st soon.’
‘Actually, they won’t.’
Now her confusion was magnified. ‘They won’t?’
He shook his head, put the bread down on the side and pulled off his tie. ‘No, they’ve gone.’
She stared at the tie, which he had dropped so that it lay in a silken ebony coil on the oak table, and wondered if he had somebody to clear up after him wherever he went. ‘Gone where?’
‘After you went to bed last night, the three of us headed down to the casino at Monte Carlo—Sergei is fond of gambling and Crystal decided that her new dress needed a bigger audience than the one she was getting here. We played cards for most of the night and then they decided they were too tired to journey all the way back here.’ He threw her a speculative glance. ‘So I came back alone.’
‘Stopping only to give the chef the day off and to buy bread,’ she said slowly as she lifted her eyes to his. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘Don’t you?’ He looked at her curiously. Was she really as innocent as she sometimes seemed? For a moment, those bright green eyes of hers looked completely guileless. ‘I was actually thinking about your sensibilities, angel moy,’ he declared softly as the step he took closed the space between them. ‘I thought you might welcome the opportunity for us to be alone together. To have the run of the house without interference—so that we can make love in private instead of all these frustrated encounters we seem to keep having in cars.’
Zara’s mouth dried. Now that he was this close, the shadow of new growth at his jaw seemed to flaunt an overt and unashamed virility, while the bright glitter from his eyes was making all her defences slowly crumble. Desperately, she tried to cling onto her determination not to fall into a situation which would lead her to nothing but hurt and heartache. You’re nothing to him, Zara—just a part-time waitress who lied. ‘But I have no intention of letting you make love to me.’
Nikolai’s mouth curved into a cynical smile. How smoothly those fabrications dropped from her lips, he told himself. How could she honestly come out with a statement like that when her eyes were just begging him to kiss her? ‘Oh, really?’ he questioned as he pulled her into his arms, so that her lips were mere inches away. ‘Do you want to prove that to me? ‘
‘I shouldn’t …’ But instead of protesting, all she could do was register the painful elevation of her heart as his mouth grazed negligently over hers.
‘Shouldn’t?’
‘Have to …’
‘Have to what?’
Closing her eyes, she struggled for coherent thought. ‘P-prove anything.’
‘No? Then humour me instead. Just kiss me, angel moy. Kiss me properly and then I’ll be a happy man. Is that such an unreasonable request?’
She tried telling herself that of course it was unreasonable—that he had all the power in this situation and he was playing games with her. But somehow she was finding it impossible to listen to her own doubts. When his voice dipped into that sultry caress and was accompanied by the slow, circular movement of his thumb at the small of her back, Zara thought that if he’d asked her to leap over the moon it would have sounded like a reasonable request. ‘Nikolai,’ she breathed.
‘Mmm?’
‘I …’ But her reply was lost because now he was kissing her and it seemed the most natural thing in the world to let him. On and on it went, deeper and deeper—like no kiss she’d ever experienced before. It felt like heaven—better than heaven. ‘Oh, God,’ she whispered as she came up for air.
‘You like it?’
‘No, I’m hating every second of it—can’t you tell?’
With a low laugh, he pulled her tightly into his body, his mouth whispering against her ear.
‘I’ve thought about you all night long,’ he said unsteadily. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever lost quite so much money before. I couldn’t give a stuff about the damned dice when all I was thinking about was how luscious and curved your body is.’ Reaching down, he began to unbutton her white shirt until it was completely undone and he slid it away from her shoulders to encounter the satin skin beneath. He swallowed. ‘It’s just a pity I can’t see a bit more of it. A situation which needs resolving immediately, don’t you think?’ Moving his hand round her back, he dealt with her bra—a deft flick of his fingers and it was soon gaping open.
‘You’ve…you’ve done that before,’ she said, from between lips which suddenly seemed to have swollen to about twice their normal size.
‘So have you,’ he declared unsteadily as she lifted her breasts up towards his mouth and he pushed her back towards the table.
But she hadn’t—not like this. At least, it had never felt remotely like this—as if she were on some sensual merry-go-round that was fast gathering speed and giving her no opportunity to get off. As if she’d been given a crash course in making love and was about to give Nikolai all the benefits of her education. She could feel her bottom dipping against the wooden table and then he was pushing her down on top of it—his lips and his hands hot and hungry as they urgently roved over every available bit of bare flesh. And even though some lost little voice was trying to make itself heard—trying to get her to call a halt to this mad-ness—Zara was in no mood to listen to it.
He yanked off her shirt and threw it to the floor. The bra quickly followed, while he captured one ripe and straining nipple in his mouth. She bucked with pleasure as he teased it with the light graze of his teeth and the warm flick of his tongue. And then he was slithering her skirt up around her thighs, impatient fingers hooking into her panties and sliding them down over her knees until they fluttered to the floor, like a white flag of surrender.
Shrugging off his jacket he returned his mouth to hers again. ‘I want you,’ he growled, his fingers skating with delicate precision over her thighs.
‘And…and I want you, too,’ she blurted out, gasping as his hand moved upwards, briefly brushing over the soft fuzz of curls before plunging his fingers deep inside her molten heat.
‘Yes, it seems you do,’ he murmured appreciatively.