Black Knight, White Queen (18 page)

He shut his eyes tighter, pressure building inside him. A terrible, crushing pressure. Because none of that was true. None of it. “Izzy…” The breath got stuck in his throat. “Stop…”
Stop touching me. Stop making me…feel.

But she didn’t stop. “I love you, Aleks.” And then he felt the satin warmth of her skin against his, her body so close. A finger stroking along his collarbone. “I want to show you that you’re precious to me.” A kiss against his throat. “I want to make you feel as good as you make me feel. I want you to feel what it’s like to be loved.”

No one had ever touched him this way. With love and with reverence. Like he was cherished. Like he was special.

“Izzy…” The pressure became so intense it felt like he was breaking apart. “Don’t…don’t…”

She kissed him. His mouth. His throat. His chest. Her hands on his stomach, sliding along his hips, down his thighs, over his cock.

“Let me love you, Aleks. Please.”

His muscles strained with the need to rip everything away. To take it all off and to run. Run as far away as he could get from her. But now she was on him, touching him, and he couldn’t because he would hurt her and he didn’t want to hurt her.

The warm scent of her hair so close, silken strands of it brushing his face where it wasn’t covered by the cloth. Fingers sliding around his cock, squeezing gently, making all thoughts of running get lost in a sudden rush of need.

She touched him, stroked him, pleasure exploding in his brain like a firework. A groan escaped him. It was so good. But he didn’t deserve it. Didn’t deserve any of it. He was just a fucked-up, orphaned kid who’d blown the one chance he’d had at a home. He tried to tell her, but the words scrambled up inside his head as he felt her roll a condom down over him, slowly, so slowly, driving the pleasure even higher.

And then the long, liquid slide of her body taking him inside her.

He arched on the bed as she settled down onto him, the warm weight of her so good and yet an exquisite torture. Her palms pressed down on his chest as she steadied herself. Then she pulled the blindfold off him.

All he could see was her. Flushed and beautiful. Her soul in her vivid eyes.

She began to move slowly and deeply, and he told her she was beautiful in Russian because he couldn’t remember the words in English. A whole language lost because of her. Because of how she made him feel.

It became harder and harder to speak, the tension pulling so tight he shook.

And then, just before it all broke him apart, she said, “I love you, Aleks. And I don’t care if you think you’re not capable of returning it. I don’t care if you think you’re not worthy of it. I love you anyway.”

No one had ever said those words to him before. No one had ever made him believe them.

Aleks felt something erupt in his chest. Something he’d buried so far down he’d thought it gone forever. It flooded through him, an emotion intense and raw and centred completely on the woman who’d brought it to life.

He cried out as the climax shattered him, as naked emotion tore through him, and abruptly he wrenched his wrists apart, tearing the fine silk of the scarves. Pushing himself upright, he wrapped his arms around Izzy, and buried his face against her neck. Inhaling her scent. Drawing her into him as she’d taken him into her.

He couldn’t speak. Couldn’t utter a single word. So he didn’t. He just held her.

And wept.

Izzy closed her eyes and laid her cheek against the black silk of his hair. He held her so tight she could barely breathe, and yet she didn’t care. She felt his powerful body shaking, the tearing sounds of his breathing loud in her ear.

Tears filled her eyes, her heart aching for him. She held on to him for a long, long time until his breathing slowed and the sounds of his grief and sorrow and anger had faded.

Then he let her go, pushing her gently off him and sliding off the bed.

Cold slid over her skin as he moved toward the bathroom and shut the door behind him. So that was it? She’d given him everything, and he responded with his close-up and retreat thing again?

But just as devastation began to bite, the door opened again and he came out, moving over to the bed.

“Aleks?”

He didn’t answer, merely climbed back onto the bed and turned her onto her side and sliding his arms around her, pulling her in close to his body, her spine pressed to his chest. The cold feeling eased and for a long time neither of them said anything.

“I’m afraid, Izzy,” Aleks said at last, so quietly she almost didn’t hear.
 

He didn’t add to it at first, but then he didn’t need to. She knew what he was talking about. His arms tightened. “I’m afraid you’ll leave. You’ll send me away.”

“I won’t.” She put her hands over the arms wrapped around her. “Not unless you want me to.” She took a little breath. “You know that, right?”

“I tried,” he said after a moment. “With my mom. I tried so hard to be good. To do the right things. To do what she told me. But I was so young and life in Russia was so different to life in the States. I thought I was doing everything right. I thought I was her son, a good son. But I wasn’t. I got angry. I hurt her and she sent me away.” A soft breath against the back of her neck. “I don’t want to make the same mistake, Izzy. Not with you.”

Her heart broke for him, cracked straight down the middle. She turned in his arms, looked into his dark face. Saw the fear and the pain. “You won’t. But it’s okay to be scared. Hey…” She gave him a watery smile. “I’m scared shitless too.”

Silver eyes searched her face. “What scares you?”

“You leaving me like Angie left me. You changing your mind and deciding you don’t want me after all. Me not being what you want. A thousand different things.”

“And yet you came back.”

“Yeah, I did.” She pushed his hair back from his forehead, a gentle touch she couldn’t help.

“Why?”

“Because I know what it’s like to feel like you’ve been abandoned. To feel that no one cares about you. Everyone that mattered in your life has left you, Aleks. And I didn’t want to be one more.”

He stared at her. As if he’d never seen anything like her in all his life. “But Izzy… This is going to be hard for me. I don’t know if I can have a relationship with anyone. I don’t know if I can say the words you want to hear. Be the person you need.”

She smiled. “See, that’s where you’re wrong. You don’t need to be anyone. You
are
the person I need. Just the way you are right now.”

Emotion crossed his face, anguish and denial. “I don’t know if I can accept that.”

“That’ll take time.” She touched his cheek. “All you need to know now is that I know you care. I can see it in your eyes when you look at me. And I can feel it when you hold me.” Her fingers drifted to his mouth. “That’s enough for me right now.”

“I…don’t deserve this.”

“Yeah, you do, Aleks. Everyone deserves love.”

There was a long silence as he looked at her, studying her. And under his gaze she felt like the most beautiful, fascinating creature on earth.

“Are you going to stay?” he asked very softly.

“Well, I did just check out of my hostel so…” She grinned. “I’m going to need somewhere to stay the night.”

“Good.” He released her, slipping out of bed.

Izzy frowned. “Where are you going?”

“Wait there.”

He went out of the bedroom, coming back a couple of seconds later with something in his hand. “Here,” he said, holding something out to her.

She blinked, looking down at the thing resting in his palm. A chess piece, beautifully carved.

“What’s this?”

“The white queen. Viktor carved her for me. She’s the last piece I won off him. She completed my set.”

“She’s beautiful.”

“She’s for you.”

Her throat constricted. She looked up at him. “What?”

“I want you to have her.”

The constriction in her throat tightened even further. She knew what that set must mean to him. And for him to give her a piece… “Why?”

“Because…” He stopped, as if trying to find the words, then went on. “Because the queen is the most powerful piece on the board. The strongest. The most important. And that’s how I see you. That’s what you mean to me.” He took her hand, placed the queen in her palm and closed her fingers over it. “You’ve always been a queen, Izzy. My white queen. I think I knew it from the moment I saw you.”

She didn’t expect “I love you” from him, not when he barely even knew what love was. But this…this was pretty close.
 

Tears filled her eyes, but she blinked them back and gripped the chess piece tightly in her palm instead. “I’m going to have to go home at some point, Aleks. Back to Auckland. I need to see my parents.”

He nodded. “But not tomorrow.”

Izzy gripped the queen tighter. “Why not tomorrow?”

“Because I have a tournament to play in.” A slow-burning smile curved his mouth. A smile that took her breath away. “And I can’t come with you until after the tournament.”

She swallowed. “You want to come with me? Back home?”

“Of course.” He reached out, touched her face. “I’m not letting you go, Izzy. Once I take a piece, it’s mine.”

A small knot inside her heart unravelled. “You’ve taken me, have you? In that case you should have given me the black knight because now you’re mine too.”

His smile deepened. “I’m a knight not a king?”

“A king? Who can only move one square at a time? No way. Of course you’re a knight. You’re strong, protective. Deadly.” She slid her arms around his waist and grinned. “And you’ve got a slight kink in your move.”

Aleks laughed.

It was the best sound she’d heard all year.

Epilogue

Aleks looked around the lounge of his Santa Monica house and frowned. In the three months since he’d left it, he’d had a caretaker come in to mow the lawn and air the whole place out once a week but even so, the house felt unlived in. Actually, no, it felt more like a hotel room. Somewhere to stay not to live. How odd. He’d never noticed that before.

He glanced across the room to where Izzy stood out on the big wooden deck overlooking the sea, the wind sending her curly, white-blonde hair streaming behind her.

Had it really only been three months since he’d been back here? Since he’d left for Bangkok?

It felt like a lifetime.

Christ, it had been a lifetime. Because before her had been a different life, lived by a different man. A man changed forever by a woman he’d met in a hotel bar in a thunderstorm.

Aleks moved to the big glass sliding door that separated the lounge from the deck. He put his shoulder against it. Watching her.

She had her elbows on the railing, leaning forward, the ebony knight on the silver chain around her neck dangling in the breeze. The knight he’d given her. A match to the white queen he’d had tattooed over his heart.

He’d had the queen done the night after he’d won his chess tournament, but it hadn’t been until they’d gotten to New Zealand and he’d spent a few weeks in Auckland that he’d found the knight in a small, artisan jewellery shop. Izzy had cried both when he’d got his tattoo and when he’d given her the necklace. He’d gotten used to her crying at seemingly strange moments. Just like he’d gotten used to her telling him how much she loved him.

He shifted against the window, studying her pale, delicate face. It still amazed him that she felt that way about him and that she’d been willing to give up her life in New Zealand to come here to the States. He hadn’t understood how she’d been able to do that. A home was a home—how could you give that up? For one person? Yet now, as he stood in the place he’d always thought was his home, he’d started to have some inkling.

He’d never told her he loved her, and he knew that hurt her. She told him she didn’t need to hear it, that she knew he cared. Only an idiot or a man in love would have gotten a chess piece tattooed over his heart, after all. But all the same, the fact that he hadn’t said it mattered.

It mattered to him too. Because he’d never said it to anyone in his entire life. Those words had power and he’d wanted to be sure before he said them to her. Be absolutely certain of the feeling in his heart because he couldn’t say them lightly. Not to Izzy.

The wind picked up and she straightened, catching her unruly hair in her hands and holding it back from her face.

This trip was meant to be a homecoming. Yet as soon as he’d opened the door, he’d realized that this place didn’t feel like home. Had never felt like home. And what’s more, he didn’t want it to. Because he’d been home for the past three months already.

Aleks stepped out onto the deck and came up behind her, pulling her into his arms. She leaned back against him, her warmth seeping into him. “I like the view,” she said. “The rest of the house feels a bit sterile and unlived in, but we can change that.”

“No.” Aleks turned her in his arms. “I don’t want to change it.”

Izzy’s eyes widened. “You don’t?”

“I want to sell it.”

Her mouth dropped open in surprise. “Sell it? But I thought you wanted to come back here to live? Have the life you wanted?”