The Master (The Game Maker 2)

Everything had been going so well until then. On a back bench, I'd sat in Maxim's lap, with our fingers intertwined. We'd talked about Rebecca's recent drug use (about four more hours to roll, Becks), and how little I'd had to drink (champagne was dead to me), and how little he'd had to drink ("I'm a wingman. I hear these positions are to be taken seriously"), and how much his brother had relaxed now that Natalie was officially his.

Well, for a while, he'd been relaxed. Yet as the night wore on and Natalie continually teased her groom--with little glances and not-so-secretive touches--it became clear that Aleks was ready to get to the consummation of his marriage.

Now, as he knelt before Natalie to remove her garter, the desire between the two could be measured on a Richter scale. His hands shook with anticipation as he tugged down the creamy lace band.

Maxim and other single men had gathered. The swaggering devil winked at me. If I'd been single with no worries, I probably would've swooned. Now it was everything I could do to smile back.

When Aleks slingshot the garter over his shoulder, I watched it as if it were a Hail Mary pass. Slo-mo . . .

Maxim caught it--because of his height advantage.

Jess bustled me to a chair. "Come on, mami and Maks!" I sat with the bouquet in my lap, and he knelt before me. Everyone crowded around, clapping and laughing.

All too happy to place the garter on me, Maxim appeared very lusty himself.

"Look at that, he's about to get to first base," Jess said. "You won the girl this round, Russian. But you better take care of her. I have a Taser, and I don't know how to use it!"

When he smoothed my dress up my legs, his gaze darkened even more, and his hands began to shake no less than his brother's had. As his touch ascended, Maxim murmured, "Do you think fate's trying to tell us something?"

Heart. In. Throat. I stiffened against him.

He could read me so well, and knew something was up. He secured the lace above my knee, then smoothed down my dress. As would be expected, he smiled at me.

For the first time ever, he'd given me his fake smile. . . .

CHAPTER 33

"Will you please talk to me?" I asked Sevastyan shortly after we took off for Miami.

After we'd made love last night, I'd basically passed out, exhausted from maintaining a happy facade. I awakened briefly in the night and found him at the window, staring out into the dark, seeming to look at nothing. But that muscle had ticked in his jaw, and I could swear he'd looked . . . wounded.

I didn't think he'd slept at all. At the breakfast reception, tension had emanated from him. He'd been distant and stiffly courteous, that fake smile in full force.

"You've hardly spoken to me today, Maxim."

"I have a lot on my mind."

His phone rang, and without a word to me, he answered. I gazed out the jet's window, waiting for another chance for us to talk. One call turned to two, and then to five. I couldn't understand the words, but I had an uneasy feeling he'd been talking about me.

I retired to the cabin, lying down. Instead of making love on this bed again, we stood on opposite sides of a new rift.

My body was still exhausted, and my mind felt sluggish, as if I were shaking off the effects of one of Jess's drugs.

Maybe all this new stimulation had been too much for me. For three years, I'd lived as a social hermit, then I'd been thrust into a crush of new people. I'd gone from broke and scraping pennies to a shopping spree worth half a mil. I'd been abstinent, then glutted with sex. I'd been convinced I might not live to see my thirties--much less remarry--then I'd fallen in love with a man who wanted everything from me.

Confused, I slipped off to sleep. Nightmares of Edward overwhelmed me.

In one, he was covered with blood--mine--creeping closer to me. I stood frozen in place, unable to force my body to run--my only defense. In the background, I heard those ugly, wet sounds Julia had made as she'd strangled on her own blood. Again and again, I struggled to escape, begging Edward to leave me alone, but he kept stalking closer, vowing to me, "I will BUTCHER you! I will cut you into pieces while you live!" My body jolted on the bed. I shot awake, sucking in breaths. Had we just landed? Why hadn't Maxim awakened me?

Once we began taxiing on the runway, I went to the lavatory. I'd never had nightmares about Edward this bad. Had I flown right back to him?

I washed my face, peering into the mirror. The relaxed woman I'd beheld days ago was gone, replaced by the Cat I'd seen for years.

When I rejoined Sevastyan in the cabin, I drew back at his expression. His tension had morphed--into seething anger.

I'd never seen him so furious. "What's happened? What's going on?" He could hardly look at me. That fury was for me?

I was in love with him, and he couldn't look at me.

He shot a vodka, saying nothing. His knuckles were white on the glass, that muscle in his jaw ticking.

In a daze, I followed him off the jet into the limo, though he acted as if he could've left me there on the tarmac.

We hadn't even gotten under way before he'd downed his first shot from the Bentley's bar. Here we were, back in sunny Miami--and it felt like the Arctic in here. He took another call, his tone clipped. We were closing in on the hotel before he hung up the phone.

"Maxim, I don't know what's happened with us, and I need you to explain it to me," I said. The divider was cracked, and Vasili could hear everything, but I didn't care.

"I told you I have a lot on my mind. We'll discuss it later." Everything about his demeanor said: Back off.

"You're putting walls up between us. Please don't. Talk to me."

"Very well." He poured another steep vodka. "Marry me."

"Que?" I couldn't get enough air.

"I want you to marry me. Today."

I was about to throw up. This wasn't happening.

"I'll take that as a yes. We'll go directly back to the airport and fly to Las Vegas." He said something to Vasili, and the man began to slow the car.

To turn around.

I shook my head. "G-go to the hotel."

"Give me a reason."

"I've only known you for two weeks."

"Are you sure there's no other reason?" he demanded.

"Why are you being like this?"

He snapped something to Vasili, and we resumed our course to the hotel.

Sevastyan turned his infuriated gaze to me. "You didn't even consider the possibility of marrying me. Not for the briefest second, did you? Last night, when you caught the bouquet, you looked miserable about it. When I placed that garter on your leg, your body stiffened against me as it never has before."

"Everything was too . . . it was a lot to take in over one weekend. As of Christmas Day, I thought we would be parting on the twenty-eighth."

He gave a bitter laugh. "You've got your claws all in me, and you're looking for the door! You have never even imagined a future with me."

"No, that's not what I meant." How to explain? I'd known I was going to have difficulty revealing my past to him. Now, freaked out and emotional, I could barely find words. "It's just that . . . things are complicated."

"I'll bet they are."

"What does that mean?"

He waved that away. "I just told you I'd marry you. A woman in your position should've been tempted."

"My position." As someone who sold sex.

"But then, the problem with all my wealth is that I come with it!"

This argument had taken me completely off guard. Because I'd lowered my guard with him.

"What the fuck was I thinking? I told you there'd be no one else. That you were with me. I confided things I've never told another soul." The pain in his eyes rocked me. "And I don't even know your real name. I expected things from you I shouldn't. I can't force you to change."

"You want me to change?" I couldn't disguise the hurt in my voice. "How?"

"For instance, when I inform you that I'm a former hobbyist, you might mention to me that you are a former esc

ort. Just a thought."

I rubbed my temples. "I don't understand any of this. I don't know where it's coming from." Maybe he regretted revealing his past. I believed talking to me had eased something in him--but it still would've had to hurt, to leave him raw. Was I getting the backlash from that? "Why are you coming at me like this?"

"You shouldn't have let me believe you were attainable if you aren't. You let me believe you could be won."

"What are you talking about?"

"You lied about that and so many other things. You looked people in the eyes, and the words danced from your tongue. You deceive better than a politician."

My confusion was turning to anger, my foggy mind clearing. "I get your mistrust. I have reasons not to trust others too. But you need to understand something."

He shot his glass. "Can't wait to hear this."

"I have never--from the first sentence I uttered--lied to you."

The fury in his eyes almost had me shrinking back into my seat.