Dealing Her Final Card (6 page)

“No,” she whimpered, feeling dizzy as she wrenched away. She put an unsteady hand to her forehead. “No.”

Vladimir stared down at her. His gaze seemed almost bewildered. She heard the hard rasp of his breath, and realized that he, too, had been surprised. Then his face hardened.

“Why should I not kiss you?” He walked slowly around her, running one hand up her arm and the side of her neck. “You belong to me now,
kroshka.
”

Kroshka?
She didn’t know what it meant, but it didn’t sound very nice.

Stopping in front of her, he cupped her chin. He handled her carelessly, possessively, as a man might handle any valuable possession—a rifle, a jewel, a horse. Insolently, he traced his hand down her bare neck. “I intend to take full possession of my prize.” His hand slid over her black T-shirt to the hollow between her breasts. “Soon you will be spread across my bed. Aching for me.” His hand continued to slide down her waist. Gripping her hip, he suddenly pulled her hard against his body. “Your only reason to exist now is to serve me.”

Shaking, she tried to toss her head. Tried to defy him. Instead, her voice trembled as she asked, “What are you going to do to me?”

“Whatever I please.” He moved his hand up her body, cupping her breast over the T-shirt, tweaking her aching nipple with his thumb. As she gasped, he smiled. “But you will please me, Bree. Have no doubt about that.”

She wanted to beg him to let her go. But she knew it would do no good. Vladimir’s handsome, chiseled face was hard as granite. There was no mercy in it. But she couldn’t stop herself from choking out, “Please don’t do this.”

“My touch wasn’t always so distasteful to you,” he said softly. He ran his hands down her shoulders, pulling off her black leather jacket and dropping it to the marble bedroom floor. “Once, you shuddered beneath me. You wanted me so badly you wept.”

Bree swallowed. She’d once been sure of only two things on earth: that Vladimir Xendzov was the last honorable man in this selfish, cynical world. And that he loved her.

“Ya tebya lyublyu,”
he’d whispered.
I love you, Breanna. Be my wife. Be mine forever.

He’d been a different man then, a man who laughed easily, who held her tenderly, a fellow orphan who looked at her with worship in his eyes. Now, his handsome face was a lifetime harder. He was a different man, hard and rough as an unpolished diamond, his blue gaze as cold as the place that had been his frequent home for the past ten years—Siberia.

His grip on her tightened as he said huskily, “Do you not remember?”

Blinking fast, she whispered, “That was when I loved you.”

His hands grew still.

“You must think I’m a fool.” Dropping his arms, he said coldly, “I know you never loved me. You loved my money, nothing more.”

“It might have started as a con,” she said tearfully, “but it changed to something more. I’m telling you the truth. I loved—”

“Say those words again,” he exclaimed, cutting her off in a low, dangerous voice, “and you’ll regret it.”

She straightened her spine and looked at him defiantly.

“I loved you,” she cried. “With all my heart!”

“Be quiet!” With a low growl, he pushed her back violently against the bedpost. “Not another word!”

Bree’s heart pounded as she saw the fury in his eyes. She could feel the hard wood against her back, feel his chest against hers with the quick rise and fall of her every breath.

Abruptly, he released her.

“Why did you really come to Hawaii?” he said in a low voice.

She blinked fast, able to exhale. “We got offered jobs here, and we needed them.”

He shook his head, his jaw tight. “Why would you take a job as a housekeeper? With your skills?” His eyes narrowed. “You were surprised to see me at the poker table. If you’re not here to con me, who was your mark?”

“No one! I told you—I don’t do that anymore!”

“Right,” he said sarcastically. “Because you’re honest and pure.”

His nasty tone cut her to the heart, but she raised her chin. “What are
you
doing here? Because the last time I checked, there weren’t many gold mines on Oahu!”

He stared at her for a long moment. “Do you truly not know?” His forehead furrowed. “It was in the news....”

“I’ve spent the last decade
avoiding
news about you, chief. Not looking for it!”

“Three months ago, I was in an accident,” he said tightly. “Racing on the Honolulu International Speedway.”

An accident? As in—hurt?

She looked him over anxiously, but saw no sign of injury. Catching his eye, she scowled. “Too bad it didn’t kill you.”

“Yes. Too bad.” His voice was cold. “I am fine now. I was planning to return to St. Petersburg tomorrow.”

Her heart leaped with sudden hope. “So you’re leaving—”

“I’m not in any hurry.” He gripped her wrists again. “Nice try changing the subject. Tell me why you came here. Who is your mark? If not me, then who?”

“No one!”

“You expect me to believe we met by coincidence?”

She bared her teeth. “More like bad luck!”

“Bad luck,” he muttered. He moved closer to her, and his grip tightened. She felt tingles down her body, felt his closeness as he pressed her against the carved wooden post of the bed. His gaze fell to her lips.

“No,” she whispered. “Please.” She swallowed, then lifted her gaze. “You said...I could just clean the house....”

He stared at her. His blue eyes were wide as the infinite blue sea. Then he abruptly let her go.

“As you wish,” he said coldly. “On your back in my bed, or breaking it scrubbing my floor—it makes little difference to me. Be downstairs in five minutes.”

Turning on his heel, he left the bedroom. Bree’s knees nearly collapsed, and she fell back against the bed.

Vladimir didn’t believe she’d ever loved him. When he’d abandoned her to the sheriff that cold December night in Alaska, he’d truly believed that her love for him had just been an act. And now he was determined to exact revenge.

His punishing, soul-destroying kiss had been just the start. An appetizer. He intended to enjoy her humiliation like a lengthy gourmet meal, taking each exquisite course at his own leisure. He would feast on her pride, her body, her soul, her memories, her youth, her heart—until nothing was left but an empty shell.

With a silent sob, Bree dropped her face in her hands.

She was in real trouble.

CHAPTER FOUR

S
EVEN
hours later, Bree had never felt so sweaty and filthy in her life.

And she was glad.

With a sigh, she squeezed her sponge over the bucket of soapy water. There was still almost no dirt—she guessed Vladimir’s team of servants had cleaned the place top to bottom the day before. But he’d still made her scrub every inch of the enormous house’s marble floor. She narrowed her eyes. Tyrannical man. Her back ached, as did her arms and legs. But—and this was the part she was happy about—she’d done it all with her clothes on. He’d thought a little cleaning could humiliate her?

Leaning back on her haunches, Bree rubbed her cheek with her shoulder and smiled at the newly shining kitchen floor.

This house was a beautiful place, she’d give him that. Glancing through the windows as she’d worked all day, surreptitiously plotting her escape, she’d seen an Olympic-sized infinity pool clinging to the edge of the ocean cliff. On the other side of the house, across the tennis courts, she’d seen a cluster of small cottages on the edge of the compound, where she guessed Vladimir’s invisible army of servants lived. Yes. She’d never seen such an amazing villa estate before.

But for all its luxury, it was still a prison. Just as, for all of Vladimir’s dark, brooding good looks, he was her jailer.

She scowled, recalling how he’d enjoyed watching her on all fours, scrubbing his home office that morning. Her stomach had growled with hunger as Vladimir ate a lavish breakfast, served on a tray at his desk. The delicious smells of coffee and bacon had been torture to Bree, following a night where she’d had no food and barely two hours’ sleep. His housekeeper, after watching with dismay, had disappeared. But Bree was proud of herself that she hadn’t given Vladimir the satisfaction of seeing her whimper.

No more whimpering, she vowed.

Bree jumped as Vladimir suddenly stalked into the kitchen, his posture angry. He stomped into the room and opened one of the doors of the big refrigerator.

Biting her lip, she looked away, scrubbing the floor harder with her sponge. But he was making so much noise, she glanced at him out of the corner of her eye.

He grabbed homemade bread from the cupboard and ripped off a hunk. Tossing it onto a plate, he chopped through it with a big knife, like a grim executioner with an ax. She gulped, watching in bewilderment as he added cheese, chicken, even mustard and tomato. He opened the fridge and added a bottle of water and then a linen napkin to the tray. His Italian leather shoes were heavy against the marble floor as he came over to her, holding out the tray with a glower.

“Your lunch,” he said coldly.

Her belly rumbled in response. She’d had nothing to eat since a cheerless Christmas dinner yesterday, a bologna sandwich eaten alone at the end of her housekeeping shift. Sitting back on her haunches, Bree wiped her sweaty forehead and looked up at him.

Unlike her, Vladimir had taken a shower, and looked sleek, urbane and civilized in a freshly pressed black button-down shirt and black trousers. His tanned skin glowed with health, smelling faintly of soap and sandalwood.

While she...

She wasn’t feeling so pretty. She’d peeled off her boots to work barefoot on the wet floor. Her long blond hair was twisted into a messy knot at the back of her head, to lift it off her hot neck. Her T-shirt was sweaty all the way through, and in the humidity of Hawaii, even with air-conditioning she knew she looked like a swamp creature from a 1950s horror movie.

She narrowed her eyes. If he thought she was going to lick his boots with gratitude for the simple courtesy of lunch, he had another think coming. His
serf!

She looked at the tray. He waited.

“I don’t like tomatoes,” she said pleasantly.

Vladimir dropped the tray with a noisy clatter on the floor beside her. “Tough. I have no desire to cater to you, and Mrs. Kalani decided to take the rest of the day off.”

Bree looked up at him, and a slow grin lifted her cheeks. “She gave you a hard time about me, didn’t she?”

“Enjoy your lunch.” He pointed to an immaculate section of the floor. “You missed a spot.”

Vladimir had thrown the tray down as if she were the family golden retriever. Rising to her feet after he left, she washed her hands, then took the tray to the dining table like a civilized person, ready for a fight if he came back to give her one. Somewhat to her disappointment, he didn’t.

Once she’d removed the tomatoes, the freshly baked bread made the rest of the sandwich delicious. Honey mustard was a nice touch, too. And the cold, sparkling water was just what she’d wanted. She wiped her mouth.

He was still a brute. Her eyes narrowed as she remembered his cold words.

For the rest of your life, you will work for me, Bree. For free. You will never be paid, or allowed to leave. Your only goal, until you die, is to serve me and give me pleasure.

He didn’t know who he was dealing with. She finished off the cold water and tidied up the tray. He thought a little housecleaning would kill her? She’d been training for this for the past ten years.

She was going to escape this captivity. As soon as she could formulate a plan.

As the afternoon wore on, Bree scrubbed her way fiercely up the stairs and then cleaned five guest bedrooms, which had already been as sparkling clean as the rest of the house. But as she reached the master bedroom, the sun was starting to lower in the western sky, and her whole body ached. She couldn’t stop yawning. Looking at the four-poster bed, she was tempted to take a short power nap. Vladimir would never know, she told herself. Climbing onto the large, soft bed, she closed her eyes—just for a few minutes.

With a gasp, Bree sat up suddenly in bed. The room was now dark. She looked over at the clock. It was almost seven o’clock. Dinnertime.

She’d slept for hours.

Feeling sweaty and gross, her body aching, Bree rose stiffly from the still-made bed, stretching her arms over her head. She rubbed her eyes with her knuckles. So where was her slave driver? Why hadn’t he discovered her napping? Tsar Vladimir the Terrible must be hard at work, she decided, planning a new way to humiliate her, or dreaming up some nefarious new attack on his brother. When she’d been cleaning his home office, he’d been talking rather intensely in Russian on the phone. But even then, his smoldering gaze had slowly wandered over her backside as she scrubbed the floors on all fours.

Fine. Let him look.

With a deep breath, Bree closed her eyes. As long as he didn’t touch. As long as she didn’t have to feel his lips, hot and hard against her own, as he held her so tightly against his body...

“You’re awake.”

At the sound of Vladimir’s husky voice from the doorway, she jumped, whirling around. “You—you knew I was sleeping?” she stammered.

His gaze was intense as he came toward her. “Yes.”

She felt suddenly very small as his tall body loomed over hers. She licked her lips. “So why didn’t you wake me up and start bossing me around?”

Reaching out, he brushed a tendril of hair out of her eyes. “Because you looked like an angel.”

His voice was low. Sensual. Bree’s eyes widened as she looked up—no, not at his lips! His
eyes!
Trembling with awareness at how they were once again alone in his bedroom, she tightened her hands at her sides. “Um. Thanks. For letting me borrow your bed.” She edged away from it. “I should probably be getting back to work....”

His eyes glimmered. “
Our
bed.”

“What?”

Vladimir’s large hand wrapped around the post’s polished wood. “You called it my bed. It is ours.”

Her lips parted. Then she folded her arms protectively against her chest. “Look. Whatever our wager was, you can’t actually expect me to...”

“Expect you to what?”

“Sleep with you.”

“You were serious when you offered it as a prize.” He looked down at her. “‘My skills at cards are nothing compared to what I can do to you in bed,’ you said.” His tone was mocking. “‘A single hour with me will change your whole life,’ you said!”

Shivering, she looked away. “I was bluffing,” she said in a small voice. “I don’t know how to do those things.” Her cheeks colored, and shame burned through her as she looked at the marble floor. “I’ve never been with a man before. I’ve never even kissed a man—since...” She bit her lip and muttered, “Not since you.”

He stared at her. “You’re a
virgin?
”

His voice dripped disbelief. A lump rose to her throat, and she nodded.

“Right,” he said scornfully. “You’re a virgin.”

She lifted her head in outrage. “You think I’m a liar?”

“I know you are.” His cool blue eyes met hers. “You lie about everything. You can’t help it. Lying is in your blood.”

Lying is in your blood.
Before Bree’s mother died, her parents had been regular law-abiding citizens, childhood sweethearts married at eighteen, high school teachers who mowed the lawn in Alaska’s short, bright summers and shoveled snow through eight-month winters. Her mother had taught English, her father science. Then, at thirty, Lois Dalton had contracted cancer. Newly pregnant with her second child, she’d put off chemo treatments that might risk her baby. Two months after Josie’s birth, Lois had died. Jack Dalton lost his wife, his best friend and, some said, his mind....

He’d quit his job as a teacher. He left the new baby with a sitter. And every day, after he picked up Bree from first grade, he took her to backroom poker games. First in Anchorage, and then to ports where Alaskan cruises deposited new tourists each day. With each success, his plans had grown more daring. And they’d worked. At first.

Pushing the memory aside, Bree shook her head. “I’m not lying. I’m a virgin!”

“Stop it. You made the bet. You made your bed.” Vladimir lightly trailed his hand above her head, along the carved wooden post. “Now you will sleep in it.”

She glared at him, setting her jaw. “I only made that bet because I was desperate—because I had nothing else remotely valuable to offer! For Josie—”

“Josie was safe. You had more than enough.”

A sudden thought struck Bree, and she caught her breath. “Did you...let me win?” she whispered. “Is that why you kept raising the stakes—why you egged me on during the game? So that I could cover Josie’s debt?”

His jaw tightened. “I thought she was some innocent kid that Hudson had lured into the game. Not like you.” His eyes flashed as he looked down at Bree. “You could have walked away. But when I offered you the one-card gamble, you accepted. There was no desperation. It was pure greed. And it told me what I needed to know.”

She swallowed. “What?”

“That you hadn’t changed. You were still using your body as bait.”

She took a deep breath and whispered, “I never thought in a million years that I would lose that game.” Exhaustion suddenly swamped her like a wave. Tears rose to her eyes. “And if you were any kind of decent man, you would never expect me to actually...”

“To what? Follow through on your promise?” He gave a hard laugh. “No, what kind of monster would expect that?”

Bree exhaled. “How stupid can I be, appealing to your better nature?”

“I won. You lost.” He folded his arms, staring at her with his eyes narrowed. “You have many, many faults, Bree Dalton. Almost too many to count. In fact, your faults are like grains of sand on a beach that stretches across the whole wide world...”

“All right, I get it,” she muttered. “You don’t exactly admire me.”

“...but I never thought,” he continued, his eyes glinting, “that you’d be a sore loser.”

Bree stared up at him mutinously. Then, setting her jaw, she turned away and stomped over to the bucket of cold water. She snatched up the scraggly sponge and held it up like a sword.

“Fine,” she snapped. “What do you want me to scrub? The bottom of your Lamborghini? The concrete around the pool? A patch of mud by the garden? I don’t even care. But we both know your house is already
clean!
”

His sensual mouth curved at the edges. Gently, he took the sponge out of her hand and dropped it with a soft splash into the bucket. “You can stop cleaning anytime you want.”

She searched his eyes. “I can?”

He put his hands on her shoulders, looking down at her.

“Come to bed with me,” he said quietly.

Flashes of heat went up and down her body. His hands on her shoulders were heavy, sensual, like points of light. With an intake of breath, she ripped herself away from him.

“Dream on,” she said, tossing her head with every ounce of bravado she possessed.

He shrugged. “Then I’ll have to find some other way to make you useful.”

Bree started to reach for the bucket and sponge, but he stopped her. “No. You are right. Enough cleaning.” He gave a sudden wicked grin. “You will cook for me.”

Her jaw dropped. He must have forgotten the last time she’d cooked for him, taking a romantic date idea from a magazine. It had been romantic, all right—she’d nearly burned the cabin down, and then the firemen had been called. “You can’t be serious.”

Vladimir lifted a dark eyebrow. “Because you’re still a terrible cook?”

She glared at him. “Because you know I would poison you!”

“I know you won’t, because we will share the meal.” He leaned forward and said softly, “Tonight I am craving...something delicious.” She saw the edge of his tongue flick the corner of his sensual lips. “Something sinful.”

Even though he was talking about food, his low voice caused a shiver of awareness down her spine. She swallowed.

“Well, were you thinking chicken noodle soup from a can?” she suggested weakly. “Because I know how to make that.”

“Tempting. But no.” He tilted his head. “A goat cheese soufflé with Provençal herbs.”

Her mouth dropped. “Are you kidding?”

“Try it.” His lips turned up at the corners. “You might like it.”

“I might like to eat it, but I can’t cook it!”

“If you cook it, I will allow you to have some.”

“Generous of you.”

“Of course.” Innocently, he spread his arms wide. “What am I, some kind of heartless brute?”