by Lucy Ellis
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
ROSE was ready this time for the flare of cameras as their limousine drew up outside of the gates of a palace complex on an exclusive Moscow street.
Plato leapt out, his broad back to the paparazzi, thereby shielding her exit.
As he bent down to help her out of the car he said in a low voice meant only for her ears, ‘You look incredibly beautiful. Have I told you that, malenki?’
Only a dozen times, thought Rose, thrilled.
In her long gown of dark blue watered silk with its embroidered bodice Rose felt beautiful—she felt like an eastern princess. She hadn’t been sure when the stylist had shown it to her on a rack of similarly glamorous gowns, but with the right underwear it flowed over her curves like water down a ravine, pooling at her ankles. Her feet were clad in very high delicate heels and she wore a ruby pendant, nestled in her décolletage, and matching earrings.
When the cases of jewellery had arrived with an armed guard Rose had already been in the gown, and the temptation to accept the loan of the gems had been too high. But she couldn’t stop the wandering of her hands to her throat and ears to check they were still there, and a couple of times Plato had smiled reassuringly at her when he’d caught her in the act.
He did it again now.
‘Don’t worry, malenki, it’s just jewellery.’
Tens of thousands of American dollars’ worth of jewellery, thought Rose a little faintly.
‘It merely sets off what everyone is actually looking at.’
‘This beautiful dress.’ Rose held out her hem, giving it a sinuous shake.
‘The woman wearing it,’ said Plato, as if this was a fact that couldn’t be questioned.
‘You look very handsome yourself,’ she said primly as she took his arm and dropped her chin to avoid the flash of the cameras as he led her rapidly into the building.
And he did. Plato and urban style got along very well.
For a boy from a small Urals town he sure knew how to dress—tonight in a mixture of central Asian design, even down to the tiniest detail of the way his blue shalwar trousers angled over the front of his very fine handmade shoes. He wore a sherwani—a long coat-style jacket—in midnight-blue, with satin inlays that just seemed to enhance how very masculine he was.
He smelt good too, of lovely exotic aftershave and clean male skin. He also had traces of her perfume on him from the car, which didn’t hurt.
There were a lot of beautiful women converging on the club.
Everyone seemed to know him.
It was like being on the arm of the Prince of the Underworld. This was where the beautiful people of Moscow came to play with him. And she was his date.
Rose held onto his hand as he led her through the well-heeled young crowd, past golden barred cages with go-go dancers, under crystal chandeliers that should have seemed incongruous, to a black and shiny seating area that was clearly exclusive given the four giant-size bouncers at the two entrances. They were on a mezzanine, high above the two dance floors, with deep sofas and ottomans and an Arabian Nights-esque feel that sent her sprawling against him as she tried to daintily take her seat.
Plato took prime position and seemed to take it for granted that she would just splay herself across him, as if he were some Oriental potentate from another century and she was his harem girl. No, his much respected first wife, she corrected with a little smile as the heat from his big, hard body spread through hers. Rose tried not to enjoy it too much.
Other men gathered—business associates who did that European thing of kissing her fingers—and beautiful women, lots of women, who eyed her speculatively, summing up her dress, her hair, her jewellery, and then went back to watching Plato.
Plato made introductions, put a cocktail in her hands, and although the conversation began in English in deference to her it quickly lapsed into Russian.
Rose didn’t mind. She watched the dance floor for a while, her body moving slightly to the pounding bass line. A guy sitting opposite leaned across and made the timeless gesture of an invitation to dance. Rose was about to agree when Plato’s large body suddenly blocked her vision, forcing her to slide back as he leaned forward to say a few direct words to the other man. The guy was on his feet and moving away within moments. Plato eased back, sliding an arm around her shoulders, and then continued on with his conversation as if nothing had happened.
When Rose tried to get up his arm grew heavy around her.
‘What is it, detka? What is it you want?’
She looked directly into his eyes. ‘I’d like to dance.’
He placed a kiss in the curve of her throat and said in her ear, ‘Later.’
Rose wasn’t sure she liked the public kiss, coming as it did after the he-man tactics with the other guy and the possessive circle of his arm. It was all right for him to socialise, but she had to sit there with no one to talk to and nothing to do.
An accessory. After the fact of Plato.
That ‘later’ was not a winner either.
‘Plato?’ She made sure her smile was all big and shiny, telling him she was making an effort. ‘I’ll be dancing now, if you don’t mind.’ She took his arm and plucked it away from her shoulder, leaning forward to lift herself off the couch. ‘If you’re busy with your friends I can dance by myself.’
He moved so fast she was barely on her feet when his hand was around her waist. ‘One dance,’ he said.
* * *
He couldn’t take his eyes off her.
It was a grounding realisation that at twenty-eight, having thought until now that he had seen it all, experienced it all, couldn’t be shocked by much any longer, a blue-eyed Texan girl had taken his number.
He’d brought her to this party to neutralise her effect on him, to distance himself from what he had revealed about himself to her, and he’d only succeeded in intensifying it.
Rose danced with the same sensual abandon she’d brought to their bed. Her hips swayed, her arms moved sinuously over her head, her breasts grazed his chest—but she was locked in her own little world, special and private, as if there was a velvet rope between them and she wasn’t going to invite him in. He wanted to take hold of it, rip it away, invade all that female mystery and…what?
He pulled her in close to him. Her eyes were shining as she looked up into his. It was impossible to be heard so he didn’t bother with words. He just caught her mouth with his, taking what she would give so freely to him but needing to take it all the same. Needing her to know she was his, but he wasn’t hers.
Rose emerged from the spell of the music and the rhythm to clutch at his steel-hard biceps as he ground his mouth into hers. He was bruising her lips, and it should have been awful, but a hot little spark darted through her and caught light and she writhed against him.
Plato swore in Russian and held her tight up to him, his mouth hot on her ear, ‘We cannot have sex on a dance floor.’
‘No,’ said Rose, a little shaken. She wanted to tell him she’d never felt this way before, that this—everything between them—was moving so fast she was struggling to understand her own feelings.
This afternoon had started as a primal reaction to fear and violence and threat, and then it had become something else—something infinitely more personal, about her and him and the way it was between them, and sweeter because of it, more beguiling.
It was something else altogether in this place. He was another man here. The same man who had invaded her home that first night, the confident, take-no-prisoners guy who could only be accessed by an appeal to his libido.
She’d told herself this afternoon she had uncovered the Plato she had been responding to all along, the man who needed some tenderness in his life, the sort of comfort she knew she could offer him. But right now she wasn’t so sure—and she was damn well spooked by her own response to him. Because her body seemed just as attuned to this arrogant sex god as it was to the man who cradled her tenderly in his arms. And didn’t he know it?
/> As the crowd heaved around them and the music continued its insistent throb she realised being with Plato was not about hearth and home. He was purposefully opening up the distance between them. She could patently feel his regret at their intimacy, knew he was reminding her they were just about sex and nothing else.
She was never going to swan back into Fidelity Falls with this man, and he wouldn’t be going anywhere with her…
This was all about right now, and right now it was all about sex and heat. They gazed at one another in unspoken accord. Plato moved first, his hand firmly around her waist, propelling her before him, literally surrounding her with the heat and protection of his body.
She saw him make a subtle gesture and suddenly a minder appeared in front of them and the crowd parted. Rose would have denied it under torture, but the knowledge he could do this, that with the snap of his fingers he could make things happen like this, sent a thrill suspiciously like sexual excitement through her body.
Plato moved with single-minded determination. The minder thrust open an exit door and suddenly they were alone in a narrow corridor.
‘Where are we?’
He didn’t answer. He just kicked open another door. And one moment she was standing in the corridor and the next she was up against a wall, and Plato was lifting her skirt and sliding his mouth over hers.
Rose didn’t have time to think, only to react and her body was way on board. She opened her eyes only long enough to ascertain that they were alone, the door was shut, and then she fumbled for the buttons on his trousers.
‘Rose, moyu rozu.’ He was saying her name, crooning things in Russian that she couldn’t understand, but somehow it aroused her, made her lift one bare thigh to bring him closer, to have him inside her.
She didn’t understand what was going on between them, but this she knew. But with him. Only with him.
It couldn’t be like this with anyone else for him either. She grasped his head between her hands and kissed him back fiercely, wanting him to know it was her, it was Rose, it was his Rose doing this to him.
He tore at the flimsy lace excuse she was wearing for panties and Rose felt her knees give with excitement. All she could think was that he would shortly be a part of her. They would be bonded. Nothing else mattered but this…
Voices in the corridor froze them. Plato’s hand was on her inner thigh, and her fingers had spread firmly around him, guiding him…
‘Der’mo,’ Plato swore softly under his breath.
For a breathless moment her body was screaming at him to keep going, she didn’t care that there were people just outside, and in that moment Plato seemed inclined to take this to its conclusion. Then his hand on her thigh shifted and she shuddered, gently biting down on his lip. He lowered her back against the wall, his hands going either side of her head as he leaned into her, breathing deeply.
Rose heard a door in the hall shut. Silence.
‘We can’t do this,’ he muttered against her mouth, and she nodded, eyes shut, breath shuddering. ‘Not here, baby, not now.’
‘Rose. Call me Rose.’ She opened her eyes and looked directly into his, because she’d known he was going to stop. That he could stop. Because he was in control and she was wildly out of control because this wasn’t just sexual for her. This was her heart.
He’s not going to love you, Rosy. You’re lining yourself up for a terrible fall…
What did he see when he looked at her? A girl driven by her own libido or the real Rose, who needed to be in love to do this?
Yes, Rose, in love.
‘Rose,’ he acknowledged more softly, bringing a gentle, unsteady hand to her cheek, and what she saw in his eyes demolished what was left of her defences when it came to this man.
She’d been wrong all along. Love wasn’t a decision made with the head—you couldn’t arm people with information and skills and send them out into the world to make a choice about who you loved. She’d tried that once, with another man, and it had all gone to hell in a handbasket. Plato, in every conceivable way, was not the man for her, and yet…
When love happened to you it was a matter entirely out of your hands.
‘Plato—’
She grabbed a fistful of his hair and pulled his head in, forging her mouth hotly to his.
If he had stopped her then she didn’t know what she would have done. Begged? Kept going? Torn at his clothes? Yes, yes, yes—she would have done all those things.
She didn’t have to. She felt the raw power of his lust slam her back against the wall. His hands closed over her bare buttocks, lifted her. The pulsing size of him was welcomed by her slippery heat and he was stretching her, and then he thrust, then thrust again, so deep she moaned despite her determination to be quiet, and he was moving inside her with a ruthless disregard for anything else but their pleasure.
He continued to kiss her, their mouths mating as their bodies moved together, her thighs clamped around his powerful lean hips. His grunts rose and fell in counterpoint to her helpless cries. She didn’t even bother to be quiet. She wanted to wring every moment from this. And as she teetered on the brink of a climax Plato continued to drive inside her, muscles bunched in his shoulders as he kept her suspended between him and the wall. She broke apart and he slammed into her and came with a deep shout, his mouth hot at the base of her throat.
She pressed her brow to his, her breath coming in funny little gasps as she realised she was trying not to cry. Happy, victorious tears. He was hers and she could have him and she was woman enough to take what she wanted.
This was who she became when she was with Plato—this wild woman unafraid of her sexuality.
He let her down on her wobbly legs and pressed a fierce kiss to her temple. She could feel him trembling, his male skin slicked with sweat. Unable to help herself she pressed her face into his shoulder, suddenly overcome by the force of what they had done and what it meant to her, what she hoped it meant to him.
But Plato was pulling himself together. He smoothed his hand over the back of her neck, that gesture of possession and comfort she loved, but when she looked up at him she noticed there was a tension in his eyes that hadn’t been there a moment before.
She stilled.
She wanted to tell him she loved him. It was all there, bubbling up excitedly through her chest, filling her mouth with silly, mushy words.
Instead she reached up and rubbed her thumb to the corner of his mouth, self-preservation throwing her a life-raft.
‘Lipstick,’ she whispered.
For a moment all she could see was his expression, the wild light in his eyes, and the regret in the tension all through his body.
As they re-entered the club, with the noise and press of bodies around them once more, Rose felt a little flutter of panic. She was going to lose him again. She turned to him a little desperately and pressed her mouth up close to his ear. ‘When can we leave?’
‘The night’s young, detka,’ he imparted, his gaze scanning over her head, avoiding making eye contact. ‘Not yet.’
It was like a slap.
‘I want to be alone with you,’ she confessed, but he had already turned away, her words swallowed up by the music and the noise.
People were joining them. Rose was crushingly aware of how rumpled she looked—moreover that Plato was tattooed all over her skin. It would have been different if he had shown by a single gesture that this meant more to him than a sexual encounter, but she just knew now that he wouldn’t.
He sat her down with a couple of other women, put a drink in her hand and said, ‘I won’t be too long—then we make tracks, da?’
She watched his retreating back as he vanished into the shadowy, light-swirling environs of the club—the shift of muscle in his back, his long lean grace. And that was when she knew. He wasn’t coming back. Not the guy who’d showed up on her doorstep back in Toronto, making ridiculous accusations and all the while gazing at her with those hungry, baffled eyes. The man who’d whipped out her v
acuum cord, driven her client down the stairs and told her she was coming to Moscow with him. That guy—the one who’d held her in his arms and made her feel hopeful and bold and special to him and him alone—was gone. She’d had her turn, and right now she was just another girl to him—a face in his crowd. He’d brought her here tonight to make sure she understood that.
She wasn’t stupid. Part of her had known it even as she’d put on her fancy dress, and she’d damned well known it when she’d forced him onto that dance floor. But she hadn’t expected her own reaction to him, and even now the sexual feelings in her body were still surging, making it impossible to deny the raw edge to what was going on between them. If all this was only about sex for him, what did it say about her that she had been right along with him up against a wall? What did it say about her that she hadn’t cared, had just wanted the excitement of being with him, thinking somehow, some way, she’d change his mind?
She’d known his reputation before she got into this. She had chosen to ignore it, decided she was going to be different. But how could she be when there was nothing different about any of this for him? Plato had been here before. She was the one who didn’t know the score.
Oh, yes, she was the big expert on relationships. She’d ignored her own advice to other women. Advice that had been hard-won after four years under Bill’s thumb. You can’t change him. Especially if he doesn’t want to be changed…
When Plato had told her about his mother and his grandmother, as a professional she’d understood immediately what it meant. He’d been starved of love by the two very women he should have been able to rely upon as a young child, and then had it taken away again by the putative mother of his child. It did much to explain the brevity of his relationships with women, the distrust. He was always waiting for it to be taken away.
She’d known then and there she’d taken on a lot more than a spoilt rich guy. But she didn’t want to be his psychologist in this situation—she wanted to offer him up her heart and for him to protect it, just as she would protect his.