by Abbi Cook
“I don’t think I do, but if you want me to get some for you, just say the word.”
“Oh, would you? That would be so great!”
“Your wish is my command, little bird. Give me a few minutes and then I’ll have your bubble bath.”
I kiss her and turn to head down to Roman’s to ask if he has any bubble bath, but Natalie holds me back by grasping my shirt. When I look back to see what’s wrong, I see the innocence in her eyes has been clouded over by something far needier.
“Don’t go. Not yet, okay?”
“Okay. The bubble bath can wait.”
“Did you want to leave because I look so bad?” she asks as she moves her hand up to her face to cover the areas that have started to bruise.
I take her hands in mine so she can’t hide what he did. My eyes roam over the evidence of his rage, and I lean down to kiss each spot. Natalie closes her eyes while my lips brush over her face, and I whisper against her skin, “You’re just as beautiful as always, little bird.”
She slides her hands through my hair and says, “I’m sorry I didn’t listen all those times when you wanted me to come here to stay with you. I was stupid. He hired people to kill me, but I never believed he’d do anything like he did tonight.”
“You’re not stupid. You’re just too trusting.”
Her lower lip juts out in a sweet pout as she frowns up at me. “Well, if I wasn’t so trusting, you and I would have never met.”
I tap that lower lip of hers and shake my head. “True, but don’t forget what I am, Natalie. If I wasn’t already halfway to being madly in love with you that day, you could have gotten hurt. Or worse.”
My scolding makes her sigh. “I prefer to look at things from my point of view. Yours is terrifying, Alexei. Mine is romantic with a man wanting me before I even met him.”
Pressing my forehead to hers, I slide my hand around her neck and groan, “I’m going to have to protect you day and night at this rate. I swear you’re going to be the death of me, little bird.”
She pulls my mouth to hers and kisses me long and deep. “Don’t say that. If anything, now I have something to live for, so you have to live too.”
“I’m still going to have to watch out. There are far more people like me in the world than good ones.”
Natalie trails her fingertip down the front of my neck and winces at my description of myself. She still wants to think of me as that kind man who stopped to help her with a flat tire. I’m not that man. I never was, even with her.
“When you talk like that, you scare me, Alexei.”
I slide my finger under her chin and tilt her head up so she has to look at me when I tell her the truth. “I’m the same man I’ve always been with you, little bird. The only difference now is I’m your protector instead of your killer. I’m equally as lethal as the latter as I am being the former.”
“Promise me you won’t hurt me. If you can’t promise that, then how can I stay with you?”
“I promise, Natalie. No one, including me, will ever hurt you again. But I mean what I just said.”
A look of understanding fills her eyes before she frowns. “Does that mean…”
She doesn’t finish her thought, so I do. “That I’ll kill him for what he did? Yes. He crossed the line tonight. I can’t let that go. We’ll never have a moment’s peace if he remains alive.”
With each word, she looks sadder, so I ask, “Does that bother you?”
I wait for her answer, hating every second’s silence that makes me think she still cares about that son of a bitch in some way. She’s too kind, so it would be in her nature to not want to see someone hurt because of her.
That doesn’t matter. Adam Anchoff has to pay for what he’s done.
“I know it should,” she says in a tiny voice. “It doesn’t. I never wanted him dead like he wanted me, but after what he did tonight, I don’t care what happens to him.”
Wrapping her in my arms, I pull her to me and love how good she is. Against her soft hair, I whisper, “He’ll pay, Natalie. He’ll pay for what he did.”
She melds to my body and sighs. She’s safe now. I won’t let another soul in the world hurt her from now on.
Chapter Forty-Seven
Natalie
I slide down the back of the tub so the water covers every inch of me except my head. I don’t know where Alexei found this bubble bath, but its lavender scent makes me feel more relaxed than I have in weeks.
Since this whole thing started. No, that would be months ago. I can’t forget that. I can’t forget that my accident all those months ago wasn’t an accident at all but my loving husband’s first attempt to rid me from his life.
I know I should be sad that my marriage is over, but I’m not. All I feel when I think of Adam is anger. It took me far too long to get here, but now that I have nothing but that when it comes to him, I never want to see him again.
The way Alexei talked about him echoes in my head, and I know what he’s going to do. Before tonight, I would have told him not to, but that Natalie ceased to exist the moment Adam pressed his knee into my back to hold me down on the floor and said all those terrible things.
“Don’t think about that,” I whisper to the bubbles covering every inch of me below my chin.
I’m safe here. Alexei will protect me. No one will hurt me.
Then a thought flashes through my mind that makes me sit bolt upright out of my bubble bath. What am I going to tell my mother? Always Adam’s biggest fan, she’s never going to accept that I’ve left him.
Oh, God. I can only imagine the lecture she’s going to give me about what marriage is and how I have a duty as his wife to repair our relationship.
I push my hand through the water, tossing bubbles everywhere in my anger. “To hell with that. I’m not doing anymore to fix a marriage he ruined.”
The door opens and Alexei walks in as I try to remove the evidence of my outburst from the tub wall next to me. Smiling, he lets his gaze drift down my body, and I realize I don’t have any bubbles covering me anymore. Quickly, I wrap my arms around my naked body, but that only makes his smile grow broader.
“Why are you hiding yourself?” he asks with a chuckle while he walks toward the tub, but his happiness instantly fades, and his eyebrows draw in toward his nose as he frowns. “Natalie, is there something you don’t want me to see? Did he do something else other than what I can see on your face?”
I look up at him and shake my head when he stops next to the bathtub. “No. I just felt a little exposed when you barged in on me taking a bath.”
His gaze travels over my body and up to my face before he smiles again. “No barging. I just wanted to see how you’re doing.”
“I’m good. Thank you for the bubble bath.”
Leaning over the side of the tub, he kisses me and for a moment, I can’t remember ever feeling better in my life. When he pulls back away from me, he’s got bubbles stuck in his beard, so I reach up and try to brush them off, but I only make things worse because of the bubbles on my hand.
“I hadn’t planned on taking a bath, little bird, but you seem to think I need some washing up, I guess?”
I giggle and point at his jaw. “No. You had bubbles in your beard and then I tried to clean them off and only put more there. Now you look like you’re halfway to being a bubble bath Santa.”
He runs his hand over his face to get rid of them, rolling his eyes. “Well, either you’re getting out of there or I’m coming in. You choose.”
“Why?”
“Because there’s no way I can be next to you when you’re naked and so cute. So you choose. Am I climbing in there and fucking you in the tub, or are you getting out and I’m carrying you out to the bed?”
Since I’m embarrassed to admit I’ve never had sex in a bathtub and honestly can’t imagine the logistics of it at the moment, I stand up out of the bath and reach for the white towel sitting on a table nearby to dry off. “I’m feeling the bed would be better.”
Alexei quickly rips the towel out of my hand and tosses it onto the floor. His hands run over my wet breasts, and he pinches my nipples before kissing me. “Don’t bother drying off.”
Lifting me into his arms, he walks toward the bedroom as I wrap my legs around his waist and my arms around his neck so I don’t slide out of his hold. His hard cock nudges up against my ass, and I sense by the dark look in his hooded eyes that he’s been patient enough waiting for me all that time in the bath.
“I’ve wanted to have you in my bed for far too long.”
“Why doesn’t the apartment count?” I ask before he lays me down on feather soft sheets.
His gaze devours my body before he lifts his eyes and meets mine. “The apartment isn’t my home. This is my home, and now I have you here with me, where you belong.”
Whatever the difference is, I don’t care where I get to be with him as long as we’re together. I love the way he looks at me like he can’t get enough of me and I’m something special he cherishes. I’ve never dreamed anyone would ever look at me like this. From the beginning, Adam never treated me like I was special.
I was his wife. That meant I lived with him, had sex whenever he wanted to, and behaved the way I was supposed to when we went out in public. But never did he act like seeing me made him happy or anything I did was special.
My job was simple. Give him children and look good on his arm. That I could only do one of those jobs successfully meant I had no use to him.
Yet in the short time I’ve been with Alexei, I’ve felt exactly how I always wanted to feel. Special. Like I’m important other than being a vessel to produce children.
He covers me with his body but barely touches me, like he’s worried he might hurt me if he puts all his weight on me. Balancing himself on his elbows, he stares down into my eyes like he’s searching for an answer.
“Is something wrong, Alexei?”
“You looked like you were a million miles away there for a few seconds,” he says quietly, his voice tinged with an edge I recognize from earlier when he first saw my damaged face.
“No. I’m right here. Every part of me is here with you.”
Leaning down, he kisses me softly on the lips. “Where you belong, little bird. Safe and sound in your home.”
My home.
“I used to have a home, but it never felt as safe as I do here. How can that be knowing what you are?”
“What I am to the rest of the world. That’s not the man I am with you. I swear on my life, Natalie.”
“Do men like you uphold your promises better than supposedly good men?”
I don’t want to ruin what we are, but now that I’ve left my life behind, I need to know what I’ve come to. Adam would never understand my need to ask all these questions. Will Alexei?
Patiently, I watch his expression for any anger, but I don’t see any. He smiles down at me and kisses the spot on my cheek that I know looks the worst.
“Bad men, you mean? Believe it or not, that’s all we have is our word because we deal almost exclusively with other bad men like ourselves. We may be killers, but we live up to our promises. We do that or we become someone who can’t be trusted. That may fly in the kind of world you’ve spent your life in, but not in mine. When I say I’m going to do something, whatever it is, I give my word.”
I think back to all those hours I’ve spent at the country club being lied to by people trying to make it seem like their lives were better than they actually were or they liked someone when in reality all they wanted to do was use them to get ahead. Even more, I can’t deny how much I’ve lied for so long. My entire life became a lie after a while.
“Then you’re promising to protect a liar,” I say sadly.
Alexei caresses my cheek and shakes his head. “You had to be a liar to live in that world. You couldn’t be who you are. I don’t require you to be anyone but Natalie in my world. I don’t want you to be anyone but yourself. The only lie I will ever ask you to tell is more a sin of omission. What I do is the only truth you can never tell a soul. Can you do that?”
The thought of someone loving me for who I am sounds so foreign to my ears that I’m not sure what to say. All I know is I can’t go back to the way I was living when I was merely Adam’s pretty wife.
“Yes, but I already told Claire. She won’t say a word to anyone, though. I promise.”
Alexei’s mouth turns down slightly into a frown, making me wonder if he’s upset with me. I search his eyes for signs of anger but find none. Finally, when he speaks again, I let out a sigh of relief.
“No one else. I need you to promise me that, Natalie.”
“I promise. I swear. I don’t know how I’d ever tell anyone what you do since I still can’t figure out how I could love a man who’s a hit man.”
He moves his hand down my body, sending need racing through every inch of me, and drags a finger over my clit. I arch my back, desperate to feel more of his touch on my tender skin, closing my eyes as he slides inside me.
“When I’m with you, I’m just a man in love, little bird,” he whispers low in my ear.
I run my fingernails across his back and shoulders, wishing I could feel his skin but his shirt is still on. “I’m at a disadvantage, Alexei. You’re still dressed, but I’m naked.”
Lifting himself up to look at me, he smiles in that wicked way that makes my stomach feel like butterflies are flitting around inside me. No man has ever looked at me like he does, and I love it.
“I like you naked in my bed.” His gaze roams over my body as he licks his lips. “It makes me want to do all sorts of things to you.”
His words are part thrilling and part frightening. I’m so inexperienced that I don’t know what kind of things he means.
But I want to.
“Like what?” I ask in a shaky voice I wish sounded sexier.
Alexei’s eyes flash with excitement. “Does my little bird like to talk dirty in bed?”
I don’t answer because I’ve never had anyone do that. All I know is I want to hear him say what he wants to do to me more than I want my next breath at this moment.
He drags his thumb over my bottom lip and slides his fingertip inside my mouth. Instinctively, I suck it, loving the taste of his skin on my tongue.
“Fuck…the feel of your mouth on me drives me wild,” he says with a heavy moan. “I’m doing everything I can to remember you’re innocent because all I want to do is ram my cock down your throat.”
I can’t control the shock that registers on my face as the mere thought of what he wants flashes through my mind. Before I can say a thing, he slides his thumb out of my mouth and leans down to softly kiss me.
“Don’t be scared. I didn’t mean to frighten you.”
Looking away so I can’t see his eyes, I whisper, “I’m sorry I’m not like other women. I guess this must be very boring for you.”
He takes my jaw in his hand and turns my face so I’m forced to look at him when he says, “Don’t apologize, Natalie. I love the fact that you’re innocent. It means I get to be the one who corrupts you.”
His smile lights up his face at that idea, and as much as I’ve never truly known anything more than the most basic sex, I want him to corrupt me. It sounds sensual and exciting, something I’ve never had with a man before him.
I close my eyes at the feel of his hand sliding around my throat, needing him more than ever. When he tightens his hold and slides a finger inside me, I can’t stop the moan from escaping from between my lips.
My fingers fumble with the buttons on his shirt while he tugs off his pants. I open my eyes when he pushes my hand away to see him tossing his clothes onto the floor, finally naked like me.
“See? Now that’s fair. At least I’m not the only one ready to go,” I say with a giggle.
Alexei slides off me and stands at the foot of the bed wearing nothing but a sexy smile. Grabbing my legs, he pulls me to him. “I’ve been ready to go from the second you got here
, little bird.”
His hands roam over my body as he stares down at me like a starving man dying for a taste of his favorite dish. I wrap my legs around his waist to pull him down to me, but he’s got other plans and shakes his head.
“Stop teasing, Alexei.”
Leaning down so his face is mere inches away from mine, he smiles wickedly as he wraps his hand around my throat again. “Nobody’s teasing, little bird. I was just enjoying the view.”
When he stands up again, his hand tightens around my tender skin, making me run wet for him. I push my heels against the back of his legs, but he’s far stronger than me and doesn’t budge.
He’ll give me what I want when he chooses and not before.
“Mmmm…baby, I’ve wanted to be inside that pretty cunt all day.”
A second later, he pushes his hips forward and slides inside me fast, taking my breath away. I stare up at him as time seems to stand still and he remains completely buried inside my body, standing over me looking like some sexual god intent on corrupting me just like he said he would.
And all I can think is I want more.
“So fucking perfect,” he groans and then leans back.
When he leaves my body, I instantly crave the feel of him and miss what he’s taken from me. Whimpering my need, I reach out to touch his skin, desperate for any connection with him.
“Alexei, please…”
His hand tightens ever so slightly around my throat, and then he thrusts his hips so his cock fills me once more. I watch his eyes narrow to slits and for a moment wonder if he’s angry about something, but a second later, he leans down to kiss me.
Against my lips, he whispers, “On your stomach, little bird.”
I don’t understand what he means, but then he slides out of me and flips me over onto the bed. I instinctively move forward, needing to feel the mattress beneath my legs, and from behind me, he lifts me up so I’m on my hands and knees.
His fingertips graze the spot where Adam pressed his knee into my back, and I hold my breath, hoping the mark I know is there hasn’t ruined everything between us at this moment. I want to say something, but the words get stuck in my throat.