by Dani Collins
His hard fingers dug into her hips and he straightened away.
She whimpered at the loss and licked her lips where the taste of him still lingered.
“Aren’t you going to move this to the bedroom?” he growled.
The fire building inside her was doused, leaving burning hot embers that blistered her sensitive nature. She had thought his innate drive to lead was ready to take over. He was determined to make her work for this, though, and it almost undermined her belief in herself and what she was able to make him feel.
Trying to understand where she had gone wrong, she searched his expression and noted the tension in his face, the tick in his cheek that made his scar pull at the corner of his slightly parted mouth. His chest was expanding in a short hard rhythm.
In a startling burst of clarity she knew why he’d stopped her. The kiss had started to become more than he could handle. He was cooling the pace so he could remain in control.
A heady sense of power flowed into her, but it was surprisingly tender too. With renewed confidence, she reached out and learned how to open a man’s jeans.
“I don’t have a condom in here,” he warned.
“You don’t need one.”
Aleksy swore in Russian. Stop her, he told himself. Before she put him over the edge. But he was too hungry to see how far she’d go. The rush of blood in his ears deafened him and the heat of desire threatened to spontaneously combust his soul.
He reached for the soft swells teasingly rising and falling behind a thin layer of wool. She often went braless. He loved it. Those modest, taut breasts of hers didn’t need support and he liked being able to find her nipples easily and feel them harden.
Clair stepped back, her light grip catching his thick wrists before he’d barely cradled her soft curves. “No touching. Not yet,” she said breathily. She pressed his hands back to the surface of his desk. “You’ll distract me and I want to make this as good for you as you always do for me.”
Anticipation screamed in him, threatening to make him lose it completely. He instinctively wanted to take over, be the one in control of the pace, especially when her hot blue gaze clashed into his, her enjoyment of having the upper hand obvious.
“I want to suck your nipples,” he demanded, balancing on the knife’s edge between stealing the dominant role that was always his and letting Clair keep the power she was obviously reveling in.
He almost had her. Her pupils expanded into galactic holes he could have fallen into. Her breath rushed out in a near surrender and her light hands on his thighs grew heavy as she melted closer.
“No,” she gasped at the last second, the word driving like a knife into his groin. She dug her fingernails through denim as she firmed her resolve. “Not yet. I want to take off your shirt first.”
With hands that betrayed a nervous tremble, she tugged the close-fitting knit up his chest. He lifted his arms, eyes closing as he endured what felt like the loss of his skin. Her lips touched his collarbone.
He caught back a groan.
Another kiss and her splayed hands smoothed across his chest hair. His nipples went so tight they felt pierced. His erection pulsed in the space of his open fly, clawing at his control.
Her hands began to graze with more surety, flowing over his rib cage and abdomen, finding his waistband. Working with awkward inexperience—which was its own delight—she eased her hands under denim, lifting his hips off the edge of the desk to work his jeans down his thighs.
“Finally,” he hissed, shaking with need.
She paused and he realized he’d spoken in Russian. She kept going and he kicked out of the jeans, stepping so his socked feet were braced, fingers flexing with desire to catch her up to him and plunder her mouth.
She lowered herself to her knees, hands cool and soft on his calves as she removed his socks. Did she know she was driving him to the absolute edge of reason?
He glared down to see her staying on her knees, gaze coming to rest on his shorts, lips pressed into a line of uncertain study. As she reached out and carefully eased the elastic over him, his vision blurred. He stepped out of his shorts and didn’t know if he’d be able to stay on his feet. He was a conqueror by nature and necessity, but at this second he was a slave. A prisoner to each of her incremental movements.
Despite knowing what she was about to do, he was staggered by the first touch of her hands, swelling and hardening to unbearable proportions, filling her palms. Words of protest and abject begging threatened to burst from him, but she was stealing every last thought from him, closing her mouth upon him with untutored, scandalously sexy ardor.
A ragged groan erupted from him. His passion nearly exploded. He wasn’t going to last and he wanted, needed, to be inside her.
With the very last shreds of his control, he tangled his fingers in the golden silk that brushed her cheeks. It killed him to force her to release him, but he had nothing left. He was about to shock or scare her and he had to have her with him when the last of his restraint evaporated. He wanted to feel each ripple of her orgasm when he came and know she was as insanely lost to pleasure as he was.
“You didn’t like it?” she asked anxiously as he drew her to her feet.
“If you don’t get a condom on me soon, you’re going to have to start arousing me all over again.” He couldn’t believe the quiet, husked voice was his own. He sounded tender. He even felt a deep, complex stirring inside himself. To say, “I want you” didn’t come near to encompassing the expansive need in him.
The phrase still caused her blue eyes to glitter with jubilation. That naked look nearly made him use the desk right there and then.
He cupped her head so he could swoop his mouth onto hers and did everything in his power to convey his desire, to bestow as much pleasure as he could. Her sweet moan, the plaster of her lithe body into his, was his reward.
Swinging her into a cradle against his chest, he made the bedroom in record time, barely able to open the drawer for a condom and get it on without erupting. He removed her yoga pants and the panties beneath with a rending of delicate lace while she pushed off her top, her breasts hot and damp with sweat as he pressed himself over her, crushing her onto the bed beneath him. Using his knees to push her thighs apart, he couldn’t resist testing her arousal, finding her so wet and ready she bucked at the first touch of his fingers.
In one triumphant thrust, he filled her. A primal tingling raced down his spine as he made her his, only his, again and again and again.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
ALEKSY TOLD HIMSELF he was allowing the relationship to continue, and deepen, for Clair’s sake. Of all the men she’d come across in her life, she found him to be sexually compatible, so he was putting himself at her service. It would be unkind to deprive her of an opportunity to explore her sensual nature. At least he knew she was unique and treated her accordingly. Some might call it self-servicing, but he disagreed. No one had ever gone out of their way to make her happy. She deserved to be spoiled in every way, so he was doing it.
It wasn’t his usual exchange of luxuries for sex either. They were both getting exactly what they wanted from that side of things.
His mind drifted to the other morning when his housekeeper had called in sick. Clair had made him breakfast. As her short robe had fluttered around her bare thighs, teasing him with glimpses of her bottom, he’d grown so hard his appetite for food had fallen to a distant second behind his hunger for her. She’d noticed.
Seated on a kitchen chair, he’d pulled her to straddle him and they’d teased and tantalized each other, playing out the lovemaking, holding back even when he was inside her, driving each other crazy until he’d had to knock his eggs to the floor and take her on the table, urged to thrust hard and fast by her breathy pleas. They’d climaxed together, vocal and near violent, and had been equally shaken and quiet aft
erward.
He’d taken her back to bed, where she’d slept against him, her head a kitten weight on his chest. He had dozed, but mostly he’d berated himself for failing to use a condom.
What was he trying to do, tie her to him forever?
He hadn’t brought himself to mention it when she had stretched awake against him, but later in the day she’d shyly informed him she didn’t think pregnancy was an issue and that they’d have to curtail their favorite activity for a few days.
A weight of disappointment had settled on him, one he’d blamed on abstinence, but they’d been back to basics this morning and even though he was still fogged with sexual satisfaction, he was also aware of a cloud of unease hanging over him.
Guilt.
The more he learned about Clair, the more he knew how badly he’d taken advantage of her. If he had the least shred of conscience in him, he’d give her up, but watching her natural reserve evaporate was positively entrancing. She had made the first move this morning, rolling atop him and telling him how much she’d missed making love with him. How could any man be expected to forgo waking up to that?
Unable to bring the ends of this particular rope together, he stopped gazing out the window and gave up pretending that he was working. His ambition was nonexistent. He’d only been in the office an hour, but he began to pack up for lunch, excited as a schoolboy for the ring of the bell. Lazlo had inadvertently revealed while arranging Clair’s credit card the other day that her birthday was coming up. She had become flustered and dismissive when Aleksy had asked her how she wanted to celebrate, eventually confessing that birthdays had always been a disappointment along with Christmas.
He was determined to turn that around for her, starting with a visit to the city’s best jeweler on his way to meet her at an exclusive, sky-high restaurant. Enjoying the way she reacted when he surprised her with toys and trinkets didn’t make him selfish, he told himself. It was the opposite.
Wasn’t it?
A short time later, however, as he scanned past diamond rings to bracelets and pendants, he recalled the way his father had often taken pains to barter for some treasure or another that his mother had coveted. Once it had been a sewing machine, another time a pair of gold earrings. His father had rubbed his hands in glee at being able to surprise his wife with her heart’s desire.
That’s all he, Aleksy, wanted to do for Clair, but it felt as if he was making false promises. The sparkling rings mocked him. He couldn’t keep this up, keep her, forever, even if he wanted to.
Did he want to?
He clenched a fist, aware of a deep need to have her as readily at hand as everything else that was vital to his existence. Air, water. Clair.
Shaken, he dismissed his misgivings and set down a small fortune on a choker with sapphires in graduated shades of blue, brilliant and sparkling as her eyes when she laughed. He liked seeing her happy. Provoking her to smile didn’t make him a bad person.
His certainty lasted through a pleasant lunch where she practiced her fledgling Russian phrases and he expanded on some of the historical events she’d been reading about. She made him look at his city and country with new eyes, and hers widened with dazzlement when she unwrapped his gift.
“It’s too much,” she protested in a whisper, then teared up as her cake arrived, topped with half a dozen sparklers. “Aleksy!” Her lips trembled and she threw her arms around his neck, hugging him hard.
The most incredible tenderness infused him as he pulled her into his lap, startled by how much emotion he’d drawn out of her with such a little act.
“Your secret is out now, you know,” she said in a strained voice, drawing back enough to swipe under her eyes and offer him a beaming smile.
His heart did a sharp dip and rock in his chest. “Which secret is that?”
“You’re the biggest softie in the world. Not nearly as ominous and gruff as you want to appear.”
His mouth twitched and his conscience gave him a kick. He was misrepresenting himself if she really believed that.
“Can we keep it between us?” he said lightly, not wanting to spoil the mood, but pressing her back into her own chair.
“Of course,” she replied with an enigmatic smile. “I like knowing more about you than anyone else does.”
The remark niggled at him as they finished their coffee and left. His security had told more than one parked car to shove off over the last month, but there hadn’t been any for two or three days. His real secret was still safe.
Nevertheless, he was so distracted by his inner thoughts as they walked out of the building that they were in the scrum of paparazzi before he realized he was their object, not one of the international celebrities also dining here.
The clamor and flash and jostle was bad enough, especially with Clair to protect. He squeezed her to his side, aware of her hardening into a tight ball as the horrific questions were shouted not just in Russian, but English.
“Aleksy! Are you guilty of murder?”
* * *
After Aleksy’s remark about the paparazzi noting whom he’d taken to the Bolshoi, Clair had made a point of searching their names online each day. Sometimes she noticed a photographer aiming a lens at them as they stepped out, but not always. The gossip hunters were sly and determined, however. Every outing was documented whether she was aware it was happening or not, including their impulsive appearance at the Maslenitsa festival.
Being stalked unknowingly made her queasy, but until this circus, her main worry had been the helplessly enamored expression on her face that matched the one worn by his previous lovers. So much for her detachment!
But how could she be impassive when he’d made himself into her own personal playground? Each time they came together she grew a little more possessive of the territory she conquered. Now he’d gone out of his way to do something special for her, buying her a ridiculously extravagant gift and—even more precious—revealing a kind of thoughtfulness that made her feel maybe, just maybe, they were forming a connection that went beyond physical.
Still glowing with a sense of being exceptional in his eyes, she let him carry her along to the sidewalk, where they were suddenly mobbed in a way that truly frightened her. Ducking from the chaos into Aleksy’s solid presence, she tried to make sense of why this was happening and what were they saying?
She realized she understood more than the Russian moniker of Scarface, but other names. Victor Van Eych. His son.
“Did you know about the private investigation?”
“How do you respond to the accusation you sent Van Eych to an early grave?”
“You’ve been arrested for murder before. Are you guilty?”
The words smashed through her euphoria like a rock through a window.
Seconds later, Clair found herself shoved into the back of his town car, jolted by more than the sudden end to the snapping and snarling of the paparazzi frenzy. Aleksy gave Ivan sharp instructions to return them home as he jerked loose his tie and ran fingers into his hair, then made a call in Russian.
She stared at him, conscience squirming at what was going on in her mind, but she couldn’t help the reaction. That white line on his face seemed too revealing.
Murder?
His cheek ticked. He knew what she was thinking and his face hardened, but she couldn’t help how shaken she was. Adrenaline saturated her blood. She tried to scramble herself together, tried to stop trembling, but she kept asking herself, What kind of man had she attached herself to?
One who bought her a necklace she somehow still had gripped in her tense hands. Also a new laptop, new smart phone, a tablet. Clothes, meals, tickets to shows. There was no end to the generosity he bestowed on her, but he wasn’t really soft and kind. He was hard and angry if she cared to remember their first meeting and—her mind tripped to think of it—capable
of murder?
No, her heart cried, but his expression wasn’t that of someone who was incensed at being falsely accused. There was too much resentment. Too much bitter resignation.
“We’ll go to Piter,” he said once they’d made it into the safety of his flat. When she only stared blankly, he clarified, “St. Petersburg. Things will be ugly here for a while.”
Uglier than right now? He was like ancient iron, all pitted darkness with grim angles in his face. Her mind was grappling to process the impossible. One question burned on her tongue: Is it true? Her heart pounded.
“We?” Her lips felt numb.
“You’re not going back to London if that’s what you’re thinking.” Implacable.
She gave a near-hysterical choke that wasn’t anything like a laugh. “I don’t know what I’m thinking.” Her gaze circled wildly, searching for a place to land, glancing off the illusion of a home she’d begun to see in these flawlessly decorated walls.
If she hadn’t been with him outside and heard those shouts, would he have told her the reason they were leaving Moscow? Or would he be selling this sudden trip as a romantic getaway?
Would she have bought in? Was she that naive and desperate for affection?
“Pack for staying in.” Acrid hostility coated each word.
She swallowed, ears ringing. She’d never felt so alone in her life, so aware that her complete disappearance would go unnoticed by the world.
“I need to know what happened, Aleksy.” Her stomach trembled, but she managed to keep her voice steady as she met his forbidding gaze.
“I told you that some people will do anything for money.” A vilified sneer pulled at his lips.
“Like lie?” Please tell me it’s all lies.
He stared at her, his gaze not the hard, sharp, dangerous blade she expected. It was supreme blankness. Bleakness. Flat, unpolished bronze.