Xander (Billionaire Racers Book 1) (3 page)

My dad suggested I reunite with Xander.

Take him.

Make him
mine
.

He said Xander owed us big time, and that Xander would do it. I think he’s even crazier than usual. You know that story about the frog and the snake? The one where the frog gives the snake a ride across a raging river after extracting a promise from the snake that the snake won’t bite? Yeah.
That
story. I’m the frog, and I can feel Xander’s teeth in my throat already. Our marriage has been a bust for him, and he has to want out.

And while I’m trying to figure out the impossible, how to make Xander protect my family without getting myself killed, I collide with a brick wall. A big, tall, built brick wall with a spectacular dick. I learn the penis information firsthand because my front is plastered against his and there’s nowhere near enough clothing between us. My gaze shoots north even as my drink heads south and toward his shoes.

“You are still trouble,” an amused male voice tells me. “Always, you need rescuing.”

LILY

Fingers
wrap around mine and corded arms pluck the glass away before it can hit the floor. Prison tattoos and gang signs cover my rescuer’s arms, Cyrillic letters spelling out his identity in black ink and a secret code I can’t crack. I have no ink on my body. I speak only baby Russian.

Disaster averted, I look up, intending to thank my white knight, but then all the air gets sucked out of the room and I can’t breathe.
Xander.

He’s still mouthwatering. I still want to lick him from top to bottom. Forget the sugary cocktail he’s holding, he’s sweeter than any tasty treat on display. Instinctively I look behind him. Xander never travels alone. He’s always accompanied by a pair of bodyguards—and usually by one or more girlfriends. As evidenced by the copious photos in the Miami gossip blogs, Xander takes the Costco approach to dating. He likes his women in multipacks—the more, the better. He’s out of my league.

He’s also not moving.

Hard and hotter than hell, my masculine roadblock doesn’t smell like Macy’s menswear either but of something wilder. Citrus and spice, leather and wood, Xander brings the outdoors in with him, and his scent makes my senses sing a wild welcome.

“Fuck me, darling,” he growls and holds the glass out for someone else to take. A waiter, a bodyguard, any warm body with four fingers and a thumb—he simply expects the closest person to do his bidding. Sure enough, a passing waiter spirits the glass away.

Fuck me, darling.
Those three words could be an invitation, a command, a threat. His voice carries the faintest of accents. I know from our marriage application that he was born in Moscow—and that he moved to this country when he was twelve. He’s a U.S. citizen, but he travels back and forth frequently on his own private jet. Other than that, he’s really a stranger I know nothing about.

He stares down at me, his gorgeous, hard face completely unreadable because of course he doesn’t come with an instruction manual. There’s no
Marrying the Mob Boss for Dummies
book on my bookshelf. I shouldn’t have come here. I realize that in a fast, painful rush, my brain finally catching up with my hopes and my fears. It’s a freeway car crash in my head, and I don’t have a seatbelt.
Krysha
. My father taught me this when I was little. The Russian word for roof,
krysha
is so much more than the slate and shingles on top of your house.
Krysha
is the roof over your head
.
It’s your organization, your family, your protection. When I lose my father, I lose mine. I’ve always thought of myself as the walls supporting the roof, but now I realize something new. Sometimes the roof keeps the walls upright.

And sometimes the roof collapses and you die of painful, blunt-force trauma. Seeing Xander face-to-face is a kick to my heart of epic proportions.

“I need to leave,” I blurt out.

“You should not be here,” he agrees, but he still doesn’t move away and he’s blocking my path to the door. One flick of his fingers, and his bodyguards will take me down. I’ve walked into Xander’s world where he makes the rules. Secretly I’ve always thought of him as my hero. Not a caped superhero, not a masked avenger righting my wrongs and definitely not some chivalrous white knight, all hands off as he defends me—but a hero, none the less. He’s my everything. He’s my nothing and that’s exactly what I deserve.

And yet I’ve always wanted more from Xander. I have, from the day he came to my rescue. He’s strong, and I covet that strength almost as much as I lust after the man beneath the suit and the powerful façade. Strip Xander of his wealth and his political power, and he’s still powerful. He has the build of a prizefighter beneath the five-thousand-dollar designer suits he wears so well. If money ever fails him, his fists won’t.

The last time I saw him, before our justice of the peace date and his courtroom showdown, he defended me with those fists. It feels like yesterday, even though it was six years ago. I’d been at a club, dancing with his stepbrother. Daniel was gorgeous, he loved to party, and he’d been the first boy to dare to ask me out. Saying
no
hadn’t even crossed my mind. Three weeks after I first snuck out to meet him, I gave him my virginity. The occasion had been vaguely disappointing, but my Dani promised me it would get better. He’d give me the fireworks, he vowed, and we’d live happily ever after. I was sixteen. I believed every word he said.

He’d snuck me into a club that night, and we’d spent hours dancing. He’d bought me cocktails, and I’d sipped nervously at them, feeling sophisticated and worldly and more than a little buzzed. My hopes and dreams had come crashing down in the wee hours of the morning. First, there had been a disturbance at the door. Armed men, men wearing flak vests and black balaclavas, with machine guns strapped over their chests, had poured into the club. Worse, they’d come straight to our table. Dani owed them money—money he didn’t have. He’d made promises he couldn’t keep. The Kolmenskaia Bratva had decided to foreclose, and that meant they wanted their pound of flesh. From Dani
and
me since I was in his company.

Rough hands had pulled at me, groping and hurting. I’d screamed. I was Ivan Petrov’s daughter. I’d heard the rumors about the illegal trade in girls, and I had no intention of letting these men drag me off with them. But there wasn’t anything I could do to
stop
it. They knew it. I knew it. Dani, bent double as two of the enforcers hammered blows into his stomach, knew it too.

And then Xander had appeared out of the shadows and cue the superhero music. He’d effortlessly, ruthlessly beaten the shit out of those men. Six years later, he’s still every bit as gorgeous, dangerous, and powerful. Cuddling up to him would be like jumping into the lion pit at the zoo—or pitching your tent on the savannah and inviting the king of the jungle in because no one puts Xander Volkov in a cage.

Except me.

Staring at him from across the courtroom while the judge handed down a one-year sentence wasn’t exactly my sixteen-year-old self’s idea of fantasy material, but even the chains and the prison orange couldn’t diminish the sheer, raw power of the man. I’d promised myself I’d make it up to him. That I’d find a way to set him free. That everything would be fine. Eventually.

It went about as well as you’d expect. While other girls were dating, exploring the college scene, I was married and seeing other guys felt wrong. So I waited and waited some more, but Xander never came back. I’ve always been aware of what he was doing. It’s not as if I kept tabs on him, but he’s hard to ignore, especially when you’re a Russian mob princess. He didn’t become a player in our world overnight. He took territory, he built his empire one determined, brutal step at a time. He’s like the barbarian horde poised on the border of Russia, waiting for the right opportunity to invade. He doesn’t play by the family’s rules.

He’d given me back my life. I owe him, and that counts for something. He’s my husband. In name only because we never actually consummated our marriage, and neither of us ever lived together. I’m still one step removed from a virgin because some part of me can’t bear to break the promises we were forced to make to each other.

“Lily.” He lowers his head, his mouth brushing over my ear. And just like that, I’m wet for him. He’s never been interested in me sexually, and that’s to his credit. I was sixteen to his twenty-two, and only a pervert would have taken me to bed. He’d married me because my father and the family honor had demanded it. He’d fixed a problem—not fallen in lust or in love.

“Tell me why you are here,” he demands. That’s another thing about Xander. He’s always in control. He doesn’t ask—he tells. Our shotgun marriage and his subsequent court date are the only times I’ve ever seen him forced to do something he hadn’t wholeheartedly embraced.

“I need a protection,” I whisper. “The Petrovs need your help.”

He stills. He doesn’t back up though, and the sensation of his large body pressed against mine is overwhelming. He’s taller, broader, heavier than me, and his legs push mine backward.

If he refuses, I can find somewhere else to start over—or I can look after my dad, find us another protector, and give our family a weapon to fight with. We’ve got peashooters when our opponents have automatic rifles, and this isn’t kindergarten. People will die, people I’ve known my entire life. And while I can’t like the life, and my fantasy is a life that’s felony-free, I can’t just walk away and let them die either. I know their families and their kids, and they’ve looked after me, raised me, and kept me safe.

Now it’s my turn.

“You want to dance with me?” He ignores my question and drawls a request of his own, but we both know he doesn’t mean it. Xander has never been a dancer.

I love dancing. Love getting lost in the pulsing, vibrating crowd of men and women filling up the dance floor. The music beats at me, echoing in my ears in short, hard bursts of sound. Bodies press together in an overwhelming cocktail of sweat and cologne and alcohol. Arms over their heads, at their sides, wrapped around a partner, bodies shimmying up and down, moving to the music’s beat or to whatever foreign stimulant raced through their bloodstreams.

“No. Can I please talk to you?” I need him to be serious—and I really, really need him to cooperate.

He actually pauses to think about it.

“I have five minutes for you,” he says, and I’ve got alarm bells going off in my head. It’s a problem that he believes our marriage is only worth that small span of time. Five minutes. Three hundred seconds. That’s a blink of the eye.

He steers me outside without waiting for my answer, his hard hand riding the small of my back. I promised myself I wouldn’t let him call the shots, but it appears following is my only option, so I go. The crowd clears a path for him, and I feel their eyes on us. We’re an unlikely pair. Our marriage is still secret, but plenty of people here know I’m a Petrov. They’ll be adding two and two and coming up with four.

And Xander isn’t trying to hide. He looks big, hard, and focused, as if he’s already planning his takeover of the Petrov family. The media sees the hot billionaire playboy, but most of that is an act he puts on. It’s part of the brand he sells. This man is the ruthless businessman who bought half of Miami. Family lines matter in our world, and rumors claim Xander has more than one Russian prince in his bloodlines. He calculates everything, and then uses those odds to his advantage. He doesn’t rush. Just watches, waits, and conquers.

As soon as we’re outside, he tucks me against the wall where it’s shadowy and concealed, and I relax just a little. There’s safety in darkness, and he’s so large that standing next to him is like wearing body armor.

He flicks a glance around, nodding toward the ginormous yacht tied up at the dock. “That is the
Koa
. She is mine.”

Is there a message there for me? Or maybe he’s just making conversation. I suck in a breath, trying not to smell his cologne. I don’t need any more reminders of this man’s hotness. Sure my hormones would like to take him out to play, but I need the kind of man who will take orders from me.

I start my pitch. “We need protection.”

“You think I am getting involved with the other Families over an old man who sent me to prison?” He sounds genuinely curious.

“Yes.” I try that power of attraction thing, put all my hopes and beliefs (and desperation too, although I’m not telling
him
that) into that one word. If I want it to happen badly enough, it should. That’s how life’s supposed to work.

Yeah.

I’m laughing right along with you.

He stares down at me for a long minute. Behind him, the yacht rises and falls with each soft swell of the harbor water. A ten-million-dollar yacht, custom-made for Xander Volkov, who flies boats across the ocean and brings home cups. Behind me, the muted roar of the party spills out of the yacht club, dancers moving to the primitive throb of the bass beat. The lights of the Miami downtown wink down at the marina, like ten-carat stars in Harry Winston’s best.

“Tell me why,” he growls. He leans in, bracing his arm over my head, and for just a minute I drink in the heat and the weight of him. He’s standing between me and the rest of the world—and I like it. I still need to work a
yes
out of him, because even though I can’t see around him, I know what’s out there. The Banda won’t stop until they’ve got what they want.

“We’ve got a family making a move on us. Nothing too serious, not yet, but they’re harassing me. Making threats.”

“You are fucking kidding me?” Tension radiates from Xander’s body, and I can’t tell if he’s angry with me for being in this situation or for not coming to him from the get-go. Or maybe it’s the day, the reason, our still way-too-public position on the dock… I’ve never understood how Xander thinks, and time hasn’t solved that problem for me.