Alexandr's Cherished Submissive (41 page)

She fisted her hands on her thighs. “I can’t stay here!”

“Jessica,” Catrin said in a sharp voice, “you cannot run from him. You must be brave and face him. Give him chance to explain. You have no idea how much you will hurt him if you run.”

She wanted to stomp her foot and scream, to just leave and never come back, but that wasn’t exactly the right way to handle a relationship, even if it was one based on a confusing mix of love and lies. If she was going to end it with Alex, he deserved to have her do it to his face. The sooner she could get this over with the better.

“Fine, I’ll let him explain, but I’m telling you right now, Catrin, there is nothing he can say that will make this okay. I saw pictures of him with other women. Beautiful women at charity and celebrity events in Russia. Recently. A few of them were referred to as old girlfriends, and there was talk of ‘flames’ being rekindled. Please tell me how I’m supposed to be okay with that level of disrespect? What, I should just trust that he’s not fucking them? Because he’s always honest with me, right? Or, maybe, because I thought we were becoming good friends you might have clued me in that he was cheating on me.”

“He is not cheating on you.”

“Right.” She sneered, then stood up, and marched to the door. When she tried the handle, it was locked. Whirling around, she glared at Catrin. “They locked me in!”

“Yes,” she whispered, “they did.”

Furious that she was being held prisoner, she went to kick the door but decided against it when she noticed her feet were still bare. Stalking back into her closet, she put on the sturdiest pair of boots she had. If she had to fucking kick out a window and climb down the side of the house to leave, she would.

“Jessica, you have to calm down. It’s not as bad as you think.”

She balled her hands into fists so hard her nails bit into her palms. She contemplated using the sturdy oak chair that she’d gotten at an antique flea market and loved to try and get through the windows. Then again, if that glass was bulletproof like Alex said it was, then it was also probably old-chair proof.

“I don’t think you’re quite getting this. He lied to me about everything, Catrin. Everything.” With a low sigh, Catrin stood and started to approach Jessica. She stopped with a hurt look when Jessica backed away. “Don’t touch me.”

“Please don’t be mad at me, Jessica. I couldn’t tell you.” Catrin’s lower lip quivered, and Jessica felt like a bitch even though she was plenty pissed at Catrin. “I-I’ll leave you alone so you have some time to think.”

When the door opened for Catrin, Jessica considered bolting for it, but Krom and another man she didn’t recognize stood there. Their faces were unreadable, but she was pretty sure Krom winced when he momentarily caught her gaze. Catrin looked back over her shoulder at Jessica then let out a muffled sob and fled. This time when Krom looked at Jessica, his expression was hard and accusing, like she’d been mean to Catrin, like she was the one at fault.

“Do you need anything?” Krom asked in a stiff voice.

“I need to leave.”

“Anything else?”

The temptation to be snarky filled her, but she wouldn’t put it past Krom to flip her over his knee for a spanking if she lipped off. “No.”

He didn’t bother with any further conversation, just shut the door with a resounding click as the bolt slid into place. The silence in the room weighed down on her, and she collapsed on her side and grabbed her pillow, crushing it to her chest as she cried. After what seemed like forever, exhaustion stole her away, and she fell into a dreamless sleep.

Loud, but muffled male voices came from the other side of her bedroom door, waking her from a restless doze. Sunlight shone from behind the curtains, and she still felt groggy. The door burst open, and Alex strode in, his handsome expression one of barely contained fury even as she noted the signs of exhaustion clear on his face. The last of the muzziness from sleep fled from her as fear made her scoot away from Alex on the bed, and she almost fell off in her haste to avoid him. He snarled at her, and she froze, but she was becoming more and more pissed off by the second, and she snarled back at him.

“Oh, hi, Alex. You know, I was looking at getting your initials monogramed on some towels for Christmas. Sure am glad I didn’t, considering they would have been wrong. Wouldn’t I have felt dumb when your friends, who know your real name, came over and saw the AG instead of AN.”

“You must listen to me.”

“No!” She surged off the bed, strode across the room, and pushed his chest hard enough that he took a step back. “You lied to me! Over and over and over again! Everything was a lie! You broke my heart, you fucking asshole! You cheating motherfucker.”

He allowed her to pummel him, her blows not hurting him in the least. “It was for your protection, and I never betrayed you.”

She choked on a hysterical sob and struggled to breathe past it, past the poison that was invading her system from her wounded heart. She wanted to believe him, she really did, but he was a pathological liar. “You lied to me about who you were for my protection. Are you fucking kidding me? That’s your excuse?”

“I told you there were things I could not tell you, things you would not understand. I wanted to give you more time.”

“Alex, all the time in the universe is never going to make me understand how you can possibly justify being a criminal. You’ve killed people.”

“I have,” he replied without remorse, a cold look she’d never seen before that made her flinch. “There are the deaths of many, many people on my hands. Does it disturb you that the same hands that touch you with such love are capable of murder?”

Upset by his matter of fact attitude, at the control he was exhibiting, and how her own self-control seemed to have totally left the proverbial building, she slapped him. “Fuck you!”

He touched his jaw absently. “I would like to remind you that I have never ever struck you in anger. Me, the monster.”

“You’ve been with other women,” she screeched, then tried to walk away from him only to have him hook his arm around her middle.

“I have not. I have attended events with friends of mine, past companions, but none of those women got anything more than dance out of me. They know their place, and it is not as my woman. My heart is taken, and any female who tries to break my bond with you has been made an example of in a public way.”

Her vision blurred as tears spilled down her cheeks, confusion and heartache overwhelming her. “Why, why would you do this to me? Do you hate me that much? What did I ever do to you to deserve being mentally fucked with like this?”

He grasped her by the back of the neck, and before she knew it, his hand held her firmly in place. “You will shut up and listen, or I will gag you, tie you up, and make you listen.”

“I don’t even know you,” she wailed, her knees giving out and causing her to sag against him. Even though she hated him, he was her only source of comfort. Then he put his arms around her and she hated him even more because his touch gave her strength. “I loved you so much.”

“Shhh,
prinsessa moya
. I have story to tell you.”

He pissed her off using his pet name for her, so she tried to push away, but he held her strong…until she slammed her hand against his chest. Then he hissed and flinched like she’d really hurt him. Right away, her ears rang as she felt some type of bandage beneath her fingertips.

He’d been hurt.

Oh, God, he’d been hurt!

With a low moan pushing through her suddenly tight throat, she ripped apart his shirt, revealing a cloth bandage that spanned his chest between the two eight-pointed stars on his shoulders. Her mind trailed to the tattoos on his back, and she flinched. Fuck. Images from the website where she’d read about Alex flashed through her mind, and she recognized those tattoos now as marks of a very, very high ranking member of the
Vory
, known in some circles as the Thieves Guild and in others as simply
Bratva
. That symbol was universal in the world of the Russian mafia for what amounted to royalty. Her gaze skittered over his body, remembering where there were other, odd marks that now told a horrifying story of death and betrayal. Violence was written into his skin, testaments to the criminal things he’d done and the fact that he’d survived terrible situations. Like being in prison three times if she read the barbed wire tattoo on his bicep correctly.

After she’d scanned him and ascertained that there weren’t any more injuries, she placed her fingertips as gently as she could on the bandages. “What happened?”

He looked conflicted for a moment then blew out a harsh breath. “Is healing. I got it three days ago, but needed to protect it during traveling. I had to leave abruptly and have not had a chance to tend to it yet.”

She had to remove her hands because they were shaking so hard she could have hurt him. “Alex, what happened?”

His hard gaze met hers. Then he carefully peeled the bandage off, and she frowned as she realized it wasn’t covering some terrible injury, but a new tattoo. It took her a moment to realize it was letters in Cyrillic, and for some reason, it looked familiar. She’d seen it before…Holy crap! He had her name tattooed on his chest. There, for all the world to see, her name over his heart. Her lower lip quivered, and she was being torn in two by her internal battle. Part of her was relieved that he was okay, that he’d done something as lovely as having her name on him, while another part hoped he’d get it lazered off because she never wanted to see him again now that she knew he was all right.

“I don’t understand you.” She thumped him in his ribs, her overwrought emotions making her want to bite him. “You do such terrible things. You lie to me, but you tattoo my name on your chest? Why?”

“I have lied to you. I admit I do terrible things, and your name is on my chest because you own me, Jessica. You are my world. Everything I do, I do to keep you safe, including hiding my true name.” His gaze was fierce, uncompromising. “I had a disagreement with my father about you. He believes that I put you in great danger by publicly declaring you are my woman. I responded by getting your name tattooed on me. He responded by…it was not pleasant.”

Horror filled her as she ran her hands over his body, haunted by the pain in his voice when he said that last sentence. “What did he do to you?”

“Shhh,
lyubov moya
, is nothing I have not endured before. My father is…harsh man. He does not like to be defied.”

“Alex.” Her nails dug into his skin, a terrifying realization filling her. “Is he going to hurt you if you continue to see me?”

“See you?” He leaned up on his elbows and shook his head. “I do not want to see you. I want to marry you.”

So thrown off her game by Alex’s response, she just stared at him for a few moments. “What?”

“In my pocket.”

Eyes wide, her hand hesitantly reached for him then pulled back. “Have you lost your mind?”

“Obviously I have. Now reach into my pocket.”

“Don’t get snippy with me, Alexandr
Novikov
. I don’t deserve it.”

“I just flew from Moscow to Dublin in record time so I could hopefully talk to you before you managed to run off and maybe get killed. The whole way, my mind was filled with images of burying you or you dying because I kept my true self from you. Is most horrible feeling I have ever experienced. I felt my soul rotting inside of me.” He reached up and gripped her by the back of her head, tilting her slightly so he could brush his lush lips over hers. “So I do not care that you hate me. I am overjoyed that you are alive to hate me. I also know that no matter how much you despise me, you are alive so I can do what I should have done since the beginning.”

Her irrational emotions took a blow from the sincerity burning in each of his words, but the wounds to her heart were too raw to ignore. “This relationship...no, this whatever we have is no longer working for me.”

“That is unfortunate, because I am in love with you beyond all reason and will do everything I can to earn my way back into your heart. Give me a kiss, but mind the tattoo.”

“You are such an asshole!”

Moving quick for someone who had just arrived off a long flight, he snatched her into his arms, and she was annoyed with herself when she realized she was being careful not to touch his tattoo of her name because she didn’t want to get it infected and screw it up.

Jessica, in beautiful Cyrillic letters, over his heart. Because his father had tried to keep them apart, he defied the head of the Novikov
Bratva
for her and had paid some kind of price for loving her. Maybe hiding his name from her wasn’t the end of the world. As always, her body was starved for him when he first came home, and it was demanding the release it knew was on the way. Her pussy was soft and achy beneath her jeans and growing wetter by the second as her anger faded, replaced by grudging relief that he was home.

While she still had an ounce of sense in her head, she drew back, only to find Alex holding out a little, black box to her.

“Jessica, please do me the honor of being my wife.” She started to protest, but he thrust the box into her hands. “Look at it before you say no.”

“Alex, getting married is not the answer to….” Her breath left her in a rush, and not just because of the beautiful two-plus carat diamond ring surrounded by sapphires. It was the pattern of the tiny sapphires on either side of the ring, with their own twin slivers of green emerald leaves that had her eyes tearing up. It couldn’t be.

“Is this…are these from my mother’s ring?”

“Your adoptive mother, yes. Your aunt gave it to me after I asked for your hand in marriage from them. She said your father had this ring made for your mother when they adopted you because the first day they had you, your mother took you into the garden to pick blueberries for you, and it was one of the happiest moments of her life. It was then that she realized she was finally what she’d always wanted to be, someone’s mother.”

“You…you what? When did you talk to my aunt?”

“When you took me to meet them.”

“But that was months ago!”