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He held her gaze, looking like some kind of pagan god of war, so tough and hard and obviously dangerous. Capable, she thought wildly, of absolutely anything.
And then, sprawled there like that with attendants on either side, he lifted up his hand and beckoned for her to come to him. Peremptory. Commanding. With only his lazy fingers and that hard, intent look on his face.
Miranda felt it like a detonation, deep inside of her, setting off a chain of explosions throughout the rest of her body. She trembled. She wanted things she refused to name, things that made her soften and burn—things she wasn’t sure she understood, and told herself she didn’t want to. But she didn’t look away from that midnight gaze of his in the mirror. And despite a kind of deep, ravenous craving she’d never felt before, and found wholly terrifying, she didn’t move.
She couldn’t. She knew, with a deep certainty she’d never felt before, that if she did, if she followed the demands of this shocking, surprising yearning that ate her up inside, she would lose herself in ways she was afraid to imagine. In ways she couldn’t even foresee. Forever. And she knew better than to lose her head over a man. She knew better.
She had to fight to keep from jumping when he stood, abruptly, scattering his admirers as he rose. Her heart seemed to drop in her chest, then started to pound, hard and slow.
Fear, she told herself, and that was what it felt like, though she knew, somehow, it was more than that. Different. Panic.
“Leave us,” Ivan commanded in French to the people surrounding him, and Miranda didn’t miss the arched, knowing looks the couturiers and assistants shot at each other. Just as she didn’t miss the soft click of the door they closed behind them, leaving her all alone with him.
Alone and half-naked. Supposedly his mistress. She knew what they were imagining on the other side of the door. His hands, all over her. Pulling up the length of expensive fabric she wore, exploring beneath it. His mouth, hot and hard on hers. And elsewhere. She was imagining it, too.
Miranda couldn’t tear her eyes from his. She couldn’t bring herself to move, not even to turn around and face him. She wasn’t sure she breathed.
Ivan roamed toward her in that predatory way of his, loose and yet certain, as if he could as easily take down sets of attackers with one hand as cross the elegant, high-ceilinged room to the small dais where she stood. His battle-tested ferocity was stamped all over him, on that hard warrior’s face of his, on the tough and ruthless body he’d packed into dark trousers and another expensive-looking T-shirt that licked over his muscled torso, and even the tailored jacket that trumpeted his wealth at high volume, so well did it mold itself to his titanlike shoulders.
There was no mistaking who or what he was. Ivan Korovin. Desperately rich. Shockingly famous. And in complete and utter control of this situation, no matter how keenly Miranda might feel she was flying apart at the seams. Or even because of it.
Her limbs ached with the effort of keeping her upright, even her neck seemed too weak to support her head, and it was not until she saw the movement of her own chest in the mirror that she realized she was breathing shallow and fast.
Like prey.
“I don’t want—” she began, panicked beyond endurance, and he was so close—
“Quiet.”
Miranda didn’t know what was worse: that he believed he could speak to her like that, that he had the right, or that she heard that autocratic command and obeyed.
Instantly.
It was, she knew, representative of everything she hated about herself.
Ivan stepped up onto the raised platform and stood behind her, and it was too much. Too much. Her eyes eased closed, as if that might protect her, from him or from herself she wasn’t sure she could tell. There was too much noise in her head, too much chaos, and she was aware that she was trembling—that her heart was fluttering wildly against her ribs, and she knew, somehow, that there was no way he would miss that. He would know—but she couldn’t do anything to help herself. She felt caged. Trapped.
And somewhere deep inside, she was very much afraid that she didn’t hate that feeling as much as she knew she should. It was one more betrayal in a long line, and this game of theirs had hardly started.
How was she going to survive weeks of this? When she wasn’t sure she could survive another three seconds?
“Look at me,” he ordered her, his voice soft and yet no less authoritative, directly into her ear. She felt the tease of his breath, imagined she felt that clever mouth directly against her skin. Miranda shuddered, but opened her eyes, afraid of what she would see.
He loomed there behind her, not quite touching her. His dark head was bent to hers, and he was so big—so big—his wide shoulders and his height making her seem slight and small before him. He exuded power like a searchlight, blinding and unmistakable.
And he was breaking their agreement, and she couldn’t let that happen. For far more reasons than she was prepared to admit to herself.
“You promised,” she whispered, her voice only the faintest scratch of sound, hardly audible over her own heart beat. “You can’t do this kind of thing when we’re alone. You can’t shift.”
She could feel the heat he generated, and there was nothing but smoke and flames in his dark gaze as it slammed into hers in the mirror. Nothing but that consuming, impossible fire that echoed in her, simmering and treacherous, no matter how she ordered it to stop.
“There are security cameras in the corners,” he murmured, so that only she could hear, and then he touched her.
And Miranda told herself she was the kind of woman who kept her promises, no matter how difficult, so she let him.
Ivan traced a lazy path from her wrist to her upper arm with one hand, then back down again. He could feel the way she shook with the effort of not moving, not wrenching herself away from him, and it nearly made him smile. It nearly made him spin her around and take her mouth again, and this time, with no intention of stopping.
But this was supposed to be a seduction. It was too soon.
He traced the length of her elegant spine, and ordered the fire in him to subside. But she was wrapped in a glorious spill of fabric that made her skin look like cream, and he wanted a taste.
He wanted.
He bent his head closer, his lips so close to the line of her neck, so close that he could inhale her delicate scent. It worked through him, making him crazy. Making that razor’s edge of need sharper. Making him entertain the possibility that he, too, could be seduced.
And he could see it all in the mirror. He could see that dizzy, unfocused gleam in her dark eyes, see the way his lips hovered so close to her soft skin. So close. He could see the immensity of his battered champion’s body, the way he stood behind and all around her, the hulking brute to all her fragile, supple femininity.
The sight of it should not have made him that much hotter. But he had never been politically correct, had he? Especially not in bed.
He made himself go slowly, carefully, as if he was as in control of this, of himself, as he should have been. He held her wrist in one hand, the other moving from the small of her back to grip her hip as if he owned her. He held her the way he’d kissed her across the world in Georgetown, as if they’d been lovers a thousand times before. As if his smallest touch was a preview to a show they both knew by heart. As if he had spent hours already today thrusting hard and deep inside of her, shattering her into millions of pieces, the way he assured himself he would. And soon.
Very soon, Professor, he promised her silently.
In another life, where they were already lovers and there were none of these games, this scene would be very different. He would simply take. What he wanted. What he felt was his. Her. He would brace her against the mirrors, or have her kneel across his lap on that settee, and he wouldn’t care who might be watching them. And in that life, neither would she. She would welcome it—him—with none of her suspicious frowns or patrician pearl-clutching. She would meet his every touch, his every thrust. Ivan felt that work through him, as if it was real. As if it had happened—was happening. That hard fist of desire in his belly clenched ever tighter.
“Milaya moya,” he murmured, as he had before. But this time it came out like some kind of incantation. “What if I am shifting after all?”
She jerked against him, and he could see her pulse go wild at her throat. Her gaze was black, and he had no doubt at all that she would call what she felt then any number of names, but he knew what it was. He knew what her body was begging for, even if she denied it.
And it was harder than it should have been, far harder than he’d anticipated, to keep himself from claiming her right here and right now, and to hell with any security cameras.
This is an act, he reminded himself coldly. You are supposed to be acting.
He raised his head, slowly and deliberately, because he did not want to move at all. He did not want to let go of her. But this was meant to be a seduction wrapped inside a masquerade, and this was only the beginning. Why was that so hard to remember?
But he knew why. And he couldn’t let his suicidal fascination jeopardize all he and Nikolai had worked for. Not even if she was the first woman to get beneath his skin, to make him forget himself, in as long as he could remember. Something he had no intention of letting this haughty little aristocrat know. He could imagine all too well how she’d enjoy using it against him.
He let go of her wrist and plucked at the fabric draped all around her, still holding her gaze, his other hand hard and possessive on her hip, because, he assured himself, it was part of the act. And because he was only a man.
“This one is perfect, I think,” he said after a moment, when he was certain he would sound nothing but calm. Casual. He pretended he didn’t see the shock in her gaze, the fiery passion mixed with something like betrayal. He pretended he didn’t care that she thought he’d played her, because he shouldn’t. Because, in the end, he was. “I like the color.”
Horrible man.
“I’ve hired a team of stylists to attend to you,” Ivan said offhandedly when they returned to his plane, as if he was addressing the help. Horrible, awful man. “They can accomplish a great deal in an hour-long flight. Do not argue with anything they suggest, please. I picked them for a reason.”
“This is completely unnecessary,” Miranda said, in a scrupulously polite undertone that felt like glass against her tongue, so badly did she want to scream at him for that little performance in the dressing room. Scream, yell. Something.
But there were people around, and she’d agreed to this charade. They’d even signed a few documents on the plane ride to France, just to make sure everything was perfectly clear. And more than that, her demons were her business. He didn’t get to know them, which she feared he would if she let herself scream at him. He didn’t get to know her—no matter what darkness he’d churned up in her with his little act for the cameras, what nightmares that performance would inevitably wreak upon her. It didn’t matter anyway. She was going to play this role, get close to him for her own purposes and then do exactly as she liked with what she learned.
It will be worth it, she chanted to herself. It will.
“I don’t need stylists,” she told him now, impressed with how in control she sounded, when she still felt so raw inside. When she could still feel his hands on her body, like third-degree burns. “I don’t need anything except a very large glass of wine and some privacy.”
“I told you I have exacting standards,” he said, not even glancing up from his cell phone as they climbed from the car.
And then he did, and she wished he hadn’t, as that too-knowing gaze of his pinned her where she stood on the tarmac, hot and black and wildly consuming. She froze. She could hardly do anything else. His hand was warm and tough where he held her elbow so lightly, so gently, and she hated that she could feel it like an electric shock, sizzling through her. Just like in the dressing room, panic and reaction warred inside of her, and it took all she had to tamp it all back down.
“My game.” His gaze burned into her. Merciless and hot. “My rules.”
And she’d agreed, hadn’t she? No one had made her do this. No one had forced her into any of it. She’d chosen to get in his car in Georgetown. She’d walked into his hotel suite all on her own. She’d agreed to this plan, she’d signed her name.
She just didn’t understand why a single touch from him and she lit up inside, melting and clenching, as if he’d done much more than caress her so lightly in that dressing room. As if she’d wanted him to.
As if she was the kind of woman who wanted.
“Do you want the relationship we agreed upon?” she asked in a pointed undertone, pulling her arm out of his grip, entirely too aware that he lazily permitted it. “Or do you simply want to see me surrender to you in every possible way?”
His mouth curved, hard and fierce, searing into her, connecting hard to her core. Her belly. The swell of her breasts. Then deepened, as if he could see all the ways she wanted him despite herself, as if he knew exactly what she’d felt, what she still felt. What she so desperately did not want to feel at all.
But the fear of what she wanted, the fear of what she felt, the fear that these were all baby steps toward losing control and the horror she knew followed that kind of folly—that was hers. Yet somehow it made the fire inside of her burn all the brighter, as if to taunt her. She blamed him for that, too.
“Ah, Professor.” It was the closest to laughter she’d ever seen him come, and something about it terrified her, as if that was a cliff she didn’t dare fall over. As if that really would be the end of her, once and for all. “You say that as if I must choose.”
CHAPTER FIVE
THE team of stylists presented his angry, posh professor to him with a flourish when his plane landed in Nice an hour or so later.
Ivan swept a critical gaze over her as they brought her out to him on the sun-drenched tarmac, expecting the jolt of desire that seared through him at the sight of her, but surprised by its intensity all the same. It was getting worse, he thought grimly. He’d come far too close to losing it in that dressing room in Paris, and some part of him regretted that he hadn’t. It was the way she’d looked at him. It was the elegant scent of her, the heavy red flame of her hair. The impossible softness of her patrician skin. Her delicious little shivers—
It was madness. She was madness. He needed to stick to his plan. This was supposed to destroy her, not him.
They’d dressed her all in white, as he’d requested, the better to appear fresh and lovely next to all of his brute strength that she’d spent so much time criticizing these past years. Soft white trousers clung to her long legs, then flared gently over skyscraper wedged sandals and her brightly painted toes, which he found far more erotic than he should. They’d layered white and cream strappy tops, one over the next, to lick over her small, perfect breasts and flirt with her enticing hips. Her hair was the focal point, tumbling down in a dark enchantment of red, looking slightly tangled, as if someone—and how he wished it had been him—had been dragging his fingers through it while engaged in far earthier pursuits.
“Do I pass inspection?” Miranda asked in that tone of voice that he was developing a small obsession with. It was her snooty, ivory-tower attempt at being polite. Or doing her best to pretend she was being polite, more likely—to act the appropriate part. Her hands were on her hips, the way he’d like his to be. Not that he was at all sure he would stop the next time he got his hands on that lithe, lean body.
A dangerous game, indeed.
He wanted her in ways that worried him. And after that scene in Paris, he couldn’t help but think that seducing her might come at a cost he wasn’t prepared to pay.
But that wasn’t anything new.
He didn’t answer her, knowing full well it would infuriate her, and seeing from the flash of temper in her dark jade gaze that it did. He took the oversized sunglasses one of the stylists had handed him and slid them onto her face, covering up those mysterious eyes of hers, and indulging himself in the fleeting sensation of her skin against his fingers, the fine silk of her hair. Her hands slid from her hips, and her lips softened slightly, and he almost smiled then, because he knew exactly what burned in her then. He felt it, too.
“Come,” he said. He reached over and took her hand in his, amused at the way she flinched and then ruthlessly controlled it in almost the same instant.
He doubted she understood what a lifetime of martial arts did, the ways it forced a man to be aware of his environment. That he knew when she breathed, when she held a breath instead; when she tensed, when she softened. And more. He let their fingers tangle and slide, enjoying the hitch in her breath and the deliberate way she forced herself to curl her hand around his. As if she would much rather dig her nails into his skin until he bled.
He was not a good man, he thought then, biting back a laugh. It was just as well he’d never had any illusions on that score. He was enjoying her bad-tempered, ill-fitting cloak of feigned submission far too much.
He led her over to the sexy little convertible sports car that waited for them, and handed her into it before climbing into the driver’s seat. He signaled to Nikolai and the rest of his security detail, and then he put the car into gear and drove.
“We have to talk about what happened in Paris,” she said the moment they started to move. “There can be no shifting, or whatever game you were playing. We already discussed this. You signed the same document—”
“We are in the open air,” he interrupted her as if she was a fractious child. “Try to contain your need to lecture me until there are thick walls around us.”
She looked at him as if she’d like to club him over the head but lacked only the appropriate instrument, and it nearly made him laugh again.
“You don’t have to talk to me like I’m one of your employees,” she snapped when they slowed at an intersection.
“This is not how I talk to my employees,” he assured her, amused. “They know better than to talk back.”
When she opened her mouth to snap something else at him, he simply reached over and shut it with two fingers over her soft lips, testing himself. Torturing himself. Shifting, perhaps, whether she liked it or not. Whether he did.
“I can’t wait to hear your litany of complaints,” he said, his voice something too close to a growl. She jerked her head back, but he could still feel the press of her mouth against his flesh. The fire of it. The way his whole body hardened, ready for her, dooming them both. “But not right now. Perhaps you can sit back and take in the world-famous view. This is the Côte d’Azur and I am Ivan Korovin. Some people would sell their souls to be sitting where you are right now, and I wouldn’t have to ask them to be still and enjoy it.”
There was a searing sort of pause, and then she pulled a silk scarf from her bag. She tied it around her hair with quick, furious jerks of her delicate hands. She didn’t say another word, and she didn’t even have to look at him, this time, to convey her feelings. He had to bite back his smile. He should not find her very prickliness so delightful. It could only spell disaster for them both.
He guided the powerful little convertible along the Promenade des Anglais, the gorgeous stretch of road that separated the city of Nice from the Baie des Anges and the Mediterranean Sea beyond. He soaked in the views of the French hills in the soft light that made Provence so justly beloved the world over, the sparkling sea, and the intriguing woman beside him whose current deafening silence was only a reprieve—having more to do with the noise of the open air around them as he drove, he imagined, than any particular attempt to do as he’d asked.
It was just as well he was about to give her something to really be angry about, he thought with a certain fatalism as he guided them through the charming seaside village of Villefranche-sur-Mer and then swung out onto the small, decadently exclusive Cap Ferrat peninsula. The narrow lanes were deliberately overgrown, richly forested in lush green vines, sweeping gardens and a canopy of ancient trees. Red-roofed villas peeked out from behind private walls while the stunning views stretched in all directions—the craggy French coastline and the endless cobalt waters of the Mediterranean always just around this curve, through those trees.
Down at the tip of the peninsula, Ivan pulled into the graceful drive that led to the impressive and world-renowned Grand Hôtel du Cap Ferrat. The hotel, now deemed a palace and more than worthy of the term, was an elegant, all-white affair, trumpeting its eminence by commanding one of the finest seaside spots in the south of France.
His professor was so busy gazing up at the soaring, whitewashed beauty of the magnificent hotel before them that she failed to notice the small pack of reporters who waited near the entrance until it was too late. He knew the moment she did as she stiffened in the seat beside him.
“What are they doing here?” she asked as she pulled the scarf from her head and let that exquisite hair of hers fall free.
“I called them.”
There was a small, shocked pause.
“Why would you do something like that?” She sounded genuinely baffled instead of angry. That would come, Ivan thought. It was inevitable. “This isn’t one of the events that we agreed on.”
He reached over and rested his hand high on her thigh, a casual possession, the way he would have if he really had been sleeping with this woman. He enjoyed the way her whole body jolted at the sudden contact. He enjoyed the way his did, too. She sucked in her breath with a sharp hiss.
“Smile,” Ivan ordered her quietly as he slowed the car to a crawl. “Let me do the talking. All you need to remember is that ours is a passionate affair.” He threw her a swift glance. “You want me so badly it overcame every last one of your well-documented, widely televised objections. You can hardly bear it if I am not touching you. That’s the story they’re here to see.”
He couldn’t see her eyes behind the dark glasses she wore, but he saw that fascinating color rise to stain her cheeks and the way she pulled her lower lip between her teeth. He could tell she was holding her breath and he could feel her leg quiver, ever so slightly, more a thrill than a shiver, beneath his hand. He’d already told her what those signs meant.
He’d like to tell her what he thought about how incredibly responsive she was to him, to his slightest touch or glance, and how that would work between them in the bed he had every intention of having her in, sooner rather than later. Not that he required a bed. A wall would do. A floor. This car, had they been somewhere less public. But this, sadly, was not the time.
This was work. This was his revenge. This was precisely how he could exact payment for the years of personal slights and lost opportunities. And worse, the things she made him wonder in the dark. What did it say about him that he could ignore the end and concentrate on the means? That he was enjoying it?
But then, he knew the answer to that, too.
She blew out a shaky sort of breath, as if trying to calm herself, and then she turned toward him and showed him her teeth.