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“Your charm hasn’t landed you one?”
He shrugged off her scorn. “I’m between lovers. The takeover has kept me busy. Now I’m tallying up my acquisitions, preparing to enjoy the spoils.”
“Well, I don’t happen to come with this particular acquisition.” She kneed the side of the mattress. “I didn’t have to share this bed to sleep in it and I had a paycheck besides. Don’t throw that look at me!” she snapped, hackles rising when he curled his lip. “Victor was going to underwrite the foundation, and it—”
“By how much?” he broke in.
“Pardon?”
“How much was he going to donate toward ‘brightening your day’?”
“He— You— Oh…” She ground her teeth, glaring at his impassive expression. Planting her hands on her hips, she stood tall and said clearly, “Ten.” That ought to make him realize how seriously Brighter Days had been taken.
“Million?” His eyebrows shot toward his hairline.
“Thousand,” she corrected, startled. She could dream of having millions at her disposal, but Victor’s promised funds would have been enough to keep the doors of the home open until she raised more.
Aleksy removed his mobile from his pocket. “You do sell yourself short. We’ll add a zero to that and call it a deal.”
“What?” she squeaked, but he was already connecting to someone, speaking Russian, then switching to English.
“Daniels, yes. You have her details through payroll? Perfect.” He ended the call.
“What did you just do?” she gasped.
“The transfer will complete in the morning.” He pushed his mobile back into his pocket. “Come here, Clair.”
She stayed where she was, aghast. Infuriated. Was it wrong to be dazzled and elated, as well? Oh, what she could do at Brighter Days with a hundred thousand pounds!
“That’s—” She cleared her throat, recalling he was under the impression he’d just bought her. Her stomach turned over, except…well, it wasn’t with the repulsion she expected. It was like peaking on a roller-coaster track and feeling the car drop away while she hung suspended and breathless. She bottomed out quickly, though, rattled by the way the world began whirring by as the situation picked up speed. She didn’t know which way was up. She wanted off.
“That’s a very generous donation,” she choked, blindly scrabbling up her folded T-shirt. She snapped it out and creased it into a messy rectangle against the bedspread. “I’ll issue a proper receipt for the full amount after I’ve moved it into the trust account.”
“Do whatever you want with it. It’s yours. Now let’s find more pleasant surroundings. I’ll send someone to finish packing your things.”
“The transfer hasn’t cleared.” Terror provided the quick retort, but it felt incredibly good to lob it at him. Better than revealing how thoroughly he mixed her up. “And given that you repulse me—”
“Do I?” He launched from his lazy slouch in the doorway. She only had time for one backward stumbling step before he’d clamped hard arms around her, pulled her into the wall of his chest, then crushed her mouth with his.
Claw his eyes out, she told herself, but aside from the fact that her arms were trapped between them, the sensation of his mouth closing on hers was too remarkable to reject. He was domineering and inexorable, but this wasn’t punishment or force; it was—
Hot. Sexy. Enticing. She instinctively parted her lips under the angle of his firm ones, and his tongue speared wetly into her mouth, shooting such a jolt of pleasure through her that her knees buckled. She moaned and lifted her chin, seeking another thrust and another. Rocking her mouth against his and moaning again when his hand moved to her bottom, crushing her against the hard ridge at his hips.
It was unfamiliar and overwhelming, but she wanted to cry, it felt so good to be wrapped in strong arms, mind blinded to all but the pleasure flaring up from her abdomen, filling her with a blossoming sense of rightness. She didn’t know she was moaning with gratification until he drew away and she heard her own mewl of distress.
With a final nip of his teeth over her swollen lips, he released her, letting her crumple with dazed clumsiness onto the bed’s pillows.
He made an adjustment to himself, his stature powerful as a warrior’s, his harsh breath moving through parted lips, the grim line softened by the sheen of their kiss. “We can wait until morning if you really want to play hard to get, but I don’t think you do.”
“I do,” she gasped, struggling to sit up. The laundry basket tumbled off the narrow bed, dumping all her packing onto the carpet at his feet. “I don’t sleep with men for money. I’ll transfer the money right back to you. You can’t force me into bed with you.”
“I don’t have to,” he said on a snort, shoulders pinned back in a hard flex. “You just proved you want to.” He paused to let her absorb what she couldn’t deny.
An awful telltale heat suffused her, making her dig her fingernails into the edge of the mattress. It was true, she wasn’t immune to him. He kept effortlessly brushing past the invisible shield that usually protected her and branding himself against her core.
“So what if I do? My instincts are warning me that it would be a bad idea,” she told him, holding his gaze and trying to listen to those instincts even as everything in her reached longingly toward him. She could barely think of anything but sating this unfamiliar hunger when he looked at her as if he wanted to flatten her onto the bed and finish what he’d started. Her breath stuttered and her nipples contracted to tight, painful points. All of her felt magnetized toward him, but she stayed put, maintaining the distance.
Something flashed in his eyes. Frustration maybe, but it had a flicker of desperation that quickly dissolved into triumph. “And of course there’s your reputation. Wouldn’t you like to preserve that?”
She frowned. “Sleeping with you would ruin it!” Her voice came out throaty and oddly tinged with anticipation. She was struggling for logic, but all she could wonder was, how would it feel to have him on top of her? Inside her? An earthy part of her desperately wanted to know. No one had ever made her feel so much, and the feelings weren’t emotional and painful, but physical and exciting. Thrilling. Her lips were still burning, aching for the return of his.
She didn’t even know him.
But she wanted to. From the second he’d stepped off the elevator, she’d been wondering who he was. Her online search had turned up dry details about his business interests, nothing about his background. Where had he come from, besides the biggest country in the world? Why had he singled her out? Why did she react to him like this?
“You read the memo,” he said, interrupting her thoughts with grating flatness. “A full investigation has been launched at the firm. Anyone found to have colluded with Victor’s illegal activities will be terminated. I expect more than a few rats to jump ship before they’re fired.”
It took a moment for his statement to penetrate. She knew she wasn’t a rat, so she hadn’t been frightened. Until now. “I didn’t know what he was up to,” she reminded him, experiencing the stabbing sense of being falsely accused. “You don’t think people will say I was fired because— I would never take what I didn’t earn!”
“Says the woman who just accepted a hundred thousand pounds for a charity that doesn’t exist.”
“I didn’t ask for that!” She scrambled to her feet. “You’ll never prove any wrongdoing on my part.”
“Nevertheless, you’ve been sacked. People will draw their own conclusions. Something you’re comfortable with, I believe?”
“That was different! And if I slept with you after seeming to be with Victor, I’d look like—” The biggest gold digger in the world. Her heart plummeted.
“Better to be called what you are than presumed a criminal. I’m well known for drawing a hard line against cheaters and thieves. I wouldn’t have one in my bed, and the world knows it. Sleeping with me would clear your name, whereas walking away would heighten speculation. I don’t think you’d find another patron after that. Not one able to keep you in the style to which you’ve grown accustomed.”
She wouldn’t find a job frying chips with rumors of lawbreaking dogging her. “You could clear my name! You only have to speak up.”
“Make it worth my while,” he countered, not bothering to hide his superior enjoyment at having her exactly where he wanted her. He really was conscienceless.
“Why are you backing me into a corner like this?”
“Why are you fighting me when you know you’ll enjoy it?”
“You won’t,” she blurted, shoulders hunching. Her appalling lack of experience would bore him out of his skull before the first act was over.
Triumph flashed in his eyes and a satisfied smile drew the corners of his mouth back, revealing a wolfish grin. “I have no problem communicating what I like, and you seem receptive. We’ll do fine together,” he assured her.
She folded her arms, fingers plucking self-consciously at the cables knit into her sleeves. The thought of his laughing at her for being a virgin didn’t appeal, but she had to tell him. “Look, I’m not…what you think I am.”
“What I think,” he said, nudging aside a pile of tumbled clothing as he stepped closer, “is that you’re something Victor wanted.” He clasped her arms above her bent elbows, gently straining them backward so her breasts arched into his muscled chest.
She gasped, stiffening in shock, hands splaying over the ridges of his ribs, fingertips unconsciously moving to trace the powerful cage beneath warm fabric. Rivulets of heat poured through her taut abdomen to a place where need pooled, making her flesh tingle and ache to be touched. “Wh-what?”
“Victor couldn’t have you and that means I must. Do you have a passport?”
She couldn’t think when he touched her, but couldn’t draw away, trapped by his strength and her own weakness. But he was talking as if she were mere spoils of war.
“Did you travel with him?” he asked with exaggerated patience.
“I was supposed to, but he died before I went anywhere. Go back to that bit about why you…” She couldn’t bring herself to say “want” when it sounded as though the sexual attraction drowning her wasn’t affecting him. She shivered in a hot-cold shudder of uneasiness while blood rushed under her skin, flushing warmth into her chest, making her breasts feel swollen and sensitized. Her hips longed to press into his, seeking the hard length that had nudged her when they kissed.
He knew what he was doing to her. A smug gleam lit his narrowed eyes as his gaze dropped to her lips. He started to lower his head.
Jerking hers back, she gasped, “I haven’t agreed.” But did she really want to step onto the street at midnight with her meager possessions and become one of the homeless? Her few shallow friendships were all with people she worked with. They wouldn’t take her in for fear of losing their jobs. She didn’t have a cushion of savings, just a credit card she couldn’t pay off if she didn’t have an income.
The direness of her situation began to hit home. At least this afternoon she’d been sure she could find some kind of menial work, but not now. Any character reference out of the firm after today would be career-stoppingly negative. Flicking a look from his set jaw to his penetrating eyes, she whispered, “You’re a real piece of work, you know that?”
“I lost my redeeming qualities years ago,” he agreed, something dark flickering in his gaze. “Which means there’s no appealing to my better nature. Make this easy on both of us and give in, Clair.”
She was tempted to. She didn’t have anything to lose and no one to answer to while he was dangling—what? A night? A reprieve at any rate, one that advertised a fringe benefit of physical satiation she had never expected to want. The emptiness of a one-night stand was, well, empty enough to make her ache, but she wasn’t in the market for a real relationship, so…
“Why extend your takeover to include me?” she asked in a voice more husky than the disparagement she was aiming for. “Didn’t you get enough out of scooping up the firm from a dead man?”
“He was still alive when I started proceedings and no, I didn’t get anything near what I wanted. Don’t make out like you’re some kind of prey just because you’re used to being the predator. You get to keep the money,” he taunted softly.
“No matter what?” The jerky toss of her head was supposed to convey brash confidence. The question was real, though. She couldn’t help being seduced by the prospect of running the foundation her way, without needing approval on every detail. Without having to reveal that each of those details touched her personally and that was why she was fighting so hard for them. “I’m not into anything kinky,” she warned. “If you’re looking for someone to spank you, move along to the next girl in the secretarial pool.”
“I’m not the submissive in any relationship,” he assured her dryly. “I like straight sex and lots of it. I don’t hurt women, ever, if that’s what you’re dancing around asking. I might play with dominating one, controlling her…” He flexed his hands on her elbows, making her breasts press into his chest.
Excitement returned with a spear of pleasure straight into her loins. She gasped.
“If she likes it,” he murmured.
She struggled, but he held fast and to her chagrin the short tussle only caused her heated desire to kindle into a shivery anticipation. His vital strength was incredibly sexy and she must have had a kinky strand after all if she responded to having pleasure forced upon her. No guilt, she supposed.
“Too bad the money hasn’t cleared,” she said with breathless regret. “Go back to your own suite. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.” After she’d had time to talk herself out of the rash agreement she was considering.
He slowly let his hands release her, his fingertips oh so slightly brushing the sides of her breasts, making need pierce her belly and leaving her shuddering with longing.
“So you can disappear with my money? I don’t think so. Van Eych might have been teased into giving without return, but I don’t tolerate cheats or thieves. Fetch your passport and we’ll take whatever you’ve left in that case. I have properties around the world. Lady’s choice where we go, but by the time we land, you’ll have your money and then—” He skimmed a proprietorial glance over her. “I’ll have you.”
CHAPTER FOUR (#ulink_28522bf3-aa85-57ff-a334-c0f2ee6e470d)
“I’M LOSING MY home at midnight,” her soft lips pronounced before tensing with acrimony. “I need to pack. Traveling will have to wait.” There wasn’t an ounce of self-preservation in her as she matter-of-factly righted the laundry basket and heaped the tumbled clothing into it.
“Don’t test me, Clair. I’m not nice.”
She straightened with a flushed face, all out aggression blasting at him in a way that had him planting his feet.
“What do you want me to do? Leave my things for the new owners to throw in the trash? Exactly how much do you want from me besides my job, my home and—” She clamped her lips over whatever else she almost said. Her mouth trembled briefly and for a moment there was a cast of startling defenselessness to her.
It was gone before unease could take a proper hold on him, hidden by the shift of her body away from him. Her stiff shoulders were proud. “You’re the one who sold this place out from under me. Stop complaining that it’s cutting into your plans.”
She was acting like an amateur.
Aleksy narrowed his eyes on her back, always aware when women were trying to manipulate him and occasionally willing to allow it when it suited his end purpose: primarily to get the physical release his body required. If Clair was attempting to wring guilt out of him, she was being predictable and hopelessly misguided. If she didn’t appreciate how powerful and absent of empathy he was, he’d demonstrate.
With one call—in English so she’d understand it—he swept away her stall tactic.
“The brawny and coldly efficient Lazlo again?” she asked without turning.
“He’s enlisting a young man you might know. Stuart from accounting? He’s proving to be extremely cooperative. A stickler for procedure. Stuart will make an inventory of your property and put it in storage at my expense.”
“Stuart from accounting wants to paw through my underpants drawer? And run back to the office with what he found in my medicine chest?”
“Not if he intends to keep his job.” Aleksy didn’t like the way she paled and liked even less the thought of some flunky fondling her undergarments. His hands tingled to cradle her in reassurance. He shook off the unfamiliar urge. “Gather your personal things if it will put an end to this delay,” he muttered. “You have one hour.”
* * *
In the end she chose Paris, but not for the reason he thought.
“The city of lovers,” he’d said ironically, the timbre of his voice stirring her blood. “Of course. A perfect weekend retreat.”
Weekend. The word punched low, gushing delicious heat through her abdomen.
She shook off the reaction and bit back an explanation that she’d picked Paris because she could get home on her own steam if she had to. Not that she had a home to come back to, but flying back to London from Cairo or Vancouver or Sydney would destroy her shallow savings.
As they traveled, she focused on budgeting for a new flat and where she’d start looking for a job so she wouldn’t recall the way Stuart’s Adam’s apple had bobbled when he found Aleksy in her flat.
Aleksy had curved a possessive hand against the back of her neck and said, “I don’t date my employees. Clair is no longer with the firm.”
Clair had lifted a disillusioned Could you be more blunt? expression to him.
Aleksy had quirked his split brow in a Want me to be?
She’d left without saying a word, her guilty blush burning her cheeks, aware that he’d sealed her fate. Her reputation as a tart was solidified and so much better than criminal. That made her squirm, but she’d learned to shield herself against judgment long ago. No, it was the way he’d gotten into her head so easily that really disturbed her. It made her feel vulnerable.
“Clair.”
His touch turned her from staring out the car window, once again opening that invisible gateway through her defenses. His intense personality whirled into her psyche like a restless summer wind, scattering her thoughts and inducing an instant, fluttering sensuality that reached toward everything in him.
“We’re here.”
The lights of Paris came to sparkling life around her. The scent of rain-damp streets smelled promisingly fresh as he left the car. The strength in his hand as he took hers to help her exit made her heart trip in a nervous rhythm against her breastbone.
She paused as he steered her toward a building, turning her face up to the sprinkling black sky to take in the facade of elegantly lit stone. It wasn’t a towering structure of glass and steel, but an old-world walk-up with wrought-iron balconies and planter boxes already blooming with spring. “This is very—” charming, she almost said “—nice.”
“It’s a good investment,” he dismissed.
The statement chilled her. “If you’re so keen on good investments, why did I hear you dumping all of Victor’s properties?” He’d been positively ruthless, speaking harshly into his mobile as she’d moved through the flat collecting her few sentimental items. He hadn’t taken any losses that she could discern, but he hadn’t seemed concerned with making huge profits either. “I’m sure his family would have kept what you didn’t want.”
“His sons kept enough,” he said bluntly, pausing on the top landing to open a door by punching a code into the security pad. “I left them their homes because they have innocent wives and children, but they knew enough about how their father made his fortune that they didn’t fight my takeover. I didn’t have the evidence to prove Van Eych’s crimes until the firm’s accounting books were in my hands. Now the truth will come out and his sons will change their names to escape any connection to him.”
His mouth curled into a cruel smile as he held the door for her.
