The Dark Duet (14 page)

This is what it’s meant to be like. I finally understand the look in Aleksandr’s eyes when he talks about Erin Angelo.

“Don’t leave me now.”

“Never,” I answer, holding her tighter than before.

In the morning, I will tell Alese everything I know about the real way we came together.

CHAPTER 15

~Alese~

My God, he’s a freakin’ beast
.

I roll over, my body still whirling from the tell-tale signs of a night of rough, but fantastic as hell sex. The man is a true master of bondage and freakiness. I think someone must’ve been thinking about Nikolai Belikov when they invented those words.

As I bury my nose and lips in the pillow Nikolai slept on, inhaling his scent as I do so, I find a note lying on the table next to his side. Opening it with eager fingers, I devour his words, the handwriting as majestic as the man who wrote it. The note says he has already headed out to the company. Today we rehearse the last few scenes of Maleficent, and I can already imagine the way Nikolai’s body, that fine specimen of a man I’ve been lucky enough to tame, will move as he dances to the final scene, the part where I’ll play my harp and Nikolai will amaze the audience. An energy fills me and my chest swells with a new feeling, something besides the heart wrenching ache of anxiety.

For the first time in years I’m choosing to breathe, to trust the goodness swimming inside of my heart. For the first time since I can remember, I feel alive and bold; ready to take on the world.

Throwing the sheets over my head, I try to ignore my phone whistling through the air. I know it’s not Nikolai, since he chose to leave me a little note signed with some kind of decorative loop underneath his name, which means the caller must be my grandparents. I can’t wait to tell my grandma, Evangeline, about Nikolai. Ever since they took me in after my parents died in the car accident, my grandma has been worried I’m headed toward life in a nunnery, claiming that must be the reason why I’ve decided to take a job in an Italian repertory, since Italy has always been known as the religion capital of the world. Of course, I see no reason to burden her with any details of how I met Nikolai. I don’t think Grandma will want to hear that my new boyfriend is actually the man who’s training me to become a killer. Oh, and by the way, he makes that Fifty Shades guy seem like a normal dude. Geesh, definitely leave out that part.

With hesitation, I lift my body up out of my bed, thinking maybe I’ll wear a colorful dress today instead of yet another one of my white or black numbers, and head toward the shower, even though I love the scent of sex and Nikolai combined, lingering on my body.

My cell phone rings again. I walk toward the table I always leave it on while sleeping, glance at the screen, and pick it up. It’s my grandparents. I’ve always felt grandpa is the tiniest bit psychic. I answer with an eagerness in my voice that dies out as soon as I hear the panic in his words.

“Alese! Where are you? Please tell us you’re all right! We need to ... please don’t ... the music box! Wait for—” His voice gets cut off by the God awful signal we always experience living in the backwoods of Lafayette, but I also heard Grandma trying to say something from the background. I dial their number again and it goes straight to voicemail, which shouldn’t bother me half as much as it’s doing, since dropped phone calls happen quite often back home.

The damn anxiety pings inside of my chest, which brings on the freaking headache next. Something’s wrong, I know it. What were they trying to say? Grandma calls me all time about something that has set her on edge, but Grandpa never loses his cool in the way I just heard on the phone. I take a quick shower, slither into a pair of jeans, and panic even more after I get my grandparents’ voicemail on both their landline and cell phones. My finger’s poised over the send button again, when there’s a knock at my door, scaring the crap out of me. I reign my breathing back under my control and open the door. A small box sits on the top step, but there’s no delivery boy waiting for me to sign anything. I pick it up and tear into the wrapping, recalling the way my grandpa tried to say something about a box.

Could the thing inside this package be connected to his call?

Ripping into the package that has no label or anything on the outside to identify the sender, I remove the wrappings and find a DVD inside. The words “For Alestasia” are written on top. There’s that name again; the one Nikolai called me last night, the same one he claims was a simple mistake.

Holding my breath and trying to ignore the voices screaming inside my head, telling me to toss the DVD out the window, I kind of glide back into the living room and pop it into the player. Right away, I wish I would’ve listened to the voice that was obviously trying to protect me.

A scene inside of a seedy room fills my screen. I inhale and hold my breath as Nikolai and two naked girls, a blonde and a brunette, commit every act of BDSM on one another the imagination of someone like me could never think of witnessing let alone doing. Whoever made the DVD must’ve known this was his favorite spot, because the one long scene is actually a series of Nikolai sessions rotating between the first two girls and a set of redheaded twins I recognize from the repertory company. The dates at the bottom of the screen indicate these sessions were recently videotaped, which hurts a lot more than I care to admit.

My body begins to tremble, and I’m feeling light-headed from holding my breath. He warned me, told me he wasn’t a monogamous type of guy, but I wasn’t prepared to discover something like this. Guess I should’ve listened.

What did I do to make him react this way?

Is this what he really wants? Can I give this to him?

The front door opens and closes. Footsteps echo through the little foyer leading toward my living room. It’s Nikolai. I can tell. My body responds to the man even when he’s doing something as simple as walking. Part of me wants to turn off the damn DVD, but the other half of me won’t move. The dark girl inside of me, the one who takes over when I become the Ghost, wants to protect me. She wants Nikolai to know that we’re on to him.

By the time the two halves of me reconcile and come together on what we need to do, Nikolai has trudged into the living room, smiling that bright golden grin I’ve been dying to see for so long. However, the smile fades as soon as he takes a good long look at my face.

Well, at least I got the chance to see that smile one last time.

~Nikolai~

Whatever energy I’m feeling right now, this sensation of being full inside my chest, fuels my dance technique as I finish the first round of Maleficent, ignoring Melody Tomczak and the way she keeps trying to get my attention in between each practice segment.

The show has come together. Alese, Crow, and I have managed to either negotiate a deal to either work with or take out four of the five targets Rudolph assigned us to relieve without him showing any indication he knows about my true intentions. Alek is still preoccupied with entertaining Erin back in the States, so I do not have the added burden of keeping him away from me to handle at the moment. However, his mother, Katerina, has threatened to stop by many times. Pushing away the woman who rescued me from a life of degradation has been one of the hardest things I’ve had to do in a long time, but I suspect she knows I’m doing this for her own good since she has complied with my wishes so far.

There’s only one problem now: Alese’s absence. She should’ve been here over an hour ago.

“Call her, Nikolas,” Paolo says as he walks over to where I’m now standing off to the side of the stage. “You know you want to do so.”

“What?” I ask, trying not to look like a lovesick idiot.

That’s right. You are in love, you fool.

Didn’t learn your lesson the first time around, did you?

“The beautiful goddess who has bewitched you,” he answers, raising his eyebrows to emphasize his point.

“I do not know what you mean,” I scoff, forcing myself to turn away from both Paolo and Alese’s empty seat.

“Ah, but I think you’re in love,” he teases. “Lots of women will be disappointed by this news. Luckily, Paolo has a solution. You may send them my way for comfort.”

I turn back to him, grinning. “Love. Never.”

“Say what you will. Deny what you may. However, I can see it.”

“Right. I have an errand to run,” I answer. “See that you keep the Tomczak sisters preoccupied while I’m gone.”

“Certainly. It’s a big job, signore, but you can count on me.” I get a big, knowing grin. Even Paolo has noticed something different about me. I am so fucked.

I drive to Alese’s apartment, silencing my phone so we’re not disturbed for the next few hours. Last night was just a taste of what I have planned for her, and I’m more than anxious to get back to my latest agenda involving Alese’s gloriously sexy body. I ease to a stop outside of her apartment, get out of the car, and head inside. Her door is unlocked, yet another thing I need to remind her not to do. I find her sitting in the floor in her living room, entranced by something on the television screen.

“Are you all right, Alese?” I ask, heading toward her, but stopping as soon as she tenses.

“You mean, Alestasia, right?” she asks in a flat voice without looking at me.

My gaze follows hers toward the screen.
Fuck!
She’s watching a video ... of me and the Tomczak sisters. And the two escorts I hired from a service that specializes in taking care of the needs of fucked up bastards like me. Of course, I should’ve known better than to visit a place like the Extasia. Rudolph Burkenstein owns at least four or five establishments in the seedy parts of Milan. It’s one of the many ways he finances his screwed to hell operation back in Switzerland.

Several things I’m not used to feeling flow through my body, but perhaps the greatest one is the shame of knowing the woman I respect has seen a side of me I never wanted anyone I care about to see.
Now, she’ll leave you. They always do, deservedly so.

We hold gazes a long moment. Finally, Alese says, “We need to talk about this.”

I shrug and stuff my hands in my pocket. “What is there to say? You’ve obviously enjoyed my little freak show. Continue. I’ll even give you some privacy.” I turn and head toward the door, shutting down inside and not giving her a chance to make me feel any worse than I’m already doing.

“Don’t you dare walk away again. Nikolai!”

I ignore her voice, a song already fading inside the wind, and do what I do best... shut down and take back the power I’ve temporarily given to her. She’ll do what they always do at this point, the moment when they discover the prince actually does have a dark and dirty side, destroying whatever fantasy they’ve formed in their minds; they ridicule me, or even worse, they accuse me of being heartless.

I walk outside, a blanket of fog and rain greeting me with cold, prickly fingers and head back to my penthouse.

CHAPTER 16

~Nikolai~

“I warned you. Gash made the terms of this agreement clear, I do believe,” Rudolph says, his fingers in a steeple and his long legs crossed as he sits on the couch across from me. He’s agreed to meet me inside Giuliani’s, a Milanese restaurant run by a man with a past as dark and shady as Burkenstein and Vladimir. The dark red plaster on the walls of the VIP section, a secluded room in back where big names needing privacy rent on a regular basis, makes an already fucked up situation seem ten times worse.

“I’m afraid I didn’t quite understand his words,” I lie. He’s talking about the warning Gash and Sparky gave me the day they broke into my penthouse, the one where they promised me that I would regret getting involved with Alese on any level other than a platonic one.

“This is a business, Nikolas. First and foremost. Ms. Broussard is special. She doesn’t need any ... extraneous stimulations, lest my hard work to condition her be ruined,” he explains as he leans over his plate the waiter just set down and stuffs a fork full of calamari into his mouth, savoring his meal as though he isn’t responsible for my misery.

“Be assured I have not stimulated anything outside of that which was requested of me.”

I get the oily laugh, something between a growl and a chuckle that I hate so much. “Oh, I think you’ve stimulated quite a bit.”

“I was instructed to train, and I did. I do not recall receiving an instruction manual for the process.” The longer I stand here the harder it gets to contain my rage.

“Clever boy. Always the slippery one, weren’t you, Nikolas?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” I hold his gaze. He’s using references to my past misgivings to throw me off.

“Alestasia Broussard is property of the Burkenstein Corporation. That includes all of her assets.” He finishes his calamari, stands, steps toward me, and stares into my face. I don’t fail to catch the meaning behind his words. He wants Alese to himself. I should’ve known. The man’s sexual appetite is just as insatiable as his love for experimenting on people. Anything he can stick his cock into, be it a male, female, or something else altogether, will work for him.