Billionaire's Holiday Bride: A Bad Boy Christmas Romance Page 5

  She almost wanted to scream as she and Alexi were ushered into the private elevator that would take them back up to the penthouse. Once the door closed and their privacy was assured she opened her jacket and loosened her scarf, hoping that perhaps a sudden chill would wake her up and that the whole press conference would be nothing but a nightmare.

  “Janice…” Alexi said once they were alone.

  She shoved him as hard as she could. “What the fuck was that?!” she demanded. “I’m sorely tempted to punch you in the face again! Do you know what you’ve done?!”

  He was silent.

  She turned away from him, unable to look at him directly. But instead she found only the reflected infinity of the mirrored walls of the elevator and countless versions of Alexi stared at her. She found it was literally impossible to look away from him.

  “I need to clean up,” he said softly.

  “You’ve done that,” she replied hotly.

  “But I need to keep clean, Janice,” he retorted, almost imploringly. “And I can’t do that if you’re not here.”

  She turned to face him, feeling tears beginning to well up in her eyes. “Alexi… you just told the whole fucking world that you and I are engaged!” She stomped her foot decisively. “We are not engaged! You’re clean and sober and your papa’s happy! That was how you were supposed to get rid of me, remember?”

  “I don’t want to get rid of you now,” he said calmly.

  She shook her head in frustration. “No… no! This can’t happen! We need to go back downstairs right-the-hell-now and you need to tell all those people that we are not engaged!”

  “I can’t do that.”

  Fury boiled up inside of her and she formed a fist and cocked her arm back to throw a punch into the well-groomed face that she had helped shape over the last thirty days. If Alexi turned up tomorrow with a fresh black eye, maybe she could have the ammo she needed to get fired from her job. Maybe she’d get half her promised check… maybe she’d only get a quarter of it… she found she didn’t care. As long as she could get away from this place – away from Alexi – she would feel fine with that.

  Before she could throw her punch, Alexi moved to her with renewed speed and planted his lips upon hers.

  The kiss was sweet… warm… full of fire that dissipated the chill she’d been filling the same way a hot wind sweeps across a desert. She could taste him. She could smell his after shave. She could feel his skin against hers. His arms encircled her, holding her close.

  Unbidden, the fight went out of her.

  As if they had minds of their own, her hands circled his neck, holding him close. She became aware that she wanted to be this close to him. There was something inside of her telling her that she had wanted this for a long time. She found that she only wanted time to stop.

  She got half her wish.

  Alexi reached out and pressed his thumb against the keypad that gave them access to the elevator. He keyed a code and the elevator stopped.

  Without a word he put his lips once more against hers and with a driving force that she suddenly felt powerless against they lightly fell to the hardened floor of the elevator.

  She didn’t try to speak or stop him now. He had been the subject of her whims for the last thirty days. There was something symmetrical about her suddenly becoming powerless to do anything to stop his whims.

  With their reflections mimicking their every move she watched as Alexi rested his weight upon her. His hands quickly sought the hem of her shirt and snaked their way up. He cupped her breasts, squeezing them hard. The feeling was enough to cause her pain, but there was something exciting and enticing about the feeling.

  “More… more…” she whispered.

  Disregarding his new suit he rose up, kneeling before her. His hands found the buckle of her belt and he unzipped her slacks. He pulled them and her panties aside in one swift and lustful move. It was almost harsh, how he did so, but she didn’t want him to stop. She wanted him to keep going. She found herself wanting to see that rough and ragged boy that she had first met again.

  And she wanted him now.

  Alexi hastily undid his pants and pulled them down enough so that his cock was freed from behind the restraining material. His hands once again found her shirt and hefted the material up, allowing him to gaze freely upon her breasts.

  Then he thrust himself inside of her.

  The feeling was suddenly like lightning between her legs. Janice had had lovers before, but there had never been one like this. She had always found some element of excitement and comfort in foreplay. But its absence now was… invigorating.

  “I want this,” he said fiercely as he began to repeatedly thrust in her. “I want this so badly!”

  The power between her legs was tremendous. Janice already felt the tides of her body rising, going from gentle waves to tsunami force in no time flat. She found her hands shooting out, looking for something firmer than air to hold onto. Her hands found the smooth glass walls of the elevator and she braced herself against them, anchoring her body so that she would not move as Alexi’s lust provided more and more power that felt capable of moving mountains.

  He began to grunt and her body responded. She could feel herself becoming wetter as he moved in and out of her. The sound his flesh slapping against hers added the music of their sudden harmony. And to the choir she added her own throat as she began to moan with his movements.

  He was hard… so hard that she could feel the veins in his cock as they rubbed against the walls of her vagina. He began to gyrate his hips as he moved; reminding her of a lap dance that she had once gotten during her college years. He swirled her inside, his cock penetrating to her depths, brushing against the inside of her labia, her mons, her clit…

  He leaned against her, resting the weight of his body on hers. And like a hungry baby his mouth fell over one of her nipples and he sucked at it, sending new batches of lightning into the storm already raging within her. Her hands abandoned their bracing posture and she ran them over his body. Though he was still clothed she could feel the muscles that were hidden underneath. It was like a small torture that she could not touch him as he touched her. Her fingers found his scalp and she ran them through it, destroying his well-combed hair.

  “Harder,” she demanded.

  He obliged.

  He moved his mouth over to her other teat and the thrusts of his hips intensified. The sounds of his grunts also became louder. She feared, for only a moment, that they might be heard and that it was possible that someone might be interested in opening the elevator doors to find them here like this.

  So what? She thought it with a smile that was pleasing. We’re engaged and at least we waited until we were alone. What can they say?

  She wrapped her legs around him, pinning him against her. His body tensed against hers and she could feel the storm inside her swirling to dangerous levels. He had not yet brought her to her full, nor she him, but they were coming close to the point where the storm would break.

  He freed his mouth from her breast and took both her tits in his hands like the joysticks on some kind of a flight craft and massaged them as he continued to move within her. His hands on her bosom, her hands in his hair, they found each other’s control centers. Every twitch of her fingers added vigor and speed to his pelvis. Every squeeze of his palms elicited a delighted moan from her.

  Such was their song and this tiny elevator was their hall.

  “I want you for my wife,” he said, his voice sounding gruff but sincere.

  Her mind felt as though it had been deprived of something vital… perhaps it was blood… or oxygen as her breaths came in short gasps now. But all she was able to do was look up at him as his pelvis grinded against hers.

  “I want you for my wife,” he repeated, sound just as he had before.

  She could see no sign of deception in his face. She had grown accustomed to seeing such in his face. And just as she had known him to be in recent weeks, he was sincere.


  “Come in me,” she said softly. “Make me your wife.”

  He smiled softly at her and though the expression was gentle, his actions were not. Though she wouldn’t have thought it possible, he began to push harder against her.

  The storm inside of her began to grow. She could feel a typhoon stirring inside of her, threatening to swallow her from the inside. Lightning and thunder clapped within her, striking every chord of her body like the strings on a guitar. She could feel every tiny vibration of her body as it collided with his. Though it was a gale inside of her, she found that she wanted nothing more than to be consumed and lost in it.

  She got her wish.

  With a final and loud grunt, Alexi reached his peak.

  She felt the plunge inside of her. It was the warm waters of the ocean converging with the cold waters and with a great wave she felt washed over by warmth that she had never felt before in her life. The storm in her belly was suddenly dwarfed by the feeling that Alexi plunged into her. Her body’s storm was suddenly swallowed by his, like the ripples of a pebble in still waters suddenly consumed by the splash of a boulder.

  Their bodies moistened… tensed… then held.

  The sensation was hard to describe. Janice found after a few heartbeats that she had no desire to try and put into words what had just transpired. It wasn’t physical… it wasn’t chemical… it wasn’t even psychological. It was something that was more than any of these.

  It was the physical feeling of love.

  Chapter 10

  By the time winter was on the wane and the snow began to melt, Janice felt that her life had settled back into a kind of neutral tone. Things weren’t as she had expected they would be, but then again she hadn’t given much thought as to how they would change. Still, the uncertainty of it all was somewhat relieving. Her life had always been about schedules and programs that were closely monitored and adhered to. Without that structure, there was something to be said for spontaneity that she enjoyed.

  She stood naked before their bedroom mirror and gave herself an appraising look. What she saw didn’t surprise her, but at the same time she could hardly recognize herself and she wondered if this was how some of her former clients had felt once she had finished with them.

  Her breasts had swollen, as had her belly. And both were due to the child growing within her. But on the whole, she didn’t think that her body had developed too badly. She was only three months along, after all. There would still be more changes in her future.

  And for the better, she thought happily.

  “You okay?” asked Alexi from behind her.

  She turned and saw him standing in the doorway, trying to adjust his tie and failing.

  She smiled at him and approached him. Even after all of this time together it amused her how he still couldn’t complete so simple a task.

  “I’m fine,” she said, keeping his fingers from doing anything other to his tie.

  He gave her a moment to adjust his tie for him and smiled at her while she worked. When she finished, he bent over and kissed her swelling belly first and then added a second on one of her tender breasts.

  He encircled her with his arms, his hands resting on her bare buttocks. He pressed his forehead against hers. “You know, a thought occurred to me this morning.”

  She smiled teasingly at him. “Something dirty, I hope?” It was an honest response. They still had at least a half an hour before he had to be downstairs to hear the update from his R&D boys. Time enough for a quickie.

  He shook his head. “No… something simple.”

  “Simple?”

  “Yes.” He took a short breath. “I realized that I never thanked you.”

  She waited for him to explain.

  “To get me cleaned up,” he said. “Otherwise I’d…”

  She silenced him with a kiss. She took it as a win that he had even stopped to consider such a thing. It was a good sign that he had other things on his mind and not just business, as his father wanted. Perhaps that was one thing that she had done too well on, but at times like these, she didn’t care.

  She broke the kiss and smiled at him. “Don’t forget to comb your hair. You have to look good.”

  Chosen By The Russian Mafia

  Chapter 1

  “Come on, Alexei, one more job, and then you can leave clean.” The man on the other end of the line said in a heavy Russian accent, making Alexei shake his head in consternation.

  “That’s what you said last time, Sergio. And the time before that. I told you, I’m out.” His own deep voice carried an equally thick accent, although his was slightly more rural. He preferred not to think of his lowly past. Nothing more than another mouth to feed in a family of thirteen, left to fend for himself as his drunk of a father spent most of his time buried in a bottle, and his mother had to turn to less than savory means to support them all.

  The first time he had heard the word Bratva, or the brotherhood as the Russian mafia like to call themselves, Alexei was only seven years old. His mother had gotten in deep, too deep, taking clients in an area controlled by the Bratva, and they weren’t about to let some country prostitute eat into their business.

  They had stormed into their house, killing his father and two of his brothers before his mother could make the deal. Alexei for her life. As the youngest, he would be the easiest to train, to turn into whatever they wanted. They had taken the deal, and Alexei had never seen his family again.

  He pushed the memories away, shoving them deep into the black corners of his mind that he refused to look at. Despite his rough childhood, it had made him the man he was today, and had also given him the means to amass a vast fortune. He had climbed quickly up the ladder in the mafia, mostly due to to his extreme cleverness, innate understanding of business, and pure luck.

  He couldn’t even count the number of times he had been at the right place at the right time, told the right lie, or met the right person, all because of his luck. Just thinking about it had him superstitiously digging the little metal medallion depicting Saint Christopher from beneath his expensive black button down shirt and kissing the back before tucking it safely away.

  The first two million he had made had been the result of a series of desperate gambles that ended up paying off. He had just turned eighteen. Now, a decade later, Alexei had turned those millions into billions. He always took the greatest risk, because those were the ones that paid big. If you play small, you win small, he thought to himself as he toyed with the small glass paperweight on his massive black oak desk.

  Sergio’s rough laughter cut off his rambling thoughts. “You never really get out, Alexei. I know that, you know that. The only difference is that I accept it.”

  “I’ve given the Bratva more than my fair share. How many people have brought in more cash than me, eh?”

  “It’s not about the money, Alexei–.”

  Alexei snorted in derision and disbelief, and Sergio hastily corrected what he was saying.

  “Okay, well, it’s not just about the money. It’s about your…abilities.”

  Alexei couldn’t help but roll his dark blue eyes, even though he knew the other man couldn’t see it. They were a superstitious bunch. And they believed in Alexei’s luck as much as he did. The only problem was, he had gone straight. It had taken almost twenty painful years to dislodge the Mafia’s vicious claws and he really didn’t want to be back under their thumb. It was a very dangerous place to be.

  “Will you at least listen to what the job is before you say no?”

  Alexei sighed, knowing he had no real choice in the matter. It seemed like every time he thought he was finally free, they found a way to reel him back in.

  “Fine, go ahead…” He sighed.

  “Okay, so it goes like this. There’s a politician, who owes some money…”

  Alexei listened with half an ear as Sergio explained the situation, making noises whenever it was appropriate as he picked up the paperweight again, staring sadly at the pi
cture of the woman that was trapped forever inside it. There was only one thing that his luck seemed to always fail him. Love.

  Chloe strode purposely down the cracked sidewalk, her freshly minted security pass gripped tightly in one hand. Her black high heels clicked aggressively as she glanced at her watch, and practically began jogging up the hill. She could see the capitol building now, but she was still a good ten minutes away, and fifteen minutes late for her meeting with senator Shields.

  “Watch out!”

  Chloe grunted as she hit something solid, very solid. And warm. And so deliciously masculine it took her a moment to realize that she had an entire cup of coffee dripping down the front of her cream colored pea coat.

  “Damn it!” She swiped the handful of napkins out of the man’s hand, uselessly dabbing at the dark liquid already staining her jacket.

  “I am so sorry.” He said in a Russian accent so heavy it took her a minute to process his words.

  “No, please, it was my fault. I wasn’t paying attention, and I am so late,” Chloe looked back down at her coat, “and so screwed.” What was she going to do now?

  “Here, take this.” He immediately shrugged out of his thick wool coat, a deep black that made his dark blue eyes look like the ocean. Not that Chloe had ever seen the ocean in person, having grown up in Washington D.C. her whole life, but what she imagined it would be like. Mysterious, fathomless, and ever shifting.

  Before she even realized what he was doing, he had helped her out of her still dripping coat and had her wrapped in his clean, warm one. She took a deep breath, inhaling the dark, masculine smell of him. Chloe took a step back, for the first time really looking at the tall stranger she had plowed into.

  His sharply chiseled features jutted from his face like a mountain hewn by hard winds and bitter cold. It was a strong face, full of character and charm, and sexy as hell, she added to herself. Her own big amber eyes swept over his jet black hair, long, but slicked back, looking like he had run his long fingers through it more than a few times. His lips were full, and quirked into a lopsided smile as he watched her watching him. His dark, ocean blue eyes filled with humor, and some hidden heat that sent an answering flame shooting through her body.