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“It does.”
“Then I offer you, again, the perfect solution to make sure he keeps his distance from you.”
“Because he is like a dog who responds to shows of domination, is that it?” she asked. “Does that make you the alpha in this scenario?”
Her smile was wintry then, and he should not have felt it like a touch. He should not have wanted to lick into it, beneath it, to taste her again. He should not have been contemplating the best way to get under her too-privileged skin. He should not have been so conflicted about what he was doing here. He should not have worried if his brother was right, after all—that there were too many ways to lose, and he was courting every one of them.
Miranda’s cold smile only deepened, as if she could read him, too. “Because if so, I’m afraid I know exactly what it makes me,” she said.
The room seemed to stretch tight around them, and Miranda couldn’t remember the last time she’d taken a full breath. No wonder she felt so off balance.
It wasn’t only that he’d called her a princess in that insulting way, as if she was some kind of socialite. It wasn’t only that he wanted to date her, of all things—but only as an elaborate ruse. It wasn’t the fact of him, so big and male and inarguably powerful, sitting there so close to her, like he was waiting to pounce. She concentrated on filling her lungs. In. Out. It was the only thing she was sure she could control.
Ivan started to speak again, but she threw up one of her hands, palm out, and stopped him, happy to see that for some reason, her hand wasn’t shaking the way she was afraid the rest of her was. Or soon would.
“I’m going to have to think about all of this,” she said, and she hated that there was a part of her that sounded almost pleading, as if, by walking into this hotel suite tonight, she had handed over her right to make decisions about her own life. “I’ll get back to you—”
“That is impossible,” he said, cutting her off. When she frowned at him, he only shrugged in that languid, lazy way of his that she was quickly coming to loathe. “We either use the momentum of this kiss to our benefit now, or we wait for it to blow over. For me, that will be very soon. For you? Perhaps not.” His hard mouth curved faintly. He was daring her, she realized, as her skin seemed to pull tight in response. “I wonder, are you more of a hypocrite if you are seen to date me, this man that you so famously hate—or if, having kissed me in so wanton a fashion in front of all the world, you don’t?”
That question hung there between them. Miranda became aware of the rushing sound in her ears and the rapid clamor of her pulse, just as he’d pointed out before. And that too-tight feeling all over, like her skin was too small for her body. She forced herself to ignore it. And to think.
The fact was, she knew he was on to something, however far-fetched and insane it sounded. However trapped she felt. She knew that a few accusations of hypocrisy were nothing compared to the kind of notoriety “dating” him would grant her—and notoriety would not only sell book proposals and the books that came from them, but guarantee that her presence as a pundit, as the go-to sound bite, was assured. As her agent had told her already, Ivan Korovin was sexy. The entire world was obsessed with him. If she went along with this, she would build her profile to unimaginable heights and would then be that much more able to get her message out, which was all she’d ever wanted in the first place. How could she turn that down and still live with herself?
Besides, she thought, letting her gaze sweep over him, he really was the ultimate modern warrior. The biggest and the baddest of all the swaggering fighter types who dreamed of being just like him. These days he dominated the box office the same way he’d dominated the ring, and she’d seen for herself that he was even more formidable in person.
“Dating” him would be like taking a trip through the belly of the beast. It would be taking her research to a previously unimagined level: testing her theories at the source. Interviewing the monster he’d claimed she’d made him in his very own lair.
She sat back down on the sofa opposite him gingerly, crossing her legs, and smoothed her hands down the front of her trousers. She could feel his eyes on her, black and hooded, as he waited with a watchful patience that seemed like another kind of caress, and just as dangerous. She told herself it was only the enormity—and inarguable insanity—of what she was about to do that made her hands feel faintly damp against her legs.
Excitement, she assured herself, not anxiety. And excitement for the book possibilities here, the career boost—not for him!
But she knew she was a liar when she met his gaze and felt it sear straight through her, down to the soles of her feet, kicking up all of that heat and longing and fire along the way.
That could only bode ill. She knew that, too.
She was going to do it anyway.
“I want to write a book,” she told him, and as she said it, she saw it all flash before her, as if it was preordained. She could call it something like Caveman Confidential. Her publisher would eat it up, and the public would rush out in droves to buy it, so desperate were they for this man. Even if what she said about him was negative. Ivan looked blank. She smiled. “About you.”
“Out of the question.” He didn’t even pretend to consider it. “I do very minimal press, and no biographies. Ever.”
“Yes, I know.” Miranda bit back a sigh and schooled her expression into something that might pass for detached. Unmoved. Uninvested. “You refuse to talk about your past. You refuse to discuss your personal life. You refuse, and because of that, you’re everybody’s favorite mystery. Well, if I’m going to risk my reputation, you can’t refuse me. I want total access.”
“Why would I grant such a thing to someone who has already built her so-called career on tearing me to pieces in the public eye?” he asked with soft yet unmistakable menace. “Why would I give you ammunition?”
Miranda didn’t much care for the so-called-career comment, but she also didn’t mistake the steel in his tone. It would not do to forget who and what this man was. What he could do.
“You cannot possibly think me that much of a fool, Professor. Can you?”
“Consider it your chance,” she said, her mind racing.
“My chance to do what?” he asked drily. “Deliver myself willingly into your tender claws?”
“To prove me wrong.”
He let his gaze drag over her. Her mouth, her neck. Her breasts. Lower. It was deliberate. Obvious. And even so, she felt the heat of it. The kick.
“I have had more appealing offers.” He was so arrogant. Every inch the wealthy, famous man. It set her teeth on edge, but she pushed on.
“Then think of it as a challenge.” She raised her brows when his midnight gaze met hers again. “Convince me that I’m wrong about you. Convince me that I’ve been wrong about you all along. Isn’t that what you think?”
“It is what I know. It is also true.”
The way he said that seemed to hum in her. Like foreboding. Miranda shoved the feeling aside. She wanted this, suddenly, as if she’d come up with the idea herself. She wanted it fiercely.
“Show me,” she said quietly, terrified he could hear how much she wanted him to agree in her voice. Terrified he was perverse enough to do precisely the opposite because of it. “Everything. And I’ll pretend to date you. I’ll do whatever you want.”
Ages could have passed then, as he regarded her calmly from across the table in that unnerving way of his, those dark eyes of his missing nothing. He only lounged there, looking as if he was lazily mulling over what she’d said—but Miranda knew better now. There was nothing lazy about him. He was like a snake poised to strike, and twice as deadly.
“There will be rules,” he said after a while, his gaze intent on hers. “If you break them, no book. For example, if you find you cannot handle the attention we’ll get? No book.”
“Fine.” She hardly dared breathe. Was he really going to do this? Let her this close to him? Tell her things he’d steadfastly refused to tell anyone else? Let her shape it how she wished? She couldn’t believe it. “I have rules, too.”
“Of course.” He ran his fingers over his mouth, and it tugged at her as if it was her mouth he was touching in exactly the same way. “Such as?”
“No touching unless there are cameras around,” she said. Too fast. Much too fast. His black eyes shone with a dark amusement. “There have to be boundaries.”
“That is your first concern?” He sounded entirely too pleased. “Not what I think the role will entail? Not what it is like to live life in so many flashbulbs? Not what we will do if this game of pretend shifts into something else entirely?” That hard curve that flirted with a smile was mesmerizing. “Interesting.”
“Don’t psychoanalyze me,” she said, meaning to snap at him, but it came out much softer. Too much softer. As she was already losing herself, before the game had even begun. “And there will be no shifting.”
“Is that another rule?”
“A very strong preference.”
“Let me tell you my most important preference,” he said in that smoke-and-chocolate voice, and if she hadn’t known better, if she hadn’t been sitting there unable to look away from him, she would have thought he was touching her. Running his hands all over her. Making her his that easily. “I like to be in charge. Accept that and this will be far easier for you.”
She could imagine it, then. Him. All of that wildness and darkness and fire. In vivid color. She who had always thought of sex in muted tones, pleasant pastels … what was he doing to her? She knew better than to let the nightmares in. To invite them.
“You can be in charge of our fake relationship all you like,” she said, her voice betraying her, too husky and too warm. Filled with all the things she didn’t want to admit were in her head, and leaving shivery trails all through her body. “Just so long as you answer my questions. All my questions. No stonewalling. No diversions. You have to give me what I want, or I walk. That’s the only deal I’m prepared to make.”
She thought she sounded tough. Cool. Competent. Nothing more than a dedicated researcher, outlining her terms.
“As you wish, Professor,” he said then.
He did not sound in the least compliant. His dark eyes shone with a potent mixture of amusement and triumph, hard and hot. It connected with her belly, her breath.
“Okay,” she said, while her heart did cartwheels in her chest and she couldn’t seem to tear her gaze away from him, no matter what. “Then I guess we have a deal.”
Ivan’s black eyes blazed.
And Miranda was left with the unsettling notion that she’d done exactly what he’d expected her to do. That he’d led her straight here and she’d walked directly into his trap.
As if he’d known precisely what she would do, what she would say, when she’d come to him tonight.
As if he’d planned it.
CHAPTER FOUR
IVAN insisted on starting this game of theirs immediately. And in Paris.
“That is unacceptable,” he’d told her that first night in Washington when Miranda had protested that she could simply meet him in a few days in Cannes, where, they’d agreed, they would use the annual film festival as an opportunity to show off their brand-new fake relationship. “We will go to Europe together, of course.”
He’d dismissed her protest with a certain casual ease and expectation of instant obedience that had knotted her stomach. Miranda had not cared for the uneasiness that had moved through her then, whispering suspicions she’d been afraid to look at too closely. What had she gotten herself into with this man? But she’d been afraid she knew.
“What do you plan to wear on the red carpet?” he’d asked in the same tone. He’d waved a hand dismissively over the tailored black trouser suit she wore that until that moment she’d thought was both professional and pretty. “This?”
Miranda had refused to curl up in humiliation, as she’d been fairly certain he’d intended she do. She’d wondered if that was what he was really after—if this was his revenge, to strip her down and try to embarrass her. If so, she’d thought, eyeing him across the coffee table, refusing to cower, he was in for a surprise. She’d survived far worse than this. She would survive him, too.
“I own dresses, thank you,” she’d informed him. Through her teeth. “I’ve even attended fancy events before, believe it or not.”
“This is not a negotiation, Professor,” Ivan had replied, still lounging there on that cream-and-gold sofa in that ostentatious hotel suite. His voice had been firm. “I have a reputation to uphold. A woman who appears on my arm must live up to certain expectations, a certain standard. We are not talking about a cocktail party filled with self-satisfied academics at your university or uppity Greenwich, Connecticut, yacht club members—we are talking about the world stage.”
She’d reminded herself then that she’d already hated him on principle alone for years, so it wasn’t as if there had been any further to fall.
“And on this world stage of yours, fashion is everything?” she’d asked, unable to keep the derision from her tone and not, she’d admitted to herself, trying too hard.
He’d only watched her, those impossibly dark eyes seeing far too much, brooding and amused at once.
“On my particular stage,” he’d replied, not quite mocking her, not quite putting her in whatever he thought her place was, she’d decided; not quite, “fashion is a statement of intent. A declaration of purpose. It is taken very seriously, like it or not.”
“Fine,” she’d said stiffly. She’d reminded herself of her greater goals, the plans she’d been so eager to put into action. The book she would write, exposing him, that would make all of these humiliations, large and small, worthwhile. That would allow her to continue reaching out to those, like her, who were tired of his brand of lauded violence. “If you want to throw your money around, that’s your prerogative.”
“Thank you,” Ivan had said in that too-dark voice of his. She’d had the wild notion that he knew the way that sardonic tone moved over her skin, into her flesh. The way it had teased at her, like the lick of a dark flame. His black gaze then had mocked them both. “I do so appreciate your permission.”
And that was how, barely seventy-two hours later, Miranda found herself standing half-dressed in a wildly famous Parisian haute couture house. It had all happened so fast. She told herself that was why her head was spinning—that and the time change. Or, perhaps, those old, terrifyingly familiar nightmares that had woken her in a heart-pounding, gasping panic each night since Georgetown. She stared at herself now in the range of mirrors splayed before her, clutching what she’d been assured would one day be a fantastically glamorous gown to her chest, as if that could preserve what was left of her modesty, wondering if the sleeplessness showed as much as her bare skin did.
Not that it mattered. She might as well have been a piece of the elegant furniture for all the notice anyone took of her.
Ivan was sprawled across the opulent settee that took up a good portion of the private, luxuriously appointed dressing room, all scarlets and golds, deep carpets and magnificent draperies, while couturiers and their obsequious underlings fawned all over him. They plied him with champagne and small silver trays of hors d’oeuvres, laughed uproariously at his passable French and treated Miranda exactly the same way he had since they’d arrived hours earlier: as the nameless, no doubt interchangeable mistress he was dressing for his own amusement today, her feelings on what pieces were selected to adorn her unsolicited and unimportant.
She hardly recognized her own reflection. She felt as if she was in some kind of time warp—that if she stepped outside, it could be the decadent Paris of any past century, and she the kind of fallen woman who would consent to the seedy arrangement they were pretending to have. She shook her head slightly, as if that could clear it of leftover nightmares and time-change grogginess. As if that could make this okay.
Was she really dressing for a man’s pleasure, at his command? Had she really climbed in and out of outfits at a wave of his hand, marching in and out from behind the privacy screen erected in the corner at a word or two from him, trying on this or that depending on his expression? Had she really let him pick out an entire wardrobe for her this morning, as if she’d come to him naked and with nothing?
It had been one thing to imagine it in her head, this calculated fake relationship with very clear goals that had seemed almost inevitable, even reasonable, in that suite of his in Georgetown. But it was something else entirely to make herself do it. To let all these haughty French strangers assess her so coolly, to let them think they knew exactly how she would pay for the piles of ready-to-wear pieces Ivan had decreed acceptable for his woman, all of it packed away already into glossy shopping bags as he turned his attention to the crucial matter of the gowns she would wear on two red carpets and at his benefit over the next six weeks.
It’s the jet lag, she told herself, again and again. It’s making you maudlin. It’s making everything seem so much more than it really is, so much harsher somehow, and the nightmares certainly haven’t helped.
But what she heard was that Russian-spiced voice of his, calling her my woman in his offhanded way, the sound of it echoing around and around in her head until her chest felt tight.
Ivan glanced up then, and caught her gaze in the gleaming bank of mirrors. She could see that focused fire in the depths of his black eyes, and was aware, anew, of the length of her naked back that was exposed to him, the glorious, shimmering blue fabric they’d pinned onto her yawning open almost all the way down to the top of her panties, which were the only thing of hers she wore.
She might as well have been naked, suddenly. She felt naked.
Like she was no more than an object, displayed for his brooding perusal.
Which was, of course, exactly what she was today, Miranda reminded herself sharply. Exactly what she was supposed to be. They’d agreed. She had agreed.
This was too much. It was too disturbing. She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t do this—
His lips moved then, distinctly. And though he only mouthed the word, for her eyes alone, Miranda heard it like a thunderclap. As if he’d shouted it.
Public.
“We agreed we would only put on our little act when there were cameras around,” she’d said nervously when they were somewhere high above the Atlantic Ocean, and Ivan had settled into the wide seat across from her with a glass of wine in his hand.
Too close, she’d thought in a rising panic. He wore a white button-down shirt, crisp and untucked, that only hinted at the impressive strength beneath. And those intriguing tattoos—the one she’d seen on his arm and the teasing hint of another she could see in the open neck of his shirt, inked black on his golden skin. He’d been sitting much too close, and he’d been much too compelling, and she’d had no time to process any of this.
She’d returned home from Washington the day after their kiss to find paparazzi camped out outside her apartment building high on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. She’d holed up indoors, grateful that Columbia’s commencement ceremony had been the week before and that she’d finished teaching all of her classes for the semester. She’d pretended that none of this was happening, that everything was as it had been, that she’d never met Ivan Korovin. Or kissed him. Much less made this devil’s bargain with him.
And when the denial had run its course, she’d planned out her new book and calmed herself with bright and happy visions of her future. When he was out of her life. When she could analyze and shape and process all of this as she wished. When she could discuss that kiss in her own terms, on all the networks that had been clamoring to interview her.
When the nightmares faded away again, the way they had before she’d met him, and let her sleep.
She hadn’t been ready for him so soon after Georgetown. She hadn’t been prepared for the shock of it when he’d greeted her in the sleek silver car that had whisked them both to the airport, much less the scorching force of him once they’d found themselves alone in the sitting area of his private jet, his men up in the front or disappeared into the staterooms.
“We did not agree.” He’d drunk from his glass with apparent unconcern. “You made an announcement. I sense you do so often.”
She’d ignored that last part.
“Does that mean you don’t agree, then?” she’d asked tightly, aware only when his gaze had flicked down to her hands that she’d been clenching them too hard against the armrests of her deep leather seat. She’d forced herself to let go.
“As a matter of fact, I do not.” He’d met her glare with that irritatingly calm gaze of his, that had held, as ever, a simmering amusement in its brooding depths. She hadn’t wanted to ask herself why that affected her so much. Why it burrowed so deeply beneath her skin. “We will put on this little act, as you call it, when we are in public. Only when we are alone, just the two of us, will we drop it.”
“But—”
“Cameras are everywhere,” he’d said quietly, with that edge of quiet, implacable certainty. “Eager eyes and mobile phones set to record. Gossiping mouths with instant internet access. You think you know what it means to be in the public eye because you have appeared on some television programs, because your name is known in some circles.” His mouth had curved slightly. Mockingly. “You don’t.”
There had been something in his gaze then, something dark and almost painful that made her heart seem to beat too hard in her chest. She’d cleared her throat, more confused by her insane urge to offer him some kind of comfort than anything that had come before. She’d tried to shake it off.
“That seems extreme,” she’d said. “And unnecessarily paranoid.”
“Yet it is precisely how I have managed to be a major movie star, featured in the number-one summer action movie for four years running, and still considered mysterious and reclusive,” he’d said without the faintest shred of arrogance or pride. Only stark, indisputable fact. “This is my game, Professor. If you want a book out of it, we will play it my way.”
Public.
Miranda flushed slightly now, holding his gaze in the mirrors of the opulent Parisian dressing room, as chastened as if he’d reprimanded her out loud. She forced herself to breathe. And then, impossibly, attempt a smile.
It was anemic, she thought, studying herself in the wall of mirrors, but it was there.
Ivan only watched her for another moment, and she again got the sense that she amused him, though he neither smiled nor laughed. Then, his eyes still so dark and commanding on hers, he lifted up a single finger of one hand and wordlessly commanded her to turn around in a circle.
For his pleasure.
And Miranda loathed herself, deeply and totally. But she did it.
Because that was the deal. And she would be damned if she was the one who would break it. Not when she had so much to gain from simply … submitting to this, to him, for a scant few weeks. Surely she could do that.
Ivan’s dark eyes gleamed hot when she met them again, a kind of promise there that she refused to let herself understand, even as a deeper, purely feminine knowledge fanned the flames of it across her skin. His mouth moved into something like a smile, dangerous and edgy. It made her feel too warm, as if the fabric wrapped around her had shrunk two sizes as she stood there before him.