His Best Acquisition

The Russian’s Acquisition

Dani Collins

A Deal Before the Altar

Rachael Thomas

A Deal with Demakis

Tara Pammi

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

The Russian’s Acquisition

About the Author

Dedication

Contents

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

A Deal Before the Altar

About the Author

Dedication

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

EPILOGUE

A Deal with Demakis

About the Author

Dedication

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Copyright

The Russian’s Acquisition

Dani Collins

DANI COLLINS discovered romance novels in high school and immediately wondered how a person trained and qualified for that amazing job. She married her high school sweetheart, which was a start, then spent two decades trying to find her fit in the wide world of romance writing, always coming back to Mills & Boon Modern Romance.

Two children later, and with the first entering high school, she placed in Harlequin’s Instant Seduction contest. It was the beginning of a fabulous journey towards finally getting that dream job.

When she’s not in her Fortress of Literature, as her family calls her writing office, she works, chauffeurs children to extra-curricular activities, and gardens with more optimism than skill. Dani can be reached through her website at www.danicollins.com.

To the editorial team in London, especially Suzy Clarke and Laurie Johnson.

Suzy because she fell for Aleksy early and told me to keep him on the back burner (that’s why he smolders), and Laurie because she fell for him as soon as she met him (and then told me how to make him even more brooding and irresistible).

Thanks, ladies!

CHAPTER ONE

I miss waking up with you.

THE NOTE STRUCK a pang of wistfulness in Clair Daniels’s chest. She wondered if anyone would ever write something so romantic to her. Then she recalled the waves of emotional highs and lows Abby had been riding for months, all under the influence of that elusive emotion called “love.” Being independent was more secure and less hurtful, she reminded herself. And the roller coaster she’d been through in the last two weeks, after losing a man who was merely a friend and mentor, was brutal enough.

Still, she had to hide envy as she handed the note back to Abby and said with a composed smile, “That’s very sweet. The wedding is this weekend?”

Abby, the firm’s receptionist, nodded with excitement as she placed the card back in the extravagant bouquet Clair had admired. “I was just saying to everyone—” She waved at the ladies gathered with their morning coffee. “I texted him that after Saturday, we can wake up together forev…” She trailed off as it struck her who she was talking to.

The horseshoe of women dropped their gazes.

Clair’s throat closed over a helpless I wasn’t waking up with him. She’d never slept with anyone but couldn’t say so. Her confidentiality clause with Victor Van Eych had made such confessions impossible.

Still, she knew everyone had thought her relationship to the boss went deeper than merely being his PA. The gossip had eaten her up, but she’d let it happen out of kindness for a man whose self-assurance had been dented by age. Other people’s opinions of her shouldn’t matter, she’d told herself. Victor was nice to her. He had encouraged her to start the foundation she’d always dreamed of. Letting a white lie prevail in return had seemed harmless.

Then his family had refused to let her into his mansion to so much as share condolences, turning their backs and pushing her to the fringes like a pariah.

She wasn’t someone who wore her heart on her sleeve, but the one person she had begun to count on had died. Shock and sorrow had overwhelmed her. Thankfully she’d had a place to bolt to for a week and absorb her loss. Ironic that it had been the orphanage, but what a timely reminder how important the home and foundation were, not just to her, but to children as alone as she was.

Now she was feeling more alone than ever, trying not to squirm under the scrutiny of her colleagues, not wanting to reveal that her chest had gone tight and her throat felt swollen. It wasn’t just Victor’s unexpected death getting to her, but a kind of despair. Would anyone ever stick? Or was she meant to walk through life in isolation forever?

Into the suffocating moment, the elevator pinged and the doors whispered open. Clair glanced over her shoulder to escape her anxiety, and what she saw made her catch a startled breath.

A hunting party of suits invaded the top floor. It was the only way to describe the tribe of alert, stony-faced men. The last off the elevator, the tallest, was obviously their leader. He was a warrior whose swarthy face wore a blaze of genuine battle injury. At first that was all Clair saw: the slash of a pale scar that began where his dark hair was combed back from his hairline. It bisected his left eyebrow, angled from his cheekbone toward the corner of his mouth, then dropped off his clean-shaven jaw.

He seemed indifferent to it, his energy completely focused on the new territory he was conquering. His armor-gray suit clung with perfect tailoring to his powerful build. With one sweep of his golden-brown eyes, he dispersed the clique of women in a subtle hiss of indrawn breaths and muted clicks of retreating heels.

Clair couldn’t move. His marauding air incited panic, but her feet stayed glued to the floor. She lifted her chin, refusing to let him see he intimidated her.

Male interest sparked to life as he held her stare. His gaze drifted like a caress to her mouth, lowered to her open collar and mentally stripped her neatly belted raincoat and low-heeled ankle boots.

Clair set her teeth, hating these moments of objectification as much as any woman, but something strange happened. Her paralysis continued. She wasn’t able to turn away in rejection. Heat came to life in her abdomen like a cooling ember blown into a brighter glow. Warmth radiated into her chest and bathed her throat.

His attention came back to her face, decision stamped in his eyes. She was something he would want.

She blushed, still unable to look away. A writhing sensation knotted in her stomach, clenching like a fist when he spoke in a voice like dark chocolate, melting and rich, yet carrying a biting edge.

She didn’t understand him.

Clair blinked in surprise, but he didn’t switch to English. His command had been for one of his companions, yet she had the impression he’d been talking about her if not to her. He swung away, moving into the interior offices as if he owned the place. One of the men flanking him murmured in a similar language.

“Was that Russian?” Clair asked on a breathless gasp as the last pin-striped back disappeared. She felt as if a tank had just flattened her.

“They’ve been coming in all week. That tall one is new.” Abby dragged her gaze away from the hall and became conspiratorial as she leaned over her keyboard. “No one knows what’s going on. I was hoping you could enlighten us.”

“I wasn’t here,” Clair reminded her. She hadn’t even been in London. “But Mr. Turner told me before I left that everything would carry on as usual, that the family were keeping things status quo until they’d had time to settle his private affairs. Are they lawyers?” She glanced toward the hall but was certain that man wasn’t anything as straitlaced as a lawyer. He struck her as someone who made his own rules rather than living by any imposed on him. Her skin still tingled under the brand of ownership he’d imprinted on her.

“Some are, I think,” Abby answered. “Ours have been meeting them every day.”

“Our—? Oh, right.” Clair forced herself back to the conversation. Lawyers. Not just her friend deceased but the boss and owner, leaving the place on tiptoes of tension. She’d noticed the mood the second she returned. Having strangers prowl like bargain hunters at a fire sale didn’t help. Clair decided she didn’t like that trespasser of a man.

Abby glanced around before hunching even closer. “Clair? I’m really sorry for what I said. I know losing Mr. Van Eych must be hard for y—”

“It’s fine. Don’t worry about it,” Clair dismissed with a light smile. She stepped back to freeze out the empathy. Putting up walls was a protective reflex, an automatic reaction that probably accounted for why no one ever sent her flowers or love notes. She wasn’t good at being close to people. That was why she’d let herself fall into a fake romance with Victor. He’d offered companionship without the demands of physical or emotional intimacy, protecting her from anyone else trying to make a similar claim. No risk, she’d thought. No chance of pain.

Ha.

That Russian would make incredible demands, she thought, and her stomach dipped even as she wondered where her speculation had come from. No way would she let someone like that into her private life. He was a one-way ticket to a broken heart. Forget him.

Nevertheless, trepidation weakened her knees as she looked toward her office, the direction he’d taken. Silly to be afraid. He would already have forgotten her.

“I’ll check in with Mr. Turner,” Clair said, holding the smile of confident warmth she’d perfected as Victor’s PA. “If I’m able to tell you anything, I will.”

“Thank you.” Abby’s worried brow relaxed.

Clair walked away, determined to push the Russian from her mind, but she’d barely hung her coat and bent to tuck her purse into her desk drawer before Mr. Turner appeared in the doorway. Waxen paleness underpinned the flags of red in his sagging cheeks.

Clair stood to attention, heart sinking with intuitive fear. “What’s wrong?”

“You’re to report to—” He ran a hand over his thinning hair. “The new owner.”

* * *

Aleksy Dmitriev set the waste bin next to his feet, reached for the first plaque on the wall and tossed it in, taking less satisfaction in the loud clunk of an industry award hitting the trash than he’d anticipated. This coup had been too easy. Clunk. The bastard wasn’t alive to see his world collapse. Clunk. Van Eych had succumbed to the lifestyle he’d enjoyed at the expense of men like Aleksy’s father rather than face the revenge Aleksy had intended to wreak. Clunk.

The blonde in the foyer was that filthy dog’s mistress. Smash!

A delicate crystal globe shattered in the bottom of the can, leaving a silver heart exposed and dented.

“What on earth,” a clear female voice demanded, “do you think you’re doing?”

Aleksy lifted his head and was struck by the same kick of sexual hunger he’d experienced fifteen minutes ago. The part of his anatomy he couldn’t control suffered another tight, near-painful pull.

At first sight he’d judged her snowflake perfect, delicate and cool with creamy, unblemished skin, white-gold hair and ice-blue eyes. As potent as chilled vodka with a kick of heat that spread from the inside. He’d demanded her name and details.

Now the dull raincoat was gone, revealing warmer colors. Her peach knit top clung to slender arms and hugged smallish but high breasts, while her hips flared just enough to confirm she was all woman.

He smothered reckless desire with angry disgust. How could she have given all that to an old man, especially that old man?

Under his stare, her lashes flickered with uncertainty. She turned one boot in before setting her feet firmly. Her fists knotted at her sides, and her shoulders went back. Her chin came up in the same challenge she’d issued when they first came face-to-face.

“Those might have sentimental value to Mr. Van Eych’s family,” she said.

Aleksy narrowed his eyes. The heat of finding the fight he’d been anticipating singed through his muscles. She was an extension of Victor Van Eych, and that allowed him to hate her, genuinely hate her. His sneer pulled at his scar. He knew it made him look feral and dangerous. He was that and more. “Close the door.”

She hesitated—and it irritated him. When he spoke, people moved. Having a slip of a woman take a moment to think it over, look him over, wasn’t acceptable.

“As you leave,” he commanded with quiet menace. “I’m throwing out all of Van Eych’s trophies, Miss Daniels. That includes you.”

She flinched but remained tall and proud. Her icy blue eyes searched his, confirming he was serious.

As the heart attack that killed your meal ticket, he conveyed with contempt.

She turned away, and loss unexpectedly clawed at him.

He didn’t have time to examine it before she pressed the door closed, remaining inside. Inexplicable satisfaction roared through him. He told himself it was because he would get the fight he craved, but what else could he expect from a woman of her nature? She didn’t live the way she did by walking away from what she wanted.

Keeping her hand on the doorknob, she tossed her hair back and asked with stiff authority, “Who are you?”

Unwillingly, he admired her haughtiness. At least she made a decent adversary. He wiped the taint of dust from his fingertips before extending his hand in a dare. “Aleksy Dmitriev.”

Another brief hesitation; then, with head high, she crossed to tentatively set her hand in his. It was chilly, but slender and soft. He immediately fantasized guiding her light touch down his abdomen and feeling her cool fingers wrap around his hot shaft.

He didn’t usually respond to women like this, rarely let sex thrust to the forefront of his mind so blatantly, especially with a woman he regarded with such derision, but attraction clamored in him as he closed his hand over hers. It took all his will not to use his grip to drag her near enough to take complete ownership, hook his arm across her lower back and mash her narrow body into his.

Especially when she quivered at his touch. She made a coy play at pretending it disconcerted her, but she’d been sleeping with a man old enough to be her grandfather. Acting sexually excited was her stock in trade. It made him sick, yet he still responded to it. He wanted to crowd her into the wall and kindle her reaction until she was helpless to her own need and he could sate his.

Disappointment seared a blistering path through his center. He wanted her, but she’d already let his enemy have her.

* * *

Aleksy Dmitriev released her hand and insultingly wiped his own on his tailored pants, as if her touch had soiled his palm.

Clair jerked her hand into her middle, closing her fist over the sensation of calluses and heat. He was hot. In every way. All that masculine energy and muscle was a bombardment. She didn’t want to react, especially to someone who wanted to fire her.

She dragged at her cloak of indifference, the one she’d sewn together in a school full of spoiled rich kids. “What gives you the right, Mr. Dmitriev, to take away my job?”

“Your ‘job’ is dead.” His curled lip told her what he thought her job was.

“I’m a PA,” she said tightly. “Working under the president. If you’ve taken ownership, I assume you’re moving into that position?”

“On top of you? A predictable invitation, but I have no use for his leavings.”

“Don’t be crass!” she snapped. She never lost her temper. Poise was part of her defense.

He smirked, seeming to enjoy her flush of affront. It intensified her anger.

“I do real work,” she insisted. “Not whatever you’re suggesting.”

His broken eyebrow went up. They both knew what he was suggesting.

“I manage special projects—” She cut herself off at his snort, heart plummeting, suddenly worried about her own very special project. The foundation was a few weeks from being properly launched. After last week, she knew the building she’d grown up in was badly showing its age. The home needed a reliable income more than ever. And the people…

“Clair, are you okay? You’re more quiet than usual,” Mrs. Downings had said last week, catching her at the top of the stairs where she’d been painting. They’d sat on the landing and Clair hadn’t been able to keep it all in. Mrs. Downings had put her arm around her, and for once Clair had allowed the familiarity, deeply craving the sense that someone cared she was hurting.

She’d come away more fired up than ever to get the foundation off the ground. She had to keep people like Mrs. Downings, with her understanding and compassion, available to children with the same aching, empty hearts that she had.

“Are you shutting down the whole firm?” Clair asked Aleksy with subdued panic.

He turned stony. “That’s confidential.”

She shook her head. “You can’t let everyone go. Not immediately. Not without paying buckets of severance,” she guessed, but it was an educated one. There were hundreds of clients with investments managed here.

“I can dismiss you,” he said with quiet assurance.

Another jolt of anger pulsed through her, unfamiliar but invigorating. “On what grounds?”

“Not turning up for work last week.”

“I had the time booked months ago. I couldn’t have known then that my employer would pass away right before I left.” And she would have stayed if Victor’s family hadn’t been so cutting. If someone, anyone, had said she was needed here.

“You obviously cared more about enjoying your holiday than whether your job would be here when you returned.”

The annual blitz of cleaning and repair at the home was the furthest thing from a holiday, not that he wanted to know. “I offered to stay,” she asserted, not wanting to reveal how torn she’d felt. With her world crashing around her here, she’d been quite anxious to escape to the one stable influence in her life.

“The VP granted my leave,” she continued, scraping her composure together by folding her arms. With her eyes narrowed in suspicion, she asked, “Would I still be employed if I’d stayed?”

“No.” Not a shred of an excuse.

What a truly hateful man! His dislike of her was strangely hurtful too. She tried hard to make herself likable, knowing she wasn’t naturally warm and spontaneous. Failing without being given a chance smarted.

“Mr. Turner assured me before I left that another position would be found for me. I’ve been here almost three years.” She managed to hang on to a civil tone, searching for enough dignity to disguise her fear.

“Mr. Turner doesn’t own the company. I decide who stays.”

“It’s wrongful dismissal. Unless you’re offering a package?” She hated that she tensed in hope. She knew exactly how marketable her skill set was: barely adequate. Going back to low-end jobs, scraping by on a hand-to-mouth existence made her insides gel with dread. This job had been her first step into genuine security.

The Russian tilted his head to a patronizing angle. “We both know you’ve enjoyed the full package long enough, Miss Daniels. If you haven’t set aside something for this eventuality, that’s not my concern.”

“Stop talking like I was—”

“What?” he demanded, baring his teeth. “Victor Van Eych’s mistress? Stop acting like you weren’t,” he snarled with surprising bite. In a few long strides he was at his desk, flipping open a file, waving a single sheet of paper. “Your qualifications are limited to typing and filing, but you’re occupying an executive office.” Another sheet flapped in the air. “You’re paid more than his personal secretary, but he still needed one because you were dedicated to ‘special projects.’” He cracked out a laugh as he snatched up the next record. “You live in the company flat—”

“In the housekeeper’s wing because it’s one of my duties to water the plants,” she defended, hearing how weak it sounded even though Victor had made it sound so logical.

“The janitors who dust the place can water the plants. You’re a parasite, Miss Daniels. One who’s being pried off the host. Take the day to pack your things.”

A parasite. She was doing everything in her power to pay back the system! This job had been a golden egg, but she’d tried not to take advantage of Victor’s generosity. Now she was finally on the brink of being able to help others instead of focusing on her own struggles—something she wanted not for the recognition, but to support children like what she’d once been—and he was calling her a parasite?

“You reprehensible, conscienceless…” Her voice dried up, which was probably best. She was shaking and liable to get personal. Mention that scar, for instance.

“Conscienceless,” he repeated through lips that peeled back in a snarl. He closed her file and took up a memo of some kind. “Do you even know what you’ve been sleeping with? Read that, then tell me who is conscienceless and reprehensible.”

CHAPTER TWO

ALEKSY TOLD HIMSELF he was only confirming that she’d actually left. He was not looking to run into her. Nevertheless, the part of him still prowling with a sense of anticlimax would leap on another chance to verbally tussle with her. Until she’d read the memo, paled, then walked out in stunned silence, Clair Daniels had been—

Forget her, he ordered himself again, but it wasn’t easy. Her type was usually fair game. He didn’t mess with marriageable women, just the types who enjoyed physical pleasure and material wealth over love. Clair had obviously fallen into that category, asking if he was offering a package. She’d been royally peeved when he turned her down, displaying the kind of passionate anger that suggested an equally passionate—

Stop it. He was here to take ownership of one more acquisition. That was all.

He keyed in the entry code to the firm’s penthouse and stepped into generic opulence. The plants looked very well tended. Unfortunately that was the only thing recommending the place. It was the height of modern convenience. No expense was spared in the white leather furniture or silk rugs over marble tiles, but it lacked…

Traces of her.

Absently stroking his thumb along the raised line on his chin, he strolled through a dining room that held no fresh flowers. The white duvet on the master bed was undented. The bathroom was not decorated with intriguing lingerie. In the kitchen, the pantry shelves were bare of all but the minimum staples. She’d vacated so completely, it was as if she’d never lived here at all.

How, then, would he find—

He caught the faint sound of a feminine voice through a wall and cocked his head, instantly alert. Moving past the refrigerator, he found an unlocked door to a laundry room. On the opposite side another door opened into a narrow kitchen, where the scent of toast lingered. Beyond, in a modest lounge peppered with colorful throws, unopened mail and abandoned shoes, Clair Daniels stood. She had her back to him as she finished a call. Her pert bottom and slim thighs were mouthwateringly silhouetted by clingy yoga pants.

The internal wolf that had been pacing restlessly inside him leapt to the fore, exploding his heart in his chest and slamming hot blood through his limbs. He was furious to find her here, but he smiled.

She hung up, turned and screamed.

* * *

Clair clapped a hand over her mouth as she recognized the Russian. As forbidding as he looked, as frightening as it was to have a man appear in her private space, she instantly knew she wasn’t in real danger. At a very deep level, she’d been expecting him. That unnerved her, but she ignored it.

Dropping her hand, she accused, “You scared the life out of me!”

“It wouldn’t have happened if you’d left as you were told.” He no longer wore the suit jacket and tie from earlier. His fog-gray shirt strained across his chest, barely containing his big shoulders and thick biceps. He’d turned up his sleeves, revealing strong flat wrists and a ruthlessly simple gold watch.

She had an urge to touch his arm to see if it was as hard as it looked, which was ridiculous. Men fell into two categories for her: Get lost and Friends is friendly enough. She’d never been silly over boys and had always found women who went hormonal a bit irritating. She was capable of noticing a man with nice abs or a handsome smile, but she didn’t get hot and weak-kneed. Ever. Especially over men who came on so strong. This quivery, oversensitized version of herself was not her.

And yet she watched with fascination as he moved with masculine grace, bending his arm and glancing at his exclusive watch, then flicking his gaze toward her bedroom door where her unpacked suitcase stood against the wall. “You’ve packed at least.”

“I haven’t unpacked from being away.” She shouldn’t take such pleasure in throwing defiance at him when she was falling into desperation, but it gave her ego a boost to let him know she wasn’t bowing and scraping under his every word. She didn’t like what he was doing to her and wanted to make it stop. Under no circumstances did she want him to know how much power he was wielding over her.

“Well, that saves time, doesn’t it?” he said with false pleasantry.

“Whose? Yours? Are you here to throw me out?” It wasn’t even five o’clock. She’d started calling hotels but had wasted precious hours trying to find a workable solution for the foundation first. She had survived starting with nothing before, but she couldn’t bear to let down people whose hopes she’d already raised. The trustees needed to run the home, not spend all their time scrambling for funding. She was stuck, but she didn’t want him to know how desperate she was. “Why didn’t you just send the clown who threw me out of my office?”

His arrogant head went back. “You can’t mean Lazlo?”

“The lowbrow who said, ‘I’m to assist you if you require it’? He might as well have grabbed me by the collar and thrown me into the street.”

Although she had to admit it had been less humiliating to stuff her few personal items into her laptop bag and make a quick exit than try to explain while saying goodbye to everyone. She’d been shaken by what she’d read in the memo and hadn’t wanted to speak to anyone while it sank in. Victor, the man she’d put so much stock and trust in, had put on far more fronts than having a young blond mistress.

“I’ll remind him to be more sensitive next time,” Aleksy said.

“Next time?” she repeated with a kick in her heart. “He’s here?”

“No, we’re alone.”

Her stomach quavered. She folded her arms over her middle, trying to project confidence when she felt gullible and stupid. “Well, I’d rather deal with him. At least he doesn’t sneak up on a person like a thief.”

Aleksy’s golden-brown eyes flashed a warning. “I bought the company fair and square and entered a flat I now own. You’re the one with no right to be here.”

“It’s a job perk!”

“It’s a love nest. One the firm will no longer support.”

So this was about money. She had deduced as much. He must have bought the firm believing its worth to be higher and only learned that Victor had falsified returns after the purchase went through. He didn’t have to take out his bad luck on her, though. They were both victims of Victor’s ruse.

“You know, if you let me keep my job, I could pay rent and this unused apartment could generate income, rather than be an expense,” she suggested.

He narrowed his eyes, displaying thick eyelashes. “How long have you been here?”

“Over a year.”

He moved through her small lounge with calculating interest, probably adding up the value of her few possessions. The place came furnished, but the faded snapshot of her parents in the cheap frame was hers. Her father’s pipe stood on the mantel above the gas flame fireplace. The items were all she had and didn’t come with real memories.

He jerked his chin at the pipe. “I’m surprised you let him keep you in here. A woman with your assets could have pressed for the main prize.” He turned his head.

She ought to have been offended, but her body betrayed her. Heat flooded her under his lingering stare. Her breasts became tight and sensitive and her thighs wanted to pinch against a sweet tingling sensation high between. She was compelled to wet her parted lips with a stroke of her tongue.

His cynical lift of an eyebrow stabbed her with mortification.

“That pipe was my father’s, not Victor’s.” She moved to snatch it up, as though that were all it would take to whisk away the pulsing attraction disconcerting her. “I never—” She cut herself off and tightened her fist around the pipe. “I signed a confidentiality statement,” she finally said, lifting her chin to see him better.

He was so looming and intense with not a shred of compassion for a naive young woman who had wanted to believe she’d been noticed because she worked hard. Aleksy Dmitriev was far above her, not just in wealth and education, but in confidence and life experience. Part of her was intrigued, but their inequality raised her barriers. It killed her to beg guidance off him, but she had to.

“I’m sure you would know better than I whether such agreements are meant to be binding after a death. With your being the new owner, are you in a position to insist I disclose—”

“I insist,” he commanded, flat and sharp. “Tell me everything.”

“Well, I don’t know anything of national import. Don’t get excited. I’m just sick of you accusing me of sleeping my way to the top when I didn’t. Victor was impotent.”

He took her chin between his thumb and curled finger. “Don’t lie,” he warned.

She lifted her free hand, intending to shove his disturbing touch away.

He caught her wrist in midair, but what really held her immobile was the ferocious flare of gold in his eyes. His irises glittered with more demand than this situation warranted. It made her still out of curiosity.

“Why would I lie?”

“Because you know I don’t want you if he’s had you.”

She sucked in a shocked breath and instinctively tried to pull away.

His grip on her wrist flexed lightly to keep her close. “That wasn’t really what he was hiding, was it?”

Clair was plunged out of her depth, body reacting with alarm, mind splintered in all directions by what he’d said about wanting her.

“I—I didn’t know until today that Victor was hiding anything,” she stammered, trying to ignore the detonations of nervous excitement inside her. “I thought he was exactly what he looked like. A successful businessman.” She tried to resist looking into his eyes, but once his stare caught hers, she couldn’t look away. Her nerves seared with something like fight or flight, but it wasn’t fear. The danger here was subtle. Sexual.

“How did you meet him?”

“Who are you? Interpol?” She longed to move away, disturbed beyond bearing.

“Tell me,” he insisted, not releasing her.

“He needed something after hours. I was working late in the file room.” She begrudged making the explanation but wanted him to believe her. Sort of. You know I don’t want you if he’s had you. It was such a Neanderthal thing to say, but it made her insides quiver. “I found it and he said I was the sort of person the top floor needed.”

“I bet he did.” His thumb moved into the notch below her bottom lip. He tilted her face up, into the fading light from the window. His gaze stroked her face like a feathery caress, taking in features she knew men found attractive, but she sensed evaluation, not admiration.

It shouldn’t matter, but it undermined her confidence. Her looks were all she had unless she managed a miracle with the Brighter Days Foundation, and losing her job had quashed that.

“I didn’t think his motive was romantic. He was old.” She tested his grip on her chin, but he held fast, making her vibrate with nerves and awareness. It took everything in her to suppress her shivers and pretend she barely noticed his touch. “When I did realize he wanted people to believe we were together, I told him I wasn’t interested and he said I didn’t have anything to worry about. He wasn’t able to make it with any woman, but he didn’t want people to know. He said if I was able to keep a confidence, I’d have a good career ahead of me as his PA. I needed the money and it wasn’t like he was grabbing me all the time or anything.” She pointedly moved her fist with the pipe into the center of his chest and pressed. “Unlike some men.”

His touch on her face changed. His fingers fanned out and he stroked his palm under her jaw to take possession of the side of her neck, thumb lightly grazing her throat.

The tender touch stilled her, not just because it was unexpected but because it felt so nice. She didn’t encourage people to touch her and hadn’t realized how cherished and important it could make her feel. Her lashes wanted to blink closed so she could focus completely on the lovely sensation.

“So you took him for all he’d give you and never put out for any of it.”

“It wasn’t like that.” He made it sound ugly when she hadn’t taken anything. “The raise and job title were his idea. He suggested I move into this flat because he held receptions and cocktail parties in the main suite. If people thought we were together, that was their assumption. Maybe neither of us corrected it, but all I did was work for him.”

“What kind of work? Hostess duties? Attending functions as his escort?” His lip curled. “Why on earth would people get the wrong impression?”

“He was a widower, so yes, I was his date. But he also put me in charge of forming the firm’s charitable foundation.”

“Ha!” He released her with a lifting of his hands in rejection. “Van Eych help the less fortunate? Now I know you’re lying.”

“I’m not.” The words rushed out, but a sense of loss washed over her as well. Let him believe what he wants to believe, she told herself, but if she was allowed to set the record straight, she wanted to, especially if he’d fired her because he thought she was involved with Victor. Maybe he would reconsider if he believed she hadn’t been. Maybe that’s what he’d meant when he’d said he didn’t want her if Victor had had her.

Dismay squirmed through her. She didn’t want him to want her physically, did she? No. She was trying to rescue the foundation. If there was even a remote chance of keeping her job, and keeping the foundation alive, she had to try.

Veering from him on shaky legs, she found her laptop bag and unzipped it. “You won’t have seen it on the books because it’s not up and running, but I can show you…”

Most of her records were on her laptop and it took forever to wake up, but she had a slender file with proof of the logo she’d recently approved. It wasn’t the fanciest letterhead, but it gave the foundation an identity and made it real. Her heart pounded with pride every time she looked at it. She showed him.

“‘Brighter Days’? It looks like a child drew it.” He barely glanced at it.

“It’s supposed to! It’s an organization that provides funding to group homes and offers grants to orphaned children so they can develop independence.”

“By underwriting their lives?”

“By providing support of many kinds!” Insulted, Clair whipped the file closed. “You obviously don’t know what it’s like to be without parents or you’d have some empathy.” As she tucked the file back into her bag, she let her hair fall forward to screen how wounded she was by his cynicism.

“Or maybe I do and I didn’t have the luxury of handouts to help me find my way. Maybe I managed on my own.” His tone was dangerously quiet.

The truth in the hardened brass of his gaze made her hesitate. The thought that he might have shared some of her struggles struck a chord of kinship in her, but he emanated aggression, provoking her defensive response.

“So did I,” she challenged. “I’m still capable of wanting to help others.”

His hard laugh cracked the air. “Van Eych gave you this flat, a manager’s salary, and countless other favors for that face.” He pointed at her features, then let his gaze traverse insultingly down her narrow shape. “Among other attributes. Not for any smiley face you drew on the sun. Hardly pulling yourself up by your bootstraps.”

He acted as if this illustration was all she had to show for her year of research and meetings and planning. Impotent fury threatened to engulf her, but to let him see he could get under her skin was handing him a weapon he didn’t deserve to hold.

“I don’t care if you believe me,” she said stiffly. “You’re obviously a bully who kicks people around for the fun of it. If you’d like to wait in your flat next door, I’ll clear out of this one by midnight.”

* * *

Such an ice queen, walking into the bedroom as though she wasn’t daring him to follow. Throwing out the bait that she’d never let Van Eych have her. He wondered how she’d homed in on the one reservation he had against her and dismantled it so effectively. A depth of experience in getting what she wanted from men, he supposed. Look at the way she had singled him out as the top dog this morning, making a play with one bold look before he even knew her name.

He almost didn’t care whether she had given herself to Van Eych, so long as he possessed her, which left him oddly defeated. Van Eych had stolen everything from him: not just his parents and home, but his youth and looks and his right to a normal life. No matter how Clair was connected, he ought to want to bury her, not bury himself in her.

He told himself her defiance provoked him. A man who’d conquered as many challenges as he had was internally programmed to trim the claws of a spitting cat and show her he wasn’t the easy dalliance she was used to. She wouldn’t be the biddable sex kitten he was used to either, but that made the thought of having her all the more exciting.

Listen to him. He knew better than to trust her, but he was halfway into bed with her anyway.

Pulling out his mobile, Aleksy texted his PA, then held his breath. He had the truth in seconds and swallowed back a howl of triumph. Her sugar daddy hadn’t been capable of making physical demands. That made taking her not just acceptable but imperative.

He pushed open the half-closed door and found more evidence to support her claim. She was moving clothes into a laundry basket set atop a narrow, single bed. There was something very youthful and innocent about her. He imagined Van Eych had been feeling his age—and beginning to feel the pressure of Aleksy’s running him to ground—when he’d discovered Clair in the file room.

Clair was just the old man’s type: young and pretty, angelic in looks but not in disposition. Van Eych had had women on the side even during his marriage, so it came as no surprise that he’d wanted to maintain the illusion of virility into his later years. The inability to fully enjoy Clair must have churned like bent nails in the old man’s gut.

If only he were alive to hate Aleksy for this. A wicked smile of enjoyment pulled Aleksy’s mouth. “The medical records confirm what you say. Van Eych was limp.”

She sent him a glance that tried for boredom but held an underlying flutter of nervous tension. “I told you, it doesn’t matter to me what you believe.”

“It matters to me.” He hooked a hand over the top of the doorframe, anchoring himself so he wouldn’t press forward into the room and take what he wanted before they’d outlined the terms. She had maneuvered a very profitable situation out of a criminal-class schemer. He couldn’t underestimate how conniving she could be.

She grabbed a hooded jacket off the suitcase near his feet. As she folded it, she hid her expression and any chance of reading her thoughts, but he heard the wheels turn.

He took in the unpacked case as he waited for her to make the next move, distantly wondering where she’d been for a week. With a real lover perhaps, but other men didn’t matter. She had never belonged to Victor. That was the important piece here. The thought of taking her for himself kindled a hungry fire in him. It was an approximation of the victory he craved, and he would have it.

With possessive satisfaction, he toured her shape, stoking the heat of anticipation as he hit narrow feet in bronze ballet slippers and climbed up slim but shapely legs. Hips that would fill his hands. A thick pullover sweater that hung loose, disguising whether she wore a bra. He’d bet she wore a snug undershirt of some kind, something that would trap the heat of her skin but still allow him to find and rub her taut nipples.

Her arm came across her breasts, forcing him out of his fantasy. Her blue eyes were wide, her lips parted. A blush of awareness bloomed across her cheekbones. She knew exactly what he was thinking and even though she was acting shocked, she wasn’t repelled. Her lashes dropped to hide her eyes, but she flirted light fingers through hair that looked as shiny and silky as gold tassels on a scarlet cushion. Her chest rose in a shaky little pant and she ran her tongue over ripe lips.

It struck him that she wasn’t accustomed to wanting the men she used.

He chuckled, delighted not only to have the upper hand, but to have her delectable body fall so easily under him. “Go ahead, Clair,” he taunted. “Ask me if offering to share that bed will persuade me to let you stay in it.”

CHAPTER THREE

FOR SOME REASON Abby’s note from this morning came back to Clair.

I miss waking up with you.

Clair didn’t allow herself to be an idealist. She knew better than to wait on Prince Charming, but her insides twisted all over again. She’d had invitations to sex before, even considered a few, but something had always held her back. Fear of letting down her guard. A sense of emotional obligation that wasn’t comfortable. Never once had she heard anything so blunt and tactical.

“I thought you believed me when I said I wasn’t sleeping with Victor.”

“Victor, yes. No man at all?” He was three thousand percent confident, laconically filling her bedroom doorway with his primed body. “You’re what? Twenty-five?”

Clair closed lips that had parted with indignant denial.

“Twenty-three,” she muttered, which was still long in the tooth to be a virgin, but she was stuck in a catch-22. She had thought she ought to save herself for someone she cared about, but she shied from any type of closeness. Opening up was such a leap of faith. Handing your heart to someone put it in danger of disappointment at the least and complete shattering at the worst. The right man hadn’t come along to tempt her into taking the risk.

This man shouldn’t tempt her, but sex without the entanglement of feelings held a strange allure. She suspected it would be very good sex too, not just because he looked as though he knew his way around a woman’s body, but because her own seemed drawn to his, sense and logic notwithstanding. He made her hot.

It was driving her crazy. She didn’t know how to cope with it except to pretend the reaction wasn’t there. Shaking out the T-shirt she wore to bed, she folded it against her middle and said frigidly, “What makes you think I want to sleep with you?”

“You’ve managed to convince me you’re capable of honesty, Clair. Don’t start lying now. You want me.”

He could tell? How? Humiliated, she avoided her own eyes in the mirror opposite, not wanting to see the flush of awareness he obviously read like a neon sign.

“That bothers you, doesn’t it?” he mocked. “That you’re attracted to more than my fat wallet?”

“What wallet?” she scoffed, ducking an admission that she was reacting to anything. “All I heard was an offer for one night in exchange for what, one more day here? You said I was selling myself short earlier. Surely a man in your position could do better than that.”

Her words didn’t take him aback, only provoked a disparaging smile. “You want the penthouse.”

“I didn’t say that,” she protested.

“Good, because the sale closes tomorrow.”

Her insides roiled. She really was homeless. She didn’t let him see her distress, only blurted, “You work fast.”

“Believe it.”

Her belly tightened at the resolute way he said it, and quivered even more when she saw the gleam of ownership in his eye.

“Well,” she breathed. “I can hardly ask you to share this bed if you can’t arrange for me to stay in it, can I? Pity.” Her false smile punctuated her sarcasm.

“I’ll provide you a bed. One that’s bigger and…sturdier.”

A jolt of surprise zinged all the way to the soles of her feet. He wasn’t supposed to take this seriously. She wasn’t.

She clenched her hand around the edge of the laundry basket as if it were a lifeline that would lift her out of this conversation, but for some stupid reason, her gaze dropped to his open collar where a few dark hairs lay against his collarbone. She imagined he was statue perfect under that crisp fabric, with sharply defined pecs and a six-pack of abs. His hips—

Good grief, she’d never looked at a man’s crotch in her life. She jerked her gaze away, mind imprinted with a hint of tented steel-gray trousers. She blushed hard and it was mortifying, especially when she heard him chuckle.

“I don’t even know you,” she choked, wanting it to be a pithy rejection, but it was more a desperate reminder to herself that this was wrong. She shouldn’t be the least bit interested in him.

“Not to worry, maya zalataya. I know you.”

That yanked her attention back to him and his supremely confident smirk.

“You’re waiting for me to meet your price. Let’s get there,” he said implacably.

“That’s so offensive I can’t even respond.”

“It’s realistic. If you were looking for love, you wouldn’t be living off an old man, allowing people to think you belong to him. I don’t need hearts and flowers either, but I like having a woman in my bed.”

“Your charm hasn’t landed you one?”

He shrugged off her scorn. “I’m between lovers. The takeover has kept me busy. Now I’m tallying up my acquisitions, preparing to enjoy the spoils.”

“Well, I don’t happen to come with this particular acquisition.” She kneed the side of the mattress. “I didn’t have to share this bed to sleep in it and I had a paycheck besides. Don’t throw that look at me!” she snapped, hackles rising when he curled his lip. “Victor was going to underwrite the foundation, and it—”

“By how much?” he broke in.

“Pardon?”

“How much was he going to donate toward ‘brightening your day’?”

“He— You— Oh…” She ground her teeth, glaring at his impassive expression. Planting her hands on her hips, she stood tall and said clearly, “Ten.” That ought to make him realize how seriously Brighter Days had been taken.

“Million?” His eyebrows shot toward his hairline.

“Thousand,” she corrected, startled. She could dream of having millions at her disposal, but Victor’s promised funds would have been enough to keep the doors of the home open until she raised more.

Aleksy removed his mobile from his pocket. “You do sell yourself short. We’ll add a zero to that and call it a deal.”

“What?” she squeaked, but he was already connecting to someone, speaking Russian, then switching to English.

“Daniels, yes. You have her details through payroll? Perfect.” He ended the call.

“What did you just do?” she gasped.

“The transfer will complete in the morning.” He pushed his mobile back into his pocket. “Come here, Clair.”

She stayed where she was, aghast. Infuriated. Was it wrong to be dazzled and elated, as well? Oh, what she could do at Brighter Days with a hundred thousand pounds!

“That’s—” She cleared her throat, recalling he was under the impression he’d just bought her. Her stomach turned over, except…well, it wasn’t with the repulsion she expected. It was like peaking on a roller-coaster track and feeling the car drop away while she hung suspended and breathless. She bottomed out quickly, though, rattled by the way the world began whirring by as the situation picked up speed. She didn’t know which way was up. She wanted off.

“That’s a very generous donation,” she choked, blindly scrabbling up her folded T-shirt. She snapped it out and creased it into a messy rectangle against the bedspread. “I’ll issue a proper receipt for the full amount after I’ve moved it into the trust account.”

“Do whatever you want with it. It’s yours. Now let’s find more pleasant surroundings. I’ll send someone to finish packing your things.”

“The transfer hasn’t cleared.” Terror provided the quick retort, but it felt incredibly good to lob it at him. Better than revealing how thoroughly he mixed her up. “And given that you repulse me—”

“Do I?” He launched from his lazy slouch in the doorway. She only had time for one backward stumbling step before he’d clamped hard arms around her, pulled her into the wall of his chest, then crushed her mouth with his.

Claw his eyes out, she told herself, but aside from the fact that her arms were trapped between them, the sensation of his mouth closing on hers was too remarkable to reject. He was domineering and inexorable, but this wasn’t punishment or force; it was—

Hot. Sexy. Enticing. She instinctively parted her lips under the angle of his firm ones, and his tongue speared wetly into her mouth, shooting such a jolt of pleasure through her that her knees buckled. She moaned and lifted her chin, seeking another thrust and another. Rocking her mouth against his and moaning again when his hand moved to her bottom, crushing her against the hard ridge at his hips.

It was unfamiliar and overwhelming, but she wanted to cry, it felt so good to be wrapped in strong arms, mind blinded to all but the pleasure flaring up from her abdomen, filling her with a blossoming sense of rightness. She didn’t know she was moaning with gratification until he drew away and she heard her own mewl of distress.

With a final nip of his teeth over her swollen lips, he released her, letting her crumple with dazed clumsiness onto the bed’s pillows.

He made an adjustment to himself, his stature powerful as a warrior’s, his harsh breath moving through parted lips, the grim line softened by the sheen of their kiss. “We can wait until morning if you really want to play hard to get, but I don’t think you do.”

“I do,” she gasped, struggling to sit up. The laundry basket tumbled off the narrow bed, dumping all her packing onto the carpet at his feet. “I don’t sleep with men for money. I’ll transfer the money right back to you. You can’t force me into bed with you.”

“I don’t have to,” he said on a snort, shoulders pinned back in a hard flex. “You just proved you want to.” He paused to let her absorb what she couldn’t deny.

An awful telltale heat suffused her, making her dig her fingernails into the edge of the mattress. It was true, she wasn’t immune to him. He kept effortlessly brushing past the invisible shield that usually protected her and branding himself against her core.

“So what if I do? My instincts are warning me that it would be a bad idea,” she told him, holding his gaze and trying to listen to those instincts even as everything in her reached longingly toward him. She could barely think of anything but sating this unfamiliar hunger when he looked at her as if he wanted to flatten her onto the bed and finish what he’d started. Her breath stuttered and her nipples contracted to tight, painful points. All of her felt magnetized toward him, but she stayed put, maintaining the distance.

Something flashed in his eyes. Frustration maybe, but it had a flicker of desperation that quickly dissolved into triumph. “And of course there’s your reputation. Wouldn’t you like to preserve that?”

She frowned. “Sleeping with you would ruin it!” Her voice came out throaty and oddly tinged with anticipation. She was struggling for logic, but all she could wonder was, how would it feel to have him on top of her? Inside her? An earthy part of her desperately wanted to know. No one had ever made her feel so much, and the feelings weren’t emotional and painful, but physical and exciting. Thrilling. Her lips were still burning, aching for the return of his.

She didn’t even know him.

But she wanted to. From the second he’d stepped off the elevator, she’d been wondering who he was. Her online search had turned up dry details about his business interests, nothing about his background. Where had he come from, besides the biggest country in the world? Why had he singled her out? Why did she react to him like this?

“You read the memo,” he said, interrupting her thoughts with grating flatness. “A full investigation has been launched at the firm. Anyone found to have colluded with Victor’s illegal activities will be terminated. I expect more than a few rats to jump ship before they’re fired.”

It took a moment for his statement to penetrate. She knew she wasn’t a rat, so she hadn’t been frightened. Until now. “I didn’t know what he was up to,” she reminded him, experiencing the stabbing sense of being falsely accused. “You don’t think people will say I was fired because— I would never take what I didn’t earn!”

“Says the woman who just accepted a hundred thousand pounds for a charity that doesn’t exist.”

“I didn’t ask for that!” She scrambled to her feet. “You’ll never prove any wrongdoing on my part.”

“Nevertheless, you’ve been sacked. People will draw their own conclusions. Something you’re comfortable with, I believe?”

“That was different! And if I slept with you after seeming to be with Victor, I’d look like—” The biggest gold digger in the world. Her heart plummeted.

“Better to be called what you are than presumed a criminal. I’m well known for drawing a hard line against cheaters and thieves. I wouldn’t have one in my bed, and the world knows it. Sleeping with me would clear your name, whereas walking away would heighten speculation. I don’t think you’d find another patron after that. Not one able to keep you in the style to which you’ve grown accustomed.”

She wouldn’t find a job frying chips with rumors of lawbreaking dogging her. “You could clear my name! You only have to speak up.”

“Make it worth my while,” he countered, not bothering to hide his superior enjoyment at having her exactly where he wanted her. He really was conscienceless.

“Why are you backing me into a corner like this?”

“Why are you fighting me when you know you’ll enjoy it?”

“You won’t,” she blurted, shoulders hunching. Her appalling lack of experience would bore him out of his skull before the first act was over.

Triumph flashed in his eyes and a satisfied smile drew the corners of his mouth back, revealing a wolfish grin. “I have no problem communicating what I like, and you seem receptive. We’ll do fine together,” he assured her.

She folded her arms, fingers plucking self-consciously at the cables knit into her sleeves. The thought of his laughing at her for being a virgin didn’t appeal, but she had to tell him. “Look, I’m not…what you think I am.”

“What I think,” he said, nudging aside a pile of tumbled clothing as he stepped closer, “is that you’re something Victor wanted.” He clasped her arms above her bent elbows, gently straining them backward so her breasts arched into his muscled chest.

She gasped, stiffening in shock, hands splaying over the ridges of his ribs, fingertips unconsciously moving to trace the powerful cage beneath warm fabric. Rivulets of heat poured through her taut abdomen to a place where need pooled, making her flesh tingle and ache to be touched. “Wh-what?”

“Victor couldn’t have you and that means I must. Do you have a passport?”

She couldn’t think when he touched her, but couldn’t draw away, trapped by his strength and her own weakness. But he was talking as if she were mere spoils of war.

“Did you travel with him?” he asked with exaggerated patience.

“I was supposed to, but he died before I went anywhere. Go back to that bit about why you…” She couldn’t bring herself to say “want” when it sounded as though the sexual attraction drowning her wasn’t affecting him. She shivered in a hot-cold shudder of uneasiness while blood rushed under her skin, flushing warmth into her chest, making her breasts feel swollen and sensitized. Her hips longed to press into his, seeking the hard length that had nudged her when they kissed.

He knew what he was doing to her. A smug gleam lit his narrowed eyes as his gaze dropped to her lips. He started to lower his head.

Jerking hers back, she gasped, “I haven’t agreed.” But did she really want to step onto the street at midnight with her meager possessions and become one of the homeless? Her few shallow friendships were all with people she worked with. They wouldn’t take her in for fear of losing their jobs. She didn’t have a cushion of savings, just a credit card she couldn’t pay off if she didn’t have an income.

The direness of her situation began to hit home. At least this afternoon she’d been sure she could find some kind of menial work, but not now. Any character reference out of the firm after today would be career-stoppingly negative. Flicking a look from his set jaw to his penetrating eyes, she whispered, “You’re a real piece of work, you know that?”

“I lost my redeeming qualities years ago,” he agreed, something dark flickering in his gaze. “Which means there’s no appealing to my better nature. Make this easy on both of us and give in, Clair.”

She was tempted to. She didn’t have anything to lose and no one to answer to while he was dangling—what? A night? A reprieve at any rate, one that advertised a fringe benefit of physical satiation she had never expected to want. The emptiness of a one-night stand was, well, empty enough to make her ache, but she wasn’t in the market for a real relationship, so…

“Why extend your takeover to include me?” she asked in a voice more husky than the disparagement she was aiming for. “Didn’t you get enough out of scooping up the firm from a dead man?”

“He was still alive when I started proceedings and no, I didn’t get anything near what I wanted. Don’t make out like you’re some kind of prey just because you’re used to being the predator. You get to keep the money,” he taunted softly.

“No matter what?” The jerky toss of her head was supposed to convey brash confidence. The question was real, though. She couldn’t help being seduced by the prospect of running the foundation her way, without needing approval on every detail. Without having to reveal that each of those details touched her personally and that was why she was fighting so hard for them. “I’m not into anything kinky,” she warned. “If you’re looking for someone to spank you, move along to the next girl in the secretarial pool.”

“I’m not the submissive in any relationship,” he assured her dryly. “I like straight sex and lots of it. I don’t hurt women, ever, if that’s what you’re dancing around asking. I might play with dominating one, controlling her…” He flexed his hands on her elbows, making her breasts press into his chest.

Excitement returned with a spear of pleasure straight into her loins. She gasped.

“If she likes it,” he murmured.

She struggled, but he held fast and to her chagrin the short tussle only caused her heated desire to kindle into a shivery anticipation. His vital strength was incredibly sexy and she must have had a kinky strand after all if she responded to having pleasure forced upon her. No guilt, she supposed.

“Too bad the money hasn’t cleared,” she said with breathless regret. “Go back to your own suite. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.” After she’d had time to talk herself out of the rash agreement she was considering.

He slowly let his hands release her, his fingertips oh so slightly brushing the sides of her breasts, making need pierce her belly and leaving her shuddering with longing.

“So you can disappear with my money? I don’t think so. Van Eych might have been teased into giving without return, but I don’t tolerate cheats or thieves. Fetch your passport and we’ll take whatever you’ve left in that case. I have properties around the world. Lady’s choice where we go, but by the time we land, you’ll have your money and then—” He skimmed a proprietorial glance over her. “I’ll have you.”

CHAPTER FOUR

“I’M LOSING MY home at midnight,” her soft lips pronounced before tensing with acrimony. “I need to pack. Traveling will have to wait.” There wasn’t an ounce of self-preservation in her as she matter-of-factly righted the laundry basket and heaped the tumbled clothing into it.

“Don’t test me, Clair. I’m not nice.”

She straightened with a flushed face, all out aggression blasting at him in a way that had him planting his feet.

“What do you want me to do? Leave my things for the new owners to throw in the trash? Exactly how much do you want from me besides my job, my home and—” She clamped her lips over whatever else she almost said. Her mouth trembled briefly and for a moment there was a cast of startling defenselessness to her.

It was gone before unease could take a proper hold on him, hidden by the shift of her body away from him. Her stiff shoulders were proud. “You’re the one who sold this place out from under me. Stop complaining that it’s cutting into your plans.”

She was acting like an amateur.

Aleksy narrowed his eyes on her back, always aware when women were trying to manipulate him and occasionally willing to allow it when it suited his end purpose: primarily to get the physical release his body required. If Clair was attempting to wring guilt out of him, she was being predictable and hopelessly misguided. If she didn’t appreciate how powerful and absent of empathy he was, he’d demonstrate.

With one call—in English so she’d understand it—he swept away her stall tactic.

“The brawny and coldly efficient Lazlo again?” she asked without turning.

“He’s enlisting a young man you might know. Stuart from accounting? He’s proving to be extremely cooperative. A stickler for procedure. Stuart will make an inventory of your property and put it in storage at my expense.”

“Stuart from accounting wants to paw through my underpants drawer? And run back to the office with what he found in my medicine chest?”

“Not if he intends to keep his job.” Aleksy didn’t like the way she paled and liked even less the thought of some flunky fondling her undergarments. His hands tingled to cradle her in reassurance. He shook off the unfamiliar urge. “Gather your personal things if it will put an end to this delay,” he muttered. “You have one hour.”

* * *

In the end she chose Paris, but not for the reason he thought.

“The city of lovers,” he’d said ironically, the timbre of his voice stirring her blood. “Of course. A perfect weekend retreat.”

Weekend. The word punched low, gushing delicious heat through her abdomen.

She shook off the reaction and bit back an explanation that she’d picked Paris because she could get home on her own steam if she had to. Not that she had a home to come back to, but flying back to London from Cairo or Vancouver or Sydney would destroy her shallow savings.

As they traveled, she focused on budgeting for a new flat and where she’d start looking for a job so she wouldn’t recall the way Stuart’s Adam’s apple had bobbled when he found Aleksy in her flat.

Aleksy had curved a possessive hand against the back of her neck and said, “I don’t date my employees. Clair is no longer with the firm.”

Clair had lifted a disillusioned Could you be more blunt? expression to him.

Aleksy had quirked his split brow in a Want me to be?

She’d left without saying a word, her guilty blush burning her cheeks, aware that he’d sealed her fate. Her reputation as a tart was solidified and so much better than criminal. That made her squirm, but she’d learned to shield herself against judgment long ago. No, it was the way he’d gotten into her head so easily that really disturbed her. It made her feel vulnerable.

“Clair.”

His touch turned her from staring out the car window, once again opening that invisible gateway through her defenses. His intense personality whirled into her psyche like a restless summer wind, scattering her thoughts and inducing an instant, fluttering sensuality that reached toward everything in him.

“We’re here.”

The lights of Paris came to sparkling life around her. The scent of rain-damp streets smelled promisingly fresh as he left the car. The strength in his hand as he took hers to help her exit made her heart trip in a nervous rhythm against her breastbone.

She paused as he steered her toward a building, turning her face up to the sprinkling black sky to take in the facade of elegantly lit stone. It wasn’t a towering structure of glass and steel, but an old-world walk-up with wrought-iron balconies and planter boxes already blooming with spring. “This is very—” charming, she almost said “—nice.”

“It’s a good investment,” he dismissed.

The statement chilled her. “If you’re so keen on good investments, why did I hear you dumping all of Victor’s properties?” He’d been positively ruthless, speaking harshly into his mobile as she’d moved through the flat collecting her few sentimental items. He hadn’t taken any losses that she could discern, but he hadn’t seemed concerned with making huge profits either. “I’m sure his family would have kept what you didn’t want.”

“His sons kept enough,” he said bluntly, pausing on the top landing to open a door by punching a code into the security pad. “I left them their homes because they have innocent wives and children, but they knew enough about how their father made his fortune that they didn’t fight my takeover. I didn’t have the evidence to prove Van Eych’s crimes until the firm’s accounting books were in my hands. Now the truth will come out and his sons will change their names to escape any connection to him.”

His mouth curled into a cruel smile as he held the door for her.

Foreboding crawled through her veins. “You think it’s funny to cause the severing of family ties?” Everything in her castaway upbringing was appalled.

“Funny? No. Justified? Yes.”

She stepped into a room lit with intimate golden pools, but she didn’t take it in, too caught up with looking for a crack of humanity in his unyielding expression. Until now she hadn’t worried what would happen to her, aware only that if she walked away from Aleksy’s money, she’d always cringe with regret. Orphaned children needed a voice and it wasn’t as if she could find support for the foundation elsewhere. Victor was gone and who else would sponsor it if rumors started up that its founder had been in collusion with a white-collar criminal? No, if she didn’t do this, the foundation was history, but reality hit as the door clicked shut behind them, loud and symbolic.

Aleksy Dmitriev was a hard man. Not cruel; she believed him when he said he didn’t hurt women. He’d already demonstrated that he held himself to specific, sharply defined ethics. But he wasn’t merely detached like her. She deflected emotions, but he didn’t feel them at all. That made something catch in her. Apprehension, but empathy too. What had made him so devoid of a heart? Had he ever had one?

Did it matter? She belonged to him regardless.

Her heart sank, taking her last chance of protest with it, leaving her feeling naked and defenseless. You’re not naked yet, a lethal voice whispered in her head.

“Dine out or in?” he asked, his accent raspy on her sensitized nerves.

Her breath stuttered and she struggled to catch it, not realizing she’d been holding it. Part of her would rather get the main event over with. It was late enough she was growing tired, but she was also wide-awake with nervous anticipation.

His nearness, the power of his intense glance, stole her voice. His hair had flattened into a dark helmet under the light rain. A shadow had grown in on his square jaw, accentuating everything male in him. She was ridiculously weakened by the sight. Her gaze should have been flashing a back off. Instead she studied his mouth, recalling the feel of those full lips moving with erotic control over hers. Her fingertips itched to trace the smooth curves that were uncompromisingly masculine, yet wickedly sexy.

“This stubble will burn if I kiss you the way you’re begging me to,” he said in a growled voice that slammed her back to reality.

“I—” She strangled on denial, mortified enough to jerk out of his hypnotizing aura and move across the room.

“I’ll shower and shave. You put on one of those cocktail dresses you asked me if you should bring. I want to see your legs.”

She threw him a livid glare, but he disappeared down a hall. What did she have to be angry about anyway? She’d sold herself into his control, hadn’t she?

Clair gripped her elbows, hanging on to her composure with bruising tightness, taking in her surroundings to turn her mind from her precarious situation. The lounge was enormous, tiled in marble and divided into sections with area rugs and attractively arranged furniture. Everything was decidedly masculine, the writing desk set in the corner surrounded by enough space to accommodate its charismatic owner. The rest of the flat took up the entire top floor of the building, incorporating half a dozen smaller flats into a single sprawling living space that one man couldn’t possibly need.

She had thought Victor obscenely wealthy. She shook her head, reminding herself that the real test of a person’s class came from his character, not his possessions. Problem was, Aleksy guarded himself even more closely than she did. She wondered what kind of man lurked beneath that polished granite exterior. One who would laugh her to the curb when he realized what a novice she was?

Stop it. Steadying her knees and pulling her shoulders back, she resolved not to be intimidated. He could laugh all he wanted, but she had her own principles: loyalty, a debt of gratitude and a personal honor that demanded she live up to her word.

She was terrified, but she’d sleep with him because she’d said she would.

* * *

Her luggage was gone from his room when he emerged from his shower.

It was an unexpected slap in the face for Aleksy. Women never rejected him. Given the math Clair had scratched into a notebook on the plane, he had considered their deal more than sealed; was she now trying to get out of it?

Snatching up his mobile, wearing only a towel, he strode from the bedroom to the empty lounge. Down at the far end of the flat, as far as she could get from his master bedroom, the door was shut. He pushed through it, noted her open suitcase on the bed and heard the hair dryer click on in the bathroom.

The release of tension in him was profound—and aggravating.

Get a grip, he ordered himself as he returned to his room. She was only a woman, the same as all the others he’d taken into his bed. Yes, there was a certain satisfaction in claiming what Victor had wanted, but Aleksy had been patient enough to hunt that man down over two decades. He ought to be capable of waiting a few more hours for this final conquest.

The short flight to Paris had been unbearable, though, the drive from the airport eternal. She’d been quiet, almost as if trying to hold herself behind an invisible shell, while his senses had been homed onto her presence, for once hungry to learn about his partner, but he hadn’t wanted to reveal his curiosity.

He didn’t want to feel it. She shouldn’t be drawing him in this strongly.

When she’d turned that look of longing on him after they arrived in the flat, it had taken everything in him to keep from leaping on her. Whether it had been a tease or real, he had ached to accept her invitation like nothing he’d ever wanted, even his lifetime of revenge. He’d controlled himself because any weakness for women had always been a distraction he couldn’t afford. He wouldn’t let a habit of a lifetime click off like a switch, but he’d been near panting in London when she’d thrown down her condition that the money had to clear.

His saving grace had been that she had been panting too; it was affecting him. The women he usually went for enjoyed sex, but with Clair the chemistry was notched to maximum. She might have an agenda, but her desire was interfering with it. It was an unbelievable turn-on; it enthralled him.

Surely once he’d had her the mystique would dissolve though. It had to. This obsessiveness was intolerable.

He stepped into black jeans and tugged on a light gray pullover, returning to the lounge, where he made a few calls while pacing off his restlessness, mercilessly tying off his need as he waited for staff from a nearby restaurant.

As he waited for Clair.

* * *

Clair forced one foot in front of the other and stepped into the lounge, tensed for the impact of Aleksy’s inspection. He was on the phone, his face and body in quarter profile.

She had expected one of his disturbingly penetrating looks, but found herself doing the appraisal, going weak as she took in the length of his back and the way his jeans hugged the shape of his backside and outlined his muscled thighs. He stood with his long legs braced and shrugged a shoulder, drawing her attention to the powerful layers of muscles bulging beneath the wool. She imagined exploring light fingers over the textures of cashmere, swarthy neck and short, damp hair and had to strangle a moan of longing.

He finished his call and turned to strip her deep purple slip dress with hungry eyes. It was the same look he’d given her this morning, just as carnal and without the safety net of an office full of people to prevent him acting on his desires.

The assessment acted exactly as powerfully on her, pinning her feet to the floor and making her realize that for all her rationalizations about helping orphaned children, the real reason she was here was this: she wanted to be with him. It was a frightening admission after a lifetime of convincing herself she didn’t want or need anyone.

“Lovely,” he said, languidly climbing his appreciative gaze from her exposed knees to her carefully composed expression.

Her stomach contracted under the impact of his undisguised sexual intention.

“Victor liked it.” She didn’t know why she said it. Perhaps to keep him from guessing how utterly he held her in thrall, but it had a glacial effect on him.

He narrowed his eyes and said chillingly, “Be very careful about throwing his name at me, Clair.”

Uneasiness wafted over her along with confusion. She had pushed that “spoils of war” unpleasantness to the back of her mind, but it came flooding forward now.

A knock on the door kept her silent.

He opened it to uniformed staff. They turned one end of the dining table into an intimate candlelit cove, setting out covered plates and pouring wine. Soft music came on and fragrant flowers complemented scents of orange sauce and rich braised duck.

Unsteady in her heels, Clair moved forward to the chair Aleksy held for her, trying to frame her suspicion in a way that didn’t demean her any further than she already was.

When they were alone, she cleared her throat. “You said earlier—” Was it only a few hours ago they’d stood in her flat setting out terms for this arrangement? What was she doing! “You said that you’d been targeting the firm for some time. Victor was under considerable stress leading up to his heart attack. Was that from the takeover?”

The implication behind her simple question crashed and reverberated in Aleksy’s head, as swift and unexpected as the knife that had cut the line into his face. A dark maelstrom of emotion threatened, the kind he hadn’t allowed himself in years. He fought it back, master of everything he felt or didn’t feel, but it shocked him that she’d almost pulled something out of him that he no longer allowed. Chagrin. Loss. Rage.

“Are you accusing me of murdering him? Intentionally?” He was able to keep his tone impersonal, but she didn’t mistake the threat beneath. She paled.

“N-no.” Her voice was weak.

“Because I’ve been targeted for takeovers many times. It never raises my blood pressure. Van Eych knew what was coming and may have grown hypertensive, but that’s because he didn’t take care of himself. He lived as if an overweight, sedentary lifestyle would never catch up to him.” His entire body ached with tension.

“I know. I told him—”

“I don’t want to hear what you told him,” he snapped with a slip of control that made her jump. “I know more about the man than I ever wanted to. Now I want to forget him. I want his entire existence obliterated.”

He was revealing more than he intended to, but it would put an end to any more infuriating remarks regarding Victor. He glared at the elegantly simple dress that showed her delicate curves to perfection, offended that Victor had paid for it, that anything about the man had ever come in contact with her.

She sat primly, cowed by his temper into holding her hands in her lap, her spine straight, her eyes downcast. He didn’t apologize; he wanted the message driven home that this topic would never be revisited again.

“Well,” she said with quiet impertinence. “That certainly answers the question I was really asking, which was whether you had a grudge against Victor.”

“A grudge?” Aleksy choked on the inadequacy of the word, but what did you call it when you knew a man was responsible for your father’s death? For your mother’s slow, painful decline? For your own self-destruction? He swept his clogged throat clean with a swallow of wine, suppressing anguished thoughts. “Yes, Clair, I had a grudge.”

Aleksy’s posture was casual, but his stillness spoke of extreme tension. There was nothing to be read in his expression beyond the startling prominence of his scar.

Clair realized she needed to tread softly, but she had to ask, “Why?”

“He knew. That’s all that’s important.”

“Not to me,” she protested.

The corner of his lip quirked. She realized he knew what was really bothering her. “You struck the deal you wanted. Do you hear me asking why it was important to you?”

He’d already made it pretty clear he didn’t care about her motivation. This was commerce, not romance, but the worry drilling a hole in the pit of her stomach was that he didn’t really want her. Obviously he was attracted to her to some degree, but she didn’t want to be a thing. She wanted her first sexual experience to at least be sensual, not a twelve-point inspection and a stamp on the windshield. What happened when she turned out to be less than the high-performance ride he was used to?

“I just want to understand. You didn’t want anything to do with me when you thought I’d been sleeping with Victor, but when you learned I hadn’t, you coerced me into this arrangement. If you’re on a mission to collect all of Victor’s possessions, why count me among them? And why sell them off as quickly as you acquired them?”

His jaw hardened at the word coerced, but he only said bluntly, “To dismantle what he built. To expunge his mark on the world.”

“Well, I won’t let you dismantle me.” She grew hot. “I wasn’t his. You don’t get to erase me.”

“He thought you were his,” he shot back. “You let the world think you were.”

“It doesn’t mean you can treat me like—”

“Property?” Bracing his elbows, he leaned forward so she had to jerk back. “Why do you care? You got what you wanted. I’ll get what I want. There’s no conflict.”

There was, but apparently only to her.

Drawing a deep breath, she picked up her fork and said stiffly, “Just so I’m clear…You don’t care whether the things you’ve acquired are to your taste. You only want to hold them long enough to devalue and unload them?” Looking him in the eye was an act of supreme courage, especially since it made him bare his teeth in an uncivilized grin.

“You get to keep the money, Clair. You’ll walk away satisfied that your bottom line has benefited, I promise. Now let’s change the subject.”

“I think you just did,” she muttered, staring at food she had no appetite for as she tried to sift through the mixed emotions of being physically infatuated with a man who promised to give her pleasure while only taking a cold helping of revenge for himself.

His attitude hurt her and she didn’t want him to have that power. She wanted to be unaffected and remote, the way he was.

“Did I?” he responded with throwaway sarcasm.

“Yes, you did.” She set down her fork with a clatter. Trying to eat was pointless when she was so consumed with nerves. She could sit here waiting out the minutes until his stupid money came through, trying to reimagine this into something more meaningful than it would ever be, or she could have sex with him and be done with it. It didn’t matter if he didn’t feel anything, she told herself. She had always preferred superficial connections over something deeper. Right?

Right?

“Let’s do it now,” she decided shakily.

Her statement arrested him. “Why the sudden change of heart?” he asked, narrowing his eyes.

Her pulse raced, but she ignored it, determined to be as cool and impervious as the women he was no doubt used to. “Because unlike an island villa or a vintage car, which have no say in life, I am a human being capable of making a choice. I want to complete this transaction so I can move on.”

She rose and left the table, heading toward his room without looking back, unable to hear if he followed because her ears filled with a whooshing sound. Her whole body trembled. She halted when she saw the intimidating expanse of his bed.

What was she doing? A cold chill of doubt washed through her. She couldn’t be so casual about stripping naked and letting a man into her body.

Fingertips grazed her spine, making her flinch. He lowered the zip of her dress before she clutched at the drooping front, panic whirling her to face him.

He scooped her to his chest, trapping her arms between them as his mouth captured hers. One hand streaked from her waist to slide beneath her elbow, where he cupped and firmly massaged her breast.

The dual sensations of fierce kiss and possessive, intimate touch hammered her with a pulse of pleasure so strong it frightened her. The situation was not just flying but exploding out of her control. She jerked her head to the side, gasping for breath, and pressed with her forearms for distance.

“You’re going too fast!”

CHAPTER FIVE

HER WORDS RESULTED in a loaded silence.

She used it to gather her composure, shocked by how easily he’d stripped her of it with one soul-stealing kiss. Compartmentalize, she urged herself, but it was impossible when the heat of his body melted her bones and his hands flexed restlessly against her back. She had to slow him down or he’d own her completely.

Trying to hide how unnerved she was by her response, she forced herself to meet his gaze. His expression was flushed, his eyes glittering with suspicion.

“A minute ago, I wasn’t moving fast enough,” he growled.

Her chin automatically came forward, even though challenging him was probably the stupidest thing she could do. “A girl still wants to be seduced.” It was the only thing she could think to say.

“Does she?” he asked in a tone that made her belly tremor. He held her chin and stared at her. “Or does she want to see how far she can push a man?”

“I’m not—” She tried to swallow through a dry throat. “I’m not going to back out,” she whispered. “I just want a slower pace. Is that so unreasonable?” She wished she had enough experience to know exactly what kind of mistake she was making.

“Are you attempting to keep it interesting or afraid of losing control?”

His guess, so accurate, sent a startled pulse through her. Unable to control how the world treated her, she instead controlled how deeply she felt the ebbs and flows of life—but she definitely couldn’t control the way she reacted to him. That terrified her.

He touched her lips. The tickling graze of his fingertip made her mouth quiver. “Tell me when you want me to kiss you, then,” he taunted gruffly.

Now. She couldn’t deny that she wanted his mouth. And she wanted to make a go of the foundation. If she kept that in mind, maybe she could get through this without giving up too much of herself.

“N-now.” The quaver in her voice reflected her inner turmoil.

“Now?” He plucked at her bottom lip.

“Yes. But just a kiss,” she cautioned, then added, “Please.”

He chuckled in a way that sounded bitter and trailed his calloused fingers along her jaw, into her hair, gently threading his hand into her loose tresses as he tilted her head back.

“Since you said please…” He stepped closer and brushed a light kiss onto her neck.

She shivered as his lips moved under her jaw and up her cheek to her temple.

It was lovely, but she felt unsteady. She set her hands on his hard chest to ground herself, eyes involuntarily closing as she appreciated the patience he was showing, touching butterfly kisses all over her face, pressing the corner of her mouth and drifting away. Giving her the time to absorb each caress, the flutter of reaction it raised, and even anticipate the next.

Before she realized what she was doing, she unconsciously tried to follow him for a real kiss. His grip in her hair made turning her face impossible. The next time his heated breath flowed over her lips, she parted her own in invitation, but he left again. A whimper of dismay escaped her and she realized with a sting of uneasiness that she wasn’t setting the pace at all. He was in control.

She ran restless hands over his chest. It was unfamiliar but thrilling. Hard muscle rippled with power beneath soft cashmere as she tried unsuccessfully to convey what she wanted from him.

“Aleksy.” That throaty tone did not belong to her.

“Do you want my mouth on yours?” he asked in a husky growl.

She did. For all her misgivings and apprehensions, her lips were hot and sensitized, the waiting unbearable. “Yes.”

He rubbed her lips lightly with his own.

A needy ache gathered hotly between her thighs. “More,” she breathed.

“Show me what you want,” he commanded.

A frustrated sound escaped her. She didn’t know! Or did she? She wanted a proper, openmouthed, hot, swirling kiss. As crazy as it sounded, she craved the mindlessness he inflicted on her.

Lifting, she tried to show him, crushing her swollen, aching mouth against his, clinging with her lips and delicately invading with the tip of her tongue.

He stiffened.

She was doing it wrong. Failure and rejection instantly loomed, even more horrifying than the swamp of sexual excitement. She instinctively tried to pull away, but his arm tightened and she felt the answering lick of his tongue against hers. A bolt of sweet lightning flashed through her, a fierce relief followed by a warning of a storm.

She stilled, tried to pull herself together, but he boldly took possession of her the way she yearned for, sealing their damp lips in a tight fit and thrusting his tongue against hers, spiraling her into the exciting world he seemed determined to pull her into.

Of their own volition, her hands crept up his shoulders, linking behind his neck to draw him down, encouraging him by diving her fingers into his short hair.

His arm stayed locked across her back, but he wasn’t pressing her into him. She did that, not even realizing she was doing it until she felt herself plastered against him. Her dress was open, she realized, but she didn’t care. Her body badly needed the pressure of his chest against breasts that seemed to swell and reach toward him, aching. A moan of longing escaped her.

“What do you want? This?” He drew one of her arms down and slid her hand beneath the soft knit, guiding her touch up his hot chest.

Startled by this new realm, she explored with rapt intrigue. His skin was like sunbaked satin, his chest hair flat and softly abrasive, his nipple small and pebble sharp against her curious fingertips. She splayed her hand, petting, fascinated, and learned quickly when he taught her the pressure he liked. She circled and flicked, feeling him jerk. Wrong again?

His arm at her back pinched her closer. “Do you want me to do that to you?” His head dipped and he caught her earlobe between his lips, sucking and sending a shocking streak of pure excitement flashing into her loins. “This too?”

She groaned at the thought of his mouth on her breast and curled her fingers against his chest, raking his nipple lightly with her fingernail. “Yes.”

His breath hissed in. “Take off your dress, then,” he ground out, loosening his hold on her and backing away.

Shaking, she dragged her hand free, grazing his abdomen on the way, feeling his stomach contract beneath her touch. He was remarkable. This state was remarkable, feeling all hot and fascinated. Alive.

It struck her that he would forever hold a place in her memory for this. The indelible connection was already bittersweet enough to make the backs of her eyes sting. Part of her screamed, Run away. The bond was temporary and would hurt to break, but she craved it all the same. Desperately. So much so that she found herself nudging the straps of her dress off her shoulders. They fell down her arms and warm silk dropped into a dark puddle over her shoes.

She was naked but for her bra, underpants and hose, all black but built for function. Her palms shyly covered the clasp between her breasts, forearms shielding the small, pale swells that peeped over the cups.

“Ask me for help with it,” he said.

“I—” It wasn’t that she couldn’t open it. It was how real this was becoming. What if she wasn’t enough for him, even for a night?

He commanded her with a look, wanting to gaze on her nude body, do things to it. The unknown scared her, but the thought of stopping was equally frightening. She couldn’t move, caught in a trembling paralysis.

He stepped close and sure fingers brushed past nerveless ones. The cups released and her neck went weak. She dropped her forehead onto his chest, aware of her bra skimming lightly over her shoulders and down her back. Her breasts were exposed to cool air while her back was branded by his hot palms. She covered herself with her crossed arms, lacking the confidence to step back and reveal herself.

“Sit on the bed.” He curled a steadying hand under her elbow.

She complied because she would fall down if she didn’t, but sitting put her eye level with his fly and she wasn’t ready to go that far even with a glance. She looked up at him, but he was no gentleman intending to kneel at her feet. He held a look of detached intensity. A roaring sound filled her ears, the kind that warned of danger. She had inadvertently entered into a power struggle with a man who could overwhelm her without effort, but he wasn’t doing it like that. He was turning her against herself. Stoking a hunger that was stronger than her natural reserve.

She clung hard to her shields but sensed he would disarm her without even trying. As easily as he caught a hand behind her knee and stroked tantalizing fingers under her calf, carrying her foot up to his stomach, tipping her onto her back.

Her heart dipped in consternation, and then she squeaked in alarm as the position parted her knees. She shot a hand between her thighs, hypersensitive to where his gaze was traveling, so tangible it was like a physical caress.

Her shoes hit the floor, thump, thump, barely heard over the beat of her racing heart. He reached to stroke her knuckles where she protected her most intimate flesh, his touch so personal she almost jerked her hand away in surprise.

“Let me take off these at least.” He moved his hand down her thigh, stroking the translucent hose. “You want to feel my hands on you, don’t you?”

“Yes, but— You’re not going to undress?”

“Eventually. When you’re ready.” He ran his hand up to the waistband, eyes glittering with challenge while his expression was one of merciless control.

Over her or himself?

Both.

Warring thoughts crashed inside her like storm waves. Apprehension at the reality of being stripped. A moral compulsion to keep her word and go through with this. An underlying weakness of pure want. Terror at the way self-control was slipping away.

He began to draw the hose down and she lifted her hips to help him, eyes closing in denial of what she was doing, but she couldn’t ignore that only her panties remained. She hid them behind her palm, knees bent to the side and locked together, breath held as she tried to imagine what would come next. And then after that.

He stood over her assessing her, proud and commanding, all the power in his court. “Do you want me to join you?”

She blew out a breath of wild laughter at his taunt. He must know how badly she wanted him and was only making her ask for it to prove a point. If she could have revealed that she wasn’t ready, she would have, but it was mortifying how much she wanted to feel him on top of her. “I do.” Her voice broke in surrender.

“Make room, then. When you’re ready,” he added, raking her body with hot, hungry eyes.

She writhed in protest, wanting mastery over herself and wanting him. Rolling onto her back, she straightened her legs, forcing her hand to fall away from her mound, the other to lift off her chest. She’d never felt so vulnerable in her life.

He set heavy hands on either side of her waist and leaned over her, taking his time studying her breasts, making her breath hitch as she felt a need to shield herself again, but resisted it. She couldn’t help watching his face with a timid need for approval. She wasn’t voluptuous. Would she be enough to gratify him?

His expression grew tight as he looked her over. A shudder quaked across his shoulders and it was a long time before he finally met her searching gaze.

She couldn’t hide how defenseless she felt, splayed before him.

“Nice,” he said in guttural English.

Nice? Her stomach plummeted at the bland word. She wasn’t even sure he meant it, but was distracted from questioning him when he grasped her wrists and slid her fists above her head. At the same time, he pressed a knee between hers and opened her legs, lowering himself onto her in a blanket of soft, crushing weight.

Clair moaned in startled delight under him, twisting against his grip, but Aleksy kept her firmly clasped.

If he allowed her to touch him right now, Aleksy thought, if he didn’t have a barrier between his tight hide and her downy skin, he’d lose it. It had been all he could do to find an English word to describe how exquisite she was.

He forced himself to remember that she was toying with him, trying to win a power struggle he hadn’t started, but was determined to win. Stroking his free hand down her arm, past her breast, over her hip and along her thigh, he curled her calf over his lower back, resenting the wool that kept him from feeling the caress of her skin against his own. He shifted and pressed his groin tight to hers, thin layers of cotton and denim between. She was utterly at his mercy and he took full advantage, rocking himself against her, wanting her to lose control before he did.

Acute arousal hued her cheeks and glazed her eyes. Her hips lifted to increase the pressure, almost sending him over the edge, but the helpless noise she made was worth the torture she was inflicting on him by drawing this out. He was winning, but barely.

Scorching excitement seared Clair’s breath from her lungs as Aleksy teased her. She couldn’t move, couldn’t speak, could only whimper in ecstatic sufferance. She’d kept men at a distance all her life, feeling superior to other women because she hadn’t believed men really offered this kind of pleasure. She’d never felt this susceptible, but she was caving now. Completely and utterly. Breathing in his aggressive male scent like a drug.

He cupped her bare breast, his palm hot and possessive. Once a month her breasts felt swollen like this, overfull and incredibly sensitive, but never this sweet. His heavy touch assuaged the ache and incited it. Her nipple grew painfully engorged, ripening under his hot stare like a cherry in the sun. He drew circles with his thumb, massaged and shaped the swell, traced the aureole and refused to give her what she wanted. What she instinctively needed.

“Aleksy, please,” she begged.

He swooped like a hawk, his masculine groan muffling as he covered the tingling tip with his hot mouth. The erotic pull almost lifted her off the bed. Moist heat flooded into her sex, completely beyond her ability to rule it. All of her became a throbbing pulse of hot need. The power of the feelings daunted her, but she reveled in them at the same time, exalted by the sense of being purely woman. When he moved to her other breast, she arched to offer herself, unable to contain her ragged moan.

His hand caressed the back of her thigh, followed the sensitive inner skin to the leg of her underpants. A sure finger slinked beneath, stroking into folds that were slick and incredibly sensitive. She had thought she knew what her body was capable of, but his touch made her jerk her hips under the intensity of pleasure. The tremendous intimacy, his confidence, the way he pressed to sustain the tantalizing peak—

“Oh, Aleksy…” she moaned.

He skimmed his touch away. “You didn’t ask for that, did you?” His eyes had gone black and inscrutable. The cruel curl at the edges of his mouth told her he wasn’t as innocent as he was playing. “Do you want me to touch you? Or—” He hooked his elbow behind her knee, hitching her ankle onto his shoulder. “—kiss you?”

A fresh flood of craving poured into her loins. She instinctively tried to close her legs against the betraying reaction, but she met the resistance of his muscled back.

“Yes?” he murmured, touching a kiss to her breastbone, then lower. His hot mouth opened against her trembling belly, lightly biting before he applied suction in a delicate sting of healing. “Shall I remove your panties with my teeth?”

She couldn’t be completely naked under him while he was fully clothed. She couldn’t. “Take off your clothes first,” she gasped.

He slowly pulled away, the retreat of his body a caress that drew out the pleasure and gave her plenty of time to appreciate the cooling pain of losing him. It also brought a moment of clarity. She realized her knee lay crooked open and her panties were wet. Her stomach quivered with tension, her nipples stood taut with arousal on breasts that rose and fell with her ragged breaths.

Inhibition was gone. She didn’t care how she looked or behaved, only that he continue making love to her.

Aleksy strained under his self-imposed leash. His blazing arousal burned him alive and every male instinct in him screamed to possess her. Begged to.

She twisted her slim body, so graceful and beguiling he had to catch back a groan of pure need. Logical thoughts disappeared from his mind. All he knew was that she tasted like summer, smelled like nectarines and ran like warm honey under his touch. Hands and mouth weren’t enough to sate him. His body needed to be inside hers. His erection throbbed harder and thicker than ever in his life, desperate to spear into her.

Her taunt about going too fast was the only thing that kept him standing over her, hiding his ravenous desire behind a stoic mask while her beautiful image slithered on the spread before him. She wanted to make him crazy and it was working, but he wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of knowing it. He wouldn’t show her any more mercy than she was showing him. She could play games, but he would drive her to a screaming pitch, erasing anything from her mind except the same imperative eating him alive.

“Aleksy?” Her languid eyes darkened with a moment of doubt.

He let a slow grin steer across his face, liking that she wasn’t assured of her lead over him. “I was waiting for your command,” he mocked, peeling his pullover up and off, tossing it to the floor. There was no relief from the sweat of arousal sheening his back and chest. A conflagration of desire continued to scorch from the pit of his gut to the back of his throat, prickling his skin. Demanding action.

“Oh…” Her weak sigh might have made his lips twist in cynical amusement. It was, after all, a sound he’d heard before when he stripped, but the way she licked her lips sent a rod of need through his hard flesh, swiping other women from his mind.

“What does that mean?” he growled, barely able to find his English. “Do this slower?” He peeled open his jeans, then forced his hands to stop. One fell away to his side; the other dipped two fingers into his pocket, bringing out the condom.

Something flickered in her gaze. Confusion. Recognition. Consternation?

“You don’t want me completely naked, do you?” The thought of being uncovered for the first time in his life, in her was enough to make him need a moment to regroup. With thumbs hooked in his waistband, he fought a complete loss of control, eyes pinned to the wink and tremor of her navel.

How he wanted her.

“Naked but protected,” she eventually said, as if she thought he’d been waiting for her answer. It sounded innocent, almost as if she wasn’t confident he’d get there unless she requested it. Her voice made him shudder with hunger.

He would get there. Oh, yes. Definitely.

Carefully he eased his jeans and shorts off his hips, dropping them and kicking them away, forcing his hands to hang loose, revealing none of his excruciating tension as he straightened.

She studied him in a long, taut silence, something he allowed because he was going to look at her the same way very soon. Still, he grew unbearably hard and thick under her gaze. His skin would split if she didn’t let him have her soon.

“You’re—” she began faintly.

He clenched the packet between his teeth and tore it open, then rolled on the latex, aware of the fine trembling that betrayed him.

“Ready,” he said, finishing her sentence. “Are you?”

She didn’t say anything, only looked at him with wide eyes, the reflections in them a swirl of emotions he couldn’t interpret. Was she trying to tease him into insanity? He reached out to hook a finger in her panties at her hip, giving her plenty of time to slow him down.

She didn’t and as he peeled them off, he had one satisfaction at least. Her nest was spun gold, darker blond than her hair, but only a little. In his periphery, he saw her hand move convulsively, but he prevented her from covering herself.

“You’re too beautiful to hide, my golden one,” he murmured, distantly aware he’d spoken in Russian but what did words matter when the need to touch consumed him? He drew a soft line through her curls, finding slippery silk and—

She arched as though electrified, breath hissing in.

“Yes,” he agreed. “Now.” He hiked her up the bed as he covered her, spreading her thighs with his own.

She reacted to the touch of his body as if he’d burned her, shrinking into the mattress before squirming to stroke herself against him, a whimper of surrender trembling from her lips. Her hands slid over him, meeting at his spine. Her legs bent to bracket his hips, and her skin was hot and soft. Delicate and feminine and enthralling.

“I didn’t know anyone could make me feel like this,” she whispered with an ache in her voice.

He didn’t want to hear about other men. The mere suggestion shook him out of his blind, ferocious need and brought him back to reality. Was she trying to incite him with jealousy? Well, he would be the only man on her mind right now.

“Do you want me?” he growled.

“So much.” She pushed her breasts and stomach against him, cheek rubbing his shaved one like a cat begging to be stroked.

“This?” He guided the tip of his erection to part and find the center of her.

She caught her breath and stilled.

He ground his teeth, waiting in agony.

Slowly she slid herself against him, rocking her hips, nearly exploding his mind as she teased them both with a hesitant, barely there caress. “Oh, yes,” she breathed.

He thrust.

CHAPTER SIX

HER STARTLED SCREAM was quickly choked off, but it was a cry of pain.

Through his shock, Aleksy recognized that his shoulders burned under the cut of her fingernails. Engorged and rampant, his erection ached at the tight pressure stopping him from finishing his entry. Beneath him, Clair had gone stiff and taut.

For several racing heartbeats, he held motionless with incomprehension.

A strained whisper stirred the air near his ear. “I didn’t think it would hurt that much.”

Her words didn’t fully penetrate, but Aleksy instinctively tried to pull back.

Clair squeaked and clamped her legs on him. “Please don’t move.”

Understanding hit him in waves. This wasn’t a misjudged case of too much too soon. This was— She was—

“You’re a virgin?” He was amazed he found the word. And so loudly.

She flinched. Her hands slid to his ribs, and her tangled lashes trembled with uncertainty. “Not anymore?”

“I don’t do virgins,” he bit out, but he was locked indelibly inside one. How? His normally agile brain wanted answers, but sensations crowded his ability to think. She was tight and tense, silky and hot and vulnerable. He was livid, knew this was wrong, but couldn’t draw away. His body was shaking, intense sexual arousal riding his pulse, sending all the wrong signals when he was compelled to be still. This couldn’t be happening. He had to stop it.

“Please don’t ruin it,” she said faintly.

It? He was ruining her.

* * *

The sharp pain was subsiding, leaving a sting and a deep awareness of the hard length lodged inside her, hot and still.

He was furious. There was no hiding from that unpleasant reality, but Clair was more caught up in how her body was trying to accommodate his intrusion. Her internal muscles flexed. An answering pulse, surprisingly erotic, made her melt around him. He settled a fraction more deeply inside her.

Her breath hitched and so did his.

She let hers go slowly, unable to look at him. His harsh I don’t do virgins was still cutting her in two. She didn’t know what to do! Her skin was still sensitized and wanting to be stroked. His penetration transfixed her. It was incredibly intimate but wickedly persuasive. She felt as if she stood in the doorway to a new understanding and desperately wanted to grasp the concept.

While she could tell he wanted to exit stage right.

Tears of frustration gathered in her eyes. “Please—”

“Stop saying that,” he rasped, hands moving to cup her head. His thumbs drew circles at the corners of her eyes, rubbing the leaking dampness into her temples. “When you’re ready, we’ll finish this.”

He sounded gruff but almost tender. The kiss he touched to her lips was gentle. Brief but followed by one a little longer. A little more thorough.

She sighed in relief. He wasn’t giving up on her. As he took her mouth, she curled her arms around him, pulling him into her, wanting to feel all of him. When she tilted her pelvis, he slid home. There was a final sting, but—oh—such a sense of rightness. Too many sensations to pick apart and name. She was all feeling and he was part of it. All of it. She squirmed against him, filling her hands with him, seeking maximum contact while reveling in the fresh magic of being possessed by him.

He kissed her with ravenous generosity, exciting kisses that transmitted joyous signals through her, making her move against him.

Thick Russian words filled her ear as he slid his wet mouth down her neck, tucked his hand under her bottom, carefully withdrew and thrust.

It felt so perfect, so good. Clair threw back her head, a lusty groan tearing raggedly from her lips. She couldn’t speak, could only embrace this primitive state and encourage him with ancient signals, stretching and arching beneath him, moaning her pleasure.

Urgency built, quickening their rhythm. The sensations were so acute she wanted to scream. She needed more. “Please, Aleksy, please.”

With a growl, he thrust faster, offering what she craved, taking and giving, straining over her, driving her to a peak, holding her there, pushing her off…

She fell, but into flight. Breathless, soaring flight. Distantly aware of his guttural yell, she rose to skim the sun, where she burst into brilliant, ecstatic flames. It was the most delicious death until, like the sparks from a spent firecracker, she drifted in pieces back to earth.

* * *

Aleksy reeled as he left her. Dealing with the condom was his excuse, not that he voiced it, but he had to get away from her. He was spent, body twitching with exertion and coated in sweat, but he wanted her again. She was like Christmas dinner, when it didn’t matter that he’d already gorged himself. Greed for more consumed him.

He splashed cold water on his face, then glared in self-disgust at his reflection, his scar standing brilliant white against his flushed skin.

Incredible, mind-shattering sex that shouldn’t have happened at any pace. You’re going too fast. No wonder she’d been so shy about surrendering to passion. And when she had…

Please don’t ruin it. What was he supposed to have done? Left her frustrated and disappointed by her first experience with a man? Would that have salvaged something of the civilized gentleman in him?

As if there’d ever been anything civilized in him, he thought with bitter self-recrimination, old blades of guilt and abhorrence flashing between himself and his image. He was well aware of the primitive forces in him. He held them in check with his rigid standards, always. Shame and contempt filled him for dallying with a virgin. He’d stolen from a man he didn’t even know.

How dare she put him in this position?

He moved back to the bedroom to confront his mistake and found her sitting up, the sheet knotted in her fist against her collarbone leaving her pale shoulders bare.

She looked like a bride on her honeymoon, thoroughly tumbled, lips puffy and ripe, hair tousled, expression still retaining some vulnerable innocence while her new knowledge made her skim a hesitant, admiring look over his frame.

That look was a baited hook that caught in his gut. Lower even. The erection that hadn’t completely subsided pulsed with renewed life.

He hated the response he couldn’t control; he refused to be led by it, especially where she no doubt thought she could take him. Planting his feet hard on the floor, he crossed his arms and stood at his full height.

“I won’t marry you.” His cold warning grounded out the sexual electricity still crackling in the air.

Her shoulders flinched before she steadied them. “Did I ask you to?”

“It’s reasonable to assume you’re trolling for a proposal with this little gesture, especially ahead of the money transfer, but forget it. I’m not the marrying kind.” She wouldn’t have tried this if she knew what a monster he really was.

“What little gesture?” She lifted haughty eyebrows.

“A woman’s virginity belongs to her husband.” He’d never forgive himself for this. Fooling around with experienced women was one thing. They had the same unclouded views he did. Innocents had expectations he would never live up to. “I didn’t ask for your virginity, so don’t think you can guilt me into making restitution for it.”

She reddened with insult. Or anger. He didn’t let himself dwell on what she might be feeling so long as he was driving his point home.

“A woman’s virginity belongs to her husband?” she repeated through her teeth. “Welcome to the twenty-first century where a woman’s body belongs to her. It doesn’t look like you’re saving yourself for marriage.”

“It’s a good thing one of us knew what he was doing.” Although he hadn’t. She’d neglected to inform him of one very salient detail. She was craftier than he’d given her credit for, coldcocking him with that one.

“We all have to start somewhere. What good is waiting for a husband who hasn’t once shown up when I needed him? I’m stuck with taking care of myself, aren’t I?”

“And this is how you chose to do it? By throwing away your virginity for hard cash?” Precisely the type of woman he usually dealt with and yes, he supposed they had all started somewhere. He was still left with a pall of disappointment in both of them.

Astonished hurt parted her lips.

Out of habit, he mercilessly sealed over the fissure her crushed expression threatened to make in his conscience, closing himself off to any emotional appeals. Best if she understood he had no heart, but then something in him stirred. Perhaps she really was romantic enough to believe this sort of thing led to a lifetime commitment. The weight of being unable to live up to that expectation settled heavily on his shoulders.

She surprised him by masking her hurt. As though shrugging into a coat, she pulled on an air of dignity. “I made a choice that was mine alone to make. I’m not the marrying kind either.”

He snorted. Innocents like her dreamed of a family. If his own family were alive, they’d expect better of him than the way he was behaving right now. Of course, if they were alive, he’d still be an innocent like her.

“You don’t know me,” she said with quiet assertion. “You don’t even want to. I’m only spoils of war to you. I trust your grudge is satisfied and you’ll leave me now?”

The cool, pithy words struck his abdominals like punches. That wasn’t what this was. Despite hating himself for not realizing sooner that he was her first, the basest male part of him was already anticipating tasting her shoulders and neck again, stroking the warm silk of her back and thighs, making her writhe against him until she was ready to take him into her. And it had nothing to do with revenge.

He didn’t want to leave her—which stunned him—but she had to be tender. He hadn’t been as gentle as he would have been if he’d known… if he’d known…

His skull threatened to split under the pressure of conflicting imperatives. He had to leave her. For now.

CHAPTER SEVEN

CLAIR WOKE IN an unfamiliar place, mind blanking with alarm before her memory rushed back. She sat up, still in Aleksy’s bed, still naked and very much no longer a virgin. Anxiety quickly faded to relief as she saw she was alone. She couldn’t have dealt with him and her mental disarray. Stunned disbelief bounced off crazy elation and crashed into an inferno of embarrassment.

Hugging her knees, she tucked a hot face into them and tried to countenance how she’d let Aleksy do all that to her. She hadn’t grown up with a lot of affection; nor did she possess any long-denied, deep-seated needs for physical closeness.

Yet she’d reveled in Aleksy’s caresses, giving herself over to him without inhibition.

Her heart wrenched as she recalled that the singular experience had cost her his respect. What kind of throwback had such archaic views on virginity? His judgment and contempt had hurt, not that she should care what he thought, but a weak part of her did. She wanted to know he’d enjoyed their coming together as much as she had.

Physical satisfaction was secondary for him, she knew. He’d taken her to strike at Victor and he’d walked out right after, his interest in her gone with the same lightning speed he’d developed it. No one had ever wanted her for the long haul. It was silly to imagine that a man like him, who could have anybody, would be any different.

The door creaked, startling her.

He caught her unprepared for the impact he had on her. He was still wearing the crushed pullover and snug jeans from last night, but he wore confidence like a visible aura so radiant she needed sunglasses. His hair was damp, the short cut combed uncompromisingly to the side. She knew how those soft strands smelled. How they felt between her fingers. Against her breasts.

His gaze locked with hers as though he read the memories she tried to repress. She died a little at being incapable of locking him out, nipples hardening with remembrance of his mouth, loins pooling with excitement for him.

It was distressing to react this strongly, to relive these sensations without him even touching her. It was a massive invasion of privacy. Against her will, her mind zeroed in on that safe moment when they’d been unequivocally linked. He’d been a lover then. She’d felt cherished, not bare and self-conscious like now. Everything in her yearned toward that memory like a flower seeking the warmth of the sun.

But that man was gone. This was the man with the grudge. To him she was a pawn on a chessboard to be tipped over and taken with ice-cold deliberation. And he’d done it.

This was the get up and get out moment, she supposed, her pulse racing.

“Hungry?” He sounded ironic, his deep voice abrading her taut nerves.

Was he taunting her for skipping dinner in favor of sating herself with him? It was cruel. She dug into her deepest reserves of composure, the way she’d done when the school bullies had taunted her.

“I could eat.” She lifted her chin and kept her gaze steady, ignoring that she was on fire inside. Other women were capable of relegating sex to something as mundane as chatting over coffee. She needed to be exactly that unaffected. She needed to get this awkward morning after finished and get out of here. “Why? Do you not know how to boil your own egg? You need me to do it?”

His eyebrows elevated a fraction at her pert challenge. His golden eyes looked deeply set into hollows darkened by a sleepless night. She was so startled by the thought that this powerful man might have lost sleep over her, she let it go as if it were hot.

The impression dissipated as he said with casual arrogance, “I pay the housekeeper to cook—or in this case deliver pastries.”

“Oh. I would have liked to walk to the patisserie.”

A flicker of surprise crossed his expression, followed by a purse of his mouth that made her bite her lip. He didn’t want to stroll hand in hand down the Champs-Elysées and she hadn’t meant to sound as if she was longing for romance either.

“I’ve never been to Paris. I’d like to visit a patisserie for fresh croissants at least once in my life,” she defended, embarrassment stinging her cheeks. “But that’s fine. I’ll be out in a moment.” She shifted her feet to the edge of the bed, signaling she needed privacy to rise and dress.

He didn’t move.

Because there were no secrets from him behind this sheet. Perhaps he had sent his housekeeper out and come to wake her for a different reason. Her heart tripped and her fragile poise slipped. She swallowed, mind casting with indecision. She knew she shouldn’t want to sleep with him again, but she did. Weak longing stole over her even as she searched his expression for his intention.

He gave nothing away as the silence grew loaded. Finally he entered the room, coming around the bed. She tensed, but he passed her by, stepping into the bathroom long enough to reach for something off the back of the door. When he returned, he draped a pewter-colored robe over the foot of the bed. “Take your time.”

He left and she let her breath out in a whoosh, staring at the closed door, wondering why she felt so forlorn. In the space of twenty-four hours the man had completely taken over her world, which was intolerable. She didn’t need to be completed. She was already whole. Aleksy might have tapped through her inner walls last night, but she had an infinite capacity for shoring herself up against the world. He’d simply caught her in a moment of weakness. Showered and dressed, she’d be completely unaffected.

She had to be.

* * *

Aleksy was not used to sexual denial. If he wanted a woman, he found one. When he had one, he had one. Waiting for Clair in the lounge, knowing she was running a soapy cloth over her nectarine-scented skin, was excruciating.

The proximity of her lissome body had burned in him all night as he paced the dark lounge. Taking her should have iced his vindictive cake, allowing him to discard her and move on, but he couldn’t stop thinking about how exquisite she’d been. He’d thought he only wanted to mark his victory over his enemy, but she wasn’t Van Eych’s. She belonged to him, only him.

It was one more twist that caught him unexpectedly. He’d planned to be in London indefinitely as he drew the noose ever tighter around Van Eych’s neck, putting him in a cell while stripping him of his stolen riches, but going to London had turned into nothing more than a formality because Victor had died. Aleksy’s appetite for steering the takeover was gone. He could leave it to his team and go back to Russia where his own interests had been neglected far too long.

Given Clair’s inexperience, he should sever their association. The deepest part of him knew that, but the rest of him rejected the idea. What would be the point in acting gallant now? Her virginity was gone. She’d given it up as a survival tactic in the face of losing her job and home. If she was going to sell herself, it might as well be to him.

It was a rationalization he grasped with surprising desperation, which disturbed him. For two decades his entire life had revolved around one thing: retribution. Taking Clair was supposed to be a facet of that, but instead she’d been an escape from it.

The stark realization unsettled him, agitating him further when he realized he wanted that escape again and again. He told himself it was timing and circumstance, that he would have found extra significance in any woman he’d bedded right now, but he didn’t want any woman. He wanted Clair.

So he would keep her as long as it took to satiate this inexplicable want, he decided.

His resolve took a hit, however, when she appeared in a filmy white sundress a few minutes later. Her disturbing sense of purity made his heart lurch. It was not unlike the modesty she’d shown in not being able to reveal herself by leaving the bed this morning. She withheld her thoughts behind a mask, but her blond hair was a golden veil and her minimal makeup revealed her natural beauty, fresh-faced and ingenuous.

If this was going to work, she had to fit the mold.

“I’ll book you into a salon today,” he pronounced with the swift call to action that had made his meteoric success possible. It would also fill her day so her nearness wouldn’t tempt him beyond bearing. Women always expected a new wardrobe anyway.

Clair touched her hair, her composed expression denting with confusion. “I had a trim a few weeks ago.”

Aleksy resisted the urge to roll his eyes. “A fashion salon,” he clarified, then added with irony, “So you can wear what I like.” He held a chair at the table for her.

“Why? Taking possession of Victor’s trophy wasn’t enough? You need to stamp your own engraved plate on it?” A betraying unsteadiness undermined her cool challenge.

He didn’t let her remark ignite his temper. “I intend to remove any traces of him from you, yes.”

“For whose benefit?”

She seemed genuinely baffled, which was yet another reminder of her unfamiliarity with the way these arrangements worked.

His housekeeper brought their meals at that moment and he watched Clair withdraw even further behind her frustrating shields as she was offered tea and asked if she’d found everything she’d needed.

After Yvette left, Clair muttered, “As if this isn’t harrowing enough.” Her hand tremored as she helped herself to a croissant, the only betrayal of tension behind an otherwise cool demeanor.

“Harrowing.” Aleksy repeated the unfamiliar word so he’d remember to look it up.

“I’m sure mornings after one-night stands are old hat to you, but this is my first. I’m not exactly comfortable with a stranger witnessing it.”

He tensed. Was that what she thought? “I don’t do one-night stands,” he informed her quietly.

“Or virgins, if I recall. Must have been a two-for-one special.”

“But you’re not a virgin anymore, are you?”

She stilled. Smoldering memories darkened the blue of her eyes, igniting a lovely blush under her skin. She swallowed and looked away.

He didn’t like that she would try to withhold any part of herself from him, especially that intriguing response. Forget experience. She had to know that once wasn’t enough for either of them. He reached out and drew her chin around to face him.

The look in her eyes was shockingly defenseless, full of anxiety and fear coupled with deep longing. Things that stirred a deep, protective desire to comfort her with tenderness…

She jerked back, blinking away the peek into her soul, turning serious. “I need to return to London.”

Her words jolted him with a startlingly strong kick of possessiveness. “Why?”

Clair’s heart jammed under his intense regard. She wanted to be as dispassionate as he was, but it was impossible. Her normal ability to hold people at a distance wasn’t bearing up against Aleksy’s penetrating looks. She didn’t even know why she was having a problem with this. She had known she was a conquest, nothing more, but she still felt vulnerable, out of her element and unaccountably lonely. Everything in her wanted to escape before it got worse.

“To find a job and a place to live,” she reminded him.

It was amazing how his eyes could harden into inscrutable bronze disks that still managed to pierce like lasers. A muted hum sounded and he glanced at the mobile next to his plate. “Perfect.” Turning it, he showed her the message. “Your time is mine now. Along with everything else,” he added with silky danger, his gaze sliding over her like loose, velvet bonds.

Clair read the confirmation of deposit, fifty thousand into her account. Her emotions seesawed as all of yesterday’s repugnance at the arrangement flooded back.

“We agreed on one hundred,” she said, then inwardly shrank from her mercenary retort. But it was for the foundation, she reminded herself. She wasn’t putting herself through this emotional wringer for one pound less than what they’d agreed. With a defiant lift of her chin, she used a show of mutiny to mask her shame.

“You don’t get where I am without performance guarantees. What if you’d changed your mind?” Aleksy was a study of couched power, ready as a tiger to leap.

“But I didn’t. I held up my side of the bargain. I expect you to do the same.” She felt like one of those balls on a tilting table, rolling out of control, destined to fall through a black hole any second.

“You’ll receive the rest when our affair is over.”

She gripped the table. “But— I thought—” Once had been enough for him, hadn’t it? Last night he’d certainly left her with that impression. “It is over, isn’t it?” The hesitant question came out involuntarily. She held her breath, not sure what answer she wanted to hear. Her ears pounded with anticipation as she watched something stark and fervent flash in his eyes.

“Nyet.”

No? Or not yet? She was so lost in trying to read his expression, so off balance by the uneven trip of her pulse that she couldn’t make sense of what he’d said. And she had prepared herself to walk away today, blasé and sophisticated and only slightly scathed. Her incredulous laugh scraped her throat.

“How much longer do you expect it to last?”

He shrugged laconically. “Until I’m bored.”

No. Unpredictability made her anxious. “You can’t expect me to put my life on hold indefinitely.”

“Consider it a lesson against agreeing to open-ended contracts.”

“But—” A panicky lump lodged in her chest. All she could think was how easily he had peeled away her layers of reserve last night. She didn’t know if she could withstand further baring of her inner self.

“What’s the problem? You said yourself you have no rent to pay or employer to report to. Do you want me to say I’ll ensure that those details are looked after before we dissolve our association? Very well. I can agree to that.”

“That’s not—” She searched the hard angles of his face, cringing from the vague distaste curling his lip, wondering how his twisted brain worked that he could only see her as avaricious and self-serving, not scared out of her wits because she was drifting so far over her head. “What did Victor do to you that you’re like this?” she breathed.

The billowing silence told her she’d stepped over a line. “My history with Van Eych is not up for discussion. It has nothing to do with us. You and I have a strong sexual connection that needs to run its course. When it has, I’ll release you and the rest of the funds.”

His words sent a zing of surprise all the way to the soles of her feet. A strong sexual connection? “I thought I was paying for the sins of a man I barely knew,” she charged, hands knotting under the table.

His cheeks hollowed. “Nyet.” He looked away, fiercely controlled emotion tightening his mouth. “There is no way for anyone to compensate for that. His sins were too great.”

He gave off vibes of such deep devastation, such intense pain, an unfamiliar desire to reach out caught at her. He’d only brush her away, she reasoned, startled that the impulse touched her at all. She wasn’t the affectionate sort.

And yet she found herself turning over that strong sexual connection remark. Was she more than a tool of reprisal after all? Fluttery sensations like a million moths flooding toward a sliver of light filled her.

“Are you saying you want…me?” It took all her courage to step into the bottomless chasm of asking him.

He grew guarded and his eyes cut to her with a flinty look. “I want your body.”

The inner door that had cracked open slammed shut. “Of course.” She removed her napkin from her lap, no longer hungry. But what did she have to be offended about? She wanted him for his body, didn’t she? Her long-term avoidance of relationships had been an avoidance of the unbearable sea of emotions that came with them. Wanting to be wanted was agonizing. She’d learned early not to let those longings take root. Skimming her gaze over his unabashedly masculine form, she recognized that he was offering her a gift: all the joys of physical engagement without a toll on her heart.

He cocked his head, amusement tilting his mouth. “How is it that a woman as naturally sensual as you are has never taken a lover before?”

Her pulse raced at how easily he’d read her yearning in one brief, unguarded glance. If she continued seeing him, she’d have to learn to keep her thoughts to herself.

“No one ever tempted me.” She tried to keep her voice level so he wouldn’t guess how unnerved she was at the way his powerful sex appeal kept smashing through her self-protective reserve. “And normal relationships don’t interest me,” she added.

“Normal?” His eyebrows climbed.

“Dating to find love. Searching for a soul mate.” Profound disappointment seemed the inevitable follow-up to those quests. “You were right when you accused me of being more pragmatic than that. I don’t want to live in a cave, but most people my age live the other extreme: partying and hooking up. Being Victor’s platonic mistress seemed like the happy medium.” She sipped her coffee, but it had gone cold and bitter, much like how she felt about her arrangement with Victor, especially now that she’d glimpsed how much pain he’d caused Aleksy. It was yet another harsh reminder that relationships—even ones with seemingly impervious boundaries—could reach inside to wound.

She should take that as a warning sign, but last night had been extraordinary. All her reasons for agreeing to sleep with Aleksy were still there along with memories that made tongues of flame lick down into her pelvis.

“Now you see the advantages in being a real mistress,” he murmured in that deadly accent. He reached for her free hand, lightly combing his fingertips between her fingers before tracing a path across her palm. Her entire body jolted and a moist layer rose under his teasing caress.

She tugged her hand into her lap and tried to erase the tingling sensation by rubbing it on her thigh. She couldn’t hide that he had a profound effect on her.

As if he read her response as acceptance, he nodded with satisfaction and rose. “I’ll call for the car. You’ll need a full wardrobe before we leave for Moscow.”

“Moscow?” Her composure dropped along with the coffee cup she still held, the clatter in the saucer jarring. “I can’t get into Russia without a visa.”

“I have your passport. Lazlo will arrange it,” he dismissed with a shrug.

“What happened to ladies’ choice? I run my own life, Aleksy.” She rose to grip the back of her chair.

“I’ve been occupied with this takeover at the expense of my interests at home,” he said stiffly. “I need to return and I want you with me. Is that asking too much?”

I want you with me. Don’t, Clair. Don’t let that mean something.

“You’re not asking,” she pointed out, determined to assert herself.

“No, I’m paying for it.”

Ouch. Piqued, she threw back, “Yes, you are, because I’m not footing the bill on whatever you expect me to wear.”

His scarred face twisted with a smile of patronizing satisfaction that made her want to bite back her words. “I wouldn’t expect anything less.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

SHE SHOULD HAVE known a man like Aleksy could only come from a city like Moscow. It dominated the way he did. Its weighty buildings with their tall, imposing towers and sharp-eyed windows spoke matter-of-factly of strength and the ability to endure. The facades, scarred by history, told a story she would never fully hear.

Yet there was an unexpected idealism she hadn’t expected in the archways and balconies and loving attention to detail. Even Aleksy revealed a streak of sentiment in the way he’d refurbished his living quarters with an eye to art and a respect for the past. The block he lived in had been built for high-ranking Soviet leaders, he told her when they arrived, which accounted for the amazing location on the Moskva River and enormous top-floor mansion, but the original wiring and wooden interiors had made the building a fire hazard. He’d had the entire structure torn apart internally over two years and was rebuilding to original floor plans with upgraded specifications.

That surprised her. He seemed unaccountably merciless in everything he did, utterly focused on his own interests. After their night flight from Paris, he’d spent most of today in his office down the hall, phone buzzing constantly, conversing in half a dozen languages. Yet if he’d only wanted to turn a coin with this building, he could have made simpler choices, punching out cookie-cutter flats for foreign investors. Instead, from the brief glimpse she’d caught through the replicated elevator cage, he was blending modern conveniences with charming vintage elements, offering stylish homes to his countrymen.

Most startling of all was the photograph above the fireplace in the lounge. The bride wore a modest dress, the groom a simple suit and tie. The corner of the small snapshot was burned, the colors faded, but it was set off by a wide mat and an elegant frame, so it took up significant space, speaking of its importance to the flat’s owner.

She guessed from his resemblance to the groom that they were his parents. Aleksy confirmed it with a simple da, not encouraging more questions, but she’d found herself oddly encouraged by this evidence of a softer side in him.

Such a complex man, just like his city.

And now he’d brought her into it. Indefinitely.

She still felt apprehensive about letting him pressure her into going along with his demands. His strong-arm tactics didn’t bother her so much as the way she’d folded to them did. She knew how to stand up for herself when it mattered. This mattered. She wasn’t a ward of the state anymore and wasn’t about to let him erode what autonomy she’d managed to build for herself. It was too hard won.

Nevertheless, she was here. As his mistress.

Until he grew bored and paid her out.

Flinching from that brutal inevitability, she moved away from the window and took up the two gowns again, hands shaking. She was trying to decide which was better suited for seeing the ballet at the Bolshoi Theatre—as if she had the first clue what the well-dressed mistresses in Moscow were wearing.

How infantile it had been to try striking him in his wallet when it was so well padded. She couldn’t imagine what he’d spent on her. Victor had given her a small clothing allowance and she’d bought conservative outfits that helped her blend in with those around her. She liked being unobtrusive.

Aleksy was having none of that. These gowns were daring and sophisticated, the colors bold, the designs requiring confidence to wear them well. She wasn’t sure she could pull off a dress like this any more than she could cope with being Aleksy’s woman.

Stop it, she ordered herself, refusing to backslide into wanting to belong to someone. He didn’t want her soul and she wouldn’t give it up. This was a reciprocal exchange of pleasure, unencumbered by demands for true intimacy.

“What are you doing in here?” Aleksy’s stern voice made her jump.

“You startled me.” Despite her previous affirmations, her knees weakened at the sight of him. Her reaction was a complex tumble of nervous excitement and an inexplicable desire to earn his admiration.

She clamped down hard on those self-destructive emotions but couldn’t wholly suppress her physical response. He was still in the casual pants and button shirt he’d worn all day in his office, and his expression was downright forbidding, but her heart raced with appreciation of his fiercely handsome looks. When would he touch her again? The question had been burning in her blood all day.

“You said to be ready for eight,” she reminded him, using the gowns as a shield for the lightweight silk robe she wore, glancing down at the drapes of color to keep him seeing her involuntary and immediate desire.

“I meant why are you in this room?” He moved forward and took in the open closet, the myriad empty boxes and zippered dress bags. “I instructed the housekeeper to put everything away in my room tomorrow.”

Her heart dropped like a boulder from a rock face. Share his room? After living alone she was finding the idea of sharing a flat—even one as big as this—to be a hard adjustment. She couldn’t breathe with him four steps in the door. No, if she was going to get through this in one piece, she needed her own space to retreat to.

“The boxes were in here, so I assumed this was my room and unpacked them.” She conquered old twinges of wanting to apologize for occupying any space at all. This wasn’t a foster home. He’d brought her here. She’d stay, but on her terms. “I’d like to use it,” she said firmly.

He assessed the volume of clothes. “As a dressing room? Very well, but I’m not about to creep up and down the hall looking for you. You’ll sleep in my bed.”

Conquering a suffocating panic, she asserted, “I don’t want to.”

“Why not?” He turned the full power of his intense personality on her.

She swallowed, not intimidated by his power and height, but instantly vulnerable to the effects his alpha male nature had on her. At some point they’d have sex again and the recently awakened woman in her craved that so deeply she was a little frightened by the power of it, but sleeping together would have its own way of increasing her reliance on him. That wouldn’t do.

“I—” The word was cut off as he drew her into a strong, careful embrace. She automatically tensed and pressed the heels of her hands to his chest, fingers still curled around the padded hooks of the hangers.

He looked down at the way she held him off, not forcing her body into his, but she sensed the firm planes of his stomach and the long, hard muscles of his thighs teasing like a warm breath beyond the fall of her kimono.

He tugged the towel from her head, releasing her damp hair, and tipped her head back so her gaze tangled with his. He stroked her cheek, then let his caress trail into the sensitive hollow beneath her ear and under her jaw.

“I’m looking forward to tonight. I don’t know how I’ve managed to work when all I could think about was touching you again. Feeling you under me.”

Her arms pressed harder as she tried to keep his seductive words from affecting her, but everything else in her melted. This was the sensual heat low in her abdomen she’d looked forward to. She consciously closed herself off to reading any significance in his admission that she’d been on his mind, though. As he lowered his head, a helpless moan escaped her. Her hands released the weight in them and slid up to curl around his neck and into his hair. The first touch of his lips shot a jolt through her. They melded together as the kiss deepened without any insistence from him. She welcomed him with a passionate response, transported to the exciting world he’d initiated her into while trying to hang on to herself, not give him everything—

He lifted his head. They were both breathless. His cheekbones were flushed, but his eyes glittered with aggravation. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” she murmured, aware of an internal tension that grew as he delved into her gaze. Keeping herself disconnected from the way he made her feel was hard. She looked at the sobering line of his scar to cool her blood, wondering about it.

His expression grew stony as he slid his hands over the silk gown, his palms hot through the slinky fabric, molding her back and fondling her bottom, making her tremble.

She let her head fall forward onto his chest to hide how the sweetness in his caress made her eyes moisten. She felt his hardness against her belly, urgent and thick, and caught her breath in wonder. He wanted her. Her.

A burst of relief made her dizzy, unnerving her, filling her with the tautness of wanting him while remaining wary of limitless intimacy. She gathered herself behind an invisible wall, before she followed through on her desire to look up and press her lips to his neck.

Before she could make the move to take this where her body wanted to go, he set her away from him and bent, coming up with the red and the blue gowns. He rejected the red with a toss toward the bed, his expression inscrutable. Holding the blue in front of her, he said with detachment, “This one. Give me thirty minutes. I’ll meet you in the lounge.”

Her mouth still tingled from the pressure of his. Her whole body felt light enough to fly while bitter disappointment weighed like a rock in her throat, keeping her from calling after him. She refused to beg for affection.

* * *

As he dressed, Aleksy was still trying to understand what had transpired in the other room. The fact that he was being so introspective about Clair’s behavior was as irritating as her trying to hold him off.

After resisting temptation all day, he’d been unable to help going to her. Finding her in the spare room, trying to keep space between them, was an oddly disturbing rejection. Everyone gave him a wide berth, but Clair’s doing it stung unexpectedly. Did she fear him? The thought galled him.

He’d been compelled to close the gap and pull her into his arms with as much gentleness as he was capable of. She had reacted beautifully, her arousal instant and obvious.

When he’d kissed her, her mouth had parted beneath his. The silk of her robe had revealed the tension in her belly and the sharp points of her nipples. Her supple body had even leaned into him. She, however, had not been involved.

Why not? She’d called herself practical when they were in Paris, her interest in her financial future blatant enough to assure him they were on well-defined ground. Had she read something about him that had turned her off?

The way she had stared at his scar had seemed to suggest so. Then she’d folded into him, almost as if she was ready to surrender regardless of what she thought of him, but he’d been stinging with disgrace. In one glance, she’d reminded him that it didn’t matter how mercenary she was, he still didn’t deserve to touch her.

Even she seemed to know it.

* * *

From inside the limo, his world gave an impression of chilly silence. The few people on the street wore overcoats and furred hats as they hurried down the street, breath fogging in the frosty air. Yet their very presence in the cold evening spoke of perseverance and a steadfast grasp on life, entrancing Clair into forgetting she didn’t want to fall in love with anything, even his country.

How could she stay immune, though, when he’d put her in the center of a fairy tale? The limo stopped and Aleksy left the car, holding a hand to help her stand, so courtly he stole her breath.

He wore a tuxedo with a white bow tie and gloves. It ought to have seemed affected, but his features were carved with masculine perfection, his brow stern enough to make everything about him serious and deliberate. Backlit by an enormous, columned building with a rosy-cream glow, he was devastatingly handsome.

She stood on unsteady legs, taking in the milling crowd streaming around the frozen fountain toward the spectacular entrance of the theater. This was the world he inhabited. Miles above any she’d ever thought to visit. Her treacherous emotions lifted with excitement, caught in a spell of beauty and wonder.

As if that wasn’t magical enough, his presence cut a swath through the crowd of people. One glance over their shoulder and people moved aside. Aleksy kept her pressed close to him as they climbed the stairs, coldly ignoring murmurs of “Dmitriev” and Russian phrases she didn’t understand, coupled with glances at his scar.

Taking her cue from him, Clair refused to acknowledge the morbidly curious looks, pretending to be absorbed in the grandeur of the theater. She was genuinely awed. The ornamental detailing and painted ceilings looked as if they’d been finished yesterday. For a moment time slipped away and she was a nineteenth-century aristocrat carrying a fan and wearing lace to her throat. The man at her side was an arranged-marriage husband—not a far cry from today’s situation at all, she thought with a wry, inward wince. He was supporting her and there was no hope for love.

An attendant approached to take her cape and Clair revealed the modern, off-one-shoulder sparkling blue dress that clung to emphasize her narrow curves and create more height than she really had. Aleksy procured them flutes of champagne and, after a brief consultation with the attendant, told her, “We have the czar’s box.”

She tried not to drop her drink.

As if this were any casual date, he guided her through a set of double doors that led through an ornate sitting room. Another set of doors ended on a grand balcony fit for, well, royalty.

Red velvet and gold struck her from the row of luxuriant chairs with their gilded edgings to the scalloped curtains framing the box to the auditorium beyond. A wall of balconies stretched away on either side in floor-to-ceiling rows, each separated by low walls decorated with gold leaf and glittering chandeliers. An enormous cake of sparkling crystals cast glamorous winks of light from high above, sparkling off jeweled necks and sequined gowns.

Clair sank weakly into the chair Aleksy pressed her toward. “I didn’t think Russia had a czar anymore,” she stammered, half fearing they’d be executed for trespassing.

His smile warmed her as if she’d gulped her entire glass of alcohol. “It’s actually the president’s box now. We could have used mine, but as this one’s empty tonight and I’m such a valued patron…” He shrugged self-deprecatingly.

“You must love the ballet. I mean—” The way his eyebrows climbed made her rethink presuming anything about him. “You have your own box and support the company. Everyone seems to know who you are.”

“Litso so shramom.” His expression altered as he repeated the phrase she’d heard as they entered. The carefully composed lines of his face revealed nothing—which was a revelation in itself. “Scarface.”

The bluntness of the moniker made her blink in shock, but she hid it, guessing anger on his behalf wouldn’t be welcome.

“I’m hardly anonymous anywhere I go,” he said, his jaw tensing. “And no, I don’t have a particular love of ballet. Coming here is merely—forgive the ancient metaphor—the quickest way to telegraph my return to the city. Do you like the ballet?”

“I’ve never been,” she answered, lowering her gaze as she absorbed his offhand question. Her preferences had obviously been the last thing on his mind. This was the most exciting outing of her life, yet he’d brought her here for reasons that had nothing to do with her. She had to stop wishing for more! She went back to the nickname. Irrepressible curiosity made her ask, “Does it bother you that people see the scar, not you?”

“There’s no separating one from the other, is there?” His look hit her like a face full of icy slush, his tone chilling her blood.

“I don’t know,” she replied, ignoring the bite of his hostility, fighting not to take it personally even though she sensed a hint of accusation in his demeanor. “Have you looked into plastic surgery?”

“Why? Does it disgust you?” His fingertip unerringly found the line of raised tissue. He drilled her with his eyes, but she didn’t have to lie.

“No. I don’t notice it more than any of your other features, like the shape of your nose or color of your eyes.” She stopped speaking as she heard how revealing that sounded. She was stunned to realize how thoroughly she had already memorized his face: the hint of a raised bump on his nose, the wicked slant in his eyebrows, the cleft in his chin. She had to force herself not to let him entrance her now.

“It’s an advantage,” he said flatly. “While people are trying to decide how many of the rumors they should believe, I’ve summed them up and leapt three steps ahead.”

“You like that it makes them nervous. Then they don’t try to get close to you,” she guessed, earning another baleful glance that made her breath stick. She was certain she was right, though, so much so that parts of her softened toward him as she recognized their similarity. She feared isolation, so she forced herself to find contentment in being alone. What did he fear that kept him holding people off so ferociously? Caring?

The thought was a double-edged sword of understanding and hopelessness so acute it made her head swim.

“This scar reminds me who I am and where I’ve been, which is a place you don’t want to go, Clair,” he said in a gentle warning that made her heart batter her ribs. So he had suffered a very deep wound. Nevertheless, she would listen to his story if he wanted to tell her. Had he ever told anyone, she wondered?

The lights faded before she could ask. Faces below rotated to watch the curtain rise. Music swelled as Petrushka began to unfold with its tragic puppet, considered cruel but instead capable of emotion, trapped in a cell, unable to reach the ballerina he loved.

* * *

Aleksy loathed small talk. It was a step into familiarity that he never encouraged. Clair had been spot-on when she suggested he was happier holding people at a distance.

Scowling, he wondered what had possessed him to talk about his scar. It was a topic he usually shut down outright, but he’d been compelled to learn if it was behind the reserve she’d shown earlier. Clair was exceptionally beautiful tonight, and fresh bitterness had overcome him that he was such an unsightly match for her.

Intellectually they were on an even playing field, which was an anomaly for him. Rather than babbling inanities or barbs, she had a quiet sincerity when she spoke and displayed surprising insight. He avoided women who made him feel. He’d never had one who made him think.

Disturbed by a rush of both anticipation and caution, he forced himself to stop letting her get under his skin and instead focus on their surroundings.

He noted with twisted pride how her smile of pleasure attracted curious, admiring looks during intermission. He detested networking at any level and would have stayed in the private lounge attached to the czar’s box if he could, but he succumbed to convention at these things.

With hooded fascination, he watched her greet those who approached with seemingly sincere warmth, admiring dresses and jewelry if no other conversation presented itself. He was used to his dates sulking, or smiling as if it pained them to make the effort, leaving the weight of social chitchat up to him. Clair put people at ease and he found his own tension ebbing because people weren’t so nervous—which, contrary to what she’d said, always made him impatient. Aleksy glanced at the next hovering couple, smiling as he recognized the man behind the gray beard and the woman’s twinkling blue eyes. He introduced Clair to Grigori and Ivana Muratov, smoothly forcing those trying to hold his attention to move along.

After brief inquiries about their daughters and grandchildren—he had known their entire family for many years —he and Grigori became caught up in discussing politics.

“That was the chimes,” Ivana warned a few moments later, touching her husband to interrupt their conversation. “Intermission is over, but this charming young lady has just told me about the charity foundation she has started. We would like to help her with that, wouldn’t we? Aleksy has made a donation.”

The unexpectedness of Clair’s subterfuge against these of all people made Aleksy’s cheeks sting with a rush anger. Thankfully the couple didn’t notice, both smiling at Clair’s bewildered face.

“Of course we’ll match it,” Grigori agreed, clapping Aleksy’s shoulder with enough enthusiasm to nearly knock him off his unsteady feet. “Send me the details.” With cheerful goodbyes, they hurried down the hall toward their own box.

“They seem very nice. How do you know them?” Clair lifted the most guileless eyes to him but sobered as she read his forbidding expression. “What’s wrong?”

“Grigori gave me my first real job after my father was killed,” Aleksy answered. He had to school his fury with everything in him as he took her arm and led her back to the lounge. Before she could pass through to the balcony, he cut her off, closing the doors so they were alone in the sitting room.

The music rose in the auditorium and Clair lifted a nervous hand to indicate it. “The show is back on.”

Aleksy turned on her. Whatever she read in his grim expression scared her, but she held her ground with more mettle than anyone he’d ever made a point of revealing his fury to.

“Why are you angry?” she asked with rigid dignity.

“Did Van Eych teach you to work a situation like that or is it a personal gift?”

She straightened as tall as she could possibly be, a pale reed so beautifully set off by the deep blue of the gown he nearly had to close his eyes against the temptation to touch her. He focused on the finery of the dress instead, on the fact that the small fortune he’d dropped on her new wardrobe wasn’t enough. She was trying to steal from his friend, as well.

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“I won’t let you take advantage of Grigori’s generous nature.” The man had been his salvation, offering Aleksy not just work, but a fresh chance. Grigori had helped a desperate young man put a roof over his mother’s head while giving him the opportunity to move up the ladder toward the life he lived now. The life itself didn’t mean anything, but Grigori’s hand up when no one else had offered meant the world.

“I didn’t expect Ivana to offer a donation.” Clair managed to sound not just innocent, but hurt. “We were only chatting. She asked how we’d met, so I told her about the charity.”

“Which doesn’t exist!”

Clair’s jaw dropped open. Rather than cower under his blistering gaze, she drew a deep, hissing breath of outrage. “Don’t tell me your precious Lazlo failed to advise you of the email I sent him today? I attached the tax receipt. What?” she dared challenge as he narrowed his eyes. “You thought I asked for the Wi-Fi code so I could update my social media status to ‘mistress’?”

He ignored her biting sarcasm. “I can check,” he warned. “With one call.”

“Do it,” she choked, acting so offended as she swung away that he experienced a flash of misgiving. He shook it off and scowled at her as he withdrew his phone.

Seconds later a muted buzz vibrated in his palm. Clair’s back stiffened as though the sound were the whir of a whip and she was bracing herself for the lash.

The edges of the device dug into his hard grip as he read and reread the message.

“You told him you’d print me a copy if I asked, so he assumed I was aware,” he paraphrased, needing to hear it to fully comprehend it.

“You didn’t ask,” she pointed out, barely able to look at him.

“So it’s real, this charity of yours.” She even had a registered number.

That swung her around to face him. “Of course it’s real! I’m not a liar. You don’t truck with those, remember?”

He found himself in the completely unfamiliar state of being at a loss as he let it sink in. “I don’t understand,” he muttered, voice graveled by his impatience at being faced with something that didn’t add up. “You gave me your virginity for charity? Why would you do that?”

“People like me deserve—” She cut off her outburst and struggled visibly, jaw flexing as though chewing back words she hadn’t meant to voice. Flicking her hair back from her shoulders, she changed tack. “Look. I didn’t want all my work to die on the vine. Brighter Days fills a very real need.”

“For who?” he asked suspiciously. “Finish what you were going to say. People like you deserve what?”

Clair’s jaw ached. She didn’t want to tell him. Why? Because she was ashamed? Still? If she wanted to get anywhere with the foundation, she had to conquer this sense of being second class once and for all.

“Support,” she answered with a swell of defiance. “When there’s nowhere else to turn.” She wasn’t as confident inside as she acted. It had always been hard to believe she really deserved any such thing when no one else seemed to agree, but she deeply believed children like her deserved a caring home and opportunities to make a secure life for themselves. If she didn’t act as their voice, they wouldn’t have one, just as she hadn’t.

“What kind of people are we talking about?” Aleksy asked. “Orphans?”

“Yes.” It was incredibly hard to look him in the eye. Her stomach trembled as she braced herself for how the label would change his view of her.

Aleksy had vaguely absorbed that she didn’t have family, but the information had only penetrated distantly. Now he sensed how deeply she felt her lack and was thrown off by her vulnerability. A pang struck him dead center of his chest so hard he wanted to rub it away.

“How old were you when—?”

“Four.” She hid her flinch with a shrug, steeling her spine. This was costing her, he could see it, but she said without inflection, “Car crash. I had a broken leg and a dislocated shoulder. They died instantly.”

“Why does that make you so defensive?” He had an urge to take her in his arms, but that wasn’t who he was. He didn’t coddle, but he still found himself trying to reassure her. “Being an orphan isn’t a crime. I’m one.”

“You lost both your parents? Not just your father?” Her somber blue eyes softened with empathy, threatening to pull things out of him he didn’t want to release. “What happened? How old were you?”

He was instantly sorry he’d mentioned it. “Fourteen when I lost my father. My mother lived until I was twenty. I suppose I wasn’t technically orphaned.” He glanced away, deliberately not addressing how his father had died. “I’m only saying there’s no shame in not having parents who are still alive. It’s hardly something you can help.”

The irony of his assurance twisted inside him. He suffered deep shame over his father’s death and the fact that he’d never been able to provide properly for his mother. He lived daily with the anguished guilt that even if his mother had survived to live as he did now, it wouldn’t have cured the broken heart that had been the real cause of her withering away.

Suppressing the agonizing memories, he focused on Clair’s circumstance instead, observing, “Four years old is still young enough to be adopted.”

Tendons rose in taut lines against her throat as she said with stunned hurt, “That wasn’t really in my control, was it?”

He might as well have kicked a puppy. He wished he could take it back, but the damage was done. She was pulling herself inward, composing herself into the untouchable woman he had seen several times now. Her skin was incredibly thin, he realized. He’d bruised her without even knowing he could do so. The way she mentally distanced herself caused an unexpected gap of agitation to open beneath his feet.

He moved forward, taking her arms in a light grip, as if he could prevent her retreat into herself.

She stiffened and her hands came up to his chest. He read the same conflicting signals of resistance and subtle, sensual melting that he’d felt in her earlier in his apartment. She liked his touch but was trying to shield herself at the same time, something he understood all too well, but she didn’t have to fear him on this.

“You’re right, of course,” he murmured, experimenting with a light massage up and down her arms. “I shouldn’t have said that. Where did you live, then? An orphanage?”

“Yes.” He felt a quiver go through her, one she suppressed as she said with quiet dignity, “The home was the only real one I had. It was stable and I needed that after being in foster situations for the first few years. That’s why I’m trying to ensure that it has enough funding to stay open, but I don’t need the donation from Grigori. The amount you’ve promised is so much more than Victor offered that I can keep them going and actually support expansion. Tell Grigori whatever you like. I won’t bring it up again. I’ll just tell people we met in London and leave it at that.” She turned her face away, lips tight.

He had dismissed her charity as a ruse when she first mentioned it, imagining that at best it was the illusion of a bleeding-heart idealist incapable of solving real problems, but the full impact of it being genuine continued to jar through him. She wasn’t a gold digger; she was a mother bear fighting to protect children.

The knowledge sliced a fresh cut of ignominy through him, but he ignored it, too caught up in trying to understand her.

“You might have given me some indication,” he admonished. “Why let me believe your motivations were shallow?”

“What do you care what motivates me? This isn’t the sort of relationship where we talk about our scars, visible or otherwise, is it?” she challenged, pupils contracted with wounded pride.

A knot of complex emotions pulled his gut tight.

“No,” he agreed. His hands unconsciously tightened on her arms.

“Good. Because I don’t want you in my h-head,” she said shakily, but he heard the underlying hurt.

The constant rejection in her life had made her understandably wary of intimacy, Aleksy guessed, but he couldn’t stand that chilly shell she was trying to recover. She wasn’t just in his head; she was under his skin so deep he could barely breathe without feeling her. Physical intimacy was the salvation for both of them, he told himself.

“How about your body?” he murmured, pulling her hips into a delicate crash against the erection that had rarely subsided since he’d met her. Sex seemed the only way to get past her shields, and he would use it, now, before she’d locked her barriers into place. “Do you want me inside you?”

She started with surprise and drew a sharp breath, face flooding with a sexual blush. “I— Well, y-yes. I mean, that’s what we’ve agreed, isn’t it? Um.” Her words caught and faded into a husky tone of arousal. “Un—um, uncomplicated and…” She licked her lips nervously and the play of her tongue was almost a visceral stroke up his spine.

Simple. Practical. Physical.

He tried to hang on to the words as he backed her toward the divan, the need in him, once acknowledged and released, so intense his muscles began to shake. Every cell in his body ached for the pleasure she promised, but there was a primordial aspect to it that he refused to examine too closely. He wanted more from her than sexual accommodation. He wanted her to give herself to him because she wanted to, not for any orphaned children. He wanted her as ensnared by this wild passion as he was.

He levered her slight body onto the cushions and lowered himself to cover her.

Clair released a helpless whimper as Aleksy’s hot mouth touched the racing pulse in her throat. Her overwhelmed senses took in the painted ceiling and the music beyond the doors. Had he locked any of them? The back of the divan offered a bit of protection if someone walked in but not much.

“Aleksy,” she choked, voice thick with the conflict of wanting him so instantly she was almost willing to risk discovery and holding back because she was upset. All her internal guards were shattered and in bad need of repair. She should wait until she had a better hold of herself, but he was strangely reassuring in the way he caged her beneath him without crushing her. The way he trailed his lips across her bare shoulder, pausing to drink in the scent of her skin.

“I want everything you’ll give me.” The statement spurred a light-headed rush, one that nearly lifted her off the divan as he slid his finger under the diagonal edge of her bodice to reveal her breast.

His mouth found the tip and her mind exploded. His urgent demand was as exciting as his mastery, causing a thrilling flood of heat into her extremities. She wove her fingers into his hair, making him lift his head. She was desperate to own his mouth but too shy to say it.

Her body spoke for her, knee bending to bracket him into the space between her legs. He responded by stroking her ankle, her calf, her thigh. With their eyes locked in ever-intensifying connection, he climbed his hand beneath the skirt of her gown until he touched her so intimately she had to close her eyes.

That only made her excruciatingly aware of the deliberate way he tantalized her. She lodged the back of her hand against her open mouth, muffling the cry of pleasure that escaped as he caressed and teased, making her long for more—

“Oh!” He pressed into her wet core and she clenched, surprising herself with an unexpected orgasm that squeezed her eyes shut and rocked her entire body. Jagged moans refused to be suffocated.

“I’m sorry! I’m so embarrassed,” she said into the paneled back of the divan, almost sobbing as he lifted her to strip her undies away.

“Don’t be,” he commanded, his voice thick and fierce. He rose over her, his penetration happening at the same time he took her mouth in a kiss that captured her deep groan of relief.

It was better than the first time. All sweetness as he filled her and paused, giving her a moment to accommodate his thick, hot girth. She grasped at him, certain there could be nothing better than this first deep thrust to alleviate the acute need.

Then he moved and the pleasure storm swept through her.

CHAPTER NINE

ALEKSY SHIFTED, ROLLING onto his back, snapping Clair out of her deep sleep.

Her naked back reacted to the loss of his heat like the cool, raw flesh under a bandage. She fought a foreign desire to turn and burrow into his warm strength.

Smoothing her hair from her eyes, she let her gaze find shapes in the barely discernible pattern of the wallpaper, trying to make sense of what was happening to her. She’d been so angry, so hurt at being misjudged, and positively crushed at his remark about being adoptable. Did he think she hadn’t spent her entire childhood waiting for new parents? For someone to want her?

He didn’t care about her struggles or pain—he’d more or less admitted it when she challenged him. He only wanted sex from her. That’s all this affair was, and it should have turned her off, should have kept her from making love in public at the very least, but his touch had erased all the hurts. She’d forgotten there was such a thing as loneliness.

And the sense of connection had inexplicably remained, even when he’d wryly apologized for being unprepared with a condom and dried her belly with his handkerchief. It should have been a horribly awkward moment, but she’d found herself giggling as if they shared a secret. His tender kiss had tasted like a promise as he solicitously straightened her disarranged clothing and shielded her from the eyes of the wait staff while they slipped out of the theater, flushed and pinned together.

The drive had been a blur. She’d stared out the window without seeing anything, mind reeling, belly still quaking, skin sensitized with longing. There’d been no misgivings, just a glow of joy like an ember inside her.

She hadn’t recognized the feeling as a state of sustained desire, but when he’d drawn her to him before their shoes and coats were off, she’d met his kiss with an enthusiasm that had made him groan. He’d scooped her into the cradle of his arms and carried her to this bed. She hadn’t given one thought to how long she’d stay here, only that she needed to be naked with him, all of her hurts and worries forgotten.

She very much feared she was losing herself, and that was bad.

Nevertheless, when his big body jerked behind her, her pulse leapt as if they were connected by invisible, electric wires. They’d spent a long time getting to know each other’s body. She’d even let him slide down her to arouse her so selflessly she’d almost died, but oh, the deliciousness of that near-death experience. When he’d risen to thrust into her, they’d locked themselves into a writhing knot of ecstasy. She’d been so exhausted and replete after their final, shuddering culmination that she’d fallen asleep without making a conscious decision to stay in his bed.

She should leave now that she’d woken, but she was reluctant, especially when he crooked his leg against hers and renewed desire tingled through her. Would he wake and love her again? Who knew she could be this insatiable?

He muttered something in Russian.

Drawn by curiosity, she rolled to face him and tried to read his features in the dark. His eyebrows were pulled together in a grim line, his jaw clenched. His long body was one taut muscle weighing down the mattress. More utterances pushed through grinding teeth.

A nightmare? Reaching out with instinctive compassion, she lightly touched the tensed muscles of his neck, thumb accidentally lining up with the ridge of his scar on his chin. “Aleksy.”

He clamped a swift hand around her wrist, the strength of his grip painful enough to make her cry his name again in a warning.

With a jolt he woke, but his grip stayed locked tight. “Clair.” He sounded…fraught, his tone demanding she answer.

“Yes, it’s me.” She tried to rotate her arm and ease his unbreakable hold. “Where were you?”

He drew a shaken breath, letting his fingers loosen, then just as quickly caught her arm again, closing around her fine bones, exploring lightly for damage. “Did I bruise you? I’ll get ice.” He released her and started to leave the bed.

“No, I’m fine.” She dropped a staying palm on his chest, startled to find it soaked with perspiration. “You’re sweating. Do you have nightmares often?”

“Never,” he replied shortly, dragging the corner of the sheet over himself, dislodging her touch as he dried himself.

Smarting from his brush-off, she curled her fist into the blankets and drew them up over her chest. “Maybe it was my being here. I was just leaving, so…” She trailed off.

He didn’t say anything.

She waited too long. Nausea clenched in her stomach as she realized he wasn’t going to protest and ask her to stay. Aghast at herself for making the mistake of fishing for signs she was needed—or at least not unwanted—she forced her stiff limbs to ease toward the edge of the bed. Funny how she had spent years conquering feelings of bereft abandonment, learning never to set herself up for it, yet the tsunami of worthlessness could sweep over her as fresh and coldly devastating as ever.

This was exactly why she avoided intimacy. He was too far inside her if he could bring her to the brink of anguished rejection this easily. This wasn’t supposed to happen.

Years of practice allowed her to swallow the lump of unshed tears trying to lodge itself against the back of her throat. She wouldn’t cry, refused to. She found her way down the hall to the spare room and crawled into the icy bed with dry eyes, telling herself the ache clawing at her insides was for Aleksy.

What would haunt him so badly he’d have nightmares? She’d been distracted by his misjudgment of her and the foundation earlier, but he’d said Grigori had given him his first job after his father was killed. He had shut down and diverted her by asking about her own history, but she had a feeling the touchy subject of his scar was related. The way he’d just called her name as if he’d been frightened for her stayed with her, filling her with an urge to go back and ask him about it. Offer comfort.

Rolling onto her back, she flung an arm over her eyes and reminded herself not to give or ask too much. This relationship was temporary and if she got any more emotionally involved with Aleksy, she’d be too deeply attached when it ended. Look how she was reacting to being separated by just a wall. She didn’t want her heart broken when half a world stood between them.

Better to stay exactly where she would spend the rest of her life: alone.

* * *

Aleksy stared unseeingly at the frozen river, still deeply perturbed by his nightmare. He hadn’t had one since his mother was alive, yet the dream and the memory it contained had ambushed him with deadly accuracy.

Except this time, when he’d heard his name, Clair’s voice had called it and torment had nearly ripped open his chest.

Soft footsteps padded on the tiles behind him. Not the bustle of his housekeeper and he felt Clair’s presence like a tangible force anyway. Her sexuality radiated into him, synchronizing to his own. He wanted to touch her with the immediacy that swept through him every time he was near her.

He hesitated to turn, though, dreading what he might see. He had meant to be gone by now, but his driver was caught in one of Moscow’s world-famous traffic jams, so he was loitering in his own foyer, mind jammed with unwanted introspection. When he pivoted, he caught her hovering indecisively, showered and dressed, hair glittering like sunlight in icicles. She took in his suit and tie beneath his open overcoat, then the briefcase on the floor. Her eyes were underlined with bruised half circles. No sleep either? Or something else?

Apprehension made his voice unintentionally severe. “Good morning.”

“Good morning,” she answered. Her cloak of composure slid firmly into place, hiding anything she might have betrayed.

He felt his mouth twist in dismay, but really, it was for the best. He’d saturated himself in her last night, allowing his own well-built defenses to waver so he could draw her in as tightly as possible, but apparently letting down his guard had allowed his subconscious to come out of hiding. That was so disturbing he didn’t know what else to do but run.

“You’re going out?” she asked without emotion, making it impossible to tell if she was relieved or disappointed.

Her remoteness renewed the fear that had been creeping through him since the early hours. Had he said something revealing in his sleep? Was that why she’d left him for the bed down the hall?

“I’m needed at the office.” He scowled at the briefcase he’d filled like a criminal fleeing the country, as if putting off facing her would change anything. There was no changing what she thought of him, only the disclosure of what that might be. “I didn’t mean to disturb you last night.” He watched her closely, trying to discern what was going on.

“It’s fine.” Her lightness sounded forced. “I needed to go to my own bed anyway.”

He bit back a reflexive Why? Her insistence on sleeping apart from him annoyed him and he didn’t understand the reaction. He usually gave his women separate apartments and left them in the middle of the night, but even that first night when he’d been in a state of utter turmoil, there was something satisfying in knowing Clair was in his bed. He’d looked in on her more than once, baffled by the spell she’d cast over him, but pleased with her presence.

He was a possessive man with possessive urges, he supposed, trying to rationalize how out of sorts he was. But this exaggerated reaction made him more determined than ever to ensure that this arrangement stayed on clearly defined footings. She had a place in his life and it was a narrow one.

“Invitations will be pouring in after last night. I’ll call to let you know where we’re going and what time to be ready.” He collected his briefcase, willing his driver to ring. “I have accounts at all the boutiques on Tverskaya. Ivan will come back after he drops me and you can shop or Lazlo can arrange a private guide if you’d like to tour the city.”

Clair tried not to gape, but she was still trying to process her reaction to last night’s expulsion from his bed and all she could think was, So this is what a mistress does with her downtime.

Logically she understood that a strong man like Aleksy would hate that he’d revealed any sort of vulnerability, so she tried not to let his plan to abandon her cut too deeply. She’d spent hours last night coaching herself not to take any of what happened between them to heart. This wasn’t personal; it was convenience. Sex. Good sex.

She licked her lips, trying not to get off track, but memories still crept through, warming her with insidious desire. She suppressed them, considering the shopping and sightseeing offers. Getting out sounded good, but she didn’t need anything after the spree in Paris. She just wanted to clear her head and remember how to be herself.

“Don’t bother anyone. I’d rather see where my feet take me,” she decided.

His macho eyebrows came together like clashing titans. “You want to walk? Alone?”

The incredible sexism in the remark got her back up. “Do you think I’ll get lost? I’ll print a map before I leave.”

“It’s not safe,” he impressed on her with another stern frown.

Clair dismissed that with a wave. “I’ve lived alone in London for five years.”

“Moscow isn’t London, Clair. Kidnappings are on the rise—”

“Who’s going to kidnap me?” She splayed a hand on her chest, forcing a laugh, but the need to state the obvious gave a surprising pluck against her heartstrings. “I don’t have any family to threaten. Remember?”

“Do you think the paparazzi at the Bolshoi haven’t printed photos of the woman with me last night? Even without that you’re young, pretty, well dressed. You don’t speak the language. Opportunists are out there and you should never, ever underestimate what people will do for money. I don’t.” His scar stood out stark white against his flush of emotion.

Foreboding slithered through her. She knew then that his scar was not the result of a tragically placed ice patch and a broken windshield. Aleksy had been indelibly marked by violence. Internal brakes wanted to screech the whole world to a stop so she could somehow process that, but how? There was no erasing what had happened to him.

A poignant ache flooded her at the same time. Before she realized what she was doing, she reached out with all the familiarity that had developed between them last night. Cupping his jaw, she lifted herself on tiptoes, aware of him stiffening as she leaned into him. Her lips almost brushed the puckered line before he abruptly set her away, jerking his head back.

“What are you doing?”

His rebuff tore her in two. She winced, regretting the lapse in her reserve, but he had no idea how few people ever showed concern for her—and after whatever he’d been through…

“Thank you for trying to look out for me.” She forced the words out.

He tugged the lapels of his overcoat as if he were fitting armor back into place and closed a few buttons. Glancing at his watch, he took a step toward the door, speaking over his shoulder dismissively, “You’ll stay in, then? Or call Lazlo for an escort?”

Her silence made him pause. He turned another weighty frown in her direction.

Clair curled her toes in her slippers. It would be so easy to let her self-reliance crumble and allow this protective, strong-willed, incredibly attractive man to run her life. What about when they were through, though? She’d be back to taking care of herself. She had to hold on to her independence.

“I’m not your kidnap victim.” She tried to sound wry, but for some reason her lips trembled and her heart skipped a beat. “I’ll go out if I want to.”

“Despite the risk,” he snapped, temper sharpening his voice.

“It’s not that great a risk!” She folded her arms, stopping short of saying he was overreacting. Obviously his experience had taught him differently. Determined to hold her own, she reasoned, “When you want to do something, who do you ask? No one, right? Same here.”

His jaw tightened. He was used to everyone answering to him, that much was clear. The precisely machined, titanium wheels in his head seemed to whir at top speed as he sought a suitable rejoinder.

“I’m not trying to be obstinate,” she said, checking her flawless manicure.

“But you won’t give me your word.”

“It would be a lie.”

With a hiss of impatience, he set down the briefcase, its weight hitting the tiles with a hard thunk. His mobile sounded and he answered with a staccato burst of Russian before tossing the device on the hall table and shedding his overcoat, his stare holding hers with antagonistic force.

Clair swallowed and fell back a step. “What?”

“You won’t stay at home as I’ve asked, so now I have to take action, don’t I?” He began loosening the knot at his throat.

“What does that mean? You’re going to tie me up?” Genuine alarm made her retreat several feet in the face of his deliberate advance.

“It means I have to change and go with you.” He yanked his tie free and draped it over her shoulder as he passed, voice pithy and displeased, but he still made her grin as he said, “Save the tying up for after dark.”

* * *

Clair reminded herself she was not behaving like a spoiled socialite. She was a fully grown adult making her own decisions, and Aleksy could do the same. She wasn’t keeping him from his work. His pacing and brooding would not make her feel guilty.

She refused to set herself up for criticism either, so she took the precaution of checking the weather even though the sky was intensely blue and the sun glanced brilliantly off Moscow’s blanket of snow. The modiste in Paris had tut-tutted about Moscow’s temperatures, taking advantage of Aleksy’s open account to empty her winter fashion collection into Clair’s possession. After noting the windchill warning, Clair pulled on warm socks over the cuffs of her skinny jeans and layered a snug waffle print under a woolen turtleneck.

Her new faux fur boots were adorable as well as functional, their trim matching a smart leather jacket in the same buff tones. She topped it all with a corduroy baker boy hat and a pair of sunglasses worth more than her last pay packet. When she appeared, Aleksy said nothing, only shrugged into a thick ski jacket and laced up sturdy boots.

Clair paused inside the exit doors to check directions with the doorman. His English was excellent, but he stammered as he answered her questions, one eye on where Aleksy waited with detached patience. Clair took care to write down the street names phonetically so she could find her way back—exactly as she would have done if Aleksy weren’t coming with her.

“Planning to ditch me?” he asked as they left the building.

“Of course not.” Outside, the wind cut like a broadsword, making all her muscles contract and her breath stop in her lungs. She had to clench her teeth against them chattering. “Do you have a preference which way we go?”

“This is your walk.”

Clair looked around her, determined not to let his attitude send her slinking back up to the flat. Taking a moment to get her bearings, she started toward the river, not stopping until they were overlooking the frozen water from a bridge twenty minutes later.

As she marveled at the jagged ice squares forming a broken path in front of the Kremlin, Aleksy withdrew a lip balm from his coat pocket and handed it to her.

So she wasn’t completely prepared. Smoothing balm over her already drying lips, she thanked him and handed it back, getting a funny feeling in her center when she watched him use it too.

“You must be outside in winter often if you’re ready for the weather,” she said.

“It’s still in my pocket from the last time I went skiing.”

Oh. Of course. “Do you ski a lot?” Somehow she couldn’t connect that detail to a man who was built like an athlete but didn’t seem given to using his body outdoors when he could watch the financials from a treadmill.

“When I visit my resort, I do.”

“Oh.” Of course. “Is your ski hill here in Russia?”

“Canada. It’s a heli operation. A good investment,” he added.

“Of course,” she murmured, smiling privately. Heaven forbid Aleksy simply buy something because he liked it. No doubt he thought she was a good investment.

That thought pinched enough that she wanted to get away from it. She began walking and he paced her, his formidable presence drawing startled looks, but ones of recognition. The average Russian citizen seemed to know him better than she did.

“What other sorts of enterprises am I keeping you from today? The internet said you got your start in road and rail transport.”

He took a moment to absorb that she’d been cyber-stalking him, then answered, “Lumber first, then transport. Other types of manufacturing. Real estate of all kinds. A shipyard.” He scowled.

“That one isn’t such a good investment?” Clair guessed.

“No, it’s very sound.” His frown cleared to what looked like pride. “All of my ventures have excellent teams in charge.”

“Then why the dismay?” she asked.

Aleksy was frowning because he couldn’t think of one thing he was being “kept from” by this stylish blonde in her smart boots and cute hat. The way she was watching him so closely, trying to read his thoughts, was the exact reason he’d wanted to avoid her today. If her penetrating glances weren’t bad enough, she was provoking yet more self-examination and he didn’t like it.

“I’m thinking of what I would be doing in the office if I were there,” he lied.

Her fine-boned jaw tensed, accepting the minor set down without comment as she looked away and walked on in silence.

He’d wanted to seal her lips against further questions, but he hadn’t meant to hurt her. The truth was, he didn’t know what he’d be doing at the office. His strategy had always been to set the personnel in place so a business ran itself, paying him dividends and allowing him to expand to the next challenge. Each new enterprise had been a step toward overtaking Van Eych, but there were no more steps. He’d reached the finish line. Time to put the game away. The work he’d put into amassing his assets suddenly seemed as pointless as tapping a plastic piece around a cardboard path. Yes, the wealth he’d accumulated would always need direction to keep him comfortable for the rest of his life, but it hadn’t accomplished what it was meant to; he was still eaten by guilt.

And still confronting a gaping emptiness in his life that could never be filled.

A bright glint flicked in his periphery, dragging his attention over Clair’s head to a man with a camera. He wasn’t dressed for the weather and looked miserable. When Aleksy confronted him with a glare, he scurried off, not giving Aleksy the chance to turn Clair and say, See? He was staked outside the penthouse and followed us.

Disturbed, Aleksy followed the man with his eyes while he made a mental note to increase his personal security. The typical paparazzo didn’t care if his target saw him. That kind of surveillance spoke of someone sniffing out skeletons in closets. A suffocating feeling rose like a band to close around his chest.

Clair’s small hand suddenly gripped his down-stuffed sleeve, pouring buoyant lightness into the dark turmoil roiling inside him. Her wonder-struck expression made his heart lurch into a painful, stumbling gallop.

“When you said the streets were dangerous— Am I imagining things or is that a bear?” Clair tore her gaze from the astonishing sight down the block to catch Aleksy watching her with an expression of heartrending struggle on his face.

He turned his face quickly to look. By the time he looked back, the only emotion he expressed was sardonic humor. “Maslenitsa.”

Clair’s nerve endings were still vibrating as she searched for traces of what she had thought she’d seen in his eyes, but whatever had been there was gone. She ducked her head so she wouldn’t give away how dejected his shift in mood made her.

Get a grip, she ordered herself, and released his arm, repeating the word he’d used. “What is it?”

“A festival to welcome Spring. Like Mardi Gras. Except we have bears, fistfights and troika rides.”

“Judging by the first two, I imagine the third is bronco-busting a reindeer? And what makes you think spring has arrived?”

Aleksy chuckled, the rich sound so unexpected Clair had to swallow her heart back to where it belonged. He soon dispelled her misconception by securing them a ride in a sleigh pulled by three horses. Snuggling her into his side, he let the English-speaking driver tuck them under a blanket and educate her on the festival, which was pagan in origin, but also related to Lent. When Clair expressed too much interest in the bear wrestling contest, the old man turned in his seat. “Not for you, malyutka. Wrestling is for old men who only have vodka to keep them warm.” He winked at Aleksy.

The man ended by fetching Clair a plate of blini, round pancakes covered in caviar, mushrooms, butter and sour cream.

“I can’t eat all this. You’ll have to buy me a whole new wardrobe,” Clair protested after a few bites of the deliciously rich food. “Here. Please,” she prompted Aleksy.

“No.” He held up an adamant hand. “I can’t eat pancakes.”

“Too many as a child?” she teased, imagining him as a strapping boy gobbling everything in sight.

“Far too many,” he said grimly. “If you can’t eat it, give it to the dog.”

She followed his nod to where a German shepherd was licking a plate, the owner unconcerned. Clair let the dog wolf down what was left of her blini and disposed of the trash, her mind stuck on Aleksy’s remark.

They moved under an ornately carved archway built of ice to a park filled with ice sculptures. The angels, castles and mythical creatures were beginning to thaw, their sharpest edges blurred, but they were still starkly beautiful, transparent and glinting in the sun.

“The driver said the festival has only been revived recently. You weren’t eating pancakes just for Lent growing up, were you?” she mused aloud, stepping back and hiding behind her camera to keep the question less personal.

“No, we ate them for survival,” he said flatly, gaze focused somewhere beyond the stunning sculptures.

“You weren’t working for Grigori then?”

“I was hardly working at all. My mother wouldn’t let me quit school.”

Clair lowered her camera. “Somehow I can’t imagine you taking orders from anyone, even your own mother.”

“I would have given her anything,” he said with a gruff thread of torture weaving through his tone. “I couldn’t give her what she really wanted—my father’s life back. I worked ahead and was in my last semester when Grigori hired me. My mother still worked at first, and at least we ate something besides pancakes. I gave her that much, at least, before she withered away.”

His bitter self-recrimination caught her off guard, making her want to touch him again, but she was learning. He would talk a little, but only if they kept it to the facts.

“Cancer?” she guessed, unable to help being affected by his loss. He gave an abbreviated nod and she murmured, “That’s tragic.”

“It was suicide,” he bit out. “She knew something was wrong and didn’t seek treatment. I would have done anything—” His jaw bit into the word. “But she felt like a burden on me.” His hand opened, empty and draped with futility before he shoved it into his pocket. “And she wanted to be with my father.”

Clair caught a sharp breath, frozen with the need to offer him comfort, but very aware she couldn’t reveal too much empathy right now.

“She must have loved him very much,” she murmured, voice involuntarily husky.

“She was shattered by his death. Broken.” His gaze fixed on a sculpture that had fallen over and splintered into a million pieces, its original form impossible to discern. “I hated seeing her like that. Hated knowing I—” He cut himself off and shuddered, looking around as though he’d just come back into himself. “Are you finished here?”

Clair huddled in the constricting layer of her jacket, aching for Aleksy even as she silently willed him to finish what he’d started to say, sensing he needed to exorcise a particularly cruel demon. Yes, she needed to keep from becoming too connected to him, but she couldn’t ignore his terrible pain.

Carefully stowing her camera in her pocket, she put her hand on his arm. He stiffened against her touch, rejecting her attempt to get through to him.

“I’m sure you did what you could. Don’t blame yourself for something you couldn’t control,” she said.

“Who else is there to blame?” he countered roughly, utter desolation in the gaze that struck hers like a mallet before he yanked it away.

A name popped into her head and she spoke it impulsively. “Victor?”

“Chto?” The word came out in a puff of condensed breath as he swung his head to glare at her.

“Did Victor—” It sounded stupid as she thought it through, but she’d been keeping up with the headlines in London. Victor’s perfidies were being revealed with glee by the press. Victims were pouring out of the woodwork day by day. Aleksy’s hatred of the man was bone deep. His remark from last night, “after my father was killed,” still rang in her brain. Perhaps she was being melodramatic, but…?

“Did Victor have anything to do with how you lost your father?” she asked, tensing with dread as she tested this very dangerous ground.

A spasm of anguished emotions worked across his dark expression. There was grief and the reflexive hostility anyone showed when their deepest pain was exposed, but there were other things too. Frustration. Resolve. Remorse?

“It’s not a connection I can prove,” he said through lips that barely moved.

Her whole body felt plunged into an ice bath. To hear her vague suspicion met with such a condemning remark gave her goose bumps. He believed Victor had played a part in his father’s death. No wonder he held her in such contempt for accepting generosity from a man with no right to the wealth he’d used to dazzle and persuade her. She felt sick for letting the advantages Victor offered outweigh a proper examination of the type of man he was.

Clair barely recalled the walk back, lost in absorbing the gravity of the injury Victor had dealt to Aleksy’s family. No wonder Aleksy was such a hard, bitter man. The greater wonder was that he hadn’t swept her onto the street the way he’d threatened to.

“Are you all right?” he asked when they entered the suite.

She looked up from removing her shoes, startled to see they were in the apartment. “F-Fine.” Her lips were numb. “I think I need a warm bath.” She could barely face him. “Walking might have been a bad idea after all.”

His scarred cheek ticked in silent agreement.

Clair swallowed. “You can go into your office if you want. I won’t go out again. I promise.”

* * *

“You’re still here.”

Clair’s bemused voice startled him, in a good way. She looked better. Her face was clean of makeup, her cheeks glowing from the heat of her bath. She wore yoga pants and a thickly woven pullover that hugged her bottom and clung to her thighs. Gorgeous.

He swallowed.

She’d been so wan after their morning out that he’d been worried about her, which unnerved him; he didn’t normally feel more than superficial concern for anyone. She was turning him inside out.

“What do you have there?” he asked, trying to distract himself, rising with the intention of taking her load of laptop and files.

“I was going to work on the foundation in here, but if you’d rather I used the dining room—”

“No, here is fine.” He looked at the cover of the laptop balanced on the stack of file folders as he set everything on the desk. The label jumped out at him with the company logo and its scrolled initials: V.V.E.

“It…was something he gave me to work on, then said I should keep it.” She bit her lip, her upward glance culpable.

Aleksy tensed. The man was dead, but he just wouldn’t die.

“I’ll get rid of it,” Clair said flatly. “I just want the foundation files off it. Then I’ll throw it in the incinerator. Honestly, I feel so sick with myself!” She covered her cheeks with her hands, her blue eyes clouded with repentance. “I didn’t realize he contributed to your father’s death. You must be so disgusted with me for having anything to do with him. I am.”

Mental walls were clashing into place, trying to lock out what she was saying, but the words were spoken. He couldn’t ignore them. All he’d said earlier crept around him like coils of barbed wire, warning him any move would only tangle him up more painfully. He didn’t know why he’d let himself delve back into his mother’s grief or Victor’s role in his father’s death. He just wished he could forget them.

He suddenly stopped cold. What was he thinking? For twenty years those horrors had been uppermost in his life, driving him toward making Victor pay for them. To put any of it out of his mind was a betrayal of his parents’ memory—but somehow the passionate hatred that had kept him going was now evaporating.

While Clair was seeping in.

His heart gave a hard, uncomfortable lurch—she was starting to mean too much to him.

She inhaled deeply, rousing him from his thoughts. He realized she was interpreting his expression and grim silence as confirmation that he did hold her in contempt. He scowled. “We met because of him. That’s it,” he tried.

“How can you say that when it’s obvious you’re angry and hate me for having anything to do with him?”

He was angry. Something was rising in him that he didn’t even understand. Clair wasn’t stupid, weak or avaricious. Why, then, had she let herself become involved with such a man?

“All right, yes,” he ground out with enough fervor to make her start. “I want to know how, Clair. How could you let him near you? How could you not see him for what he was?” Unexpected, bile-green jealousy rose in him. “How could you—”

Not wait for me.

He jerked his head to the side, hands fisting defensively, terrified by what he’d almost said. His heart pounded and sweat broke on his brow and upper lip. He reminded himself that for all his possessive urges, he really had no right to her.

“In part, I was just very naive,” she said with quiet self-reproach.

“I know you’re naive,” he countered, incensed by the reminder. Everything in him was programmed to protect that vulnerability in her, even from—especially from—himself. After all, if he’d finished his story earlier, he’d have revealed that he was ultimately responsible for his father’s death. That his father had stepped into a fight Aleksy had started and that when Aleksy had finished it, he’d walked away with two lives on his conscience. Three if he counted his mother.

He kept looking for qualities in Clair that he disliked so he could feel less disgusted with himself for pressuring her into this arrangement, but she kept reinforcing that he was taking advantage of an innocent. Her next words proved it.

“It was the first time I’d been singled out as special. I was susceptible to that,” Clair admitted in a small voice, eyebrows pulling together with humiliation.

Aleksy seemed to freeze into an even stiller statue. Clair experienced that old feeling of wanting to fade into the wallpaper, hiding her flaws so no one would see why she didn’t deserve to be chosen and taken home. It was painful to stand tall and own her mistake. She clasped the edge of his desk, drawing strength from its solid weight.

“When I was growing up, the home had an arrangement with the school nearby. If we kept our noses clean, we could attend and have the same chance at scholarships and higher education as the rich kids. I gave it a shot, but I wasn’t a genius, just average. And I wasn’t rich. I always wore secondhand uniforms, never had trendy shoes, never got invited to parties. The kids weren’t trying to be mean. I just wasn’t one of them.”

Aleksy’s intense scrutiny nearly evaporated her voice. It was so hard to crack herself open and reveal this tainted, imperfect neediness inside her.

“When I got to London I wasn’t special there either. I worked three jobs to make rent, so I didn’t have time to date or party even if I’d wanted to. Then along came Victor. He treated me like I was the only one who could get things right. He needed me to be places for him and when I walked down the hall, people noticed me because they thought I was important.” The last part tasted bitter. She’d known she wasn’t important, but she’d liked that others had been deluded into thinking it. How pathetic.

Letting her hips rest on the edge of the desk, she gripped it with both hands, shoulders hunching as she spilled the rest. “He gave me things I’d never had, money for clothes. New clothes. He said he’d support the foundation.”

“I’m doing that. Do I make you feel special?” His harsh voice grated over her exposed, sensitive core.

It sounded like a trick question. “I realize I’m just another mistress to you. I don’t expect you to treat me as anything special,” she said.