Red Alpha: A BWWM Russian Alpha Billionaire Romance (10 page)

Her sweater landed on the carpet with a wet thud, followed by the thin button up that she’d worn beneath it. Though the air in the hotel room was warm, the dark-haired woman found that she was still trembling almost violently as more and more of her was exposed.
Why
was she still so goddamned cold?

She still couldn’t find it in her to protest as Demyan stripped her from her soaked wool skirt and coaxed her to step out of her shoes. Thankfully, he left her the modesty of her bra and panties before whipping his own coat from his shoulder’s to drape around hers.

Immediately, Cadence was enveloped by the enticing, spicy scent of the Russian and she clutched his heavy garment to herself almost reflexively. “Stay there.” He commanded her lowly – as if she would have gone anywhere dressed as she was – before he disappeared into the bathroom.

Shortly thereafter came the sound of water running into a tub. The inviting sound was enough to draw a low groan from her lips as she sank onto a chaise at the foot of an immense, elegantly made bed. Somehow, Cadence couldn’t help feeling that they weren’t explicitly supposed to be here. They hadn’t checked in, after all. More like snuck in…in as much as you could sneak the only black person for miles into a high end establishment leaving a small river in her wake.

Still…whatever the circumstances…Cadence very suddenly found herself in a slightly embarrassing situation: she was alone in a hotel room with Demyan Boykov, and she was about as close to naked as she could get around him without compromising herself.

To occupy herself while he was in the bathroom she thought of every boring meeting Danshov made her sit through. She conjugated Russian verbs in her head and tried to remember the last thing that she’s said to her parents before leaving the United States. None of those things did very much to alleviate her nervousness, and by the time Demyan returned, she was, if possible, more tense than she had been before he left her.

The man looked absolutely delicious clad in only a black silk button up and slacks; and it occurred to Cadence that, somehow, he got away with wearing half the layers that she did without freezing his ass off. All that glorious muscle must somehow insulate him.

“Come on.” When he spoke, his voice was low and gruff. “We need to get you into the bath.”

Cadence’s hazel eyes almost bugged out of her head. “I…Thank you for this, Demyan, really. But I think I can take it from here.”

“Can you?” He crossed long arms over his chest, eyeing her skeptically. “Let’s see you wiggle your fingers.”

Her expression turned incredulous. He
had
to be joking. However, when the man’s gaze merely hovered on her expectantly, Cadence merely sighed, itching her fingers from beneath Demyan’s jacket to extend them.

When she tried to move them, she was shocked to find her fingers surprisingly stiff and pale. Biting her lip, the young woman tried again, forcing herself to stifle her alarm. It wasn’t like she didn’t know what cold temperatures could do to a body…she just hadn’t thought that they’d do it so quickly.

When she failed to wiggle her fingers for a third time, Demyan merely took her outstretched hand to tug her into the expansive bathroom. The tub there was just as lovely as the one in her suite – and blessedly full to the brim with steaming hot water. Though she wanted nothing more than to plunge into it up to her neck and stay for an eternity, Cadence cast an apprehensive glance at the man next to her.

Demyan, however, was almost clinical in the way he handled the situation. In a trice, he had whipped his coat from her shoulders, leaving her shivering in her blue cotton bra and panties. Somehow, the young woman had expected a moment like this to be a bit more…well, sensual. Instead, the Russian man merely picked her up around her waist – his touch seemed almost searingly hot – before plunking her down in the tub, undergarments and all.

Immediately, Cadence yelped at the abrupt shift from hot to cold, but Demyan’s firm grip on her prevented her from doing much more than sloshing water over the sides of the bathtub. “Be still,” he ordered, his voice oddly tight, a moment before she forced herself to stop squirming. Once she had, she found herself acutely aware of the man’s eyes on her – though she told herself that his actions were completely platonic. “Lean back.”

God, a woman could get used to a man ordering her around if every man did it like Demyan Boykov. His growling, lowly accented voice had haunted her dreams upon more than one occasion – and to hear it when she was so scantily clad? Cadence found herself far from unaffected.

But for the both of them, she feigned disinterest, instead doing what Boykov bid and lying back against the tub to submerge her entire body in the water. For a moment, a sharp prickling sensation spread out over her skin, making her bite her lip as she was subjected to pins and needles for perhaps the longest five minutes of her life.

And then, slowly, the bone-deep cold finally began to be replaced by the heat of the bathwater. In increments, Cadence slowly relaxed, a low breath escaping her as she began to get the feeling back in her extremities. “Oh
God…
” A soft, grateful moan escaped her as her head sagged back against the rim of the bath. “Is it
always
that painful?”

“Most people don’t put themselves directly into the path of an oncoming snow plow.” Was it just her, or was that thinly veiled amusement that she heard in his voice. “Give me your hand.”

She complied almost without thinking, raising one hand from the bath to offer it to him. This time, when he took it, she could feel the intense warmth of his palm. Taking her fingers between both of his hands, Demyan began to firmly massage the feeling back into it. His thumbs moved in broad, smooth strokes over her palm and wrist before working the base of each of her fingers.

Up until that point in her life, Cadence had hardly considered something like hand massage to be even vaguely erotic. Now, when she was mostly naked, alone in a hotel room with a man who was easily the most attractive she’d ever seen in her entire life, the gesture took on an entirely different meaning.

The young woman endured in stolid silence for about ten minutes. Closing her eyes tightly, she tried to shut down her body’s responses even as they threatened to overwhelm her. Once the feeling crept back into her limbs, the tips of her breasts began to tingle, and the warmth that had nearly driven her mad in the restaurant slammed back into her belly with almost bruising force. Cadence bit her lower lip, forcing herself to breathe as Demyan asked for her other hand.

Christ almighty…now she would certainly think twice the next time she got the urge to rush out into the street. All she would need to remember was being practically nude in a bathtub while one of Russia’s most powerful men worked at her fingers and she would be embarrassed enough to stick to the innermost parts of the sidewalk for the rest of her stay.

When Demyan’s adept fingers began moving beyond her hands, however – up her wrists and towards the crook of her elbow, Cadence surprised herself with the speed with which she yanked out of his grip, her breath catching in her throat. “
Stop!
”

The demand burst from her – just loud enough to echo around the bathroom and make her face redden at the clear desperation in her own tone. At Demyan’s arched brow, Cadence cleared her throat softly, looking away from him as she crossed her arms self-consciously over her nearly bare chest. “I mean…I think I have it. Thank you, Demyan.”

The Russian hesitated for only a moment before simply nodding as he stood.

Cadence forced herself to exhale a deep, shuddering breath as she listened to him leave the bathroom; and when the door snapped shut behind him, she all but sagged to the bottom of the bathtub.

There wasn’t an English explicative in the book that didn’t run through her mind. She was
obviously
treading on thin ice here. She let Boykov come onto her once – drunk though he might have been – and now she didn’t protest him seeing her mostly unclothed?

If Cresseda ever found out about this, she would have her head.

With a low groan, the dark-haired woman covered her face with her hands. She would stay in the bath for only as long as it took for her to warm up. Then, she would be up and out. She didn’t need to spend a moment longer than necessary alone with Demyan. Already, Danshov must be wondering where she had gotten too. His meeting must be long over.

Hesitantly, Cadence lowered her hands to one of her thighs. She began to move her fingers in broad strokes over the sensitized skin, imitating the way Demyan had urged feeling back into her fingers and palms. She flushed slightly as she imagined what the man’s very capable hands might feel like in her instead, and the gush of ensuing warmth between her legs had her glad that he’d left the bathroom when he had.

She certainly didn’t need this to be any
more
dangerous.

This had been a bad idea.

Demyan had known it even as he had tossed Cadence into the taxi and requested the driver take them to one of the hotels he frequented when he needed to get away from his obligations. The staff that worked there had a way of…conveniently forgetting when he visited, which suited him just fine. As his own personal funds had all but paid for the most recent renovations to the establishment, he was free to come and go as he pleased.

Though the look of shock on Cadence’s face when he propelled her, unbidden, into a hotel room had been…amusing, to say the least.

A more apt word might be arousing.

She was nervous around him. While this fact in and of itself was nothing special – plenty of people were nervous around him – Demyan found Cadence’s slightly skittish ways to be oddly intoxicating. When he entered a room, almost immediately, she would jump up and leave it. At the sight of him, her spine straightened and she went ramrod straight – almost as if someone forced a metal rod down her throat.

She tiptoed around him – no mean feat, considering that she was currently staying in his home – and every time those lovely almond eyes of hers locked with his, he wondered what she was thinking.

He certainly knew what
he
was thinking.

He was regretting not taking her to bed when he had been drunk enough to proposition her. Of course, sober, such behavior was entirely unacceptable; but that didn’t mean he could avoid remembering the way she felt in his arms. How she smelled and how soft her skin had been…

It was hard for him take liberties when it seemed like Elisaveta was lurking around any corner. She seemed particularly voracious as of late, watching him like a hawk as he went about his business in the penthouse. Of course, for his most worthwhile investments, his accountant came to him – and that was nothing Veta didn’t know about. But lately, she’d been grilling him on the details of their finances almost as if she suspected he might be hiding something from her.

Unfortunately for his sister, if she wanted his secrets, she wouldn’t find them in ledgers and figures.

On the very rare occasions where Veta
wasn’t
looking, Demyan managed to sneak glances at Cadence. While she was reading in the library or hunched over a desk observing a session in the Kremlin. The way she pulled her lower lip between her teeth as she tried to teach herself Russian and poured over maps and history books like they were of tantamount importance. He couldn’t remember the last time he had encountered a woman more interested in knowledge than money.

It was refreshing.

As was Cadence herself, and the way she flaunted those abysmally attractive curves of hers in his presence.

He told himself that the reason he had stripped her so quickly once they’d reached the private safety of the hotel room was because she risked hypothermia otherwise; it distracted him from the almost painful hunger in his gut, despite having just eaten. How long had he wanted to see the look on her face as he divested her of every scrap of clothing she wore?

True, at that particular moment she’d been blue and shivering with cold, but that hadn’t taken away from the mouthwatering lines of her body. Unlike most Russian women, the underthings she wore were plain blue cotton rather than exorbitant lace – and through the thin, soaked material, he could quite easily see the pebbled peaks of her nipples.

It took every iota of control the dark-haired man had not to strip her of those final garments and take her to the big bed behind them to warm her up using his own methods. He was supposed to be a gentleman, he reminded himself. Gentlemen – especially gentlemen in his particular position - didn’t allow their carnal hungers to overcome their more rational minds.

Discreetly, he called down to the front desk and had someone come to pick up Cadence’s clothes to clean and dry them. As they’d come during peak hour for the hotel cleaners, he was told that the process would take about two hours – which meant that he’d have to come up with some suitable excuse for Osip. In just half an hour he would, no doubt, be looking for his biggest cheerleader. Cadence stood out in a way that couldn’t be missed.

He only hoped he’d gotten her up into the room quickly enough that the entire premises hadn’t seen her. Somehow, selfishly, he’d hoped that, by following her out for lunch, he’d be allowed a moment alone with her – away from the prying eyes of Veta, Lichakov, and everyone else who watched him like hawks, anticipating every move before he made it.

Of course, he hadn’t wanted a snow plow involved, but he supposed he’d have to take what blessings he was given.

Slowly, the tall man sipped from a single glass of whiskey – just enough to take the edge off. He’d had it brought up more for Cadence than himself. A few swallows would warm her insides just as quickly as he’d rushed to warm her outer extremities…though, Demyan knew, he had little to no business thinking about Cadence’s insides
or
her extremities.

“Demyan?” At her soft inquiry, he looked up to see the dark-skinned woman slipping from the bathroom, wrapped in one of the silk robes that the hotel provided. Her teeth were still chattering even as she gazed about the suite questioningly. “Where are my clothes?”