‘What’s wrong?’ Mikhail asked, recognising the tension in her fine-boned features while at the same time wishing she would go and wipe off all the metallic grey make-up obscuring her beautiful eyes.
‘Nothing …’ Kat forced a valiant smile while he ordered their meals in Russian without consulting her preferences or even telling her what he had chosen for her to eat. She was doing this to regain her family home and she could put up with being treated like a piece of inanimate furniture for the sake of the house, she told herself staunchly.
Mikhail signalled Stas and gave him an instruction that startled the older man into glancing in surprise at Kat.
The first course arrived and it was caviar served with strips of hot buttered toast. Kat had never liked fish—in fact even the smell of anything fishy made her tummy roll. Mikhail failed to notice how little she ate and was equally impervious to the fact that she only took a few mouthfuls of the equally fishy soup that followed. Stas then approached her with a package, which he handed to her.
‘The make-up … you can remove it now,’ Mikhail informed her with satisfaction as she glanced into the bag in disbelief and discovered a pack of wipes.
Taken aback by the request that she remove her make-up while she was out in public, Kat vanished to the cloakroom and carefully peeled off the false eyelashes before wiping off the dramatic eye shadow. The effort left her eyelids slightly swollen, not that she supposed that that little consequence would matter to Mikhail, whose main goal in life always seemed to be getting exactly what he wanted from those around him. He didn’t seem to respect or even notice the normal boundaries that other people observed. After only a couple of hours Kat was reeling in shock from the challenge of dealing with such a force of nature. She dug into her bag for her own small stock of cosmetics and applied some foundation and lip gloss to banish the bare look from her face.
‘Much better,’ Mikhail told her approvingly when she reappeared, looking more as he remembered her. He was as comfortable with her transformation and his determined control of it as she was not. ‘I can see you again.’
Mercifully, a giant succulent steak arrived for Kat’s main course and she was finally able to satisfy her appetite with something she could eat. The dessert was something cheesy covered with honey. After that no-holds-barred introduction to Mikhail’s national cuisine, dutifully drinking down the special vodka he praised to the skies and ending on coffee seemed almost tame in comparison.
He then asked her if she wanted to visit a club and Kat felt like a party pooper when she admitted that it had been a long and very busy day and that she was tired.
As they stepped out of the restaurant onto the shadowy street, a dark shape lunged at her without warning and a shocked cry of fear erupted from Kat. Just as abruptly, Mikhail thrust her behind him and stepped between her and her apparent assailant with what sounded very much like an oath. In the scuffle that followed, men seemed to jump from all directions and she fell back into the doorway breathless and full of alarm, her heart thundering in her eardrums as she appreciated that Mikhail already had the man pinned down in a pretty threatening manner. Stas, the head of his security team, was intervening and he and Mikhail momentarily seemed to be engaged in some sort of a dispute. Mikhail’s anger was audible in his dark deep voice. Shaking the terrified-looking man he still held as a terrier might shake a rat, Mikhail released him with a sound of disgust and swung round to retrieve Kat.
‘Are you all right?’ Mikhail demanded thunderously.
‘I got a fright … that’s all,’ Kat framed shakily.
‘I saw the street light gleam on something in his hand—I thought he had a knife,’ Mikhail grated, shepherding her with determination towards the limo where the passenger door already stood open. ‘But it was just a camera—he’s only an idiot paparazzo trying to steal a photo!’
Still trembling from the shock of the incident, Kat settled into the passenger seat and marvelled at the way in which her attitude to Mikhail Kusnirovich had been turned on its head within the space of a minute. He might have neglected to ask what she liked to eat at dinner but he had, without the smallest hesitation, put himself in the path of what he thought might be a knife to protect her. Kat was stunned but hopelessly impressed that he could even have considered putting himself at risk for her benefit.
‘Wouldn’t your security have taken care of him?’ she prompted in bewilderment.
‘Their primary task is always to protect me, not those I am with. It was my duty to protect you, milaya moya,’ Mikhail growled between compressed lips, a lean brown hand clenching into a fist on his thigh, his adrenalin charge still clearly running on a high.
‘For what it’s worth, thanks.’ Kat concentrated on breathing in deep and slow to still her racing heartbeat.
‘You were in no danger—it was only a camera,’ Mikhail reminded her dismissively.
But he hadn’t known that when he had instinctively acted to ensure that she was not hurt, Kat conceded, suddenly plunged deep into her own thoughts and ashamed of the speed with which she had been willing to label Mikhail as selfish and arrogant. What had just happened revealed that there was far more depth and many more shades to the Russian billionaire’s tough character than she had been prepared to believe.
When Mikhail stepped into the lift with her back at the hotel, however, Kat’s nervous tension mushroomed afresh. She wondered why he was coming up to the suite with her. He lounged back in one corner of the lift, brilliant black eyes pinned to her with glittering intensity, and her legs went all woolly and her head swam, nerves fluttering in her tummy as she fumbled for something casual to say to dispel the dangerous drag in the atmosphere.
‘What birth sign are you?’ Kat heard herself ask inanely.
Mikhail gazed back at her blankly. No, she wasn’t going to get any horoscope chit-chat out of him, she registered in fierce embarrassment.
‘I’m a Leo … I was asking when were you born?’ Kat explained in the hope that he would appreciate that she wasn’t a crackpot.
Mikhail, taken aback by the random nature of the conversation and still not grasping what she wanted from him, breathed tentatively, ‘Thirty years ago?’
In receipt of that unexpected information, Kat froze in horror. ‘Are you telling me that you’re only thirty years old?’ She gasped.
Exasperated, Mikhail, who had been thinking that kissing her would hardly be breaking the rules because it was essential that she became accustomed to being touched by him, raised level black brows in enquiry. ‘Ya ne poni’ mayu … I don’t understand. What’s the problem? What are we talking about?’
Kat’s back was so stiff she might have had a poker welded to her slender spine and her colour remained high. She stepped out of the lift, dipped the key card into the lock on the suite door and stalked into the big reception room, switching on the lights.
Mikhail followed her, a frown hardening his features as he studied her. ‘Kat?’ he pressed impatiently.
Kat spun back to him and settled furious green eyes on him. ‘You’re younger than me … years younger!’ she launched at him in angry consternation. ‘I can’t believe that I didn’t see that, that I didn’t even consider the possibility!’
Unmoved by the same conflict of emotion that powered Kat, Mikhail gazed steadily back at her. ‘Da … you’re a few years older. And the problem is?’
Outrage shimmering through her slender taut figure, Kat stared back at him accusingly. ‘That’s a big problem as far as I’m concerned.’
Women were strange, Mikhail reflected, but he was utterly convinced in that instant that she was more strange than most. She had been born five years in advance of him. It was an age difference so minor in his opinion that it was barely worth commenting on, but the look of aversion stamped in her beautiful green eyes warned him that she was not so accepting of the fact. Anger stirred in him because he immediately recognised that she was grabbing at yet another reason to hold him at bay and no woman had ever put up s
uch sustained resistance to him before.
‘It’s not a problem for me,’ Mikhail countered curtly, black eyes brooding as he struggled to work out why he still wanted her in spite of all the discouragement she offered. In fact the more she tried to move away, the faster he wanted to haul her back in a kneejerk reaction that felt natural enough to disturb him.
An older woman with a younger man, Kat was thinking in painful mortification. People always found that combination both funny and objectionable. Remarkably older men seemed to get away with relationships with very young women without attracting similar derision. But the knowledge that Mikhail was a full five years younger than she was simply underscored Kat’s conviction that she should not be with him at all.
‘It’s wrong, distasteful … inappropriate that you’re younger than I am,’ Kat spelt out jerkily. ‘I’ve read in the newspapers about women christened “cougars” for getting involved with younger men and I’m afraid I’ve never wanted a toy boy …’
A smouldering silence spread between them.
‘A toy boy? You are calling me a toy boy?’ Mikhail echoed in rampant disbelief that she could have dared to apply that offensive term to him. Dark blood marked the arch of his high cheekbones. It was one of the very few occasions in his life when he was rendered almost mute by a shock backed by a surge of the volatile rage that he virtually never let anyone see. ‘Take that back … that term,’ he instructed rawly. ‘It is an insult that no man would tolerate!’
The scorching heat of his dark eyes blazing with indignation clashed with Kat’s defiant gaze. She was very still because although he had not raised his voice she had never seen that much anger in anyone: it burned off him like a shower of sparks in darkness, acting on her like a menacing wave of warning that shortened the breath in her lungs and convulsed her throat.
‘You’re years younger than me,’ Kat responded in shaken self-defence, pained by that discovery, not even understanding why it should matter so much to her. ‘It’s not right—’
‘Take it back,’ Mikhail breathed wrathfully. ‘It is unacceptable that you should say such a thing to me.’
Kat swallowed hard. Her knees felt wobbly: he really could be the most downright intimidating male. ‘All right, I’ll take it back,’ she muttered ruefully. ‘I didn’t intend to insult you but I was shocked.’
‘I would be no woman’s toy boy,’ Mikhail delivered harshly.
It was a ludicrous label for a six-foot-five-inch male exuding aggression, Kat conceded numbly as she sank down boneless with stress on a sofa and nodded weakly, still shaken by the inexplicable emotions that had erupted inside her. ‘Well, that’s OK because I wouldn’t make a very good cougar,’ she confided in a pained undertone.
‘Why not?’ Mikhail enquired, his tension dispersing as he studied her. She looked exhausted, her russet head drooping on her slender neck like a broken flower, as if it was too much effort to hold it upright, and a sense of blame assailed him because he had almost lost his temper with her and he knew he had frightened her. He recalled his father’s infamous violent rages too well to allow himself any comparable outlet. Indeed the main bastion of his character was self-control in every mood and in every situation.
Kat was all shaken up. She could not recall ever having been in such turmoil before or understanding herself less. He was only thirty-years old and she was thirty five, way too old for him, in fact even being attracted to him was practically cradle-snatching, she decided desolately.
‘Why not?’ Mikhail asked again, curious about what made her tick in a way he had never been curious about a woman before.
‘Cougars are experienced women … I’m not,’ Kat admitted dully, convinced that she was an oddity in such a day and age and wondering in despair how she could possibly have done things differently. Her mother had put her sisters through so much with her ever-changing parade of men and Kat knew that for the sake of her siblings’ welfare she needed to lead a very different life from Odette. Unfortunately ten years earlier she had not appreciated that that would mean celibacy because in those days she had still dimly assumed that eventually she would meet a suitable man and enjoy a serious relationship. Only it hadn’t happened; the opportunity had just never arisen.
His level black brows drew together. ‘I don’t understand.’
Kat released a bitter laugh that was discordant in the quiet room and lifted scornful green eyes to say, ‘I’m still a virgin. How’s that for seriously weird?’
In the immediate aftermath of that admission, it would have been hard to say which of them was the more shocked: Kat that she had told him something she had never told any other living person, or Mikhail, who could not have been more stunned had she confessed that she was a serial killer. Physical innocence was way beyond his experience and even further removed from his comfort level.
CHAPTER SIX
ENSCONCED IN THE spectacular luxury of Mikhail’s private jet the following day on a flight to Cyprus where they were to board his yacht, The Hawk, Kat pretended to read a magazine.
So far, Mikhail had not required much in the way of companionship. He had worked industriously since they boarded mid-morning. If he wasn’t talking on his phone, he was doing something on his laptop or rapping out instructions to the employee who had boarded with him. Kat was relieved by his detachment because she was still cringing over her behaviour with him the night before. How on earth had she lost the plot like that? Why the heck had she randomly announced that she was a virgin? That was none of his business and totally extraneous information to a male she had no plans to become intimate with. She would live to be a hundred before she forgot the stunned expression he had worn in receipt of her gauche admission. Aghast at having embarrassed herself to that extent, Kat had simply fled afterwards, muttering goodnight and taking refuge in her bedroom.
A virgin? Mikhail was still brooding on that astounding information. It explained a lot about her though, he conceded grudgingly; it made sense of things he hadn’t understood. No wonder she had been so edgy and had overreacted to his approach in her home, no wonder she had felt the need to insist that she would not sleep with him! But he was still strongly disconcerted that a beautiful, sensual woman with so vital a spirit could have denied herself physical pleasure for so many years. His suspicion that she might be trying to play games with him as so many of her predecessors had done by using his desire for her as a bargaining chip had died then and there. Furthermore, far from being daunted by what she had told him, he had discovered that he wanted her more than ever. Was that because she had never been with another man? The novelty of the situation? It was yet another question he couldn’t answer. He studied her covertly, taking in the taut delicacy of her profile set against her rich russet curls and the long slender legs crossed at the knee with a humming tension he could feel. Although he knew that she wasn’t one bit happy about being on his jet en route to his yacht, hunger laced with satisfaction roared through Mikhail like a tornado. For the moment, she was here and she was his. Pushing his laptop aside, he dismissed the PA hovering at his elbow to do his bidding.
Kat stole a covert glance at Mikhail, yielding to the terrible secret fascination that literally consumed her in his presence and tugged at her every nerve-ending. She sensed his preoccupation, wondered if he was thinking about her and despised herself for it. She didn’t want his attention, had never wanted his interest, she told herself staunchly. Yet how did that belief tie in with her treacherous satisfaction that he should find her so attractive? There was something within her that rejoiced in his awareness and her own, something she didn’t know how to root out, something that scared her because it seemed outside her control.
‘Would you like a drink?’ Mikhail asked smoothly.
‘Water, just water, please …’ Kat responded, mouth running dry as she collided with glittering black eyes enhanced by luxuriant lashes. Alcohol would not be a good idea when she needed to keep her wits about her. He had the most stunning eyes and the reflectio
n made colour stream like a banner across her cheekbones.
Mikhail pressed the bell and the steward appeared to serve them. Restive as a prowling jungle cat, Mikhail leapt upright and watched her sip almost frantically at the water, the glass in her slender hand trembling almost infinitesimally. She could fight it all she liked, he thought with dark triumph, but she was every bit as aware of him as he was of her. He reached down, deftly removing the glass from her clinging fingers to set it aside, closing a big hand over hers to lift her to her feet. She raised startled eyes to his lean strong face, her beautiful eyes as verdant a green as a spring leaf.
‘What?’ Kat gasped, nerves now leaping about like jumping beans inside her as she looked up at him, feeling dwarfed by his height and width, the sheer hard power of his tall, well-built frame.
‘I’m going to kiss you,’ Mikhail murmured huskily, his dark deep drawl roughening.
Totally unprepared for that approach, her lashes flickered in shock. ‘But—’
‘I don’t need permission for a kiss,’ Mikhail derided. ‘Only to take you to bed. That gives me a fair amount of leeway, milaya moya.’
Kat was very much shaken by that catastrophic interpretation of their agreement. She had assumed that if he could accept she wouldn’t sleep with him, he wouldn’t touch her at all, for why would he want to waste time and energy on foreplay when the main event was not on offer to close the deal? She was stung by the realisation that he was bending the rules and by the belief that she should have known in her bones how devious he would be.
‘But I don’t want this,’ Kat told him feverishly, her slender body rigid as steel in the imprisoning circle of his arms.
‘Let me show you what you want,’ Mikhail husked with unassailable cool, long fingers closing into a handful of russet curls to draw her head back.