Dark Alpha (ALPHA 2) (10 page)

“You aren’t in the least like him—”

“Oh but I am, Nicky,” he assured mockingly. “What was it you said? ‘Men like me like to play with people like you’, just because we can?” He shrugged. “You’ve just been played, Nicky.”

Nicky stared at him for several seconds as she realized exactly what he’d said. “You bastard!” She jumped down from the table and began to gather up her clothes.

Lucien knew he was a bastard.

And right now he was a
lying
bastard.

Because he wanted Nicky so badly at this moment he knew he couldn’t be in the least gentle, that he would take her any way he could get her. In every orifice. Up. Down. Any damned way he could get inside her.

Not going to happen. Not when this woman was capable of making him lose control so completely.

He gave and took pleasure, and then he walked away. And he never, ever lost control.

With Nicky he knew he had not only done that but he was in danger of not being able to walk away.

Which meant he had to make her walk away.

He gave a disinterested shrug. “You came here to thank me for helping deal with Jenkins. Consider it done. Your thanks has been duly accepted—and very much appreciated—and now you can leave.”

Nicky’s face was burning with humiliation and the heat of the tears falling down her cheeks as she hastily pulled on her clothes, wincing slightly as the fabric abraded against her sore and aching flesh; the jeans were especially uncomfortable without her panties.

The panties Lucien had shredded in his haste to get a taste of her...

There was none of that determined and remorseless lover to be seen in the man who now watched her dispassionately between narrowed lids from across the kitchen.

If it weren’t for her aching and satiated body, Nicky would have thought she had imagined the wild intensity of Lucien’s lovemaking a few minutes ago.

As it was, she
knew
it had happened. Just as she knew that it had meant absolutely nothing to Lucien. That she had been nothing more than a challenge to him.

Now he just wanted her out of his apartment, and out of his life, with minimum fuss.

She straightened, fully dressed again now. “Could you at least tell me how to get out of here?”

“I’ll walk you through to the elevator.” He nodded coolly, standing aside to wait for her to precede him out of the kitchen and into the hallway.

Nicky paused to look at him searchingly as she drew level with him. “Lucien, why—”
 

“Leave it, Nicky!” Lucien warned harshly, a nerve pulsing in his tightly clenched jaw as he looked down at her coldly.

She gave a shake of those red curls, tears glistening in her eyes. “I don’t understand you.”

Lucien smiled bleakly. “I don’t want you to understand me, Nicky, I don’t want any woman to ‘understand me’. All I want from you now is to leave.”

Before Lucien changed his mind and swept her up into his arms and carried her off to his bedroom, keeping her prisoner there until he was completely sated.
 

Maybe in a week, a month, a
year,
he might even be able to let her out again.

“Fine.” Nicky nodded abruptly as she raised her chin and walked out of the room ahead of him, only the trembling of her bottom lip, as Lucien walked beside her down the hallway, to betray that she was on the verge of tears. Tears she obviously refused to allow to fall in front of him.

Because she believed he was a bastard. A cold, unfeeling bastard, who had just used her to prove a point.

Because that was what Lucien wanted her to believe.

When in reality Nicky scared him more than anything, or anyone, ever had in his life before.

And there had been so many scary things in his life before Nicky...

Chapter 6

“You do realize you’re going to stir a hole in the bottom of that coffee cup in a minute, don’t you?” Chrissie teased lightly.

Nicky’s fingers immediately fumbled with the plastic stirrer and she dropped it into her coffee, slopping some of the hot liquid over the rim of the cup and onto the table.

She took several seconds to mop up the sticky liquid with the paper napkins before looking up at Chrissie. “I’m sorry, I’m a bit of a mess today,” she excused ruefully.

“So I can see.” Chrissie nodded ruefully. “So I could hear in your voice earlier when you telephoned, which is why I’m here now meeting you for lunch.” They were seated in a coffee shop close to where Fleur and Chrissie ran their herbal shop together. “What’s up, Nicky?” she pressed worriedly.

The look of concern on her friend’s face was almost Nicky’s undoing, but she managed not to break down as she drew in a few deep breaths. “Do you remember Lucien Wynter?” Just saying Lucien’s name was enough to cause Nicky’s hands to start shaking again. She slipped them beneath the table so that Chrissie couldn’t see how badly they were shaking.

She hadn’t seen or heard from Lucien in four days, not since that day in his apartment, when—when—

“Lucien Wynter?” Chrissie looked totally blank. “I don’t think— Oh yeah.” Her brow cleared. “You mean the guy who gave the lecture that day at uni?”

The guy who gave the lecture that day at uni
...

How innocent that sounded.

Except Nicky knew there was nothing innocent about Lucien. Or the time she’d spent with him.

That evening at the restaurant had been bad enough, but she hadn’t been able to stop thinking about that day at his apartment for a single moment since it had happened. She felt hot all over, her body aching every time she thought of the things Lucien had done to her. The intensity, the single-mindedness of his lovemaking. He had been so focused on her pleasure that nothing else had seemed to matter to him for that brief time.

And afterwards he had thrown her out.

Nicky had cried for hours when she got home that day, her body exhausted with pleasure, completely satiated, her emotions raw and totally exposed. In the same way her body had been so totally exposed to Lucien just hours earlier.

And it had all been just another game to him. A cruel and hurtful game that had left Nicky feeling both hurt and humiliated.

She hadn’t gotten out of bed for two days afterwards, not wanting to see or speak to anyone, just wanting to stay hidden beneath the bedcovers. To forget what had happened. To forget Lucien.

“You’re starting to scare me now, Nicky.” Chrissie frowned. “You look terrible and—”
 

“Thanks.” Nicky was well aware of the way she looked. She hadn’t regained any of the weight she’d lost the week before, she wasn’t wearing any makeup today, and her hair needed washing.

But at least she had managed to get out of bed yesterday and today—that was an improvement on the two previous days.

“You know I’m not being horrible,” Chrissie grimaced. “I’m just worried about you. You’re talking about some guy we met almost a year ago and haven’t thought of again since. You still don’t have a job—” She broke off with a frown as Nicky gave a humorless smile. “What?”

“I do have a job.” She nodded. “I just don’t know if I want it. It’s complicated.” She winced as Chrissie’s brows rose. “Maybe I should just tell you everything, and then maybe you can help me decide what I should do?”

“From the look of you, I think probably only you can decide that,” Chrissie said slowly. “But, yes, I do think you need to at least talk to someone.”

Nicky drew in a deep breath and began to talk. Once she began she didn’t seem able to stop, telling Chrissie everything, from the very first day of Lucien’s lecture. She omitted nothing, the words just tumbling out of her.

Chrissie made no attempt to disguise her anger when Nicky’s words came to a stuttering halt. “What an utter—”
 

“Bastard. Yes,” Nicky agreed shakily.

“The man is totally fucked up!”

“Yes,” Nicky sighed.

“But you still like him?” Chrissie looked at her searchingly.

“I’m not sure that ‘like’ is the right word to use in connection with the way I feel towards Lucien...” Nicky grimaced.

“The sex was that good?”

“The sex was incredible,” Nicky admitted ruefully. “I’ve never experienced anything so intense in my life before.”

“Then I’m guessing neither has he, and he’ll be back for more.”

Nicky snorted softly. “I somehow doubt that.”

“Is that why you have that hopeful note in your voice?” Chrissie said knowingly.

“I don’t—well...maybe I do,” she conceded heavily. “There’s just something about Lucien, something so—so—he looks so sophisticated, so controlled and together, and yet that day in his apartment he was—” She gave a shake of her head. “There was just something so raw, primal even, about the way he made love to me. It was as if he was totally out of control one moment and the next he was this cold stranger telling me to get dressed and leave.”

“Because you got to him,” her friend said knowingly.

“No—”
 

“Yes.” Chrissie nodded with certainty. “Think about it, Nicky, the man
is
sophisticated, and far too controlled and controlling, and then you came along, and he lost it. It doesn’t matter that he managed to claw back that control, to get it together again. You got to him, and so you had to leave.”

Nicky wasn’t sure she quite believed Chrissie’s interpretation of what had happened that day. Although it did help to alleviate some of the heaviness that had settled on her chest and refused to go away. “This came in the mail this morning.” She turned and took an envelope out of the depths of her shoulder bag and placed it down on the table.

Chrissie gave her a searching glance before picking up the envelope and taking out the letter from inside. Something fell as she unfolded the letter. Chrissie glanced down. “What the—!” Her eyes widened as she read the amount written on the check now lying on the table.

“Read the letter that came with it,” Nicky urged.

Chrissie’s brows rose. “It says here that you’ve been reinstated in your job and the enclosed check is to cover all your back wages for the past six weeks.” Her eyes narrowed. “So, as well as sorting out the letch Lionel Jenkins, Lucien Wynter has also arranged for you to be given your old job back?”

Nicky nodded. “What I don’t understand is why? Why would he even bother?”

“Guilt, maybe?” Chrissie shrugged. “Because he was such a bastard to you that day in his apartment, and this is his way of saying sorry?”

Nicky had thought that too at first. She had also considered taking the letter, and the check, to Lucien’s office and telling him exactly where he could shove it.

Except her pride wasn’t going to pay her bills or keep a roof over her head, but this check would.

Once Nicky had calmed down a little she had also recognized that Lucien wasn’t a man who allowed himself to feel guilt. Or feel the need to apologize. For anything.

So why had he done this? What possible reason could he have for arranging for her to have her job back, and also ensuring that she was paid the wages she had lost because of Lionel Jenkins?

“Or,” her friend spoke slowly, “this could just be his way of letting you know he’s still out there?”

“I don’t think so.” Nicky gave a definitive shake of her head. “Not when he made it perfectly clear when we parted that he wasn’t going to see me again.” The two of them had walked to the elevator in silence that day, Nicky stepping inside it in that same silence, Lucien looking on grimly as he stood and watched the elevator doors close. All without either of them having said another word to each other since they left the kitchen.

The kitchen where Lucien had made love to her on the marble tabletop...

Chrissie shrugged. “Then maybe he’s trying to antagonize you into going to see him again?”

And that’s exactly what Nicky would have done if she had followed through on her first reaction to receiving this letter.

It was never going to happen. Nicky would never deliberately put herself through that particular humiliation again.

“I can’t believe you haven’t told me any of this before now.” Chrissie eyed her incredulously.

Nicky was surprised she had confided in her friend now, when for so many years she hadn’t dared to confide in anyone about anything. When for that same amount of years she’d had to think about every word she said before she said it. To be careful never to slip up and reveal any of Felicity Bennett’s past rather than the one she had invented for Nicky McKenzie.

Even with Chrissie, her closest friend for the past three years, she had always been careful. Not for her own sake, but for Chrissie’s; knowledge of Nicky’s past could put her friend in danger, and Nicky never wanted to do that.

But this situation with Lucien was just too big, so far out of her experience that she needed to talk to someone about it. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before now, Chrissie. I just—it all seemed slightly unreal that day at uni, and then the evening was such a disaster.” She grimaced. “The sort of humiliating disaster I just wanted to forget.”

“I’ve had a few of those myself.” Chrissie gave Nicky’s hand a reassuring squeeze.