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“Do you want the relationship we agreed upon?” she asked in a pointed undertone, pulling her arm out of his grip, entirely too aware that he lazily permitted it. “Or do you simply want to see me surrender to you in every possible way?”
His mouth curved, hard and fierce, searing into her, connecting hard to her core. Her belly. The swell of her breasts. Then deepened, as if he could see all the ways she wanted him despite herself, as if he knew exactly what she’d felt, what she still felt. What she so desperately did not want to feel at all.
But the fear of what she wanted, the fear of what she felt, the fear that these were all baby steps toward losing control and the horror she knew followed that kind of folly—that was hers. Yet somehow it made the fire inside of her burn all the brighter, as if to taunt her. She blamed him for that, too.
“Ah, Professor.” It was the closest to laughter she’d ever seen him come, and something about it terrified her, as if that was a cliff she didn’t dare fall over. As if that really would be the end of her, once and for all. “You say that as if I must choose.”
CHAPTER FIVE (#u2604603f-c35b-570c-86df-095d907673b1)
THE team of stylists presented his angry, posh professor to him with a flourish when his plane landed in Nice an hour or so later.
Ivan swept a critical gaze over her as they brought her out to him on the sun-drenched tarmac, expecting the jolt of desire that seared through him at the sight of her, but surprised by its intensity all the same. It was getting worse, he thought grimly. He’d come far too close to losing it in that dressing room in Paris, and some part of him regretted that he hadn’t. It was the way she’d looked at him. It was the elegant scent of her, the heavy red flame of her hair. The impossible softness of her patrician skin. Her delicious little shivers—
It was madness. She was madness. He needed to stick to his plan. This was supposed to destroy her, not him.
They’d dressed her all in white, as he’d requested, the better to appear fresh and lovely next to all of his brute strength that she’d spent so much time criticizing these past years. Soft white trousers clung to her long legs, then flared gently over skyscraper wedged sandals and her brightly painted toes, which he found far more erotic than he should. They’d layered white and cream strappy tops, one over the next, to lick over her small, perfect breasts and flirt with her enticing hips. Her hair was the focal point, tumbling down in a dark enchantment of red, looking slightly tangled, as if someone—and how he wished it had been him—had been dragging his fingers through it while engaged in far earthier pursuits.
“Do I pass inspection?” Miranda asked in that tone of voice that he was developing a small obsession with. It was her snooty, ivory-tower attempt at being polite. Or doing her best to pretend she was being polite, more likely—to act the appropriate part. Her hands were on her hips, the way he’d like his to be. Not that he was at all sure he would stop the next time he got his hands on that lithe, lean body.
A dangerous game, indeed.
He wanted her in ways that worried him. And after that scene in Paris, he couldn’t help but think that seducing her might come at a cost he wasn’t prepared to pay.
But that wasn’t anything new.
He didn’t answer her, knowing full well it would infuriate her, and seeing from the flash of temper in her dark jade gaze that it did. He took the oversized sunglasses one of the stylists had handed him and slid them onto her face, covering up those mysterious eyes of hers, and indulging himself in the fleeting sensation of her skin against his fingers, the fine silk of her hair. Her hands slid from her hips, and her lips softened slightly, and he almost smiled then, because he knew exactly what burned in her then. He felt it, too.
“Come,” he said. He reached over and took her hand in his, amused at the way she flinched and then ruthlessly controlled it in almost the same instant.
He doubted she understood what a lifetime of martial arts did, the ways it forced a man to be aware of his environment. That he knew when she breathed, when she held a breath instead; when she tensed, when she softened. And more. He let their fingers tangle and slide, enjoying the hitch in her breath and the deliberate way she forced herself to curl her hand around his. As if she would much rather dig her nails into his skin until he bled.
He was not a good man, he thought then, biting back a laugh. It was just as well he’d never had any illusions on that score. He was enjoying her bad-tempered, ill-fitting cloak of feigned submission far too much.
He led her over to the sexy little convertible sports car that waited for them, and handed her into it before climbing into the driver’s seat. He signaled to Nikolai and the rest of his security detail, and then he put the car into gear and drove.
“We have to talk about what happened in Paris,” she said the moment they started to move. “There can be no shifting, or whatever game you were playing. We already discussed this. You signed the same document—”
“We are in the open air,” he interrupted her as if she was a fractious child. “Try to contain your need to lecture me until there are thick walls around us.”
She looked at him as if she’d like to club him over the head but lacked only the appropriate instrument, and it nearly made him laugh again.
“You don’t have to talk to me like I’m one of your employees,” she snapped when they slowed at an intersection.
“This is not how I talk to my employees,” he assured her, amused. “They know better than to talk back.”
When she opened her mouth to snap something else at him, he simply reached over and shut it with two fingers over her soft lips, testing himself. Torturing himself. Shifting, perhaps, whether she liked it or not. Whether he did.
“I can’t wait to hear your litany of complaints,” he said, his voice something too close to a growl. She jerked her head back, but he could still feel the press of her mouth against his flesh. The fire of it. The way his whole body hardened, ready for her, dooming them both. “But not right now. Perhaps you can sit back and take in the world-famous view. This is the Côte d’Azur and I am Ivan Korovin. Some people would sell their souls to be sitting where you are right now, and I wouldn’t have to ask them to be still and enjoy it.”
There was a searing sort of pause, and then she pulled a silk scarf from her bag. She tied it around her hair with quick, furious jerks of her delicate hands. She didn’t say another word, and she didn’t even have to look at him, this time, to convey her feelings. He had to bite back his smile. He should not find her very prickliness so delightful. It could only spell disaster for them both.
He guided the powerful little convertible along the Promenade des Anglais, the gorgeous stretch of road that separated the city of Nice from the Baie des Anges and the Mediterranean Sea beyond. He soaked in the views of the French hills in the soft light that made Provence so justly beloved the world over, the sparkling sea, and the intriguing woman beside him whose current deafening silence was only a reprieve—having more to do with the noise of the open air around them as he drove, he imagined, than any particular attempt to do as he’d asked.
It was just as well he was about to give her something to really be angry about, he thought with a certain fatalism as he guided them through the charming seaside village of Villefranche-sur-Mer and then swung out onto the small, decadently exclusive Cap Ferrat peninsula. The narrow lanes were deliberately overgrown, richly forested in lush green vines, sweeping gardens and a canopy of ancient trees. Red-roofed villas peeked out from behind private walls while the stunning views stretched in all directions—the craggy French coastline and the endless cobalt waters of the Mediterranean always just around this curve, through those trees.
Down at the tip of the peninsula, Ivan pulled into the graceful drive that led to the impressive and world-renowned Grand Hôtel du Cap Ferrat. The hotel, now deemed a palace and more than worthy of the term, was an elegant, all-white affair, trumpeting its eminence by commanding one of the finest seaside spots in the south of France.
His professor was so busy gazing up at the soaring, whitewashed beauty of the magnificent hotel before them that she failed to notice the small pack of reporters who waited near the entrance until it was too late. He knew the moment she did as she stiffened in the seat beside him.
“What are they doing here?” she asked as she pulled the scarf from her head and let that exquisite hair of hers fall free.
“I called them.”
There was a small, shocked pause.
“Why would you do something like that?” She sounded genuinely baffled instead of angry. That would come, Ivan thought. It was inevitable. “This isn’t one of the events that we agreed on.”
He reached over and rested his hand high on her thigh, a casual possession, the way he would have if he really had been sleeping with this woman. He enjoyed the way her whole body jolted at the sudden contact. He enjoyed the way his did, too. She sucked in her breath with a sharp hiss.
“Smile,” Ivan ordered her quietly as he slowed the car to a crawl. “Let me do the talking. All you need to remember is that ours is a passionate affair.” He threw her a swift glance. “You want me so badly it overcame every last one of your well-documented, widely televised objections. You can hardly bear it if I am not touching you. That’s the story they’re here to see.”
He couldn’t see her eyes behind the dark glasses she wore, but he saw that fascinating color rise to stain her cheeks and the way she pulled her lower lip between her teeth. He could tell she was holding her breath and he could feel her leg quiver, ever so slightly, more a thrill than a shiver, beneath his hand. He’d already told her what those signs meant.
He’d like to tell her what he thought about how incredibly responsive she was to him, to his slightest touch or glance, and how that would work between them in the bed he had every intention of having her in, sooner rather than later. Not that he required a bed. A wall would do. A floor. This car, had they been somewhere less public. But this, sadly, was not the time.
This was work. This was his revenge. This was precisely how he could exact payment for the years of personal slights and lost opportunities. And worse, the things she made him wonder in the dark. What did it say about him that he could ignore the end and concentrate on the means? That he was enjoying it?
But then, he knew the answer to that, too.
She blew out a shaky sort of breath, as if trying to calm herself, and then she turned toward him and showed him her teeth.
He didn’t mistake it for a smile.
“I dislike you,” she said softly. So very softly that it would have sounded like sweet, whispered love words to anyone standing nearby. She deepened that curve of her mouth. “Intensely.”
“Good,” he said in the same tone as he threw the car into Park, putting his mouth near her ear and drinking in another one of her delicate near-shivers. He could start to crave them, he thought then, and he knew exactly how dangerous that was. “That always looks better on film.”
And then they were surrounded.
Questions flew through the quiet air. Ribald commentary in several languages that Ivan chose to ignore for the sake of everyone’s health, to the tune of all of those cameras flashing and filming, capturing every moment, every touch, every breath. He helped Miranda from her side of the car like the gentleman he wasn’t and kept her close, throwing his arm over her shoulders with casual ease. He felt her tense, but she smiled as he’d commanded and nestled against his side, and for the briefest moment the press of her body against his made him almost forget himself again—made him almost forget that he was acting and she was the kind of woman who had looked down her nose at him from the start. That this was another job, a carefully calculated performance. Nothing more.
Idiot. The derisive voice in his head sounded suspiciously like his brother’s.
Ivan ignored it. He fielded the questions, one after the next, with the ease of all these years he’d spent handling press junkets and intrusive paparazzi. How long had this affair been going on? Who had made the first move? What had made them act out their forbidden love in such a dramatic display in Georgetown? Was this a publicity stunt? Could they look this way, please? Smile? Kiss again?
“Surely the entire world has seen quite enough of us kissing,” Miranda said, defying his order to keep quiet, but with a dry humor that Ivan knew would come across as delightfully self-deprecating. He pulled her closer, then gazed down at her as if he was filled with affection. And loved the tremor he felt snake through her, that immediate, helpless response of hers he was rapidly finding addictive. He wasn’t even sure she knew what signals she was sending him, which made it that much better. Seducing her would be easier than he’d anticipated.
He told himself what snaked through him then was as simple as anticipation.
“That’s it,” he said when he saw Nikolai appear in the entrance to the hotel behind the pack of reporters and nod curtly, indicating the agreed-upon five minutes were up. “We’ll see you all at the movies later this week.”
“What about all the nasty things she’s said about you over the years, Ivan?” one of the more dogged reporters asked, pitching her voice above the rest. “Have you hashed all of that out behind closed doors?”
It was an American reporter, and Ivan recognized her. Give this woman the right sound bite, he knew, and it would dominate the entertainment news. He slid his sunglasses from his face. He looked at Miranda for a long moment, until she flushed again—unaware, he was sure, that it looked as if what had passed between them in that glance was purely sexual. Carnal and burning hot. Then he looked back at the camera.
He knew exactly what he was doing. He did it all the time. It was Jonas Dark at his finest. Enigmatic. Dangerous. And impossibly, explosively sexy.
Ivan smiled. Slowly and knowingly. He dragged it out, knowing his famous smile was the most lethal weapon in this particular arsenal.
“That was just foreplay,” he said.
Miranda hardly saw the cool, achingly lovely lobby of the Grand Hotel, all in elegant whites and frothy creams, with only the faintest hints of blue to beckon in the sea beyond. All she saw was that powerhouse smile of Ivan’s, that he’d turned on so easily for the cameras, so sexy and treacherous. She barely registered the beautifully maintained grounds soaking in the abundant sunshine or the water arrayed before them as if the whole of the glorious Mediterranean Sea had been placed there for the pleasure of the hotel’s guests alone.
She only heard him say that terrible word, over and over again. Foreplay. She managed, somehow, to remain silent and smiling as staff and security buzzed around them, ushering them into the sumptuous private villa set apart from the rest that she assumed only a star of Ivan’s magnitude could command.
She had to bite her tongue to stay quiet. More than once.
And then, finally, they were alone in one of the private villa’s luxuriously appointed rooms, filled with light and graceful arrangements of flowers. The room was done in fine yellows and clear blues, sophisticated creams and the barest hint of lavender, the fresh, crisp, timeless elegance of Provence in every detail.
And more importantly, there were no cameras. No eyes, no reporters, no snide questions polluting the air. No people nearby to hear a single word. At last.
Ivan moved to close the door behind the last of the hotel staff, who had all but performed grand jetés in their rush to serve his every need, and Miranda kept her word and waited until it was shut tight. Until they were finally, finally locked away in private.
“Foreplay?” Her throat felt clogged. Rough and cracked. As if she’d already screamed at him the way she wanted to do, over and over again. She stood in the middle of the room, her hands in fists at her sides, and wondered that she wasn’t screaming now. He turned back to face her, lounging back against the door with his powerful arms crossed, his hard face impassive. “Foreplay?”
“Are you unfamiliar with the term, Dr. Sweet?” His voice was like silk, curling around her, sensual and beguiling, and she hated that, too. His dark eyes mocked her, as ever. “Do you require a demonstration?”
“I would sooner—”
“Careful,” he warned her. Was that amusement she saw move across his fierce face then? Did he find this funny? But, of course, that was why she was so furious. She knew perfectly well that he did. “It is easy to make rash, sweeping statements in emotional moments, only to regret them later. When you are inevitably proved a liar.”
Miranda was shaking again, but this time, she wasn’t afraid of falling apart. This time she was far more worried that she might pick something up and throw it at his head, an urge she understood was deeply, deeply foolish. And counterproductive. But there it was, growing stronger by the second. She clenched her hands even tighter—and did not let herself reach for the nearest assortment of fat, lushly perfumed orchids in their heavy glass vase.
“Is that what this is about?” she asked, fighting to keep her voice even, though there was no pretending she was anything like calm or cool any longer. “Sex? Am I some trophy to you?”
“That would require that being with you is some kind of reward,” he returned, all silken mockery and that razor’s edge beneath.
There was no reason at all for that to sting. Miranda told herself it didn’t—it was just this long, strange day and not nearly enough sleep. Everything stung, there had been far too much touching, and she still hadn’t forgiven herself for the things she’d let him do in that dressing room in Paris. The things she’d felt. And wanted. All of which had been bad enough before he’d called her entire hard-won career foreplay.
“I deserve an award myself,” she told him, battling to keep from raising her voice—sure that he would take too much pleasure in it if she did, as if it was evidence against her. “I’m no actor, and yet I’m parading around in clothes that aren’t mine, with pounds of makeup on my face, pretending to think it’s sexy and thrilling while you trash my entire career with one throwaway sentence—”
“Did that bother you, Professor?” he asked, his gaze suddenly harsh and intense. He pushed away from the door and moved toward her, rangy and muscled, smooth and liquid. He was mesmerizing. And a very clear threat. She knew that, she felt it in every cell, in the wild heat that enveloped her and set her heart to its panicked beating once again—but she didn’t move. “Did you find it upsetting to have your life’s work dismissed so easily? Made into a vicious little punch line for the masses to devour?”
She didn’t like the shimmering ribbon of shame that unspooled inside of her then, making her feel too hot with it. Too low. She couldn’t handle how close he was now, but she refused to let herself back away, despite every shrieking alarm inside of her that urged her to fling herself in the opposite direction. To run, screaming, while she still could. He still wore that shirt that showed far too much of his skin, that swirling hint of the tattoo on his chest, and he didn’t stop moving until he was so close she had to tilt her head back slightly to meet his intent black gaze, despite the high sandals she wore.
“So this really is about revenge for you,” she said, pretending he wasn’t looming over her, pretending even more that her heart wasn’t drumming frantically against the walls of her chest—pretending it was as simple as fear, as intimidation, when she knew very well it was a complicated mess of both. And more.
“Call it whatever you like,” he said in that intense, demanding way. “Was it revenge the first time you called me all of those names in that book of yours? Caveman Number One? The Nouveau Neanderthal? When you took it upon yourself to imagine—on camera—the most insulting reasons possible for any woman I might have dated to leave me?”
“You admit it, then.” Miranda pretended she didn’t feel the slap of his words, the unfortunate truth of them. She remembered that sense she’d gotten in Georgetown, that he’d planned all of this, that he’d known she would walk right into his trap. And she had. “This is nothing more than an elaborate exercise in petty, adolescent revenge.”
Why had she picked him all those years ago when she was working on her dissertation? There had been no shortage of widely adored, badly behaved sports heroes cluttering up the cultural consciousness, any one of whom could have made her point. Why had she zeroed in on this one?
But she knew why. She had turned a page in a magazine one afternoon and there he was, gleaming and intimidating and nearly naked, all of those muscles rippling and overwhelming, and she’d felt the punch of it. Of him. All of that rampant maleness, none of it in the least bit controlled … And she’d hated him for that feeling, for the things she felt curling inside of her, hot and wild and messy. Maybe she still did.
She sniffed now, shoving that sense of shame aside, her second thoughts so long after the fact, the probability that this was a trap she’d agreed to let him close on her. “And all because your feelings are hurt that I suggested one of your starlet girlfriends left you because you suffered from testosterone poisoning?”
“What’s a little foreplay next to that?” he asked silkily, though there was a flash in those dark eyes that made her think he was choosing his words far more carefully than it seemed. “You should try it.”
She rolled her eyes at him as if he didn’t get to her at all. As if she was as unimpressed with and unmoved by him as she wished she was.
“How depressingly predictable,” she said, temper in her voice, though she wasn’t sure if she was angry at herself or at him. Or both of them. “Is there a man alive who doesn’t think his magical penis can somehow cure a woman’s dislike of him? It would be funny if it wasn’t so sad.”
“Enough of your wild generalizations and crackpot theories, Professor,” he said, not in the least cowed or shamed by her words. If anything, his black gaze seemed hotter, and he was closer to a smile than she’d ever seen him get. In private, anyway, and she was annoyed that she even noticed the distinction. “Let’s talk about you. And how obsessed you’ve been with me for all these years.” He opened his arms wide, the kind of arrogant display only an excessively confident man could manage with such decidedly masculine grace, and it should have been ridiculous. “With this.”
It should have been ridiculous. But instead, Miranda’shead seemed to go entirely blank. His chest was hard and chiseled and acres wide. This close to him, she could sense that roaring heat and power that was so uniquely his and worse, that terrifying, betraying lassitude inside of her in response that threatened to make her simply sag against him. Simply … lie down on the vast bed she’d somehow failed to notice she was standing beside and pray he came with her. On top of her. Into her.
What is the matter with you? She didn’t know how to want these things. She never had before. It was as if he’d cast some spell on her that made her someone else entirely.
“I don’t want you,” she bit out, desperation making her voice harsh. “Any of you.”
She blinked at him, the great expanse of him. All of those smooth, hard muscles, all of which, she was far too aware, he knew exactly how to use. She’d seen his fights on television. She’d seen his movies. She wished she didn’t notice that he smelled fresh and clean, of soap and warm male.
She wished she was as unmoved as she should have been.
“I want what we agreed to, and nothing more.” She nodded at his chest. “Certainly not any of that.”
It shouldn’t have been so hard to say, and he laughed then, dropping his arms but not backing up an inch.
“Keep telling yourself that.”
“You unbelievably arrogant—” she began, furiously.
“Did I ever pretend to be anything else?” he asked, his head tilting slightly to one side, cutting her off ruthlessly. His voice was calm, dark. Well nigh imperial, which was precisely how he looked as he gazed down at her. “You claimed you studied me. That you knew me. How did you think this was going to go?”
“I thought you were serious about this,” she accused, suspecting that the person she was truly furious with was herself. “Instead it’s been nothing but games and absurd demands, your hands on me and your constant attempts to—”
She cut herself off, but it was too late. His dark eyes seemed to glow.
“To what?” She heard it all in his voice then. Sex. Fire. Need. It pulsed in her, too. “Why don’t you say it, Miranda? You might just get what you want.”
God, her name in that mouth. Had he said it before? In that way of his, rich and Russian and so seductive it hurt her not to reach out and touch him? It hurt, and she was getting tired of all the ways she hated herself today, all the ways she continued to betray herself, all the ways this man was turning her into someone she couldn’t recognize or understand.
“Oh, good,” she said, proud of the way she sounded then, so close to her usual cool, almost as if she wasn’t losing herself here. “Another attempt to intimidate me.”
The corner of his wicked mouth simply kicked up into that mocking, compelling curve, and her mouth went dry.
“I don’t have to attempt anything,” he pointed out with a quiet certainty that pounded in her like a drumbeat. “I only have to enter a room and you begin to tremble. I only have to put my hands on you to feel you come apart.”
