Who she belonged to?
Shit, had he been jealous of Jonas and Seth earlier?
Okay, yes, he admitted he hadn’t liked the way Daisy was so relaxed in their company. It had bothered him that she might be attracted to one or both of them.
Bothered?
Oh, fuck it, yes, he had been jealous of her being with those two men. Gut-wrenching, fist-clenching, rip-the-heads-from-their-shoulders jealous.
Just as he had been as tense as hell just now as he waited for her to come out of the bathroom. That tension had turned to confusion, and then disappointment as she didn’t speak to him and it became obvious she was going to leave the bedroom and sleep somewhere else.
Nikolai didn’t want Daisy sleeping anywhere but in the bed, beside him.
He was now fighting a battle within himself, against that want, that need. And losing. “Stay here with me,” he said softly. “Just to sleep, nothing else. Please.”
Daisy stopped breathing, her heart skipping several beats as something melted inside her. The barrier, ice, she had started to erect against her feelings for this man? Possibly. Whatever it was, she knew she could no more have walked away from Nikolai after he said please so sincerely than King Canute had been able to hold back the tide.
“I’ll be keeping my gun under the pillow,” she warned as she padded over to the other side of the bed, taking her gun from the pocket of her robe before she began to unfasten it.
Nikolai grinned at her as he climbed back beneath the bedcovers. “As long as you don’t shoot me by mistake if I have to go to the bathroom in the night.”
“I’ll do my best not to,” she assured him dryly. She put the gun under the pillow before sliding under the covers beside him, only to be suddenly struck by shyness as she had no idea what she was supposed to do next.
Nikolai didn’t feel the same hesitation. He turned to pull her into his arms so that her body lay curved against and along the heat of his, before resting her head on the warmth of his shoulder and curving her arm across his waist. He breathed a loud sigh of satisfaction before the even rising and falling of his chest told Daisy he had fallen asleep instantly.
Daisy wasn’t sure if she felt disappointed, insulted, or just warmed by their closeness after hours fraught with danger and tension.
She didn’t have long to debate those emotions, as she too fell into a deep sleep.
“We can sit down and discuss the plans for today as soon as I’ve had breakfast with Daisy. Gregori?” Nikolai frowned as the other man didn’t answer him but just continued to watch him as he stood beside the table where Gregori was eating his own breakfast.
Unlike Nikolai, who had pulled on yesterday’s jeans and a clean black T-shirt after taking a shower, the other man was already dressed in a formal suit.
“What the hell are you smiling at?” Nikolai scowled his irritation with the grin that slowly curved the other man’s lips.
That smile became teasing. “Does Miss Redmond prefer a cooked or Continental breakfast?”
“Why do you want to know?”
“I was just curious.” Gregori relaxed against the back of his chair. “I believe this is the first morning in twenty years that the two of us have not breakfasted together when we have been away on business.”
Nikolai’s frown turned to a scowl of irritation.
He and Daisy had woken up together this morning in a tangle of limbs, his morning erection a questioning throb between them. But while Nikolai hadn’t exactly made her a promise last night, he had said he only wanted them to sleep together, nothing more.
Excusing himself to go to the bathroom had been the gentlemanly thing to do, but it certainly hadn’t been his first choice.
Daisy had been excitedly looking through the room service breakfast menu when he came out of the bathroom fifteen minutes later. He had taken care of his erection in the shower, but one glance at her in a thin red vest top and black boxers, and it had reared back into painfully throbbing life.
His first instinct had been to excuse himself and get the hell away from her for the rest of the morning, but he hadn’t wanted to disappoint her when she suggested they could eat breakfast together outside on the balcony she’d discovered off the suite’s sitting room.
She was there right now—thankfully, she would now be wearing her robe over the vest top and boxers that left so little to the imagination—waiting for the breakfast to arrive and for him to join her. He had only stepped next door briefly to inform Gregori it would be a while longer before the two of them could sit down and discuss the plans for today.
He sighed his impatience with Gregori’s teasing. “She’s ordered fruit and croissants. And coffee.”
The other man nodded. “The two of you share the same breakfast preferences.”
A liking for the same breakfast was a small thing maybe, but those small things the two of them had in common were accumulating the longer he and Daisy spent together.
In her own way, Daisy was also a warrior.
She’d served in the army, knew how to shoot a gun, and wasn’t afraid to use it if she had to. The women he had taken to bed in the past would have been hysterical at being shot at in Utopia two days ago. They certainly wouldn’t have shot back.
Unlike a lot of women—and men too, for that matter—Daisy was comfortable enough in her own skin not to feel the need to talk all the time.
Senseless conversation had never been Nikolai’s forte. He had no patience whatsoever with inanity.
They were physically compatible in ways he never could have imagined when he first met her. What Daisy lacked in experience, she more than made up for with her enthusiasm to try anything he asked of her.
Nikolai had a feeling if they made love together again that Daisy might even be able to teach him a thing or two.
In some ways, she already had.
Sex had always been exactly that in the past, enjoyable in the moment, and as quickly forgotten. With Daisy, there was so much more to it. Quite what that more was, Nikolai wasn’t sure, but it had taken every effort of will on his part last night to just hold her in his arms and go to sleep instead of making love with her.
The two of them choosing the same breakfast from the hotel’s extensive room service menu wasn’t exactly momentous, but it added another layer to the things they did have in common, rather than the things they didn’t.
And he didn’t appreciate Gregori’s speculative expression. “Any news yet from the pilot regarding the plane?” It was definitely time to change the subject.
Gregori instantly sobered. “It was, as suspected, a timed explosive device attached to the engine. We have no idea by whom as yet.”
“Have you spoken to Gaia yet this morning?”
“Of course.” A warm smile returned to Gregori’s lips at mention of his wife.
“Does she know about the plane?” He knew the couple had decided they wanted a family as soon as possible. Gaia might even already be pregnant. Learning her beloved husband had almost died in an air crash could be harmful to that pregnancy.
The other man’s mouth thinned. “No. And I have no intention of telling her about it until we’re safely back in England.”
Nikolai’s frown was quizzical. “Why tell her about it at all?” He shrugged. “The danger is over now, so there’s no point in worrying her.”
“You will learn one day, my friend, that it is best not to keep secrets from each other in a marriage, even those that might cause distress. It is a recipe for disaster to do otherwise,” Gregori added knowingly.
Considering the other man had once been even more closed off to intimacy than Nikolai was, he was sure Gregori had to be talking from personal experience.
As for himself and marriage—
“Gaia sent you a hug and her love, as usual.”
Gaia bore him no ill will from their first disastrous meeting, possibly because Nikolai had rid the world of the monster threatening to kill Gregori. Whatever the reason, Gaia treated Niko
lai much as she might Gregori’s brother, if he had one.
He nodded. “Give her a hug and my…affection, when you speak to her next— What?” He eyed Gregori warily as the other man began to chuckle.
Gregori continued to laugh as he threw his napkin down on the table before standing up to give Nikolai a brief hug. “You are changing, my friend,” he murmured appreciatively, giving the tops of Nikolai’s arms a brief squeeze before releasing him and stepping back. “Go and eat breakfast with your woman.”
“Daisy is not—”
“Go,” Gregori repeated firmly.
Nikolai went back to the adjoining suite. Not because the other man told him to do so, but because he didn’t want to continue that particular conversation. He desired Daisy, physically wanted her so much he ached, but that was just sex and not—not—
Daisy still isn’t wearing her robe.
She was, as he had expected, sitting outside on the balcony in the morning sunshine, waiting for him to join her in enjoying the breakfast food and drink now laid out on the small round table between two chairs. No doubt the unseasonable warmth of the morning was responsible for her lack of clothing. An explanation which was no help at all in quelling Nikolai’s instant arousal.
He made no effort to take the seat opposite hers. “Did you answer the door dressed like that?” The red vest top clung revealingly to her breasts, the briefness of the black boxers leaving the silky length of her shapely legs completely bare.
Daisy’s smile turned quizzical as she took in the scowl on Nikolai’s face. Dressed in a casual T-shirt and jeans, he really was the most gorgeous—
Every muscle and sinew tensed inside her body as she heard the familiar whistling sound of a bullet as it traveled swiftly through the air.
Nikolai!
She didn’t hesitate for so much as a second but launched herself across the balcony at him, knocking him off his feet with the force of her body hitting his. She felt a brush of air against her temple as the two of them toppled over, accompanied by the sound of glass breaking above them.
The breath left Nikolai’s body in a whoosh as he landed painfully on the concrete floor, Daisy on top of him. “What the hell—” He broke off as he saw a bloom of red appear on Daisy’s left temple, the color immediately draining from the rest of her face as her eyes fluttered closed and her head dropped forward onto his chest.
Someone’s shot at us.
No, not at them, at him.
Instead, they had hit Daisy.
Chapter 11
“Stop pacing, Nikolai, you’re giving me a headache.” Daisy stopped herself from frowning as she realized it actually hurt to use those particular muscles.
It still seemed incredible to her that someone had taken a shot at Nikolai as he stood on the balcony of their hotel suite. He seemed to be of the opinion that the shooter had been on one of the other tall buildings in this busy part of New York. Considering their location on the fortieth floor of the hotel, Daisy was inclined to agree with him.
Once back in their suite, Nikolai had made two phone calls, one to Gregori, the other to a doctor who had arrived at their hotel shortly afterward. The sort of doctor who didn’t ask questions, apparently—such as how she came to have the wound in the first place. The graze had bled profusely to begin with, but had eventually stopped so that the doctor could place a gauze dressing over it. He warned of headaches and possibly delayed shock before he left.
She already had the headache.
She was also, thankfully, wearing the robe she had asked Nikolai to get for her from the bedroom before Gregori joined them in their suite. She didn’t care if she had been shot; being in the presence of the formally dressed Gregori while she was wearing only her vest top and boxers would still have been embarrassing.
Nikolai now came to an abrupt halt in the middle of the sitting room, but the scowl didn’t lessen on his own brow as he glared down at Gregori, who sat unmoving in one of the armchairs across the room. “This has to stop,” Nikolai snapped grimly. “If Daisy hadn’t reacted so quickly to the sound of the bullet—” He broke off with a shudder. “The next time, they may not miss.”
In the past forty-eight hours of taking on Nikolai’s security detail, Daisy had been shot at, had a graze on her neck from wood splintered by one of those bullets, nearly been blown up and crashed in an airplane, and now she had another graze, on her temple this time, from another bullet. All of them things meant to eliminate Nikolai.
“There will not be a next time,” Gregori said softly.
Daisy had always found this man to be charmingly urbane, if a little distant and formal in his behavior. His unnatural stillness right now and the cold glitter of his dark eyes were distinctly scary.
He rose slowly to his height of well over six feet, appearing every inch the coldly dangerous and powerful man he really was. “It is going to stop, Nikolai,” he nodded as he straightened the cuffs of his shirt. “Today.”
Daisy gazed at him in alarm. “What are you going to do—” She broke off uncomfortably as Gregori turned that chilling dark gaze on her.
“Daisy—”
“It’s okay, Nikolai, I am sure Miss Redmond is just doing her job,” Gregori assured him, still in that unnaturally soft voice.
Daisy turned to Nikolai, only to realize his expression had become just as inscrutable as the other man’s. “What are the two of you planning to do?” She glanced at them both uncertainly.
Gregori gave a humorless smile. “As Mr. Petrov is obviously aware of our presence in New York, I thought I might invite him here for lunch.”
“Lunch…?” she repeated.
Daisy’s confusion almost made Nikolai smile. Except this situation was now too serious for humor of any kind. None of them doubted for a moment that Boris Petrov was responsible for this latest shooting. Or that it had to stop. Before someone died and the killing began in earnest.
Nikolai had thought his heart had stopped—thought Daisy’s heart had stopped forever—when the blood bloomed on her forehead earlier and her head flopped down against his chest as she lost consciousness.
Keeping below the protection of the balcony, Daisy held securely against his chest, he had crawled back inside the hotel suite. He had only started to breathe again after he gently placed her on the couch and discovered the graze on her temple was a flesh wound rather than a fatal one.
The anger had swelled inside him at that moment, and it was still inside him. He wanted retribution, revenge, for believing, even for a few seconds, that Daisy was dead.
Because of him.
Because she was with him.
He had been surprised last night when she told him she had decided to leave Grayson Security. Now he hoped it would be sooner rather than later. In a less dangerous job, there was at least a chance she wouldn’t get shot at on a daily basis. That she might actually live long enough to experience that life she’d talked about.
To do that, she was also going to need to stay well away from him.
“Lunch,” Gregori now answered her lightly. “I thought, Nikolai, that while he was here, we might show Mr. Petrov the view from my balcony”
He bared his teeth in a smile. “As we did Wongsawat in Bangkok last year?”
“Exactly,” the other man confirmed with satisfaction.
“An excellent idea.” Nikolai nodded.
“You can’t.” Daisy stared at them both in disbelief.
“Can’t what, Miss Redmond?” Gregori raised his brows enquiringly. “I’m sure you’ll agree, the views from this hotel are…breathtaking.”
“You really, really can’t do this, Gregori.” She sat up, too quickly, if her sudden wince was any indication. “Nikolai, be reasonable.” She turned to him appealingly. “This is New York, not Bangkok, and we’ll all end up being arrested if you throw Boris Petrov off the hotel balcony. You for murder, the rest of us as accomplices.”
Gregori’s brows rose even higher. “My dear Miss Redmond, who said anything about
throwing Mr. Petrov off a balcony?”
“You— But— You just did!”
“No, I believe I said I wished to show him the view.” He turned to Nikolai. “Perhaps, while I’m in my suite telephoning Boris, you might explain to Miss Redmond the difference between eating lunch and the danger of attempting to fly off a balcony forty floors high.”
“He’s serious, isn’t he?” Daisy turned from watching Gregori as he disappeared into the adjoining suite.
“About inviting Boris here for lunch? Yes—”
“Nikolai, I have a graze on my temple, not brain damage!” She glared her frustration with these two arrogant men. “Besides which, even if Boris Petrov is stupid enough to accept Gregori’s invitation, he isn’t going to come here alone.”
“I would say he’s more arrogant than stupid,” Nikolai said softly.
“And he’ll no doubt have half a dozen of his goons with him when he gets here. They aren’t going to just let the two of you hurl their boss off the balcony—”
“As Gregori said, there will be no tossing anyone off a balcony,” Nikolai assured her with a wince. “I think you may have watched too many gangster movies as a teenager.”
“Nikolai—”
“Calm down, Daisy.” He moved to stand beside the couch. “The doctor said you need to rest, and also to keep an eye on you in case of delayed shock.” He bent down to place one arm beneath her shoulders and the other under her knees before lifting her and cradling her against his chest. “The best place for you at the moment is in bed.”
At any other time, Daisy might have welcomed—enjoyed—being carried off to bed in the arms of this arrogant Russian. Here and now, with the looming danger of Gregori Markovic doing something reckless—and fatal—to Boris Petrov, she was less enamored of the idea.
She struggled in Nikolai’s arms. To no avail. “Put me down right now, you—you overbearing barbarian.”
His arms didn’t slacken in the slightest, nor did he make any attempt to put her down as he continued through to the adjoining bedroom. “I believe my great-grandfather was a Cossack, not a barbarian.”
Warrior Alpha (Alpha 6) Page 13