Chapter 16 - Mikhail
Mikhail couldn’t deny the male triumph coursing through him as he considered the ring on his finger. He wasn’t even sure why it should matter to him that he had wedded Mira, but somehow he couldn’t shake the feeling of immense satisfaction that the little wildcat was now all his.
Careful , his subconscious murmured and he tried to reroute his thoughts.
It was true he had the hots for her, but that aside, he wasn’t even sure he liked her. She was cool as a cucumber one minute and hot as coals the next; he had a hard time understanding her or pegging her personality. She was like the wind—flighty, exotic, cool, and tempestuous all at once.
Remembering how exotic she had looked in her white floral gown yesterday that clashed beautifully with her red tresses, he felt his dick stir with interest. He was looking forward to watching her putter around with the flower beds, adjust some furniture, and generally make her mark on his home in that way women liked to do.
She was classy, sophisticated, and so intensely feminine that it made all his male instincts gravitate toward her. Every time he thought about her, he wanted to either fuck her so hard that she wouldn’t be able to walk straight for a month; or wrap her in a cocoon and protect her like fine porcelain. Everything about her—and the feelings she evoked in him—was a mass of contradictions.
She was sweet, young, unspoiled, and fresh.
She also had no clothes, since she’d come with just her car and a duffle bag, he recalled.
He picked up his phone and called one of the most expensive boutiques in Chicago, La Femme . It was a French outfit specializing in haute couture and owned by one of the few people on earth he considered his friend, Madame Pruitt. She was at least seventy if she was a day, but she had fallen in love with Mikhail the very first time they met, and he with her. There was nothing erotic in their relationship; he loved her with the ardent loyalty of a son and she loved him as only a mother could.
“You rascal, I haven’t seen you in ages,” she laughed.
“Well, you’re about to see me now. Get me everything you have in your store for a size twelve woman.”
“A size twelve? That’s unusual for you. You always go for the zero-size model types,” she mused.
“Well, I’ve married this one. She is…absolutely gorgeous. She has red hair and skin so fair I’m sometimes almost afraid to touch her.”
“My, my,” Madame Pruitt crowed with absolute delight. “Seems someone has been bitten by the love bug.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Mikhail snapped, drawing a gasp from Madame Pruitt because he never spoke to her with anything but love and respect. “This is merely a—business arrangement, if you will. But I won’t have her looking like a homeless waif while she’s here. You understand? My reputation and all,” he added more gently.
“Of course, my son. Your reputation…and all ,” she added.
He frowned at the phone as he ended the call. Was that a giggle he’d heard in her voice? Madame Pruitt never giggled. She was dramatic and hyper, but she was also aristocratic and dignified. She never giggled. He shook his head. The world must be going mad.
He was so excited he bounded toward Mira’s room, eager to tell her what he had done and envisioning the childlike delight that would be on her face when she saw the many new clothes he’d bought for her.
When he reached her room, he gave a brief knock. At her command to enter, he popped open the door excitedly and then drew up short. She was sitting at her dressing table putting on a pair of teardrop earrings. But that wasn’t the shock; the shock was what she was wearing…or not wearing.
She was wearing a simple burgundy-colored dress with flecks of gold scattered all over it. He recognized the dress at once, because he had given it to Alena. How the hell were Alena’s clothes still in his house?
She must have read something in his face because she rose gracefully to her feet. The billowing folds of the loose gown fell around her body, hiding her curves but still tantalizing him with the promise of what was hidden.
“That dress—” he began.
“I know, right? It’s so divine. I couldn’t believe it when your housekeeper showed me an entire closet full of gorgeous clothes. They’re mostly not my size, but this one is one-size-fits-all. It’s so beautiful,” she declared, turning to grin happily at her reflection in the mirror.
Mikhail didn’t have the heart to tell her to take it off when she was so childishly delighted about it.
He clasped his hands behind his back and announced formally, “I sent for new clothes for you. The boutique’s on their way to deliver. You should have your own clothes soon and you won’t need this dress,” he muttered.
She shrugged. “Thank you. But I think I’ll keep this one too, unless you think whoever owns it would mind?”
He thought about it briefly. Oh, Alena would mind very much. She’d been nothing but a twisted core of hatred, anger and malice when she left him.
“Someone’s here to see you, sir,” the housekeeper announced from the doorway.
He grabbed Mira’s hand. “Let’s go. That has to be the boutique.”
She saw him throw a glance at where his hand was clutching hers and he belatedly recalled her edict that he was not to touch her after their marriage. Without her saying a word, he released her hand at once and strode briskly downstairs, leaving her to follow at her own pace.
When he arrived the living room, however, he was shocked when he saw the tall, classy woman perched against an end table, uncaring of whether it could support her weight or not.
“Alena!”
She lifted her head as soon as she saw him and launched herself across the room. Before he could shield himself, she was kissing him ferociously. He waited to feel any reaction, but all he felt was about as much tingle as anyone would feel kissing a tree.
He lifted his hands to her waist to push her away just as a shocked gasp announced Mira’s arrival.
Alena leaned away, looking triumphantly toward Mira. Her mirth vanished as soon as she saw what Mira was wearing.
She swore furiously in Russian and started for Mira, arms outstretched as though to tear the skin off her face.
Mikhail was quicker this time and snagged her around the waist, forcing her to halt. He looked apologetically at a white-faced Mira. “I’m sorry. This is not what it looks like. Alena is an old friend.”
“Alena is his girlfriend whose dress you’re wearing, bitch. Give it back,” Alena ordered.
Mira didn’t say a word. She simply looked from Mikhail’s face to that of the angry woman in his arms who was straining to break out of his grip.
Then she reached behind her, unzipped the dress, and let it slide to the ground to pool at her feet.
She looked like a red-haired goddess wearing nothing but a pair of pure-white lace panties and a matching lace bra. She looked like a magazine cover, Mikhail thought, feeling his groin tighten anew. Even Alena stopped struggling to stare.
“I’ll be in my room when the new clothes arrive,” Mira announced, turning to leave, only to halt again because the doorway was blocked by Madame Pruitt, who had just arrived with two attendants, all of whom were open-mouthed too.
Madame Pruitt transferred her piercing gray gaze to Mikhail and declared, “If this Aphrodite is who you’ve called me here to dress, then I shall love you forever, Mikhail.”
He couldn’t respond. He looked on, still caught somewhere between arousal and confusion.
Mira apparently decided to take matters into her own hands, because she walked forward, one arm outstretched as she said formally in very precise French, “I am pleased to meet you Madame.”
Madame Pruitt clasped the girl to her bosom and covered her cheeks with kisses.
Fine , Mikhail thought grumpily. So Madame Pruitt approves. What else is new?
Everyone seemed to like Mira, and he had no quarrel with that; except for the fact that she didn’t like him. She’d let him know in no uncertain terms when she banned him from touching her again. Once he’d gotten his revenge on her father, he would let her go, he decided.
But as he watched her saunter away on Madame Pruitt’s arm, her well-rounded, lace-clad derriere twisting this way and that, he couldn’t help wondering if it would be as easy as he thought to let her go when the time came.
“Walk away, ho!” Alena called, yanking out of his grip to grab her dress off the floor. “Just remember one thing, every time he’s boinking you, he’s really thinking of me. I’m the one that got away. Alena! Remember my name.”
Mira stopped on one of the stairs and turned to look down at them both. Something in her regal bearing and attitude made Mikhail feel very small all of a sudden. He caught a faint sheen of tears in her eyes, but she blinked and it was gone.
Then without another word, she turned away and kept walking, leading Madame Pruitt and her assistants to her room.
Mikhail caught Madame Pruitt’s eyes and her dagger glares could have pulverized rock. He knew at once that she was telling him without words to get Alena out of there.
He turned to do just that when he caught Alena also glaring at him with tears in her own eyes. “I’ll destroy you, Mikhail. You left me for that…that trash.”
He grabbed her hand and gave her a small shake. “The only one who has behaved like trash today, and in the past, is you. Give it a rest, Alena.”
“You call me trash for falling in love with Dmitri, but then you killed him. You killed the man I loved and you kicked me out. And now you want to move on to someone else. Listen to me, Mikhail. I won’t let you be happy. If it’s the last thing I do, I’ll destroy you and your little twelve-year-old slut,” she vowed.
They didn’t sound like empty words. They were the words of an enraged woman. He knew he should throw her in his dungeons and throw away the key, but he couldn’t bring himself to hurt her no matter how much she had hurt him.
He called for his men and when they came, he thrust her at them unceremoniously. “Get her out of my sight and get me that housekeeper.”
As soon as the sour-faced woman was before him, he knew his instincts were right because she couldn’t meet his gaze.
“Someone told Alena about my marriage of less than a day, and someone told Mira to wear Alena’s clothes exactly when Alena was arriving, so she would recognize them and humiliate Mira.”
To her credit, the woman didn’t deny it, petrified though she was. She lifted her chin and declared, “Alena gave me this job.”
He nodded. “Yet I pay your salary.”
“I’ll leave now,” she said.
“Not so fast. You’ll tell me everything you revealed to Alena and any of my other enemies and how many times or so help me, I’ll forget you are a woman and send you to my torture chambers.”
She blanched and began to confess.
Mikhail leaned back against the chair and began to listen to her litany of wrongdoings.
From the corner of his eyes, he caught a flash of movement as though someone had been listening at the door and had moved away to steal up the stairs. He couldn’t be sure, but he could have sworn the figure that had moved so stealthily was Mira.