Read The Tycoon's Virgin Bride - Part 3 (The Corskovi Dynasty) Online
Authors: Ann King
THE TYCOON’S VIRGIN BRIDE –
Part 3 (The Corskovi Dynasty)
Ann King
Copyright 2013 by Ann King
*Previously published under
a different title.
All rights reserved; no part of this publication may
be reproduced or transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying
or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters,
places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been
used fictitiously. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead is entirely
coincidental.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thank you to my father and to my wonderful family,
friends and readers for your unconditional love and endless support.
What happens when the one you desire
is minutes away from marrying someone else?
She’s torn…
Hannah
Steeles
is moments away from marrying a man she does not
love, sexy Russian Gustav
Kolodenko
. The chapel is
filled with a hundred guests and she’s ready to walk down the aisle but her
heart is with hot, dripping with charm Andre
Corskovi
,
the man who makes her pulse race and dominates her fantasy.
The
friend who is giving her away in place of her father.
It’s too late to
turn back now.
He wants her…
Andre
Corskovi
, sexy, young self-made billionaire is used to getting
what he wants but this time may be a challenge. He’s never wanted any woman
more than he wants beautiful, charming Hannah
Steeles
.
It’s when he’s asked to give her away in place of his late mentor that he
wrestles with his desires. He can’t get her out of his system but the chapel is
decorated and filled with guests. Will he give away the one woman he desires or
take her for himself?
*Previously published under a
different title.
Mixed feelings surged through Hannah
Steeles
as she stumbled to the chair. She had to sit down
or she would pass out.
Gustav
Kolodenko
, the sexy heart throb with the Russian accent
who’d swept her off her feet less than two months ago in exchange for a green
card wedding and to father her child in wedlock was back—and not in a
good way.
He’d
jilted her at the altar two weeks ago. Well, sort of. She was about to jilt
him
at the altar after having second
thoughts about their Vegas vows. After all, she’d only met him two months ago.
Now, here he was in front of her, presumably holding her captive now in Andre’s
Toronto penthouse while Andre was away. And Gustav wasn’t even the man she
thought he was. She’d just learned that he was somebody else.
Gustav
was an undercover secret service agent from her country. God, what had she done
now? Why was he after her? Hannah’s head throbbed, she felt as if a hammer was
pounding on her skull.
“Are
you going to be okay?” Gustav asked smoothly as he walked over to the window to
peer outside. He then moved around the suite to make sure they were alone. He
seemed to have a sweeping device in his hand to detect bugs. She’d recognized
such a device when Andre’s chauffeur and right hand man, Hans, had come to
sweep their hotel suite for bugs in Vegas.
Hannah
sat dazed on the chair, unable to move. Paralyzed by fear.
Fear
of the unknown.
Fear of what Gustav
Kolodenko
,
or rather Mr. James Gustav
Kendricks
, III, secret
service agent 08975
MSSA
, wanted with her.
She
stole a second glance at the badge she held in her hand after Gustav handed it
to her a moment ago. She ran her fingers over the cold, hard metal material and
felt every groove. It was real. This was all real. This whole situation was
like a vivid nightmare.
“So…so
you’re
a…a
secret agent?” she whispered breathless,
dazed. Her eyes drifted to his dark grey suit and silk tie, his jacket was
loose fitting, obviously to conceal his service pistol. His body filled out
nicely in the suit, she noticed.
“You
could say that?” he answered as he walked over to where she was seated. He
leaned against the granite counter in the kitchen area in front of Hannah.
Moments earlier, she was sitting there opposite Andre. It was strange how
situations could turn in a heartbeat. There she was with a man she should have
despised but for some reason, she didn’t.
“What
do you mean by that?” she lifted her head to look into his eyes. His eyes were
blue as the ocean and sparkling, his jawline strong and set with high
cheekbones. He was certainly a charmer and delicious eye candy for sure. He was
also smooth operator. Just the way he moved was silky, flawless, calm and
indicative of a man who was always in control.
There
was something in Gustav’s beautiful bright eyes framed by his dark eyebrows
that she found oddly trusting. That was what got her hooked on him when they’d
met that night two months ago at a bar of all places.
An
upscale bar.
She had
gone there with her roommate Lucy after she’d confided in Lucy that she needed
to find a husband quick and get married and have a baby before it was too late.
She had a hereditary medical condition related to her uterus that would make it
difficult for her to
conceive
as she grew older.
Hannah
just didn’t want to have a baby out of wedlock like her mother. She’d promised
herself that. She hadn’t even known her real father and her mother was the talk
of the town when she’d given birth to her. Hannah still carried the disgrace on
her birth certificate with father unknown written on it. It was a devastating
shame she carried around with her.
A shameful chain that had
to be broken.
“Well,”
Gustav sighed, slicing through her concentration, “the truth is, I am on
leave.”
“On
leave?”
“Yes,”
he said with his arms folded across his broad chest, a dimpled grin settled on
his handsome face. There was something about Gustav that reminded her of a
roughneck yet she found him trusting, intriguing at the same time. She loved
men with
a bad
boy stubble or a sexy five-o’clock
shadow on their face. And he sported one, just like Andre. Perhaps that was what
drew her to him…that night.
She
waited for him to continue, her breathing shallow
,
her eyes
wide open
.
Gustav
unfolded his arms and scanned around the apartment once more. “Very nice. I see
your taste has improved since we last met—in residential accommodation,”
he clarified as he cocked a brow.
God, he looked so cute like
that. No. Stop it, Hannah. Something is so fucked up about all of this. You
need to know like yesterday what’s going on with this guy and the
Melipos
government.
“Gustav
what the fuck is going on?” Hannah growled as she stood up, her arms folded
across her chest now, lips pinched, nostrils flared.
Gustav
took an apple from the fruit basket on the granite countertop and offered it to
her. She shook her head refusing. He then turned around and ran the cold-water
tap over the apple before shaking it dry. Slowly he turned around and as if his
eyes were transfixed on Hannah he slowly lowered the apple to his full lips and
slid his tongue out to lick it before slowly pressing his lips as if kissing it
but parted his lips wider to take it in his mouth and crunch into the apple.
Juice from the apple slid from his full lips…Hannah licked her dry lips. She
remembered what those delicious lips felt like on hers when he kissed
her—on their third date. Oh, he was one hell of a kisser—could
bring a girl to orgasm with his erotic kisses. Why was he teasing her now? What
the hell was he up to?
As if
in a trance, Hannah finally snapped out of her brief daydream and shook her
head, her eyes darted away from his luscious full lips—those sexy, hot
lips of his.
“Why
don’t you take a bite, Eve…I mean Hannah?” he neared her, sending her pulses
racing. She rolled her eyes at his slip of the tongue ‘Eve’ comment. Then her
gaze drifted back to the apple in his hand. Hannah licked her lips again.
God,
she was so tempted but…something just came over her. Before she knew it she
lifted her hand with the intent to slap the apple out of Gustav’s hand to stop
him from teasing her, but his other hand was quick and grabbed her wrist with
such power and force she thought he would snap her hand off. She pulled back as
he loosened his grip and heaved a sigh of relief.
“You
know I don’t like to be touched…that way,” his voice was low and dangerous.
She’d forgotten about what he told her that night they’d met…well, almost.
“Yeah,”
she panted, “I forgot that you’re some undefeated world champion in Judo,
Karate and what else?”
“Kick
boxing.”
“Right.
Kick boxing. Only you used a different name then, didn’t you?” she murmured.
He leaned
back against the counter surveying her from head to toe, as if undressing her
with his oh, so blue sexy eyes. But she had to get a hold of herself.
“Andre
would be here anytime soon.”
“No he
won’t. He’s…engaged at the moment. Tied up.”
“What?
What’s that supposed to mean? What the fuck is going on Gustav or James or
whoever you are?”
“You
see the name on the badge. My first name is James but God how I hated it when
growing up…”
“Yeah
and what is your real accent like? You sound American now but when we first met
you had a Russian accent.”
“Yes,
that was good, wasn’t it?”
“That
was all part of your cover, too?”
“You
could say that.”
“That’s
all you’ve got to say,” she said slowly and casually moving away from Gustav
and closer to the door.
She was
going to try and make a run for it. Try to get the hell away from Gustav as far
as possible and call Andre on her cell phone. But it was in her purse in the
bedroom.
Shit!
How would she get it now? Screw
that! She would call Andre from one of the service phones. This was Andre’s
building after all and the staff all knew she was his ‘special guest.’
Hannah
continued to question Gustav while he continued to pick fruit from the fruit
basket on the kitchen countertop seemingly paying her no attention. It was clear
that he was going to keep her there but for how long? And why?
“So you
learned to change accents to fool women?”
“No, my
dear. When you are in my line of business it helps to speak and understand as
many
languages
as possible. I speak seventeen languages fluently,” he said with his back
turned to her as he bit into a juicy strawberry.
“Oh,
wow, seventeen languages, fluently. That explains it. Of course, if you’re
going to work in espionage or secret service it comes in handy, I guess,” she
continued slowly moving backwards towards the door.
She
sighed deeply when she felt her back touch the front of the door. She then felt
for the gold knob and slowly turned it as Gustav engaged himself in picking out
a grape from the fruit tray.
Fuck you!
She called out in her mind as
she opened the door and proceeded to run out. Only she slammed hard into a
large man as tall as Shaq O’Neal, probably seven feet tall and huge by all
definitions of the word. Huge guy had biceps the size of her body!
Holy fuck!
Hannah’s head pounded from the
impact.
Who is this guy?
The Incredible Hulk?
He gave
her a deleterious gaze and she immediately went back inside the suite and
slammed the door closed behind her. Panting, her heart raced hard and fast in
her chest as she leaned her back against the door. She thought her ribs would
crack at the impact.
Holy shit! What the hell was
that? Am I being held prisoner in here?
Gustav
was still over by the counter helping
himself
to the
breakfast tray, seemingly oblivious to what had just occurred.
“I see
you’ve met Angus,” he finally said smoothly as he sliced another apple with
what looked like a Swiss Army knife.
“I’m
afraid you’re going to have to learn to trust me, my dear Hannah.”
“Trust
you? You’ve got to be kidding, right?” she huffed, folding her arms tight
across her bosom, she’d just remembered that she was still in her silk gown and
didn’t want to give Gustav any ideas.
“Why
wouldn’t you? You thought you could trust me to impregnate you and create a
sham wedding for your family,” he cocked a brow. His
demeanor
was incredibly
calm,
it frightened her and intrigued
her at the same time.
“That…that
was different. Back then, I didn’t know you were spying on me, following me…”
“Hey,
that secret recording in what would have been our honeymoon suite was not my
doing.”
“I know
that. Andre’s men found the source and they’re dealing with it.”
“Good.
Wouldn’t want that sort of thing to be leaked online or show up on YouTube, God
forbid,” he sounded a tad sarcastic but Hannah couldn’t quite tell at the time.
Horror
gripped her throat and squeezed so tight she thought she would pass out from
lack of breathing. She shook her head and drew in a deep breath mentally
pushing that notion of a sex tape floating around in cyberspace out of her
head. Andre said he’d handled it. She trusted him. She just had to or she’d
live to be a paranoid crazy person looking over her shoulders every minute and
missing out on actually…living.
“First
and foremost, Hannah, I would never do anything to hurt you.”
“Then
why did you track me down and have me followed and pretended that I was your
wife and crazy shit like that.”
“Whoa…whoa.
Wait a minute. First of all, that was one of the reasons I came to America to
see that you were okay. Yes, it’s true that someone from
Melipos
had gotten wind of the Barrington’s search for a missing heir and followed you
here to track you down for monetary purposes but it wasn’t me. I was sent after
the fact.”
“What?”
Hannah was breathing hard and fast now, her heartbeat galloped like a speeding
horse at the racetrack, it was almost unbearable. “Wait a minute. I…I don’t
understand. Missing heir? Start from the beginning.” Hannah’s hand shook as she
reached for a glass on the tray that Gustav had brought in pretending to be the
waiter.
She was
trembling so hard that Gustav’s smooth hand touched hers to calm her sending an
electrical current down her spine.
His
electrifying bright eyes locked with hers and she was in a trance again. She
was mesmerized by the rich blueness of his eyes. It was like gazing into the
ocean. He was breathtaking…but he could be a real jerk sometimes. He had a shit
load of explaining to do and she wanted it all out now. He then took his other
hand to remove the glass from her and poured her a tall glass of orange juice, freshly
squeezed. Just the way she liked it.