Alexandr's Reluctant Submissive (2 page)

If nobody knew about her conversation with Krom, that meant she was breaking Mr. Novikov Sr.’s rules and it wasn’t safe. She had to get out of here before Jorg found out she’d somehow stumbled onto Alex. A stinging sweat broke out over her skin, prickling and sensitizing as the compulsion to run filled her.

Panic had her heart thumping painfully as her frantic gaze darted around the room, not daring to look at the man who held her so securely yet meeting his gaze was too hard.

She couldn’t.

If she looked into his haunting gray eyes again, she didn’t know if she could be held responsible for her actions. His mere presence had her yearning for him so intensely that the thought of doing what she had to do was terrible, yet she couldn’t let herself hesitate. Not with her daughter’s life at stake.

She had to face him, but she couldn’t make herself meet his gaze.

Staring at his chest, she closed her eyes as she shuddered and placed her hands on his shoulders, trying to keep herself from caressing all that hard muscle. “Alex, please release me. It is vitally important that I leave as soon as possible, with as few people as possible ever knowing I was here.”

“Leave?
Nyet
.”

That one word held so much anger, so much contempt wrapped up in pain, that she wanted to hide from him, knowing she deserved every bit of his disgust. “Alex, listen to me, if you ever loved me, if you ever loved our daughter—”

“You are
not
leaving me again, ever!” he growled, and she tried to push her way out of his arms, getting nowhere. “I forbid it!”

“I don’t have time for this! You have to let me go before he knows I saw you.” Finally she looked up and met his beloved eyes; hurt on a scale she couldn’t even fathom weakening her until she sagged against him. Her voice came out in a broken murmur as she said, “He’ll take her from me, Alex.  Your father will take her and give her to one of his men to raise. I can’t let that monster have her.”

A hot flash of anger dissolved his sorrow in an instant, vaporizing it and leaving devastation in its wake. “Is that what he threatened you with? That he would steal our daughter and give her to someone else?”

She clasped her hands over her mouth, then lifted them enough to speak, her lips trembling against her fingertips. “Please don’t say anything. He can’t know I’m here. Please, he can’t know. I stayed away from you, I did, please, if he finds out you must let him know that I didn’t seek you out.
Please
!”

He closed his eyes and held her so tightly to him she could barely breathe. “I will kill him for this, for how he has destroyed our lives, for doing this to us.”

“Alex—” her uncle Peter murmured from behind her.

“Out,” Alex snarled.

“But—”

“Everyone get out. I allowed you to speak to her, and I will now put a bullet in the heart of any man stupid enough to be here in thirty seconds.”

The door slammed not long after that, leaving her alone with him.

A rush of adrenaline gave her the strength to push out of his arms, and she stumbled as she rolled off the sofa then stood on her high heels. For the first time, she gave the room a good look, vaguely noting the fabulous view of the water and the cathedral ceiling. To think how excited she’d been on the drive up the long, winding drive that led to this fantastic palatial residence; how eager she’d been to start a new phase of her life in this veritable palace that Tatiana would adore.

Alex’s voice was positively feral as he nearly snarled, “Jessica, come here.”

The hair on her arms stood up and she backed away from her husband as quickly as she could in her heels, sensing the rising danger radiating from him like a blast furnace. No, she had to make him see sense. If he understood the situation, he’d let her go. “Alex, please, you can’t protect me from him! He can find me anywhere, take me at any time, and nothing will stop him.”

He let out a roar that she swore shook the windows and scared the hell out of her. This was not the same man she’d married. The pissed-off male standing before her was a stranger, a frightening one at that. Deep down she knew he would never hurt her, but the fire in his eyes was no longer sane. Something had broken inside of him and at this moment, she didn’t recognize the cold, hard man coming at her like an enraged bull. The sunlight caught the silver in his temples as he stalked past a bay of windows and she took another shaky step backwards, almost stumbling when her heel hit the edge of a throw rug.

She held out a shaking hand. “Stay away from me!”

“Never.”

When he was almost on her, she reached out and snatched a slender crystal vase that held a single orchid before smashing it against the dark wood table it had stood on.

Holding the razor-sharp glass before her, she brandished it in Alex’s direction while shaking so hard she could barely maintain her grip. “Don’t you understand? I will kill anyone, even you, to protect her. Please don’t make me hurt you, I wouldn’t survive it.”

He strode forward so swiftly she almost accidentally impaled him, only flinging the vase away at the last second. The moment his lips crashed down on hers, he robbed her of all rational thought, of the ability to do anything but feel the brush of his beard against her face, revel in the caress of the lips she worshiped, and taste him on her tongue. God, he tasted just like she remembered. No, almost the same, but richer.

Better.

Once again her tears fell, but this time the salt bathed their lips and Alex let out a low, tortured moan that tore at her, lending a desperation to their embrace that sent spirals of arousal through her. Urgently she ran her hands over him, touching every part she could as he did the same, their movements rushed and jerky.

She damned herself for being weak even as she clung to him.

With the last of her willpower, she managed to break their kiss but couldn’t make her arms release him. “Please don’t make me decide between you.”

“Jessica, listen to me very carefully.” His accent thickened with his raspy words. “Jorg was the one who gave Peter information on you. I do not know what happened that night, and we will discuss, but right now I need you to understand you have nothing to fear from my father.”

“What are you talking about?”

She sagged against him, desperately searching his face, her mind pinging over the differences between how he looked now and how she remembered him. The shiny scar going from his cheek to his upper lip was the first thing, a token left behind by Jorg’s torture master. Hatred flared deep in her gut as she reached up and trailed her trembling fingers over his scar, the visible reminder of his suffering tearing at her already shaky hold on herself. It was all she could do not to break down into hysterics as she tried to process his words.

His voice lowered to a soothing croon while he crouched down a little bit, the thick muscles of his thighs straining the fabric. “I do not understand yet what exactly has happened, but my father, for his own insane reasons, must have decided it was time for me to know. And of course he went about giving me the information in the worst way possible. Knowing that he watched me suffer and did nothing…”

Rage like she’d never experienced trembled in the back of her mind as the ramifications of what he’d just said sunk into her.

She wondered how hard it would be to gain access to Jorg Novikov so she could shoot him in the head.

It was a violent, tempting thought and she realized that maybe she wasn’t handling this all too well. In fact, little black dots began to dance around the edges of her vision as her heart continued to race. The fabric of his suit jacket began to fade beneath her fingertips as numbness tingled through her extremities. She’d gone into emotional overload and knew if she didn’t snap out of it, she’d soon have a panic attack.

It took a great deal of effort, but she managed to jerk her gaze back up to Alex, seeking something to hold on to before her rational mind went on vacation. It had been almost a year since her last panic attack; she’d gotten them occasionally after the kidnapping by Jorg’s goons, and she’d been hopeful those episodes were over. Instead a harsh sweat stung her skin and she began to pant.

Alex grasped her face between his calloused hands and forced her to meet his gaze, easily trapping her with his natural dominance that had only increased during their years apart. “
Dorogoya
, he will never hurt you again. I swear it.”

The fierce desire to believe him battled with her need to protect Tatiana.

She forced her lips to form words she could barely whisper. “But what about the rest of the world, Alex? The Curse…”

“The Curse is no more.”

She startled. “How is that possible?”

“With much work and help, we made it happen. Though you were already lost to me, I did it for my brother and sister-in-law. Dimitri has married an American girl, Rya. He loves his wife the way I love you. I did everything I could to help guard their love. She is so protected not even someone suicidal would try to hurt her, and they are very happy together. The Boldin women are safe as well. We have strong truce. Your…death helped to bring peace to the Novikov and Boldin
Bratvas
.”

She’d read something about Dimitri being engaged, but at that point she’d been trying to break her habit of checking up on the Novikov men and hadn’t allowed herself to research it any further.

The gentle tone of his voice seduced her and she fought his hold, trying to remember the millions of excuses to stay away from him that were as fragile as spider’s silk in a hurricane. She had to remember that her wants came second to her daughter’s safety. By not running as fast and far as she could, she might be betraying Tatiana. Yes, they might be safe from Jorg—though she doubted it—but Alex’s life was filled with danger. When it came down to it, he was a crime lord and she’d be bringing her daughter into a world where she would be in constant peril.

The thought of anyone harming her bright, loving little girl made her stomach clench in a sour ball. Taking a deep breath, she forced herself to go against her natural inclination to give in to Alex’s desires and instead challenge him with the truth. She wasn’t some twenty-year-old girl anymore, dazzled by her husband’s overwhelming charisma. She was a woman who’d vowed never to be a naïve, trusting little fool again.

“Rya, she’s under constant guard, like I was, right? I’d bet her life is so hazardous that she can’t go to the store without her own security detail.” The way his lips tightened confirmed her suspicions. “Alex, I can’t raise our daughter in an environment like that. Tatiana deserves to be free to just be a little girl. To have playmates as companions, not bodyguards. The moment the world knows she exists, she becomes a target.”

The switch from a gentle, comforting Alex to a pissed-off man happened so fast, she got emotional whiplash from trying to follow his shifts in temper. “I could have
protected
you all those years ago if you’d simply come to me instead of running away. All you had to do was trust me to take care of you like I had sworn to do.”

She jerked back, his words hitting her like a fist. The side of her leg bumped a chair as she regained her balance. When she stumbled, he took a step forward as if to steady her but she held her hand out and snarled, “Trust you? Seriously? You lied to me about everything, over and over again. And I betrayed you by saving our daughter’s life? You have lost your mind.”

He ran his hands through his still thick hair and began to pace. “You should have told me. I would never have allowed him to hurt you. Never.”

“How could I? Alex, people were coming to kill me, they fucking shot Krom in the head and killed our guards. Even if your father hadn’t contacted me, those men would still have come for me. I would still be dead.”

“I could have protected you!” His voice turned anguished and her heart bled for his pain. “If you had just trusted me a little more, I would have destroyed
anyone
for you. Do you not understand? I would rather have died with you than lived without. No torture in the depths of Hell could compare to the pain of living without you at my side. You were dead to me, Jessica, and my heart died with you.”

His words struck her right in the chest and she gasped at the pain in his hot silver eyes, in every line of his strong, scarred body. All the horror and agony he’d endured was displayed before her and she whimpered for him, torn apart by how much he hurt. Her body ached with guilt, and anger, and fear, all mixed up into a dizzying cocktail that left her thoughts scrambled. Right now her emotional side ruled and her stupid soft heart couldn’t stand to see him suffering.

“I did have faith in you, and faith in Krom. He said he would come get me when it was safe, and I believed that he was working on a way to
make it
safe. Every day I prayed he would be there, I’d look for him in crowds and hope. I had to stop doing that because as the days passed and I never saw him, it…it hurt. Bad. I-I had difficulty dealing with knowing how much our deaths hurt you, all too aware that if I really tried I could probably find a way to contact you. But at what price? When your father had me kidnapped—”

“What?” Alex said in a low, deadly murmur.

A hitch in her breath stole her voice for a moment, but she forced herself to continue. “He had me kidnapped just to show me that he could, and to reinforce the consequences of what would happen if I returned to you. That…that bastard made me watch a tape of Oleg’s daughter’s funeral.”

An anguished sound escaped him and he ran his hands into his hair again, this time gripping it with his fists.

“Fuck!” His snarl startled her and she flinched, and he grit his teeth. Closing his eyes, he breathed hard enough that his nostrils flared with each deep inhalation.

Knowing he was on the edge of losing it entirely, she quickly said, “They didn’t hurt me, at all, just scared me.”

Hands trembling, he visibly struggled to control himself. “I failed you.”

She ducked her head and tried to keep her cool so she didn’t burst into hysterical tears of sorrow and guilt. Misplaced or not, she couldn’t help but hate knowing that she was responsible for so much grief, so much agony. But even as guilty as she felt, the alternative would have been to have Jorg steal Tatiana from her in the middle of the night like some gruesome troll from an old fairy tale.