by Lynne Graham
I really really fancy him. I want to sleep with him tonight. I’m falling in love with him like some silly infatuated schoolgirl!
Eyes wide with shock and dismay at the thoughts suddenly chasing without warning through her bemused head, Alissa sat up with a start, water sloshing noisily around her. Conscious that the water was cooling by then, she got out of the bath and wrapped her slender figure in a white fleecy towel. Only taking the time to remove her make-up and comb her hair, she returned to the bedroom just as the phone by the bed buzzed.
‘Come and join me,’ Sergei urged lazily. ‘I’ve just had to sack the manager of my football team!’
Alissa rummaged through the drawers in the dressing room for nightwear. Everything had been unpacked and neatly put away for her. Sliding into a turquoise nightdress in haste, she pulled on the matching wrap while chanting a firm mantra to herself. I am not going to have sex with him again. I am not going to have sex with him again under any circumstances. We’re just going to talk about football. But I do hope I don’t have to watch any.
Sergei, his lean, beautifully built body clad solely in a pair of black silk designer boxers, was pacing the floor of the room next door and talking on the phone in a foreign language. He was also gesticulating with a good deal of force to express his feelings. With the fingers of one brown hand he indicated the trolley of food by the bed in an invitation for her to help herself.
Alissa only then realised that she was actually ravenously hungry and she lifted a plate and selected choice morsels of food from the sizeable assortment of hot and cold dishes on offer. Forcing her attention away from the clothes discarded untidily on the carpet, she curled up on the bed and munched happily through a selection of chicken, salad and fresh baked bread. Sergei completed his phone call, treated her to a spirited speech about unreliable temperamental staff and embarked straight away on another phone call. She didn’t quite grasp what all the fuss was about and truthfully didn’t much care. Halfway through her own meal she set it aside and filled a plate for him, placing it where he could reach it while he paced back and forth.
‘How many languages do you speak?’ she enquired between calls.
‘Six or seven and enough to make myself understood in basic terms in another couple,’ he breathed as if the talent were nothing unusual. ‘When I do business, I like to be able to talk to people direct rather than through intermediaries.’
‘I speak French and Spanish but not fluently,’ she told him modestly.
‘You have to learn Russian,’ he replied.
‘Do I?’
His black brows drew together in a frown at the question. ‘Of course, milaya moya.’
Sergei studied her, striving to dissect the precise source of her ever-growing appeal because, just at that moment, she looked more like a teenager than an adult. Her face shone with cleanliness and her hair was tucked untidily behind her ears. Natural and unadorned, she bore no resemblance to the high maintenance women who normally shared his bed. She had beautiful eyes though, very clear and expressive. They were by far her best feature, although that soft, full-lipped mouth was worthy of note too, he conceded, while at the same time noting the fine smooth grain of her skin and the appealing delicacy of her bone structure. His appetite for food dwindled to be replaced by another kind of hunger while he appraised her and recalled more intimate images that sent the blood pounding through his veins.
Struggling to appear unaware of that lengthy allmale scrutiny, Alissa asked herself what she was doing sitting on his bed. Was that being standoffish? More businesslike in her approach? Discouraging? Shame sat like a lump of lead in her stomach but she didn’t budge. Without warning the prospect of keeping her distance from him and restoring platonic limits had all the appeal of a heavy rainstorm on her horizon.
‘I like that you’re completely sober,’ Sergei commented.
‘I learned to leave my glass full and everyone stopped pushing more drinks in my direction,’ she confided with a comical expression.
Charmed by that cheeky smile, Sergei switched off his phone, tossed it aside and reached for her with purposeful hands. She came up on her knees and he knotted one hand in the heavy fall of her golden hair and slowly, sexily ravished her mouth while he pushed the wrap and the straps of her nightie down off her slim shoulders. As the garments fell to her knees he captured her breasts and kneaded the quivering tips until she was gasping, shaken by the immediate surge of heat between her thighs.
‘I can’t stop wanting you,’ Sergei growled, long fingers dropping down to part the golden curls on her mound and gently tease the sensitive bud of her clitoris before venturing to stroke the lush damp lips she would have hidden from him.
Her breath was rattling in her tight throat. She parted her thighs for him, awkwardly balancing herself with a hand on his shoulder until he hauled her up into his arms and tipped her back on the bed. Her body was humming, as desperate for every caress as though their earlier encounter had never happened. He kissed a tormenting passage down over her writhing, shifting length.
‘I want to make love to you the way I should have this afternoon,’ Sergei breathed thickly. ‘I can’t wait to drive you crazy with pleasure.’
And just as he knew what he was doing, she did as well. Later she would make herself acknowledge that shameful fact, but while he was doing gloriously arousing things to her weak and easily tempted body she was a complete pushover. What she was feeling was impossibly strong and left no room for questions of right and wrong. He pleasured her with his mouth and his tongue and his fingers until she was a trembling, overheated heap of excited nerve-endings crying out for more.
Hot and ready, she watched him as he donned protection. When he finally sank into the tight wet sheath of her womanhood, the sheer excitement of his entrance sent her careening headlong into violent orgasm. Her sobs and convulsions of delight almost made Sergei lose control as well. Fierce strain etched in the hard, handsome contours of his face, he lifted her knees to hold her still and drove his hard male heat into her yielding flesh with insistent hunger.
Her excitement never once dropped by so much as an atom and she soon hit another high, a climax ripping through her like fireworks blazing up. Afterwards she thought she would never move again. Her limbs were heavy, her body languorous and the most amazing sense of well-being and peace engulfed her. Sergei rolled over, keeping his arms wrapped round her so that he carried her with him.
‘You are so hot, angil moy,’ he intoned, his stunning dark golden eyes glittering with rich appreciation, his heart still thundering against her, his bronzed length damp with sweat. ‘I may never let you get out of this bed again.’
Alissa was so exhausted that she had no strength left to move. She consoled herself by dabbing kisses on whichever part of him she could reach and he stretched indolently and this time around he stayed close, letting her have her way.
‘Yelena told me you’re still stressing about the breakdown of your parents’ marriage,’ Sergei murmured. ‘That’s crazy—’
Alissa stiffened. ‘Why is it crazy?’
‘You lived in a happy united family for over twenty years. You should appreciate how lucky you were.’
Alissa blinked in shock at that rebuke from an unexpected quarter. ‘Why? What was your experience?’ she snapped, mortified by his criticism.
‘A father in and out of prison for stealing cars—he was a thief and a stupid one. I also had to put my mother to bed drunk every night,’ he breathed wryly. ‘My father was shot dead in the street for stealing a local gangster’s car and a year later my mother’s liver finally quit and she died…’
Caught up in the dark story of his childhood, Alissa wriggled round in the circle of his arms to look at him wide-eyed with disquiet. ‘What age were you then?’
His lean strong face bore no emotion. He might have been talking about someone else’s life. ‘Thirteen. Yelena insisted on giving me a home with her. We were strangers because my father was a lousy son as well
,’ Sergei recounted levelly, grim dark eyes meeting hers. ‘She was my only experience of family life and I gave her a hard time. I was as feral as a wild animal.’
Alissa traced the stubborn shape of his sensual lower lip with an admiring fingertip. ‘I can imagine that.’
Sergei released a spontaneous laugh of disagreement. ‘No, you can’t. We grew up in different worlds. Yours was cosy, middle class and protected. I bet you got just about everything you ever wanted.’
‘No, I didn’t!’
‘Tell me one thing you didn’t get,’ Sergei challenged, absorbed in the constant play of animation across her heart-shaped face, while he wondered why he was talking to her when he never wasted time doing that with a woman.
‘I fell in love with someone else’s boyfriend once,’ Alissa admitted, offended by his apparent belief that she had been spoiled and cosseted with good fortune all her days. ‘I had to get over it, but it was a very unhappy time for me.’
‘Didn’t you make a play for him?’
Alissa gave him a shocked look. ‘Of course not. He was my sister’s boyfriend.’
‘If you weren’t prepared to fight for him, you can’t have wanted him that much, milaya moya,’ Sergei quipped, wondering darkly if she would fight for him or whether she was guilty of being as shallow as her profile beneath that surface show of niceness.
‘Sergei…’ she said ruefully. ‘There are such things as family loyalty and moral standards.’
‘I wonder if our child will inherit your outlook.’ His dark brows drew together in a slight grimace. ‘I’m very cold-blooded when it comes to protecting my own interests. One or two of your genes mightn’t do too much damage but too many would make him or her weak in my world.’
In receipt of that speech, Alissa blinked in bewilderment and jerked back from him. ‘Our child? What are you talking about?’
Scanning her perplexed face with a frown, Sergei loosened his hold on her, allowing her to break the connection. ‘If that’s a joke, it’s not a very good one.’
‘Why would it be a joke? I agreed to marry you…’
‘And have my baby, as you are very well aware,’ Sergei countered with impatience. ‘But if you agree, and I don’t see why you shouldn’t, I’m willing to push the time frame back a month or two.’
And have my baby. That fatal assurance rang like a clarion call in Alissa’s head and froze her to the marrow. Alexa could not possibly have agreed to such an iniquitous contract. It couldn’t be true, it couldn’t be!
Chapter Seven
‘WHAT are you doing?’ Sergei demanded as Alissa slid soundlessly off the side of the bed like a wraith trying to avoid detection. In almost the same movement she reached for her discarded nightdress.
Alissa’s upper lip was damp with perspiration. She had broken out in a literal cold sweat. Why would Sergei lie? Nor had there been anything teasing about his voice or manner. Indeed he’d had been terrifyingly matter-of-fact when he mentioned putting back the time frame for a while. A baby? She was to give him a baby as part of the contract? He had to be out of his mind!
She pulled on her nightie with shaking hands, for the nakedness of intimacy seemed more wrong than ever now that she was being forced to confront the reality that to protect her sister she had deceived him. Was it possible that Alexa could have set out to deceive her as well? It was after midnight and Alissa was incredibly tired. There were no bright ideas in her mind to inspire her and no magical escape hatch in sight. So desperate was she to know exactly what Sergei was talking about that she felt that her only option was to come clean.
‘We need to talk,’ Alissa breathed tautly.
Wondering what on earth she was up to, Sergei had already sat up to view her with narrowed and intent dark eyes. ‘It’s late,’ he responded, wishing he hadn’t broken the habit of a lifetime and started sharing confidences with her. Somehow she was getting under his skin and he didn’t like that.
Alissa laced her hands together. ‘I’m afraid we’ve got to talk because when you mentioned having a baby I genuinely didn’t know what you were talking about—’
‘Bearing in mind the contract you signed and the legal advice you had beforehand, that’s an impossible claim for you to make.’ Brilliant dark eyes now glinting with cold incredulity, Sergei thrust back the bedding to spring out of bed. ‘What are you trying to do to me?’
Alissa hovered while he strode into what appeared to be a dressing room similar to hers and disappeared briefly from view. She listened to doors being opened, drawers being rammed in and out with a force that defeated their smooth gliding mechanism. The tension in the air was already making her tummy queasy. The sheer scale of the deception she had engaged in was suddenly hitting her for the very first time. It seemed to her that she could only have walked blindfold into marrying him with her brain on hold. Only now, when she had to break the silence of secrecy, was she able to fully contemplate the enormity of what she had done.
Sergei emerged, sheathed in well-worn jeans and a black T-shirt. Barefoot, every inch of his long muscular physique taut, he surveyed her, his lean dark features set in forbidding lines. ‘Explain yourself.’
Her heart beating very fast, Alissa breathed in deep, wondered where on earth to begin and decided to go straight to the crux of the matter. ‘It was my sister who initially applied for this…er…role. She went through the whole interview procedure using my name and my educational background…’
His bronzed skin stretched taut over his proud bone structure. A hint of pallor was detracting from his healthy colour. ‘Your…sister? Are you seriously trying to tell me that you are not the woman who was vetted to become my wife?’
The tension was so fierce that her spine was rigid. ‘Yes. I know it must sound awful to you, but there was truly no malicious intent involved in the exchange.’
Taut with savage disbelief at that either excessively naïve or excessively stupid assessment of the damage done, Sergei’s hands slowly coiled into fists of restraint by his side. He could not immediately credit the possibility that he could have spent a fortune recruiting the perfect wife and the future mother of his child only to end up being duped by a complete con artist and her accomplice in crime. The very idea of it enraged him. Transgressions of that nature didn’t happen to Sergei. He had little experience of monumental foul-ups because he employed a large staff of the very best professionals available to protect him.
Alissa was torn between relief at his silence and terror of what he might be about to say to her. She made a slightly clumsy pleading movement with one hand and took a step forward. ‘My sister, Alexa, is my twin—my identical twin.’
Comprehension hit Sergei like a punch in the stomach. He immediately recalled the sour skinny version of her in the photograph. He had got the little, smiley, curvy virgin one instead when he might well have rejected the original in the flesh. Recalling his misgivings over Alissa’s failure to match his initial expectations and, even more gallingly, the background check he had cancelled out of pure lust, he cursed and only half under his breath. He should have insisted that she be checked out. He had only himself to blame on that score. Why had he let her sex appeal overrule the shrewd intelligence and preservation instincts that until now had kept him safe?
‘You do realise that you and your sister have committed fraud?’
Alissa turned very pale indeed at that charge and busied her trembling hands in picking up her wrap and putting it on. ‘Fraud?’ she queried unsteadily, sheer horror at the assurance that she was guilty of a crime scrambling her ability to think straight.
‘Who went through the elimination process for this role?’
‘Alexa.’
‘For the entire process?’ Sergei prompted.
Alissa nodded confirmation, her eyes full of anxiety.
‘Who signed the contract?’ he continued
‘Alexa…in my name. She forged my signature,’ Alissa told him unwillingly.
Reining back a burst of volcani
c rage that would have blown her out of the room, Sergei allowed himself to wonder whether, in the light of those facts, she was still his legal wife. He levelled hard dark eyes of purpose on the bird he had in hand and knew that, impostor or otherwise, he had no intention of letting her out of his sight for longer than five minutes lest she make a run for it. Fired up by the danger of that risk, Sergei lifted the phone to speak to his security chief, Borya, and gave the older man a ream of detailed instructions. He commenced with an order for background reports on Alissa and her twin sister and concluded with the directive that his wife’s phone calls be recorded and her every move watched.
Breathing in short shallow bursts, Alissa waited for Sergei to turn back to her. Fraud was a hard, scary word and she felt incredibly stupid for not having expected it to be thrown at her.
‘You’re an impostor,’ Sergei told her with icy precision.
Alissa nibbled worriedly at her lower lip. ‘Yes.’
‘A liar—’
‘I haven’t had to tell any lies!’ she protested.
‘From the first night we met you’ve been lying to me by pretending to be your sister,’ he rephrased his charge grimly. ‘Why?’
Alissa had never been so conscious of his size as she was standing in that lamplit bedroom with his dark shadow falling across her. His anger was like a physical entity in the room, for the atmosphere was explosive. She breathed in deep and slow.