Dark Alpha (ALPHA 2) (20 page)

“Don’t be bloody stupid,” he snapped his impatience. “I wouldn’t have bothered coming to collect you if I hadn’t wanted to see you again.”

Nicky sank down into her seat, too disappointed by the return of Lucien’s coldness to even bother arguing with him on the subject. She had so been looking forward to this evening, to being with him again... “Would you turn the car around, please, and take me home again?” God, please, please don’t let Lucien have heard that emotional wobble in her voice.

She had known from the beginning what type of man Lucien was: cold, arrogant, aloof.

But she’d had glimpses of another Lucien. The Lucien who had dealt so effectively with Lionel Jenkins. The Lucien who had waited for her outside her apartment. The Lucien last night who had been as wild with lust for her as she was for him. The same Lucien she had later sat and had dinner with in his kitchen, the two of them talking of everything and nothing.

That
Lucien she had liked. Much more than liked. And she had hoped, really hoped, that the two of them might have a few days together just enjoying each other, making love, talking, even laughing on occasion.

Lucien’s behavior this evening was too stark a reminder that his mood could be mercurial, one time the cold-eyed stranger sitting beside her right now, the next the insatiable lover of last night.

The insatiable lover that she would happily spend more time with, that she was falling in love with. If she wasn’t in love with him already.

This cold and unreachable stranger made that love shrivel in on itself and retreat to a far corner of her soul.

“Lucien, I asked if you—”

“I heard you the first time,” he grated harshly.

“You’re just choosing to ignore me, as usual,” she guessed with a weary sigh.

He shrugged. “There seems little point in turning the car around when we’re almost at my apartment.”

“I really don’t want to be with you the way you are right now.” Nicky turned away so that Lucien couldn’t see the tears of disappointment she knew were glistening in her eyes.

Lucien stared grimly ahead as he pressed the remote control to open the steel door into the underground garage of the Wynter Enterprises building.
 

He deliberately waited for Dair to close and lock the steel door behind them before turning off the engine of his car, his hands still tightly gripping the steering wheel.

As a way of resisting the overwhelming need he felt to reach out and crush Nicky in his arms as he devoured those plump and sexy lips.

She had taken his breath away earlier, when she opened the door of her apartment to him. The red dress she was wearing made her hair appear a deep and vibrant copper color, its figure-hugging style clinging lovingly to the soft curve of her breasts and slender waist before flaring out slightly at her hips, her legs long and silky in three-inch-heeled red shoes.

And he hadn’t been able to stop thinking about whether or not she had remembered not to wear any panties...

Lucien had burned to know the answer to that question, to see for himself.

She had looked so damned happy to see him too when she first opened the door. But Lucien had only been able to wonder if that glow in her eyes, the soft smile on her lips, was really genuine, or if both were faked for his benefit. As a way of keeping him interested in her long enough for her to gather whatever information it was she wanted from him.

Maybe he should just confront her now with what he knew, demanding that she tell him the truth about herself, and make her tell him what she wanted from him.

Would she deny knowing what he was talking about? Followed by another demand that he take her home, because she ‘really didn’t want to be with him the way he was right now’?

Or would she admit her guilt?

Lucien knew it was the second one of those answers that continued to hold him back from that confrontation.

Because he really didn’t want her to be guilty of anything.

A part of him, that part inside him that had so long been denied,
wanted
whatever it was between the two of them to be real. For Nicky’s uninhibited pleasure the night before to have been real. For her happiness earlier, the way her eyes had lit up when she saw him again, to also be real.

All of which meant that Dair was right to be worried about him. Because Lucien never gave anyone a second chance, and he had given Nicky several.

Only to have her eventually betray him?

That thought was enough to send a chill through him. “I’m just hungry,” he dismissed before getting out of the car and slamming the door behind him, taking the bags of food out of the trunk and coming around to open Nicky’s door for her, brows raised questioningly as she hesitated.

Nicky continued to eye him warily as she finally got out of the car, not looking in the least happy as she walked beside him to the elevator.

Lucien’s emotions were a churning, seething mass of contradictions as they stood together in the elevator up to his apartment. He was so angry still, and yet also totally aware of Nicky’s unique, arousing smell, as it permeated every one of his senses in the confines of the elevator. The citrus of her shampoo. The woodsy smell of her perfume. The sweet and heady spice between her legs now causing his cock to engorge and harden.

He could never remember being as angry as this before now, so bent on punishment, and yet at the same time want to give and take pleasure.

“Lucien, will you please tell me what’s wrong with you this evening?” Nicky continued to eye him warily as he put the bags of food down on the kitchen table.

What was ‘wrong’ with him? Lucien not only wanted this woman, he had allowed himself to
like
her, that’s what was ‘wrong’ with him. And all the time she—

Fuck it!

He crossed the kitchen in two strides, lifting his hand to cup her cheek as he ran the soft pad of his thumb over her bottom lip, feeling the trembling response of that soft flesh beneath his touch. “I’m hungry for you, not food!” His eyes glittered darkly as his thumb now parted her lips before thrusting inside the heat of her mouth. “Suck, Nicky,” he encouraged gruffly. “Let me watch your lips and tongue licking and sucking as if it’s my cock in your mouth.”

Nicky turned her head aside, avoiding that invasive thumb as her arms moved up and pushed against the hardness of Lucien’s chest. She should never have come up to his apartment with him, should have followed her instincts and insisted he drive her home, or called a cab if he didn’t want to drive her.

Because she had finally recognized the emotion that burned and seethed beneath the surface of Lucien’s coldness.

Anger.

Lucien was a churning mass of anger.

A cold and yet furious anger, that burned rather than simmered, and all of it focused on punishing her.

She kept her arms up between them to stop the full length of his body from pressing against hers. “Why are you being like this, Lucien? Why?” she demanded emotionally.

His mouth twisted. “Why are you fighting me when you know you want this as much as I do?” he answered her question with one of his own as he deliberately rubbed his arousal against her.

He gave a hard grin of satisfaction as he looked down at her breasts and saw the nipples were now pebble-hard against the material of her dress.
 

“I can
smell
the juices flowing between these delicious thighs.” His hand moved caressingly from her knee to her thigh— “Jesus Christ!” He stilled before lifting the skirt of her dress and looking down at the silky stockings she wore, held up by lace suspenders, a hint of red-gold curls visible between her thighs. “You didn’t wear any panties,” he groaned harshly.

“I said I wouldn’t.” Nicky could still remember the excitement she had felt earlier as she put on just the stockings and bustier beneath her dress, becoming aroused just thinking of Lucien’s reaction to seeing her in them. Just them.

But that had been before. Before Lucien had turned back into that cold and controlling man. A man who was determined to master and control her by using her own sexual arousal against her.

Nicky squirmed out of reach as his hand would have moved to caress the dampness she knew lay between her legs. “I won’t let you treat me like this, Lucien.” She gave him another push, harder this time, and finally succeeded in escaping the steel bands of his arms. “I won’t let any man treat me like this!” Her breath caught in a sob as her arm moved up instinctively in an arc and the palm of her hand made painful contact with Lucien’s cheek.

Her eyes were wide with shock as she stepped back, breathing hard, her now stinging hand raised up to her mouth at the realization of what she had just done.

Lucien felt as if he were emerging from an angry and lust-filled haze when the hard crack of Nicky’s hand made painful contact with his face.

He stepped back to draw in deep and controlling breaths as he took in Nicky’s disheveled appearance and realized how far he had been willing to go to punish her.

He had intended on pleasuring her, hoping to break down her defenses that way. To pleasure her, and carry on pleasuring her, punishing her, until she begged for mercy, at which time he would have demanded she tell him the truth of who she was and what she wanted from him.

But he would never have hurt her. Drive her out of her mind with pleasure, yes, but he would never have physically hurt her.

The horrified expression on Nicky’s face said she believed otherwise.

“I can’t do this.” He gave a self-disgusted shake of his head as he took another step back. “I cannot fucking do this!” he repeated fiercely, hands clenched at his sides.

He had known all those months ago, in the coffee shop, that the redhead sitting at the next table pushed buttons he hadn’t even known he had until he looked at her and knew he wanted her. Hard to deny that response, when his cock had instantly hardened to arousal.

An arousal that surprisingly hadn’t deflated in the slightest as he listened to her and her friend discussing the idea of her taking a rich and elderly lover to pay off her debts. Or when her friend had posed the idea that the reclusive porno-watching Lucien Wynter might fit that criteria perfectly.

Dair had given him a mocking grin over
that
less-than-flattering description.

Lucien’s only intention that day, when he spoke to Nicky after the lecture, had been with the idea of a little payback. Of keeping her on tenterhooks as to whether or not he intended on exposing her rudeness to Paul Grant.

Instead he had ended up inviting her out to dinner.

He had been so irritated with himself for having done that, and so irrationally annoyed with Nicky for being so damned beautiful he couldn’t seem to resist her, that he had deliberately set out to be as unpleasant as possible that evening.

Making love to her in a public restaurant definitely came under the heading of being unpleasant.

It had almost been a relief when she got up and walked out on him before he completed the act, and to hell with everyone and everything else around them.

He had even managed to convince himself over the months that followed that he’d imagined that raw and immediate response to Nicky McKenzie. That no woman on earth had that sort of power over him.

Until she walked back into his life, and that desire had surged back into life with a vengeance.

Just knowing she was downstairs that day had been enough to break Lucien out in a cold sweat.

He should have refused to see her, of course. Should have. Could have. Didn’t.

One look at her and he was hooked. Again. And every time he had seen her since that day his control had slipped a little further out of his reach.

Last night—God, last night—had been wild, totally
out
of control. For both of them. Lucien wanting, needing, to possess all of her, to mark her, to brand her as his in a way he had with no other woman.

Having Dair tell him earlier today that Nicky McKenzie wasn’t even her real name had felt like he’d woken from the spell she’d woven about his senses since the moment he’d first seen her. Leading him to question every single conversation they’d ever had. Every kiss. Every touch. Every nuance of that amazing lovemaking.

The ice had entered his heart and his veins then, and all he’d been able to think of was that Nicky—or whatever her name was—had tricked him, made a fool out of him, and that she had probably done it for money.

Even so, he had thought he would be able to see her again, bed her again, take what he wanted, without mercy or emotion.

He had been wrong.

Tonight he had discovered he had absolutely no barriers left where this woman was concerned. Only that raw and aching need he felt, every time he was with her, to lose himself in her heat and passion.

“Tell me who you really are,” he now demanded harshly. “And don’t say Nicky McKenzie,” he warned grimly as her eyes widened. “Because we both know that isn’t your real name!”

Chapter 12

Lucien gave a pained frown as Nicky stared at him like a deer in headlights—eyes wide, her body poised as if for flight.

As evidence—if he had needed any—that Dair had been right. That her name really wasn’t Nicky McKenzie.