Valentin Jealous Read online

  Contents

  VALENTIN

  Read all of the Bad Russians

  Valentin is passionate, possessive, and jealous

  ©

  Join Alice’s Readers’ Group

  Dancing Her

  Chapter 1 Him

  Chapter 2 Her

  Chapter 3 Her

  Chapter 4 Him

  Chapter 5 Him

  Chapter 6 Her

  Chapter 7 Her

  Chapter 8 Him

  Chapter 9 Her

  Chapter 10 Him

  Chapter 11 Her

  Chapter 12 Her

  Chapter 13 him

  Chapter 14 Her

  Chapter 15 him

  Chapter 16 Her

  Chapter 17 him

  Chapter 18 Her

  Epilogue Her

  Epilogue Him

  READ ALL OF

  THE BAD RUSSIAN SERIES

  Alexandr : Obsessed

  Arkady Possessive

  Yevgeni Protector

  Nikita Demands

  Mischa Dominant

  Nikolai Powerful

  Dimitri Driven

  Leonid Unstoppable

  Konstantin Urgent

  Valentin Jealous

  Anatoly Ruthless

  Valentin is passionate, possessive, and jealous

  When the older Russian man’s attention fixes on a young American girl, nothing can stand in his way.

  I love how she dances, I love how she eats.

  She drives me insane, but I can’t get enough.

  She has to be mine, completely and in every way.

  This steamy, fast and sizzling hot, insta-love romance has pent-up passion and fulfillment of raw, surging need, enough to start a forest fire. There’s no cheating and a Happy Ever After Ending guaranteed to leave you breathless and drenched.

  © Alice May Ball 2020

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner.

  Any resemblance to any persons, living or dead, or to any actual events is purely coincidental.

  All the people portrayed in this story are over the age of eighteen, and entirely imaginary. If you think that you know some of them, or that you may be one of them, then you should consider writing fiction yourself.

  Cover Design by Signs of Desire for TzR Publishing

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  Dancing

  Her

  DANCING, SPINNING FREE, WATCHING myself in the mirror, I love it. I love feeling the music rush and pulse through me, lift me and carry me. Turn me and twirl me around. Bend me and play me, sweeping me up off the floor. I’m so glad no one else can see me now, to watch and laugh at how ridiculous I look. But these few moments first thing in the morning, this time belongs to me.

  It’s the opposite of how I feel whenever anyone else can see me. In a moment, I’ll put on my big, loose clothes, bury myself away again, hide myself before I go out in public.

  But for now, I just lose myself to dance.

  Daddy wouldn’t like it.

  Chapter 1

  Him

  WHEN SHE STEPS INTO the room, it’s like time stops for an instant. Her eyes burn with spirit and natural intelligence, but her movements are reserved. Careful.

  How can she be shy, with a face like that, a body like that? With eyes like those? A woman as beautiful as she is, she should open herself up, feel her power, feel herself free to own the world.

  I must have her. I will take her. Claim her and make her mine.

  She will be as free as a bird. And still she will belong to me.

  Chapter 2

  Her

  THE SHOCK COMES AS soon as I step into the economics classroom. I nod my usual little smiles around the room, and I see a new student at the back corner. A powerful, older man.

  He’s big. Dark and broody. Concentrating, writing in a notebook. An actual book. With a pen. His finger rests against his cheek. He’s occupied and engaged, with an intensity that pulls me like a magnetic field. I feel deep down, something stirs in a way that I know is all wrong. I know Daddy wouldn’t like him.

  When I enter the class, his eyes barely flicker up from his notebook. Then, for some reason, his attention fixes on me. I wonder if I must have run up the stairs too fast. My heart stops for a moment, like it’s suspended over a deep chasm. Ready to drop.

  I usually sit near the back, on the far side of the classroom. Today, I want to sit as far to the front as I can, on the side near the door. Something about the power of that man’s attention scares me. I don’t want him behind me, where I can’t see him.

  Settling in, I have to squirm to get into the chair with the awkward writing tablet flap on the arm. I balance my books and my tablet. I have to put my precious bracelet carefully on the arm of the chair so I can work on the tablet without it rattling.

  I’m flustered, unable to decide whether I’m too afraid to have him out of my sight, or too compelled, too much attracted by the intense power of him.

  All the way through the class, even the seminar discussion section, I keep on losing focus. I’m constantly distracted, thinking about that man. He has a distinguished look about him, but there’s also something dark. Something dangerous.

  While the professor takes us through charts and tables of amortization and yield, the word ‘yield’ echoes in the back of my mind. I can’t think about the numbers. They won’t stay in my head. All that I can think about is the dance lesson I took on YouTube early this morning.

  Still, I have to make notes, try and take it all in. Daddy will ask me all about the class, like he always does. He’s more interested in it than I am. But of course he is. He only insisted on me getting the MBA because he wants me to join the business and help him run it.

  There’s nothing in this world I want less than to work in Daddy’s firm. It’s a great business and I love it and I love all the people and I love him. But it’s not me, and it never will be.

  At the end of the class, the professor comes to my chair for a word. We often talk at the end of the lesson. This time, I can’t wait to get out of there. I see the big man in the back, uncurling himself from the chair. Rising to stand, looking at me like I could be a piece of cake.

  I hope the professor doesn’t think that I’m rude or mean, hurrying away as I do.

  I rush downstairs, out into the bright sunlight in Union Square, and down to the subway. I’m still distracted as I hustle along the platform for the Q train uptown to 96th Street. Then, out of the corner of my eye, I see him.

  That impeccably cut beard, the thin hint of a scar down the side of his face. I can’t believe that it’s him. But it definitely is.

  As soon as the train slides in and the door swish open, I jump on board. He’s hurrying along the platform. I’m sure he’s running to reach the car that I’m in. But that’s ridiculous. Obviously.

  The train is about to pull out. The doors are going to shut.

  And he jumps into the car.

  ‘Never run away. Always stand your ground. Stand and fight, like a man.’ That’s what Daddy says. Even though I’m not a man, he has said that to me since I was tiny. It made sense to me and I always lived by it.

  Not this time, Daddy. I’m going my own way from here.

  Like the criminal in a movie, I wait until the doors actually start to close. And I slip quickly back out. Off the car, off the train, just in time to
see it pull out. With his eyes burning at me from the car as it hauls him away.

  I sit on the hard bench to wait for the next train. Feeling deflated, like I lost something. Thinking how dumb it is, running away from somebody who’s in the same class as me. Thursday morning, I’m bound to see him again. Only this time, I’ll look and feel as foolish as I know I am for running away.

  I was shocked to see him, striding down the platform. Coming toward me. Perhaps it shouldn’t have been so surprising. I guess I’m just used it to people ignoring me. He obviously didn’t ignore me. When the next train pulls in, my body feels heavy as I stand to drag myself into the car.

  My breath is hard and my heart beats fast and so loud I can hear it. The subway car has more space than usual. There are a couple of seats and I take one. Still breathing heavily, I’m fidgeting and awkward in the seat.

  As I watch the doors close, I realize that I have lost something. In my hurry to get out of the class, I left my bracelet behind.

  Chapter 3

  Her

  I GUESS I MUST be smiling nervously as I look around, people-pleaser me, but my eyes are caught by a man sitting opposite. He’s got a big grin on his pink, wet face. Little pinkish eyes gleam straight at me.

  It’s only then that I notice his hands. In his pants pockets. Shuffling.

  For some reason, his wet grin is the most comical and awful thing about him. I can’t believe someone would get off on behaving like that. But, even more, I guess, I can’t believe that he would get away with it in a car full of people, in public and in broad daylight like this.

  I’m too nervous and wound up to do what I really want to do—which is to point at him and laugh and shout, ‘You ridiculous asshole!’

  As we slide into the next station, I’m looking anywhere except at him. At the same time, I’m jumpy, second-guessing if that’s the reaction he wants.

  To keep my eyes away from him, I study the face of every passenger on the platform as they blur past and the train slows to a stop. Then my eyes are caught.

  It’s him. He got off the train at the next stop. He knew I’d be on the next train. He knew. It’s obvious. And it’s kind of brilliant. And, God, am I glad to see him.

  I’m transfixed as he steps onto the train. His thin smile cuts into me like it’s going to peel me open.

  He’s noticed the man opposite. He turns to look at him and reaches slowly down, like he has all the time in the world. Carefully, with a lethal precision, he takes the man by the throat and lifts him. Pulls him by his neck until he’s stretched onto his tiptoes.

  The pervert’s red face puffs up and he splutters. My man—I can’t believe that I’m thinking of him that way!—grips his throat and glares into his eye. And I can’t believe how strong he is. He lifted the man out of his seat with one hand!

  His eyes narrow to slits like knives and in a fury, he flings the pervert down with disgust. He throws him hard and the sweaty perv splays out, with his pink face slammed flat on the metal ridges of the car floor.

  With a voice that’s strong, slow and firm, he says, “If you can crawl off the train on your hands and knees before the doors shut,” he says, “I won’t kill you.” He has a highly cultured accent. Russian, by the sound of it.

  The burr of his voice sets off a small volcano, deep inside of me.

  Like a half-crushed beetle, the creep scuttles on his knees and his elbows, wheezing and snorting, to the car doors. As the doors start to close, his face glows in panic. He lurches and rolls out. He almost drops into the gap between the train and the platform. His agonized squeal squeaks loud through the closing doors as he rolls, red-faced and heaving, to the feet of the passengers standing on the platform.

  From the passengers inside the car as the train starts to move, a small ripple of applause breaks out. My man looks up, his brooding eyebrow dark as his eyes cut across the car. Everybody stops.

  But an older woman, big, gray-haired, round and jolly, says with a big New York voice, “You did a fine thing there, mister, and I don’t give a fuck who knows it.” Passengers chuckle and she grins, bright and broad, as she raises her hands to clap. And everybody else joins in to clap again.

  While all that happens, I’m just sitting here, about to burst into liquid flames.

  He looks down and waits for a moment. Takes his applause with grace. Then he lifts his hand, palm down. Everybody stops. He looks around the car and nods an acknowledgment.

  He sits, next to me. Leans toward me. Feeling him so close makes me want to reach out. His fragrance is exotic and expensive, but it doesn’t hide the definite scent of pure man underneath.

  He holds out a hand. His voice is deep and smoky, “Valentin Vasilichkov.”

  Valen-tin, he says it. When I take his hand, my breath rushes in a gasp. My voice cracks. “Eva.”

  “Are you okay?” His strong, firm voice is so gentle I feel like I could curl up in it. I can’t be thinking the way that I am about him. About an older man. Especially not a man I know nothing about.

  It seems kind of indecent. My cheeks heat up and prickle and I blush at the thought.

  I can’t be feeling the tingling sensations that I do, either. Or the hot ache.

  I looked up into his pale, watery blue eyes. I could drown in them. Thinking I should be saying, ‘yes.’

  My voice is hoarse. “I’m fine.” Which is very much not the truth.

  There’s something dark in his smile. It scares me. But I like it.

  He says, “I’m glad that I waited for you.”

  I want to say something brave, like, ‘He was harmless. I was fine.’ But my breath is stuck in my throat. “Thank you,” is about all that I can manage. Even that, my voice skids in the middle of the first word. I feel like an idiot.

  I’m not used to this much attention. I’m not used to any attention at all. And I like it that way. Well, mostly.

  “Let me take you to dinner.”

  “I’m not hungry.” I feel silly, blurting it out like that.

  “Of course not. It’s early.” His laugh is dark, too, but warm, like a shaft of clear sunlight. “Later.”

  “I’m not sure—”

  “I have to warn you, I’m very jealous.”

  “That’s okay,” I tell him, “I don’t belong to you.” I feel like I’m recovering myself.

  And he says, “No. But you will. You must.” And I realize that I’m not recovering at all.

  He’s very persuasive.

  “Tell me where I will send the car.”

  “What?”

  “To collect you for dinner. At eight.”

  I see what he’s doing. Now I know that I have to fight back. “Tell me the restaurant. I’ll meet you there. At eight thirty.”

  Chapter 4

  Him

  WITHOUT ME EVEN REALIZING it happened, I gave up on waiting for love a long time ago. It seemed like it was never going to happen for me.

  Beautiful women put themselves in my path all of the time, but the more they did, the more disappointed and disillusioned I became. All of the women I knew were wonderful, smart, beautiful. Many of them were even wealthy. But I didn’t feel that spark. The chemistry was never there.

  People said, ‘Have patience. Maybe you should give it time. Don’t be in such a rush,’ but I knew. If I didn’t feel it straight away, it was because it wasn’t there. I could never settle for a near-enough. It’s all or nothing for me.

  More than one chance came up for me to make a match that would have been advantageous, either in business or in politics, but none of them set my pulse racing. None would have been the desire of my heart. I could never settle for less than everything. Nothing short of perfection is ever anywhere near good enough for me.