The Dark Duet (8 page)

Clenching my fists, I force my thoughts back to the vengeance resting inside of my heart.
Focus, Kolya. She’s the key to getting what you crave so greatly
.

I will take Burkenstein out.

Revenge against Vladimir lies just within my reach. I can taste it, can feel it throughout my body. The thought of snuffing out the life of the man who threw me into the darkness arouses me in ways no sexual encounter can mimic.

I close my eyes and dream of nothing.

CHAPTER 10

~Alese~

Back in the training room, I flip him over and he lands on his ass at least three times or more. The somber music he plays each time we train has finally taken a toll on me. Today it’s Berlioz, and I can’t help thinking of that old Julia Roberts movie where I first heard this song playing.
Sleeping with the Enemy
, I believe it was called. How appropriate. Either I fight and live up to his standards—stringent and demanding as they might be—or I keep suffering through his dark music each time we train.

“All right. You win. I call mercy,” he gasps out as I twist his arm behind his back while he’s on the floor.

“No mercy. I don’t go easy on my victims. I am not going to be kind,” I murmur in his ear, mocking the way he treated me on the first night of our training a couple weeks ago.

“You are a natural, little dove.”

He’s right. Fighting this way comes just as easily to me as eating a bowl of rice, and I don’t get it. Sure, I have large chunks of my life I don’t remember, and sometimes the places I see in history books—the crazy-strange locations like Turkey, Switzerland, and Romania—all seem familiar to me, but none of that stirs my confusion up more than the speed of which I’ve learned Nikolai’s techniques. Nevertheless, I take full advantage of my gift.

“Feel like begging for your life? I’ve got an even better idea. How about we kill that depressing music you’ve got going on over there. Only then will I consider allowing you to live.”

A deep, throaty laugh escapes his lips, and his face remains hidden by that luscious golden hair of his, so basically, I have no idea what he’s conjuring up in his twisted mind. Laughter rumbles through my body, energizing me, arousing every single nerve cell in my body and making me wet with need and desire. I can stand here and say he doesn’t turn me on, I can deny that the violent nature of our practice and the implications behind what I’ll eventually be assigned to do doesn’t lend an intriguing aspect to this situation, but I’d be lying. There’s no doubt I’m attracted to him, but would a man like Nikolai Belikov ever consider someone like me? A girl with a sketchy past, mental disorders, and no history of life outside the few things my grandparents have told me the last few times I talked to them.

I’m caught up in thoughts of the many things I could do to Nikolai when I go airborne and end up on my back, the wind knocked out of me. Suddenly, I’m gasping as Nikolai presses the full length of his body down on top of me, his face within inches of my own.

“Distracted, little dove?” he asks, his wicked smile driving me insane with need. Both of our breaths come out as one combined gasp when I attempt to buck my body up underneath his. No luck. He’s a dancer with an insanely unreal amount of strength in that muscular frame, but he’s also something else right now. Situated between my legs, I can feel the bulge of his cock, the hardness pressed against my right thigh that he’s managed to pin down. At least I know he’s physically attracted to me.

“Maybe I’m a little unfocused,” I whisper, my eyes focusing on his lips and then locking on his gaze. A dark look has clouded over his face, and the grip he has on my wrists hurts like hell, but I don’t even think he realizes just how tightly he’s holding on to me.

My body fires to life, the adrenaline of the moment concentrated in my nipples and between my legs. There’s a darkness inside of this man, yes I know, but it’s the part of him that kills the numbness inside of me, something I haven’t been able to do in years.

Go for it, Alese.

You know he won’t make the first move.

I lift my hips, grinding my thigh against his hardness. At once Nikolai closes his eyes, taking in a sharp breath as though I’ve hit him with a stun gun or something. He opens his eyes, focuses his half-lidded gaze on me, and parts his lips, a shaky breath escaping them.

Do it now, or lose this moment forever.

I lift my head off the mat the tiniest bit and aim my lips toward his. He inhales and holds his breath, his face twisted in a mixture of desire, anger, and intrigue. He’s the most tortured soul I’ve ever met, and I want to help cure him of whatever thing is haunting him. Grasping a handful of my hair on top my head and pulling until I cry out from the pain, he practically shoves his tongue down my throat as soon as I open my mouth and make the first gasp. A little squeak escapes my lips as his mouth devours mine, his kiss a heated elixir intoxicating me until I feel as though my body will float away from this high I’m experiencing.

I slip my hands up underneath his shirt and massage his back; a mass of corded muscles and smooth skin, my prizes for being bold enough to touch him this way. In return, he deepens the kiss, his tongue literally assaulting mine in his eagerness to conquer my mouth. Our breathing a song of lust and need; a connection neither of us expected, or is prepared to handle, forming between us.

His kiss leaves my mouth and continues down my chin to the hollow of my neck, his lips hungrily devouring my skin as he sucks and nibbles hard, driving me completely insane.

“Oh God, I want you, Nikolai,” I gasp out, but my words have done the opposite of what I’d hoped would happen. He lifts his head and stares down at me through half-lidded eyes, his face dark with passion. However, the expression turns in on itself and the mask he hides behind each day returns, shutting me out.

“This cannot happen.”

“Why?” I ask, holding on to a handful of his shirt so he can’t escape. He doesn’t answer. Instead, he closes his eyes a short moment, lifts up to a standing position in one gracefully swift move, turns and walks out the door, leaving me sitting in the dark, alone and wondering if there’s anyone in this crazy world who could love someone like me.

“What the hell ever, Belikov!” I yell at the door, my bottom lip trembling from the rush of anger I’m experiencing. Tomorrow I’ll focus on what’s most important from now on: my training and ultimately, understanding the dreams that keep on screwing with my sleep. There has to be more to this life than the extreme sense of nothing that fills me every day.

~Nikolai~

The Extasia’s pole dancers make a pornographic movie appear to be tame. When everything else in life disappoints me, I can always count on one of Milan’s seedy, underground swinger’s clubs to provide a sordid and satisfying orgy. I have chosen a blonde and a redhead, anything besides brunette since I cannot seem to retain control of my common sense around the dark-haired lovelies in my life.

We enter a private room at the end of a long hallway inside of the club, a posh room that contains a bed large enough to hold no less than four or five people. Black marble floors are covered in various sizes of white flokati rugs. Gray walls contain pictures of naked lovers entwined together, their expressions lost in the pleasures of the lust they’re experiencing no doubt, the complete opposite of the way I’m feeling as I allow these two women to explore my body.

Lying back on the bed, I lose myself in the way the older dancer, the blonde, both kisses and nibbles along my upper body. Meanwhile, her partner unbuttons my trousers, releases my cock, and goes down on me with respectable skill ... something that should be setting me on fire. Instead, it only serves to heighten the one thing I have been trying to get out of my mind ever since I left the theatre.

I close my eyes and see her face. Alese.

Damn her!

Why is she always there, waiting?

“I want you, Nikolai,”
she had said.

The women open my shirt and run a trail of kisses across my chest and down my abdomen. When the blonde wraps her lips around my cock, the pressure building inside of it sends my body into a place that exists between being conscious and subconscious as I lose myself in the sensations coursing through my body. But damn if I cannot stop envisioning her face: those hazel eyes with enough sadness to soften even the hardest heart, those lips that are so completely kissable. Inside my mind, Alese’s heart-shaped lips are the ones caressing me with warmth as they wrap around my shaft. Unfortunately, reality, the sneaky bastard, steals my joy. Every. Single. Time.

My eyes flutter open and focus on a blonde head moving up and down on me, her light tresses completely opposite of the brunette-colored ones I just imagined. A pair of blue eyes glance into mine, giving me her best seductive look as she works my cock. I exhale and glance away, softening even though her skilled tongue works me in such a way that should cause me to explode.

Her partner, the redhead, attempts to kiss me, and something inside of me snaps. An intense feeling of guilt stabs me in the chest. I grab her wrists harder than I mean to do.

“Ouch, baby,” the redhead purrs, wincing at the same time. “Let little Ava help you feel better.”

“Those are off limits,” I gasp, shifting my hips in such a way that her partner is forced to lift her head off my cock, which has already gone soft. Rising up off the bed, I move to the edge and prop my hands over on my knees, closing my eyes and purging the vision of Alese strapped to the experimentation table in Rudolph’s lab from my mind.

“Come back to me, handsome,” the blonde purrs, running her hand down my abdomen, around my back, and across my ass. “I can ease whatever’s going on in that sexy head of yours.” The two women giggle. I open my eyes and focus on the blonde, moving my hands up to cradle her face. Smiling seductively, she attempts to kiss me. I move my head back and say, “I think you have already failed once, have you not?” I flick my eyes toward my soft cock.

“I’m sure I can help you. Just open your mind,” the Ava girl chimes in and places her lips on mine. I firmly grasp her face, moving her back away from mine. Wincing, she inhales sharply.

“An open mind can be a dangerous thing for such a lovely creature as you,” I warn without easing up on my grip.

“Hey, take it easy,” the blonde says, massaging my hands until I release her partner. Sighing, I ease to a standing position and get dressed, making sure to leave their payment on the table beside the door as I exit.

Walking under the street lights of Milan’s night life, I head back toward my penthouse. I need some time to think. To focus. If I keep telling myself to do so, then eventually it will work. Alek now knows I’m back in Milan; both he and Adriana have texted me several times and I haven’t answered. Rudolph made it clear that until Alese was fully trained I was to stay away from the Dostovskys. For their own safety, I have obeyed, but I am almost certain my silence will not keep them away for long.

Lost in thoughts of my neglected family—Alek, Katerina, and yes, even Adriana—I keep walking. My feet have taken on a different purpose from my mind, and before I even glance at the street sign, indicating I just crossed over onto Via Agollonie, I know exactly where I have gone. I find myself standing below Alese’s window, my form concealed by the shrubbery situated across the lawn. I look up at her, standing framed in the light, naked from the waist up. She’s taking extra time to get dressed, and even appears to be posing a few times.

Does she know I am out here, creeping through the shadows like a man of insanity instead of a trained assassin?

At once my breath increases and the thought of seeing that gloriously athletic body naked shakes up the animal inside of me. My longing for her has reached a peak, and I can no longer deny or control whatever shit is happening in my head. Pulling out my golden BlackBerry, I situate my finger over the keys.
She will see you as the insane person you truly are, my friend.

I do not care. I want her.

Me: You are a beautiful creation, Ms. Ballentine.

The form silhouetted in the window stops posing and disappears from the light. A few agonizing minutes pass, and I am almost certain my sweaty palms will cause me to drop my phone. I inhale deeply and hold it.
What the fuck are you doing, Kolya? Leave. Now!

Alese: Do you like to watch, Sir Belikov?

I smile at that reference to the text I had sent her at practice earlier.

Me: Always.

Alese: Would you like to see more?

Me: Of course.

Alese: Wait. Isn’t that against the training policy?

Me: I do not remember saying such a thing.

Alese: LOL. Well, there’s a price.

Me: Name it.

Alese: I don’t come cheap ...

Alese: Are you sure you can afford me?

Me: I SAID NAME IT!!!