Chapter 22
willing
LEXI
Nicolai’s clenched tone did not sound thrilled.
And I felt like a little creep.
I would not pressure anyone into boinking with me, ever. That was gross.
But I wondered what it was about me that made him refuse so easily, so ardently.
That made him want to write up a contract to make sure it was forbidden to take me to bed.
That had made Jimmy flee into some other woman’s arms.
That made Nicolai’s jaw bunch up with irritation at how he thought I’d maneuvered him into it.
Embarrassment soured to sharp anger. “Stop playing with me. I don’t like it.”
Nicolai turned his head slowly to look at me, and his jaw barely moved as he spoke.
“I’m willing. Fuck, if I wasn’t dying to touch you, if you didn’t occupy my every thought, I would’ve said no in the car.
I would’ve been kind about it, but I would’ve settled you back into your seat.
Instead, at the slightest crook of your little finger, I lose all control, and I don’t lose control. ”
“You’ve been arguing why you don’t want to ever since we got back.”
“I never said I didn’t want to. I never said I didn’t want you. I said we should not. And I was right. We shouldn’t. But given these choices, I’m willing.”
“Yeah, that doesn’t sound like enthusiastic consent,” I snarked at him.
“Give me five minutes, and your ‘enthusiastic consent’ will more than make up for any perceived deficit on my part.”
“My dude, really, I am not going to pressure you into something you aren’t interested in. Something, meaning, me. Because you’re obviously not interested in me.”
He leaned back to stare down at me. “I’m not interested? You think I’m not interested in you?”
Okay, full steam ahead. I wasn’t going to chicken out by fishing for compliments. I was a realist, not a dreamy bride anymore.
Straight gaze, matter-of-fact tone. Let’s effing go.
“Look, I get it,” I said to him, biting each of my words. “I’m not your type, and that’s okay. Those women at Omnia tonight were incredibly beautiful. I was bottom-tier in that crowd.”
Nicolai’s dark eyebrows darted down, and a pop ran through his form like he was flinching backward. “None of that is true, Lexi, and I don’t like you thinking that.”
I swallowed hard because I didn’t need to self-pity myself into crying.
“And hey, I’m a theater kid. I’m at least a little bi, or I was.” That truth hurt. My voice dropped to a sigh. “I was bi, before Jimmy.”
“I don’t think that changes unless you decide it does.”
“My point is that I would’ve dragged any one of those women into an alcove and necked with them, or I would have stood on a chair and necked with them. You people are all so tall. So, I understand, and I can’t blame you for having eyes and seeing the obvious.”
That wasn’t a lack of confidence or self-degradation on my part. It was simply the truth, so I went on. “They’re your type, and they’re your standard. And I’m not.”
Ottalie, Charlotte, and Poppy had all been absolutely beautiful, even though I’d been too jealous of them having casually slept with my supposed-husband to admit it.
And okay, some of that was me saying it out loud before Nicolai did to protect my own pride, but donning a little emotional armor might keep me from making a snot-sobbing idiot of myself.
I’d almost married a guy, Jimmy, who’d been tupping some other engineering student at college.
And then, I had evidently married a different guy who’d rather go without than smash me.
It wasn’t good for my self-confidence.
That’s why I was so busy flaring my eyelids wide and staring at my legs rolling back and forth under the copper silk of my dress, fidgeting so I wouldn’t die from that terminal case of embarrassment, that I missed when Nicolai started to move.
If my butt hadn’t been sitting on the bed pillows, I would’ve sworn that Nicolai had swept my legs out from under me because my head felt a rush, a sensation of falling and then the bed came up to meet my back, and then he was bracing himself on his arms above me, his knees pinning my legs down with my own skirt.
Nicolai’s voice was breathless, barely above a whisper. “You think I’m not attracted to you, after all this?”
Surprise stole my breath. “Nicolai—”
Wide blue eyes, breaths as gasps, his shock looked like he’d been sucker-punched by his best friend.
“I’ve had to stop myself from ripping this dress off you since you modeled it this afternoon at the shops.
I can’t touch you like I’ve wanted to since I saw you for the first time on the sidewalk outside this very club, even before Volkov got me hammered, and you’ve never even—and I shouldn’t—”
Nicolai squeezed his eyes shut and dipped his head like he was confessing a crime.
“I am fucking enchanted with you, Lexi. You were out there on the sidewalk, so vulnerable, performing. You were making art with your living-statue performance and giving people a moment of delight, a moment of wonder in these shitty times.”
“I needed the money,” I admitted.
He opened his eyes, shaking his head. “Sure, but I pay for a movie ticket, and I buy paintings and museum entrances. Paying artists is part of the social contract. Otherwise, we don’t get to have plays or paintings or books.”
At least someone understood why they needed to drop the money in the hat.
“But it was more than that,” he said. “Like every single one of my asshole ancestors who happened upon something sparkly, I wanted to collect you. I wanted to tuck you away and make you mine.”
By marrying me, he’d kind of done that.
Nicolai glanced down my body from where he hovered over me, his heated gaze tracing the curves of my breasts above the dress’s low neckline and trickling lower, over where the copper silk draped on the black corset underneath.
I could almost feel his gaze stroke where his eyes tracked.
“I wanted to look at you, to marvel at you, to experience your art. And now I can’t stop thinking about touching you, about having you in my bed.
About your skin under my hands and under my mouth. ”
The image of his hands and his mouth on my skin spun in my mind.
So, maybe that was why he’d picked me out of the crowd.
I’d been flipping over everything that had happened on Friday night in my head ever since he’d passed out in that cruddy hotel room at Caesars Palace, rolling every moment back and forth like a toddler batting a ball.
Why me?
Nicolai’d had to swim through dozens of people, maybe a hundred, to reach where I’d stood on my suitcase.
Why hadn’t he picked someone else, anyone else, out of the crowd flowing around us?
Beyond seeing my poufy white dress and making the obvious connection between seeing a wedding dress and getting married, maybe his thing about collecting me was why he hadn’t gotten derailed from his monomaniacal quest that crazy first night.
Buying a license from the Marriage Bureau, finding a Russian Orthodox Church and priest, and going through three different Orthodox sacraments was a lot to ask of a drunk, especially with me complying as slowly and maliciously as I could.
Maybe his motivation hadn’t entirely been vodka-fueled poor impulse control.
Maybe some of that night’s unrelenting obsession had been real.
But it definitely hadn’t been love at first sight. That would be weird. That kind of thing didn’t happen in real life.
I didn’t believe in beautiful, magical moments like that anymore.
But maybe Nicolai’s interest in my pathetic little theatre show, maybe his autocratic desire to collect me, maybe that had been real.
Vodka had definitely been part of Nicolai’s questionable life choices that night. I shouldn’t discount how hammered he’d been. Marrying the first chick he’d seen had probably seemed like a good idea at the time.
I probably shouldn’t read too much into what he’d said, other than he’d seen me, had an impulse to collect me, and then done it.
“Every moment I spend with you, I want more.” His eyes met mine, locking my gaze. “I want to pin you to the bed and stroke you until you’re begging so I can have you.”
Oh.
So he did want to smash, probably.
Maybe that had been part of it, too. My wedding dress’s foundation did have an integrated push-up bra. My boobs had looked great on my wedding day.
But he didn’t really want to smash. He was telling me all the reasons why he wasn’t going to make a move. He was still rejecting me, and my pride smarted like a hard spank.
So I verbally punched back. “Yeah, whatever. You’d try to make me beg. I’ve been holding out my whole life. I can say no to anything.”
I said to the guy who was on his hands and knees above me.
His eyes narrowed. “I could get you to yes.”
Nah, nah. No way. I was not manipulating anyone into sleeping with me, not even my legal spouse. Somewhere, sometime, I would find the right guy, I hoped. “My dude, you have an arrogance problem.”
“It’s not arrogance. It’s confidence.”
“Yeah, sure. I get it. Your rizz is so strong that your body count is in the thousands.”
One side of Nicolai’s mouth curved just a little. “I don’t need a ‘body count in the thousands’ when women are always willing to get on a plane and come to me, any time I text, any night of the week.”
Ottalie, Charlotte, and Poppy, for starters.
Yuck.
“Yeah, well,” I stumbled. “I don’t know why any woman would do that.”
“I could show you.”
Pavlovian snark popped out of my mouth, a latent burn from high school. “Oh, my dude. Pass.”
I didn’t mean it, not about Nicolai.
Not for his sad, desperate eyes that first night, his laugh while we married, and his smolder as he held himself above me, staring down at me, his gaze steady on mine.
And if I was being honest, it wasn’t the undeniable fact that he was gorgeous that attracted me so damn hard.
It was his touches all night, holding the back of my hand to his heartbeat, his almost imperceptible caress at the narrow part of my back reassuring me while he introduced me to his dozens and dozens of friends.