The Master (The Game Maker #2)(83)

The flowers had hit my chest, dead center. If I hadn’t caught the bouquet, it would’ve fallen to the ground.

All the girls congratulated me, some more believably than others. (Really, Polly, sour grapes? Here. Take them.) Natalie had hugged me, while Jess had declared herself my wedding coordinator: “Dibs, bitches!”

Máxim had wrapped his arms around me, eyes lively. “How interesting.”

I’d plastered a smile on my face for all of them, never more aware that my life was a lie.

Everything had been going so well until then. On a back bench, I’d sat in Máxim’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.

Máxim 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 . . .

Máxim caught it—because of his height advantage.

Jess bustled me to a chair. “Come on, mamí 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, Máxim 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, Máxim 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 fa?ade. 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, Máxim.”

“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 Máxim 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.