by Lynne Graham
‘I swear I could devour you,’ Nikolai swore against her swollen mouth.
He gazed down as her dreamy green eyes darkened to emerald, her bronze hair fanning round her head in a halo of vibrant colour. Cyrus had hurt and frightened her yet she still wanted Nikolai. It was a strangely humbling acknowledgement because he knew it meant that she trusted him. And yet he knew that he wasn’t worthy of her trust because he hadn’t told her what he had done. He crushed that train of thought to attend to the fact that she was still wearing far too many clothes.
Ella watched Nikolai yank off her jeans from the ankles and colour ran up over her chest as her serviceable black knickers were revealed. Nikolai tossed the jeans down and peeled her top off over her head, tumbling tresses falling back on her white shoulders above sweet little breasts cradled in lace cups. He could see her uncertainty, the nervous tension building as if she had no idea that his hands were shaking and that he was burning up for her, no idea at all that she was a rare and perfect beauty. He couldn’t take his eyes from her as he unclipped the bra and lifted his hands to explore the delicate little mounds he had bared.
‘Gorgeous...’ he said gruffly, the word torn from him because she looked as though one wrong word from him would send her into flight.
‘Seriously?’ she pressed, face hot with a heady combination of surprise, embarrassment and doubt.
‘Serious as a heart attack.’ A long tanned finger stroked a dainty swell crowned by a straining pink nipple and he bent his head to capture it with his mouth. ‘I like your breasts. I could even go as far as saying that I love your breasts,’ he framed, his warm breath fanning her skin as he blew on a straining pink bud.
‘But there’s nothing much there,’ she mumbled almost argumentatively because she had always felt that her lack of endowment in the bosom department was her biggest physical flaw. She was tiny and she was skinny and she didn’t have the curves so many men were said to prefer.
‘More than enough to satisfy me,’ Nikolai growled, long fingers curving to a ripe little mound, gently stroking the responsive flesh, smiling as her back arched, driving her breast into his palm. ‘You’re delicious.’
Some of her tension ebbed. He wanted her, she reminded herself with growing assurance, and being wanted like that, complimented like that, suddenly seemed like the most wonderful thing in the world. He was accepting her, flaws and all, and in the same way she would accept him, she promised herself. She wasn’t going in expecting perfection and eternal love.
The brush of his fingers against a prominent nipple made her hiss and her hips performed a little shimmy all on their own. Her body was warming up at its own pace, warmth gathering in her pelvis, tingles of reaction ensuring that she was fiercely aware of that part of her. He yanked off her knickers with scant ceremony, taking her by surprise. Her eyes flew wide, startled, apprehensive.
Nikolai smiled down at her. ‘It’s all right. We won’t do anything you don’t want to do...’
‘I want to do everything,’ she admitted shakily as he freed her from his weight and slid off the bed. ‘Where are you going?’
‘Condoms,’ he explained, striding into the bathroom. ‘There may not be any because I’ve never used the house...no, there’s nothing here.’
‘You don’t need to,’ Ella muttered, shaking her head. ‘I have a contraceptive implant in my arm.’
He frowned. ‘But why do you have that?’
‘When Paul and I were together, I thought...well, that I’d need contraception.’ Ella struggled to think back to that period when everything had been shiny and new and untested between her and Paul. As far as she recalled the implant would keep her safe from pregnancy for four years, but try as she did she could not remember exactly when she had had the implant put in.
‘I’ve never had sex without a condom and I’ve been tested... I’m clean,’ Nikolai assured her.
Ella was already thinking about something else. ‘A moment ago you said you’d never used this house. Never?’
‘Never,’ he repeated. ‘It didn’t feel like mine. The day I got the keys I walked over every inch of it and thought what a waste it was that I was never allowed to meet the old guy. There are all these ancient photos of people and I don’t know who they are and I never will know now because there’s nobody left to identify them. Yet some of them must be relatives.’
‘That’s sad,’ she agreed.
He didn’t know why he was talking to her like that because he had been on his own a long time and he liked it that way...didn’t he? Once his sister was gone, he had not had a single living relative that he knew of. Of course, he hadn’t looked, he acknowledged for the first time, and he was well aware that his grandfather had had sisters because they had contacted him. He had simply decided that it would be pointless at this stage in his life to take the connection any further. And why the hell was he even thinking about such a thing? What did Ella do to his wits? Why was he confiding in her when she lay naked and beautiful on a bed in front of him? What kind of black magic was that? He was talking about private things that he never ever shared. Thee mou, it had to be those soft, sympathetic eyes of hers working a dangerous spell.
‘I’ve never needed family,’ he told her flatly.
Ella was wondering if it would be pathetic to slide below the duvet to hide her naked body and she was stiff as a post while she lay there wondering, colour creeping up across her nudity in a mottled flush of awful self-consciousness. It was daylight and the drapes weren’t fully closed and everything was on display and she felt incredibly uncomfortable.
‘Family’s everything to me,’ Ella admitted, finally giving up the fight and diving below the duvet with apology. ‘I can’t imagine life without them.’
‘The duvet won’t hide you from me for long,’ Nikolai warned, the command gilt-edged with the desire clearly burning in his eyes.
He unzipped and dropped his jeans and her eyes rounded at the sight of him because in his haste to check on her earlier he had forgone underwear below the denim. With a sudden laugh, Nikolai pounced and flipped the duvet back off her. ‘Was that look one of awe or horror?’ he demanded.
Ella’s faced burned red. ‘No comment...’
Nikolai kissed her breathless and then nipped a line down the slope of her neck that seemed to hit every pulse point she possessed. She gasped beneath his mouth, gasped again when his wickedly clever fingers found her clitoris and lingered with devastating intent. Startled, she jerked, she moaned, lashes fluttering in dazed dismay as he slid down the bed to part her thighs and pay attention to a part of her she much preferred to ignore.
‘No, Nik—’
‘Is that an embarrassed no? Or an absolutely not?’ Nikolai prompted.
Forbearance became the better part of valour and she closed her eyes, trying not to think about what he was planning to do but reluctant to prevent him when her only excuse was shyness. She wasn’t that shy, was she? And then he did something that sent a current of red-hot tingles racing through her entire body and her hips executed a sensual shimmy and her lips parted on a long, low whimper and whether she was shy or not got lost in the process. The prickling awareness in her pelvis coalesced into a heavy throb at the heart of her that made her all hot and needy. Suddenly she couldn’t worry any more about how she looked or what came next, suddenly she was just in the moment and the moment was so wildly, insanely exciting and primal that she was lost in it. The pulsing heat expanded, sucking in more and more of her and then rising until she couldn’t hold it in any more. She gave a helpless cry, her spine arched and her body flailed as an explosive climax gripped her.
‘You see, the absolutely not would have been a mistake, glikia mou,’ Nikolai pointed out as he drew level with her again, eyes like dark melting chocolate caressing her flushed face.
Dumbly she nodded, heart leaping as he claimed her mouth and his
tongue tangled with hers in a frank expression of all-male hunger that made her blood thunder through her veins. He was rearranging her limbs, tipping her back into a new position and, before she could even gather all her nerves again, he was there at her entrance and pushing in. At first it felt so strange to her, his body joining with hers, and the sensation of pressure, of stretching, was surprisingly pleasurable, as if her body had been lying in wait for years to experience that exact sensation and was now pouncing on it with joyful acceptance.
And then Ella jerked as a stinging burn marked his invasion. It didn’t kill the pleasure but it did make her tense and draw in her breath in dismay.
‘Want me to stop?’ Nikolai husked, eyes pure, gleaming caramel seduction.
‘No...don’t you dare!’ Ella warned, impatient on the brink of what she had waited so long to experience.
He eased out of her and drove in again and the burn intensified and then vanished. She blinked, expecting pain because she had always expected pain, but the pain didn’t arrive. ‘It’s OK now,’ she whispered in surprise.
‘It’s got to be better than OK for you the first time,’ Nikolai told her.
‘No expectations here,’ she told him bravely and wrapped her arms round him because she recognised his patience, his care and concern and knew it could have been a much less pleasurable experience with someone else.
Her body sang with his every movement, madly stimulated by excitement. Within the space of a minute and a half she travelled from the aftershocks of satiated pleasure to heart-stopping, racing excitement. She angled up to receive him, hips rocking, body thrumming joyfully to the age-old beat of passion. It was good, it was better than good, it was truly amazing to slot helplessly into that fierce hypnotic climb to pleasure again. A kind of frenzy gripped her muscles and she shook, feeling ecstasy within her grasp and snatching at it. And it ran over and through her, a rolling white-hot wave of convulsive delight and fulfilment that left her drained and limp.
Ella was convinced that she would never move again, and then Nikolai moved when she didn’t want him to and she rolled over and rested her head on his chest instead, her arm wrapping round his narrow waist.
He dropped a kiss on her damp brow. ‘Thank you,’ he rasped breathlessly. ‘That was amazing.’
She wanted to thank him but she was tongue-tied, everything she had thought she knew about herself, everything she had ever believed, thrown into turmoil. And, quite literally, she couldn’t think straight and he felt like the only stable being in an unstable world. A deep sense of peace washed over her in waves of emotional and physical exhaustion.
Nikolai lay still and ever so slightly stiff. Ella was snuggling up to him. He had never snuggled before, was usually straight into the shower, clothes back on, goodbyes said within minutes. Well, isn’t this a new experience to be savoured? a sardonic voice sniped inside his head. She deserves more, that same little voice added. What sort of more? Nikolai lay there until the even sound of her breathing let him know that she had fallen asleep. Only then did he gently and carefully slide out of the bed.
More as in flowers? He almost smacked his head against the shower wall in frustration. He had never done flowers before. But then he had never had sex with a virgin before. He had never coerced a woman into his bed either while pretending that he was giving her a choice. That final blunt acknowledgement sliced through him as painfully as a knife in the gut. Nausea rising, he got out of the shower and dressed. He would call by his apartment to change into a suit on his way to see Desmond’s family and the police. And then what?
Nikolai looked at Ella sleeping in the bed, bronze hair in a mad tangle, a narrow white shoulder and a loosely unfurled tiny hand lying on top of the bedding. She looked so small, so defenceless and he had taken advantage of her. His heart sank. And then what? The question tolled in his conscience like a giant bell and he felt sick again. He had to deal, had no choice really: he had gone too far to turn back.
He sent her a text to explain where he was, which was a serious break from his usual habits. Never apologise, never explain was his usual mantra with women. He sent flowers for the first time in his life. He was almost desperate enough to throw in a cuddly toy as well. By the time he had commiserated with the dead bar manager’s family and spent several hours in the police station telling them that, no, he had no idea why anyone would risk the life of so many people by setting his hotel on fire, he was shattered. Of course, he had had to pass on the names of anyone he might deem to have a grudge against him and he had had to mention Cyrus’s name in that context. He had been frank with the police, but he had also had to admit that he had not uncovered any actual physical evidence of Cyrus breaking the law and that arson didn’t quite run true to form for the man whose sole focus had always been innocent women.
Nikolai returned to his apartment. It was silent and he stood in the low-lit lounge and marvelled at the undeniable truth that in his desire for revenge he had veered badly off course and injured innocents. How had that happened? What had happened to his sense of right and wrong? When had his once pure motivation become twisted? He poured himself a whiskey and sat down in his shirtsleeves, struggling to work out how Ella could ever have struck him as a pawn and as mere collateral damage to be written off.
How could he ever have been that arrogant? That selfish? That wrong? And failed to recognise it? At some stage he had developed a dangerous form of tunnel vision and, seeing only Cyrus in his sights, he had taken aim and fired. Ella was the fallout and, even worse, he might as well have painted a target on her back because Cyrus’s violent rage at the town house had been deliberately provoked by Nikolai. He had set her up for that scene and she had been hurt and he was painfully aware that she could have been hurt a lot more.
But how much more would the whole ugly truth hurt Ella? Ella, who was soft enough to sacrifice everything for her family? Ella, who had been unjustly damaged by his pursuit of revenge? He couldn’t tell her the truth because that would humiliate and hurt her, inflicting more harm. Another glass of whiskey went down Nikolai’s throat as he ran uneasily through all the wounding, shocking blows that Ella had already suffered. The father who had had a stroke, the fiancé who had died, the veterinary career that had had to be put on ice. She had kept on picking herself up and bravely soldiering on and then Nikolai had come along and suddenly everything had taken a turn very much for the worse. He had taken her from her home and her family and her life and then he had taken her to bed. Wrong heaped on wrong heaped on wrong. He raked a trembling hand through his black hair.
How could he possibly tell her that he had set her up and used her as a weapon? What woman’s self-esteem could overcome a truth like that? Particularly one who had already had a fiancé who might or might not have had a gay affair?
He owed her.
Somehow, he had to make it up to her. He would give her what he should have given her from the start. Trust, support, stability, respect. Could he fake love? He knew she’d want it, he just didn’t know if he could deliver what he’d never felt. He could try though, couldn’t he? How hard could it be to say, ‘I love you’?
His mobile phone pinged and he looked in consternation at the text she had sent. A black brow slowly lifted in wonderment. She was asking if he was still at the police station and there was a nosy bunny rabbit emoji attached to it.
Thee mou, he was planning to marry a woman who used emoticons...
CHAPTER SEVEN
ELLA WAKENED WITH the sense that something was not quite right in her world. Her hand slid across the empty space beside her and she suppressed a groan because Nikolai had not returned as she had hoped.
One swallow did not a summer make, one of Gramma’s favourite sayings. She was not in a relationship with rules where she could develop expectations and act accordingly. No, there were no rules and she felt frighteningly lost without them.
Y
et Nikolai had been so different with her the day before. Shorn of his icy, controlled detachment he was a different man. Yesterday he had simmered with passion and emotion. She loved that he had that depth, that capacity for feeling, even though he assiduously hid it from the world. He had been protective, tender and a wonderful lover. In every respect he had been everything she could have wanted, so why was she fretting?
Nobody got to know what tomorrow would bring. She wasn’t alone in that situation. Possibly it was Cyrus’s revelations about Paul that had left her feeling so unsure of everything. She needed to put what Cyrus had told her away and tuck it back in the past where it belonged. She had genuinely loved and grieved for Paul and nothing could change that. Deep ties of friendship and caring had bound them. And that was the best way to remember him and what they had shared. How he lived before they met was irrelevant and it would be foolish to doubt her own judgment over past events.
As a knock sounded on the door she pushed herself up against the pillows, smiling when Max came in with the dogs trailing in his wake. ‘I’ve set your breakfast out on the deck. It’s through the conservatory on the other side of the corridor,’ he told her, vanishing into the annexe off the bathroom and emerging with a flowing aqua dressing gown almost too fancy for the description and a pair of slippers.
‘Those aren’t mine,’ she said blankly.
‘The closets on the left-hand side in the annexe are packed with your new clothes,’ Max explained, snipping off the labels still attached to the garment and settling it down at the foot of the bed for her use.