Chapter 16 Jimmy in the Casino #2
His words caught me off guard, and I snapped my gaze to him. Happiness and hope filled me like light before I had a chance to stop it because he was obviously playing with me. “I—I—”
While I was trembling in Nicolai’s arms, he pivoted and, with firm pressure on my hand that assured me this guy knew how to lead, he dipped me.
I’d had enough dance classes in high school to hang on and point my toe.
Nicolai grinned. His delighted smile was absolute mischievous joy, the first time I’d seen that smile in a while. He whispered, “Touch my face with your left hand to show him my ring on your finger.”
My eyes started to slide right because Jimmy would be absolutely horrified at this public display of affection. He hated PDA, derided it, sneered at it, for himself and everyone else.
Nicolai whispered to me, “Don’t look at him. Eyes on me, because I’m only looking at you.”
I looked into Nicolai’s eyes, the calm, teal Caribbean water of his eyes, and he smiled. “That’s my girl. Now show him the ring, claiming you as mine.”
I did it.
I lifted my left hand bearing those diamond-encrusted wedding rings that weighed on my finger, and I caressed his cheek. The slightest dark stubble shaded his jaw.
“Good girl.” Nicolai’s mussed dark strands were dangling around his temples and forehead, and that mischievous sparkle still glimmered in his teal eyes. “You’re okay with this?”
I nodded, vibrating my skull up and down to try to be subtle but to assure him that I was absolutely okay with being petty as far as Jimmy Johnson was concerned.
As petty as possible, actually.
Nicolai’s arm behind my back lifted me as his mouth crashed down on mine, our tongues tangling, my breath escaping into his mouth.
His other hand slid up my arm and into my hair, cupping the back of my neck and cradling my skull as he kissed me and held me suspended midair.
Like I was flying.
The jangling coins and bells of the casino fell away.
My heartbeat thundered in my ears.
I wrapped my arms around his neck, holding on, clutching him because it felt, just for a moment, like I was starving for what he offered.
Nicolai straightened a little, dragging me with him but holding me closer, pressing me through our clothes against his hard body but still kissing me.
I’d slipped my hand up his face and into his hair, the soft silk tangling around my fingers.
His warm cologne still clung to his skin, subtle scents that seemed woodsy with smoke, a forest fire contained in a man. His lips and mouth on mine tasted like wine and subtle mint.
Nicolai broke off the kiss with the slightest of gasps, gazing at me with half-hooded eyes. He was breathing hard, his body a bellows stoking a flame, and his hands clenched into fists, grasping my hair and the heavy silk of my dress.
He was searching my eyes, searching for something, as stunned as I was.
I was so dazed that I couldn’t tell what he wanted and didn’t know what to say.
His thumb grazed my cheekbone, a caress. After that kiss, the crowd would probably think a touch like that was overkill.
Crowd?
Nicolai’s eyes darted to the hushed crowd huddling around us.
And Jimmy and that other woman had front-row seats to the show.
The kiss hadn’t been lewd, just startlingly passionate, considering that there were maybe a hundred people staring at us.
Nicolai’s blue eyes met mine, and his sheepish smile was cute.
How did the otherworldly handsome man become cute? That was the magic.
He lifted his head, looking around like he hadn’t known exactly what kind of attention he was attracting.
Wow, Nicolai could not only act, but he was a ham. He’d hammed it up and upstaged an entire casino’s worth of jangling slot machines and yelling card dealers in one hot second.
He straightened us to standing.
Trembles fluttered through my skin and every limp muscle in my body.
Nicolai’s projecting bass voice could have filled a theater.
“Sorry, folks! Got carried away.” He juggled me in his arms and lifted his left hand from behind my back, waggling his new gold and platinum band on his wedding-ring finger.
“We just got married last night, and I couldn’t help myself.
” His eyes found mine again. “My wife is everything to me.”
Our connected gaze felt electric, like truth traveling between us, but Nicolai broke it off first to rotate his hand in another dismissive wave, letting Jimmy see his left hand and his wedding ring, too.
Everyone applauded.
And hooted. It was a little gross.
Jimmy was slapping his hands together with slow, sarcastic claps, a scowl twisting his handsome face.
Though as I looked, Jimmy’s jawline was looser than I remembered, and his nose was a little off-center.
But I shouldn’t be comparing Jimmy to Nicolai.
Nicolai Romanov was movie-star handsome, royalty-handsome, almost fictional-handsome.
With his dark, silken hair and clear eyes, the straight lines and sharp angles of his jaw and cheekbones, massive, towering height and contagious chuckle, the sharp intelligence in his eyes and how his lifelong friends clustered around him at the nightclub—
The way Nicolai had seen Jimmy, figured out who he was, and then made me feel a billion bucks in his arms—
Looks weren’t a contest.
Looks weren’t even important.
Even though Nicolai would have won a looks contest by a frickin’ mile, too.
But he’d also made me forget that Jimmy even existed for a moment while he’d kissed me.
That other woman, her, was absentmindedly clapping, but she was peering between Jimmy and me as if seeing the bond between us composed of all the times Jimmy had told me he loved me, wanted to marry me, and talked about spending our lives together.
But that bond was gone. Jimmy had wrenched it out when he’d walked away with her.
A hard bar took me out at the knees and folded my legs, but instead of falling, I was flying into the air.
Nicolai had swept me up into his arms. He grinned at me as he started walking toward the doors.
I grabbed onto his neck, trying to take some of my weight off his arms.
My wedding rings flashed like strobes in the thousands of light bulbs studding the casino’s ceiling above.
The voluminous copper silk of my long skirt fluttered around us.
Nicolai didn’t seem to struggle in the slightest with carrying me as he strode for the sliding exit doors through the applauding crowd.
Jimmy had carried me once and told me I needed to lose weight.
I twisted in Nicolai’s arms to look back over his shoulder.
My ex was staring after us and toying with his poker chips.
She was talking to him, craning her neck, trying to get his attention, but Jimmy’s narrowed gaze didn’t leave mine as Nicolai carried me through the crowd and strode toward the exit.
Nicolai’s stride was swift and long, almost a strut, as the glass doors slid away from our path and he carried me into the desert night outside.
Stifling-hot night air rolled around us.
Nicolai’s head was up, looking around, and he changed the angle we were moving to a diagonal toward a cluster of black SUVs.
Behind us, the crowd followed, flooding out the casino doors into the entryway roofed with flashing lights.
“You can put me down,” I whispered to him.
“No time. We have to get to the cars.”
In the small valet parking lot to the side of the Caesars Palace casino’s entrance, Ueli saw us coming, raising two fingers that caused other security personnel to spill from two blacked-out SUVs.
Just two.
There’d been three total SUVs, two chase vehicles plus our car, when we’d driven here. “Where’s the other one?”
The security team, black suits in the spotlight-sprayed night, sprinted toward us, forming a cordon between us and the chasing crowd. They faced outward, arms spread, communicating with each other through earpieces.
Had I missed something? Had there been a move on Nico?
Fear soaked into me.
Ueli had the SUV’s rear door open as we reached him. “Get in now,” he growled.
He’d almost snarled.
“Was it deliberate?” Nicolai asked him when we were close enough.
“It looked like it.”
The other guys fanned out, running for the other vehicle.
The one other black, tinted SUV, not two of them.
“Where’s the other car?” I whispered to Nico.
“I don’t know,” he said, darting a quick look over his shoulder.
Nicolai half-tossed me into the back seat, clambering in right after me as Ueli slammed the door behind him and jumped into the front.
Dushyanta turned the wheel, and the vehicle pulled out.
I scrambled backward, wedging myself into the rear seat’s corner as Nicolai grabbed for his seatbelt, the strap clanking against the retractor.
He looked up and caught me staring at him.
His hand stilled.
My God, his eyes had been shining when he’d told me to look at him, when he’d said he was only looking at me.
When he’d called me my wife, when he’d told me to touch his face to show Jimmy his ring on my finger.
When he’d called me Mrs. Romanov and told everyone he adored me.
God help me, I’d believed him.
But he was acting. He must have been acting.
From the other side of the car, Nicolai watched, his jaw clenched, his hands curled into fists. He didn’t look angry. I’d seen his anger with his brother.
He looked wary, his eyes wide, scanning my every move.
I muttered, “Fuck it,” for the first time in my life and lunged across the rear seat to straddle his legs.
The warmth and strength of body between my legs, between my thighs and almost where my legs met, was an electric snap to my sensibilities. I’d never done this. I’d never let anyone so terrifyingly close to that part of me, not with my legs spread apart, open, unguarded.
Off-balance, I slapped my hands against the window and the front seat behind me so I wouldn’t tumble off his lap.
Nicolai stroked up the silk dress over my thighs, his palms and fingers curling around my hips, holding me down on him.
I could feel the smooth cloth of the suit he wore, the hard lines of his body underneath, at the very tops of the bare insides of my thighs, against the satin of my panties, and in the smallest friction against that inner part of me, vulnerable as the petals of me weren’t pressed together.
I’d never— This was too—
Nicolai was staring up at me, his eyes locked on mine, but he spoke loudly to the guys in the front. “Get us into a garage and park the car. We need a minute.”
“Yes, sir.”
The SUV rocked around us, the sudden acceleration swaying me on my knees, brushing his body against me. His gaze didn’t leave mine, and I didn’t look away from him.
I couldn’t.
He reached up with one hand, smoothing his palm and fingers up my arm and over my shoulder to the back of my neck. His fingers threaded into my hair.
So I kissed him.