by Penny Jordan
A brief telling glance from the paperwork in front of him to his watch, followed with an inhaled breath on her part at the powerful surge of the jet’s engines as they took off, told Laura all she needed to know about Vasilii’s control over every aspect of his life. She and her work would be subjected to exactly the same kind of scrutiny he gave every aspect of his business affairs, she warned herself, thanking the steward for the coffee he had brought her once the plane had levelled off. She certainly wasn’t going to let the fact that Vasilii still hadn’t really spoken to her affect her professionalism, Laura assured herself, and she opened her laptop bag to remove her own papers.
She’d checked the flight time to their destination—it was two and a half hours—and she would certainly rather have Vasilii ignoring her for as much of that time as possible rather than cross-questioning her about the information he had given her to read. Not that she had any qualms about her ability to do the work she had been hired to do. In fact she was rather looking forward to the challenge of what she suspected would be some very complex and challenging negotiations, with both sides bargaining hard for their own agendas and both sides determined to get what they wanted.
From his own seat Vasilii watched as Laura bent over the papers she had removed from her case. The way the light inside the cabin fell on her revealed the creamy slenderness of her throat, the heavy weight of the gold earrings once again drawing attention to the delicacy of her earlobes. Today she was wearing her hair held back off her face. A strand of it had escaped to curl against her neck, as though deliberately tempting him to reach out and wind it around his finger.
Somehow, out of nowhere, a feeling that was totally unfamiliar to him and unwanted by him tightened Vasilii’s stomach muscles. In denial of its raw betraying ache, he immediately stamped down on it and suppressed it.
The steward had slipped unobtrusively out of the cabin. Vasilii might not want to talk to her, but there were certain things she needed to discuss with him, Laura recognised as she skimmed through the notes she had made for herself the previous evening. In her previous job she had been used to acting on her own initiative—John had encouraged that. He had said that the only way she would grow was by making her own decisions and her own mistakes and learning from them.
She wondered if John and Nancy had managed to sort out their problems now that she, Laura, was out of the picture. He loved his fiancée, no doubt, and had been terrified of losing her. What must it be like to be loved like that, no matter what one did? Laura would never know. She simply wasn’t the kind of woman who inspired that kind of love. John had often teased her that she frightened off the men who wanted to date her with her dedication to her career. She had to have that dedication, though. Money had been very tight after she had been orphaned, and she had learned young the importance of supporting herself financially.
A glance at Vasilii showed her that he had momentarily stopped working to drink his coffee, so getting up and going over to him, Laura asked, ‘If you could spare me a couple of minutes? There are some things I need to check with you.’
Putting down his coffee cup, Vasilii indicated the empty seat closest to his own. Thankfully, as far as Laura was concerned, it was still distanced from it by a couple of feet. She wasn’t ready yet to go too deeply into just what it was about the thought of any physical proximity to Vasilii that made her feel so tense and wary about her own possible vulnerability.
It made logical sense to reassure herself that it was not caused by his physical presence but by his interpretation of her morals and the curt warning he had given her. They had been more than enough to make any woman’s pride sting, and to give her good reason to feel wary about inadvertently giving him the opportunity to misjudge her further. And yet niggling deep down in her conscience was a small seed of self-doubt that kept on reminding her of just how much she had once admired and desired him. But as a girl, and in a fantasy which had borne no reality to the kind of person he actually was. It was just her own determination to make sure that nothing she did or said gave Vasilii Demidov any opportunity whatsoever to accuse her of wanting any kind of relationship with him at all other than that of his temporary PA. Because she didn’t.
Sitting primly in the seat, she began, ‘The hotel where we’ll be staying—’
‘Is owned by a fellow Russian.’ Vasilii stopped her, giving a dismissive shrug. ‘It has been designed to attract the top end of the luxury market—Wei Wong Zhang mentioned it specifically. I have reserved two floors. The lower floor for Wei Wong Zhang’s entourage and the top floor for Wei Wong Zhang and his family and for us. There are two suites—’
‘The Royal Suite and the Empire Suite,’ Laura acknowledged. ‘I’ve studied the floor plans, and both suites have exactly the same floor space. I don’t know if you’ve made any decision yet as to which suite should be allocated to Wei Wong Zhang, but if you haven’t it occurs to me that to allocate the Empire Suite to him might be seen as a good diplomatic move.’
‘Why do you say that?’ Vasilii challenged her.
‘Because of the name—the Empire Suite. Wei Wong Zhang is a student of the history of the Chinese Emperors and their dynasties. It would be a subtle way of acknowledging his expertise in that field.’
Vasilii nodded his head.
‘Very well. You’d better text ahead to the hotel and tell them. We’ll be arriving several hours ahead of the Chinese anyway, to give us time to welcome them appropriately.’
‘I thought perhaps a formal banquet, to which you could also invite the hotel owners? You did say that Wei Wong Zhang wishes to develop resorts in China?’
‘Anything else?’
‘Wei Wong Zhang’s wife’s name, as you know, is Wu Ying. Ying in Chinese can mean water flower. Bearing that in mind, I would like to order flowers for the suite that reflect that. It would be both a compliment to her and—’
‘A subtle way of letting the Chinese know that we are aware of the nuances of Chinese negotiations?’ Vasilii guessed.
‘Yes. I went online yesterday after I left you, and did as much research as I could into the family and their likes and dislikes. Wei Wong Zhang is a sophisticated man with sophisticated tastes. He is highly educated and has travelled extensively in America, while Wu Ying has remained at home in China raising their daughter. If the gossip is true, Wei Wong Zhang has forced his wife to accept within their family circle his son by an American-Chinese mistress by giving Gang Li the status of “nephew”. On the surface it seems, therefore, as though she has very little status within their relationship. Plus, Gang Li isn’t just being groomed to take over the business, if what you’ve told me is true. He is also the existing power behind the throne of that business. However, Wu Ying is connected through her own family to some of the most powerful men in the Chinese government, so I would guess that Wu Ying is every bit as important to Wei Wong Zhang’s business in her own way as Gang Li. If I am correct then it makes good sense to ensure that both she and her role are accorded proper respect. Of course if you have information that I do not have access to that contradicts that …’
‘No, I don’t.’ Although Vasilii’s tone was curt he was in actual fact extremely—if unwillingly—impressed by Laura’s grasp of the situation, and her interpretation of it.
He was just about to point out to her that they had still to discuss her understanding of the negotiations so far when the plane jolted abruptly as it encountered turbulence in the atmosphere outside. The papers Laura had been balancing on her lap slid to the floor, but as she got up to retrieve them the force of the turbulence increased. The plane dropped so swiftly that she lost her balance completely, the movement of the plane throwing her in Vasilii’s direction.
Instinctively, as she began to fall, Laura reached out to steady herself, grabbing hold of the first thing she could—only to realise too late that, instead of clinging to some safely inanimate object, what she was actually holding on to was Vasilii’s arm and thigh. Even worse, the fierce jolt of the ai
rcraft had thrown her right across Vasilii’s body, so that her face was against his shoulder, her body resting against his.
Arousal—male and urgent, fiercely demanding, owning no master and recognising no control—struck like lightning, burning away his self-control, seizing Vasilii’s body before he could stop what was happening to him. The mindless response of his flesh to the intimacy of Laura Westcotte powered through him a hot desire that seared and roiled like red-hot lava, with a speed that overwhelmed his unwary self-control. Like border guards lolling in the sunshine, his defences had let the intruder take control before they could stop it.
He had somehow developed an extra set of senses which now sprang up inside him, every single one of them registering their awareness of and reaction to the intimacy of her body next to his. He had removed his suit jacket to work, and he could feel the warmth of her breath against his shoulder through the expensive sea island cotton of his shirt. He could feel her hair brushing his neck, and the impulse to lift his hands and slide them through its softness and then bind her to him whilst he punished the soft sweetness of her mouth for the way in which she had breached his defences to make him want her poured through him with molten heat.
The need he could feel beating within him was a savagely primitive male call to strip back the protective clothing of civilisation and modern manners, to rip through reality and go back to a place where instinct was all. Her presence in his arms, against his body, had destroyed the self-control he had thought so secure that he no longer even questioned the strength of that security, arousing within him a need and a hunger that filled him with shocked disbelief. Stunned immobility turned into an agonised inability to move as his own body subjected him to the fierce pulse of desire that heated his blood and his flesh, throbbing with betraying intensity only centimetres from where her hand was crushed against his thigh.
Sometimes in life things happened—life-changing events that came seemingly out of nowhere to wreak havoc and tear apart certainties. His mother’s death had been one of those events, the accident that had killed his father another, and now there was this, Vasilii recognised as his mind and his body fought against one another for control of his senses. He wanted her, and he wanted her badly. Very badly. At some deep-seated, instinctive and totally male level he wanted her with a burning desire that right now felt like the rocket-fuel-raw heat of a volcano crushed down inside him, all too volatile and ready to explode.
This should not be happening. It must not be allowed to happen. He couldn’t understand why it was happening. Not like this. Not with this overpowering intensity and certainly not with this particular woman. Neither his arms nor his flesh were strangers to what it felt like to touch a woman. He was a man, after all, even if the turbulent desires of his youth had been tamed to a more controlled recognition of the benefit of a discreet sexual relationship with a woman who understood his rules. It was true that the demands of his business empire meant that it was many months since his last relationship had ended, but he had not missed the woman who had been his lover. He had certainly not missed having sex to the extent that its absence could logically be held responsible for the intensity of the savage need that was possessing him now.
But it must be. Vasilii was not prepared to tolerate any other explanation for his reaction. His body had obviously decided that it needed a woman—but not this woman. In different circumstances the very fact that he had detected within himself any kind of weakness where someone he employed was concerned would have had him cancelling Laura’s contract immediately and replacing her. However, as angrily reluctant as he was to admit it, she was far too necessary to the upcoming negotiations for him to do that.
She was in Vasilii’s arms, lying across his body, breathing in the warm male scent of him in a way that made her both want to recoil from that intimacy and—even more dangerously—to move closer to it. Her face was still buried against Vasilii’s shoulder. If she opened her mouth she would be able to feel his flesh and muscles, his collarbone through his shirt. She could feel the sinews of his arm beneath the fingers with which she was gripping it.
Most intimate and most shocking of all, though, was not the fact that her hand was splayed out against his thigh, sandwiched between their bodies as she lay against him, but that—wilfully, wrongly, recklessly and humiliatingly against all good sense and everything else she could think of—she could feel the demand of her own desire to seek more of that heat, more of that sensation of feeling the pulse of his blood, more of the knowledge relayed to her fingertips that beneath the expensive fabric of his suit trousers she could actually feel the silky softness of male body hair.
An explosion of female reaction shot through her, bringing her senses into shockingly sensual awareness not just of Vasilii as a man but of her own immediate instinctive and intense female response to that knowledge.
The raw, bare, unthinkable truth was that she wanted him.
At some level—against each and every one of the inbuilt warnings within her, against all logic and common sense—something in her hungered for him. That knowledge was like a white flash of burning awareness, searing her defences. It must be immediately banished, leaving only the pain of the scar on her conscience behind it.
Vasilii had laid down the rules of their relationship. She had accepted them. She had believed she would have no difficulty whatsoever in adhering to them. And yet now this accidental and unwanted physical contact with him had shown her that somewhere within her there was a vulnerability so dangerous that it rendered her fearful and doubting her self-control.
The plane had now steadied itself, and was flying calmly in a clear blue sky.
The turbulence might have come from outside the plane, but something told Laura that there would be no respite for her from the turbulence that Vasilii was able to create inside her.
How much time had passed? Seconds? A heartbeat? A brief interruption of real time that meant nothing and yet at the same time meant everything when he weighed it against what it had forced him to accept about himself, Vasilii acknowledged. He felt Laura shift her weight and push herself away from him in the thick, heavy silence that had now invaded the cabin. His senses—so dangerously sensitive to her now—could tell the difference between the scent of her skin, the warmth of her perfume, the fragrance of her soap. They urged him not to let her escape but instead to seek retribution for inflicting their torment on him. He wanted, he recognised on a brutal surge of self-knowledge, to strip her clothes from her body and his from his own and to wrap her in the scent of his own maleness until he had marked her as his own.
Laura could feel Vasilii thrusting away from her as she eased herself back onto her own feet. She couldn’t bring herself to look at him. She dared not. If she did … If she did he might all too easily see in her expression, in her eyes, the shaming, shocking, humiliating reality that was her body’s aching longing to go back to him.
How had it happened?
Laura didn’t know. She’d never been the kind of person who wanted to do something simply because it was forbidden, so the fact that Vasilii had told her so coldly not to get any ideas about him was hardly likely to have been the cause. The loss of her parents had left her feeling unsafe, and with a need to protect herself from challenging circumstances. She’d grown up ‘doing the right thing’ and ‘behaving responsibly’ towards herself and towards others, which had made the accusations against her with regard to John all the more hard to bear.
Apart from that youthful crush she’d had on Vasilii there had never really been a time when she’d felt the power of her own sexual need as a force beyond her control. And even with that crush her desire had been youthful and innocent, not in any way as … as demanding as it had been just now. Was it possible somehow for something of what she had felt at fourteen to have sparked off what she had felt lying against Vasilii’s body? It seemed improbable, but what other explanation could there be?
Whatever had caused it, it must not happen again. Never. Ever.
Picking up her scattered papers, she registered Vasilii’s continuing silence. His way of showing her his disapproval, she guessed. At least he couldn’t accuse her of deliberately causing the turbulence that had taken her into such intimate contact with him.
Not causing the turbulence, no. But he was capable of accusing her of making use of it, Laura recognised. She was glad that she now had her back to him and he couldn’t see the telltale colour heating her skin. The truth was that if he did choose to make that allegation she could neither entirely reject or deny it. From now on she must make sure that she kept the right kind of physical distance between them, and that everything she said and did where Vasilii was concerned was wholly and entirely professionally based.
Vasilii must never know how she had felt.
What had happened to him must never be allowed to happen again. Even if Laura had not been working for him, even if he had not had the doubts about her that he did, Vasilii knew that he could never allow himself to have a relationship with her. If he did he could end up wanting her too much, and letting that wanting get out of control. Just as he had wanted his mother to come back and not be dead. The pain of that had been like the burn of Russia’s winter ice, when life returned to numbed flesh—searing, agonising, life-destroying. Laura Westcotte must never know how he had felt.
CHAPTER FOUR
‘VASILII, my old friend.’
Laura was glad of the opportunity afforded by the owner of the hotel’s warm personal welcome to Vasilii as they stepped out of the helicopter that had brought them to the hotel from the airport to stay in the background—if only to give her the chance to take in in privacy the full, dizzyingly opulent splendour of the hotel itself.