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He didn’t mistake it for a smile.
“I dislike you,” she said softly. So very softly that it would have sounded like sweet, whispered love words to anyone standing nearby. She deepened that curve of her mouth. “Intensely.”
“Good,” he said in the same tone as he threw the car into Park, putting his mouth near her ear and drinking in another one of her delicate near-shivers. He could start to crave them, he thought then, and he knew exactly how dangerous that was. “That always looks better on film.”
And then they were surrounded.
Questions flew through the quiet air. Ribald commentary in several languages that Ivan chose to ignore for the sake of everyone’s health, to the tune of all of those cameras flashing and filming, capturing every moment, every touch, every breath. He helped Miranda from her side of the car like the gentleman he wasn’t and kept her close, throwing his arm over her shoulders with casual ease. He felt her tense, but she smiled as he’d commanded and nestled against his side, and for the briefest moment the press of her body against his made him almost forget himself again—made him almost forget that he was acting and she was the kind of woman who had looked down her nose at him from the start. That this was another job, a carefully calculated performance. Nothing more.
Idiot. The derisive voice in his head sounded suspiciously like his brother’s.
Ivan ignored it. He fielded the questions, one after the next, with the ease of all these years he’d spent handling press junkets and intrusive paparazzi. How long had this affair been going on? Who had made the first move? What had made them act out their forbidden love in such a dramatic display in Georgetown? Was this a publicity stunt? Could they look this way, please? Smile? Kiss again?
“Surely the entire world has seen quite enough of us kissing,” Miranda said, defying his order to keep quiet, but with a dry humor that Ivan knew would come across as delightfully self-deprecating. He pulled her closer, then gazed down at her as if he was filled with affection. And loved the tremor he felt snake through her, that immediate, helpless response of hers he was rapidly finding addictive. He wasn’t even sure she knew what signals she was sending him, which made it that much better. Seducing her would be easier than he’d anticipated.
He told himself what snaked through him then was as simple as anticipation.
“That’s it,” he said when he saw Nikolai appear in the entrance to the hotel behind the pack of reporters and nod curtly, indicating the agreed-upon five minutes were up. “We’ll see you all at the movies later this week.”
“What about all the nasty things she’s said about you over the years, Ivan?” one of the more dogged reporters asked, pitching her voice above the rest. “Have you hashed all of that out behind closed doors?”
It was an American reporter, and Ivan recognized her. Give this woman the right sound bite, he knew, and it would dominate the entertainment news. He slid his sunglasses from his face. He looked at Miranda for a long moment, until she flushed again—unaware, he was sure, that it looked as if what had passed between them in that glance was purely sexual. Carnal and burning hot. Then he looked back at the camera.
He knew exactly what he was doing. He did it all the time. It was Jonas Dark at his finest. Enigmatic. Dangerous. And impossibly, explosively sexy.
Ivan smiled. Slowly and knowingly. He dragged it out, knowing his famous smile was the most lethal weapon in this particular arsenal.
“That was just foreplay,” he said.
Miranda hardly saw the cool, achingly lovely lobby of the Grand Hotel, all in elegant whites and frothy creams, with only the faintest hints of blue to beckon in the sea beyond. All she saw was that powerhouse smile of Ivan’s, that he’d turned on so easily for the cameras, so sexy and treacherous. She barely registered the beautifully maintained grounds soaking in the abundant sunshine or the water arrayed before them as if the whole of the glorious Mediterranean Sea had been placed there for the pleasure of the hotel’s guests alone.
She only heard him say that terrible word, over and over again. Foreplay. She managed, somehow, to remain silent and smiling as staff and security buzzed around them, ushering them into the sumptuous private villa set apart from the rest that she assumed only a star of Ivan’s magnitude could command.
She had to bite her tongue to stay quiet. More than once.
And then, finally, they were alone in one of the private villa’s luxuriously appointed rooms, filled with light and graceful arrangements of flowers. The room was done in fine yellows and clear blues, sophisticated creams and the barest hint of lavender, the fresh, crisp, timeless elegance of Provence in every detail.
And more importantly, there were no cameras. No eyes, no reporters, no snide questions polluting the air. No people nearby to hear a single word. At last.
Ivan moved to close the door behind the last of the hotel staff, who had all but performed grand jetés in their rush to serve his every need, and Miranda kept her word and waited until it was shut tight. Until they were finally, finally locked away in private.
“Foreplay?” Her throat felt clogged. Rough and cracked. As if she’d already screamed at him the way she wanted to do, over and over again. She stood in the middle of the room, her hands in fists at her sides, and wondered that she wasn’t screaming now. He turned back to face her, lounging back against the door with his powerful arms crossed, his hard face impassive. “Foreplay?”
“Are you unfamiliar with the term, Dr. Sweet?” His voice was like silk, curling around her, sensual and beguiling, and she hated that, too. His dark eyes mocked her, as ever. “Do you require a demonstration?”
“I would sooner—”
“Careful,” he warned her. Was that amusement she saw move across his fierce face then? Did he find this funny? But, of course, that was why she was so furious. She knew perfectly well that he did. “It is easy to make rash, sweeping statements in emotional moments, only to regret them later. When you are inevitably proved a liar.”
Miranda was shaking again, but this time, she wasn’t afraid of falling apart. This time she was far more worried that she might pick something up and throw it at his head, an urge she understood was deeply, deeply foolish. And counterproductive. But there it was, growing stronger by the second. She clenched her hands even tighter—and did not let herself reach for the nearest assortment of fat, lushly perfumed orchids in their heavy glass vase.
“Is that what this is about?” she asked, fighting to keep her voice even, though there was no pretending she was anything like calm or cool any longer. “Sex? Am I some trophy to you?”
“That would require that being with you is some kind of reward,” he returned, all silken mockery and that razor’s edge beneath.
There was no reason at all for that to sting. Miranda told herself it didn’t—it was just this long, strange day and not nearly enough sleep. Everything stung, there had been far too much touching, and she still hadn’t forgiven herself for the things she’d let him do in that dressing room in Paris. The things she’d felt. And wanted. All of which had been bad enough before he’d called her entire hard-won career foreplay.
“I deserve an award myself,” she told him, battling to keep from raising her voice—sure that he would take too much pleasure in it if she did, as if it was evidence against her. “I’m no actor, and yet I’m parading around in clothes that aren’t mine, with pounds of makeup on my face, pretending to think it’s sexy and thrilling while you trash my entire career with one throwaway sentence—”
“Did that bother you, Professor?” he asked, his gaze suddenly harsh and intense. He pushed away from the door and moved toward her, rangy and muscled, smooth and liquid. He was mesmerizing. And a very clear threat. She knew that, she felt it in every cell, in the wild heat that enveloped her and set her heart to its panicked beating once again—but she didn’t move. “Did you find it upsetting to have your life’s work dismissed so easily? Made into a vicious little punch line for the masses to devour?”
She didn’t like the shimmering ribbon of shame that unspooled inside of her then, making her feel too hot with it. Too low. She couldn’t handle how close he was now, but she refused to let herself back away, despite every shrieking alarm inside of her that urged her to fling herself in the opposite direction. To run, screaming, while she still could. He still wore that shirt that showed far too much of his skin, that swirling hint of the tattoo on his chest, and he didn’t stop moving until he was so close she had to tilt her head back slightly to meet his intent black gaze, despite the high sandals she wore.
“So this really is about revenge for you,” she said, pretending he wasn’t looming over her, pretending even more that her heart wasn’t drumming frantically against the walls of her chest—pretending it was as simple as fear, as intimidation, when she knew very well it was a complicated mess of both. And more.
“Call it whatever you like,” he said in that intense, demanding way. “Was it revenge the first time you called me all of those names in that book of yours? Caveman Number One? The Nouveau Neanderthal? When you took it upon yourself to imagine—on camera—the most insulting reasons possible for any woman I might have dated to leave me?”
“You admit it, then.” Miranda pretended she didn’t feel the slap of his words, the unfortunate truth of them. She remembered that sense she’d gotten in Georgetown, that he’d planned all of this, that he’d known she would walk right into his trap. And she had. “This is nothing more than an elaborate exercise in petty, adolescent revenge.”
Why had she picked him all those years ago when she was working on her dissertation? There had been no shortage of widely adored, badly behaved sports heroes cluttering up the cultural consciousness, any one of whom could have made her point. Why had she zeroed in on this one?
But she knew why. She had turned a page in a magazine one afternoon and there he was, gleaming and intimidating and nearly naked, all of those muscles rippling and overwhelming, and she’d felt the punch of it. Of him. All of that rampant maleness, none of it in the least bit controlled … And she’d hated him for that feeling, for the things she felt curling inside of her, hot and wild and messy. Maybe she still did.
She sniffed now, shoving that sense of shame aside, her second thoughts so long after the fact, the probability that this was a trap she’d agreed to let him close on her. “And all because your feelings are hurt that I suggested one of your starlet girlfriends left you because you suffered from testosterone poisoning?”
“What’s a little foreplay next to that?” he asked silkily, though there was a flash in those dark eyes that made her think he was choosing his words far more carefully than it seemed. “You should try it.”
She rolled her eyes at him as if he didn’t get to her at all. As if she was as unimpressed with and unmoved by him as she wished she was.
“How depressingly predictable,” she said, temper in her voice, though she wasn’t sure if she was angry at herself or at him. Or both of them. “Is there a man alive who doesn’t think his magical penis can somehow cure a woman’s dislike of him? It would be funny if it wasn’t so sad.”
“Enough of your wild generalizations and crackpot theories, Professor,” he said, not in the least cowed or shamed by her words. If anything, his black gaze seemed hotter, and he was closer to a smile than she’d ever seen him get. In private, anyway, and she was annoyed that she even noticed the distinction. “Let’s talk about you. And how obsessed you’ve been with me for all these years.” He opened his arms wide, the kind of arrogant display only an excessively confident man could manage with such decidedly masculine grace, and it should have been ridiculous. “With this.”
It should have been ridiculous. But instead, Miranda’s head seemed to go entirely blank. His chest was hard and chiseled and acres wide. This close to him, she could sense that roaring heat and power that was so uniquely his and worse, that terrifying, betraying lassitude inside of her in response that threatened to make her simply sag against him. Simply … lie down on the vast bed she’d somehow failed to notice she was standing beside and pray he came with her. On top of her. Into her.
What is the matter with you? She didn’t know how to want these things. She never had before. It was as if he’d cast some spell on her that made her someone else entirely.
“I don’t want you,” she bit out, desperation making her voice harsh. “Any of you.”
She blinked at him, the great expanse of him. All of those smooth, hard muscles, all of which, she was far too aware, he knew exactly how to use. She’d seen his fights on television. She’d seen his movies. She wished she didn’t notice that he smelled fresh and clean, of soap and warm male.
She wished she was as unmoved as she should have been.
“I want what we agreed to, and nothing more.” She nodded at his chest. “Certainly not any of that.”
It shouldn’t have been so hard to say, and he laughed then, dropping his arms but not backing up an inch.
“Keep telling yourself that.”
“You unbelievably arrogant—” she began, furiously.
“Did I ever pretend to be anything else?” he asked, his head tilting slightly to one side, cutting her off ruthlessly. His voice was calm, dark. Well nigh imperial, which was precisely how he looked as he gazed down at her. “You claimed you studied me. That you knew me. How did you think this was going to go?”
“I thought you were serious about this,” she accused, suspecting that the person she was truly furious with was herself. “Instead it’s been nothing but games and absurd demands, your hands on me and your constant attempts to—”
She cut herself off, but it was too late. His dark eyes seemed to glow.
“To what?” She heard it all in his voice then. Sex. Fire. Need. It pulsed in her, too. “Why don’t you say it, Miranda? You might just get what you want.”
God, her name in that mouth. Had he said it before? In that way of his, rich and Russian and so seductive it hurt her not to reach out and touch him? It hurt, and she was getting tired of all the ways she hated herself today, all the ways she continued to betray herself, all the ways this man was turning her into someone she couldn’t recognize or understand.
“Oh, good,” she said, proud of the way she sounded then, so close to her usual cool, almost as if she wasn’t losing herself here. “Another attempt to intimidate me.”
The corner of his wicked mouth simply kicked up into that mocking, compelling curve, and her mouth went dry.
“I don’t have to attempt anything,” he pointed out with a quiet certainty that pounded in her like a drumbeat. “I only have to enter a room and you begin to tremble. I only have to put my hands on you to feel you come apart.”
“That’s called disgust.”
“You and I both know what it’s called,” he contradicted her with all of that easy arrogance. He was so sure. She told herself it appalled her. It did. “But you can deny it to yourself if you must. It makes no difference to me. Or to reality.”
Miranda was shaking again, and furious with herself, knowing that he could see it—and what he’d think it meant. What it does mean, a part of her she refused to acknowledge whispered.
“We had a very specific deal,” she said, trying to find her footing again. She felt like such a fool. Had he tricked her or had she been so blinded by her greed to finally get the tools to expose him that she’d talked herself into this? And now the damage was done, and she could either disappear in shame or try, somehow, to make this worldwide humiliation work for her. Somehow. “Red carpets, public places. There was never any talk of calling up reporters so you could make nasty insinuations and have me stand there and just … take it.”
He smiled then, but it was a different kind of smile, and Miranda told herself it didn’t matter that there were shadows in his eyes then, that hint of darkness that she’d seen before and didn’t want to explore any further. His hand moved as if he might touch her face, but he dropped it back to his side, and she told herself she didn’t feel that as a loss. She didn’t. He was simply acting. Playing his role. Her own hand rose to her neck, as if taking the place of his, and some small light flared in his eyes then, as if he recognized what she’d done.
“Did you think I would make this easy for you?” he asked then, rough and soft all at once, that darkness still heavy in his gaze. “If you want that book, Miranda, you’ll have to work for it. And I can tell you right now, you probably won’t like it.”
“I already don’t like it,” she said, but it came out a whisper, and was much too dark. As if he was getting under her skin from the inside out.
“Then you’d better prepare yourself.” He was even closer suddenly, so close it felt as if he was touching her, or was it that she wanted that? With parts of herself she wasn’t sure she recognized? In ways she hadn’t known she could want anything? “Tomorrow we go into Cannes.”
His head tilted to that dangerous angle, as if he was kissing her again. His mouth was right there, wicked and delicious, and she couldn’t seem to think of a reason why she shouldn’t reach across the space between them and taste it.
But that way lay madness, and she knew what came after. Why couldn’t she remember that? Why was she torturing herself?
“My hands are going to be all over you,” he promised, his voice dropping low, from silk to something like velvet, rough and lush all at once. “And yours will be all over me. I’m going to feed you from my fingers and you’ll lick them clean. And when we get back here, in private, you can tell me all about the ways you hated it and how much you dislike me, but we’ll both know the truth, won’t we?”
His hand came up again, and she thought he might push her hair back from her face or touch her cheek, but he paused. Everything went wildly electric—white and searing. It was too hot between them, blinding and impossible, and she knew that if she breathed too hard, it would all be over. He would touch her and she would explode and she had no idea what might happen after that.
Or, worse—she did know. She knew exactly what would happen. And she didn’t have any idea how that could be true, or why what charged through her then was as much that age-old fear of hers as it was desire. For him. As if they were made up of the same thing.
Or why she had the strangest notion that he might be able to tell the difference.
“We’re not in public now,” she told him from some place inside of her she hadn’t known was there, her voice the faintest whisper of sound. “There are no cameras, no people. You can’t touch me.” She swallowed. “You agreed.”
“I know the rules.”
But he didn’t move.
One breath. Another. And Miranda knew they were poised on a razor’s edge, no matter what he said about rules, or what she’d said about shifting. Or what she told herself she wanted from this twisted little game.
What she did want. She did.
He dropped his hand and then he stepped back, as if it was harder than it should have been, and she told herself she was relieved.
“Some day, Miranda,” he said, that fire in his gaze, that dark promise in his voice, kicking up that exquisite shiver all along her body, “you will beg me to break those rules. You will beg me to make that shift.”
“I would rather die,” she vowed. Melodramatically, it was true.
He smiled then, and it connected hard with her belly, her sex. With that great riot he’d stirred up inside of her, that she didn’t have the slightest idea how to handle.
“I very, very rarely lose control of myself,” he said, another kind of promise, throwing kerosene on all of those fires again, making her think that soon there would be nothing left of her to burn. “It is one of the reasons I am who I am. Can you say the same?”
And that was the scariest part of all of this, Miranda thought, staring back at him in all of that breathless tension, her body yearning for him in ways that boded only ill.
Until today—until him—she’d thought she could. She’d prided herself on it.
CHAPTER SIX
THE next morning, Ivan ran. Hard.
Nikolai kept pace with him through all five grueling miles, and was breathing only slightly more heavily than Ivan was when they came to a stop below the Grand Hotel, near one of the rocky beaches that sloped down into the gleaming sea. It was the sort of place he’d dreamed about when he was a boy and should have been appreciating now that it was commonplace for him, and yet all Ivan could think about was one snooty woman whose carefully orchestrated downfall should have been child’s play for him. He needed only to touch her, take her. He knew it. And he’d had the perfect opportunity to push that particular envelope yesterday—yet hadn’t.
He had no explanation for that. But it had kept him up half the night.
Ivan didn’t speak as they walked back through the hotel’s extensive grounds toward the villa. Beside him, Nikolai’s silence was as eloquently disapproving as ever, for all it was ferociously cold and ruthlessly contained. Ivan almost missed the half-mad, hair-trigger creature his brother had been before Ivan had abandoned him to go off and fight the whole world.
But that Nikolai was long gone, lost to his own darkness for years now, and Ivan, too, was the civilized, Americanized version of his old self. Stripped down from his fighting weight, the better to grace Hollywood screens. Expected to be urbane and amusing as well as brutal. Fluent in the language, in the tabloids, in his own contributions to the culture. But he was still the same Ivan he’d always been, underneath. Some part of him never let go of the fact he was nothing more than the son of a factory worker, no more or less than that.
He wasn’t sure he recognized the man who looked at him from Nikolai’s arctic-blue eyes any longer. He’d pulled his brother out of Russia eventually, as he’d promised when they were boys. He’d taken him from their uncle when he’d been able to do it. But first he’d had to leave him. And they were both still paying for that.
“Is this your version of handling this situation?” Nikolai asked in a low voice, breaking the heavy silence between them. His gaze flicked over Ivan’s expression, which was when Ivan realized he was scowling.
“It is under control.”
Nikolai’s frigid eyes met Ivan’s. Held.
“I can see how under control you are, of course,” he said, not even attempting to hide the sardonic lash in his voice. “As you run across Cap Ferrat as if pursued by the devil himself. Don’t trust your brother, trust your own bad eye, is that it?”
“If you are neither my brother nor the president of our foundation while we are here,” Ivan growled at him, “because you insist upon acting as the bodyguard I don’t need, then I beg of you, Nikolai, play your part. And spare me the Russian proverbs.”
“As you wish, boss,” Nikolai replied coolly. Not at all subserviently.
Ivan dismissed him, breaking into a light jog for the rest of the way back to the villa. He knew why Nikolai was here—why he’d taken on the role of bodyguard the night that kiss had gone viral, when he’d been supposed to highlight his role as president of the Korovin Foundation in the run-up to the benefit gala in Los Angeles in June. His little brother was worried about him. As if he couldn’t properly seduce and then discard one irritating woman—who wanted him, no matter what lies she might tell to the contrary.
He ran faster. He wanted to think about other things. He wanted to shower and change, and then he wanted to take his fake girlfriend out to experience a perfect, romantic, entirely feigned day in the glare of the French sunshine and as many cameras as possible.