‘You know why.’
Alina blinked. She didn’t know why and then it dawned that possibly Demyan was telling her that it wasn’t meaningless, nameless sex that he wanted tonight. She actually heard the whistle of air in her nostrils as she breathed in a strange mix of anger and arousal—the scent came from her.
Alina stepped out and Demyan walked behind her; she could feel his eyes on her as she opened the door.
This time as she punched in his number her hands were shaking but for a different reason. Demyan was at her neck, his erection pushing in her skirted bottom, his hand at her breast.
‘Demyan, I don’t think—’
‘Don’t think, then. And don’t talk.’
His mouth was hot at her neck, his hand pulling up her T-shirt and then removing it as he rubbed against her. He was animal. Alina had never felt anything like the passion that blazed from behind her; it both unnerved her and excited her. Deftly he removed her bra so her breasts sprang free and his fingers bit into the soft flesh.
She wanted to stop, to shower, to slow things down.
‘I’ve been working, Demyan...’
‘Don’t argue with me now...’
It wasn’t his command but his fingers sliding into her skirt that made her stop, and the pressure on her clitoris that made her throb. She tried to turn around but he held her firm, just enough so she couldn’t. Or rather, as his hand released her, she didn’t, and when Demyan lowered himself to his knees Alina went with him onto hers,
If she hadn’t been so turned on, Alina might have been scared, except he had flicked the switch and there was nothing she would deny him.
Alina heard the slide of his zipper and felt the coolness of air as he ruched up her skirt and pulled down her panties.
‘Demyan...’ Alina was shaking, shocked to her own core at the knowledge he could do anything. His hand roamed the curve of her bottom, and she closed her eyes, bracing herself, just handing herself over to the scariest, most beautiful man who in that moment she had little choice but to trust. And at the base of her soul she did. Her eyes opened, as did her mouth as he seared inside her. Alina’s jaw gritted as he met her cervix but there was a strange giddy relief in her head and she started to come.
Demyan was thrusting and Alina’s head was on her forearms yet her neck arched back as deeper he ground, pulling her hips back to his in tune, meeting his urgent want.
One orgasm ran into another, the second so strong that Alina almost crawled on her knees to be away from him, but he held her tight and she went with it, sobbing and choking back the tears as her buttocks and thighs clamped the small of her back to an arch and he swelled further inside her.
‘Alina...’ He lost his head for a moment, and said things he did not mean as he came, that he loved her, that he was crazy about her, that she’d saved him, but they were all said in Russian, Demyan consoled himself as he slid out of her.
‘Come on...’ He picked her up, as if she weighed nothing, and Alina didn’t argue, her legs were incapable of walking. She had no idea she was the first woman he had brought up these stairs and to his bed and she lay there watching him shrug off his clothes. He caught her eyes.
‘I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas any more,’ Alina said, and Demyan gave a thin smile and climbed into bed.
‘You make a very nice Dorothy,’ Demyan said, and attempted a very brief kiss but it turned into just a little bit more.
‘Sleep,’ Demyan said, pulling back.
Amazingly she did.
He did too but only for a couple of hours. He woke and looked at Alina asleep next to him. His ribs hurt but he moved to his side and looked at her.
Had she not picked him up he’d be back in the cells by now, Demyan knew.
He wanted to kiss her awake, to make very slow love, but he didn’t do that sort of stuff and, anyway, she looked too peaceful to wake.
Instead, he got up and wrapped a towel around restless hips and roamed the penthouse.
Demyan didn’t even bother to put on the lights.
He knew this place like the back of his hand.
It was the only place apart from the farm where he had ever felt settled. Each hotel was the same but different; here had really been a home.
Demyan headed to Roman’s bedroom and hesitated before opening the door.
He’d told Alina he didn’t want to know if she did have it tidied and cleaned. Demyan knew that the superstitions were just that, old tales, but he had been raised on them, brought up to believe that danger beckoned, had had his mother’s mad rambling repeated over and over so much so that he could hear it now.
His brain in business was logical yet he almost folded over in relief when he opened his son’s bedroom door and it was just as he had left it.
Alina had understood how much the small ritual meant. Even Nadia, who was Russian, had laughed when Demyan had asked she keep the room the same when Roman had had a fever and been taken to hospital.
Nadia.
The name made him feel ill.
Demyan sat on the bed and picked up his son’s guitar. He glanced at a picture of Nadia and heard her voice again.
‘My period was already late when I slept with you.’
He could still hear her saying the words, telling him that the sexy young Russian, with a serious future ahead of him, was a more palatable father than the married professor she had been seeing the past few months.
Roman was his, Demyan had been sure of it, not once had he thought otherwise.
He looked at the photos of his son.
The image of Nadia.
Yet he was deep like he himself was. He liked words; he liked to sit in his room and did not desire company at times.
Nature or nurture?
Demyan put down the guitar very carefully and left his son’s room as he had found it then went back to bed, but he did not sleep.
* * *
Alina’s phone alarm went off at six, the room in darkness. She looked at his back, could see from the set of his shoulders that Demyan was awake. As her eyes grew accustomed she could make out the bruises. Her hand moved to his shoulders and she felt the despair and the tension in them. ‘Demyan...’ She wanted more, wanted to know more, and she wanted to give now rather than be taken.
Demyan closed his eyes as her hands worked his shoulders, rolling onto his stomach and almost giving in to the bliss of her bottom on the small of his back as her hands soothed him and then her mouth on his neck. He turned over and looked up at her.
‘I make coffee...’
‘Demyan...’ She didn’t understand him, could feel him hard, nudging against her, and it had been okay when he had been showing her, teaching her, but it apparently wasn’t okay now. So badly she wanted to make love to him yet, like Demyan, she refused to beg.
‘Two sugars,’ Alina said, and rolled off.
He kissed her sulking mouth. ‘You remind me of a much nicer version of me,’ Demyan said, and got up.
‘I’m not sure that’s a compliment.’
‘Oh, it is.’ He pulled on black jeans. ‘I’d better get dressed, I don’t want to scare the florist...’
As Alina lay there, trying to fathom the unfathomable, Demyan added two shots of cream to his and two sugars to hers and was glad that they would have visitors this morning because it would be rather too easy to head back to bed and start over again.
He had far too many feelings for Alina and he would prefer not to examine them.
‘Demyan...’ Alina had other ideas. She really wanted to talk and it would be far easier out of bed. She was at the top of the stairs and wrapped in a towel, Demyan at the bottom holding the coffee, when the door opened and both were met by angry, accusing eyes and teenage rage.
‘Is this the reason you don’t fight for
me?’
‘Roman,’ Demyan shouted as the coffee landed on the floor, but Roman wasn’t waiting to listen to his father. Hurling abuse, he turned and ran.
‘Some souka shows up and you...’
‘Roman!’ Demyan roared. Alina fled back to the bedroom and sat on the bed, her head in her hands, as the door slammed, only to be opened by Demyan and not even closed as he sped out after his son.
The alarm went off just to confuse things and Alina sped down and was punching in the numbers, wearing only a towel, as Libby arrived. She gave a very subtle eyebrow rise at Alina’s appearance and then glanced down at Alina’s waitressing uniform on the floor.
For Alina, to have her private life, her very new, very private sex life, exposed like that was excruciating.
She dressed in yesterday’s clothes but the hooks on her bra had been flattened by Demyan’s less than patient attempts to get it off.
She doubted he kept safety pins!
And it wasn’t just the eye roll from Libby but the florist coming in as she tried to make the bed.
Alina took herself out of the way as best she could, standing in the terrace garden as the royal couple and their entourage made their way through. There was no sign of Demyan.
She’d expected no less.
‘They didn’t give away much.’ Libby caught up with her after they had gone. ‘I’ll let you know as soon as I hear anything.’
‘Thanks.’
‘Alina...’ Libby could see her discomfort and tried to put her at ease. ‘It’s forgotten, it never happened...’
It never should have, Alina decided.
Demyan returned just as Alina was leaving. She didn’t care if he’d lost his keys, or how he might get in.
She was beyond livid.
‘Have you any idea how embarrassing that was?’
‘Alina, my son turned up...’
She really was in no mood to discuss his domestic life. ‘Well, he clearly gets his foul mouth from his father. How dare he speak to me like that?’
She was beyond reason. It was all horrible and wretched and really no one’s fault but she was in no mood to see that. ‘I’m going.’
‘Where?’
‘Where do you think? Home,’ Alina said. ‘Oh, but that’s right, you wouldn’t know what that was—after all, you’re getting rid of yours.’
She stood there, waiting for him to match her anger, to tell her not to leave, to offer to drive her, hell, call a taxi even, but Demyan was clearly more than used to an angry lover’s silent demands and he was also terribly used to ignoring them.
‘You’re not staying for coffee, then?’
She could have slapped him. She wanted to slap him but there was simply no point.
‘Go ahead,’ Demyan said, glancing at her clenched fists, but instead of slapping him Alina let out a sob and turned and ran.
You signed up for this, Alina reminded herself as she shivered on the bus ride home, remembering the teary women leaving his room.
Why had she expected anything different from him? He was leaving, could it be any clearer? She was the one helping to sell his home. How foolish to think, for even a second, that it might be different for her.
Demyan was terribly used to slamming doors—really, did women close them any other way after a night in his bed?
What he wasn’t used to was that gnawing of disquiet. Neither, when he should be thinking of the conversation he had just had with Roman, was he used to lying on a bed, hands behind his head, staring up at the ceiling and looking at the world from her vantage point.
‘I don’t need this,’ Demyan said out loud, because he really did not need feelings right now.
He had no intention of going after her, she was far better away from him, and, Demyan thought, noticing for the first time the picture she’d had hung, what the hell had she done to his wall?
Talk about how to put potential buyers off! Alina had said the room needed a few feminine touches but there was a blown-up nipple hanging on the wall.
Or was it an ovary?
Demyan was no art snob and barely gave paintings a glance; if he did, he was far too sullen to comment. But this thing on his wall was actually rather fascinating. So much so that Demyan peeled himself off the bed and went in for a closer look.
How could a flower be sexy? But it was. Lush and ripe, it just throbbed on the wall. The artist had somehow put the human into biology. It reminded him of that dress she had worn. And then he glanced down and saw the signature.
Alina.
Bright and beautiful, Demyan thought, but, like the pregnancy that had carried her, complicated.
CHAPTER NINE
IT WAS A busy night and terribly hard to smile and be polite and discuss the specials on the menu when your head was locked in a war zone called Demyan.
She ached.
Not just her heart but also her body.
Alina was swollen and sore from their lovemaking, she was tender all over, and now, if she didn’t want to upset Pierre, she had to paint on that smile.
‘Alina!’ Pierre snapped. ‘Quickly to table four. He’s back.’ Then she turned and her heart almost stopped.
There sat Demyan, a lazy smile on his face.
‘How can I help you?’
‘Do you really want me to answer that here?’He said and then saw the shimmer of tears in her eyes.
‘You were right,’ Alina admitted. ‘I’m not up to this.’
‘Meaning?’
‘In a couple of weeks you’ll be gone.’
‘What an amazing couple of weeks we could have,’ Demyan said. ‘I want to get to know you, Alina.’ Even if he had no soul to offer, he could leave her with the gift of herself. ‘I want to know who you’re hiding yourself from.’
‘I’m not hiding.’
‘What’s the bravest thing you have ever done?’ Demyan asked, and he watched as she struggled to answer. ‘I’ll tell you—it was when you came back with me last night. You took a risk, a chance...’
‘It seems terribly foolish now.’
‘You regret it?’
‘No.’
‘Then take another risk,’ he said. ‘Come out with me tonight.’
‘I’ve got to work.’
‘After work,’ Demyan said, but she shook her head. ‘Be with me during the time I have left in Australia.’ Demyan made a scissors sign with his fingers. ‘It’s time to snip that safety net.’
‘If I wanted psychological advice you’re the last person I’d go to,’ she said, but it just made him smile.
‘What’s stopping you, Alina? What’s stopping you from having fun and living as you want to?’
‘Roll up, roll up, Demyan’s in town, but then you’ll be gone and I’ll be left with the muddy field.’
‘You’ve got boots in your car.’
She closed her eyes.
‘You can do this, Alina.’
Could she, though? ‘How?’
‘Just be yourself.’
‘I am.’
‘Not quite,’ he said, because he’d seen her pictures, he knew there was so very much more. ‘But you’ll get there. For now, what’s on the menu?’
‘A promiscuous Russian and a naïve farm girl.’
‘Sounds very tempting.’
‘It is.’ She took out her pad. ‘What do you want to eat?’
‘You choose,’ Demyan said. ‘Surprise me.’
‘I doubt that I can.’
‘Oh, I’m sure that you could.’ He confused her, he tested her, he challenged her. ‘Off you go.’
‘What does God want?’ Pierre asked, when Alina had left Demyan’s table. He blinked at Alina’s response but just a little. Demyan could have whatever he
liked.
Which was the problem.
Pierre would never guess they were lovers, no one could know the sex that was burning in the room as Glynn brought him his drink.
‘One Nothing Left to Lose.’ Glynn smiled and as Demyan caught her eye, Alina smiled too as he called her over. ‘What’s in it?’
‘I haven’t a clue,’ Alina said. ‘The name seemed appropriate.’
‘It tastes sensational.’ He made her feel weak as he rolled the beverage on his tongue and then swallowed. ‘I taste Yellow Chartreuse,’ Demyan said. ‘It is a liqueur made from a secret recipe by monks...’ He offered her the glass to taste but Alina shook her head.
She was working.
She could feel his eyes on her as she worked and her body thrummed with awareness, all her senses heightened. She was petrified to go to the loo, quite sure that in the smouldering mood he was in Demyan would have no qualms about following her in. She was on a delicious edge, so much so she almost shot out of her skin when the bell went and his food was ready.
Demyan looked down.
‘We’re skipping straight to dessert,’ Alina said. ‘To the best bit. It’s the nicest thing on the menu.’
‘You like crème brûlée?’
‘Yes, but that’s lavender crème brûlée. It’s delicious, one taste and you swear you could eat it for ever, but it’s very rich...’
‘A treat.’
‘An occasional treat,’ Alina said, trying to tell herself that this was not love, jut a delicious dalliance she would soon tire of. ‘Enjoy.’ She went to go but he stopped her.
‘Bring me another.’
All night he teased her, all night they played till Alina’s skin was burning, and she was grateful to end the shift without dropping a pile of plates. She could hardly breathe as she stepped out of the restaurant and to his mouth.
‘I want you.’ His tongue had the last traces of her favourite thing in the world and his erection was almost painful on her bursting bladder.
‘I need to go to the loo...’
‘I needed you to go to the loo...’ They were filthy kissing between laughing. ‘Be bad, Alina.’
‘I can’t be.’
‘You’re in my world now.’
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