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He turned to meet her gaze, his own that deep, mesmerizing midnight, and a dark current seemed to hum too loud in her, drowning out her confusion. Then a devastating pulse of awareness reverberated down her spine and sent out shock waves as he closed the distance between them and beckoned her toward one of the elegant gold-and-cream sofas with a wave of his hand. He moved like liquid, ruthless and sure. He was a nightmare made real, and she couldn’t understand why her body didn’t seem to know it.
She ignored the invitation to sit. She called it self-preservation.
“Why does a man like you need bodyguards?” she asked, not aware she meant to speak.
His dark brows arched high. “By ‘a man like me,’ do I assume you mean rich? Famous?”
“Deadly,” she replied. She fought to control her own expression when his hardened, when he seemed to move closer to her without having moved at all. “Shouldn’t a man with your particular skills be able to handle himself?”
“Most lunatics use guns,” he said with a certain calm resignation that sent a chill spiraling through her. “And fists are somewhat inadequate from certain distances, I find. But I appreciate your interest in my security arrangements, Dr. Sweet. I’m sure it is benevolent.”
She didn’t like how he said her name. Or, if she was brutally honest, she didn’t like how very much she did like it—he said it as if he was tasting it with that wicked mouth of his. But she wasn’t here to sink any further into that mire. She couldn’t. How had she wandered off on this tangent when there was so much to discuss—and all of it far more important that his damned mouth?
But even as she thought about that mouth, it seemed to relent. “And in any case, that was my brother.”
“Your brother?” Although now that she thought about it, the other man had been like a far colder, far more terrifying Ivan, hadn’t he? It boggled the mind.
“Nikolai acts as my bodyguard when he feels it necessary,” Ivan said. His dark brows rose. “Would you like me to explain to you the peculiar swamp of Korovin family dynamics? Would that make you feel more at ease? You look as if you are about to faint.”
“I’m fine,” she snapped. And then couldn’t contain what was swirling inside of her another second. “This is a complete disaster, and it’s your fault. I told you it would affect my career and I was right. And that was before we made the news!”
The kiss had gone viral. Every person Miranda had ever met, it seemed, had called or e-mailed or texted to inform her that they’d seen the clip of it. Online or e-mailed to them. Then on television. Of Ivan’s hands all over her and her seemingly enthusiastic acceptance of it and, worse, her response to it. To him.
I am a very possessive man, he’d told her in that dark, stirring voice of his, picked up by all those cameras. He’d looked down at her as if she was edible and he was starving. She’d watched it herself on her own laptop in her hotel room. Over and over. She’d watched him kiss her so thoroughly, almost lazily, as if he had all the time in the world and every right. With such raw, carnal power that she’d felt it explode inside of her all over again. She’d watched herself simply … submit. Surrender. And then melt all over him like wax against a flame.
There was no way she could lie to herself about what had happened, about how she’d responded to him. It had been right there in front of her. He’d been the one to kiss her and he’d been the one to pull back when he was done, but she’d been the one draped against him, boneless and glassy-eyed and evidently mindless.
Opposites Really Do Attract! the online gossip sites had shrieked. Mortal Enemies in Not-So-Mortal Combat? Korovin’s Kiss KOs the Competition!
Ivan Korovin is sexy with a capital S! her agent had texted while she was obediently sitting in the back of Ivan’s chauffeured car, too upset with the situation to be as outraged as she should have been at his high-handedness. He’s a bestseller on two feet!
Clearly, Ivan Korovin kissing anyone with a pulse would be a story. She’d seen that story a thousand times herself—Ivan with this model or that starlet. She’d discussed that story in detail, dissecting the dramatic tales his various women always told in the wake of their affairs with him. But Ivan Korovin kissing the starchy professor best known for calling him “a barbaric King Leonidas without the excuse of a Sparta”? Miranda didn’t need her agent to tell her how salacious that story was.
“It seems we are thrown together in this, like it or not,” Ivan said then, breaking her out of the dark spiral of her thoughts with his far darker, far richer voice. “Perhaps it would be better if we tried to think of it as an opportunity.”
He was dressed in casual black trousers slung low on his narrow hips and a soft, charcoal-gray T-shirt that strained over his rock-hard biceps and clung to his well-honed gladiatorial torso. A darkly inked tattoo in an intricate pattern wrapped around the tight muscles of his left upper arm, twisting around to end just above his wrist. His thick, dark hair was damp, which felt like a kind of unearned, unwanted intimacy. It made her imagine him in the shower. It was almost too much to bear.
Even doing no more than simply standing there, he looked distractingly, aggressively male, powerfully masculine, like some kind of potent, lethal work of art. She felt the force of it—of him—as if his very presence a few feet away was the same as his mouth on hers, tutoring her in all those layers of fire and need she’d never imagined existed.
He looked like the warrior he was. She should have been actively repelled by him, and she couldn’t understand why she wasn’t. Why she still felt as if this untamed, uncivilized menace of a man was safe even when he very clearly, very obviously wasn’t.
“An opportunity to do what?” she asked, her voice thicker than it should have been. She saw his eyes narrow, and knew he’d noticed it. She crossed her arms as if to ward him off. “Celebrate the end of my career? Who on earth will take me seriously now that I’ve been seen in such a compromising position with the poster boy for all things violent?”
There was a long, simmering silence. He only looked at her, his dark eyes seeming even blacker than before, his hard face with its much-broken nose forbidding in the soft light of the sitting room lamps. Miranda found it hard to swallow, suddenly, and even harder to breathe, and she was forced to remind herself that he was a very, very dangerous man. A violent man. By trade and training. Possibly also by inclination.
These were all things that should have been foremost in her mind.
“I make action movies,” he said in a cold, distinctly hostile tone. There was no sign of temper on that ruthless face of his, which somehow made the lash of it all the worse. “I also practice sambo, among other martial arts, like the rest of my countrymen. It is our national sport. If that makes me the poster boy for all things violent, Professor, I would suggest to you that it’s your poster. You’re the one who’s made me into a monster. I am only a man.”
She felt something course through her then that was too close to guilt, to the sickening heat of shame, and she didn’t understand it. She didn’t want to understand it, just as she didn’t want to feel that betraying flood of heat behind her eyes. She didn’t want to think about her work from his perspective. She liked the box she’d put him in all these years. She shoved it all aside, and tried to focus on the point of this. The reason she was here—and it wasn’t to let him take her down in his inimitable way. Again.
“Exactly what opportunities do you see in this mess?” she asked instead, fighting to keep her voice level.
He watched her for another long, intense moment, and Miranda had to order herself not to fidget as she stood there before him. A wild panic surged through her then, alarm bells tolling out a frantic melody, her stomach in a twist, because she had the terrible feeling that whatever was about to happen would ruin her forever, far more comprehensively and irrevocably than any kiss had done. She knew it. She could feel it hanging there in the air between them.
And worse, she suspected he knew it, too. As if this was all just one more nightmare waiting to happen, and she the fool who had walked right into it.
Don’t be ridiculous! she snapped at herself. Why was she reduced to hysteria in the presence of this man? Miranda had always prided herself on her calm reason, her logic. She’d studied so hard, and from such a young age, to be a scholar—to save herself from moments like this one by thinking her way out of them.
She had weapons, too. She needed to remember that.
But even as she hastily tried to arm herself, his midnight eyes only seemed darker, that temptation of a mouth something near enough to stern, and she had to fight to restrain a shiver. Anticipation or anxiety? She honestly didn’t know. His mouth curved, though it was not a smile, not at all, and it danced through her all the same.
“I think we should date,” he said.
CHAPTER THREE
“DATE?”
She repeated the word in obvious horror, and then again, as if the idea of dating him was profoundly, soul-rendingly disgusting to her.
Ivan imagined that to someone like Miranda Sweet, who he had made it his business to know had been raised in a leafy green American Dream suburb redolent with affluence, it was. She was all Ivy League ivory towers, impressive vocabulary words, intellectual pursuits—the kind of plump, thoughtful life that one could achieve only if one had never wanted for anything. While he had fought his way out of Nizhny Novgorod after the collapse of the Soviet Union with his bare hands and nothing else, save his determination to do anything—absolutely anything—to survive and escape.
Of course she found him disgusting. It was almost amusing, really.
Almost.
That intriguing mouth of hers opened and then closed, and he found himself remembering the heat of it, the intoxicating kick he couldn’t seem to shake from his head. Or from the rest of him. Given how unimpressed she was with him, famously so, he should not find her so attractive. He hated that he did—hated even more that Nikolai had noted it. He suspected it spoke to the kind of deep, unmendable flaws that he’d thought he’d fought his way away from, literally, years before.
But then again, when had he ever wanted anything safe? Safety would have been staying in Nizhny Novgorod with his brutal uncle, eking out a living as best he could when the Soviet Union fell all around them. Safety would have been doing something other than fighting. Anything else. No one fought the way he had unless they’d had to; he knew that. He’d lived it. And he had never been anything like safe in all of his life. He wouldn’t know how to want such a thing.
But he knew what he was good at: winning. And this particular fight would take logic first, then seduction. The very underhandedness she’d accused him of—because why not live down to her expectations? Why not present her with the very Ivan Korovin she’d been conjuring up on her own all this time? It was only that fascination of his that might trip him up.
“I should have realized,” she said eventually, her voice cool, though her eyes were much darker than before, hinting at some deeper emotion Ivan could only guess at, and damn her, but he wanted to guess more than he should, “that you’re completely insane.”
“Not at all,” he said. He made no further attempt to conceal his temper, and saw her eyes widen slightly at his tone. “What I am is a businessman. And whatever your opinion of my business, I happen to be extremely good at it. You can’t pay for the kind of exposure and reach that today’s kiss brought us. My people think, and I agree, that we’d be foolish not to capitalize on it.”
But Miranda was shaking her head.
“I don’t have the slightest idea what you’re talking about,” she said in that upper-crust voice of hers that intrigued him as much as it slapped at him.
Ivan felt something twist inside of him. He knew what women like her wanted, and it wasn’t a rough, unpedigreed Russian with big fists, no matter how famous he might have become. It was always the same. They wanted the smooth, polished movie star who only pretended to be a tough guy. They wanted the magazine spreads and the glossy premieres. They never wanted any of the darkness beneath, the things he’d done or the places he’d been—and, in fact, usually bolted at the first sight of it.
“If you would condescend to sit down, Professor,” he said, unable to keep the edge from his voice, “I would be happy to explain it to you.”
As expected, she looked at him as if she thought he was some kind of wild dog, howling into the night. She settled herself primly on the edge of the nearest sofa, her back straight, her dark red hair in a long, silken tail down her back. Everything about her deliberate, careful posture, he realized as he threw himself on the sofa opposite her, irritated him. Made him feel too big, too wild, too dangerous. Too dirty, too beneath her. Too much.
Oh, yes, he thought. She’d pay.
“Are you trying to provoke me?” His voice was hard, cracking across the lavish table that slouched between them, glass and gold and a riot of fresh flowers in the center. “Is that why you’re acting as if you’ve been thrown into a lion’s den?”
“I have been,” she replied, her eyes gleaming green with the temper that didn’t—quite—sound in her voice. “Who knows what you might do next? You introduced yourself mouth-first.”
“Are you claiming what you feel right now is fear?” he asked, almost amused again. Or so he told himself.
She only glared back at him, clearly unaware that he found her defiance impossibly sexy. He had no intention of sharing that with her. Women like this one already had far too many weapons at their disposal. Why should he hand her another?
“Your pulse is racing,” he told her softly, as sure of this, of her, as he would have been about any opponent in any ring. He hadn’t lied when he’d told her he was good at what he did. “And your skin is flushed. Your pupils are slightly dilated and you keep worrying your lower lip with your teeth. That is not fear. It is attraction.”
For a moment she stared at him, aghast. And then Ivan saw that something else move beneath it, that simmering fire that was causing all of this trouble in the first place.
“You don’t know me well enough to make that determination.” But her voice was far too constricted and she sat even straighter, if possible, and pressed her soft lips into a tight line.
He wanted to lick her all over, starting there.
“I don’t need to know you at all.” He shrugged. “I know people, and I know how to read physical tells.”
She scowled at him. “What do physical tells have to do with anything?” Her hands tightened on her lap, as if she wanted to clench them into fists, but thought better of it at the last moment. “The physical is the least important part of attraction. It’s nothing but smoke and mirrors. The brain is what really matters.”
He really was amused. Finally. He leaned back against the sofa. “Then, Professor, I am sorry to tell you this, but you’re doing it wrong.”
She was so much prettier in person, he thought then, even as she glared at him in all of her high-class fury. He was so much more susceptible to her than he’d ever dreamed he’d be. Damn her. It made everything that much more complicated. Or it made him a fool. He supposed it was the same result either way.
She tensed as if she was debating running for the door. But she only breathed for a moment, then relaxed again, however slightly, and he wished he knew why. He wished he could read whatever was going on behind that smooth, compelling triangle of her face. He wished, and he was old enough, battle-scarred enough, to know better.
“Is that why you think we should date?” she asked then, her tone crisp with disbelief. And all those other things he wanted far too much to uncover and identify, one by one. “So you can regale me with your theories about the physiological reactions of total strangers?”
“That would be a side benefit, of course.”
“This is ridiculous,” she said, standing then, practically vibrating with tension. Or was it something else? He had the sudden sense that she was far more emotional, perhaps even fragile, than he’d imagined. Than she showed. But he didn’t want to think of her that way. “I knew I shouldn’t have come here. My life is disintegrating around me and your solution is to date?”
“Calm yourself, please.” He stretched his legs out in front of him as if he had never been more at ease, enjoying the way her dark eyes narrowed in outrage. It was better than the possibility of tears, however remote. “It obviously wouldn’t be a real relationship. I am well aware of your opinion of me. I am no fonder of you. In that sense, we are perfectly matched.”
Which was true, of course. But it did not address this thing between them that had nearly burned him alive where he stood earlier. And Ivan only had to look at her to know that bringing up the best way he knew of to deal with that kind of wildfire, out-of-control chemistry—in the nearest bed, for a week or so—would only cloud the issue unnecessarily. Not to mention, force her to vehemently deny something that he had every intention of proving to his satisfaction. At length.
But not now.
“Why would you even suggest something like this? Is that how people do things in Hollywood?” She looked scandalized. “I didn’t think that was true. Not really.”
“Surely you cannot deny the power of that kiss,” he said, for no other reason than to poke at her. Or so he told himself. He shrugged languidly when she stiffened. “If you can, you are alone. Last I checked, the clip has been watched in excess of—”
“There is no accounting for taste,” she blurted, as if she couldn’t bear to think about how many people had seen the video. Seen them. The perfect Ivy League professor with a shined-up Russian thug all over her. She no doubt felt contaminated by his very public touch. Forever marred. It made him want only to dirty her further. Here. Now.
“Indeed.” He eyed her. Forced his voice to remain cool. “Just as there is no denying our on-screen chemistry. Think of the headlines we could generate if we actually tried.”
“You have to be kidding me—” she began, though he could see the heat across her cheeks, telling him far more than her words ever could. For one thing, that she wanted him just as much as he wanted her, however loath she was to admit it.
He could use that. He would.
“I am changing careers.” He watched her process that. That blink. That considering tilt of her head. Why should he find such things so powerfully compelling? “Again.”
“Racing about the world claiming that unnecessary kisses are a new form of chivalry?” she asked drily. It was as if she couldn’t help herself. “With your fame and fans, I’m sure you could turn it into quite the cottage industry. A moveable kissing booth, if you will. Headlines and chemistry at every turn, just the way you like it.”
“Philanthropy,” he replied, and watched her redden further, as if he’d chastised her. “My last Jonas Dark movie comes out in June. My new charity will be kicking off with its first major event a week or so later. It can only benefit me, as I make the switch from action hero to philanthropist, to have my most outspoken critic show the world she sees me as a man, not merely the Neanderthal fighting machine she has claimed I am on every available media outlet for the past two years.”
That had been the main thrust of his publicist’s argument earlier, as Ivan had watched the clip of the kiss on one of the major gossip programs in disbelief. Ivan had been unable to get his head around the fact that he was now linked to his nemesis in this way. And worse, that he had no one to blame for his predicament but himself. That last had been Nikolai’s main point—that and the suggestion that he take this opportunity to neutralize the Miranda Sweet issue once and for all.
Why had he kissed her?
But Ivan was nothing if not practical. No matter the force of his fascinations. No matter what price he might have to pay. And so there was no reason he couldn’t make this little game work for him on a number of levels, he thought as he watched her now, that dark shimmer of red in her hair, that lush mouth, that unconscious patrician certainty of hers. No reason in the world.
The plan had practically made itself. Revenge might have been a dish better served cold, but that wasn’t to say it wasn’t just as effective hot and wild. He supposed he’d find out.
“I can see how that would benefit you,” she said after a moment, her tone suggesting he had begged for her help on his knees—as if he needed her desperately and she was trying her hardest to be polite in the face of such naked entreaty. He bit back a laugh at the image.
“Let’s not get carried away.” His voice was dry, no hint of the laughter that moved in him. “I said that it could benefit me, not that I needed it. I don’t. But I could use you, certainly.”
“I appreciate the distinction,” she said in that cool way that made him ache to find his way into the fire she hid beneath it. “But I can’t quite see how going along with this would do anything for me but make me a hypocrite.”
“Please.” He did not precisely scoff at her. He didn’t have to. “I’m a movie star. There’s no way you could ever generate this kind of exposure on your own. We’ll play to the public’s obvious fascination with the possibility that so appalls you—that a man like me and a woman like you could ever be together. They’ll eat it up. We’ll break up after about a month or so, milk the rumors and go our merry ways. I don’t see the downside.”
“Because there isn’t one,” she said quietly, something that looked much darker than simple panic in the green of her gaze. “For you. It actually matters to me that people will see me as a hypocrite. That, in fact, I’ll be a hypocrite.” She made a low noise. “Not everything is for sale.”
“Spoken by someone who never had to sell something precious in order to stay alive.”
He couldn’t hide his impatience—nor his irritation at her and all the people like her, who had been born rich and privileged and would never know what it was like to have to choose between their pride and their survival. Much less fight for it with their own hands. Much less lose so much of themselves, and everything else that mattered, along the way.
“I understand you, too, Professor,” he told her, his own voice much colder than it had been. “You’re not the only one who studies their opponents. I know precisely what kind of princess you like to pretend you never were.”
Her eyes flew to his, stricken, and that delicious color rose in her cheeks again, making him feel the same kind of rush he’d felt in the ring when he’d won a tough round. He supposed that confirmed that he was exactly the Neanderthal she believed he was, and in that moment he didn’t care.
“That seems like an ineffective bargaining tool,” she said after a short pause, and while he could hear that he’d got to her in the scratchiness in her voice, see it in that extra bright sheen to her dark jade eyes, she still said it calmly. Coolly. As if she was utterly unfazed. He felt a trickle of reluctant admiration work through him. “Bludgeoning someone you’re trying to persuade with a highly slanted interpretation of their biography. Not the smoothest approach, I’d have thought.”
“Try this one,” he suggested. “Guberev actually is the animal you would like to think I am.” It shouldn’t bother him in the slightest to lie to her, to manipulate the fear he’d seen she felt. It was one more strategy, wasn’t it? All worth it in the end, no matter how it felt now. No matter that it made him who she thought he was. “I don’t know what he wanted from you, but the fact that he felt comfortable showing up at a summit and approaching you in the way he did should give you pause.”