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He wanted to lick her all over, starting there.
“I don’t need to know you at all.” He shrugged. “I know people, and I know how to read physical tells.”
She scowled at him. “What do physical tells have to do with anything?” Her hands tightened on her lap, as if she wanted to clench them into fists, but thought better of it at the last moment. “The physical is the least important part of attraction. It’s nothing but smoke and mirrors. The brain is what really matters.”
He really was amused. Finally. He leaned back against the sofa. “Then, Professor, I am sorry to tell you this, but you’re doing it wrong.”
She was so much prettier in person, he thought then, even as she glared at him in all of her high-class fury. He was so much more susceptible to her than he’d ever dreamed he’d be. Damn her. It made everything that much more complicated. Or it made him a fool. He supposed it was the same result either way.
She tensed as if she was debating running for the door. But she only breathed for a moment, then relaxed again, however slightly, and he wished he knew why. He wished he could read whatever was going on behind that smooth, compelling triangle of her face. He wished, and he was old enough, battle-scarred enough, to know better.
“Is that why you think we should date?” she asked then, her tone crisp with disbelief. And all those other things he wanted far too much to uncover and identify, one by one. “So you can regale me with your theories about the physiological reactions of total strangers?”
“That would be a side benefit, of course.”
“This is ridiculous,” she said, standing then, practically vibrating with tension. Or was it something else? He had the sudden sense that she was far more emotional, perhaps even fragile, than he’d imagined. Than she showed. But he didn’t want to think of her that way. “I knew I shouldn’t have come here. My life is disintegrating around me and your solution is to date?”
“Calm yourself, please.” He stretched his legs out in front of him as if he had never been more at ease, enjoying the way her dark eyes narrowed in outrage. It was better than the possibility of tears, however remote. “It obviously wouldn’t be a real relationship. I am well aware of your opinion of me. I am no fonder of you. In that sense, we are perfectly matched.”
Which was true, of course. But it did not address this thing between them that had nearly burned him alive where he stood earlier. And Ivan only had to look at her to know that bringing up the best way he knew of to deal with that kind of wildfire, out-of-control chemistry—in the nearest bed, for a week or so—would only cloud the issue unnecessarily. Not to mention, force her to vehemently deny something that he had every intention of proving to his satisfaction. At length.
But not now.
“Why would you even suggest something like this? Is that how people do things in Hollywood?” She looked scandalized. “I didn’t think that was true. Not really.”
“Surely you cannot deny the power of that kiss,” he said, for no other reason than to poke at her. Or so he told himself. He shrugged languidly when she stiffened. “If you can, you are alone. Last I checked, the clip has been watched in excess of—”
“There is no accounting for taste,” she blurted, as if she couldn’t bear to think about how many people had seen the video. Seen them. The perfect Ivy League professor with a shined-up Russian thug all over her. She no doubt felt contaminated by his very public touch. Forever marred. It made him want only to dirty her further. Here. Now.
“Indeed.” He eyed her. Forced his voice to remain cool. “Just as there is no denying our on-screen chemistry. Think of the headlines we could generate if we actually tried.”
“You have to be kidding me—” she began, though he could see the heat across her cheeks, telling him far more than her words ever could. For one thing, that she wanted him just as much as he wanted her, however loath she was to admit it.
He could use that. He would.
“I am changing careers.” He watched her process that. That blink. That considering tilt of her head. Why should he find such things so powerfully compelling? “Again.”
“Racing about the world claiming that unnecessary kisses are a new form of chivalry?” she asked drily. It was as if she couldn’t help herself. “With your fame and fans, I’m sure you could turn it into quite the cottage industry. A moveable kissing booth, if you will. Headlines and chemistry at every turn, just the way you like it.”
“Philanthropy,” he replied, and watched her redden further, as if he’d chastised her. “My last Jonas Dark movie comes out in June. My new charity will be kicking off with its first major event a week or so later. It can only benefit me, as I make the switch from action hero to philanthropist, to have my most outspoken critic show the world she sees me as a man, not merely the Neanderthal fighting machine she has claimed I am on every available media outlet for the past two years.”
That had been the main thrust of his publicist’s argument earlier, as Ivan had watched the clip of the kiss on one of the major gossip programs in disbelief. Ivan had been unable to get his head around the fact that he was now linked to his nemesis in this way. And worse, that he had no one to blame for his predicament but himself. That last had been Nikolai’s main point—that and the suggestion that he take this opportunity to neutralize the Miranda Sweet issue once and for all.
Why had he kissed her?
But Ivan was nothing if not practical. No matter the force of his fascinations. No matter what price he might have to pay. And so there was no reason he couldn’t make this little game work for him on a number of levels, he thought as he watched her now, that dark shimmer of red in her hair, that lush mouth, that unconscious patrician certainty of hers. No reason in the world.
The plan had practically made itself. Revenge might have been a dish better served cold, but that wasn’t to say it wasn’t just as effective hot and wild. He supposed he’d find out.
“I can see how that would benefit you,” she said after a moment, her tone suggesting he had begged for her help on his knees—as if he needed her desperately and she was trying her hardest to be polite in the face of such naked entreaty. He bit back a laugh at the image.
“Let’s not get carried away.” His voice was dry, no hint of the laughter that moved in him. “I said that it could benefit me, not that I needed it. I don’t. But I could use you, certainly.”
“I appreciate the distinction,” she said in that cool way that made him ache to find his way into the fire she hid beneath it. “But I can’t quite see how going along with this would do anything for me but make me a hypocrite.”
“Please.” He did not precisely scoff at her. He didn’t have to. “I’m a movie star. There’s no way you could ever generate this kind of exposure on your own. We’ll play to the public’s obvious fascination with the possibility that so appalls you—that a man like me and a woman like you could ever be together. They’ll eat it up. We’ll break up after about a month or so, milk the rumors and go our merry ways. I don’t see the downside.”
“Because there isn’t one,” she said quietly, something that looked much darker than simple panic in the green of her gaze. “For you. It actually matters to me that people will see me as a hypocrite. That, in fact, I’ll be a hypocrite.” She made a low noise. “Not everything is for sale.”
“Spoken by someone who never had to sell something precious in order to stay alive.”
He couldn’t hide his impatience—nor his irritation at her and all the people like her, who had been born rich and privileged and would never know what it was like to have to choose between their pride and their survival. Much less fight for it with their own hands. Much less lose so much of themselves, and everything else that mattered, along the way.
“I understand you, too, Professor,” he told her, his own voice much colder than it had been. “You’re not the only one who studies their opponents. I know precisely what kind of princess you like to pretend you never were.”
Her eyes flew to his, stricken, and that delicious color rose in her cheeks again, making him feel the same kind of rush he’d felt in the ring when he’d won a tough round. He supposed that confirmed that he was exactly the Neanderthal she believed he was, and in that moment he didn’t care.
“That seems like an ineffective bargaining tool,” she said after a short pause, and while he could hear that he’d got to her in the scratchiness in her voice, see it in that extra bright sheen to her dark jade eyes, she still said it calmly. Coolly. As if she was utterly unfazed. He felt a trickle of reluctant admiration work through him. “Bludgeoning someone you’re trying to persuade with a highly slanted interpretation of their biography. Not the smoothest approach, I’d have thought.”
“Try this one,” he suggested. “Guberev actually is the animal you would like to think I am.” It shouldn’t bother him in the slightest to lie to her, to manipulate the fear he’d seen she felt. It was one more strategy, wasn’t it? All worth it in the end, no matter how it felt now. No matter that it made him who she thought he was. “I don’t know what he wanted from you, but the fact that he felt comfortable showing up at a summit and approaching you in the way he did should give you pause.”
“It does.”
“Then I offer you, again, the perfect solution to make sure he keeps his distance from you.”
“Because he is like a dog who responds to shows of domination, is that it?” she asked. “Does that make you the alpha in this scenario?”
Her smile was wintry then, and he should not have felt it like a touch. He should not have wanted to lick into it, beneath it, to taste her again. He should not have been contemplating the best way to get under her too-privileged skin. He should not have been so conflicted about what he was doing here. He should not have worried if his brother was right, after all—that there were too many ways to lose, and he was courting every one of them.
Miranda’s cold smile only deepened, as if she could read him, too. “Because if so, I’m afraid I know exactly what it makes me,” she said.
The room seemed to stretch tight around them, and Miranda couldn’t remember the last time she’d taken a full breath. No wonder she felt so off balance.
It wasn’t only that he’d called her a princess in that insulting way, as if she was some kind of socialite. It wasn’t only that he wanted to date her, of all things—but only as an elaborate ruse. It wasn’t the fact of him, so big and male and inarguably powerful, sitting there so close to her, like he was waiting to pounce. She concentrated on filling her lungs. In. Out. It was the only thing she was sure she could control.
Ivan started to speak again, but she threw up one of her hands, palm out, and stopped him, happy to see that for some reason, her hand wasn’t shaking the way she was afraid the rest of her was. Or soon would.
“I’m going to have to think about all of this,” she said, and she hated that there was a part of her that sounded almost pleading, as if, by walking into this hotel suite tonight, she had handed over her right to make decisions about her own life. “I’ll get back to you—”
“That is impossible,” he said, cutting her off. When she frowned at him, he only shrugged in that languid, lazy way of his that she was quickly coming to loathe. “We either use the momentum of this kiss to our benefit now, or we wait for it to blow over. For me, that will be very soon. For you? Perhaps not.” His hard mouth curved faintly. He was daring her, she realized, as her skin seemed to pull tight in response. “I wonder, are you more of a hypocrite if you are seen to date me, this man that you so famously hate—or if, having kissed me in so wanton a fashion in front of all the world, you don’t?”
That question hung there between them. Miranda became aware of the rushing sound in her ears and the rapid clamor of her pulse, just as he’d pointed out before. And that too-tight feeling all over, like her skin was too small for her body. She forced herself to ignore it. And to think.
The fact was, she knew he was on to something, however far-fetched and insane it sounded. However trapped she felt. She knew that a few accusations of hypocrisy were nothing compared to the kind of notoriety “dating” him would grant her—and notoriety would not only sell book proposals and the books that came from them, but guarantee that her presence as a pundit, as the go-to sound bite, was assured. As her agent had told her already, Ivan Korovin was sexy. The entire world was obsessed with him. If she went along with this, she would build her profile to unimaginable heights and would then be that much more able to get her message out, which was all she’d ever wanted in the first place. How could she turn that down and still live with herself?
Besides, she thought, letting her gaze sweep over him, he really was the ultimate modern warrior. The biggest and the baddest of all the swaggering fighter types who dreamed of being just like him. These days he dominated the box office the same way he’d dominated the ring, and she’d seen for herself that he was even more formidable in person.
“Dating” him would be like taking a trip through the belly of the beast. It would be taking her research to a previously unimagined level: testing her theories at the source. Interviewing the monster he’d claimed she’d made him in his very own lair.
She sat back down on the sofa opposite him gingerly, crossing her legs, and smoothed her hands down the front of her trousers. She could feel his eyes on her, black and hooded, as he waited with a watchful patience that seemed like another kind of caress, and just as dangerous. She told herself it was only the enormity—and inarguable insanity—of what she was about to do that made her hands feel faintly damp against her legs.
Excitement, she assured herself, not anxiety. And excitement for the book possibilities here, the career boost—not for him!
But she knew she was a liar when she met his gaze and felt it sear straight through her, down to the soles of her feet, kicking up all of that heat and longing and fire along the way.
That could only bode ill. She knew that, too.
She was going to do it anyway.
“I want to write a book,” she told him, and as she said it, she saw it all flash before her, as if it was preordained. She could call it something like Caveman Confidential. Her publisher would eat it up, and the public would rush out in droves to buy it, so desperate were they for this man. Even if what she said about him was negative. Ivan looked blank. She smiled. “About you.”
“Out of the question.” He didn’t even pretend to consider it. “I do very minimal press, and no biographies. Ever.”
“Yes, I know.” Miranda bit back a sigh and schooled her expression into something that might pass for detached. Unmoved. Uninvested. “You refuse to talk about your past. You refuse to discuss your personal life. You refuse, and because of that, you’re everybody’s favorite mystery. Well, if I’m going to risk my reputation, you can’t refuse me. I want total access.”
“Why would I grant such a thing to someone who has already built her so-called career on tearing me to pieces in the public eye?” he asked with soft yet unmistakable menace. “Why would I give you ammunition?”
Miranda didn’t much care for the so-called-career comment, but she also didn’t mistake the steel in his tone. It would not do to forget who and what this man was. What he could do.
“You cannot possibly think me that much of a fool, Professor. Can you?”
“Consider it your chance,” she said, her mind racing.
“My chance to do what?” he asked drily. “Deliver myself willingly into your tender claws?”
“To prove me wrong.”
He let his gaze drag over her. Her mouth, her neck. Her breasts. Lower. It was deliberate. Obvious. And even so, she felt the heat of it. The kick.
“I have had more appealing offers.” He was so arrogant. Every inch the wealthy, famous man. It set her teeth on edge, but she pushed on.
“Then think of it as a challenge.” She raised her brows when his midnight gaze met hers again. “Convince me that I’m wrong about you. Convince me that I’ve been wrong about you all along. Isn’t that what you think?”
“It is what I know. It is also true.”
The way he said that seemed to hum in her. Like foreboding. Miranda shoved the feeling aside. She wanted this, suddenly, as if she’d come up with the idea herself. She wanted it fiercely.
“Show me,” she said quietly, terrified he could hear how much she wanted him to agree in her voice. Terrified he was perverse enough to do precisely the opposite because of it. “Everything. And I’ll pretend to date you. I’ll do whatever you want.”
Ages could have passed then, as he regarded her calmly from across the table in that unnerving way of his, those dark eyes of his missing nothing. He only lounged there, looking as if he was lazily mulling over what she’d said—but Miranda knew better now. There was nothing lazy about him. He was like a snake poised to strike, and twice as deadly.
“There will be rules,” he said after a while, his gaze intent on hers. “If you break them, no book. For example, if you find you cannot handle the attention we’ll get? No book.”
“Fine.” She hardly dared breathe. Was he really going to do this? Let her this close to him? Tell her things he’d steadfastly refused to tell anyone else? Let her shape it how she wished? She couldn’t believe it. “I have rules, too.”
“Of course.” He ran his fingers over his mouth, and it tugged at her as if it was her mouth he was touching in exactly the same way. “Such as?”
“No touching unless there are cameras around,” she said. Too fast. Much too fast. His black eyes shone with a dark amusement. “There have to be boundaries.”
“That is your first concern?” He sounded entirely too pleased. “Not what I think the role will entail? Not what it is like to live life in so many flashbulbs? Not what we will do if this game of pretend shifts into something else entirely?” That hard curve that flirted with a smile was mesmerizing. “Interesting.”
“Don’t psychoanalyze me,” she said, meaning to snap at him, but it came out much softer. Too much softer. As she was already losing herself, before the game had even begun. “And there will be no shifting.”
“Is that another rule?”
“A very strong preference.”
“Let me tell you my most important preference,” he said in that smoke-and-chocolate voice, and if she hadn’t known better, if she hadn’t been sitting there unable to look away from him, she would have thought he was touching her. Running his hands all over her. Making her his that easily. “I like to be in charge. Accept that and this will be far easier for you.”
She could imagine it, then. Him. All of that wildness and darkness and fire. In vivid color. She who had always thought of sex in muted tones, pleasant pastels … what was he doing to her? She knew better than to let the nightmares in. To invite them.
“You can be in charge of our fake relationship all you like,” she said, her voice betraying her, too husky and too warm. Filled with all the things she didn’t want to admit were in her head, and leaving shivery trails all through her body. “Just so long as you answer my questions. All my questions. No stonewalling. No diversions. You have to give me what I want, or I walk. That’s the only deal I’m prepared to make.”
She thought she sounded tough. Cool. Competent. Nothing more than a dedicated researcher, outlining her terms.
“As you wish, Professor,” he said then.
He did not sound in the least compliant. His dark eyes shone with a potent mixture of amusement and triumph, hard and hot. It connected with her belly, her breath.
“Okay,” she said, while her heart did cartwheels in her chest and she couldn’t seem to tear her gaze away from him, no matter what. “Then I guess we have a deal.”
Ivan’s black eyes blazed.
And Miranda was left with the unsettling notion that she’d done exactly what he’d expected her to do. That he’d led her straight here and she’d walked directly into his trap.
As if he’d known precisely what she would do, what she would say, when she’d come to him tonight.
As if he’d planned it.
CHAPTER FOUR (#u2604603f-c35b-570c-86df-095d907673b1)
IVAN insisted on starting this game of theirs immediately. And in Paris.
“That is unacceptable,” he’d told her that first night in Washington when Miranda had protested that she could simply meet him in a few days in Cannes, where, they’d agreed, they would use the annual film festival as an opportunity to show off their brand-new fake relationship. “We will go to Europe together, of course.”
He’d dismissed her protest with a certain casual ease and expectation of instant obedience that had knotted her stomach. Miranda had not cared for the uneasiness that had moved through her then, whispering suspicions she’d been afraid to look at too closely. What had she gotten herself into with this man? But she’d been afraid she knew.
“What do you plan to wear on the red carpet?” he’d asked in the same tone. He’d waved a hand dismissively over the tailored black trouser suit she wore that until that moment she’d thought was both professional and pretty. “This?”
Miranda had refused to curl up in humiliation, as she’d been fairly certain he’d intended she do. She’d wondered if that was what he was really after—if this was his revenge, to strip her down and try to embarrass her. If so, she’d thought, eyeing him across the coffee table, refusing to cower, he was in for a surprise. She’d survived far worse than this. She would survive him, too.
“I own dresses, thank you,” she’d informed him. Through her teeth. “I’ve even attended fancy events before, believe it or not.”
“This is not a negotiation, Professor,” Ivan had replied, still lounging there on that cream-and-gold sofa in that ostentatious hotel suite. His voice had been firm. “I have a reputation to uphold. A woman who appears on my arm must live up to certain expectations, a certain standard. We are not talking about a cocktail party filled with self-satisfied academics at your university or uppity Greenwich, Connecticut, yacht club members—we are talking about the world stage.”
She’d reminded herself then that she’d already hated him on principle alone for years, so it wasn’t as if there had been any further to fall.
“And on this world stage of yours, fashion is everything?” she’d asked, unable to keep the derision from her tone and not, she’d admitted to herself, trying too hard.
