7. Ofelia #2
“Don’t you fucking dare, Mickey,” Lars calls over the music. “I have two nightclubs lined up after this one, and you’re coming with me. So are you,” he adds, pointing to Lourdes and Benny. “But no more Taylor Swift, I beg you.”
Benny shoots me an agonized look.
“Please, please stay.” I’m looking at Benny but addressing my brother, who still looks undecided.
“I’m so tired, I just want to sleep. Alexei is right: the hotel is closer than my apartment, and besides, it’s the same one you guys are staying in.
I’ll be there when you all get back, and we can have breakfast together tomorrow, okay?
” Taking Mickey’s hand, I kiss my brother’s cheek hastily.
“I’ll be fine,” I say in his ear. “Truly.”
Despite his clearly high level of inebriation, Mickey fixes Alexei with a dark stare as I pull back. “I’m trusting you,” he says grimly.
Alexei’s mouth curls derisively, but to my relief, he refrains from commenting.
We walk out of the VIP section with two security men on either side of us, me leaning heavily on Alexei’s arm and my brother’s eyes boring holes in my back as I go.
“Let me see that bruise on your temple,” Alexei says as soon as the limo doors close behind us.
I shake my head. “I told you, I’m fine. It was just a bump. I’m tired, that’s all.”
“Lean forward.” Ignoring my protests completely, he puts his hands on either side of my head, tilting my temple to the light so he can see it clearly.
I shiver. I forgot how safe his hands make me feel.
Even back in the dark, terrifying days when they were holding a knife.
I close my eyes as he gently probes my skull now, letting him take the weight of it in his hands.
His thumb rubs across my cheekbone as he settles me back in the seat.
“You’ll have a decent bruise tomorrow.” His voice is slightly rough as his hands fall away from my face.
I open my eyes, narrowing them as I try to bring him into focus. “Pretty sure I’ll still be feeling better than Mickey or Benny will.”
Alexei’s mouth curves at one edge. “True enough.” He reaches for the Scotch in the limo bar and pours himself a drink. “Should I ask someone to get clothes from your apartment?”
I shake my head, then wince at the ensuing stab of pain. “I left a bag in Lourdes’s room in case I wound up crashing there, so I’m good.”
He frowns. “Have you eaten anything tonight? You can’t take painkillers on top of alcohol and an empty stomach.”
“I can never eat before a performance.” I yawn, suddenly bowled over with exhaustion.
“Christ.” Looking annoyed, Alexei pulls out his phone.
“Yes,” he says curtly when someone answers on the other end.
“We’re staying in the Quintessence Suite, and we’re about ten minutes away.
I want a plain omelet ready in the room on arrival.
” He goes on to order a selection of food, as well as requesting my bag be collected from Lourdes’s room.
“You sound hungry,” I say as he hangs up.
His mouth twitches at one corner. “The food is for you, Ofelia. Not me.”
“Oh.” His face blurs in my vision. “Not sure,” I say blearily, “that I’ll be awake to eat it.” My eyes start to close.
“Ofelia!” Alexei’s sharp voice jolts me awake.
“No sleeping,” he says sternly. “Until I’m sure you don’t have a concussion.
And definitely not until you’ve eaten.” He glances out the window as the limo glides to a halt.
“We’re here,” he says, sounding relieved.
Opening the door, he steps outside. Instead of offering me his hand, he simply leans in and picks me up, wrapping my arms around his neck.
“I can walk,” I say indignantly.
“Not well, going by the way you came down the stairs in that club.” His arms close around me, one large hand cradling my head to shield me from watching eyes as he lifts me.
Then I’m tucked against the wall of his chest, my face nestled against the crook of his neck, enveloped by his dusky scent, the dangerous yet achingly familiar blend of smoky Russian leather and samovar tea that is as familiar as a dream.
His hand shields my face as he carries me through the foyer. I keep my head turned into the heat of his skin, my eyes closed as we pass the curious reception staff and enter the elevator.
He talks to the security guys on the way up to the suite, his voice rumbling reassuringly against my cheek, but I’m so aware of his heat and scent all around me that I barely notice. Then the doors open, he deposits me on the couch, and his body is suddenly gone.
“Hey,” I protest weakly, my eyes opening.
“Hey, yourself,” he says dryly, taking a dish from a nearby trolley and removing the silver lid as he places it on the coffee table in front of me. “Eat,” he orders, unfolding the linen-clothed cutlery. “And drink.” He pushes a bottle of water toward me.
“Not hungry.” I can barely keep my eyes open, overwhelmed by the sudden exhaustion that always follows the high of being on stage.
“Tough.” He cuts the omelet, then loads up a forkful and brings it to my mouth. “Open.”
“Oh,” I say, as my lips close around the gooey mass of cheese and egg. “That’s good.”
“Yes. It is.” He sounds amused. “Now do it again.”
“I can feed myself.”
“Maybe.” He is definitely amused. “I just think it’s safer if I do it.”
“Safer.” My voice sounds like it’s coming from a distance. “Nothing about you . . .” I swallow more food. “Is . . .” I swallow again. “Safe.”
“True.” Alexei’s voice rasps through the slowly growing fog. “But you’re safe with me, Ofelia. I swear you are.”
I feel the pressure of the fork against my lips again, but I don’t want to eat anymore. I just want to be close to him.
I curl into him, burying my face against his neck, inhaling him like he’s a drug.
“You have to eat,” he says, but his voice is low and hypnotic, and his arm around me draws me so close that I cling to the edges of his jacket, wanting nothing more than to stay here.
To keep him close.
I want to speak, but when I try to open my eyes, they feel leaden. His nearness combines with the darkness, drawing me down into the past and into the dreams that belong to him.
Alexei’s hard body looms over mine, his lone eye blazing a furious, intense blue that bores fiercely into my own.
Despite the watching men and the danger I’m in, his intensity is strengthening rather than frightening, like being injected with some vital force that makes my blood thrum through my body.
His hand slides up my thigh, higher and higher, so close to the most intimate part of me that I can barely breathe, then halts.
I feel the chill touch of the blade, right at the juncture of my thigh.
“Trust me,” he breathes.
The flat of the blade presses against my outer folds, a strange, cold pressure that makes me suck in my breath. His eye holds my own, and I bite my lip as the tip of the blade pricks my skin.
The breath of his voice ripples against my ear again: “Scream . . .”
I lurch awake in my hotel bedroom with my heart racing and the scream still stuck in my throat. Momentarily bewildered, in the grainy pre-dawn, by my strange surroundings and a pillow that feels unusually hard, I shift slightly and realize it isn’t the pillow that’s hard.
It’s Alexei’s chest beneath my cheek.
I know it by his dusky, intoxicating scent and my own instant arousal, even before I glance up.
My hand is curled beneath Alexei’s chin, and my lips almost touch his jaw. One of his large hands cradles my head against his chest. The other clasps my bare thigh, holding it possessively in place over his hips.
Or more accurately, across another part of his anatomy. One that is even more insistently hard than his chest.
I become slowly aware that my dress is rucked up around my waist and my legs sprawled so widely apart that my ass is in the air, pushing my heat firmly against his hip.
Not just heat.
It’s one thing to wake from that dream wet and aching when I’m alone. Then I can slide a hand between my legs and bring myself to the quick, intense orgasm I need to fall asleep again.
Waking in that state pressed up against the actual subject of that dream is another thing altogether.
Especially when the iron-hard length I’ve only ever been able to fantasize about is throbbing hungrily against my inner thigh, so close to where his hands and blade were in my dream that I barely know the difference between the two.
I don’t realize I’m moving my hips until Alexei makes a low noise in his chest that vibrates beneath my cheek. He pulls my thigh higher and wider across him, his length pounding against my bare leg, turning his head toward me so my lips graze the skin just behind his jaw.
He groans again, his hand sliding around my thigh and onto my ass, and he gathers me closer, his fingers slipping into the crease of my thigh as he rocks me effortlessly against him.
As far as my body is concerned, we’re way past the point of no return.
This seductive reality is way too close to my every fantasy for me to argue with it, and I’m too turned on to want to.
My thighs widen even further, my lips part against his neck, and my fingers close around his suit shirt, pulling myself closer still, orgasm so close I can feel the sensual waves lapping just on the edge of consciousness.
Clearly I’m not the only one.
Suddenly Alexei’s hands close around my hips, and he lifts my entire body like I’m a marionette, settling my legs on either side of his hips, his pants and my soaked silk underwear all that lies between me and his pulsing cock.
I brace myself on his chest with my hands as his roam lazily over my ass.
Groaning appreciatively, he arches upward, pressing down on my hips to rotate me against his rock-hard bulge.
“Oh,” I gasp.
He stops.
Becomes extremely still.