The Princess in the Tower Read online

  “You will have to forgive, Diana. She is very shy around company and her panic and anxiety disorder is now too great for her to receive guests. Tomorrow, you will be shown the Empyrean-629. It is her greatest work yet and I trust, Mr. Romanovich, you will still be bidding to be the first and only to take the Empyrean-629 into your fleet for Dyeus Airlines for the first six months of production?”

  Alexandrov’s fake smile turned into a frown.

  “I believe we already discussed that and everything was settled.”

  James’ smile widened with triumph. He tapped the side of his champagne glass as he spoke.

  “Yes, but now you appear to have some competition.”

  He turned and gestured with his eyes towards a tall, dark-haired handsome man standing near the fireplace talking to a woman. Alexandrov’s eyes narrowed as he took in his brother Ilya’s profile and toned athletic figure not too dissimilar to his own except for being five years younger than himself.

  “Your brother Ilya Romanovich has decided to branch out from the private jet business and create his own fleet of commercial airliners for his company Ataksak. He has offered to take more and compete.”

  “Has he,” Alexandrov said coolly taking another sip of his champagne. He watched his brother with a critical eye. “He was always one for getting in over his head.”

  “I never understood why you both split your father’s company and went your separate ways.”

  Alexandrov felt his teeth clamp together as he continued to watch his brother from a distance. He must have felt his scrutiny because Ilya suddenly turned to look directly at him. He coldly nodded to him. Alexandrov answered, James Logan’s comment, “Call it creative differences.”

  The billionaire turned and walked away. He had to find Diana Logan fast. After mingling with acquaintances and friends in the industry who had all been invited to the unveiling, he made sure James Logan was occupied and discreetly left the party to return to the hall.

  Alexandrov slipped unnoticed up the sweeping staircase of the castle covered in red carpet. The dark wood panelling and elaborate standing candelabra at the bottom on either side gave the whole place a gothic feel as the summer evening gave way to twilight. He passed groups of people on the open gallery on the first floor to continue on to the fourth floor following the information given by the member of staff he had bribed to tell him where she resided. Then he turned west on the fourth floor to hurry past bedrooms until he came to another open gallery on the left. This area appeared to be secluded and out of reach of the other guests. At the far end was another set of stairs. Glancing around to make sure he was not seen, he hurried up them to find himself standing in front of one large door with nowhere else to go.

  He took the old wrought iron key out of his tuxedo inside pocket and placed it in the lock wondering how Diana Logan would receive his intrusion. Then he wondered what state he would find her in as he turned the lock. The information about her situation had included domestic abuse and intense cruelty. Images of the beautiful woman he had met three years ago being beaten and psychologically tortured while she was used for her genius made him sick to his core. He was getting her out tonight. His security team were downstairs mingling with guests and James Logan’s own team. All he had to do was march her out of the building at his side. A former soldier with Russia’s elite special forces, GRU Spetnaz had meticulously planned her extraction. He placed his hand on the handle and slowly turned it hoping she wouldn’t be frightened. He imagined fear would come naturally to her every day when James Logan entered the room.

  But he was to receive a surprise when he stepped into the room.

  “Diana. Diana Logan. I came here to help you,” he called out her name scanning the large circular medieval room for any sign of her presence. The large mahogany four poster bed was draped in heavy red damask curtains tied at each of its four intricately carved posts stretching down from the carved mahogany canopy to trail on the smooth wooden floor. The bed was covered in red silk with large fluffy red and white pillows complimented by silk covered round, square and rectangular cushions of patterned whites and lighter reds.

  It was a dark, stone room with a high ceiling in the turret. There was only one window, wide and tall enough to allow a window seat with cushions. He walked over to it noticing a book of Keats poetry lying on top of it, left by the beautiful reader herself no doubt. He smiled loving the fact that she had a similar taste in poetry to himself. He’d always loved the English poets, Keats, Shelley & Wordsworth. He flicked through the book smiling and put it down. On top of a large Persian rug in front of the wooden chest at the end of the bed there was an authentic antique medieval circular round table and chairs. There was a white damask tablecloth placed over it and the table was set for one with silver cutlery. A steaming plate of vegetable risotto with a chilled bottle of Chablis waited to be eaten but the dinner guest was nowhere to be found.

  “It is like the Marie-Celeste,” Alexandrov muttered out loud to himself. “Where are you, my little brave kotyonok?”

  Glancing at the two landscape paintings mounted on the stone walls and the television mounted on the wall directly opposite the bed underneath a fireplace, he looked in the bathroom behind the bed to see if she was in there. He was pleased to see it contained everything she needed, a double shower and standalone bath with a window overlooking the grounds behind the castle. He smiled when he saw a water damaged book of Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey lying on the side of the bath.

  “You are a romantic, malen’kiy” he whispered to himself with a smile. “But there will be no reading in the bath when I bathe you.”

  Alexandrov was perplexed. Then he spied another door at the end of the room. He headed for it but halted his excitement to find her, not wanting to scare her, and slowly opened the door. He’d expected to walk straight into another room but instead he found himself in a walkway with two windows overlooking the back of the castle. He could see it led to another room with a closed door. It made him impatient. He strode quickly along the walkway and paused before opening the door.

  The Russian billionaire stepped into another round room in another tower of the castle.

  He really is trying to keep you hidden up here. Why? What did you do to displease and anger him? I will rescue you my little princess and take you far away from here. Then we can bring the Empyrean-629 to glory together.

  For all of Alexandrov’s anger at the treatment Diana was receiving at the hands of her husband, he could not deny the captivating thought of her being locked away in a fairy tale castle tower just for him and his pleasure alone. It was as endearing as thinking of himself as the knight who rescued her from it. He shook his head and grinned at himself before gently calling out her name once more. Again, he was greeted with silence. He knew she was there. Glancing around the room, which seemed a library with all of its books and the array of six computers all operating at once, he could see there was no other door and no other room for her to hide in from him.

  “I know you are here, Diana. I have come to help you and get you out of here. Please don’t hide from me anymore. I am not here to hurt you,” he tried to reassure her.

  He turned his eye to the computers unable to help himself from getting a glimpse of the aircraft she had designed that was causing so much chatter in the aviation world because of its new economic wing design and use of biofuels. Big mistake. As he walked towards them with purpose and bent over the first one trying to bring the details up, Diana Logan came up behind him and hit him on the back with a keyboard. She growled at him, hitting him with her fists. Alexandrov swung around to catch hold of her and make her stop.

  She was completely naked, and he had to confess a wondrous sight with her ample plump breasts swinging and bouncing wildly with her movement on top of her slim small curved body. She was coming at him with all she had, and she managed to slap the side of his face hard before he could grasp her wrists and bring her attack to a close.

  “Let me go. Let me
go,” she shouted kicking at him.

  “I am not here to hurt you.”

  “No, you were trying to steal my design. I know who you are Mr. Romanovich. Now let me go.”

  Alexandrov held her tight sweeping his eyes over her.

  “I want you to listen to me.”

  In a sneaky self-defence move, Diana twisted her wrists and removed them easily from his hold. This time she took the opportunity to aim a punch at his face, but he put up his hand and closed it around her fist.

  “That, is it.”

  The Russian billionaire caught hold of her arms again and pulled them behind her back, spinning her around. He swept his arm around her waist and lifted her up against him, holding her arms behind her with one hand closed around her wrists. He carried her back through the walkway into her bedroom ignoring her cursing and flung her body face down across the four-poster bed making sure her feet still touched the floor.

  “What are you going to do to me?” She was breathless with her exertion and there was a hint of fear in her tone. Good, she would be easy to get under control now that she was realising she was helpless against his male strength and in his power.

  “Teaching you a lesson you will learn very quickly,” he firmly told her, loosening his bow tie at the same time. She started to struggle again but he was used to feisty women who resisted being spanked so he was still able to expertly bind Diana Logan’s hands behind her back with the bow tie.

  “What the hell are you doing?”

  “I am going to spank you, little one,” he said with a measurement of humour. “I don’t like disobedient little girls who do not listen to me or trust when I am there to help them. And this will remind you when you next sit down.”

  “You can’t spank me like a child. I am a… ow!”

  He grinned at her cry when he flippantly slapped one bare cheek before beginning her punishment.

  “Yes, I can.”

  Her long, blonde curls hung freely about her shoulders. Quickly he gathered them up in a ponytail to use as a rein and tugged firmly, forcing Diana to raise her face from the bed and become a little unbalanced without her arms to support her. He twisted her hair around his fist making sure he did not pull too tightly and then set about beginning to tame her wild temper with a bare bottom spanking.

  Alexandrov stood at the side of the naked aircraft designer and raised his hand to deliver another strike to her rump. In view of her treatment at James Logan’s hands, he made sure the slaps she took to first one cheek and then the opposite in quick succession were firm but not too hard. He was aiming for a gentle rosy blush to her rear rather than a wave of burning hot crimson at this point in the relationship he hoped would develop between them. A wish he had nurtured in secret since the first time they’d met. He would have her complete obedience and submission if they were to take it any further. As a natural Dominant, it was the only way he would even entertain one.

  He loved watching the way her flesh jumped and quivered with each strike and aimed the next at the seat of her bare bottom, entranced by the way it coloured instantly as it rose and wobbled before settling back in place. Diana’s yelps were gentle, but he could see a flush of red cross the cheeks of her angry, pretty, porcelain features indicating that the humiliation of being spanked as a grown woman like a naughty little girl, while naked by a clothed dominant male acting like a father figure was punishment enough.

  He turned his attention to the tender backs of her thighs raising a couple of freshly shocked cries from Diana’s lips and then ended her light spanking. Next time he would not be so lenient. He kept hold of her hair and rested his spread hand across her bottom feeling a gentle warmth pulsate from her flesh. He rubbed it gently to soothe her and looked to the side of her face and the light tears that had fallen onto her cheek. A smile twitched at the corners of his mouth when he noticed the anger she’d worn on her face before he disciplined her had gone to be replaced by embarrassment and confusion. She could not look at him. So, his naughty little, kotyonok or kitten was aroused.

  Chapter 3

  Diana was confused. Her bare bottom was burning but there was a curious sensation between her thighs she could only put down to some kind of arousal.

  What the hell?

  She’d never been spanked before, so this was a very new, different and humiliating experience. The bastard had her just where he wanted her with her arms tied behind her back and his firm hold on her hair and no it couldn’t be… It all made her feel a need for him to take it further and satisfy the ache throbbing inside her vagina. She’d almost forgotten what it was like to feel desire for a man since the beginning of her captivity in the tower three years ago. James had forced himself on her more than once but for the last year he had left her alone, only using his physical abuse to control her. She was forbidden any clothing to deter her from continuing to attempt to escape. He had made her distrust and even hate men. Yet something was stirring inside her with this man, Alexandrov Romanovich who she had met only once. She’d never forgotten his face or how handsome and dominant he was when they’d talked. But she had been a happily married woman at the time or so she had forced herself to believe and the brief attraction was going to go nowhere. It seemed cruel that it wasn’t long after, that James had changed and made her consider the reality of her sham of a marriage when he’d beaten her so badly, she had ended up in the hospital.

  Well, Mr. Alexandrov Romanovich, if you have come here to steal my design for the Empyrean-629 I am not letting you take it without a fight.

  She shivered with excitement when Alexandrov smoothed his hand down her back. His touch shaking the determination to make him pay from her mind.

  “Relax, Diana. I am here to help you, not to hurt you. If I let you go, I want us to talk,” he told her in that smooth intoxicating Russian accent of his. She closed her eyes sinking into the warmth he was spreading throughout her body with the caress of her bottom, feeling herself grow more wet with the way he circled his fingers around one cheek of her sore bottom. She snapped her eyes wide open. He was controlling her.

  The very idea made her want to struggle and show him her anger. But the voice at the back of her mind told her, it wasn’t to get away from him, it was because she wanted him to subdue her and exercise his dominance over her once more. She threw caution to the wind and fought him for her release wondering what he was going to do to stop her from gaining her freedom. No matter what, he wasn’t getting her design.

  “You aren’t here to help me. You came to steal the design for the 629. I am not going to let you take it. Over my dead body.”

  “Easy, kotyonok,” he soothed stroking her back again containing her futile struggles.

  “I am not your kitten,” she snapped.

  Diana heard him give a small laugh.

  “You know Russian?” he quizzed.

  “I have learnt quite a few languages. I have had a lot of time to fill in here for the last three years,” she said with strong angry sarcasm.

  “Why does James keep you here? Why did you let him?”

  Diana closed her eyes and gritted her teeth in frustration.

  “Why would you presume I let him do anything to me?”

  Silence. Point scored. Then she remembered him telling her about his mother. Time to take control back.

  “Do you think I am like your mother?” she asked. “Letting a man beat me and my kids just to keep money, social standing and security until he killed one of them,” she snapped remembering one of their in-depth conversations at the conference when he had talked of his anger at his mother and the death of his younger brother.

  Big mistake. Alexandrov was suddenly pulling her up so fast her head was spinning. She could feel the weight of his anger crush the air around her. He let go of her hair and took hold of her waist. He threw her across the bed and leaned over her, clasping his hand firmly around her throat. His black eyes darkened even further as anger slashed at his handsome features making Diana swallow hard as she covere
d his hand with her own in a feeble attempt to remove it. She’d gone too far but she couldn’t back down now, her own stubborn will wouldn’t allow him to have all of the power when he was accusing her of allowing all of this to happen.

  “I am not your mother,” she said slowly, carefully.

  “You don’t know anything about her,” he almost hissed the words at her. “You have no right to talk about her.”

  “I know what you told me yourself. You have no right to come in here to steal my design, spank me like a child and accuse me of allowing myself to be abused.”

  “Then tell me why the fuck a genius of the aviation industry is being kept like a captive princess in a tower in this day and age at her husband’s order?”

  He thinks I am a genius!

  “Three years ago, I was happily married but James grew cold towards me. He was spending time drinking and gambling after he’d met Bazanov Victorovich and the American Entrepreneur, Max Taylor.”

  “Bazanov is Russian Mafia operating in the UK and Taylor is known for dubious business dealings. How the hell did Logan get involved with them?”

  “James has had a gambling problem for years. It had been kept contained until then. That is why we have a strict business relationship. I started Empyrean before I met him, and it was already a success. I foolishly wanted him to be a part of it, so I gave him fifty percent with a string of conditions and safety clauses dictated by my lawyers. He can’t touch my shares. No matter what he tries to do it is locked up tight because of his addiction. But it hasn’t stopped him from trying to find a way to get a hold of it.”

  She paused, feeling her anger and frustration making her breathing more agitated which caused her bare breasts to rise and fall underneath him, the tips brushing his tuxedo jacket. Despite the friction between them, his eyes never left her face once nor did his annoyance.