Dark Alpha (ALPHA 2) (23 page)

“Stay away from me—” Nicky broke off with a startled squeak as Lucien dropped onto his knees in front of her. “What are you doing?”

“Damn it, look at you,” he muttered again disgustedly as he examined her feet. “You should have kept your shoes on—”

“I wouldn’t have been able to run in high heels.” Nicky’s shock had deepened in the last few seconds. But this time because Lucien was down on his knees in front of her, rather than her initial surprise at his being here at all.

This was the last thing she would have expected, considering the way they had parted earlier.

“Lucien—!” She quickly put her hand out and onto the doorframe for balance as he lifted one of her feet and placed it on his denim-clad thigh. “You’ll get blood on your clothes.”

He ignored her protest as he continued to inspect her abused feet and ruined stockings. “What the hell did you think you were doing running away from me like that?”

Nicky wasn’t exactly sure why she’d run from him earlier; there hadn’t been a single moment this evening when she had actually felt in physical danger from Lucien. Not even in retaliation after she had slapped his face.

It had been his disappointment in her that she hadn’t been able to bear. The way he had looked at her as if she had betrayed him.

Which as far as Lucien was concerned, she probably had, simply by lying to him.

And yet he had still come after her.

That had to mean something. Didn’t it?

“Lucien, how did you get into my apartment?” she repeated huskily in an effort to take her mind off the fact that Lucien was now gently inspecting her sore foot.

“These will have to come off.” His hands glided up the length of her leg to her thigh, where the suspenders held up her stockings.

“Don’t.” Nicky’s hand moved quickly to rest over the top of his to stop it from progressing any further, even as she felt that familiar traitorous quiver of pleasure at his touch. “I want to know how you got in here, Lucien.”

He closed his eyes briefly before looking up at her. “I picked the locks.”

“You picked the—?” Her eyes were wide. “Is that one of the things you learned to do during your ‘bad boy’ years?”

Lucien gave a self-derisive smile. “One of them, yes.”

Another piece of the puzzle that was Lucien Wynter.

She gave a shake of her head. “Why isn’t your car parked outside?” She wasn’t willing to be distracted, or let Lucien continue to evade answering her questions. Even if the warmth of his hand, still resting on the bareness of her leg, was now sending those familiar shivers of awareness between her thighs; she could already feel herself dampening there, and her clit becoming an aroused throb.

“Because I parked it at the back of the building,” he dismissed distractedly.

“You deliberately did that because you knew that if I saw it parked in front I wouldn’t come in?”

His jaw tightened. “Yes.”

“Is Dair out there too, somewhere?” It was logical to assume that where Lucien was, so also was his overprotective cousin.

“Yes.”

“I asked what you’re doing here, Lucien,” Nicky reminded. “Why did you bother following me? And I want answers this time,” she warned impatiently.

He breathed out a heavy sigh. “I came after you because I realized, after you left earlier, that I was wrong to have made an accusation without giving you the chance to defend yourself.”

She arched a mocking brow. “Really?”

“Yes—really.” He shot her an impatient glance. “And because— All of us have secrets, Nicky, some of them worse than others,” he added huskily.

Nicky looked down at him searchingly, surprised to see that those piercing green eyes were completely open to her. “You too?”

Lucien gave a humorless smile. “Oh me most of all.”

She let that pass for the moment; the truce between the two of them was far too fragile for her to risk probing into something Lucien obviously didn’t want to talk about.

Any more than she had wanted to answer his questions earlier tonight.

The fact that Lucien had come after her, that he was here in her apartment, was a
huge
concession from a man who so obviously held himself aloof from emotional complications. And Nicky was undoubtedly a ‘complication’.

“How do you know you can trust me now?” she prompted huskily.

“I don’t,” he accepted softly. “Any more than you know you can trust me. But maybe we should both give that a try, hmm?”

“Both?” She looked at him warily.

“If I want you to trust me, then I have to trust you, too,” he bit out hardly, jaw tight.

“I tell you my secrets and you tell me yours?” Nicky couldn’t keep the skepticism out of her voice.

She saw several emotions flicker across Lucien’s face.

First resistance.

Followed by reluctance.

And finally resignation.

“If that’s what it takes, yes.” He nodded abruptly. “But first we need to get you to the bathroom and wash the dirt out of these cuts before they become infected.”

Nicky slowly relaxed the fingers that had been gripping his before removing her hand altogether. She wasn’t sure what Lucien intended on trusting her with, but that he intended to trust her at all was another huge concession on his part.

Just as she had always known there had to be more to Lucien’s obsessive need for privacy than just his extreme wealth.

As she had recognized those amazing tattoos were out of place on the body of the billionaire Lucien Wynter.

Lucien rose to his feet before sweeping her up in his arms. “Bathroom?” He looked down at her.

“Down the hallway on the left.” Nicky’s arms clung about Lucien’s neck as he walked down the hallway and into her tiny bathroom before sitting her down on top of the vanity next to the sink.

“May I?” Lucien’s fingers rested on the hem of her dress as he looked up at her.

Nicky hesitated only fractionally before nodding. “Yes.”

The sight of Nicky in stockings and suspenders was enough to cause Lucien’s cock to swell and stiffen in his jeans. A discomfort he ignored as he unfastened the suspenders; he deserved a little pain, after being such a complete bastard earlier tonight that Nicky had felt she needed to run away rather than see or speak to him again.

That throb became a hot ache as he slowly rolled the first stocking down the silky length of Nicky’s leg before carefully removing it completely.

He bent and placed his lips against the tender flesh of her sore and cut foot before turning his attention to the other stocking, his lips once again a soothing caress against her abused flesh when her other leg was bare. “This is just...unacceptable.” Lucien’s lips now traveled across the arch of her foot. “Don’t ever run from me again, Nicky.”

It had been Lucien’s coldness, his implacability, his distrust of her, and the fact that she had fallen in love with him, that Nicky had run away from.

A nerve pulsed in Lucien’s jaw. “I brought your shoes back with me, by the way, and I put the food away in your fridge in case you were hungry when—if, you returned.”

“I’m not.”

Lucien had felt his stomach sink earlier as he watched Nicky drive away with Dair. Because he had finally realized—far too fucking late—that the predominant expression he had seen in Nicky’s eyes, when he told her he knew her name wasn’t Nicky McKenzie, had been fear.

Not guilt, but fear.

And not of him, but of something or someone else that had nothing to do with his business rivals or blackmail. The shock on her face been far too real, too immediate, for it to be in the least feigned. Something he would have seen sooner if he hadn’t been blinded by anger, but which he had realized only too clearly within seconds of Nicky leaving.

Nicky’s parting comments, in regard to him learning to trust people more, and that ‘not everyone was his enemy until proven otherwise’, had also rung true.

Once Lucien had realized and accepted that, he had known he had to go after her. That he couldn’t let Nicky go without at least trying to apologize to her for having thought only of himself earlier, and what her assumed name might mean to him, rather than any personal reasons Nicky might have had for making that change in her identity.

The last thing he had been expecting, when he flashed his car headlights for Dair to stop so that he could speak to Nicky, had been for her to run away from him while he talked briefly to Dair.

Lucien had felt so damned impotent once he realized she had gone. So afraid that he would never see Nicky again. That she would just disappear, as she had so obviously done from her previous life when she became Nicky McKenzie.

Those long minutes Lucien had waited in the darkness of Nicky’s apartment, not knowing when or if she would come back, had been even more of a revelation to him.

The main one being that he didn’t
care
who she really was, or why she was with him, only that she be with him again.

If necessary, on her terms rather than his.

As he sat here in her apartment, with the minutes slowly ticking by, the silence oppressive, Lucien had decided he wouldn’t even ask for that if only Nicky would come home safely.

He had breathed a heavy sigh of relief when he finally heard her key in the lock.

Although he was less pleased once he saw how bedraggled and tired she looked.

“I’m going to run a bath for you.” He moved to turn on the taps, making sure the water was the right temperature, adding some of the perfumed bubble bath that she said she liked, before returning to her side. “Would you like some help undressing?” he offered gruffly.

Nicky swallowed. “Why are you being so nice to me?”

He grimaced. “Because it’s time that I was? Past time,” he acknowledged. “And because you’ve never been anything else to me, no matter how much of a cynical bastard I’ve behaved towards you,” he added self-disgustedly.

She reached up to lightly caress the hardness of his jaw. “I slapped you earlier,” she reminded.

“I deserved it.” Lucien also knew that he didn’t have the right to condemn Nicky for something which he was also guilty of...

He raised his hand to cup her cheek. “Do you want me to continue calling you Nicky?”

She swallowed. “Yes.”

“What color are your eyes really?”

She tensed, as if she was going to refuse to answer him, before heaving a resigned sigh. “Hazel-blue.”

He touched those corkscrew curls. “And these are really more blond than red?”

“Yes.”

“But the curls are real, yes?”

“Yes.”

“I love your curls.” He buried his face in their scented softness.

Lucien had used the ‘l’ word...

Maybe it was only in connection with Nicky’s riotous curls, but he had still used a word, expressed an emotion that Nicky hadn’t believed him capable of feeling for anything or anyone.

She waited for him to say something more, eyeing him uncertainly when he didn’t. “Don’t you want to ask me anything else?”

“I’d much rather kiss you,” he breathed softly before his head slowly lowered—as if giving her the chance to deny him—before his lips claimed hers in a slow and questioning kiss.

Nicky took the kiss for exactly what it was—an apology offered.

An apology she accepted.

Lucien finally broke the kiss to rest his forehead against hers. “I’d better turn the bath water off before it overflows,” he drawled ruefully. “Then, with your agreement, I’m going to help you finish undressing, before I help you bathe, dry you off with a towel, make sure you eat something, and then tuck you up warm and cozy in your bed. And if you’re feeling really, really generous, you might even let me crawl into that bed beside you?” He quirked a questioning—uncertain—brow.

Nicky blinked her surprise, and not just at this uncharacteristic hesitation from Lucien. “You want to spend the night here with me, in my single bed, when you have that huge bed waiting for you in your apartment?”

“A huge bed that doesn’t have you in it.”

The evening that had ended so disastrously only an hour or so ago suddenly seemed bright with possibilities.

“Nicky, I really am sorry for the way I behaved earlier tonight,” Lucien sighed. “Obviously I’m hoping you’ll decide to confide in me—but only if or when you decide you want to,” he quickly assured as Nicky tensed. “Maybe we could go away somewhere together, and relax for a few days? I own a villa in France, an apartment in Milan, another in New York, an island in the Caribbean, and a manor house in Wales—”

“You own an island in the Caribbean...?”

He smiled slightly. “I do. We could go there for a couple of weeks, if you’d like to? We could talk, eat, make love.”

It sounded idyllic to Nicky. As idyllic as it was impossible. Because this wasn’t just about her—she also had a responsibility to ensure Neil’s safety too.

“It sounds wonderful,” she acknowledged wistfully.

“But no?”

“But no.” Nicky nodded. “Besides which, don’t you have a wedding reception to attend tomorrow?”