. James.” It had been an effective message. Unlike Alexei, who still hadn’t been able to pin down her whereabouts, his uncle let her know he could find her anywhere, any place.
Three weeks after that, she’d realized she hadn’t gotten her period in all the weeks of worry, fear, and confusion following her leaving Alexei. The plus sign on the pregnancy test stick had been her final answer. She’d keep this baby, but if she wanted to protect it, she’d have to let go of its father.
But now she was once again sitting across the table from Alexei, being accused of things she couldn’t deny, the old feelings roiling around with new fears. No, she couldn’t tell him, she decided for what felt like the millionth time in the past few days. She had no idea what he’d do if she told him. And she couldn’t take that risk.
Alexei thought he was impressing her with his hotels, his private jets, and his empty restaurant, but all he was doing with his displays of wealth and power was scaring her more.
“I have to go to bathroom. I’ll be right back,” she said. She didn’t wait for his permission, just threw down the napkin she’d had on her lap, and all but ran out of the restaurant.
“Ms. St. James,” the hostess said as she ran past her.
“I’m going to the bathroom,” Eva said over her shoulder.
“There’s a restroom inside the restaurant—“
Eva didn’t hear the rest. Instead she made a beeline for the gift shop across the lobby, where she found and bought a pay-as-you-go phone, which the clerk assured could be used to make international phone calls.
Five minutes later she was in a stall in the nearby women’s restroom, dialing Aaron’s number with trembling fingers.
“Hello?” he said, his voice groggy.
Tears sprang to her eyes, but she tried to keep her voice light when she said, “I’m sorry for waking you, sweetness. I just wanted to hear your voice. Did you have fun at Disneyland Paris?”
“Yeah,” he said. “We did the Star Tours ride and went down Space Mountain—it’s just like the one in California. And then Serafina started crying, but I gave her some of my gelato and she stopped.”
She could hear the pride in his voice and smiled. “Wow, you’re one amazing cousin.”
“Yeah, that’s what Aunt Maria says. She says I should come out next summer, too. Can I, Mama?”
“Maybe,” she said. “We’ll talk about it when you get home.”
“You can come, too, and you can see Disneyland Paris.”
They talked for a few minutes more about the differences between Disneyland in California, which they’d visited a year ago, and Europe’s version. Then they talked about what he had for dinner and the action movie he’d gone to see with Steve and how they’d gone to a park and kicked around a soccer ball earlier in the day. There was a lot of Uncle Steve this and Uncle Steve that, and she realized how much Aaron must have missed have a male figure in his life who wasn’t a cranky old man.
She wished, not for the first time, she could give Aaron the father he so obviously craved. One who wouldn’t use all the money at his disposal to take him away from her, not because he actually wanted children, but to punish her for not telling him he had a son.
“Mama, I’m sleepy. Can I go now?”
She glanced at the phone read out. Almost forty minutes had passed. She was surprised Alexei hadn’t sent someone in there to fish her out. “Okay, baby, I’ll try to call you again in a day or so.”
The world and her myriad problems had fallen away while talking with her son, but as soon as she hung up, they came crashing back down on her shoulders and it felt like she had feet made of lead as she walked out of the bathroom, forcing herself to go back to the restaurant and face Alexei.
But she didn’t have to go far because Alexei was standing right outside the bathroom door in his well-tailored linen suit, looking exactly like what he was: one pissed off billionaire.
“What is it with you and standing outside of bathrooms?” she asked.
He did not laugh. “You were talking to him.”
Eva didn’t have to ask who he was referring to. She clamped her mouth closed, once again preferring to tell him nothing rather than having to tell yet another lie. It had been hard enough to pull off the one she spun for him last night. And she suspected she wouldn’t have gotten away with it, if he hadn’t already been so inclined to believe the worst of her.
He clenched and unclenched his hands, as if restraining himself from doing her physical violence. When he reached for her, she actually took a step back, afraid.
But when he caught her by the arm, he didn’t hurt her, he kissed her, his tongue sweeping into her mouth, his other hand snaking around the back of her neck as he all but devoured her mouth in a kiss that took not only her breath away, but also all of her troubled thoughts.
She welcomed this, welcomed him, threading her arms around his chest, kissing him back with all the frustrated passion and residual love she didn’t want to feel.
Chapter Fifteen
ALEXEI had not intended for the day to fall apart as it did. In fact, when he had woken up next to Eva on the floor, his spirit had felt lighter than it had in years. Somehow, by finally confessing the ugly truth, Eva had unburdened him. He had actually felt a little grateful to her as he carried them both to his bed to sleep for a few more hours, until he woke up at five a.m. as was his habit.
She looked so peaceful, lying naked in his bed, that he’d caressed her face, feeling a strange longing to kiss her awake. But in a moment of tenderness, he decided to let her sleep. He worked out in the suite’s gym, showered, got dressed, answered a few business emails, all while whistling a tune to an old folk song from his childhood.
When he called his publicist to arrange for a photographer to discretely track their movements when they came down for lunch, it hadn’t felt so much like his final revenge, but one last thing to take care of so he could finally relax and enjoy the rest of his time with Eva.
The plan had been to wake her up, get her downstairs for a romantic lunch, which would be snapped by his photog, and then get the pictures published in a few Dallas newspapers. His publicist had agreed leaking photos of him at The R with a local beauty would be a great advertisement for the hotel. Though she had to be wondering why he cared, considering The R was just one of his holdings and while profitable, not so much so that he should take an active interest in its publicity. Of course, she had no way of knowing his sudden desire to get The R in the trades stemmed more from a personal thirst for revenge than good business sense.
Drummond was a small town. Someone would see the romantic vacation pictures and tell Eva’s Aaron about them. This new plan allowed him to keep his promise to Eva but have his ultimate revenge, too.
However, the day turned sour when he went back into the master suite and found Eva crying out, “No,” in her sleep. She woke from her nightmare with a start, and then shrank from his touch, like she was repelled by him, letting him know exactly who her nightmare had been about. He had meant to start the day off fresh with her, but they ended up getting in yet another argument.
He had managed to get her downstairs to lunch as planned, but not without feeling a surprising spike of shame for what he was about to do. Yes, she had treated him horribly years ago, and he wasn’t one to let an insult
that big go unanswered. He had a reputation for not just vanquishing but crushing his enemies, and it wasn’t unearned. While he no longer resorted to violence, he wasn’t above using underhanded tactics if it would help him win a contract or get a bigger percentage in a deal or outrun his competition. The reason he had come so far so fast was because he put winning over everything, and this philosophy had served him well over the years.
But what he was about to do was suddenly making him feel less like winner, and more like a bully, no better than her father, who had obviously been using her one rebellion with Alexei to control her all these years.
When she listed her reasons for wanting to move away from Drummond, it sounded like the same reasons she’d like to get away from him. Then when she tried to tell him she’d changed, he’d called her an irresponsible girl, which basically sent her running from the table and made him feel like an even bigger jerk.
She had been right about him needing closure, and maybe she was right about herself, too. Maybe she had changed for the better, and he just didn’t want to see it, like he hadn’t wanted to see that her fun-loving nature was really fickle immaturity eight years ago.
After just a few uncharacteristic moments of indecision, Alexei went after her. He’d call the photog off, he decided, and they’d talk for real this time. He was sick of arguing with her, and the one thing she’d said about working hard to be a better person had him intrigued. He wondered if she had actually become the person he had thought she was back in the day.
But when he’d reached the restaurant entrance, it had been just in time to see her exit the gift shop and scurry into the nearby women’s restroom.
Curiosity had him walking into the small boutique.
“Mr. Rustanov, hello!” the older woman behind the cash register said when he entered. Though all of the hotel employees had been informed he was staying on the premises, the cashier was probably rightfully surprised he had deigned to step into one of the gift shops. “Can I help you find anything?”
“The woman who was just here. What did she buy?”
The cashier didn’t hesitate with her answer, his status as the hotel’s owner overriding any consumer confidentiality ethics she might have had. “A pay-as-you-go phone.”
“I see.”
And just like that, the bitterness he’d thought himself freed from that morning came back to hang like an acid storm cloud over his heart.
He waited for her outside the restroom. And waited. And waited. At first he had only been annoyed. Obviously, they would need to set some ground rules for the next few days. No more lying, no more sneaking off to make calls to her boyfriend. But as the minutes ticked by, he grew angrier and angrier.
Who did she think she was? Keeping him, Alexei Rustanov, waiting while she talked to her boyfriend on the phone? By the time she emerged from the bathroom forty minutes later, he was quaking with fury.
“You were on the phone with him,” he said, his voice tight with accusation.
She didn’t answer, which was answer enough. While he had been considering ways to forgive her and get to know her better, she had been whispering sweet nothings to the man she really loved.
He kissed her, long and hard, giving the photog plenty of time to snap his fill of pictures. The fact that she kissed him back, matching him in passion, made him despise her all that much more. How could she talk to her boyfriend one moment and then turn around and kiss him as if she burned for him in the same way he burned for her?
He broke off the kiss with an angry “Let’s go.”
He took her by the hand, another romantic gesture meant for the photog, and guided her to the elevator. But once they were ensconced back in the penthouse, he all but flung her into the master bedroom.
“Strip.”
“Alexei…”
“Shut up. You’re back on yes-no punishment. Now strip.”
Setting her jaw, she kicked off her flip-flops and peeled off the simple, yellow sundress she had chosen from the closet of clothes he’d provided for her. Then she stepped out of her panties and jerked off her strapless bra.
If he hadn’t been so consumed with anger, he would have chosen that moment to tell her she had been very wrong earlier. His reaction to her wasn’t purely based in revenge. Her dark chocolate body, the breasts, the hips, the ass, the way she shifted from foot to foot, waiting for his next instruction—it called to him in a way no other woman’s body ever had.
“Lie down in the middle of the bed.”
She did as he said with stiff movements.
“Now close your eyes.”
The sight of her lying there naked and prone caused his cock to pulse in his underwear. He took himself out, at the same time he said, “Picture me. Not him. Not any man you might have been with before. Just me.”
He lightly stroked his cock a couple of times, giving her a chance to get the picture fully in her mind. “Now imagine me touching your breasts. Put your hands over your tits and imagine they are mine.”
With awkward hesitation, she laid her hands on her chest and rubbed her own breasts.
“As you know from experience, I would do a better job than this. Squeeze them, flick your nipples.”
She did and to his delight, he watched her two black cherry-colored nubs become hard under her ministrations.
“Do this until it becomes uncomfortable for you in other places. Do this until you become wet, and then stick two fingers into yourself. These are my fingers and I want you fuck them.”
He guessed she must have already been wet, because no sooner were the words out his mouth, did she insert two fingers into her own slit.
“Now you may talk, but only to say my name. Say it now.”
“Alexei…” Her hips bucked on the bed. And his hand began stroking himself with a mind of its own. If there had ever been a sight hotter than the one of Eva masturbating on his bed, Alexei had yet to see it.
“Yes, fuck my fingers, let them make your sweet pussy come and say my name again.”
“Alexei…” She opened wider with two more fingers, sliding them in and out of her tunnel, while her hips jutted back and forth.
Pre-cum appeared on Alexei’s dick and was quickly used as lubricant by his now-frantically stroking hand. He only stopped long enough to climb up on the bed and kneel beside her curvaceous, writhing body.
“Use your other hand to rub your clit and come for me. Let me see you come, Eva, keep saying my name as you do.”
His words sent her over the edge. “Alexei! Alexei! Alexei!” Her back arched, and all self-stroking stopped as she came with one last long, helpless cry of his name. “Alexei!”
“Open your eyes,” he said as soon as he was done.
She opened her eyes, which were still glazed over with the orgasm she’d just had, and without him having to make the command, she knocked his hand away and replaced it with her own before taking him into her mouth inch by inch, until her pretty lips met her hand at the base of his dick.
He used one hand to hold her head steady as it bobbed up and down on his cock and the other to lift the fingers that had just been inside of her to his lips. He loved the way she tasted, always had, and he greedily sucked her essence from her fingers until he released into her mouth.
She swallowed every last drop, creating extra suction on the bulb of his dick as she did so, and he found himself calling out her name as he finished coming in her mouth.
When she was done, he drew her up to her knees and kissed her again, needing to taste himself on her lips, to be reminded of who she was here with, whose name she had called out over and over again as she masturbated herself to orgasm.
They fell onto the bed kissing, her legs tangling with his, her hard nipples stroking his chest through the Egyptian cotton of his shirt. They kissed so long, that Alexei’s anger began to recede. They kissed so long, that he forgot why they’d gotten into this argument in the first place. They kissed so long, that time began to rewind. They were Alexei and Eva agai
n, making out for hours on his mattress on a hot summer’s day, neither of them wanting to be the first to break the embrace.
He came to his senses before she did, dragging his lips away and saying, “I have an idea.”
She looked up at him but said nothing. He then remembered he had instructed her not to speak. “You may speak freely again.”
“You have an idea?” she asked, her voice husky with sex and amusement.
“Let us not argue anymore,” he said. “No matter what. Let us both decide right now to not, how do you say, push the other’s buttons.”
She smiled. “I can try.”
“If we both try, we can accomplish this.”
She laughed and nuzzled his chest. “Oh, I love when you do the authoritative Russian thing. Okay, I’m on board to try not arguing with you. Though, be warned: half the time I don’t know I’m pushing your buttons.”
“I will let you know, and you will let me know. And if one of us lets the other know, the one pushing the buttons will stop.”
She nodded. “Okay, that sounds fair.”
She then laid her head down on his chest and they held each other in companionable silence. He stroked her hair, loving the feel of it against his chin and the smell of the coconut oil and aloe vera gel she used to keep her thick curls so defined.
“I have an idea, too,” she said.
Then she fell quiet.
“Yes, what is it?” he prodded.
“Why don’t we pretend it didn’t happen?”
It took him a few seconds to figure out what she meant. “Pretend the break-up did not happen?”
“The break-up, the last eight years, the Drummond Oil purchase. Let’s pretend it didn’t happen. I won’t sneak off in the middle of lunch to make calls. You won’t keep reminding me how bad I messed up when I left you. We’ll be like every other couple in this hotel, on vacation like normal people, one of whom happens to be following every sexual command of the other.”
He thought about this idea, and though one petty part of him knew pretending she didn’t have a boyfriend or any reason to feel guilty about the way she left him would make all of this much easier on her, he also realized it would make things easier for him as well. He liked the idea of being the people who had just spent the last thirty minutes kissing as opposed the ones who had spent the hour before that arguing.
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