The Last Kolovsky Playboy (10 page)

‘Leave it.’ He could not think about then. Could not stand to think about the day when all this would be over—when everything he had would perhaps be gone. When nothing remained, when she knew his shame, she would hate him too. He looked into her troubled blue eyes and he was angry. Because she knew nothing—none of them, not one of them, knew the danger, knew the trouble. He carried it all…

‘In a couple of months,’ she persisted, but her voice was strangled when he finally undid the knot, her hand reaching to close together the flimsy material. ‘Please don’t, Aleksi.’

‘I would be forgiven for straying,’ he said nastily. ‘As all we do is kiss, and always you are covered to the neck.’

‘Sorry I’m not as blatant as your usual scrubbers,’ she hissed.

‘Take it off,’ Aleksi demanded, his voice silken, his mouth soft. But he was the smiling assassin, and she sat there, shivering in her own misery. It wasn’t the camera she feared, wasn’t her cottage cheese thigh on the cover of a magazine, but his scrutiny, his distaste she dreaded right now. ‘It’s warm; you need oil.’

When she didn’t or rather couldn’t move, Aleksi did, his hands removing hers from the sarong. His mouth, warm now, kissed her shoulder as he parted the sarong and then dropped it.

‘Lie down.’

She could feel his breath on her shoulder, could feel the sweat trickling between her breasts, feel his hand on her stomach, and she wanted to weep in shame. But that would only shame her more, so instead she lay there.

Always her body had captured his attention.

He poured oil into his hand before he looked properly at her, and he saw that his hand was shaking a fraction. Those breasts he had once caressed naked were behind fabric and he wanted them exposed. But he wouldn’t do that to her here, with paparazzi watching, so he oiled her shoulders and resisted the urge.

He loved her breasts. They were completely natural, without any telling scars beneath the areolaes. He slipped his hand up underneath her armpits, also knowing there were no scars there either. It was a little game he played, and usually his hand met the hard ridge of an implant, but there were no hard edges to Kate; she was soft, unlike him, and she was nervous but she didn’t need to be. He saw her frantically try to hold in her stomach, but despite her best efforts when his warm palm met her skin there it was soft rather than taut. Her body was nothing like the many others he had been with, which had all been the same.

Finally, after all these long days and lonely nights, she let him touch her, and it wasn’t just her body but her mind that remembered the bliss, and he felt her surrender, felt her accept what she had been resisting, and only then did he lead her inside.

‘You’re going to hurt me.’ There—she’d said it. She stood in his bedroom by his bed and she wanted him so badly. Yet she still wanted to run, because there was no simple solution for her. ‘No matter what I do—I know this is going to end up in hurt.’

‘I’m not hurting you now.’ And he wasn’t. ‘Just don’t
fall in love with me, Kate.’ Between sentences he kissed her. ‘Because only then can I hurt you.’ It should have sounded like a threat or a warning, but instead it was more of plea. ‘Don’t think even for a moment that it can be like this for ever…’

‘I don’t.’ Kate swallowed. She just hoped it instead.

‘This is now,’ Aleksi said, and slid his hands around her waist. He spoke into her mouth. ‘The words I say, the words we say as lovers, don’t belong in the future.’

‘I don’t understand,’ she murmured.

‘When I say you are beautiful…’ His mouth grazed her neck, and then one hand dealt with her bikini. Her breasts tightened briefly at the rush of fanned air, then softened to his warm tongue. ‘When I say I want you…That I need you…’

‘You actually mean that you won’t in the future, right?’ She pushed him away furiously. ‘Are those words you say so you can close your eyes and go through the motions?’

‘Hell! What did he do to you?’ Aleksi demanded. ‘What did that louse do that you can doubt yourself so much?’

‘He
hurt
me, Aleksi, as you’re promising you’re about to.’

‘Only if you think that it can last,’ he reiterated. ‘Because we both know it can’t.’

It couldn’t—how could he tell her that soon it might all be gone? That the luxury that bathed her now might soon be over? That even with his bravado,
Krasavitsa
might no longer be his? Oh, he would rise again, would come back from nothing, of that he had no doubt—but he would have to do it alone. Which was why it was imperative
she took care of herself. But how could she want him anyway if she knew the truth?

He was back down at her breasts now, buried in them, wanting to get lost in them, but some things had to be said. ‘Cash that cheque,’ he ordered.

She slapped him in absolute fury. How dared he kiss her breast and at the same time remind her that he was paying her?

‘That’s what stopping you?’ Aleksi would not be thwarted. ‘Is that what is stopping you cashing it? Thinking I’m paying you for sex?’ Her tears were her answer. ‘Then I’ll do it for you.’ He had never been so hard, had never wanted a woman more, but it had to be business that drove them—this was
his
life that was crashing and burning, not hers, and he couldn’t afford to let her glimpse the darkest part of it all.

He left her naked, apart from her bikini bottoms, while he tapped into his computer, and she stood there sobbing with humiliation and shame as he erased all her problems and created a whole set of new ones.

‘There…it’s done.’

‘So now you can have sex with me?’ she flung at him.

‘Now,’ Aleksi said firmly, ‘we can forget about it for a while—forget why you are here.’

But she fought with him, avoiding the mouth that was searching for hers. He wanted to resume, to carry on where they’d left off. He had just paid her more money in a moment that she had earned in her entire life and now he expected to sleep with her!

‘I have paid for your time, for the façade, for you to hold my hand and kiss me in public. I have paid you for the invasion to your privacy and for your exclusive company over these next weeks.’ He pushed her onto the
bed and pulled at her bikini while her hand strove to stop his. ‘And now it is about choice,’ Aleksi insisted when she was naked beneath him. ‘Because the money is out of the way now—it is gone, it is done and forgotten. What happens now is your choice.’

But he gave her no choice at all, because her body wept for him…

He was out of his shorts and kissing her hard when suddenly he stopped.

‘Tell me to stop now and I promise you will never have to say it again.’ His erection was there between her closed thighs, his body on top of hers, his words hot breaths in her ear. He kissed her ear till she furled over on the inside. ‘Apart from a kiss in the street, or a handhold on the way to an event…’ he was breathing so hard in her ear now she turned her head away ‘…I will never lay a finger on you again.’

And then he kissed her neck, but still he spoke.

‘I don’t pay for sex, Kate, and I never have done—you either want me or you don’t.’

Her thighs parted a fraction when her lips couldn’t, and it was like opening a door a little way and the cat shooting out—except Aleksi didn’t quite let himself in.

‘It’s your choice,’ he insisted again, but he was trying to steady himself, because her beckoning warmth was doing strange things to his mind. He found himself wanting to stay just a little longer on the precipice, envisaging the thrill of the jump, but exhilaration was already building, and then he felt her mouth, felt her kiss him, felt her open, and he accepted her warm welcome and crept in.

Not a stab, not a split second, not a dive. Instead, for Kate, there was a slow gathering and filling. He made
that moment of entry last for ever. He gathered speed with his thrust, and yet it was like a slow sear deep inside her—slow enough for her to assimilate rapid sensations: him filling her further, the stretch of her body, the moan of relief from him. Then his tongue licked her ear and she felt something new, something close to blind panic, but so much more wonderful than that. All this she felt as Aleksi slid deep inside her.

He beckoned her on his decadent path with a rapid withdrawal, just to the edge, and then he dived in again and again…

And she had never, ever been so intimate with another person before.

Had never been so angry and so desperate and so relieved and so free at the same time, and she told him all that with her body.

She fought—not to get him off, but to pull him deeper and deeper inside her. And harder he went, till she thought she would scream from the pleasure of it, and then she heard that she
was
screaming. It came from another place, this voice that was hers but she’d never before heard.

‘I can’t.’ She heard herself gasp it—then wanted to explain herself, because she wasn’t saying she couldn’t do it; she was saying she couldn’t hold back any longer.

Only words were meaningless now. They were in a different place that spoke a different language, yet Aleksi understood it, because clearly he couldn’t hold back either. He was speaking in Russian, and saying her name; he was a different man than she had ever seen or imagined. He was rough and he was tender and he was mindful yet brutal, and so was she—it was another version of Kate that he had exposed. He was so into her,
this guarded, sexy, remote man, who was there with her on another level. He made her act like an animal—she was biting and scratching, and her legs were so tight around him that she felt him bucking against her calves. She offered no escape.

Kate was a delicious tourniquet around him, and he shot into her what she craved. They shared the same dizzy high—this rush, this shared sensation that lasted and lasted till she could hear the slowing thud of the bed and realised they were still on the planet, could feel again her body, which she’d surely just climbed out of.

Then she thought about the screams and the bed and the swear-words and the servants—and she did the strangest thing, with him still inside and on top of her. She stared to laugh.

And, strangest of all, Aleksi laughed too.

Then he rolled off and lay beside her and did the unthinkable.

He asked something rather than demanded it of her.

‘Will you come to England with me?’

She didn’t answer, just turned and looked over to him. He didn’t look at her, just stared up at the ceiling, and something told her that her reaction was more important to him than she could even begin to guess.

‘Tonight,’ Aleksi added, and then he did look over to her. ‘Just for a few days—you can bring Georgie, or she can stay with Sophie. Maybe your sister could come and stay here…’

In everything, for more than five years, Georgie had come first with Kate, and of course she still did. But there was actually room in Kate’s life now for someone else.

‘I’ll come,’ she said quietly.

‘I don’t want to unsettle Georgie, but…’

‘She’ll be fine,’ Kate said, because she knew her daughter would be. ‘I’ll sort that out.’

Then he did something that had never come easily to him.

Kate watched as he nodded his thanks to her and then fell asleep.

Had it been anyone less complex than Aleksi, she’d have thumped him.

I
T WAS
freezing in the UK, but Levander and Millie’s welcome was warm.

They had a sprawling home on the outskirts of London, and though Kate could see instantly that Aleksi and he were brothers, there was a lightness to Levander, a peace that was missing in Aleksi.

Their house was filled with love and laughter and Kate felt a pang. She wished she’d brought Georgie, but a sixth sense had told her that her daughter would be better off at
home.
Her mother had actually come down from the country for a few days to watch her, and there was Sophie, and her friends, and a party that Georgie felt was too important to miss.

It was her first break from motherhood in almost five years, and it was a guilty relief.

She and Aleksi pretended to be tired when they landed, and were in bed before seven—but it wasn’t for sleeping. In the morning, having spoken to Georgie, even though she sounded just fine, Kate found she had to resist constantly phoning to ensure that everything was okay.

‘It’s like trying not to go back and check if you’ve
put the handbrake on in the car.’ Kate described it to Millie. ‘Even though you
know
you have…’

‘I know.’ Millie nodded. ‘We left Sashar here when we went to Russia for Dimitri—everyone said that we needed some one-on-one time with him and that it would be better for Sashar too. Especially as Dimitri can be…’ she hesitated to summon the right word ‘…difficult.’

He was certainly that.

Dimitri didn’t say a word, didn’t join in, and he didn’t even seem to be taking an interest in what was going on.

‘He does sometimes,’ Millie said hopefully. ‘He laughed at something Levander said the other day, and he has played a little with Sashar.’

‘That’s good,’ Kate said, and Millie nodded.

‘My brother’s severely autistic, so I know that Dmitri is interacting a bit—we’ve just got to be patient.’

Which wasn’t a Kolovsky virtue.

Belenki had again dodged all Aleksi’s attempts to contact him.

An emergency had arisen, his PA had informed Aleksi.

‘He can’t help that,’ Kate attempted one morning as they sat around a vast indoor pool—it was freezing outside, all the windows were steamed up, but inside the temperature was soaring—and not only due to the luxurious surrounds. Craig was texting constantly now, and she had finally agreed to meet him when she returned, just to get him to leave her alone, which had her on edge. And Aleksi was proving impossible. ‘You can’t plan for emer…’ Her voice trailed off as Aleksi peeled off a page from the newspaper he was reading and there was his nemesis, skiing down a black run in Switzerland.

‘That photo’s for me,’ Aleksi said.

‘Don’t be ridiculous.’ Kate laughed. ‘He’ll be mortified he’s been caught out.’ Still she smiled. ‘Aleksi, you do it all the time—it’s just business.’

‘No.’ Aleksi shook his head. ‘It isn’t.’

‘Then what?’ She didn’t get it—she truly didn’t get what it was about Belenki that galled him so. ‘What is it with him?’ she demanded, because she really had to know—his answer, however, just confused her.

‘That,’ Aleksi said tartly, ‘is what I’m trying my damnedest to work out.’

Their
words
thankfully went unnoticed by their hosts, but Kate was sick of his moods, sad that a lovely morning could be ruined by a photo in the newspaper of a man he barely knew—and she told him so, then flounced off to find a better mood in the water.

Levander was playing with Sashar in the pool, and Millie was sitting with Dimitri—who sat where he had been put, his legs dangling in the water, so sheltered and closed, such a contrast to the laughter and boisterousness and sheer joy that came from his little brother.

‘Come on, Sashar, jump!’ Levander grinned to his son, who had climbed out of the pool and was standing on the edge, nervous but excited as his father urged him on.
‘Jump!’

It took only two tries and then little Sashar stretched out his arms and flew to his father, who caught him. It went on, over and over again, and the squeals of delight made everyone laugh.

Everyone except Dimitri and, Kate realised, Aleksi.

He had been on his phone, replying to an e-mail—only now the e-mail was forgotten. Kate could feel his tension lift, feel the shift as Aleksi looked towards where his brother stood with arms outstretched to Dimitri,
whose pale body was shaking as he contemplated taking that brave step.

‘How about you, Dimitri?’ Levander said in English, and then he repeated it in Russian. ‘Jump,’ Levander urged. ‘I will catch you. I promise.’

But Dimitri just sat there, his eyes looking down.

Levander said it again.
‘Preeguy
Dimitri, jump.
Yar tibyar piemaryou.’
And then Aleksi, who wasn’t a father, who hadn’t been through anything that Levander had, who had no bond with the child, spoke for his nephew.

‘Leave him be, Levander.’

Distracted by the warning in his brother’s tone, Levander briefly turned around.

‘We’re just playing. He’ll do it when he is ready…’ Then he turned his attention back to his new son. ‘How about it, Dimitri?’

He spoke again in Russian, but now Kate understood what was being said. What she didn’t understand was the tension in Aleksi, who sat beside her like a coiled spring. It was as if he might pounce at any time. Kate glanced over to Millie, who had also picked up on the strange atmosphere.

‘Levander is just letting him know that when he is ready to join in…’

‘That is not a game.’ Aleksi’s voice was hoarse. ‘It will not help him. Levander!’ Aleksi’s voice was restrained, but urgent. ‘Leave him.’

‘Don’t tell me how to raise my son.’ Levander was less than impressed with his brother’s interference.

‘They’ve been playing for ages,’ Millie said patiently. ‘Levander is not pushing him. Dimitri will go in when he’s ready.’

There was something Kate was missing here. Her eyes darted from Aleksi to Sashar who, jealous from lack of attention and wanting some of the fun, climbed out of the pool and ran around the side, laughing and sailing into the air. Then her eyes moved back to Aleksi, whose face was chalk-white. She could see the vein pulsing in his neck as Levander caught his son, and there was fear, real fear in his eyes, as Dimitri stood at the very wrong moment and decided to jump.

‘Levander!’ Aleksi called to his brother—only Levander didn’t need his brother’s warning.

He was watching not just Sashar but Dimitri too. He didn’t launch himself, it was more a step really, and despite having just caught Sashar, Levander caught Dimitri in time, pulled him into his arms and didn’t make too much of a fuss—just held him and encouraged him till Dimitri found his feet on the bottom of the pool.

The steam from the water was rising, a contrast to the icy rain slicing against the windows, and Millie climbed in and took over as Levander glared over to his brother and got out.

‘Did you think I would drop him? Did you really think I would deliberately drop him for
fun?’
Levander challenged.

‘To show him,’ Aleksi corrected. ‘To teach him.’

‘I know what I’m doing,’ Levander snapped. ‘I know what he’s been through. What sort of a sick person do you think I am? Don’t tell me how to raise my son.’

‘Would
you?’
Aleksi challenged his older brother. ‘When you came to our family, had our father told you to jump would you have done?’

‘No,’ Levander admitted. ‘But I am not Ivan. Dimitri can trust me.’

‘Trust no one,’ Aleksi sneered. ‘That is what Dimitri has been taught.’

‘What were
you
taught, Aleksi?’ Levander asked, and he didn’t sound angry any more.

‘To jump,’ Aleksi said. ‘I stood on the dresser at the bottom of the stairs and he held out his arms and told me to jump. I didn’t want to, but he told me to trust him…’

Kate felt sick. She had heard of the ritual, a strange reversal of today’s events, where bonding camps made you jump from great heights into the waiting arms of strangers. A ritual that had once been passed from father to son—to toughen them up, to show them the harsh ways of the world.

‘So you jumped?’ Kate asked in a croak when Levander said nothing. ‘And then what?’

‘He let me fall,’ Aleksi muttered. ‘He let me fall and then he picked me up off the floor and held me as I cried. He told me I had been foolish, that I hadn’t listened to what he’d told me before—
“nyekamoo doveerye”
—that I should trust no one.’

‘He was wrong—’ Levander started, only Aleksi didn’t want to debate it.

‘I’m going to rest.’

For the first time he really limped as he walked off. For the first time he wasn’t being proud, or perhaps he didn’t have the mental energy to push through the pain. Kate just sat, wondering if she should follow. She guessed he would rather be alone, yet she ached to go after him.

‘Sometimes,’ Levander said, as the pool door closed on his brother, ‘I wonder if the sympathy of my family
is misguided. As hellish as my childhood was in the orphanage, I think I might have got off lightly.’

‘He was wrong.’ It was all Kate could say at first, her mind still whirring with conflict. Because the thought of destroying a child’s trust was abhorrent to her, yet things had been different then. ‘It was the way men toughened up their children then.’

‘Leave it.’

‘I don’t want to leave it,’ Kate answered. ‘I’m trying to understand you.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I…’ She hurriedly choked back the word he hated so. ‘I care about you.’

‘I pay you to care,’ Aleksi said coldly.

‘Please don’t!’ she begged. ‘Because you know there are some things that can’t be bought…’

‘I disagree.’

‘Well, you’re wrong!’ Kate sobbed. ‘Because—’

“Kate.’ Only then did his eyes meet hers, and he might as well have been looking at the wall for all the feeling in them. They were as grey and cold and as impermeable as steel. ‘I am not interested in a relationship—I am not interested in your caring. How much more clearly can I say it? All I want now is my business—not just Krasavitsa; I want the lot. And then—’ he nodded as he made his mind up ‘—I want my mother out!’

‘How can you speak of her like that?’

‘I don’t care for her,’ Aleksi said. ‘I care only for the Kolovsky Empire.’

‘You’re so cold,’ Kate whispered.

‘More than cold,’ Aleksi said. ‘You want to know
why I hate her? You want to know why this is nothing but business for me?’

She had wanted to know, but suddenly she was scared. Only there was no stopping Aleksi now.

‘I want to understand you,’ she told him.

‘You couldn’t,’ Aleksi retorted.

‘Maybe if you just let me know you, I will,’ she retorted.

‘When I was seven, and Christmas was close, my mother said there would be no gifts that year—that I had been too naughty. I knew she must be lying, so I searched for them. She hadn’t been lying about that—there were no gifts—and instead I found out their real lie.’

‘About Levander?’ Kate asked, her stomach tightening as she thought of a seven-year-old boy finding out the family secret. ‘I thought they only found out about him being in the orphanage after they came to Australia…’

‘They knew,’ Aleksi said. ‘They knew all along that they had children in the orphanages—but they were too busy living their new lives to care.’

‘Children?’
she gasped.

‘Levander is my father’s son,’ Aleksi said. ‘Ivan had a brief fling with his cleaner before he was engaged to my mother. Levander’s mother, when she found out she was dying, begged them to take Levander with them to Australia—she had guessed they would soon flee Russia.’

‘And you found this out?’

‘I found letters,’ Aleksi said, ‘and certificates. I confronted him…’

Kate knew some of this. She had worked at Kolovsky long enough, had heard the whispers and read the papers, so it came as no real surprise that Ivan and Nina
had actually known about Levander all along—but Aleksi hadn’t finished yet.

‘I found out, too, that there was another child—that before Levander my parents had had a son together.’ Beneath his tan his face was grey. ‘Not even my brothers know that. I confronted my father with it.’

‘And what did he say?’

‘He answered me with his fist,’ Aleksi said, ‘and with his boots, and with his belt. What scared me…’ briefly his eyes met hers ‘…was not the pain, but his fear.’

She didn’t get it. She wanted to ask, to probe, yet she knew to stay silent, and tried so hard not to cry as she heard how badly he had been beaten.

‘He was scared and angry and I knew he had no control. That his fear was bigger than him in that moment…’ His eyes held hers, awaited her response, and yet she didn’t understand, no matter how she wanted to.

‘I consoled myself that in that moment his fear overrode his love for me.’

She swallowed. She would go over and over his words later, to try and make sense of them, but for now all she wanted was for him to speak. Only Aleksi was done. Turning his back on her, he stared out of the window. It was so warm inside, so light and airy, it was strange to think that on the other side of the glass it was cold and damp and frozen. She knew she had to reach him, to speak, or he would be gone.

‘Nothing overrides love,’ she said at last.

‘Wrong answer.’

She felt her blood run cold—knew somehow that she had just failed him.

‘When you are seven—when you lie on the floor and the man you love, the man you admire, the man you one
day want to become beats you, kicks you…When you can see his eyes bulge and feel his spit on your face…’

Her tears were silent, but they were there, flowing down her face as she listened to him.

‘You tell yourself this is not your father’s doing—that he loves you—that it is the fear that makes him do this…’

‘Aleksi—’

‘Leave it,’ he said. ‘I have.’

‘How can you?’ Kate begged. ‘You have another brother. Did you look for him?’

He just stood there.

‘Have you found him?’

‘No.’

And then she asked the question he dreaded giving an answer to. ‘You haven’t even
tried
to find him?’