Midnight Alpha Read online

  She didn’t have wild sex with a man she had only known for twenty-four hours, let alone one as unpredictable and powerful as Gregori Markovic.

  Gregori knew the exact moment Gaia came to her senses—not the same senses that had allowed him to suck her nipples and finger-fuck her—and knew before she spoke that she was going to refuse him.

  His cock felt as if it was about to explode, and the wariness in her eyes and sudden pallor of her cheeks told him that for her the moment was over.

  His control was balanced on a knife-edge and she was going to say no to him.

  He closed his eyes to shut out the sight of her as he dragged first one, and then another labored and controlled breath into his starved lungs, desperately trying to come back from that edge, to not behave like the animal she obviously thought he was.

  Except he was, of course. They were all animals, with just a veneer of civilization painted over them. For Gregori, at this particular moment in time, that veneer was extremely thin.

  Damn it, he could still taste her on his lips and tongue, his fingers were still sticky with her cum, and if he opened his eyes he knew she would look just as disheveled as she had seconds ago: her hair a loose tangle, her bra unfastened and pushed aside to reveal her lush breasts tipped with equally large nipples, her pussy visibly red and slick as she straddled his hips, those red curls damp and oh-so-sweet smelling.

  His forced his arms to drop to his sides and his eyes remained closed. “Go,” he rasped in a guttural voice so completely unlike his own.

  “But—”

  “Just go, Gaia. Before I change my mind and decide to fuck you senseless!” At this moment Gregori didn’t feel in control. The opposite: he felt as if he were quietly going out of his mind with lust for this woman.

  He didn’t behave like this. He invited a woman out for dinner, they talked over the meal and wine, went back to her apartment or his, went to bed and fucked until they’d both had enough. Goodnight. Usually goodbye.

  Civilized.

  Nothing about this time with Gaia had been in the least civilized. He hadn’t been able to stop thinking about her since last night, had taken one look at her again tonight and been drawn like that fated bloody moth to the flame. He had barely waited until they were in the privacy of his office before pushing her back against the door, ripping her blouse open and feasting on her breasts, and then he had ripped off her panties and eaten her pussy too.

  This was not the Gregori Markovic people knew. Not the Gregori Markovic he knew. Not the Gregori Markovic he wanted to know. He couldn’t be out of control, damn it. Ever. In his world it could get him or someone else killed.

  “Go, Gaia,” he told her again when she made no effort to move off his thighs. “If you haven’t moved in the next ten seconds,” he warned harshly, “then I’m going to throw you on top of my desk and just take you!”

  Gaia had no doubts that he meant that threat, could see the strain he was under in the thin line of his mouth and the way his skin was stretched tautly over his cheekbones—

  “Five seconds and counting,” he ground out harshly. “Four, three—” He stopped counting as he felt Gaia slide awkwardly off his thighs. “You’re still here, Gaia,” he added softly after those last two second had passed.

  “Because I can’t go anywhere dressed like this!” she protested agitatedly.

  Gregori opened his eyes to look at her and saw she was trying to hold the two sides of her ripped shirt together, and failing miserably. A nerve pulsed in his jaw as he sat forward to remove his jacket before thrusting it at her. “Just go, damn it!”

  Gaia didn’t need to be told again. She quickly slipped her arms into the far-too-big jacket and wrapped it about herself as she hurried to the door. Only for a fresh wave of humiliation to wash over her, as she saw her ripped panties lying on the floor where Gregori had thrown them before burying his face between her thighs.

  She gave a choked sob as she quickly grabbed up that scrap of lace before wrenching the door open to hurry from the room and slam the door behind her.

  Only to come to an abrupt halt as she saw Nikolai Volkov leaning nonchalantly against the opposite wall.

  Had he been standing out here the whole time? Listening to her groans and screams and sobs as she climaxed over and over again?

  “Gregori’s office is soundproof,” he supplied evenly.

  Gaia breathed a sigh of relief, although the way she was dressed, with her ripped panties in her hand, surely told its own story.

  “That jacket’s a nice fashion statement,” Nikolai drawled. “It looks good on you.”

  Could this man read her every thought? “Go to hell, Mr. Volkov,” she spoke the words out loud just to make sure.

  “Too late,” he came back derisively.

  Gaia gave him a searching glance, but as might be expected with such a self-contained man, she could read nothing from his expression. “Tell Mr. Markovic that he’ll need to explain to Rick why I’m going home for the rest of the night.”

  That pale grey gaze moved slowly from her feet to the tangle of her hair. “Are you expecting him to join you? Gregori I mean, not Rick,” he added mockingly.

  “Absolutely not,” she denied emphatically. “I just think he should be the one to explain to his bar manager why one of his staff feels unable to work the rest of her shift.”

  Nikolai gave a slow, wolfish smile. “Are you sure you want Gregori to do that?”

  Gaia felt the anger building up inside her—way, way too late, when it should have been Gregori she was angry with. “I very much doubt that he is any more eager than I am to tell Rick the real reason I have to go home.”

  He shrugged. “He isn’t in the habit of explaining himself.” All of his humor, at Gaia’s expense, evaporated now. “To anyone,” he added softly.

  Gaia’s chin rose. “Then that’s his problem, not mine.” She turned on her heel—those bloody four-inch heels—and continued walking, totally aware of Nikolai watching her as she ignored the open elevator doors and turned the corner for the stairs instead: there was no way she wanted to run into any of the nightclub staff and possibly be asked for an explanation as to why she was wearing a man’s evening jacket over her ripped clothes.

  A jacket that still carried Gregori’s warmth and the seductive smell of his body—

  God, she wanted out of this jacket, out of this nightclub, and far away from the scene of her total humiliation.

  “Think she’ll come back tomorrow night?” Nikolai questioned lightly as he strolled into Gregori’s office seconds later.

  Gregori was still seated behind his desk, although he had removed the unused condom and disposed of it before straightening his clothes. He now sat unmoving, silent, still shocked by what had happened just minutes ago in this room with Gaia Miller.

  Most of which Nikolai seemed to have guessed.

  Possibly based on their shared past. Even so, Gregori knew he had never been as wild and out of control as he had been tonight.

  So what was it about Gaia Miller in particular that had caused him to lose it so monumentally?

  It couldn’t just be that lush mouth and figure. Or even those damned enticing freckles.

  He wasn’t even attracted to curvy women, let alone freckles.

  He was if they were on Gaia Miller.

  He was more than attracted, he acknowledged; she was fast becoming an obsession.

  Here, in this very room, just minutes ago, his control had been completely shattered by his need, his hunger to fuck her, to fuck them both into oblivion.

  It was a serious—dangerous—chink in his armor. And not one he could afford with Ivan Orlov prowling about trying to find proof that Gregori had ordered the hit on the other man’s son. Sergei had deserved to die for what he had done to Gregori’s sister, and Gregori didn’t feel a moment’s regret that someone had shot the bastard before dumping his body in the Hudson.

  He had already extracted his own revenge in a much more subtle way, by demand
ing that Orlov disown his son, a sentence worse than death among the families. He certainly hadn’t ordered the kill.

  The fact that Orlov believed he had, and was causing unrest with the other families with his accusations, was his only concern.

  He simply didn’t have any room in his life at present for a woman. Especially one like Gaia Miller. Which meant only one thing.

  He straightened. “Take Miss Miller home, Nikolai, see that she’s paid three months wages, and that she understands her employment at Utopia is at an end.”

  “She already left. That’s what I came in here to tell you,” Nikolai frowned as Gregori glared at him fiercely.

  “She left?”

  “Yes.”

  “And how is she going to get home?”

  Nikolai shrugged. “The same way she always goes home, I expect.”

  “Which is?”

  “From what I found out about her, she usually walks—”

  “Fuck!” Gregori stood up abruptly, body tense. “She can’t just walk through London at two o’clock in the morning. She is without a doubt the most irritating, infuriating—”

  “If you’re going through the casino you should take my jacket,” Nikolai offered. “You seem to have…misplaced yours,” he added pointedly.

  “Along with my wallet,” Gregori realized belatedly. “Damn it to hell!” He slapped the flat of his hand violently down on the desktop.

  “Want me to go after her?”

  “No.” He thought quickly. “Keep your jacket and go downstairs, tell Rick that Miss Miller isn’t feeling well and had to go home. I’ll go down and out the back way and find her,” he added grimly. “I’ll go in my own car.”

  “Take Jerome with you,” Nikolai called out sharply as Gregori strode impatiently to the door.

  It was what Gregori should do, what he needed to do, he just didn’t want any witnesses to his next conversation with Gaia Miller.

  Chapter 6

  “I said get in the car, Miss Miller.”

  Gaia’s answer to Gregori’s impatiently repeated instruction was to increase her pace. Not that she would have stood any chance of out-walking or even out-running the powerful black car crawling along the road beside her.

  It looked like a make of an expensive sports car. She’d lived in London her whole life, where learning to drive had never been a priority, so she really didn’t know a lot about the make and model of cars. But it was exactly the sort of car she would have expected Gregori to drive: sleek, black, with tinted windows that didn’t allow onlookers to see inside the vehicle.

  Quite why he had decided to follow her she had no idea.

  In fact, she could think of only one reason for it, and that was to carry on where they had left off, and that really, really wasn’t going to happen.

  As it was, her panties had been too ripped for her to be able to wear them, and her fitted low-rise denims were chaffing in all the wrong places, causing even more discomfort to her still-sensitized flesh.

  When the car had first slowed and then kept pace with her, she’d thought she was being stalked. When the electrically operated window on the passenger side of the car had lowered, and she’d been able to see who was sitting behind the steering wheel, she’d known she was being stalked. By Gregori Markovic, of all people.

  “Go away!” She turned to glare at him. “I have nothing more I want to say to you right now.”

  “What if I have something I want to say to you?”

  She turned away, jaw set stubbornly. “I’m not interested in you or anything you might have to say.”

  Gregori would have liked to think he was over the madness of his desire for this woman, but if anything Gaia looked sexier than ever to him. Her hair was still loose about her shoulders, and she was wearing a pair of snug-fitting jeans and a cobalt blue sweater that clung to her shapely curves. Something his rapidly hardening cock appreciated even if he didn’t.

  He gave a resigned sigh at that physical reaction. That physical reaction was one of the things he hadn’t wanted Jerome to witness about this meeting with Gaia, which was why he hadn’t taken Nikolai’s advice and brought the other security guard with him. Besides which, there was room for only two people in his car. “What did you do with my jacket?”

  Gaia came to an abrupt halt beneath a street light, hands on her hips as she glared across the distance separating them. “Is that the reason you followed me? Because you thought I’d stolen your damned jacket? Don’t bother to answer that.” She threw her hands up in disgust. “I left your jacket in the staff room, along with my ripped shirt,” she added challengingly. “Who’s the woman in the photograph in your wallet, Gregori? Is she the woman you were cheating on tonight?” She eyed him scornfully.

  Gregori had brought the car to a halt when Gaia stopped walking, and he now rested his head on the backrest and closed his eyes, counting to ten as he sought desperately for that inner calm that always seemed to desert him when he was around this particular woman.

  Unfortunately, Gaia was still glaring at him with those gold-colored eyes when he reopened his own and looked at her, her head tilted at a challenging angle.

  His mouth tightened. “The woman in the photograph is my sister Katya.”

  She seemed to deflate slightly. “Oh.”

  “Yes, oh,” he drawled. “You remind me of her,” he realized quizzically.

  Her eyes widened incredulously. “I remind you of your sister?”

  He nodded, a mocking smile playing about his lips. “She never does what she’s told either! In fact,” he continued conversationally as Gaia bristled indignantly, “I have reason to believe her husband spanks her bare bottom on a regular basis because of that lack of obedience.” And right now Gregori knew he would really have enjoyed doing the same thing to Gaia Miller.

  Whereas she looked absolutely outraged. “That’s disgusting!”

  Gregori drew in a sharp breath. “Katya’s reckless behavior could get her killed.”

  “Whereas I’m sure mine is just annoying— I can’t believe you allow your brother-in-law to beat your own sister!” She gave an incredulous shake of her head.

  “He spanks her bare bottom,” he corrected dryly, “and from the groans and screams that follow I think she must like it.” He was openly grinning as Gaia now looked discomforted rather than outraged.

  “I— But—” The color blazing in her cheeks almost matched the red of her hair.

  “Have you ever tried it?” he prompted curiously, although he had already guessed from her reaction that she hadn’t. “Thought about it, at least?”

  “Have you?”

  The blush in her cheeks that accompanied her defensive response told him she had thought about it. He wondered if it was before or after the two of them met…

  His eyes narrowed. “I’m seriously thinking about it right now, in fact.”

  Her eyes widened. “If that ‘serious thinking’ is in regard to me then I’d advise you to think again.”

  Gregori didn’t think it was wise for him to go there either. But not for the same reason Gaia did. If he had Gaia over his knee, bare-assed or otherwise, then he didn’t believe he would be able to stop there.

  His sigh was weary this time. “Will you just get in the car so I can drive you the rest of the way to your home? Where we’ll say goodnight—politely—and then I’ll be on my way.”

  “I’m not getting in a car with a man who thought I stole his wallet!”

  Had he thought that? Or had he just used that as an excuse to see Gaia again, his earlier caution, his decision not to be alone with her again, be damned?

  It was true that he’d felt more emotion, more everything since finding Gaia Miller under his desk the night before. And he had no idea why. She was outspoken, totally lacking in sophistication, made no pretense of playing the games and machinations he was used to from other women.

  She was also so physically responsive she made his blood boil rather than simmer!

  Gregori re
cognized it was a dangerous combination for a man whose whole life had to be about control. In business. At Utopia. Even in his home. He was The Markovic now, and the rest of his family looked to him for leadership.

  Ivan Orlov had become an outside threat to that authority, and Gaia Miller was fast becoming an internal one.

  “I did not believe you had taken the wallet intentionally,” he answered her accusation stiltedly.

  “It sounded that way to me!”

  “I cannot help what it sounded like— Oh damn it to hell!” Gregori lost all patience with her stubborn refusal to get in the car, and put the car in park before thrusting the door open and climbing out onto the road before striding over to where she still stood beneath the streetlight.

  Gaia took a wary step back as Gregori powered across the pavement towards her, his eyes glittering darkly with his impatience, mouth thinned, square jaw clenched, his shoulders incredibly wide in that pristine white silk shirt.

  And yet Gaia didn’t feel in the least frightened of him. She should have, but she didn’t.

  This man wielded more power in London than the government and the monarchy combined, in fact, the Markovic and Montgomery families owned the city.

  And Gaia had obviously just seriously pissed him off!

  Well that was just too bad, because he had seriously pissed her off too. “I’m not getting in that car with you,” she repeated flatly.

  “It isn’t safe for a woman to walk the streets alone at two o’clock in the morning,” he snapped his impatience.

  “I’ve been doing what I want, going where I want, when I want, for the past six years without any assistance from you, thank you very much!”

  “I cannot help what you have done in the past, tonight you are my responsibility—”

  “I’m not anyone’s responsibility,” Gaia cut in derisively. “As I said, I’ve been on my own a long time, Gregori, I don’t need anyone watching out for me. Least of all you.” She may now be ninety-nine percent certain that Gregori hadn’t been Angela’s lover, but that didn’t mean he didn’t know who the man was. Or that he wasn’t helping to hide the fact that Angela had been murdered.