Shadow Alpha

by Carole Mortimer

  Kat eyed him skeptically, having already recognized that coiled anger for exactly what it was.

  She had no idea what she would say to Sergei, given the opportunity, but these past few days with Dair had done so much to restore her self-confidence, in herself and as an attractive woman.

  She would meet Sergei again for exactly what she now was, daughter and sister to the head of the Markovic family, and lover of Dair Grayson.

  Chapter 16

  Dair wasn’t so sure about his ability to remain silent, or keep his fists to himself, once the three of them had been shown into Ivan Orlov’s study later that day.

  If Sergei gave Kat just one more sneering glance then Dair knew he was going to lose it, etiquette and hierarchy be damned.

  How the hell Gregori had managed to remain calm through the farce of the meeting and greeting and being offered refreshment, which he had refused, without ripping Ivan or Sergei’s throat out, was beyond Dair’s comprehension.

  Gregori’s expression was completely unreadable, and had been since the plane landed an hour ago at the private airfield, when he had asked to be driven to the clinic where Kat had been held prisoner for six weeks.

  Gregori’s haughty demeanor alone would have been enough to gain them entrance, but the armed men surrounding him had ensured it. Dair had tried to dissuade Kat from going back into that hellhole, but again she had been adamant, meaning Dair had no choice but to go inside too.

  He could feel his own anger rising as they’d approached the room where he had found Kat tied to her chair just days ago. Gregori’s face had been a cold, hard mask as he paced the room that had been Kat’s prison, before crossing back to the door where she stood and taking both her hands in his to look at the abrasions on her wrists from the restraints. He had then kissed each wrist in turn before placing his arm about Kat’s waist and returning outside to the cars, all without a word having been spoken.

  But Dair had seen Gregori’s eyes as he straightened from kissing Kat’s wrists, had seen the merciless fury glowing deep in the depths of those cold obsidian irises. His own telephone call to the police three days ago may have put the clinic under investigation, but that fury in Gregori’s eyes had told him the older man would ensure that the place was taken apart, brick by brick.

  Dair stood at the back of Ivan Orlov’s study now, Lijah next to him, the rest of Gregori’s men waiting outside but ready to enter at the first sign of trouble.

  As for Kat…

  If Dair hadn’t already known he was in love with her then he would have fallen, and fallen hard, just watching her as she sat so cool and regal at Gregori’s side, her face pale but stunningly beautiful.

  Dair just wanted to pick her up and carry her out of here, take her somewhere no one could find them, and just make love to and with her for days and days without end.

  Instead he was forced to stand and watch as Gregori and Ivan played some sort of mindfuck game with their eyes, neither man speaking as they each waited for one of them to break that silence.

  As might have been expected, it was that arrogant bastard Sergei who eventually spoke first, marching over to stand just in front of Dair to look him up and down contemptuously. “Are you the stupid fucker that took Kat out of the clinic where she was being treated for depression—” He broke off with a startled gurgle as Dair moved quickly, pinning him up against one of the floor-to-ceiling bookcases, hand about Sergei’s throat as his feet dangled three inches off the floor.

  Dair shoved his face into the other’s man’s rapidly reddening one, totally ignoring Sergei’s efforts to pull Dair’s hand off his throat. “Don’t even speak her name again, you contemptuous little shit!”

  “Call your man off, Gregori—”

  “Dair is not ‘my man’,” Gregori answered Ivan evenly.

  “He’s mine,” Kat spoke calmly.

  Dair wanted to turn and look at her in the brief silence that followed her announcement, but he was otherwise engaged with Sergei Orlov.

  Didn’t stop him from thinking, though. Did she mean it? Was he ‘her man’? If he wasn’t then he was very soon going to be!

  “Are you saying that you and this man—”

  “Have a care what you say now, Ivan,” Gregori warned softly. “As I said, Dair is his own man, but I am sure, if I were to ask nicely, that he would apply just the right amount of pressure to rid the world of the piece of slime you call your son.”

  “In a heartbeat,” Dair confirmed without taking his eyes off the still-struggling Sergei as he squeezed the other man’s throat just a little tighter, not enough to kill him—yet—but enough that Sergei was really having trouble breathing now.

  “There is really no need for any of these threats of violence,” Ivan sounded agitated.

  “No?” Gregori came back with deceptive mildness; Dair didn’t need to see the other man’s eyes now to know they were still in the same killer mode his own had been in since Kat told him the truth last night.

  “It is unfortunate that Kat and Sergei have been having some marital problems since losing the baby—”

  “There was no legal marriage, so there can be no ‘marital problems’,” Gregori broke in icily. “And I believe what you meant to say was that your son pushed my sister down the stairs, killing her baby and almost killing her too, after which the two of you had her imprisoned in a private clinic, watched over by the staff you employed to have her restrained in a chair whenever your bastard of a son went to visit her!”

  Until that moment Kat hadn’t known how much Gregori knew of the past five years; it seemed that Dair really had told her brother everything during their telephone conversation the previous night.

  She and Gregori hadn’t really spoken much on the plane here, and Kat had assumed that was because her brother was tired; she now realized he had simply been too angry to speak before now.

  He turned to look at Dair. “Might I suggest that you release him now?” he spoke pleasantly, as if he were discussing the weather.

  “Then perhaps the two of us can talk of this matter like two civilized men,” Ivan sounded relieved at Gregori’s show of lenience.

  “Civilized?” Gregori echoed mildly. “Your son is a product of your making, Ivan,” his voice hardened dangerously. “A weak, self-centered, arrogant bully,” he added so that there should be no doubts.

  “Kat has been sick—”

  “Katya is a warm and wonderful woman who should never have been allowed within a hundred feet of your son!” Gregori bit out icily. “And my request for Dair to release him is only so that I might have the pleasure of disposing of the vermin myself!”

  “I cannot—” Ivan broke off his protest as Gregori stood up to his full imposing height.

  He looked down the length of his nose at the older man. “I will give you my terms for peace, Ivan, you may take them or leave them.”

  “And if I choose to leave them?”

  “Then there will be war between your family and mine, and I will inform all the other families of your son’s duplicity.” Gregori’s mouth twisted disdainfully. “We are what we are, Orlov, but even amongst those such as us there is a code of honor. We both know your son has broken that code.”

  Kat almost felt sorry for Ivan in that moment. Almost. But she was too aware of his influence in what had happened to her these past two months to allow more than that brief moment of sympathy.

  “You may release him now, if it pleases you, Dair,” Gregori prompted as Sergei’s gasps for breath became audible.

  It didn’t ‘please’ Dair at all, and he continued to look at the younger, still struggling man for several more long seconds before releasing him so suddenly Sergei dropped to his knees, coughing and choking as he tried to draw breath into his starved lungs.

  “As I said, there was no legal marriage between my sister and your son,” Gregori continued coldly. “So the twenty million pounds you will settle on Katya now will be recompense for her even having to breathe the same air as him,”
he ignored Kat’s gasp as he continued. “You will publically and irrevocably disown Sergei as your son—none of these conditions are negotiable,” he assured as the other man paled. “You should realize I am doing you a favor, Ivan,” he scorned. “Because once you are gone no one will accept Sergei or work with or for him as head of the Orlov organization. I will personally ensure that they don’t.”

  Kat hadn’t known what to expect of this meeting, but it certainly hadn’t been this. If Ivan agreed to disown Sergei then the younger man would become a pariah in the world he had strutted through so arrogantly all of his life.

  “Your intentions were admirable, Dair.” Gregori looked down contemptuously at the still coughing and choking Sergei. “But I believe I prefer him to suffer a living death,” he added ominously.

  Sergei’s head came up. “Father!”

  As if aware of Kat’s brief moment of empathy earlier, Ivan now turned to her appealingly. “Is this what you want, Kat? To see the man you were married to disowned, and reduced to being an outcast to all that he knows and loves?”

  What Kat wanted was never to have met Sergei, let alone have ‘married’ him.

  “He was also the father of your baby,” Ivan obviously misunderstood her silence for weakness.

  A weakness that Dair’s desire for her had ensured no longer existed.

  “He also killed it.” Kat stood up, ice having hardened her heart at the mention of her baby. “You’ve heard Gregori’s terms for peace, Ivan, I suggest you agree to them. And you,” she turned to where Sergei was still kneeling on the floor, Dair looming over him. “If I ever see or hear of you again I’ll make sure the knife doesn’t miss next time!” She turned on her heel and walked out of the study, head held high, despite feeling a desperate need to run from the house where she had been so unhappy.

  Dair watched Kat admiringly as she walked out of the room looking as regal as any queen. He had never felt more pride, more respect for her, than he did at that moment. She had gone through the fires of hell, and really had emerged from them as tempered steel.

  His expression hardened as he looked down at the man still groveling at his feet. A man who wasn’t even worth bruising his knuckles on.

  Nevertheless. “And if I ever hear you’re so much as in the same country as Kat, then I’ll be the one you answer to,” he ground out dangerously soft. “Do you hear me?” He nudged the other man’s thigh with his booted foot.

  “I hear you,” Sergei muttered resentfully.

  Dair turned his icy stare on Ivan Orlov. “The same goes for you.”

  The older man’s eyes glittered with fury. “You cannot come into my home talk to me in this way—”

  “Oh yes, he most certainly can,” Gregori was the one to affirm pleasantly.

  “Because he’s Kat’s lover!” Sergei sneered.

  “Leave, please, Dair,” Gregori advised in that same pleasant voice, only the matte black of his eyes revealing that he was still in killer mode. “Sergei and I have just a little more to say to each other, and then I will join you and Kat in the car.”

  Dair gave the man on the floor one last contemptuous glance before following to catch up with Kat as she stood outside in the warm sunshine.

  She was all that was important.

  “So what happens now?” Kat prompted curiously once they had arrived back at the airport and boarded the plane.

  Her brother had obviously still been furious by the time he left the Orlov house and strode over to where Kat and Dair sat in silence in the back of the limousine, his only comment being, ‘It is settled.’ But the abrasions on his knuckles showed that the agreement hadn’t all been of a verbal kind.

  Kat had reached instinctively for Dair’s hand at that moment, relaxing slightly as his fingers curled reassuringly about hers, and had remained that way on the drive back to the airport.

  “We will return to London,” Gregori answered her now. “Where I will endeavor—I have no idea how—to make up for the years you have suffered living here.”

  “I—”

  “I want Kat to come back to Venice with me,” Dair put in abruptly, causing Kat to turn and look at him in surprise.

  Gregori raised one dark, arrogant eyebrow. “The question is, does Kat wish to return to Venice with you?” He looked at her enquiringly.

  Dair’s jaw tightened as he also turned to look at her. “Do you?”

  Kat couldn’t read anything from Dair’s expression. Which meant she also had no idea why he wanted her to go back to Venice with him.

  Did he think she needed a holiday, now that all the tension was over and done with?

  Did he want more of that raw and primal sex between them?

  Or did he want them to spend some time together getting to know each other better, now that the problem of the Orlovs was no longer looming so heavily in the background?

  Which of those was it?

  Or perhaps it was something else entirely, such as he felt sorry for her, and believed she needed time to recuperate from her ordeal?

  There was no doubting that Kat had just been through one of the worst hours of her life. Even being in the same room with Sergei had been suffocating, but she had been determined that neither Ivan nor Sergei would know that beneath her cool exterior she was trembling inside.

  A part of her had really wanted Dair to just keep squeezing Sergei’s throat until he stopped breathing and his eyes glazed over. Dair’s presence had been what kept her grounded; she had known, to the depths of her being that while Dair was near no one would be able to hurt her.

  She had been dreading their parting to the same depths of her being, but if all Dair was offering her was a place of refuge in Venice, until she felt ready to go back to London, then she couldn’t accept his invitation.

  She was in love with Dair, she had no doubts about that, but she wasn’t accepting scraps from any man ever again. Dair himself was responsible for showing her that she deserved more than that. That she was more than that—

  “Please come back to Venice with me, Kat,” Dair spoke huskily as Kat’s silence dragged on. Every muscle in his body was tense, even his damned teeth were aching from where his jaw was tightly clenched as he waited for her to answer.

  Instead of answering him, Kat now turned to her brother. “Would you excuse us while Dair and I go into the bedroom to discuss this further?” she prompted lightly.

  “I think that might be for the best, yes.” Gregori gave a pointed glance at the other men on the plane with them, all of them trying to look as if they weren’t eavesdropping on the conversation.

  Dair had left two of his own men in New York, Gregori two more, to ensure that the agreement with Ivan Orlov was carried out, but there were still half a dozen of Gregori’s men as well as Lijah on the plane.

  “Perhaps you might like to keep in mind that the walls of this plane are not soundproof?” Gregori added dryly, no doubt in reference to Kat’s ‘purrs’ he had heard this morning.

  Dair had a feeling that at least one of these men had heard Kat do more than purr when they were out on the balcony together last night, as well as seen Dair bare-assed naked and groaning his own pleasure.

  Kat felt the warmth in her cheeks even as she held her hand out to Dair. “We’ll do that,” she answered her brother ruefully. “Well?” She looked at Dair speculatively.

  He stood up and placed his hand in hers, neither of them speaking as they walked to the back of the plane.

  Kat paused in the doorway to turn and smile at her brother. “You really should get yourself a private jet, Gregori; I think you might find traveling more…enjoyable, in future if you did.” She gave him an impish smile as she followed Dair into the bedroom and closed the door behind her, then leaned back against it, arms folded in front of her breasts. “Why?”

  He frowned at her from across the compact space. “You know exactly why I almost choked that bastard Sergei—”

  “Oh to hell with Sergei.” Kat stepped further into the room. “He�
��s the past. Yesterday’s news. Finished. Gone.”

  Dair gave a wry smile. “You’re over him then?”

  “I was never on him,” Kat dismissed impatiently. “My father arranged the marriage, you know that. Any tolerance I might have had for him died with my baby.”

  “Kat—”

  “Stop right there, Dair.” She held up her hands as he would have moved to take her in his arms. “We need to talk, and I can’t think straight when you touch me.”

  He gave a grin. “Really?”

  “Yes—really.” She eyed him exasperatedly. “Now tell me why you want me to go back to Venice with you?”

  “I did promise to take you to a masked ball—”

  “Don’t play games, Dair,” she warned wearily. “This is just too important, one of those once-in-a-lifetime windows of opportunity that may never be open again.”

  “What the hell does that mean?” He scowled darkly.

  She sighed. “You know exactly what it means, Dair.”

  “What do you want me to say?” He ran his hand through his hair. “You’ve just gone through two months of hell. We haven’t stayed in the same place for longer than a few hours at a time since I got you out of the clinic. That meeting with the Orlovs was traumatic for you, to say the least.”

  “So you’re offering me a holiday in your palace in Venice?”

  His jaw tightened. “I’m offering you some time away from all the stress. Time to stop looking over your shoulder every minute of every day and night.”

  Kat’s eyes were narrowed. “That’s not good enough, Dair.” She turned back to open the door out into the main cabin.

  Only to have Dair’s arms shoot over both her shoulders, the palms of his hands on the door slamming it shut again.

  Kat stopped breathing as he stepped in close behind her, the length of his body pressed intimately against her back, making her completely aware of the hard length of his arousal against her spine.

  “Tell me what you want from me, Kat?” He spoke against the side of her throat, his breath a warm caress against her sensitized flesh.