Warrior Alpha (Alpha 6) Read online

  An Alpha Series Novel

  WARRIOR ALPHA

  by

  Carole Mortimer

  USA Today Bestselling Author

  COPYRIGHT

  Copyright © 2015 Carole Mortimer

  Cover Design Copyright © Glass Slipper Designs

  Editor: Linda Ingmanson

  Formatter: Matthew Mortimer

  ISBN: 978-1-910597-11-8 (mobi)

  ISBN: 978-1-910597-12-5 (ePub)

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  All Rights Reserved.

  DEDICATIONS

  Peter

  As Always

  Chapter 1

  The person who had just followed Nikolai into the early morning shadows of the London alley would, in all likelihood, be dead in three more seconds.

  One second.

  To allow Nikolai to bend fluidly and withdraw the knife from the sheath strapped to his ankle.

  Two seconds.

  For him to turn, arm raised.

  Three seconds.

  To allow for accuracy and release—

  Holy fuck!

  Instead of releasing the eight-inch knife, Nikolai’s fingers tightened and maintained a grip about the haft. His breath stilled in his lungs as he stared at the figure he could see standing at the end of the alley.

  Bloody hell, I nearly injured or killed a woman.

  Not that being a woman made her any less deadly. After all, it was said the female of the species was deadlier than the male. The female black widow spider, eating the male after copulating, was a prime example of that.

  And how fucked up was that? Thanks for the sex, father of my future children. Attack. Kill. Yum.

  All that might be true, but as far as Nikolai was aware, he had never killed a woman.

  This particular woman was probably about five eight or nine in height, wearing fitted black jeans and a short black leather jacket over a black sweater. She weighed maybe a hundred and ten to a hundred and twenty pounds. A short cap of blonde hair gleamed in the glow of a streetlight off to the left of the alley, putting half her face in shadow. But the half Nikolai could see was beautiful. Her skin was pale and creamy, light-colored eyes narrowed on him, high cheekbones either side of a pert nose, full and sexy lips, a pointed chin currently raised in challenge.

  Which was when he also noticed that she was holding a gun in her left hand, and it was pointing straight at his heart.

  She met his gaze calmly. “I believe a bullet beats a knife any day? Or early morning,” she added with a rueful glance at the still-darkened sky.

  Nikolai shrugged. “Not when I would still have time to throw the knife before your bullet struck.”

  “Like to test the theory?” She didn’t attempt to hide her derision.

  Not really. As he said, his knife might end up killing her, but she would undoubtedly get off at least one shot before the knife made contact. Which meant, in all likelihood, they would both end up dead.

  Nikolai decided attack was far better than defense. “Who the fuck are you, and why are you following me?”

  “I’m not following you.”

  “Bullshit!” he scoffed. “I made you as soon as I stepped outside the club earlier. You’ve been following me ever since.”

  She seemed unconcerned with that information. “If I’d intended for you not to know I was there, then you wouldn’t have. Put the knife away before coming any closer, Mr. Volkov,” she instructed as he began to stride toward her. “Okay, I’ll put the gun away first,” she drawled as he eyed her own weapon pointedly. “Satisfied?” she taunted once the gun was stashed away in the waistband at the back of her jeans.

  “Not even close.” Even so, Nikolai slid the knife smoothly back into the sheath at his ankle before striding the rest of the distance separating them.

  Five eight, he decided once he was looking down at her, and a hundred and ten pounds. Which was a little on the slender side for her height.

  And what the fuck does her height or weight matter when she’s been following me and then pointed a gun at me just seconds ago!

  Nikolai headed security for all the Markovic family’s business enterprises, as well as being personal bodyguard to Gregori Markovic, patriarch of the Russian contingent of London’s infamous criminal underworld. As such he had left the exclusive members-only Markovic-owned Utopia nightclub at his usual time of four thirty in the morning. Which was a little over ten minutes ago.

  It had taken Nikolai exactly one of those minutes to realize he was being followed, another five minutes to confirm it after deciding to walk back to his apartment rather than drive. As a teenager, he had survived on the streets of Moscow, and then London. Consequently he felt less vulnerable defending himself on foot than he did in the confines of a car, where he could easily be forced off the road by another vehicle.

  He had spent the remaining four minutes walking in the direction of this alley, knowing this particular alley came to a dead end, which made it the perfect place for him to turn and fight.

  He just hadn’t expected the person he was going to fight to be a woman. “I repeat, who are you and why are you following me?”

  “My name is Daisy Redmond.”

  “Like the flower?” An innocuous name—pretty—for a woman who carried a gun hidden in the waistband of her jeans.

  “Like the flower.” She nodded. “And I repeat, I’m not following you.”

  “You were just out for a pleasant stroll, is that it? Came out at four thirty in the morning to enjoy the beautiful scenery?” He grimaced at the litter-strewn alley that smelled distinctly of cat’s pee and the unwashed bodies of the vagrants who often spent the night sleeping here in boxes. Nikolai had personal knowledge of the people sleeping here in boxes, because twenty years ago, he’d had no choice but to sleep here once or twice himself.

  “Hardly.” She wrinkled her pert nose at that obvious smell. “And we need to talk about the leaving-at-four-thirty-in-the-morning thing you have going.” Her tone became brisk, businesslike. “You need to vary your routine, most especially the time you leave Utopia in the mornings. Mix it up a little. You’ve become complacent, fallen into habits that make you far too vulnerable—”

  “Jesus, you’re a fucking bodyguard!” Nikolai took a step back to glare down at her in disgust. “My fucking bodyguard?”

  “I don’t think there will be any fucking involved—”

  “Don’t get cute with me!” His voice was soft and dangerous.

  Well, I handled that well, Daisy acknowledged with a self-derisive shake of her head.

  Although, in all honesty, she wasn’t sure there was a right way to go about telling a man like Nikolai Volkov that he’d had his own personal bodyguard shadowing him for the past three days and this was the first he’d known about it.

  She was aware his surname meant wolf in Russian, and the reverence and/or fear with which people treated him said he more than lived up to the translation. With his pale blond hair, piercing silver-gray eyes, and his lean and powerful physique, he even appeared a little like a wolf.

  Ready to pounce. Or whatever it was that wolves did to bring down their prey.

  The file she’d been given on Nikolai stated he’d been born in Moscow thirty-five years ago, father unknown, his mother dying before his thirteenth birthday. He’d disappeared off the system after that, but it was believed he had lived on the streets before stowing away on a ship to England when he was fifteen. Once in London, he had again lived on the streets for several months.

>   Quite successfully too, by all accounts, until the day he attempted to steal from Dimitri Markovic, the previous head of the powerful Russian family Nikolai now worked for.

  The young Nikolai had been fortunate not to have ended up dead in an alley somewhere. An alley much like this one, in fact.

  But Dimitri must have seen something he liked in the teenage Nikolai, or maybe he knew that a little kindness shown to one so young would breed a lifelong loyalty. Because instead of having the boy killed, he had chosen to take Nikolai into his home and family.

  Dimitri was dead now, had been so for almost a year, and his son Gregori had taken his place as head of the family “business.” If anything, Gregori valued Nikolai even more highly than his father had, not just as the head of all Markovic security, but also as his closest friend.

  “I’m currently your bodyguard, yes,” Daisy confirmed, recognizing that there was a certain irony in the alpha wolf being protected by a woman.

  Pale gray eyes narrowed dangerously. “Working for whom?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t— You’re making it very difficult for me to breathe, let alone answer you, Mr. Volkov,” she managed to choke out past the hand now curved about her windpipe.

  He had pushed her up against the brick wall of the building behind her, the hardness of his body pressing far too intimately—threateningly—against her. Making her totally aware of the heat of that hard body, the smell of his cologne, and the heady smell of musky male that was all Nikolai.

  Daisy had been watching and admiring the predatory yet almost graceful movements of this man’s muscled form for the past few days, not even the perfectly tailored suits he favored succeeding in hiding the power of that body.

  The harsh beauty of his face was now just inches above her own in the moonlight. Those mesmerizing silver eyes. High cheekbones that proclaimed his Russian ancestry. His mouth a hard and yet sensual slash above a square and determined jaw.

  Yes, Daisy had watched and definitely admired. And wanted.

  An unprecedented physical reaction to just being near a certain man.

  The pressure of his hand didn’t lessen in the slightest as those pale eyes glittered down at her. “I asked who you’re working for.”

  Most people would have instinctively reached up and grasped ineffectually at Volkov’s wrist in an effort to dislodge the stricture of his hand about their throat. Daisy wasn’t most people. Nor, no matter what Volkov might have assumed to the contrary, was she a defenseless lamb out of her depth with the wolf.

  It was time for Daisy to demonstrate she was more than capable of acting as this man’s bodyguard. To show him she might have been named after a flower, but she was far from being a shrinking violet.

  What happened next was over in a matter of seconds, as Daisy first kneed Nikolai painfully in the groin, causing him to gasp and loosen his hand about her throat, before her stiffened fingers flashed out and into his left kidney, at which point he released her completely.

  “Never underestimate your opponent, Mr. Volkov.” She watched him as he bent over, wheezing from the dual assault on two of his most vulnerable organs. “If I’d been the attacker you originally thought I was, then you would be dead by now.”

  The fact she was right in no way endeared this woman to Nikolai.

  He was head of Markovic security, for fuck’s sake. Being taken off guard at all was bad enough, but by a woman at least seven inches shorter than he was and who weighed half as much as he did was unacceptable.

  As well as fucking humiliating.

  He drew in a deep breath, ignoring the pain in his balls and kidney as he straightened back up to his full height. “Military or private?”

  “Was military, now private,” she answered him with the same minimal efficiency.

  He grimaced as some of the tension left his body. “Then I’m guessing you work for Grayson Security.”

  “Very good, Mr. Volkov.” She gave an acknowledging and derisive inclination of her head.

  Nikolai knew Lijah Smith, rather than the owner Dair Grayson, had been in charge at the prestigious security company for the past nine months. A man Nikolai had met and clashed with six months ago, when they had both been called in to protect Gregori and the woman who was now his wife. It had been an uneasy alliance at best, and Nikolai could easily imagine Lijah’s amusement now, at Nikolai’s expense, in sending a woman as his bodyguard.

  And what the hell was that all about?

  He gave a shake of his head. “I didn’t ask Lijah for protection.”

  “But your boss did.”

  Gregori.

  Dair Grayson was married to Gregori’s sister, the two of them now with a baby daughter just a few weeks old. Nikolai might head Gregori’s security, but Grayson would be the first person Gregori would turn to if he felt Nikolai was in need of protection.

  Protection from whom, and why, was the question he now wanted an answer to. “Why?”

  “You would have to ask Mr. Markovic that. I’m on a need-to-know basis,” she added as he scowled. “The why of it isn’t something I need to know in order to keep you alive.”

  “A military drone,” he sneered.

  Pale eyes—green?—glittered at his deliberate insult. “If that’s what you choose to think, Mr. Volkov.” Her voice was dismissively bland.

  Nikolai huffed out his frustration with her reply. That frustration added to because he knew he would have behaved in exactly the same way if the roles had been reversed.

  But that didn’t make him feel any less impatient with this situation. It was too late—or too early in the morning—for him to talk to Gregori about this now. The other man had left Utopia hours ago, and was probably already in postcoital sleep with Gaia. He certainly wouldn’t appreciate Nikolai calling and waking him for some hours yet.

  He eyed Daisy Redmond impatiently. “So what happens now? You follow me home and sit outside watching my apartment for the rest of the night?”

  “I follow you home, ensure you’re safely inside, and my associate will sit outside watching your apartment for the rest of the morning,” Daisy corrected lightly. “I’ll go home and grab a couple of hours’ sleep.”

  He raised blond brows. “We could always cut out the middleman. You could spend the night with me at my apartment and grab a couple of hours’ sleep afterwards,” he suggested huskily.

  Daisy stilled, her gaze turning wary, unsure if she had understood him correctly. The predatory glint in Nikolai’s eyes said she had.

  Following this man for these past three days had made her curious about his private life. Mainly because he didn’t seem to have one. Instead, he divided his time between frequenting Utopia, being head of security for the other Markovic business holdings, and performing his duties as personal bodyguard to Gregori Markovic.

  She doubted the present lack of a woman in Nikolai’s life was due to anything other than choice. His appearance, along with that edge of danger he wore like a cloak, meant this man could have his pick of women. Under any other circumstance, Daisy knew she would have been one of those women.

  But acknowledging her attraction to Nikolai, and taking that attraction any further—like spending the night at his apartment with him—was a definite no-no. Not only was it completely unprofessional, but it would also be madness on her part to become personally involved with a man as obviously dangerous as this one. She might have gotten the drop on Nikolai just now, but she knew it was only because he had been too surprised by her gender to take the necessary precautions. He was prewarned now, and the glitter in those pale eyes said he wouldn’t be caught wrong-footed again.

  “Afterwards?” she echoed mockingly.

  “Afterwards.” He gave what really could only be described as a wolfish smile.

  Daisy chose to ignore the sudden leap of her pulse. “You don’t know me, Mr. Volkov, and I don’t know you—”

  “We could spend the morning correcting that oversight.”

  “You also only have my word th
at I am who I say I am,” she continued determinedly. “For all you know, I could be an assassin sent to eliminate you.”

  “I love it when a woman talks dirty to me.” He was suddenly standing way too close again, despite the fact that Daisy hadn’t actually seen him move.

  She took a precautionary step back. “I don’t think so, thank you, Mr. Volkov.”

  “Sure about that?”

  “Very.” Had he seen her reaction to him? Did he know her nipples were hard and her panties wet just from standing this close to him? Probably, came the humiliating answer.

  He shrugged. “Your loss.”

  Daisy had absolutely no doubt that was true.

  At the same time as she knew she would be wise to stay well away from Nikolai on a personal basis.

  Her work for Grayson Security meant she was surrounded by warriors on a daily basis. Hardened men, mainly ex-military. Even so, she had no doubt Nikolai was the warrior of all warriors. A man who had been raised on the streets of Moscow, where there were no rules except that of survival. This man had more than survived, he had emerged as tempered steel. A man who was as comfortable wearing a tailored black evening suit, as he was right now, as he was fighting bare-knuckled in the streets.

  Nikolai wasn’t a man any woman in her right mind should ever consider having a physical fling with.

  Daisy sincerely hoped she was, and continued to remain, in her right mind.

  Despite his lack of female company the past few days and nights, the file Daisy had on this man stated Nikolai Volkov usually changed his women as often as he did the silk sheets on his king-size bed.

  She wasn’t quite sure why the material of his sheets or the size of his bed had been in his file, but it had been there in black-and-white anyway. Maybe as a warning from Lijah?

  It wouldn’t surprise her. Lijah, as was the case with all the men who worked at Grayson Security, was a little overprotective where she was concerned.