by Dani Collins
“Don’t be sweet to me right now, Mikolas. I’ll fall apart.”
“You prefer the goon from the lobby?” he growled, making a semihysterical laugh bubble up.
“You’re not a goon,” she protested, but obeyed the hard arms that closed around her and cuddled into him, numb fingers stealing under the edge of his jacket to warm against his steady heartbeat.
He ran soothing hands over her and let out a breath, tension easing from both of them in small increments.
She was still feeling shaky when they reached the Makricosta Olympus.
“I hate these things,” he muttered as he escorted her to the brightly decorated ballroom. “We should have stayed in.”
Too late to leave. People were noting their entrance.
“Do you mind if I...?” she asked as she spotted the ladies’ room off to the right. She could only imagine how she looked.
A muscle pulsed in his jaw, like he didn’t want her out of his sight, but after one dismayed heartbeat he said, “I’ll be at the bar.”
Reeling under an onslaught of gratitude and confusion and yearning, she hurried to the powder room and moved directly to the mirror to check her makeup. She felt like a disaster, but had only a couple of smudges to dab away.
“Synchórisi,” the woman next to her said, gaze down as she fiddled with the straps on her shimmery black dress. Releasing a distinctly British curse she said, “My Greek is nonexistent. Is there any chance you speak English?”
Viveka straightened from the mirror, taking a breath to gather her composure. “I do.”
“Oh, you’re upset.” The woman was a delicate blonde and her smile turned concerned. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have bothered you.”
“No, I’m fine,” she dismissed with a wobbly smile. The woman was doing her a favor, not letting her dwell on all the mixed emotions coursing through her. “Not the bad kind of crying.”
“Oh, did he do something nice?” she asked with a pleased grin. “Because husbands really ought to, now and again.”
“He’s not my husband, but...” Viveka thought of Mikolas saving her and thanking her for the wedding debacle. Her heart wobbled again and she had to swallow back a fresh rush of emotion. “He did.”
“Good. I’m Clair, by the way.” She offered her free hand to shake while her other hand stayed against her chest, the straps of her halter-style bodice dangling over her slender fingers.
“Viveka. Call me Vivi.” Eyeing the straps, she guessed, “Wardrobe malfunction?”
“The worst! Is there any chance you have a pin?”
“I don’t. Can you tie them?” She circled her finger in the air. “Turn around. Let’s see what happened to the catch.”
They quickly determined the catch was long gone and they were too short to tie.
“I bet a tiepin would hold it. Give me a minute. I’ll ask Mikolas for his,” Viveka offered.
“Good idea, but ask my husband,” Clair said. “Then I won’t have to worry about returning it.”
Viveka chuckled. “Let me guess. Your husband is the man in the suit?” She thumbed toward the ballroom filled with a hundred men wearing ties and jackets.
Clair grinned. “Mine’s easy to spot. He’s the one with a scar here.” She touched her cheek, drawing a vertical line. “Also, he’s holding my purse. I needed two hands to keep myself together long enough to get in here or I would have texted him to come help me.”
“Got it. I’ll be right back.”
* * *
Mikolas stood with the back of his hand pressed to a scotch on the rocks. So much for behaving mainstream and law-abiding, he thought dourly.
He was watching for Viveka, still worried about her. When she had apologized, he’d been floored, already kicking himself for bringing her downstairs at all. He could be at home making love to her, none of this having happened. Instead, he’d let her be terrorized.
There she was. He tried to catch her eye, but she scanned the room, then made for a small group in the far corner from the band.
Mikolas swore under his breath as she approached his target: Aleksy Dmitriev. The Russian magnate had logistics interests that crossed paths with his own from the Aegean through to the Black Sea. Dmitriev had never once returned Mikolas’s calls and it grated. He hated being the petitioner and resented the other man for relegating him to that role.
Mikolas knew why Dmitriev was avoiding him. He was scrupulous about his reputation. He wouldn’t risk sullying it by attaching himself to the Petrides name.
While Mikolas knew working with Dmitriev would be another seal of legitimacy for his own organization. That’s why he wanted to partner with him.
Dmitriev stared at Viveka like she was from Mars, then handed her his drink. He removed his tiepin, handed it to her, then took back his glass. When she asked him something else, he nodded at a window ledge where a pocketbook sat. Viveka scooped it up and headed back to the ladies’ room.
What the hell?
* * *
Viveka was thankful for the small drama that Clair had provided, but flashed right back to seesaw emotions when she returned to Mikolas’s side. He stood out without trying. He wore that look of disinterest that alpha wolves wore with their packs, confident in his superiority so with nothing to prove.
A handful of men in sharp suits had clustered around him. They all wore bored-looking women on their arms.
Mikolas interrupted the conversation when she arrived. He took her hand and made a point of introducing her.
She smiled, but the man who’d been speaking was quick to dismiss her and continue what he was saying. He struck her as the toady type who sucked up to powerful men in hopes of catching scraps. The way the women were held like dogs on a leash was very telling, too.
Viveka let her gaze stray to the other groups, seeing the dynamic was very different in Clair’s circle, where she was nodding at whoever was speaking, smiling and fully engaged in the conversation. Her husband was looking their way and she pressed a brief smile onto her mouth.
Nothing.
Mikolas had been right about invisible barriers.
“This must be your new bride if the merger has gone through,” one of the other men broke in to say, frowning with confusion as he jumped his gaze between her and Mikolas.
I have a name, Viveka wanted to remind the man, but apparently on this side of the room, she was a “this.”
“No,” Mikolas replied, offering no further explanation.
Viveka wanted to roll her eyes. It was basic playground etiquette to act friendly if you wanted to be included in the games. That was what he wanted, wasn’t it? Was this what he had meant when he had said it was her task to change how he was viewed?
“I stopped the wedding,” she blurted. “He was supposed to marry my sister, but...” She cleared her throat as she looked up at Mikolas, laughing inwardly at the ridiculous claim she was about to make. “I fell head over heels. You weren’t far behind me, were you?”
Mikolas wore much the same incredulous expression he had when he’d lifted her veil.
“Your sister can’t be happy about that,” one of the women said, perking up for the first time.
“She’s fine with it,” Viveka assured with a wave. “She’d be the first to say you should follow your heart, wouldn’t she?” she prodded Mikolas, highly entertained with her embellishment on the truth. Laugh with me, she entreated.
“Let’s dance.” His grip on her hand moved to her elbow and he turned her toward the floor. As he took her in his arms seconds later, he said, “I cannot believe you just said that.”
“Oh, come on. You said we should appear long-term. Now they think we’re in love and by the way, your friends are a pile of sexist jerks.”
“I don’t have friends,” he growled. “Those are peopl
e whose names I know.”
His touch on her seemed to crackle and spark, making her feel sensitized all over. At the same time, she thought she heard something in his tone that was a warning.
Dancing with him was easy. They moved really well together right out of the gate. She let herself become immersed in the moment, where the music transmitted through them, making them move in unison. He held her in his strong arms and the closeness was deliciously stimulating. Her heart fluttered and she feared she really would tumble into deep feelings for him.
“They should call it heels over head,” she said, trying to break the spell. “We’re head over heels right now. It means you’re upright.”
He halted their dance, started to say something, but off to her right, Clair said, “Vivi. Let me introduce you properly. My husband, Aleksy Dmitriev.”
* * *
Mikolas pulled himself back from a suffocating place where his emotions had knotted up. She’d been joking with all that talk of love, he knew she had, but even having a falsehood put out there to those vultures had made him uncomfortable.
He had been pleased to feel nothing for Trina. He would have introduced her as his wife and the presumption of affection might have been made, but it wouldn’t have been true. It certainly wouldn’t have been something that could be used to prey on his psyche, not deep down where his soul kept well out of the light.
Viveka was different. Her blasé claim of love between them was an overstatement and he ought to be able to dismiss it. But as much as he wanted to feel nothing toward her, he couldn’t. Everything he’d done since meeting her proved to himself that he felt something.
He tried to ignore how disarmed that made him feel, concentrating instead on finding himself face-to-face with the man who’d been evading him for two years.
Dmitriev looked seriously peeved, mouth flat and the scar on his face standing out white.
It’s the Viveka effect, Mikolas wanted to drawl.
Dmitriev nodded a stiff acknowledgment to Viveka’s warm smile.
“Did you think you were being robbed?” Viveka teased him.
“It crossed my mind.” Dmitriev lifted a cool gaze to Mikolas. When I realized she was with you, he seemed to say.
Mikolas kept a poker face as Viveka finished the introduction, but deep down he waved a flag of triumph over Dmitriev being forced to come to him.
It was only an introduction, he reminded himself. A hook. There was no reeling in this kind of fish without a fight.
“We have to get back to the children,” Clair was saying. “But I wanted to thank you again for your help.”
“My pleasure. I hope we’ll run into each other in future,” Viveka said. Mikolas had to give her credit. She was a natural at this role.
“Perhaps you can add us to your donor list,” Mikolas said. I do my homework, he told Dmitriev with a flick of his gaze. Clair ran a foundation that benefited orphanages across Europe. Mikolas had been waiting for the right opportunity to use this particular door. He had no scruples about walking through it as Viveka’s plus one.
“May I?” Clair brightened. “I would love that!”
Mikolas brought out one of his cards and a pen, scrawling Viveka’s details on the back, mentally noting he should have some cards of her own printed.
“I’d give you one of mine, but I’m out,” Clair said, showing hands that were empty of all but a diamond and platinum wedding band. “I’ve been talking up my fund-raising dinner in Paris all night—oh! Would you happen to be going there at the end of next month? I could put you on that list, too.”
“Please do. I’m sure we can make room,” Mikolas said smoothly. We, our, us. It was a foreign language to him, but surprisingly easy to pick up.
“I’m being shameless, aren’t I?” Clair said to her husband, dipping her chin while lifting eyes filled with playful culpability.
The granite in Dmitriev’s face eased to what might pass for affection, but he sounded sincere as he contradicted her. “You’re passionate. It’s one of your many appealing qualities. Don’t apologize for it.”
He produced one of his own cards and stole the pen Mikolas still held, wordlessly offering both to his wife.
I see what you’re doing, Dmitriev said with a level stare at Mikolas while Clair wrote. Dmitriev was of similar height and build to Mikolas. He was probably the only man in the room whom Mikolas would instinctively respect without testing the man first. He emanated the same air of self-governance that Mikolas enjoyed and had more than demonstrated he couldn’t be manipulated into doing anything he didn’t want to do.
He provoked all of Mikolas’s instincts to dominate, which made getting this man’s contact details that much more significant.
But even though he wasn’t happy to be giving up his direct number, it was clear by Dmitriev’s hard look that it was a choice he made consciously and deliberately—for his wife.
Mikolas might have lost a few notches of regard for the man if his hand hadn’t still been throbbing from connecting with Grigor’s jaw. Which he’d done for Viveka.
It was an uncomfortable moment of realizing it didn’t matter how insulated a man believed himself to be. A woman—one for whom he’d gone heels over head—could completely undermine him.
Which was why Mikolas firmed himself against letting Viveka become anything more than the sexual infatuation she was. The only reason he was bent out of shape was because they hadn’t had sex yet, he told himself. Once he’d had her, and anticipation was no longer clouding his brain, he’d be fine.
“That was what we came for,” he said, after the couple had departed. He indicated the card Viveka was about to drop into her pocketbook. “We can leave now, too.”
* * *
Mikolas made a face at the card the doorman handed him on their way in, explaining he was supposed to call the police in the morning to make a statement. They didn’t speak until they were in the penthouse.
“I’ve wanted Dmitriev’s private number for a while. You did well tonight,” he told her as he moved to pour two glasses at the bar.
“It didn’t feel like I did anything,” she murmured, quietly glowing under his praise. She yearned for approval more than most people did, having been treated as an annoyance for most of her early years.
“It’s easy for you. You don’t mind talking to people,” he remarked, setting aside the bottle and picking up the glasses to come across and offer hers. “Do you take yours with water?”
“I haven’t had ouzo in years,” she murmured, trying to hide her reaction to him by inhaling the licorice aroma off the alcohol. “I shouldn’t have had it when I did. I was far too young. Yiamas.”
Mikolas threw most of his back in one go, eyes never leaving hers.
“What, um...?” Oh, this man easily emptied her brain. “You, um, don’t like talking to people? You said you hated those sorts of parties.”
“I do,” he dismissed.
“Why?”
“Many reasons.” He shrugged, moving to set aside his glass. “My grandfather had a lot to hide when I first came to live with him. I was too young to be confident in my own opinions and didn’t trust anyone with details about myself. As an adult, I’m surrounded by people who are so superficial, crying about ridiculous little trials, I can’t summon any interest in whatever it is they’re saying.”
“Should I be complimented that you talk to me?” she teased.
“I keep trying not to.” Even that was delivered with self-deprecation tilting his mouth.
Her heart panged. She longed to know everything about him.
His gaze fixed on her collarbone. He reached out to take her hair back from her shoulder. “You’ve had one sparkle of glitter here all night,” he said, fingertip grazing the spot.
It was a tiny touch, an inconsequential rem
ark, but it devastated her. Her insides trembled and she went very still, her entire being focused on the way he ever so lightly tried to coax the fleck off her skin.
Behind him, the lamps cast amber reflections against the black windows. The pool glowed a ghostly blue on the deck beyond. It made radiance seem to emanate from him, but maybe that was her foolish, dampening eyes.
Painful yearning rose in her. It was familiar, yet held a searing twist. For a long time she had wanted a man in her life. She wanted a confidant, someone she could kiss and touch and sleep beside. She wanted intimacy, physical and emotional.
She had never expected this kind of corporeal desire. She hadn’t believed it existed, definitely hadn’t known it could overwhelm her like this.
How could she feel so attracted and needy toward a man who was so ambivalent toward her? It was excruciating.
But when he took her glass and set it aside, she didn’t resist. She kept holding his gaze as his hands came up to frame her face. And waited.
His gaze lowered to her lips.
They felt like they plumped with anticipation.
She looked at his mouth, not thinking about anything except how much she wanted his kiss. His lips were so beautifully shaped, full, but undeniably masculine. The tip of his tongue wet them, then he lowered his head, came closer.
The first brush of his damp lips against hers made her shudder in release of tension while tightening with anticipation. She gasped in surrender as his hands whispered down to warm her upper arms, then grazed over the fabric of her dress.
Then his mouth opened wider on hers and it was like a straight shot of ouzo, burning down her center and warming her through, making her drunk. Long, dragging kisses made her more and more lethargic by degrees, until he drew back and she realized her hand was at the back of his head, the other curled into the fabric of his shirt beneath his jacket.
He released her long enough to shrug out of his jacket, loosened his tie, then pulled her close again.
Her head felt too heavy for her neck, easily falling into the fingers that combed through her hair and splayed against her scalp. He kissed her again, harder this time, revealing the depth of passion in him. The aggression. It was scary in the way thunder and high winds and landslides were both terrifying and awe-inspiring. She clung to him, moaning in submission. Not just to him, but to her own desire.