by Penny Jordan
CHAPTER NINE
HE HAD stopped, turned away from her, denied her because of her virginity? Laura opened her mouth to speak and then closed it again.
Vasilii could almost feel her confusion and her pain. He could certainly feel the ache of her continued physical longing because it echoed his own. If she were to touch him now … if he were to touch her … But he mustn’t, and she mustn’t—for her own sake. There was nothing for her with him. He had, after all, decided a long time ago not to allow himself to become emotionally involved with anyone, and she would want that. She would need it. He had to find a way to drive her away—to make her turn from him, to stop her from making him do what he must not.
Anger and pain burned with equal intensity inside him in a jumbled confusion of emotions that threatened to tear away the foundations of everything he believed about himself. They spilled out into the defensive cruelty with which he told her bitingly, ‘I don’t like traps. Especially when they are so obviously baited.’
Traps? He thought she was trying to trap him?
‘I don’t understand what you mean,’ Laura protested.
‘Oh, yes, you do. You’re far too intelligent not to,’ Vasilii corrected her. ‘There’s only one reason a woman of your age and in your circumstances—an attractive, desirable, intelligent woman—chooses to remain a virgin. And that has to be because she’s decided her virginity is going to be a bargaining tool.’
‘What? A bargaining tool for what?’ Laura demanded. She felt both bewildered and shocked, her mind churning with emotion whilst her body was still awash with hormones and its desire for intimacy with the man whose words now said that they were opponents.
‘For whatever she wants to bargain for—a rich lover … marriage … There are still men in this world who believe that only a woman’s virginity can guarantee her worth and thus her value to him. I am not one of those men. In a lover I want and expect experience and skill. And, since I do not intend to marry, a virgin bride has no value for me. You made a big mistake in fixing your ambitions on me, Laura. Even if I did want a wife, I’m not fool enough to be flattered by the gift of your virginity. The “See how special I think you are? I’ve saved my virginity for you and so you must repay me with the kind of commitment that comes with a wedding ring” scenario doesn’t cut it with me. I don’t intend to marry—ever. You’ve wasted your time—and not for the first time. What really happened with John? Were you hoping to persuade him to ditch his fiancée for you? The word is that ultimately he’ll be the company’s CEO and a very wealthy man. He was the one you were saving your virginity for, wasn’t he, Laura?’
The tearing, slicing, stabbing agony saying those words caused him, and what that pain meant, drove him to fresh defensive anger. ‘You hoped to tempt and torment him into a personal relationship with you that you could turn to your own advantage. How galling it must have been for you when he became engaged to someone else. No wonder his fiancée wanted rid of you—especially when she found out you’d made one last desperate attempt to win him over. And, having lost him, you obviously decided that I could take his place in your plans.’
He was deliberately whipping up his anger against her, Vasilii knew, as he drove himself to resist the aching longing that was still there inside him. He couldn’t give in now. If he did … If he did then he would have opened the door to a future that held the threat of a return to the pain that had almost destroyed him once.
‘No! Never. You have no right to say that. And you are so wrong,’ Laura insisted.
Vasilii’s accusations would have been laughable if they hadn’t been so demeaning. How could Vasilii even think those things about her, never mind accuse her of them? The pain that lashed into her cut her pride and her self-respect to the bone.
‘I have every right. And logically I can’t be wrong,’ Vasilii contradicted her. ‘For a woman of your age in these modern times to still be a virgin there has to be a reason—and none of the ones I can think of apply to you, given the enthusiasm with which you were ready to give your prized and carefully guarded virginity to me. No, Laura, you can deny it all you like. It won’t make any difference to me.’
Of all the scenarios she might have imagined of being taken to bed by Vasilii, being rejected by him because of her virginity was the least likely of them. Ridiculously and humiliatingly, she recognised, she had wanted him so much, been aroused by him so much, that she had not given her virginity a thought.
‘Better luck with your next would-be target,’ Vasilii told her cruelly. He had to whip up his anger against himself and against her. It was the only way he had of stopping himself from taking her in his arms. The shock of that awareness stiffened every defensive instinct he had against what it meant, and made him fight all the harder to reject both Laura and what he was experiencing.
When she shook her head in rejection of his cruelty, and repeated with determined pride, ‘You’re wrong!’ Vasilii made himself ignore the voice inside himself that urged him to believe her and to take her back in his arms.
It was unthinkable that he should give in to that need for her. He didn’t even want to acknowledge it. Because if he did that would mean … That would mean that the straight highway of his life, free of the danger of emotion, had somehow taken a hidden turn that had appeared out of nowhere like a mirage in the desert. And a mirage was exactly what these … these ridiculous unwanted and dangerous feelings that were invading him were. A mirage that would disappear in the blink of an eye and as easily as love itself could disappear.
Pain from the volcano deep inside him that had never fully been sealed off burned hotly, spewing out the anger he needed to drive himself back to his empty highway. ‘No?’ he challenged Laura acerbically. ‘Ask yourself, what kind of woman of your age is still a virgin? Only one who has some kind of hidden agenda.’
‘Instead of saying that to me, you should be asking yourself what kind of man you are, Vasilii, and what it is that has made you so embittered and afraid to let anyone into your life,’ Laura fought back valiantly.
Laura’s words, coming so hard on the heels of the thoughts and feelings already tormenting him, were forcing Vasilii to acknowledge how different Laura was from any other woman he had known. She could touch places within him that no one else had ever come close to touching. She could arouse him emotionally as well as physically, to an intensity that no other woman had done. All the more reason not to get involved with her, the inner voice of his defensive system warned him. All the more reason to fight hard and deny the effect she was having on him, to turn his back on her, to turn away from her and reject her—even if doing so made him feel as though he was ripping a piece of his own flesh away from his body.
Silently Laura gathered up her discarded clothes and left the room. If those were tears she was holding back they were tears of female anger—tears of pity for all that Vasilii could have been and was not. They were certainly not tears for what she had been denied, she assured herself as she opened the door into her own bedroom.
Daylight, but the morning light brought her no escape from the humiliation and the despair of last night, Laura recognised as she showered and then dressed for the formal farewell meeting with the Chinese. She was a woman whose mind and body were fighting on opposite sides of a battle that neither of them could win. Her thoughts might be filled with and fuelled by the searing pain of her own angry awareness of Vasilii’s unfair judgement of her, and her need to defend herself from the accusations he had made, but her body was refusing to listen to that anger or take into account her wounded pride. All it cared about was the persistent ache of longing it had been left with, thankfully dimmed now from its original raging intensity to something less likely to totally overthrow the tight self-control she was trying to keep over it.
It would make more sense and be far safer to whip up her justifiable anger against Vasilii than to focus on the ache inside her body, Laura knew. He was completely wrong about her reasons for still being a virgin. Remaining
one had never been a choice she had made, it was simply something that had somehow happened.
Because for her there had only been Vasilii?
No! The Vasilii she had fallen for years ago didn’t even exist. She had created him inside her own foolish imagination. The real man was nothing like the hero she had imagined. But Vasilii as he was had still aroused her. She had still wanted him. Was that because of the adrenaline of the terrible fear she had experienced contrasting with her relief at being rescued last night? Adrenaline was a very powerful hormone. Everyone knew that. And love was a very powerful emotion.
Love? She did not love Vasilii. She had far too much common sense to commit that kind of emotional suicide. Really? So where had her common sense been last night, then? That had been a mistake—a momentary failure of reason and self-control. It wouldn’t happen again. What? Not even if Vasilii were to come to her now and start touching her? Start kissing her again as he had done last night?
The agonised moan produced by her protesting body had to be smothered in her throat. She had things to do—a life to get on with. In another half an hour she would be standing with Vasilii, bidding goodbye to the Chinese, and when she did she was not going to let him know so much as by a single breath just what she was now going through.
Morning, and not even the coldest of cold showers had the power to diminish the fiercely hungry ache of need still possessing his body. It seemed that nothing would—or at least nothing that he could do, Vasilii recognised grimly. What the hell was happening to him? Physical sexual desire was an appetite that he had always controlled within himself. It had never come close to controlling him—filling him, driving him, tormenting him so that he had hardly dared close his eyes last night in case he started imagining … Imagining what? That Laura was back in his arms? His senses surrounded and filled by the sight, the scent, the taste of her …?
Angrily Vasilii started to get dressed. By rights there should be nothing in his thoughts this morning other than finding a solution to the total disaster with this contract. By rights there should be no one on his mind other than Wei Wong Zhang. By rights …
Breakfast. Previously a shared private time of the day during which Vasilii had run through with her the working order of the day ahead and the targets he had set for it.
This day—this breakfast—they sat on either side of the room service trolley in grim silence. In reality the last thing Laura felt like doing was so much as being in the same room as Vasilii, never mind eating, but she still had her pride—and that pride was demanding that she behave as though nothing out of the ordinary had happened at all. Professionally she still had a job to do, and she was determined to prove to herself that she could still do it.
Just how hard that was going to be had been brought home to her by the fact that somehow, despite the smell of freshly squeezed orange juice and piping hot coffee, her senses were still picking up and identifying the disturbingly male scent of Vasilii’s skin. How was that possible? How had she become so sensually aware of him that she could recognise the intimacy of that scent? How? Did she really need to ask? She was sensually aware of him because last night he had left her body sexually unsatisfied, and right now it still hungered for him. She recognised his scent because she craved the intimacy of that scent on her own skin. Craved the intimacy of his touch, his kiss, his possession …
The hand holding her coffee cup trembled. Quickly Laura put the cup down.
Draining his own coffee cup, Vasilii reached for the copy of the Financial Times that had been delivered with their breakfast. Because he needed its protection to retreat behind? Protection? Why should he need protection? He would have needed some last night if things had continued to their natural conclusion. Laura probably wouldn’t even have thought of that. Did she realise the risk she had almost taken? Did she realise how vulnerable she might have been had he chosen to take what she had been offering him? This morning she could quite easily not still be in possession of her virginity—all the bargaining power she might have been able to use on another man gone.
The bell to the suite buzzed, and the intercom crackled into life to announce the arrival of the hotel owner.
‘It’s Gang Li,’ Alexei told them both without any preamble. ‘He’s gone.’
‘Gone?’
Despite the icy coldness of Vasilii’s voice there was no mistaking his fury. Laura found that she was flinching from it as it whipped round the silent air of the room.
‘He was supposed to be under guard.’
‘He was. But it seems that he managed to bribe the guards to let him go and give him an escort to the airport, where he hired a private jet. As he has dual nationality he could end up heading for either China or America. I’ve spoken with the Chinese, and they’re making arrangements to apprehend him if he tries to return to China. I’m sorry, Vasilii. Heaven knows how much he must have paid them. The guards have disappeared, of course, and we’re only able to piece together what must have happened.’
Vasilii’s grim nod of his head was his only response.
‘I’m sorry,’ he apologised to Laura, without looking at her. He concentrated instead on looking towards the wall once Alexei had gone.
‘It isn’t your fault,’ Laura responded. Her main concern was for the other women Gang Li might target rather than herself. She, after all, had had Vasilii to save her.
It was his fault, though, Vasilii felt. He should have realised that Gang Li might try something like that.
‘He isn’t going to get away with this. I’ll speak with Wei Wong,’ he told Laura. ‘I want to make sure that neither he nor what he did is allowed to disappear.’
Laura could see that he meant it. Why was it every time she told herself that she had seen something in him to destroy her teenage image of him as hero and protector he then did or said something that revealed the opposite? It was almost as though someone somewhere was determined to keep her … What? Hoping for the impossible? She would be a fool indeed to do that.
Laura had expected them to be the first to arrive in the room that had been put aside for their formal parting with the Chinese, but to her surprise Wu Ying was already there waiting for them—and on her own. As always she was immaculately and elegantly dressed—her smile for Laura was genuinely warm as she greeted her.
‘My husband will be with us shortly,’ she told them both, ‘but there is something I must say to you first—about this terrible thing done to Laura by Gang Li. You may be sure that Gang Li will not be allowed to get away with what he has done. My cousin is determined on that.’
‘I certainly hope that the justice he deserves is meted out to him,’ Vasilii told her grimly.
‘It will be,’ she said firmly. ‘You may be assured of that. And, with regard to the contract, my cousin has informed me that from now he wishes to be involved in the ongoing negotiations. Until now it has not been considered suitable for him to announce any government interest in this project. However, he is very impressed with your plans, Vasilii, and he has suggested that you and Laura return to China with us so that the negotiations can continue there.
‘Laura has been a very strong and determined advocate on your behalf whenever we have spoken together. She has worked tirelessly and consistently to show me how mutually beneficial a business collaboration between us would be. Her honesty and trustworthiness have shown me that her respect and admiration for your business skills are genuine, and that has helped me to report back very favourably to my cousin.
‘I have to confess that I was not entirely surprised to learn that the two of you are in a personal relationship with one another,’ Wu Ying told them, adding with a pleased smile, ‘For a woman these things are much plainer to see than they are to a man, and from the start I detected a closeness between you that was not merely professional.’
Laura couldn’t bear to look at Vasilii. If she did she knew that he would see the pain and humiliation she couldn’t hide. Not that her discomfort was Wu Ying’s fault. She had br
ought it on herself.
He hadn’t lost the contract—thanks in no small part to Laura. She had been right when she had warned him that Wu Ying might be more powerful than she seemed. Vasilii struggled with feelings as unexpected as they were confusing. Was that really a fierce sense of pride he felt in Laura for her professional skills? Was that an acknowledgement that her judgement in human terms had been better than his own? Was that also a primitive male need within him to publicly claim her as his own?
‘I have my cousin’s authority to invite you to join us at the winery of which he and I are joint owners,’ Wu Ying continued. ‘May I tell him that you will accept his invitation to return to China with us?’
‘Yes, indeed. I shall be honoured to accept it,’ Vasilii answered her, after a small but—for Laura—a telling pause. Vasilii knew that he really had no choice other than to accept. And it meant that he would have more time with Laura …
‘Excellent. Then we shall celebrate the continuation of our negotiations instead of saying goodbye. Now I must leave you whilst I convey the good news of your acceptance of our invitation to my cousin and my husband. Our flight leaves at midday.’
Wu Ying had gone—a determined whirlwind of a woman who was now showing herself in her real light, Vasilii recognised, torn between relief at the good news about the continued negotiations and the realisation of just how much he might owe to Laura for that opportunity. She had seen what he had not, and in doing so she had shown just how very good at her job she was. And it wasn’t just via her professional role in his life that he was being forced to recognise the influence she was having on him. Like the ever-shifting sands of the desert, vulnerable to the lightest of breezes, the foundations of his own rock-steady fixed decisions on how he wanted to live his life and why were being challenged and moved by her—even if she herself did not know it. And must not know it. He wasn’t comfortable with what was happening to him. He didn’t want it, and he certainly didn’t like it.