Chapter 15
Alina
Within an hour, I’m hustled out of the clinic and across the street to Alexei’s penthouse. Guards surround us as we make the short trip—way too many guards, and they don’t even bother to stay out of sight.
What is Alexei afraid of? That I’ll make a run for it the moment I’m out on the street? Or that my brothers will swoop in to snatch me away for good?
The latter is an actual possibility, to be fair. Though… if he doesn’t want me anymore, shouldn’t he be glad to be rid of me?
I steal a glance at his tense features as we ride the elevator up to the penthouse.
Does Alexei still want me? Could I have misread the way he pulled away after that kiss?
We haven’t had sex since before my escape, but I thought that was due to my state after the surgery and during the treatment.
But maybe it was because he was starting to grow cold on me?
Then again, if that were the case, why would he take care of me with such dedication?
Out of some misguided sense of duty? Or is he feeling guilty for stalking me all those years?
Yeah, no, that doesn’t sound like Alexei Leonov.
If he’s taking care of me, it’s because he wants to.
Which means he still wants me… right?
Dammit. Why do I even care? If the cancer treatment has made me undesirable to him, he’ll just let me go, and all will be well.
Won’t it?
“Here we are,” Alexei says as the elevator doors open into the penthouse. “Are you hungry, or would you like to go straight to bed?”
“I’ll take a shower first,” I say.
And I’ll thoroughly brush my teeth while I’m at it.
Maybe I smell like medicine, or worse.
“Wait,” Alexei says, grabbing my hand as I start heading for the bathroom. “I’ll come with you.”
Oh.
My pulse speeds up.
His grip on my hand is firm and possessive. Very much my uncompromising captor.
Maybe I did misread his reaction to the kiss.
Maybe he just wanted to get me here, where we have more privacy.
I’m all but shaking with anticipation as he leads me to the bathroom, where he helps me undress, his eyes darkening to pitch black as the clothes come off my body.
His touch isn’t overtly sexual—his hands don’t linger on my skin any longer than necessary as he helps me disrobe—but it’s still electrifying, each brush of his fingers sending arrows of heat straight to my core until my knees are literally weak with need.
I want this.
I want what only he can give me—that dark, violent pleasure that both destroys and renews me.
I need it to feel whole again.
It’s only when I’m completely naked that I realize he’s still clothed—and making no moves to undress himself. Instead, he steps away from me and goes to turn on the shower, testing the water with his fingers as he adjusts the faucets to his satisfaction.
The heat inside me cools drastically.
Is he not joining me? Then why is he here?
“Go ahead,” he says gruffly without looking at me. “Step in.”
“Are you…” I hesitate, hating how insecure I feel. “Are you coming in too?”
His entire body tenses. “No.” His voice is rough. “I’ll take one later. I’m here to help in case you don’t feel well.”
So I didn’t misread it earlier. He doesn’t want to have sex with me. Even here, where we’re not likely to get interrupted by any doctors or nurses.
I try to ignore the acidic tightness in my throat as I step under the warm spray and reach for the shampoo. One benefit of not wearing any makeup is that I don’t have to worry about raccoon eyes as the water hits my face.
Or as tears mingle with said water, leaking from my eyes despite my best efforts to hold them back.
I don’t even know why I’m crying again. This is fine.
More than fine. So the man who forced me to marry him doesn’t want me.
That’s a good thing. If this persists, he’ll soon realize that whatever irrational obsession he developed when I was a teen has faded.
At that point, he’ll probably file for a divorce, and I’ll be back with my family.
I’ll finally be free.
I want to tell him to leave now, to let me be alone in the bathroom, but I’m afraid he’ll hear the tears in my voice. So I just silently shampoo what little hair I have and scrub my body, soaping up three times to get rid of all traces of the clinic.
By the time I’m done, my tears have dried up, though I’m no calmer.
When I started treatment, I dreamed of this day, of being told that I’m in remission.
I thought it would be the best day of my life.
Instead, I’m a hot, weepy mess. And I don’t think it’s entirely because of Alexei’s rejection, though that stings like a thousand riled-up wasps.
It’s everything combined, these strange, illogical emotions that are choking me like some carnivorous vine.
Inappropriate, inexplicable emotions like anger.
And guilt.
And resentment.
The deeper I dig, the more I realize that I’m fucking furious that this happened to me.
The cancer, the miscarriage, my parents’ deaths.
And Alexei is smack in the middle of it all, his obsessive desire for me the only constant in the never-ending upheaval of my life, as much a relief valve for my turmoil as a contributor to it.
And now that constant is no longer there.
He doesn’t want me anymore.
A burning knot swells in my throat again as I turn off the water with jerky movements. Alexei is already by the door of the stall, holding out a fluffy white towel, ready to wrap me in it as soon as I step out.
It’s so nice of him. So fucking considerate.
It makes me want to rip his head off.
Who the fuck does he think he is, invading and manipulating my life all this time, marrying and impregnating me against my will, only to end up treating me this way? Like… like I’m his fucking sibling that he needs to parent.
Like all he feels for me now is pity.
Teeth clenched, I step out of the stall and duck to avoid the towel coming toward me. “I’ll air dry,” I say tightly. “Better for my skin that way.”
And it’s not like I have long hair dripping everywhere. Or that needs to be washed beyond a quick shampooing. A buzzcut is fucking amazing that way. I never knew what I was missing by having that long, heavy hair weighing me down all the time.
Frowning, Alexei steps back and hangs the unused towel. “Are you feeling okay?” His deep voice is laced with concern. “Any nausea or headache?”
Shockingly, no. Or maybe yes, but I’m too mad to notice. Instead of a reply, I march over to the sink, squirt out half a tube of toothpaste onto an electric toothbrush, and shove it into my mouth, using the loud buzzing to muffle the roaring anger inside me.
Anger that, deep down, I know he doesn’t deserve. Not today. Not after the way he’s been during my treatment. But I can’t help it.
There’s a caged beast inside me, and it’s clawing to get free.
Frown deepening, Alexei comes up behind me as I spit out the glob of toothpaste burning my mouth with its extreme mintiness.
Our eyes meet in the mirror.
Like me, he’s lost some weight in the past few weeks, and his sharply cut jaw and cheekbones look even more defined, his masculine features even more beautifully, cruelly chiseled.
His dark eyes are slightly sunken, circled with shadows of lingering exhaustion.
Even on the king-sized bed in the clinic, he didn’t sleep well. Or eat well when he was awake.
I know all that, and guilt is a bitter-tasting foam on the bubbling rage inside me. I have no right to feel so angry when Alexei has been nothing but kind during these awful weeks. A model husband by any measure… if one ignores our history, of course.
“What’s going on?” he asks, laying his hands on my shoulders and squeezing gently. Oh-so-fucking gently, like I’ll break if he applies more pressure. “Is something wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong.” I set the toothbrush on its charger with a sharp motion. “What could possibly be wrong?”
Other than the fact that I’m standing here buck naked and dripping wet in front of him, and he doesn’t give a flying fuck. I might as well be a stick figure for all the sexual interest he’s showing in me.
Keeping his touch maddeningly gentle, he turns me around to face him. His gaze is penetrating, deeply searching. “What is it, Alinyonok?”
Nothing. Everything. I want to scream that at him, but he’ll think me insane. Fuck, I feel insane, completely out of control. I’m actually shaking from the effort it takes to contain the explosive emotions inside me.
I can’t let them loose.
I don’t know what will happen if I do.
“You can tell me,” he urges softly. “I’m here for you. You know that.”
“Are you?” The words burst out of me. Immediately, I want to take them back, but it’s too late because more are coming on their heels. “Why would you be, when you don’t want me anymore? When I’m now this”—I jerk out of his hold to gesture down at myself—“this sick, damaged thing?”
Even without a mirror, I can see my post-treatment body as he must: the protruding hipbones and knobby knees, the unmanicured toes and the fading rash on my calves from one of the medications.
My breasts are smaller, my ass has all but disappeared, and my face hasn’t seen makeup in so long I’ve forgotten what lipstick looks like.
And that’s before I even think about the scars and the almost-buzzcut on my head.
Why on earth did I imagine he would want this version of me?
At my words, his eyebrows snap together.
“What the fuck are you talking about?” His voice is low and dangerous.
“You think I don’t want you?” Face darkening, he advances on me, and I instinctively back away until my back presses against the glass wall of the shower stall as he continues through gritted teeth.
“You think that all this time, I haven’t been holding back with the greatest fucking effort?
” His palms slap against the glass on either side of my head, pinning me in place.
“That it hasn’t taken every bit of my willpower to avoid taking what I want from this ‘sick, damaged thing?’” He grinds his hips against my stomach, and I gasp as I feel the massive bulge in his jeans.
An erection that wouldn’t be there if he didn’t want me.
My heart pounds as I stare up at him. He looks…
savage. Feral. His teeth are so tightly clenched a muscle pulses by his ear, and his mouth is a brutal slash above his too-sharp jawline.
Even his hair, a couple of inches too long due to a missed haircut or two, seems to have given up on any pretense of civilization, tousled black locks falling haphazardly over his eyebrows and tempting my hand to brush them back.
My voice, when it emerges, is something between a squeak and a croak. “So… you are still attracted to me?”
Despite the incontrovertible evidence in his jeans, something pathetic in me still wants to hear him say it.
He leans down until only a few centimeters separate our faces and I can see the red striations in the whites of his eyes.
“Attracted to you? I fucking crave you, Alinyonok. Sick or well, weak or strong, bedridden or dancing around, it doesn’t matter.
As wrong as it was, I wanted you eleven years ago, when you were still a child, and I want you today—only infinitely more.
My obsession with you has no bounds, no parallels to anything.
I want you when you’re sleeping and when you’re awake, when you’re eating and when you’re puking your guts out.
I even wanted you when you were lying on that operating table with your head cut open, and if that’s not fucked up, I don’t know what is.
” Before I can draw in a shocked breath, he continues grimly.
“I’m pretty sure I’ll want you on your deathbed.
And on mine. Every day, every hour, every moment of my existence is a never-ending battle for control around you, a battle that I’m fucking losing. ”
With that, he grips my face with his big hands and crushes his lips to mine.