# Prince of Secrets

LUCY MONROE

100% DeterminedPrince Demyan Zaretsky does whatever it takes to protect his country. So seducing Chanel Tanner will be easy. And marriage… ? An unfortunate side effect of duty. She unwittingly holds the economic stability of Volyarus in her hands… and he must secure it.100% Devastating!With his royal identity and intent disguised, Demyan sets about a ruthless seduction designed to make Chanel lose her mind with ecstasy. But when he discovers she is a virgin he uncovers something in himself – a conscience. Now his plan takes a shocking turn… one this dark-hearted prince has never anticipated!‘A storyline that whisks you away from page one!’ – Sue, 51, Bank Assistant www.lucymonroe.com

“You should leave.”

Another primal sound of anger came out of Demyan before he crossed the small distance between them and yanked Chanel’s body against his with tender ruthlessness. “I’m not going anywhere. Not tonight. Not ever.”

“You can’t make promises like that.” His breaking them was going to destroy something inside her that her parents and ex had been unable to touch.

The belief that she was worth something.

“I can.”

“What? You’re going to marry me?” she demanded with pain-filled sarcasm.

“Yes.”

## About the Author

LUCY MONROE started reading at the age of four. After going through the children’s books at home, she was caught by her mother reading adult novels pilfered from the higher shelves on the bookcase…Alas, it was nine years before she got her hands on a Mills & Boon® Romance her older sister had brought home. She loves to create the strong alpha males and independent women who people Mills & Boon® books. When she’s not immersed in a romance novel (whether reading or writing it), she enjoys travel with her family, having tea with the neighbours, gardening, and visits from her numerous nieces and nephews.

Lucy loves to hear from her readers:

email LucyMonroe@LucyMonroe.com,

or visit www.LucyMonroe.com

Recent titles by the same author:

ONE NIGHT HEIR (By His Royal Decree)

NOT JUST THE GREEK’S WIFE

HEART OF A DESERT WARRIOR

FOR DUTY’S SAKE

Did you know these are also available as eBooks? Visit www.millsandboon.co.uk

## Prince of Secrets. Lucy Monroe


www.millsandboon.co.uk

For Debbie, my sister and my friend. God blessed our family immeasurably when He brought you into it. And for Rob, a dear brother of the heart. Together, you have brought so much generosity, love, faith and joy to our family and to me personally. Much love to you both, now and always!

## PROLOGUE

“WHAT AM I looking at?” Demyan asked his uncle, the King of Volyarus.

Spread before him on the behemoth antique executive desk, brought over with the first Hetman to be made Volyarussian king, was a series of photos. All were of a rather ordinary woman with untamed, curly, red hair. Her one arresting feature was storm-cloud gray eyes that revealed more emotion in each picture than he would allow himself to show in an entire year.

Fedir frowned at the pictures for several seconds before meeting Demyan’s matching espresso-dark gaze.

Those who mistook Demyan for Fedir’s biological son could be forgiven—the resemblance was that strong. But Demyan was the king’s nephew and while he’d been raised in the palace as the “spare heir to the throne,” three years older than his future king, he’d never once gotten it confused in his own mind.

Fedir cleared his throat as if the words he needed to utter were unpalatable to him. “That is Chanel Tanner.”

“Tanner?” Demyan asked, the coincidence not lost on him.

“Yes.”

The name was common enough, in the United States, anyway. There was no immediate reason for Demyan to assume she was related to Bartholomew Tanner, one of the original partners in Tanner Yurkovich.

Except the portrait of the Texas wildcatter hanging in the west hall of the palace bore a striking resemblance to the woman in the pictures. They shared the same curly red hair (though Bartholomew had worn it shorter), high forehead and angular jaw (though hers was more pleasingly feminine).

Her lips, unadorned by color or gloss, were a soft pink and bow-shaped. Bartholomew’s were lost beneath the handlebar mustache he sported in the painting. While his eyes sparkled with life, hers were filled with seriousness and unexpected shadows.

Bartholomew Tanner had helped to found the company on which the current wealth of both Volyarus and the Yurkovich family empire had been built. At one time, he had owned a significant share in it as well.

“She looks like Baron Tanner.” The oilman had been bequeathed a title by King Fedir’s grandfather for his help in locating oil reserves and other mineral deposits on Volyarus.

Fedir nodded. “She’s his great-great-granddaughter and the last of his bloodline.”

Relaxing back in his chair, Demyan cocked his brow in interest but waited for the king to continue rather than ask any questions.

“Her stepfather, Perry Saltzman, approached our office in Seattle about a job for his son.” Another frown, which was unusual for the king, who was no more prone to emotional displays than Demyan. “Apparently, the boy is close to graduating university with honors in business.”

“Why tell me? Maks is the glad-hander on stuff like this.” His cousin was also adroit at turning down requests without causing diplomatic upset.

Demyan was not so patient. There were benefits to not being raised a Crown Prince.

“He is on his honeymoon.” Fedir’s words were true, but Demyan sensed there was more to it.

Otherwise, this could have waited. “He’ll be back in a couple of weeks.”

And if Mr. Saltzman was looking for a job for his son, why were there pictures of his stepdaughter all over the conference table?

“I don’t want Maks to know about this.”

“Why?”

“He will not agree to what needs to be done.” Fedir ran his fingers through hair every bit as dark as Demyan’s, no strands of gray in sight. “You know my son. He can be unexpectedly…recalcitrant.”

For the first time in a very long while, Demyan had to admit, “You’ve lost me.”

There was very little his cousin would not do for the country of his birth. He’d given up the woman he wanted rather than marry with little hope for an heir.

Fedir stacked the pictures together, leaving a candid shot on top that showed Chanel smiling. “In 1952, when Bart Tanner agreed to help my grandfather find oil on or around the Volyarussian islands, he accepted a twenty-percent share in the company in exchange for his efforts and provision of expertise, a fully trained crew and all the drilling equipment.”

“I am aware.” All Volyarussian children were taught their history.

How Volyarus had been founded by one of Ukraine’s last Hetmans, who had purchased the chain of uninhabited and, most believed, uninhabitable islands with his own personal wealth from Canada. He and a group of peasants and nobles had founded Volyarus, literally meaning free from Russia, because they’d believed it was only a matter of time before Ukraine fell under Russian rule completely.

They had been right. Ukraine was its own country again, but more people spoke Russian there than their native tongue. They had spent too many years under the thumb of the USSR.

Hetman Maksim Ivan Yurkovich the First had poured his wealth into the country and become its de facto monarch. By the time his son was crowned King of Volyarus, the House of Yurkovich’s monarchy was firmly in place.

However, the decades that followed were not all good ones for the small country, and the wealth of its people had begun to decline, until even the Royal House was feeling the pinch.

Enter wildcatter and shrewd businessman Bartholomew Tanner.

“He died still owning those shares.” Fedir’s frown had turned to an all-out scowl.

Shock coursed through Demyan. “No.”

“Oh, yes.” King Fedir rose and paced the room, only to stop in front of the large plate glass window with a view of the capital city. “The original plan was for his daughter to marry my grandfather’s youngest son.”

“Great-Uncle Chekov?”

“Yes.”

“But…” Demyan let his voice trail off, nothing really to say.

Duke Chekov had been a bachelor, but it wasn’t because Tanner’s daughter broke his heart. The man had been gay and lived out his years overseeing most of Volyarus’s mining interests with a valet who was a lot more than a servant.

In the 1950s, that had been his only option for happiness.

Times had changed, but some things remained static. Duty to family and country was one of them.

King Fedir shrugged. “It did not matter. The match was set.”

“But they never married.”

“She eloped with one of the oilmen.”

That would have been high scandal in the ’50s.

“But I thought Baron Tanner left the shares to the people of Volyarus.”

“It was a pretty fabrication created by my grandfather.”

“The earnings on that twenty percent of shares have been used to build roads, fund schools…Damn.”

“Exactly. To repay the funds with interest to Chanel Tanner would seriously jeopardize our country’s financial stability in the best of times.”

And the current economic climes would never be described as that.

“She has no idea of her legacy, does she?” If she did, Perry Saltzman wouldn’t bother to ask for a job for his son—he’d be suing Volyarus for hundreds of millions. As one of the few countries in the world that did not operate in any sort of deficit, that kind of payout could literally break the Volyarussian bank.

“What’s the plan?”

“Marriage.”

“How will that help?” Whoever she married could make the same claims on their country’s resources.

“There was one caveat in Bartholomew’s will. If any issue of his ever married into the Volyarussian royal family, his twenty percent would revert to the people less a sufficient annual income to provide for his heir’s well-being.”

“That doesn’t make any sense.”

“It does if you know the rest of the story.”

“What is it?”

“Tanner’s daughter ended up jilted by her lover, who was already married, making their own hasty ceremony null.”

“So, she still could have married Duke Chekov.”

“She was pregnant with another man’s child. She’d caused a well-publicized scandal. He categorically refused.”

“Tanner thought he would change Great-Uncle Chekov’s mind?”

“Tanner thought her son might grow up to marry into our family and link the Tanner name with the Royal House of Yurkovich for all time.”

“It already was, by business.”

“That wasn’t good enough.” King Fedir sighed. “He wanted a family connection with his name intact, if possible.”

“Family was important to him.”

“Yes. He never spoke to his daughter again, but he provided for her financially until she remarried, with only one caveat.”

“Her son keep the Tanner name.” It made sense.

“Exactly.”

“And he presumably had a son.”

“Only one.”

“Chanel’s father, but you said she was the only living Tanner of Bart’s line.”

“She is. Both her grandfather and father died from dangerous chemical inhalation after a lab accident.”

“They were scientists?”

“Chemists, just like Chanel. Although they worked on their own grants. She’s a research assistant.”

The woman with the wild red hair in the pictures was a science geek?

“And no one in the family was aware of their claim to Tanner’s shares?”

“No. He meant to leave them to the people of Volyarus. He told my grandfather that was his intention.”

“But he didn’t do it.”

“He was a wildcatter. It’s a dangerous profession. He died when his grandson was still a young boy.”

“And?”

“And my grandfather provided for the education expense of every child in that line since.”

“There haven’t been that many.”

“No.”

“Including Chanel?”

“Yes. The full ride and living expenses scholarship she received is apparently what gave Perry Saltzman the idea to approach Yurkovich Tanner and trade on a connection more than half a century old.”

“What do you want me to do? Find her a Volyarussian husband?”

“He has to be from the Yurkovich line.”

“Your son is already married.”

“You are not.”

Neither was Demyan’s younger brother, but he doubted Fedir considered that fact important. Demyan was the one who had been raised as “spare to the throne,” almost a son to the monarch. “You want me to marry her.”

“For the good of Volyarus, yes. It need not be a permanent marriage. The will makes no stipulations on that score.”

Demyan did not reply immediately. For the first time in more years than he could remember, his mind was blank with shock.

“Think, Demyan. You and I both know the healthy economy of Volyarus sits on a precarious edge, just like the rest of the world’s. The calamity that would befall us were we to be forced to distribute the funds to Miss Tanner would be great.”

“You are being melodramatic. There’s no guarantee Maksim the First’s duplicity would ever be discovered.”

“It’s only a matter of time, particularly with a man like Perry Saltzman in the picture. His kind can sniff out wealth and connections with the efficiency of ferrets.”

“So, we deny the claim. Our court resources far exceed this young woman’s.”

“I think not. There are three countries that would be very happy to lay claim to Volyarus as a territory, and the United States is one of them.”

“You believe they would use the unclaimed shares as a way to get their hands on a part of Volyarus.”

“Why not?”

Why not, indeed. King Fedir would and, come to it, Demyan wouldn’t hesitate to exploit such a politically expedient turn of events himself.

“So I marry her, gain control of the shares and dump her?” he asked, more to clarify what his uncle was thinking than to enumerate his own plans.

He would marry one day. Why not the heir to Bartholomew Tanner? If she was as much a friend to Volyarus as her grandfather had been, they might well make an acceptable life together.

“If she turns out to be anything like her grasping stepfather, yes,” Fedir answered. “On the other hand, she may well be someone you could comfortably live with.”

The king didn’t look like he believed his own words.

Frankly, Demyan wasn’t sure he did, either, but his future was clear. His duty to his country and the well-being of his family left only one course of action open to him.

Seduce and marry the unpolished scientist.

## CHAPTER ONE

DEMYAN SLID THE black-rimmed nonprescription glasses on before pushing open the door to the lab building. The glasses had been his uncle’s idea, along with the gray Armani cardigan Demyan wore over his untucked dress shirt—no tie. The jeans he wore to complete the “geeky corporate guy” attire were his own idea and surprisingly comfortable.

He’d never owned a pair. He’d had the need to set the right example for his younger cousin, Crown Prince to Volyarus, drummed into Demyan from his earliest memory.

He’d done his best, but they were two very different men.

Maksim was a corporate shark, but he was also an adept politician. Demyan left politics to the diplomats.

For now, though, he would tone down his fierce personality with clothes and a demeanor that would not send his prey running.

He knocked perfunctorily on the door before entering the lab where Chanel Tanner worked. The room was empty but for the single woman working through her lunch hour as usual, according to his investigator’s report.

Sitting at a computer in the far corner, she typed in quick bursts between reading one of the many volumes spread open on the cluttered desktop.

“Hello.” He pitched his voice low, not wanting to startle her.

No need to worry on that score. She simply waved her hand toward him, not even bothering to turn around. “Leave it on the bench by the door.”

“Leave what, precisely?” he asked, amused in spite of himself by her demeanor.

“The package. Do you really need to know what’s in it? No one else ever asks,” she grumbled as she scribbled something down.

“I do not have a package. What I do have is an appointment.”

Her head snapped up, red curly hair flying as she spun her chair to face him. “What? Who? You’re Mr. Zaretsky?”

He nodded, impressed by the perfect pronunciation of his name.

“You aren’t expected for another half an hour.” She jumped to her feet, the pocket of her lab coat catching the edge of a book and knocking it to the floor. “And you’re going to be late. Corporate types interested in funding our research always are.”

“And yet I am early.” He crossed the room and picked up the book to hand to her.

Taking it, she frowned, her small nose scrunching rather charmingly. “I noticed.”

“Eventually, yes.”

Pink stained her cheeks, almost washing out the light dusting of freckles. “I thought you were the delivery guy. He flirts. I don’t like it, so I ignore him if at all possible.”

The woman was twenty-nine years old and could count the number of dates she’d had in the past year on less than the fingers of one hand. Demyan would think she might welcome flirting.

He did not say that, of course. He gave her the smile he used on women he wanted to bed. “You have no filter, do you?”

“Are you flirting with me?” she demanded, her gray eyes widening in shock.

“I might be.” Awkward and this woman were on very friendly speaking terms.

Her brows furrowed and she looked at him with evident confusion. “But why?”

“Why not?”

“I’m hospitably inept, not desperate.”

“You believe you are inept?”

“Everyone believes I’m socially awkward, particularly my family. Since not one of them has trouble making friends and maintaining a busy social life, I bow to their superior knowledge in the area.”

“I think you are charming.” Demyan shocked himself with the knowledge that he spoke the truth.

An even bigger but not unwelcome surprise was that he found the geeky scientist unexpectedly attractive. She wasn’t his usual cover model companion, but he would like very much if she would take off her lab coat and give him the opportunity to see her full figure.

“Some people do at first, but it wears off.” She sighed, looked dejected for a few short seconds before squaring her shoulders and setting her features into an expression no doubt meant to hide her thoughts. “It’s all right. I’m used to it. I have my work and that’s what is really important.”

He’d learned that about her, along with a great deal else from the investigation he’d had performed on top of the dossier his uncle had provided. “You’re passionate about your research.”

“It’s important.”

“Yes, it is. That is why I am here.”

The smile she bestowed on him was brilliant, her gray eyes lighting to silver. “It is. You’re going to make it possible for us to extend the parameters of our current study.”

“That is the plan.” He’d determined that approaching her in the guise of a corporate investor was the quickest way to gain Chanel’s favor.

He’d obviously been right.

“Why are you here?” she asked.

“I thought we’d been over that.”

“Most corporations donate without sending someone to check our facility over.”

“Are you offended Yurkovich Tanner did not opt to do so?”

“No, just confused.”

“Oh?”

“How will you know if this is a good setup or not? I mean, even the most fly-by-night operation can make their lab look impressive to a layman.”

“The University of Washington is hardly a fly-by-night operation.”

“No, I know, but you know what I mean.”

“You really have no filter, do you?”

“Um, no?”

“You as good as called me stupid.”

“No.” She shook her head for emphasis.

“The implication is there.”

“No, it’s not. No more than I consider myself stupid because I could stare at my car’s engine from dawn to dusk and still not be able to tell you where the catalytic converter is.”

“It’s under the engine.”

“Is it?”

“Point taken, but you knew your car exhaust system has one. Just as I know the rudimentary facts about lab research.”

“I know about the catalytic converter because my mother’s was stolen once. I guess it’s a thing for young thugs to steal them and sell them for the precious metal. Mom was livid.”

“As she had a right to be.”

“I suppose, but getting a concealed weapons permit and storing a handgun in her Navigator’s glove box was taking it about sixty million steps too far. It wasn’t as if she was in the car when they stole the thing.”

Demyan felt his lips twitching, the amusement rolling through him an unusual but not unwelcome reaction. “I am sure you are right.”

“Is English your second language?”

“It is.” But people rarely realized that. “I do not speak with an accent.”

“You don’t use a ton of contractions either.”

“I prefer precise communication.”

Her storm-cloud gaze narrowed in thought. “You’re from Volyarus, aren’t you?”

He felt his eyes widen in surprise. “Yes.”

“Don’t look so shocked. My great-great-grandfather helped discover the oil fields of Volyarus. Did you really think I wouldn’t know that the Seattle office of Yurkovich Tanner is just a satellite? They paid for my university education. It was probably some long-ago agreement with Bartholomew Tanner.”

She was a lot closer than was comfortable to the truth. “He was bequeathed the title of baron, which would make you a lady.”

“I know that, but my mom doesn’t.” And from Chanel’s tone, she didn’t want the older woman finding out. “Besides, the title would only pass to me if I were direct in line with no older sibling.”

“Do you have one?” he asked, knowing the answer but following the script of a stranger.

“No.”

“So you are Dame Tanner, Lady Chanel, if you prefer.”

Her lovely pink lips twisted with clear distaste. “I prefer just Chanel.”

“Your mother is French?” he asked, continuing the script he’d carefully thought out beforehand.

Demyan was always fully prepared.

“No. She loves the Chanel label, though.”

“She named you after a designer brand?” His investigators had not revealed that fact.

“It’s no different than a parent naming their child Mercedes, or something,” Chanel replied defensively.

“Of course.”

“She named me more aptly than she knew.”

“Why do you say that?” he asked with genuine surprise and curiosity.

He would have thought it was the opposite.

“Mom loves her designers, but what she never realized was that Coco Chanel started her brand because she believed in casual elegance. She wore slacks when women simply did not. She believed beauty should be both effortless and comfortable.”

“Did she?”

“Oh, yes. Mom is more of the ‘beauty is pain’ school of thought. She wishes I were, too, but well, you can see I’m not.” Chanel indicated her lab coat over a simple pair of khaki slacks and a blue T-shirt.

The T-shirt might not be high fashion, but it clung to Chanel’s figure in a way that revealed her unexpectedly generous curves. She wasn’t overweight, but she wasn’t rail thin either, and if her breasts were less than a C cup, he’d be surprised.

That information had not been in her dossier, either.

“You’re staring at my breasts.”

“I apologize.”

“Okay.” She sighed. “I’m not offended, but I’m not used to it. My lab coat isn’t exactly revealing and the men around here, well, they stare at my data more than me.”

“Foolish men.”

“If you say so.”

“I do.”

“You’re flirting again.”

“Are you going to try to ignore me like the delivery man?”

“Am I going to see you again to ignore you?”

“Oh, you will definitely see me again.”

As hard as Chanel found it to believe, the gorgeous corporate guy had meant exactly what he said. And not in a business capacity.

He wanted to see her again. She hadn’t given him her number, but he’d called to invite her to dinner. Which meant he’d gone to the effort to get it. Strange.

And sort of flattering.

Then he’d taken her to an independent film she’d mentioned wanting to see.

Chanel didn’t date. She was too awkward, her filters tuned wrong for normal conversation. Even other scientists found her wearing in a social setting.

Only, Demyan didn’t seem to care. He never got annoyed with her.

He didn’t get offended when she said something she shouldn’t have. He didn’t shush her in front of others, or try to cut off her curious questioning of their waiter on his reasoning behind recommending certain meals over others.

It was so different than being out with her family that Chanel found her own awareness of her personal failings diminishing with each hour she spent in Demyan’s company.

She’d never laughed so much in the company of another person who wasn’t a scientist. Had never felt so comfortable in a social setting with anyone.

Tonight they were going to a dinner lecture: Symmetry Relationships and the Theory of Point and Space Groups. She’d been wanting to hear this particular visiting lecturer from MIT for a while, but the outing had not been her idea.

Demyan had secured hard-to-come-by tickets for the exclusive gathering and invited her.

She’d been only too happy to accept, and not just because of the lecture. If he’d invited her to one of the charity galas her mother enjoyed so much, Chanel would have said yes, too.

In Demyan’s company, even she might have a good time at one of those.

Standing in front of the full-length mirror her mother had insisted Chanel needed as part of her bedroom decor, she surveyed her image critically.

Chanel didn’t love designer fashion and rarely dressed up, but no way could she have been raised by her mother and not know how to put the glad rags on.

Tonight, she’d gone to a little more effort than on her previous two dates with Demyan. Chanel had felt the first two outings were flukes, anomalies in her life she refused to allow herself to get too excited over.

After all, he would get that glazed look at some point during the evening and then not call again. Everyone did. Only, Demyan hadn’t and he had—called, that is.

And maybe, just maybe, she and the corporate geek had a chance at something more than the connection of two bouncing protons.

He understood what she was talking about and spoke in a language she got. Not like most people. It was the most amazing thing.

And she wanted him. Maybe it was being twenty-nine or something, but her body overheated in his presence big-time.

She’d decided that even if their relationship didn’t have a future, she wanted it to have everything she could get out of it in the present.

Both her mother and stepfather had made it clear they thought Chanel’s chance of finding a lifelong love were about as good as her department getting better funding than the Huskies football program.

Nil.

Deep inside, Chanel was sure they were right. She was too much like her father—and hadn’t Beatrice said she’d married him only because she was pregnant with Chanel?

Chanel wasn’t trapping anyone into marriage, but she wouldn’t mind tripping Demyan into her too-empty bed.

With that in mind, she’d pulled out the stops when dressing for their dinner tonight. Her dress was a hand-me-down Vera Wang from her mother.

It hadn’t looked right on the more petite woman’s figure, but the green silk was surprisingly flattering to Chanel’s five feet seven inches.

The bodice clung to her somewhat generous breasts, while the draping accentuated her waist and the line of her long legs.

It wasn’t slutty by any stretch, but it was sexy in a subtle way she trusted Demyan to pick up on. She would usually have worn it with sensible pumps that didn’t add more than an inch to her height.

But not tonight. Demyan was nearly six-and-a-half feet tall; he could deal more than adequately with a companion in three-inch heels.

Chanel had practiced wearing them on and off all day in the lab.

Her colleagues asked if she was doing research for a physics experiment. She’d ignored their teasing and curiosity for the chance to be certain of her ability to walk confidently in the heels.

And she’d discovered it was like riding a bike. Her body remembered the lessons her mom had insisted on in Chanel’s younger years.

The doorbell rang and she rushed to answer it.

Demyan stood on the other side, his suit a step up from his usual attire on their dates, too.

He adjusted his glasses endearingly and smiled, his mahogany gaze warm on her. “You look beautiful.”

Her hand went to the crazy red curls she rarely did much to tame. Tonight she’d used the full regimen of products her mother had given her on her last birthday, along with a lecture about not getting any younger and looking like a rag doll in public. “Thank you.”

“Do we have time for a drink before we leave for the dinner?” he asked, even as he herded her back into the small apartment and closed the door behind him.

“Yes, of course.” Heat climbed up her neck. “I don’t keep alcohol on hand, though.”

The look in his eyes could only be described as predatory, but his words were innocuous enough. “Soda will do.”

“Iced green tea?” she asked, feeling foolish.

Her mother often complained about the food and drink Chanel kept on hand, using her inadequacies as a hostess to justify the infrequent motherly visits.

Demyan’s eyes narrowed as if he could read Chanel’s thoughts. “Iced tea is fine.”

“It’s green tea,” she reiterated. Why hadn’t she at least bought soda, or something?

“Green tea is healthy.”

“Lots of antioxidants,” she agreed. “I drink it all the time.”

He didn’t ask if the caffeine kept her up, but then the man drank coffee with his meals and had gotten a large-size fully caffeinated Coca-Cola at the movie.

“I keep both caffeinated and decaf on hand,” she offered anyway.

“I’ll take the caffeine. I have a feeling we’ll be up late tonight.” The look he gave her was hot enough to melt magma.

Suddenly, it felt as if all the air had been sucked out of her apartment’s cheerfully decorated living room. “I’ll just get our tea.”

He moved, his hand landing on her bare arm. “Don’t run from me.”

“I’m not.” How could two simple words come out sounding so breathless?

His hand slid up her arm and over and down again, each inch of travel leaving bursts of sensation along every nerve ending in its wake, landing proprietarily against the small of her back. “I like this dress.”

“Thank you.” Somehow she was getting closer to him, her feet moving of their own volition, no formed thought in her brain directing them.

“You’re wearing makeup.”

She nodded. No point in denying it.

“I didn’t think you ever did.”

“I stopped, except for special occasions, after I moved away from home.”

“An odd form of rebellion.”

“Not when you have a mother who insists on image perfection. I wore makeup from sixth grade on, the whole works.”

“And you hated it.”

“I did.”

“Yet you are wearing it now.” The hand not resting on her back came up to cup her nape. “For the visiting MIT professor?”

“No.”

“I didn’t think so.” Then Demyan’s head lowered, his mouth claiming hers with surprisingly confident kisses.

And she couldn’t think at all.

Sparks of pleasure kindled where their lips met and exploded through her in a conflagration of delight. It was only a kiss. He was barely touching her, just holding her, really. And yet she felt like they were in the midst of making love.

Not that she’d actually done the deed, but she’d come close and it hadn’t been anything as good or intimate as this single kiss. She’d been naked with a man and felt less sensation, less loss of control.

Small whimpers sounded and she realized they were coming from her. There was no room for embarrassment at the needy sounds. She wanted too desperately.

She’d read about this kind of passion, but thought it was something writers made up, like werewolves and sentient beings on Mars. She had always believed that this level of desire wasn’t real.

Before meeting Demyan.

Before this kiss.

The hands on her became sensual manacles, their hold deliciously unbreakable. She didn’t want to break it. Didn’t want to take a single solitary step away from Demyan.

Their mouths moved together, his tongue barely touching hers in the most sensual kind of tasting. He used his hold on her nape to subtly guide her head into the position he wanted and she found it unbearably exciting to be mastered in this small way.

Demyan was one hundred percent in control of the kiss, and Chanel reveled in it with every single one of her sparking nerve centers.

The hand on her waist slid down to cup her bottom. He squeezed. The muscles along her inner walls spasmed with a need she’d never known to this intensity.

She’d been tempted to make love before, but never to the point of overcoming the promise she’d made to herself never to have sex—only to ever make love. In her mind, that had always meant being married and irrevocably committed to the man she shared her body with.

For the first time, she considered it could well mean giving her body to someone she loved.

Not that she loved Demyan. How could she? They barely knew each other.

The feelings inside her had to be lust, but they were stronger than anything she’d ever considered possible.

He kneaded her backside with a sensual assurance she could not hope to show. She tilted her pelvis toward him, needing something she wasn’t ready to give a name to. Her hip brushed the unmistakable proof of his excitement; they moaned into one another’s mouths, the sounds adding to the press of desire between them.

The knowledge he wanted her, too, poured through her like gasoline on the fire of her desire.

Her hands clutched at his crisp dress shirt as she rocked against him, wanting more, needing something only he could give her. He rocked back against her, the sounds coming from him too feral and sexy for the “normal corporate guy” he was on the outside.

The disparity so matched her own newly discovered sexual being inside the science geek, the connection she felt with him quadrupled in that moment.

Without warning, he tore his mouth from hers and stepped back, his breathing heavy, his eyes dark and glittery with need. “Now is not the time.”

Her own vision hazy with passion, all that she saw in focus was his face, the expression there an odd mixture of confusion and primal sexual need that could not be mistaken.

Even by someone as socially inept as she was.

Why was he confused? Didn’t he realize how much she wanted him, too?

“We don’t have to go to the dinner.” She stated the obvious.

## CHAPTER TWO

“NO. WE WILL GO.” He took a deep breath, like he was trying to rein in the passion she so desperately wanted him to let loose.

On her.

What would it be like to be the center of the storm she could see swirling in his intent gaze?

Shivering, she knew with absolute certainty that was one query she wanted answered.

“Do not look at me like that,” he ordered.

“Like what?”

“You want to be naked,” he gritted out as if it was an accusation.

Though how could it be? With the erection pushing so insistently against his dinner trousers, there could be no question his body was on board with hers in the desire department.

More to the point, she wanted him naked, but she didn’t have the moisture in her mouth to say so. She simply nodded a hazy agreement.

“No. We have the dinner. Sex…” He shook his head as if finding something difficult to comprehend. “Sex will come later.”

“Please tell me you aren’t into delayed gratification.” She’d found her voice and cringed at how blunt she’d been, not to mention needy sounding. “It’s just that I don’t get a lot of gratification at all. I don’t want to put it off.”

She snapped her mouth shut, biting her lips from the inside to stop any more untoward words from escaping.

Instead of reassuring her that it would be perfectly okay to miss the lecture, and dinner, and anything else that stood between them and making love, he seemed amused by her words. Darn it.

Demyan’s mouth curved slightly and the need in his eyes receded a little. “Rest assured when we make love, you will not feel in any way ungratified.”

Chanel usually objected to the euphemism of lovemaking for what was essentially a physical act between two people. An act she had heretofore refused to indulge in completely. They weren’t in love, so how could they make love?

Only, she found the words of objection stuck in her throat. In fact, she could do nothing but agree with his assertion. “I’m sure.”

He might be something of a corporate geek, but his confidence in his sexual prowess was too ingrained not to be well based.

Demyan helped Chanel into her seat, his head still reeling from how quickly he’d lost control with her back at the apartment.

He’d very nearly taken her right there in the living room. No finesse. No seduction. Just raw, consuming, needy passion.

Demyan did not do consuming. He did not do need.

Raw exposure of desire was for other men. He didn’t hold back, but he didn’t lose control either. He was known for showing maximum restraint in the sexual realms, bringing his partners to levels of pleasure they showed great appreciation for.

He did not lose it over a simple kiss.

His tongue had barely penetrated Chanel’s mouth. With two layers of clothing between them, their bodies had not been able to touch intimately. He’d still been so close to coming, he’d had to pull away before he shamed himself with a reaction he’d never even evinced in adolescence.

The plan had been to give her a small taste of passion before leaving the apartment, to flirt with Chanel in subtly sexual ways over dinner and then leave her after a make-out session that left her wanting more.

Gaining her acquiescence to a hasty marriage with the prenuptial agreement the royal family’s lawyers had already drawn up required strict adherence to his carefully thought out strategy.

The plan was to keep her reason clouded by emotion, unfulfilled lust built into consuming desire being the primary element.

He didn’t plan to consummate their relationship for another week, at least. He wanted her blinded by her own physical wants, ready to commit to him sexually and emotionally.

Instead, he felt like an untried boy gasping for the chance to feel up under her skirt.

“Are you okay?” Chanel asked, worry in her tone.

Shaking off the disturbing thoughts, he gave her his most winning smile. “Of course. I am here with you, aren’t I?”

“Don’t say things like that.” Her frown was far too serious for his liking.

“Why not, when they are true?”

“They don’t sound true.” There was too much knowing in her gray eyes for his comfort. “That smile you give me sometimes, it’s just like a plastic mannequin.”

How odd that she should claim to know the difference. No one doubted his sincerity.

A smile was a smile. Except when it wasn’t. As he well knew but had not expected his less-than-socially-adept companion to. Taken aback, he sat down, noting as he did so the interested looks of their neighbors.

He turned the smile on them. “What do you say? Am I sincere?” he asked an older woman wearing something he was sure fit a lecture hall better than a formal dinner hosted in the Hilton ballroom.

Her returning smile was the besotted one he was used to getting from women. Even academics. “Very. Perhaps your companion can’t help her insecurities. Women like us don’t usually snag such lovely escorts.”

Chanel made a small, almost wounded sound next to him.

Before he could respond to it, the short, rather round man beside the older woman puffed up like a rooster. “Is that meant to imply that I am not as imposing?”

The woman looked at her date, and the smile she gave him shone with the kind of emotion Demyan found incomprehensible. “No, you are not, and that’s exactly the way I love you. I would not have married you nearly forty years ago and stayed this long otherwise.”

Feathers suitably smoothed, the man relaxed again in his chair, even deigning to give a somewhat superior smile to Demyan before turning to his wife. “Love you, too, m’dear.”

The older couple became obviously lost in a moment Demyan felt uncomfortable witnessing. He turned his attention to Chanel, only to find her frowning, her expression sad and troubled.

“What is it?”

“She’s right. You don’t belong with me.”

“That is not what she said, Chanel.” He put his hand on the green-silk-clad thigh closest to him. “I would say there is great evidence to the contrary.”

“What do you mean?”

He did not answer, but his expression was as meaningful as he could make it.

He could tell the exact moment all the tumblers clicked into place in Chanel’s scientific brain.

Her eyes widened, color surging up her neck into her face. “That’s just chemistry. A kiss hardly constitutes a claim.”

On that, he could not agree. Loss of control or not, their kiss had been a definite claim-staking on his part. “I’m surprised a woman of your education would declare there was anything mere about chemistry.”

“We’re here.”

“And?”

“And if the chemistry was so amazing, we wouldn’t be.”

He couldn’t believe she’d said that. He’d damn near ruined a pair of Armani trousers because of the heat between them.

They were not back at her apartment making love for two important reasons only, and neither had a thing to do with how much he’d wanted what she offered so innocently.

Making love tonight wasn’t according to plan. Even if it had been, Demyan would have changed the plan because he’d needed the distance from his passion.

He couldn’t tell her that, though. Not even close. “I thought you wanted to hear this lecture.”

“I did.”

He let one brow quirk.

“I do,” she admitted with the truculence of a child, made all the more charming because he was fairly certain she had not been a truculent child.

Just a very different one than her mother had expected her to be.

From everything he’d learned about her, both from the investigative dossier and herself, Chanel Tanner took after her father, not her mother. Not even a little. Mrs. Saltzman had clearly found that very trying when raising her daughter.

An hour later, Chanel looked up from the furious notes she’d been taking for the past twenty minutes on her smartphone. “I’m enjoying myself. Thank you.”

A genuine smile creased his lips. “You’re welcome.”

He liked seeing her like this, enthusiastic, clearly in her element.

“Dr. Beers has made at least two points I hadn’t considered before. They’re definitely worth additional consideration and research.” Chanel glowed with satisfaction Demyan found oddly enticing.

He liked this confident side of her.

Afterward, Demyan made sure she got the opportunity to talk to not only the visiting lecturer but also the head of the university department overseeing her lab’s research.

Her boss, who had attended the dinner as well, kept shooting her accusing glances from across the ballroom.

Demyan observed, “The head of your research is not happy to see you here.”

“He doesn’t like any of his assistants to make connections outside the department.” Chanel didn’t sound particularly bothered by that fact.

“That is very shortsighted.”

“He’s a brilliant scientist, but petty as a human being.” She shrugged. “I have no aspirations to run my own lab.”

“Why not?”

“Too much politics involved.” She looked almost guilty. “I like the science.”

That sounded like what Demyan knew of her father. “Why the frown?”

“My mother and stepfather would be a lot happier if I had more ambition, or any at all, really.”

“Yes?”

“When Yurkovich Tanner offered my schooling scholarship, they made it clear I could attend any school I wanted to.”

This was not news to Demyan, but perhaps she would explain why she’d opted for a local state school when she’d had the brains, the grades and the SAT scores to attend MIT, or the like.

“You graduated from Washington State University.”

“It was close to home. I didn’t want to move away.”

Pity. It might have done both Chanel and her mother a world of good. “You were still looking for a relationship with your mother.”

He understood that, though he’d never told another soul. His parents had given him up in everything but name, but he’d never cut ties completely with them.

He’d spent his angst-ridden teen years waiting for them to wake up and realize he was still their son. It hadn’t happened and by the time he left to attend university in the States, he’d come to accept it never would.

“I think I still am,” Chanel answered with a melancholy he did not like.

“You are very different people.”

“I’m the odd one.”

“You are not odd.” Unique, but not in a bad way.

“I wasn’t the daughter she wanted. My younger sister is the much-improved model.”

“That’s ridiculous. You are exactly as you should be.”

“Sometimes even I think you’re being sincere.”

Once again, she’d startled him. Because she was right. In that moment, he’d been speaking nothing but the truth with no thought of his final agenda.

Chanel wasn’t sure of the proper way to go about inviting a man up to her apartment for sex.

Demyan wasn’t making it easy, either. She wasn’t entirely sure, despite the kiss earlier, that he would accept. He’d been attentive over dinner, made sure she enjoyed herself to the fullest. She’d even caught him giving her that look, the one that said he wanted her.

Only, she got this strange sense that he was holding back.

And not for the same reason she was so uncertain about this whole sex thing. No way was Demyan a virgin.

She couldn’t help it—no matter how much her body was clamoring for sexual congress with this man, there was still a part of her that insisted that act was supposed to be a special one. Not very scientific of her, she knew.

Everyone from her mother, who had given up on Chanel’s nonexistent love life, to friends who could not comprehend her “romanticized view of sex,” agreed on one thing. Chanel’s virginity was just another sign of how she did not fit into the world around her.

But making love was supposed to be something more than two bodies finding physical release, she was sure of it.

Chanel had never wanted just sex. Wasn’t sure what effect it would have on her sense of self if she indulged in it now.

Things looked different at twenty-nine than they had at nineteen, though.

She should be more relaxed about the prospect of casually sharing her body with another person. She wasn’t.

If anything, the older she got the more important she realized each human connection she made was. Sex was supposed to be the ultimate act of intimacy.

She had to admit she’d never felt the bone-deep connection with the few men in her past that she’d felt in that single kiss with Demyan.

She wasn’t stupid. She knew losing the two people in her life who had loved her unconditionally at the tender age of eight had made her reticent about opening up to others, particularly men.

Her father and grandfather.

Chanel’s stepfather hadn’t loved her at all, never mind without limits. As for her mother, Chanel was twenty-nine and the jury was still out on that one.

Which, as an adult woman, had nothing to do with the question of if and how Chanel should offer her invitation to Demyan.

His car slid to a halt by the curb outside her apartment building. He cut the engine, reaching to unclip his belt in one smooth move.

Maybe she wouldn’t have to figure it out, after all.

“You’re coming up?”

“I will see you to your door.”

“It’s not necessary.” She could have smacked herself. “I mean, only if you want to.”

Oh, that was so much better.

One dark brow lifted as he pushed his door open. “Have I ever left you to see yourself inside?”

“It’s only our third date.” Hardly enough time to set a precedent in stone.

Her own words hit her with the force of a solid particle mass traveling beyond the speed of light. What was she thinking? Sex with him when they’d barely spent more than a minute in each other’s company?

Still remembering the pleasure of his kiss earlier, her body screamed yes while her mind sounded a warning Klaxon of nos.

No closer to a verdict about how to handle the rest of the night, she stalled in frozen indecision.

Her door was opened and Demyan bent toward her in his too-darn-sexy dinner suit, his hand reaching toward her. “Are you coming?”

She fumbled with her seat belt, getting it unbuckled after the second try.

The knowing look in his dark eyes said he knew why she was so uncoordinated.

“Don’t,” she ordered.

The knowing glance turned into a smirk. “Don’t?”

“You’re smug,” Chanel accused as she climbed from the car, eschewing the help of his hand.

Ignoring her attempt to keep her distance, he put his hand around her waist, tucking her body close to his as they approached her building. “I am delighted by your company.”

Heat arced between them and, that quickly, she remembered why after only three dates she was ready to break a lifetime habit of virginity.

“I’m still not sure why we’re here.”

“You live here?” Amusement laced his voice as he led her into the unsecured building.

The lack of a doorman was a bone of contention between Chanel and her mother. If the older woman had been concerned for her safety, Chanel might have considered moving, but the issue was in how it looked for her to live in an unpretentious, entirely suburbanite apartment complex.

“I do not like the fact that the entrance to your home is so accessible. This dark cove outside your door is not entirely secure, either,” Demyan complained as he took her keys and unlocked the door.

She hadn’t quite decided if the action was some throwback to old-world charm or simply indicative of his dominating nature when he ushered her inside.

They moved into the living room and he shut the door behind them. There was meaning in that, right? The shut door. If he’d wanted only to see her inside, he could have left her on the landing.

“Would you like a drink or something?” Like her?

Was she really going to do this? Chanel thought maybe she was.

“Not tonight.” The words implied he planned to leave, but the way he stepped closer to her gave an entirely different meaning.

She didn’t reply, his proximity stealing her breath just that fast. For the first time in her life, she began to understand how her mother, Beatrice, had ended up pregnant by a man so very different from herself.

Sex was a powerful force. “Body chemistry is so much more potent than I ever believed.” She sounded every bit as bewildered as she felt.

“Because you have never felt it so strongly with someone else.” There was no question mark at the end of that sentence.

Chanel would take umbrage at the certainty in his tone if Demyan didn’t speak the absolute truth.

“I’m sure you have.”

Something strange moved across his features. Surprise? Maybe confusion. “No.”

“You stopped earlier, not me.”

“It was not easy.”

Was that supposed to make her feel better about the fact he’d been more determined to go to the lecture than she’d been? Sarcasm infused her voice as she said, “I’m glad to hear that.”

His eyes narrowed, a spark of irritation showing before it disappeared. She wasn’t surprised. Demyan might not be the corporate shark her stepfather was, but he was not a man who liked to lose control, either.

Not that he had. Now, or earlier.

He had stopped after all, and right now, as much as she could read desire in his dark gaze, he wasn’t acting on it.

She, on the other hand, was seconds away from kissing him silly. She, who had never initiated a kiss in her life.

“Do you want to stay?” she asked baldly.

Subtlety was all well and good for a woman who found the role of flirt comfortable, but that woman wasn’t Chanel.

He smiled down at her. “Do you want me to?”

“I don’t know.”

Shock held his face immobile for the count of three seconds. “You don’t know?”

She shook her head.

“You didn’t seem unsure about what you wanted earlier tonight.” Disbelief laced his voice.

She nodded, making no attempt to deny it. Subterfuge was not her thing. “I barely know you.”

“Is that how it feels to you?”

She experienced that strange sense of disparity she’d had with him before. The words were right, the expression concurrent and yet, she felt the lack of sincerity.

Only, unlike at the dinner, there was a vein of honesty in his words that confused her.

“You already know you could take me to bed with very little effort.”

“I assure you, the effort will not be minimal.” Sensual promise vibrated in every word.

Chanel felt his promise to her very core and her thighs squeezed together in involuntary response, not because she feared what he wanted but because it made her ache with a need she’d never known.

“That’s not what I meant.” Her voice cracked on the last word, but she pretended not to notice.

The slight flaring of his nostrils and the way his eyes went just that much darker said he had, though. “What did you mean then, little one?”

“I’m hardly little.” At five foot seven, she was above average in height for a woman.

“Do not avoid the question.”

“I wasn’t trying to.” She’d just been trying to clarify, because that was familiar territory.

The rest of this? Was not.

Only he knew how tall she was, so if he wanted to call her little one, maybe that was okay. “I suppose I do seem kind of short to you. You’re not exactly average height for a man in North America, though maybe I should be comparing you to Ukrainians, as that’s your country’s formative gene pool.”

In fact, he was well above average height, certainly taller than most of the men in her life, and that gave her a peculiar kind of pleasure. Which, like many things she’d discovered since meeting him, surprised her about herself.

She’d never thought she would enjoy feeling protected when she was with a man, or that the difference in their height would even succeed in making her feel that way. Maybe it wasn’t just that difference but something else about Demyan entirely.

Something intangible that didn’t quite match his casual designer sweaters and dark-rimmed glasses.

“You do not seem short.” He tugged at one of her red curls, a soft smile playing about his lips as if he could read her thoughts and was amused by them. “You are just right.”

This time there was no conflict between the words and sincerity in his manner.

But it put the times there was in stark relief in her mind. “I can’t make you out.”

“What do you mean?” He looked surprised again and she got the definite impression that didn’t happen a lot with him.

“Sometimes I think you mean everything you say, but then there are times, like at dinner tonight, when it seems like you’re saying what you think I want to hear.”

“I have not lied to you.” Affront echoed through his tone.

“Haven’t you?”

“No.” Dead certainty, and then almost as if it was drawn from him without his permission, “I have not told you everything about myself.”

“I didn’t expect you to bring along an information dossier on our first date.” Of course she didn’t know everything about him; that was part of the dating process, wasn’t it? “You don’t know everything about me, either.”

His gaze turned cold, almost ruthless. Then he adjusted his glasses and the look disappeared. “I know what I need to.”

Sometimes there was a glimmer of another man there—a man that even a shark like Perry would swim from in a frantic effort to escape. Then Demyan would smile and the impression of that other man would dissipate.

## CHAPTER THREE

DEMYAN DIDN’T SMILE now, but she knew the man in front of her wasn’t a shark.

Not like the overcritical Perry, and definitely not like someone even more ruthless than her stepfather. There was too much kindness in Demyan, even if he was wholly unaware of it, as Chanel suspected he was.

“What did you mean earlier?” he asked, pulling her back to the original question.

Oh, yes…right.

“It’s just…you must realize I’m a sure thing. Even if I’m not sure I want to be.”

“Why aren’t you sure?” he asked, deflecting himself this time.

Or maybe he just really wanted to know. Being the center of someone else’s undivided attention when she wasn’t discussing her work wasn’t something Chanel was used to.

When she was with Demyan, he focused solely on her, though, as if nothing was more important to him. He wanted to know things others reacted to with impatience, not interest. It was a heady feeling.

Even so, peeling away the layers to reveal her full self to him wasn’t easy. “You’ll laugh.”

“Is it funny?”

“Not to me.” Not even a little.

“Then I will not laugh.”

“How can you be so perfect?”

“So long as I am perfect for you, that is all that matters.”

“Do you mean that?”

“Yes.” There could be no doubting the conviction in his tone or handsome features.

“Why?”

“Are you saying you feel differently?” he asked in a tone that implied he knew the answer.

“Love at first sight doesn’t happen.”

“Maybe for some people it does.”

All the breath seemed to leave the room at his words. “Are you saying…” She had to clear her throat, suck in air and try again. “Are you saying you feel the same?”

“I want to be your perfect man.”

“You mean that.” And maybe it was past time she stopped doubting his sincerity.

How much of her feeling he was saying what she wanted to hear stemmed from her own insecurities? Why was it so hard for her to accept that this man didn’t need her to be something or someone different to want to be with her?

The answer was the years spent in a family she simply didn’t fit, the daughter of a mother and stepfather who found constant fault with a child too much like her own father for their comfort.

“I do.”

She nodded, accepting. Believing. “I’ve never had sex.”

Once again she’d managed to shock him. And this time she didn’t have to look for subtle signs.

His whisker-shadowed jaw dropped and dark eyes widened comically. “You are twenty-nine.”

“I’m not staring retirement in the face, or something.” She had eleven more years of relatively safe childbearing, even.

Not that she thought she was going to marry and have children. She’d given up on that idea when she realized that even in the academic world, Chanel was a social misfit.

“No, I didn’t mean that.” But his voice was still laced with surprise and his superior brain was clearly not firing on all cylinders. “You’re educated. American.”

“So?” What in the world did her PhD in chemistry have to do with her virginity?

“Are you completely innocent?”

Man, did he even realize how that sounded?

And people thought she was old-fashioned. “Even if I’d had sex, I would still be innocent. Sex isn’t a crime.”

“You know that is not what I was referring to.”

“No, I know, but innocent? Come on.”

The look he was giving her was way too familiar.

“I’m awkward,” she excused with a barely stifled sigh. “I told you.” Had he forgotten?

“You are refreshingly direct.” That wasn’t disappointment in his tone and the look she thought she recognized.

Well, it wasn’t. He almost looked admiring. If she believed it, and hadn’t she diced to do just that? “Mother calls it ridiculously blunt.”

“Your mother does not see you as I do.”

“I should hope not.”

They both smiled at her small joke that did nothing to dissipate the emotional tension between them.

He put his big hands on her shoulders, his thumbs brushing along her collarbone, the hold possessive like before. And just like earlier, she found a new unexpected part of her that liked that. A lot.

“Demyan.” His name just sighed out of her.

She didn’t know what she meant by it. What she wanted from him.

He didn’t appear similarly lost, his gaze direct and commanding. “You say you’ve never had sex. I want to know what that means.”

It took two tries to get words past her suddenly constricted throat. “Why does it matter?”

“You can ask that?”

“Um, yes.” Hadn’t she just done?

“You are mine.”

“Three dates,” she reminded him.

“Love at first sight,” he countered.

“You…I…”

“We are going to make love. What I want to know is what you have done to this point.” His thumbs continued the sensual caress along her collarbone. “You are going to tell me.”

“Bossy much?”

“Only in bed.”

She wasn’t sure she believed him, was even less sure if it mattered. She wasn’t worried about standing up for herself. She’d never conformed when it counted, no matter how much easier it would have made her life—especially with her family.

Right now she found she wanted to answer his question, needed to. Still, she kept it general. “Heavy petting, I guess you’d say.”

“Be more specific.”

“No.” Heat crawled up her neck.

He shouldn’t care, should he? Virginity wasn’t an issue for modern men. Or modern women, her inner voice mocked her, and yet you are a virgin.

He bent so close their lips almost touched. “Oh, yes.”

Thoughts came and went, no words making it past her lips until she made a sound she’d never heard from her own vocal cords before. It was something like surrender, but more.

It was sexual.

The air between them grew heavy with the most primal kind of desire, pushing against her, demanding her acquiescence.

In a last-ditch desperate bid for space, she shut her eyes, but it did no good. She could feel his stare. Could feel his determination to get an answer.

She was super sensitive to his nearness, too, her body aching to press against his, her lips going soft in preparation for his kiss.

The kiss didn’t come.

“Tell me,” puffed across her lips.