Black Knight, White Queen (4 page)

Abruptly he shoved himself away from her, ignoring her outstretched hand, fighting down the feeling of dread. “I need a shower.” The words sounded cold and flat. Too bad. He had to get out of here. Had to leave before he did something else he’d regret.

Izzy slowly sat up, staring in shock at Aleks’s retreating back. She felt like he’d emptied a bucket of cold water over her head. What the hell had just happened? He’d given her the most intense sexual experience of her life and then looked at her like she was dirt and buggered off?

No effing way. She’d had a gutsful of people ignoring her. Making her feel like she didn’t count. Dismissing her thoughts and her feelings as if they didn’t matter. Her parents. Her friends. Everyone.

Aleks couldn’t make her feel like she was part of the world again only to take it away with a dismissal so cold it was a wonder she hadn’t frozen to death. So what if he was a complete stranger and this was only a one-night stand? So fucking what? She wasn’t putting up with it anymore.

Izzy got to her feet and stormed after him.

The other room was a bedroom, the closed door opposite probably leading to the en suite bathroom. Already she could hear the sound of water running. Crossing the room, she pulled open the door. The bathroom was all white marble and tile, the pristine cleanliness of it marred only by Aleks’s wet clothing lying in a sodden heap on the floor. She could see his tall figure behind the misted up glass of the shower walls, standing motionless beneath the showerhead.

“What the hell was that about, dude?” Her voice echoed harshly off the tiled walls but she didn’t care. “Is that how you treat every woman you screw? You have unprotected sex then leave them on the floor of your suite?”

“Go away.” Again, that flat, uninflected tone. He sounded like a bloody robot. Like a stereotypical Russian villain in a Bond movie. “Put on your clothes and leave.”

“Oh and I suppose you’re going to leave the money for me on the bedside table, right?” Izzy stalked over to the shower door. “I’m not a prostitute, Aleks. Don’t treat me like one.”

A silence fell. Then he said, “I don’t understand what more you want.”

She stared at the misty walls of the glass, realizing that actually, she didn’t know what more she wanted either. He was a stranger to her. A stranger she’d just had soul-shattering sex with admittedly, but a stranger all the same.

And yet somehow, strangers or not, they’d shared something back in that lounge. Something that had gone beyond a meeting of bodies. Surely he’d felt that too?

Izzy put a hand on the shower door and jerked it open.

Aleks stood underneath the shower, leaning back against the glass, his eyes closed, black hair plastered back against his head, sleek as a seal. He had the body of an Olympic swimmer, broad, heavily muscled shoulders and chest, lean hips, powerful legs. Water slid over his smooth, tanned skin, highlighting every contour.

Her heart slowed. The man took her breath away.

His eyes opened, staring at her from underneath the veil of water. “Go away, Izzy.”

He looked so openly hostile that for a second she considered it. But a core of innate stubbornness wouldn’t let her.

“No,” Izzy said and stepped into the shower, the door shutting behind her, enclosing them in the warm, humid air. “Tell me why you freaked out on me back there.”

“Freaked out?” He said the words as if they were foreign to him. “I did not freak out.”

“Yeah, you did. You went all cold and Russian on me.”

Hostility radiated from him. “I don’t have to explain myself to you.”

“No, but treating me like a fucking human being would have been nice.”

He moved fast. Pushing himself away from the shower wall and taking hold of her forearm with one hand while he grasped the handle of the shower door with the other. Clearly preparing to eject her forcibly from the shower.

But as soon as his fingers touched her skin, he froze, looking down into her eyes.

She could feel it, the electricity arcing between them. Humming and vibrating between their bodies. Sparking beneath their skin. Hot and raw and consuming.

Her heartbeat sounded loud in her ears. Perhaps she should have been scared. After all, he was much bigger and stronger than she was. He could have been a complete psycho for all she knew.

But when she looked up into his remarkable gray eyes, she didn’t see madness. She saw hunger. Hunger and need and, beneath those, the edge of fear. Which was weird because why the hell would he be afraid of her?

She didn’t think, she just reached up, touched the warm wet skin of his cheek. “Hey, what’s wrong?”

He went utterly still. And she could sense something else lurking beneath the surface of him. Something dark. Something painful. Like a bruise. Like grief.

Her throat closed. Because she knew grief. Knew it like she knew a close friend. All its little ways. Its twists and turns. The holes that opened up beneath your feet when you were expecting solid ground. A free-running street when you were expecting a dead end.

“Aleks,” she whispered, wanting to tell him that she knew exactly where he was. Knew exactly how he felt.

But she didn’t get a chance because his grip on her changed. His hand slipped off the shower door handle and instead of pushing her out of the cubicle, he pulled her into his arms.

The slick, hot skin of his body pressed against hers, his arms like iron bands around her, holding her so tight she could barely breathe. His head bent as he turned his face into her neck and she realized with a sudden lurch that he wasn’t doing anything else but holding her. There was nothing sexual in the embrace, though he was aroused. She could feel the hard length of his cock against her stomach. Yet he didn’t make any attempt to kiss her or touch her apart from his arms around her.

Comfort. He wanted comfort. From her.

Her heart opened up, large inside her chest.

How long had it been since another person had needed her? Had turned to her? Had wanted her for something? Too damn long. She’d waited and waited for her mother to take her remaining daughter in her arms, hold her, share their grief and take comfort in each other. Waited, aching with her own pain. Waited in vain. Because her mother had never turned to her. Had never even given her a hug. Her mother had taken her grief into herself and made it clear she couldn’t support anyone else’s. And as for her father, well, he’d just ignored Izzy entirely.

Izzy didn’t know what had caused Aleks such grief or why he’d turned to her like this. Such questions didn’t matter. All that mattered was that he held her like he needed her and that was balm to her wounded soul.

She closed her eyes and put her arms around him, holding him tightly, stroking her hands down his spine, water flowing over them both.

She didn’t know how long they stayed like that, locked in each other’s arms. But Aleks moved at last, his head tilting so that his mouth pressed against her neck, licking the water from her skin.

The breath went out of her in a rush, and then his fingers were tangling in her hair, pulling her head back so he could kiss her. But this kiss was different. It wasn’t as hungry, wasn’t as desperate. A measured, tasting kiss.

When he lifted his head, the look in his eyes was so guarded it was as if that grief and fear and need had never existed.

Her breathing quickened, her heartbeat loud in her ears. Aleks didn’t look away, a hand moving up from her hip to cup one breast. She shivered in his arms. “I guess that means you don’t want me to go after all?”

“No.” His gaze dropped to what his hand was doing, his thumb circling her nipple in a lazy movement. “Not yet.”

Izzy bit her lip, sensation arrowing through her. She wanted to ask him where his grief had come from, what that fear was. But she knew he wouldn’t tell her. Not with that look in his eyes. And besides, they were hardly the kinds of questions you could ask a guy you’d only known a matter of an hour or so.

“Then what do you want?” she asked instead.

He lifted his eyes to hers. “Stay with me tonight.”

Chapter Four

Her gaze had gone hazy with hunger. “Oh man, I thought you’d never ask.”

He didn’t think he’d be asking either. But then again, he had to do something to make sense of the emotion that had come upon him as he’d touched her. The childish, primitive need to hold someone and be held in return.

You wanted comfort for your grief.

The idea seemed logical yet he still wasn’t clear as to whether he even felt grief, let alone the need to be comforted for it. Lust made more sense to him. That he could identify. That he could handle.

Yet it felt more than lust. An unidentified emotion inside him wanted to keep her here with him. Something in her soft, wet warmth. Something in the scent of her as he’d buried his face in her neck and smelled rain and roses. Something that had reminded him of the only time in his life when he’d been truly at peace.

“There are conditions,” he said hoarsely. There had to be. He couldn’t allow himself another loss of control like he had back in the lounge. Another crack in his armour. Not with this woman. She seemed to be able to get under his skin in a way he wasn’t expecting.

Be cold, Sasha. Be ice. Don’t let anyone get beneath the surface. Chess is as much about psychology as it is strategy.

Viktor’s voice in his head, laying down the law as he’d taught Aleks the moves of the queen, the knight, the rook. Advice that had saved him and his game on more than one occasion.
 

“What conditions?” Izzy’s pale hair lay in sleek whorls on her shoulder, one lock sliding down over her breast like a mermaid’s.

He couldn’t stop looking at her. She should have looked pale and washed out with her silver hair and pale skin but she didn’t. She’d gone pink in the heat of the shower, her whole body flushed, blue eyes like a gas flame. So much colour. So much life.

You should let her go.

Of course he should. But he wasn’t going to. He just needed some way of keeping all these weird feelings locked up and contained. A way of keeping her and her heart-on-her-sleeve emotions contained.

Aleks took a slow, silent breath. “I have to have control, like I told you before.”

A smile turned her mouth. “Yeah, I’m kind of okay with that.”

He forced his gaze from the curve of her breast and the soft pink of her nipple, though the burning intensity of her eyes wasn’t much better. The blood pounded strangely in his head.

What would his strategy be here? What would keep this chemistry between them manageable? He needed to keep her controlled. Restrained.

“I think I’m going to tie you up,” he said, studying her face for reaction.

Izzy’s pale lashes lowered, eyes narrow slivers of blue. “Tie me up, huh? Who’d have thought you’re a little bit kinky? Actually, scratch that. Of course you’re a little bit kinky.”

Actually he wasn’t. He’d never tied anyone up before because he’d never felt the need to. But with her…well, she changed the rules, which meant he had to change his strategy. “If you don’t want to, then you know where the door is. I won’t do this against your will. But if you want to spend the night with me, then that’s the only way it’s going to happen.”

“Why? And don’t tell me it’s the only way you get your rocks off because you didn’t have to before.” A gleam of curiosity burned beneath her pale lashes.
 

He didn’t want to give her the truth because it would admit too much. Give her far too much power, and she already had enough of that. “Why? Because I said so.”

Her mouth curved. As if she knew exactly what she did to him. “So it’s going to be like that, is it? No problem. I can handle it.”

“Be sure, Izzy.”

The amused look faded from her eyes. “I’m sure.”

For a moment his own curiosity kicked in. Strange since he’d never been much interested in other people’s motivations before, at least not outside chess. “You’re not worried about a complete stranger tying you up?”

Izzy arched a brow. “Should I be worried?”

“No.”

“Well then. Besides, you’re not a complete stranger, Aleks.”

“Yes, I am. You don’t know me from Adam.”

She stepped close, water streaming over her pale skin, catching in her lashes. “Of course I know you. We’re the same.”
 

The same? He didn’t understand. And it must have shown on his face because she smiled a little, lifted one hand and let it rest on his chest. “We’re the same under here.” She moved her thumb over his skin. “We both want escape. And we’ll take it where we can get it.”

But he still didn’t understand what she was talking about. Because he wasn’t escaping anything. Not anymore. He’d left the Moscow streets behind. Had his own house in California. His own life. There was nothing he needed to escape from. She, on the other hand…

“What are you escaping?” he asked.

Deep in her eyes, pain flickered. Just a glimpse. “Reality. Myself.”

The words were there in his mouth, the question of why. But it wasn’t a question he should ask. Because once he asked it, this thing between them would change. Become something more than stranger-sex. Become something deeper.