Pinned Down: A Triple Threat Sports Romance (39 page)

Chapter Twenty-Four

Jess

I was dreaming. I knew I was dreaming. Part of my consciousness knew very well that I was still in the back seat of Nikolai’s car, still cruising toward I had no idea where, still in danger. I guessed my brain wanted to escape for a little while.

I dreamed about Grayson. I dreamed we lived in a house on a quiet street. We had nice neighbors, and as I pulled in at the end of a long day, they waved at us. Hell, it was a dream. I made Cindy one of them. She could live next door and come over for dinner.

David was playing out in the backyard with his dogs. We bought him two, since he couldn’t decide at the shelter which one he wanted most. When he saw that I’d come home from work, he ran to me and between him and the two dogs, I was soon lost in the pile. I laughed and kissed him, petted the dogs, asked how his day went. He would tell me all about it, then tell me his daddy was out in the garage
. Of course he is
, I would think, going out to see him. He would spend a lot of time working on his bike out there—sometimes, he would take David out with him to teach him little things about bike repair and how to work on cars. He wanted to show him manly things like that to make up for lost time. My heart would melt when I’d see them working together, side by side.

I was right there in the scene, walking through the door that led to the garage. He had his back to me, working shirtless, bent slightly so I could get a good look at his butt in a pair of jeans. He was a little sweaty, a little dirty. I was wearing a suit, just coming from work. When he turned around, he smiled at me. That gorgeous, sexy, panty-melting smile that had gotten to me from the time we were kids barely old enough to understand the feelings we’d developed for each other.

“Come here,” he said, beckoning. I held myself back.

“You’re all messy,” I said, giggling.

“What, you’re afraid I’ll mess up your work clothes?” He came to me, walking slowly like a cat. Taking his time. Building the anticipation. The breath caught in my throat, just as it always did in that moment before something explosive happened.

He pinned me up against his work table, one hand on either side of me. He smelled like sweat and grease, yet somehow the combination was almost unbearably sexy. It made my knees go a little weak, forced the blood to rush between my legs and leave me dizzy.

“I’ve been waiting for you all day,” he said, slowly leaning in until our mouths were just inches apart. I opened my lips slightly, and he smiled before taking my bottom lip between his teeth.

I hissed, closing my eyes, ripples of pleasure running through me. He took me by the waist, sitting me on the table before his hands slid up my thighs, pushing the skirt up around my hips. I wrapped my legs around him, thrusting my tongue into his mouth, groaning as he fondled me. He pressed his erection against my burning, aching mound and I broke our kiss long enough to gasp for air.

His hands ripped open my blouse, baring the tops of my breasts. He pushed them together, burying his face between them, licking and sucking my skin. I moaned, holding his head fast, my fingers tangling in his golden hair. I threw my head back, moaning softly once he pulled down my bra cups to reveal my tight, taut nipples to his greedy mouth.

All the while, he humped me through our clothes. I raked my nails down his sweaty back, pulling him closer with my legs. Needing release for the burning he’d started in me. I needed him. I reached down, fumbling with his jeans while he pulled my panties off, tossing them aside.

The first thrust made us both freeze, pleasure tearing through us. I leaned back on my hands, letting him rock me on his rigid length. My breasts bounced up and down in time with his thrusts, my legs locked together around his waist. I let my head fall back, eyes closed, mouth open in complete ecstasy as he pushed me higher.

“Yes,” I gasped, sitting up to take him in my arms. We kissed, our tongues wrestling as our bodies moved together. His thrusts were fast and sharp, harder and harder the longer he went. I felt my body clenching all around him, tightening as we moved faster, faster on and on until…

“Grayson!” I bit down on his shoulder, my nails digging into him as my entire body seemed to pulse with pleasure. Wave after wave hitting me, pulling me under. I succumbed gladly, giving myself over to the sweet release. It was so good. It was always so good, every time.

I opened my eyes, remembering where I was. Not with Grayson in our garage. We didn’t even have a garage. I was in the car with Nikolai, and Grayson was far away. He had no idea where I was. He might even have been going in the wrong direction for all I knew.

“What were you dreaming about back there?” Nikolai asked. “You went quiet, and I knew you must have drifted off.”

I looked at the clock on the dash. Only thirty minutes had passed—I was terrified for a minute that I had woken up in another state.

“I wasn’t really dreaming about anything,” I lied. No way I would tell him and let him defile my dream like that.

“Liar. You looked and sounded very happy. You kept sighing, and you had a smile on your face. I bet you were dreaming about your hero,” he said. The way he made it sound, it was something dirty or nasty. I wished I could run the car off the road, into a tree. So what if I died? As long as I took him with me. I wasn’t used to feeling that way about another person, and it was a bit of a shock when I had the thought. Funny what a person will become when somebody drives them to it—no pun intended.

I ignored him, staring out the window. He couldn’t get to me. He couldn’t have my thoughts, my fantasies, no matter how much power he appeared to have over me.

“You never told me whether you’d like to hear the story of why this is happening to you. I think you deserve to know, don’t you? Unless you want to go through all of this with no understanding of what’s brought us all to this state.”

“I thought my silence was answer enough,” I said, glaring at him with my arms crossed. His eyes met mine for a brief moment, and I saw humor in his expression. At least, if he had the eyes of a normal person I would have. There were crinkles in the corners of his eyes, but that was the only thing that gave me the impression of his being human.

“So you don’t want to know? It’s a very interesting story, and we have all the time in the world. I’ve wanted to tell you about it for years. This is a treat for me.”

“I wouldn’t want to deprive you of your treat,” I spat. His eyes narrowed in the mirror.

“You would do well to remember who’s in charge here. You forget yourself too often. Once more, and I might forget to be nice.” The menace in his voice was enough to get me to calm down and change tactics.

“All right. What do you want to tell me?”

He smiled. He’d been waiting for me to give in. “I remember it like it was yesterday,” Nikolai said. His voice had taken on a sort of faraway quality, like he was all ready to tell a big, long tale. I thought I might have been the only person he ever told it to, which might have been why he was so eager to tell it. “My daughter, Nina, coming home to me, telling me she had fallen in love. With a member of a biker gang.”

That was not what I had expected to hear. When had Grayson cheated on me? It was the first thing that came to mind
. Son of a bitch, this is all because he couldn’t keep it in his pants?
If it weren’t Grayson, why would it be so important to tell me?

“She was so in love with him, or so she said. He was everything she ever wanted. Exciting, strong, tough, powerful. Now, to be fair, I thought it might have had something to do with me. I mean, that’s the kind of man I always was. They say women marry their fathers, don’t they?” Nikolai looked at me in the mirror. “Your father must have been a piece of work if you married Grayson.”

“Never mind,” I said. “That’s none of your business. And we’re not talking about me right now.”

“No, we’re talking about me. Where was I? Oh, yes. So Nina tells me this, and needless to say, I wasn’t happy about it. I went back and forth with her. Where had she met this person? Oh, at a party one of her girlfriends took her to. He was there. He had charisma. He attracted her like a fly to honey. She was over the moon. I mean, really. She pulled out every cliché known to man.” Well, I could agree that Grayson was an attractive person. He’d always been charismatic, magnetic, exciting. That was what had attracted me to him, too. I hadn’t been able to help myself. That didn’t mean I didn’t want to kill him more and more with every word Nikolai spoke.

“I tried to talk her out of it. I wanted more for her. I knew men like this, you see. I had known them all my life. I started out working for big mobsters back in Russia, then I moved here when my bosses did. I saw a lot of things a person of my age at that time should never see. Unthinkable things. You wouldn’t want to hear about that.” There was something the two of us could agree upon, at least. “I wanted a good man for my only child. I wanted her to settle down with a wealthy man, a man with good prospects, someone who wouldn’t run her down into the sort of life I was accustomed to. I mean, don’t get me wrong, it benefitted me immensely. I had a lot of money back then, and I have even more now. I never denied her anything, either. Maybe I should have. Maybe then she wouldn’t have been so headstrong. I couldn’t help myself. She was my little girl.”

“So, you see, I was unhappy. He was a Viper, she said. I was even unhappier about that, since the Vipers had been insinuating themselves into my business for years. I’d been fighting to keep them far away from me, but they kept popping up like weeds. I thought it fitting that my daughter should have been in love with one of them—it was ironic, right?”

“Right,” I said, my voice quiet. I thought about Grayson back in the day, always telling me I was the only one for him. Telling me he loved me and would never so much as look at another girl. All the time, he was running around with the daughter of a psychopath. I wondered if it might not be better for him never to catch up with me, because I would kill him myself if I got my hands on him.

“I thought, well, she’s young. This is bound to settle down. She’ll cool off, the way kids do. I always believed Romeo and Juliet would have come to their senses if their parents had only let them get used to each other for a little while. Eventually, they would have seen that it was all a bunch of hormonal nonsense.” He chuckled—the first nearly human chuckle I’d heard out of him. His eyes met mine in the mirror.

“She didn’t cool off, you see. She was more and more convinced she would marry this man. Nothing I said would get through to her. It was like talking to a brick wall. My beautiful girl. She had always been so willing to listen to me and follow my advice. She was my special darling, the light of my life. I was her hero. She didn’t see me as her hero anymore. She started to resent me, to challenge me at every turn. To tell me I had no power over her. Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t that I thought I did. I only wanted to tell her the right way to go, since I had the benefit of age and experience. She wanted to hear none of it. I was stuck, you see. I couldn’t do anything right.”

I nodded, wanting to string him along. As long as he was talking, reminiscing the way he was, he wasn’t threatening me or being creepy. In fact, strange as it was even at the moment, I almost felt sorry for him. I knew what it was like to have a willful child, even if mine was still a little boy. I didn’t know what I would do if I were ever in Nikolai’s situation. What if David brought home a girl I didn’t approve of? What would I say?

“Finally, I told her I wanted to meet this man with whom she had fallen in love. She was thrilled—she thought it meant I accepted him, you know? She thought I would see the light once we had the chance to talk things over. I thought, sure. Why not? I’ll let her think that. I’m not sure what I really wanted to do, to tell you the truth. Kill him, maybe.” My blood ran cold at the thought. He could have killed Grayson ages before I knew about him. Oh, yes, I had plenty of harsh words for my ex-husband. He was in for an earful.

“So she arranged the meeting, and told me her lover would be willing to meet with me. Only he had no intention of ever meeting me, you see. When Nina approached him with the idea, he realized he’d made a big mistake. He had never intended on making this official with her. It was nothing serious for him. All he ever wanted to do was use her, have his fun, and throw her away. Just like all those biker trash do.” His eyes met mine, and I held his gaze. “Doesn’t that bother you? I’ve always wondered. From what I understand, you’re a fairly intelligent person. Don’t you hate knowing that your man was screwing other women? Or that the club he loved so much treated women the way they did?”