Shadow Alpha (24 page)

“And joining the army was so much safer!”

“I made some good friends there,” he defended. “Lifelong friends who I know will always have my back, as I’ll always have theirs.”

“Friends like Lijah?”

“Yes.”

“What’s his story?” she prompted curiously. “The way he dresses—well, that Stetson is a bit unusual when he also speaks as if he attended Eton?”

“Maybe he did.” Dair’s expression had become closed off. “We don’t ask questions in the army.”

“So I shouldn’t ask any either,” Kat guessed ruefully.

“Best not,” he advised dryly.

She snuggled back down into his arms, her head once again resting on his shoulder. “I think you need to get some sleep now.”

“Have plans for when I’ve regained my strength, do you?” he teased lightly.

“And the fact that you haven’t slept for days.” She chuckled huskily at his look of disappointment. “But I’m sure I’ll be able to come up with something…inventive, by morning.”

“As long as it doesn’t involve me going outside on the balcony bare-assed again!” Dair warned ruefully. “Bathed in moonlight is one thing, even romantic, but being stark naked in broad daylight is something else!”

He
was something else, as far as Kat was concerned.

Dair had turned his life around after being shot, remade himself, as had Lucien.

It gave Kat hope that she would be able to do the same. Without anyone having to die so that she could be free of Sergei and his father once and for all.

Especially not Dair.

Kat didn’t care if she was never able to see him again, as long as he stayed safe from the Orlovs’ reprisals. She would do anything—

“You’re thinking too loud again, Kat,” Dair murmured sleepily. “It’s keeping me awake.”

“Sorry.” She gave him a quick kiss on the lips before snuggling down comfortably beside him.

Her last thoughts were that she would do a Scarlett, and think of all this again tomorrow…

Chapter 15

“I really hope, for your sake, Grayson, that you have a very good reason for being naked in bed with my sister!”

Kat had been very slowly drifting back into consciousness after the deepest, most restful sleep she’d had in a very long time. Possibly years.

Because of Dair.

On the couple of occasions when she had woken in the night, it was to find his strong arms securely around her, her head on his shoulder as it was now, and she had known she was safe, instantly falling asleep again with a smile curving her lips.

Hearing her brother’s voice, when Gregori couldn’t possibly be in Venice, let alone at Dair’s secret palace on the Grand Canal, was a little strange…

Maybe it was a side effect of the meds still in her system? A hallucination—

“Oh fuck off, Markovic!” Dair’s chest grumbled beneath her ear. “Kat’s a big girl now, and she certainly doesn’t need her big brother’s permission to go to bed with a man!”

Now Dair was answering her hallucination…?

“I asked you to find her, and if necessary bring her home, I did not ask that you seduce her too!”

Gregori again.

She would have to see a doctor once they were back in England—

“Me seduce
her
?” Dair drawled mockingly. “I hate to burst your bubble, Markovic, but Kat did the seducing last night.”

“And the night before that?”

There was a slight pause before Dair answered. “I believe that may have been a lot of both of us.”

Kat accepted that the lingering meds in her system might make her imagine that
she
was seeing and hearing people who weren’t there, that she might even have conversations with them. But in this case, it was
Dair
who was having a conversation with Gregori. Which must mean—

She tensed as she slowly turned to glance over the top of the sheet covering her, eyes widening as she saw her elegantly attired brother sitting in the chair by the doors still opened out onto the balcony.

She quickly dived back under the cover of the sheet again.

She wasn’t hallucinating.

Gregori really was here.

Not just
here,
but actually sitting in the bedroom where she and Dair were in bed together.

And the two men
were
having this conversation.

Something was seriously, seriously wrong with this scenario.

“Dair!” Kat raised the sheet over her head just enough that she could see the strong column of his throat, and his clenched jaw. “Dair, please tell me that—”

“You might just as well come out from beneath that sheet, Katya,” her brother drawled derisively. “I’ve been sitting here for half an hour now waiting for the two of you to wake up, listening to your little contented purrs as you lay in your lover’s arms.”

“You wouldn’t have had to see or hear anything if you hadn’t let yourself in here, Markovic,” Dair growled, not at all happy that he’d been made to feel wrong-footed. Again. And for the same reason. Kat. She was going to be the death of him, of both of them, before this was over.

Where the hell were his men? They were supposed to be standing guard outside, should have seen Markovic and at least stopped him from entering the palace. If Gregori’s men had harmed either one of them…

It wasn’t helping the situation—or Dair’s mood—that Gregori Markovic was impeccably attired in one of those dark bespoke suits he favored, with a crisp white shirt and perfectly knotted grey tie, as well as meticulously groomed and freshly shaven; he looked like a fucking male model newly stepped off the catwalk.

Whereas Dair couldn’t remember the last time he’d combed his hair, let alone shaved. He was also, as Gregori had already remarked, stark naked beneath this sheet, and badly in need of a shower.

And Kat’s ‘contented purrs’ belonged to him, damn it.
 

Gregori gave an unconcerned shrug. “I assure you I didn’t break in. Your men were only too happy to allow me entry once they saw I had Lijah with me. But if they
had
proven uncooperative…” He gave a feral grin.

Dair recognized that grin for the danger it was. He should—he had a grin just like it.

Maybe that was one of the reasons he had developed a grudging liking for the older man. That, and the fact that Gregori obviously loved Kat.

Even so… “I already regret making that invitation—”

“You
invited
him here?” Kat forgot all about her embarrassment as she held the sheet to her and sat up in the bed, turning to look accusingly at Dair. “When? How?” She gave a shake of her head. “The two of us have been together day and night since we left New York, so how could you possibly—”

“TMI, Kat.” Gregori winced.

She glared at him. “I was talking to Dair!”

Her brother’s brows rose at her vehemence. “Katya…?”

“Your little Kat has developed claws, Gregori,” Dair drawled mockingly. “I’d turn over and show my back to prove it, but—”

“You will do no such thing!” Kat’s cheeks were ablaze with color.

“You see.” Dair grimaced at Gregori. “I didn’t stand a chance once she started ordering me about in that strict no-nonsense voice.”

“I do see, yes,” her brother drawled, obviously bemused.

Dair gave a grin, obviously enjoying himself. “She likes it when I take charge too, of course—”

“Dair!”

“Now you are the one providing TMI.” Gregori rose decisively to his feet. “Enlightening as this conversation is, I believe you and I have somewhere else to go, Grayson. My men are waiting at the airport to accompany us. As I said, I also brought Lijah with me, as you requested, as someone that Katya knows and is comfortable with to stay here and protect her—”

“You can both stop right there.” Kat had finally found her voice again, her previous embarrassment forgotten as she realized there was more going on here than Gregori escorting her back to England.

She had thought, once she got over her initial shock of realizing Gregori really was here, that Dair had arranged—she still had no idea how—to just hand her, and the responsibility of her, over to Gregori.

And that had hurt.

It had hurt a lot.

But listening to the rest of their conversation—Gregori’s men waiting at the airport, leaving Lijah here to guard her—she now knew that these two men were planning on doing something else entirely.

She looked at Dair accusingly. “Exactly when did you and Gregori have this cozy little chat?”

He gave a pained groan. “God, you make me hard when you talk to me in that schoolmarm voice!”

“Dair!”

“Grayson!”

“What?” He raised innocent brows. “I was only trying to explain why I won’t be able to get out of bed for the next few minutes.”

Kat gave a groan as she heard her brother chuckle. She now included him in her glare. “Don’t think for a moment that I don’t realize the two of you are deliberately trying to distract me! And it isn’t working. I want to know when
you
spoke to my brother.” She pinned Dair with that determined gaze. “And exactly where the two of you think you’re going without me.” She included Gregori in that censorious frown.

Her brother shrugged. “Dair telephoned me late last night—”

“While you were sleeping,” Dair explained as Kat frowned. “And you know exactly where we’re going, Kat,” he added seriously.

Yes, she did, and if her brother and her—her what? Exactly what was Dair to her? Her lover? Her boyfriend? Both those terms implied a certain permanence, and Kat had no illusions about Dair still being in her life once all of this was over.

She gave a shake of her head. “Not without me you’re not.”

“Katya—”

“I love you very much, Gregori,” she interrupted softly. “I will be forever grateful to you for asking Dair to help me.” She repressed a shudder at the thought of what might have happened to her if he hadn’t.

“I think you should know, Katya, that my enquiries have shown that Sergei Orlov’s legal wife was found dead in a hotel room in Las Vegas some five weeks ago,” Gregori told her quietly.

“You really did tell him
everything
during this sneaky telephone call to him last night!” She turned to Dair accusingly as he lay back against the pillows, his chest completely bare, the sheet having fallen down to his waist, his arms—God, his arms were just so strong and hot.

She had known that Sergei’s patience with her intransigence had been coming to an end, and that Ivan was a cold-blooded bastard. He wanted a grandson, his heir, and if Kat was no longer willing to provide that, with Sergei’s previous wife out of the picture, Kat would have needed to be replaced with a woman who would.

Was she surprised to learn of the death of Sergei’s wife?

She was sorry, but not surprised.

Without Gregori’s concern, and Dair’s rescue, Kat didn’t rate her own chances of being allowed to live for too much longer as having been very high.

“I really am very grateful to both of you,” she assured them again, her voice husky. “But this is my fight, not yours—”

“There you are wrong, Katya,” Gregori spoke in that voice that warned her he was talking as the head of the Markovic family rather than just her beloved older brother. “What the Orlovs did to you is unforgivable, the insult to the Markovic family equally so.”

Dair looked at Gregori not Kat. “Would you mind leaving us for a few minutes, Gregori?” The playful banter had gone and been replaced with a cold intensity. “You could go down to the kitchen and have coffee with Lijah.”

Gregori gave a hard smile. “You have an interesting choice in associates.”

“I trust Lijah with my life,” Dair answered challengingly. “And Kat’s,” he added softly.

The two men eyed each other for several long seconds before Gregori gave a terse nod. “You have ten minutes, no longer, after which I’ll leave for New York without you.” He crossed the room in long strides before bending down to kiss Kat warmly on the brow. “It’s good to have you back, my Katya.”

Kat reached up to touch his cheek lovingly before he straightened, gave Dair a terse nod, and left the bedroom.

Dair waited only long enough for Gregori to close the door behind him before throwing back the sheet and getting out of bed, feeling at far too much of a disadvantage being completely naked.

He hadn’t been lying about his hard-on either, his cock jutting up thick and engorged as he moved to pull on his boxers and jeans before turning back to face Kat. She had used the same time to also get out of bed and pull on and fasten the peach-colored robe.

Which immediately made Dair remember her in that robe last night as she ordered him how and where to make love to her, causing his cock to swell even more painfully.

A reaction instantly dampened by the stubborn expression on Kat’s face.

Dair prepared himself for a fight. “You aren’t coming with us, Kat.”

Temper colored her cheeks. “I’m thirty years old, Dair, and I’ll go where I damn well please!”

“Kat—”