Alexandr's Cherished Submissive (3 page)

He inwardly winced at her analogy. Evidently, the women he’d bedded here had been talking, not that he should be surprised. Not many women were happy when they discovered he had no interest in them for anything other than sex and friendly companionship. He’d never dated a woman, never saw a need to. He wasn’t ready to settle down, and no woman had interested him for more than a month or two, at most, unless they were fine with just fucking.

A glance showed the line for the bathroom was longer than ever, but he barely paid attention. His focus was on this mysterious American who was resisting him, not something he was used to with a woman. The situation would be amusing if it wasn’t happening to him.

It only made him want her all the more.

Adding a touch of seduction to his gaze, he watched her closely, now only dimly aware of the line for the bathroom growing. “Do you believe everything that is told to you?”

She laughed, the melody of her joy immediately bringing a smile to his face and everyone’s within hearing distance. She might not physically turn heads, but her merriment made her irresistible. It even made him smile, which he rarely did in public. He was sure he’d smiled more during this conversation at a crowded bar than he had in months. If Dimitri could see him right now, he’d be laughing his ass off at how foolish Alex was behaving as he pursued the bartender.

The Novikov brothers didn’t chase women. Women chased them. Or at least they usually did.

Tossing her hair over her shoulder, the warm red highlights glinting beneath the brighter lights behind the bar, she held up her finger to the other bartender indicating she’d only be a minute then turned back to him with an impatient expression making a furrow between her eyebrows. “I’m sure you know you’re amazingly hot for an old guy—”

If he’d been drinking his lager, he would have choked. “Old guy? I am twenty-nine.”

She held up her hands, silver bangles glinting on her slender arms. “Hey, whatever. To a twenty year old that’s like...ancient.”

Had she just called him ancient?

A growl escaped him, but instead of being scared, she laughed again. “Like I said, as good looking as you are, I bet women are throwing their panties at you everywhere you go. So why don’t you bother one of them? I’m not trying to slut-shame you, you do what you have to do, but I don’t like people who break hearts, and I’m not interested in a one-night-stand.”

Instead of acknowledging that women did indeed throw themselves at him everywhere he went and that he broke hearts, he shrugged, deciding silence was the best option—although he was curious as to what ‘slut shaming’ was.

She smirked when he didn’t say anything. “I’ll let you know right now that I have absolutely no time for players. In fact, they disgust me. You, buddy, are barking up the wrong tree. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a job to do.”

With that, she lifted her pert nose and turned, her waist-length hair swishing behind her in a way that reminded him of how a cat would flick its tail, as she stalked away with an irritated twitch of her hips.

Bemused, he watched her huff around the bar for a moment, her stiff movements making her perfect breasts bounce as she pointedly ignored him. His cock twitched again in interest. She was a sassy little thing and would need a firm hand in bed. Might be fun to spend some time with a woman who had some spirit to her instead of his usual companions who indulged his every whim.

Tearing his gaze from her, he turned his attention back to the bathroom where a long line had formed and a guy was knocking on the door, loudly. Abandoning his beer, he signaled for the bouncer to go get Peter.

Alex’s senses were tingling in a way that let him know something was about to happen. His sixth sense had saved his ass more times than he could count, and he instantly fell back on a lifetime of training. As the son of a powerful
Bratva
lord, Alex had spent his entire life immersed in a world where men created their own, often violent and bloody rules. His instincts had been honed to such a fine edge that he could often feel trouble before anything actually happened. It had earned him an almost mythical reputation, and he liked it that way.

Still, he didn’t want any unnecessary attention drawn to Peter Cleary’s pub. Not that the local police would ever do anything. They were paid off by Peter and scared of incurring his ire, but Alex did try to not offend his allies. With them as friendly as they could be considering the circumstances, he’d rather not have Peter pissing and moaning at him about a corpse on his property. The bathroom had no windows, only brick walls, and that drunk motherfucker had not come out of the small room. So, unless Fat Fuck Jake had somehow slithered down the drain, something was wrong.

He brushed aside the man knocking on the door. “Move.”

With that, he kicked the door in and it bounced off something on the floor. It took some force, but he nudged the door open enough to stick his head through and stared. For the first time in a long time, he was surprised. There, lying on the floor, was Jake. Dead. Apparently, either from falling down and hitting his head—there was a large pool of blood around his head and some on the edge of the toilet—or passing out and choking on his own vomit.

Laughter threatened, but Alex needed to blend in, not stick out, and he would definitely stick out if he started chuckling at the sight of a corpse. His wry amusement continued to grow, and he really had to struggle to choke back his mirth. Closing his expression down, he rubbed his neatly trimmed goatee and looked at the hulking bouncer hovering nearby. “I need Peter.”

Before the bouncer could move, Peter, along with two of his brawny enforcers, strode down the hall. The burly, middle-aged man was shirtless, his thickly muscled chest covered with hair as red as the hair on his head and as equally smattered with white. Tattoos spread from shoulder to shoulder and across his upper back in a colorful display of Celtic knot work. When his gaze met Alex’s, the head of the Cleary gang’s solid jaw was set at a no-bullshit angle before he barked out, “Get yer arses back. All a’ya.”

The customers left in spite of their blatant, and in some cases, drunken curiosity, the threat of getting beat bloody a good motivator. When Peter Cleary said move, a person moved.

His pale, freckled face was flushed, and he ran an agitated hand through his dark red, curly hair. “What the fuck, Alex? Mary was suckin’ my dick, and I gotta stop that bliss to come out here and see a fuckin’ bathroom? Do y’know how often that woman is in a mood good enough t’give head?”

Laughing, Alex rubbed his face with both hands. “Open the door.”

Of course, the bodyguards held the door open for Peter, and a second after he looked around the corner, he started laughing as well. When he turned back, Peter shook his head with a disbelieving grin twitching his thick lips. “You lucky asshole. Yer fucking mark did himself in. Unbelievable.”

“What can I say? Lady Luck loves me.”

Snorting back a laugh, Peter shut the door then sighed. “Ain’t that the truth.”

Alex merely chuckled while he sent a text to his father that the job had been done.

After ordering his enforcers to clean up the mess, Peter turned to Alex and clapped him on the shoulder. “Well, now that yer finished, I have something I’d like to discuss with you. A business proposition I think will benefit us all.”

Letting out a tired sigh as the adrenaline slowly drained from his system, Alex followed Peter, texting a few of his men to update them before returning his attention to his surroundings. Together, they made their way down the hall, and when they entered the main area of the pub, most of the crowd avoided looking at them. They passed the bar heading to the stairs that would take them to the second level, and Alex caught the auburn-haired bartender’s eye. She was watching him and Peter with a suspicious frown he wanted to kiss off her lips. Their gazes met, and he swore the room faded until it was just the two of them, bound together by a connection stronger than anything he’d ever felt.

“Who is new bartender? The redhead in purple shirt.”

To his surprise, Peter froze in place and gave Alex a dark, menacing look. “Her name is Jessica, and you’ll do well to stay away from her.”

Peter had never given a shit before if Alex seduced every waitress and bartender in the building, so his aggressive response brought Alex’s attention to razor sharp focus on the other man. “Why?”

“Later.”

Alex followed a silent Peter upstairs, past the offices on the second floor and up to the third floor, which he’d turned into his private residence. The eight thousand square foot space somehow managed to be comfortable and cozy, thanks to Mary’s feminine touch. After nodding to the armed men guarding his home, Peter led Alex into his private office. With the windows looking out over the busy streets of Dublin, Peter’s office was a relaxing space cluttered with the mementos of a man who’d lived a full life. Alex scanned the various awards and certificates of merit lining the walls that Peter had accumulated during his political career.

Alex’s friend sat back with a sigh. “The woman at the bar, that’s Jessica, my niece. Keep your filthy hands off’a her.”

Alex looked away from a framed magazine article featuring a picture of Peter smiling with Prince Charles and stared at his friend in shock. “Your niece? Your sister died long ago, no?”

One of the things that had cemented Peter and Alex’s friendship was that they had both lost their sisters to the violence that saturated their world, but in different ways. While Alex’s mother and half-sister had been assassinated by a rival
Bratva
, Peter’s older sister had fled to America with a member of an Irish gang that was the Cleary’s sworn enemy. For years, Peter had searched for her. Unfortunately, she covered her tracks well, and he’d been unable to find her.

“Much has changed since we spoke last, my friend.”

Peter made his way to Alex with two crystal tumblers, each glass containing a rich amber liquid. As usual, in private he lost a bit of his deep Irish brogue that he used in certain areas of his public life. Peter was a smart man and knew the people loyal to him related better to someone who talked like them. On the flip side of that he could also sound like the highly educated man he was while talking with his fellow politicians.

“Is good or bad change?”

“Both. My private investigator found a misfiled police report about a Jane Doe, later identified as Katie, being found dead of a brain hemorrhage. The second page of the report detailed there was a sixteen-month-old child found with Katie. A girl, who was put into the American foster care system.”

Alex accepted his glass when Peter handed it to him, then took a sip. “When did you find this out?”

“Ten months ago. It took me another few months to find the girl, Jessica. From what we’ve been able to piece together, Katie and that piece o’ shit she ran off with split up not long after they arrived in the United States. He died a few months after Katie in a shootout with the local police, never known’ he’d had a daughter who was almost two years old.”

Alex let out a low sigh as he witnessed Peter struggling to contain his emotions. Men did not cry in front of other men, but even among the monsters he dealt with, the grief over loss of family was understood all too well. With this in mind, Alex looked away, pretending to scan Peter’s cluttered bookshelf as he sipped his drink. “I am sorry for your hardship.”

After a few moments, Peter spoke again, his voice under control now and his emotions locked down tight. “Fortune was smiling on my niece ’cause she’d been adopted by a good, lovin’ family and was raised on a farm in rural America. They adored her, and Jessica never felt anything but loved.”

Thinking of how many children ended up on the street without parents, Alex nodded. “She was very lucky. Must have strong guardian angels.”

Peter raised his glass in a toast then took a drink before answering. “Unfortunately, her adoptive parents died of unrelated illnesses a year or two before I found her. As soon as I had a DNA confirmation of who she was—I didn’t want to disrupt her life if we had the wrong girl—I contacted her, hoping she’d at least hear me out. I didn’t have anything to worry about. Jessica was ecstatic to learn she had blood relatives and I… well, fuck, I felt like I had a piece of Katie back with me. Jessica has her mother’s joy, and when she smiles, it reminds me of the way Katie would smile at me when she was Jessica’s age, right before Katie took off with that sod. Never thought I’d get a chance to see anything that beautiful again.”

Inwardly, Alex sighed over the fact that Jessica was Peter’s niece, which meant Alex wouldn’t get to experience the pleasure of having her slender thighs wrapped around his hips. There was no way in hell his friend would let him near his niece and with good reason. Peter knew about Alex, knew about his reputation with women, and Alex could respect the man’s desire that he stay away from the lovely Jessica.

If he had a niece, he sure as hell wouldn’t want a man nine years older than she, an assassin at that, perusing her. Now he just needed his body to realize she would never happen and move on to another pair of long legs to dream about. Unfortunately, some primitive instinct that couldn’t be ignored shouted that she belonged to him and wouldn’t allow him to put her in the mental ‘hands-off’ box.

He realized Peter had said something and forced himself to pay attention. “What was that?”

“I said she’s a sweet girl with a gentle heart.”

Chuckling, Alex raised his glass to his lips and took a drink. “Do not worry. She already told me I do not have a chance in hell with her. It seems your other waitresses warned her about me.”

Grinning with no small amount of relief, Peter sat back and crossed his arms over his bare chest. “You can’t expect to fuck your way through my staff and have them not talk. Women are bitchy, territorial creatures, and your dick and wallet are big enough that they all piss and moan at each other about who you’re gonna fuck on any given night. If you weren’t so damn handy to have around, I’d have banned you from my pub for putting my girls in a snit.”