Behind the Palace Walls (18 page)

“You are my wife,” he ground out. “Of course I care.”

She snorted. “Really? And here I’d thought I was simply your prisoner. Or is this how wives are treated in Russia?”

He hadn’t expected her anger, hadn’t expected her to challenge him. It surprised him, fueled the fire in his veins. He hauled her closer, his temper on a gossamer string. “We are leaving now,” he growled. “And you will never set foot in this house again.”

A flash of discomfort crossed her features. “You’re holding me too tight. You’ll leave bruises.”

He immediately released her. The last thing he wanted to do was hurt her. He took a step back, raked a hand through his hair. He’d barely spent three minutes in her company and already she made him lose control.

But seeing her with Petrov had made him crazy. She was too good for a snake like Yevgeny Petrov.

Not only that, but she was also his wife. Pregnant with his child. His gaze slipped to her belly, but she looked the same as she had nearly three weeks ago.

But when he met her eyes again, he amended the thought. She did not look the same. She looked…elegant. Beautiful and ethereal—and brimming with temper.

He didn’t like her this way.

Or, he did like it, but he didn’t like everyone else seeing what he saw. His Paige wore dull suits and glasses. This Paige was gowned in pure white, like a virgin or an angel. The silk skimmed her curves like water flowing over a creek bed. Her dark hair was pinned up, showing the graceful curvature of her neck. He recognized, with a flash of surprise, the Voronov diamonds at her throat. The tiara she wore had once been his great-great-grandmother’s.

His body throbbed with heat and desire. He wanted to sweep her up and take her from this place right now.

“Where are your glasses?” he demanded.

She looked at him like he’d lost his mind. Which, he feared, he had.

“I’m wearing contacts. Are you going to tell me what you’re doing here, Alexei, and why you’re acting so bossy?”

He took his jacket off and wrapped it around her, belatedly remembering that she’d been cold. He’d stood in the entry and watched her with Yevgeny for several minutes before he’d interrupted. He didn’t know why, except that maybe he’d wanted to see how she would react. Now, he felt small and petty for having done so. Paige had been innocent when he’d made love to her, and though she’d harbored a crush on Chad Russell, she’d never acted upon it.

But he’d stood there, watching Petrov, who was more like Chad in type than he was, and wondering what she would do if the man tried to kiss her. Except that he’d been unable to let it go that far.

“I could ask the same of you.”

She blinked. “Without the bossy part, I assume. And I was invited.”

“So was I.”

“Do you mean you didn’t know I would be here tonight?”

“I knew,” he clipped out. Because Mariya had called to inform him of the fact. And he’d raced from Moscow because he could not stay away. “But I want to know why you came.”

She pulled his jacket around her body, covering the dress. “Because I’m bored, Alexei, and tired of being alone. Because someone invited me to a party, and I wanted to be out among people, where there was laughter and music and conversation. I married you for our baby and for my sister’s future, but I didn’t agree to be your prisoner.”

An erotic image of her bound to his bed with silken ropes flashed into his mind.

“You are not a prisoner,” he said.

She snorted. “No, but I might as well be. If I’d known we weren’t going to make a life together for the sake of our baby, I could have stayed in Texas and you could just visit whenever you found yourself passing through.”

“Your life is here now. With me.”

She stomped her foot. He’d noticed she often did so when aggravated. For some reason, he found it amusing. But he did not dare to smile now that she was bristling like a cat.

“But my life isn’t with you! It’s in your palace, where everyone is so cold and formal and no one talks to me like I’m a normal person!” She slapped a hand against her chest. “But I am a normal person, Alexei. I’m not a princess, not an exalted being—I’m just Paige Barnes from Atkinsville, Texas, and I don’t know how to be anyone else!”

He reached for her hand. He’d been handling this badly, and it was time to regroup.

She snatched it away and crossed her arms beneath her breasts. The movement lifted the creamy swells, drew his gaze. He wanted to touch her, wanted to strip her and explore every last inch of her glorious skin.

“You are Princess Paige Voronova, and I don’t want you to be anyone else,” he said.

Her eyes glittered. “That’s not how it looks from where I’m standing,” she said, her voice almost a whisper.

Alexei sensed a softening in her and reached for her again. This time she did not resist as he pulled her gently closer. He tipped her chin up. He had to kiss her. It had been too long, and he was suddenly dying to do so. Dying to see if the flame inside him whipped higher, or if it was all his imagination.

He lowered his head slowly, waiting to see what she would do. For a moment, he thought she would reject him, but then her eyes closed and her mouth parted.

A fierce surge of possession went through him. He hadn’t expected her to surrender. The gesture stunned him, humbled him. He did not deserve her surrender, but he would not reject it. Not this time.

He hovered above her mouth, not kissing her just yet, but letting his gaze brush over the cream of her skin, the long sweep of her lashes where they fanned against her cheeks, before finally settling on the lush pink of her lips.

She was in that moment the most desirable woman he’d ever known.

Her eyes fluttered open in question, but before she could speak and puncture the wonder of it, he crushed his mouth down on hers. He had not kissed her since the night he’d made love to her, and the moment their tongues met, he wondered why in God’s name not.

She clutched the lapels of his tuxedo, opened herself to him while he plundered the depths of her lush mouth. Alexei surrendered to the feeling. He was through fighting her pull on him. It was ridiculous to do so when he couldn’t even imagine touching another woman. She was a fever in his blood that would not be abated through deprivation.

Tonight, he was taking her to his bed and to hell with anything else.

Paige hardly recognized the man who hurried her to the waiting limo and climbed in beside her. With a sharp command to the driver, he hit the button for the privacy glass before turning to her.

Her heart raced, but whether it was from the look in his eyes or the way he’d kissed her, she wasn’t certain.

“I want you,” he said as he pushed her back on the long, plush seat and spread his body over hers. “It has been too long.”

Paige swallowed as the hard lines of his body pressed into her soft curves. She ached with heat and need, and though part of her gibbered that she shouldn’t fall into his arms so easily, she knew she was ultimately going to do so.

His lips found the tender skin of her neck, and she sighed helplessly. How could she reject this pleasure?

There was something about this man, something about the way she felt when he touched her, that she could not deny. He turned her inside out, made her skin seem too tight and thin to contain what she felt for him.

Was this what it felt like to be in love?

Love. The word cracked in her brain like thunder over the Gulf of Mexico. How many times had she cowered from the power of those sonorous blasts as a child? She wanted to cower now, to hide her head in the sand and make the noise go away.

Love.

She could not love him. She didn’t know him well enough, even if her heart insisted that she knew everything she needed to know. He was driven and strong and he felt things deeply. And he’d made her his wife because he would never abandon his child.

But there was still the matter of his deception. He’d set out to seduce her with a goal in mind. He’d not actually asked her for information that night, but she told herself it was because he’d learned what he needed during his endless phone calls instead.

“You are thinking about something,” he murmured against her cheek.

It surprised her that he knew. “Yes.”

“Tell me what it is.”

“I’m wondering why you’re here.”

“I’m here because you are my wife.”

She settled her palm on his cheek because she could not help but do so. He turned into her hand, kissed her skin. “I want to believe that,” she said.

“Then believe it.”

Her pulse throbbed in her throat, her temples. “I can’t.”

His gaze clouded. “What is this all about, Paige?”

“What’s it about? How can you ask me that? You know what it’s about!”

He sat up with a sigh. She scrambled into a sitting position. Part of her was cursing herself for opening her mouth, and another part was urging her on.

“I wish to make love to you, and you wish to talk.” He shoved his fingers through his hair. “Yet I suppose I deserve it.”

“I haven’t heard from you in three weeks,” she said. “And now you’re here, kissing me and scrambling my brain—”

“I scramble your brain?” He looked supremely satisfied.

She folded her arms as if to shield herself. “You know you do. If you didn’t, I doubt we’d be here now. I would not be pregnant, and you wouldn’t have had to marry me.”

He was moving toward her again, sliding her back against the seat once more. “I am liking this idea that I make you forget yourself,” he purred.

She put her hands against his shoulders, though she did not push him away. “You do, and now you’re making me forget that I’m upset with you. You left me all alone in a strange country with no friends, not to mention dragging me from my home in the first place. And you tried to seduce information out of me.”

He kissed her throat. “I did not try to seduce information out of you,” he murmured. “I intended to do so, but I forgot all about it in my desire to bed you.”

Her eyes closed and she bit back a moan. Concentrate. “Is that supposed to make me feel better?”

“I don’t see why not.” He flexed his hips against her, his glorious hardness pressing into her sensitive core. “This does not lie, maya krasavitsa. I wanted you then and I want you now. But I am sorry I hurt you.”

“Are you really?”

He lifted his head and gazed down at her. The expression on his face was intense, solemn. “Da, I am. I should have never attempted to use your connection to Chad.”

She couldn’t say why precisely, but she believed him. She simply knew it in her soul that he meant what he said. Her heart swelled until she hurt from the intensity. “Thank you. It means a lot to hear you say it.”

“I am not perfect, Paige, but I admit when I am wrong.”

He lowered his head to kiss her again, but Paige braced a hand against his chest. “One more thing.”

One eyebrow arched in question.

Paige swallowed. But she would not be stopped. She deserved to know. “I want to know what your relationship with the countess is.”

He answered without hesitation. “She was my mistress very briefly, and that was quite some time ago.”

“You were not with her when we were first together?”

“No.”

“She said she saw you in Moscow recently. You told her about me.”

He grinned, and her heart flipped. “And you would prefer I kept you a secret?”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“Countess Kozlova is a vain, shallow woman,” he said. “She means nothing at all to me, and never has. Does this satisfy you?”

“I’m not sure,” she said. “How do I know you’re telling me the truth?”

He looked suddenly very serious. “Because the truth, Paige, is that I have not been with another woman since the night I was with you.”

She was stunned into temporary speechlessness. “But—but…I saw you. That actress—”

He flexed his hips and sent a current of sensation arcing through her body. “She was quite disappointed, I assure you.”

He lowered his head, his lips touching hers gently, a light skimming of flesh against flesh. “I have been unable to think of anything but that night we shared, the night we created a baby,” he murmured. “There has been no one but you since that night.”

Tears pressed against the backs of her eyes. It was so close to what she wanted to hear from him, and yet not close enough. But how could she reject him now? How could she say no when this was a beginning? It was possible, wasn’t it, that they could build a relationship together if only they tried?

Suddenly she wanted more, wanted to feel if he was real and this moment not simply a figment of her imagination. Would she wake soon, hot and throbbing and disappointed?

She wasn’t sure who deepened the kiss first, but it soon turned erotic, sizzling, a meeting of lips and tongues and teeth that was so deep and thorough Paige thought she might combust at any moment. And then his hand skimmed down her silk-clad form until he reached her ankle.

He caught her hem, inched her dress up, his fingers sliding over her calf, along the inside of her knee, her thigh. Paige whimpered as his thumb brushed across the silk of her panties. Sparks of sensation ignited in her belly as moisture pooled between her thighs.