Chapter 20
never again
LEXI
Iwalked into the bedroom of Nicolai’s hotel suite at the Billionaire Sanctuary club, believing that those were the last few minutes of my life when I would be a virgin.
Surely, what had happened in the car, what we’d done, how he’d touched me, surely that was a prelude to something.
Right?
Opulent pale blue velvet and silver cords draped the king-sized bed and tufted the plush headboard.
I sat on my side of the bed and stared at the empty doorway, waiting, shivering, or maybe shaking.
The night before I was supposed to marry Jimmy Johnson, Jimmy had sent me a picture of himself sprawled on the bridal suite bed at the Monaco Hotel and Casino because he’d been staying there before our wedding.
White nylon netting poofed like clouds around the wide bed on the platform, a virgin wedding-night theater set.
The insinuation was Here’s where I’m going to take away your virginity.
Where you will be changed.
By him.
But now I was in a different suite.
In a different hotel.
With an altogether different husband.
With someone I wanted to touch me, not just get it over with.
I kicked off my shoes, the bones of my feet shifting to settle flat on the thick carpeting. My ankles and hamstrings stretched so good.
In the car, Nicolai had wanted me, too.
I was wanted.
I wasn’t loved. I understood that.
But at least, for now, finally, at least a little, I was wanted.
The passion in his kiss couldn’t be faked, right? I hadn’t just been swept away, I’d been blown off my feet, hurled by the force of it.
His touch, his hands on my skin, his body coiling under my thighs had been the opposite of Jimmy’s reluctance every time I’d reached out to him, even to hold his hand.
It would be different this time, I told myself. It was different.
Nicolai was different.
He was murmuring with Ueli out in the living room, the low beats of their serious tone but not their words carrying through the living area, past the couches, and into the bedroom where I waited.
Just a few deep, masculine lines, and then the suite’s front door clacked closed, and the locks rattled.
Footsteps, softened by the living room’s plush carpeting, plodded.
Nicolai leaned his shoulder against the doorframe. His head was only inches from the top, and his shoulders almost filled the width. He probably had to aim when he walked through doorways.
His arms were crossed tightly over his chest, biceps bulging under his closely fitted suit jacket. “You can’t kiss me like that ever again.”
My knees slid in their sockets, and I grabbed the foot of the bed to keep from collapsing in a heap on the floor. “What?”
His frown deepened, and he stared at the carpeting under his feet. “Look, I’m an adult, but I’m not a robot. I can’t keep my hands off you when you do that. We have a deal. One year, no sex, then an annulment.”
Shit, this husband didn’t want me, either. “But—but I thought—”
His voice was tight, and he didn’t move his jaw. “That’s the deal.”
“We don’t have a deal. We haven’t signed a contract yet,” I blurted, my fingers grasping the soft velvet of the comforter in my fist. “We can change the deal because we haven’t signed it.”
Nicolai sighed, dragging one hand through his dark hair. “We should have negotiated and signed the contract before the ceremony, or at least before we signed the marriage license this morning.” A deeper sigh, and his shoulders sagged. “My lawyers are going to kill me.”
“That’s not my problem.”
“Nevertheless, we haven’t consummated the marriage, and as such, we’re—” He stopped, frowning.
“We’re what?”
He frowned and clasped the hair on the top of his head like he was trying to yank it out. “If I remember right, you’re my bride but not yet my wife.”
I whirled and flopped onto the bed, sitting on the side facing the couch and leather chair over by the window. The copper silk of my dress billowed around my ankles and settled. “That’s not what you told the whole Caesars Palace casino.”
“That was to piss off that fool. God, what an ass he is.” His growl sounded close to violence.
“Whatever.” I was letting anger get the better of me. “It doesn’t matter, anyway.”
Nicolai walked into the room, tapping the door closed behind himself, but I didn’t watch him past the edge of my peripheral vision. His voice was softer, almost begging. “An annulment requires certain unusual circumstances. Lack of consummation is one of a few conditions they’ll accept.”
The bed bent on the other side, shifting me backward.
“So to be clear, we can’t have intimate relations because we’re married. But if we get an annulment, then it’s okay.”
I could practically feel Nicolai’s aura over there, his back turned toward mine, like warmth washing over my bare skin under the dress’s spaghetti straps.
Or maybe that was just temptation.
“It’s an odd situation, I’ll admit,” he said.
I wanted to feel the smooth skin of his cheek on my palm again, his lips on mine, and the strength of his body between my legs.
“You kissed me first,” I told him, staring at the dark-tinted glass of the window and the muted flashing lights of the Strip in the distance.
From behind me, Nicolai’s voice sounded half-strangled. “You straddled me in the back seat of the car. You were—your legs were—” His voice cracked.
“I mean, in the casino. When Jimmy was there. You started it when you dipped me and told me to touch your face, and then you kissed me.”
“Oh.” His voice was lower. “Yes, I did.”
“Yeah, you did!” I twisted on the bed to stare at him, sitting on the opposite side of the bed, turned away from me.
The pillow right beside my hand would make an excellent weapon for either throwing or whacking him.
“And this morning over at Caesars in the hotel room’s bathroom, you were all,” I dropped my voice to its lowest gruff register, “‘Do you want to touch me?’ And you were walking around that hotel room in nothing but a towel, and you looked like—like you. And you kissed me at our wedding.”
Nicolai’s back bowed like something heavy pressed down his broad shoulders. “And what I wouldn’t give to remember our wedding.”
I’ve never thrown anything at a wall in my whole life.
Performative violence seemed immature. But damn, if I’d been holding anything, from that pillow to a priceless Ming vase, I would have chucked that sucker to watch it splatter on the plaster.
“When you kissed me, it didn’t feel like you hated it. ”
“Of course, I didn’t hate it. God, what I want to do to you,” he groaned. “But I need that annulment. That’s why we’re doing this.” He crouched farther, his face resting in his hands. “That’s why we’re doing this.”
He looked so defeated.
“Then we shouldn’t have gotten married in that Orthodox Church. We should’ve just had any ol’ preacher marry us, and then we wouldn’t have to worry about this whole annulment thing.”
“I was drunk,” he sighed.
Yeah, he was.
Nicolai rubbed the side of his face and turned on the bed toward me, his bright eyes catching my attention.
The rise of his eyebrows and lift of his hand implored me to understand.
“I wanted to marry you, and it was like sleeper-spy codes activated in my head. If I were getting married, it had to be in a Russian Orthodox Church. It had to be a Russian Orthodox priest. It felt imperative, obsessive, like I was a lemming sprinting for the edge of a cliff.”
My frustration was dimming because Nicolai sounded so resigned. “Yeah, that’s what it looked like, too. I kept waiting for you to pass out from the booze, but you didn’t. You were on a mission.”
“Unfortunately,” he sighed.
“This whole annulment thing is just so foreign to me,” I said, finally letting some of the steam blow off.
“There’s just, like, all these hoops to jump through, and we have to make sure we’re not violating it even in the privacy of our own hotel room.
You know, I’ve heard that if both of us agree, the Vegas courts have a special quickie divorce for morning-after wedding regrets. It takes, like, a week, and it’s done.”
His voice and eyes were ice-hard. “Absolutely not. We have to obtain an official annulment from the Russian Orthodox Church. Nothing else will do.”
He stopped as if his vehemence surprised him.
I tilted my head at him as if viewing his auto-refusal from a forty-five-degree angle would make it make sense. “You are really hung up on that annulment. It doesn’t seem like you’re that religious, otherwise.”
He was frowning at his wedding ring on his hand, and his voice almost had a lilt like he was confused. “I’m not religious. Not at all, actually.”
“It’s Sunday morning now. Are you going to church today? Are we?”
He huffed one chuckle again. “I do not remember the last time I attended mass. I think I’ve been a few times since my father’s funeral.”
“Which was in a Russian Orthodox church?”
“Yes.”
My questions became rapid-fire. “Then what’s really going on with you?”
“—I don’t know.”
“Oh, come on, my dude. That dramatic pause spoke volumes. I’ve seen you at your worst. Talk to me.”
His confused frown didn’t waver as he stared at his wedding ring, twisting it around his finger. “It’s cultural, I guess.”
“So, not literally religious.”
“No.” But he didn’t sound sure.
“Did you promise your parents you’d remain Orthodox?”
His answer came quicker, nonchalant. “They weren’t religious. My mother was barely willing to nominally convert to marry my father, and they occasionally attended Christmas or Easter Mass, but not both, and not every year.”
“Were you baptized?”
“Yes, and chrismated, as an infant. I remember Kostya’s baptism.”
“Are you worried about divine retribution if you just lie to the priests about us consummating it?”
His pained blink was a scoff. “Of course not.”
“Worried about getting smote? A lightning bolt out of the clear blue sky going to get you?” I pried.
More scoffing, but his shoulders hunched. “That’s ridiculous.”
“Devout family?”