But wasn’t part of Zara’s keenness to move more to do with the fact that she didn’t quite know how to react to this man who had just made love to her? What had just happened between them was entirely outside her experience. She’d never had sex with her boss before. She’d never had sex on a kitchen table before. In fact, her experience with men was lamentably small—but she doubted whether Nikolai would ever believe that.
Not that she needed to prove anything to him, of course, she told herself fiercely. She just needed to extricate herself from this highly embarrassing situation.
‘We can’t stay here,’ she said.
‘No, I guess we can’t.’ Nikolai yawned. He felt comfortable. Sated. It seemed that the enforced wait had been worth it after all. What did they say? Something about hunger always making the best sauce…‘Let’s go and lie by the pool. We can drink lemonade and lie in the shade and sleep.’ His eyes glittered down at her. ‘Or not sleep.’
It sounded tempting. Maybe too tempting. Wouldn’t doing that make her start longing for the impossible—a world which would never be hers? Desperate to cling onto some sort of reality, Zara shook her head. ‘I don’t have a swimsuit.’
His eyes narrowed. ‘You must have brought something with you.’
‘No.’
‘But surely …’
‘Surely, what?’ She could hear the defensive rise of her voice as she met the mocking challenge in his eyes. ‘I don’t make a habit of jumping into my clients’ swimming pools.’
‘I’m happy to hear it,’ he murmured, his hand splaying possessively over one bent, bare thigh. ‘But given that the client was me—didn’t you imagine that something like this might happen?’
‘What, that I’d end up being…being…ravished by you on the kitchen table?’ She shook her head. ‘It may come as a surprise to you, Nikolai, but no—it wasn’t the first thing which sprang to mind. Were you so sure this was going to happen?’
He shrugged. ‘The venue was always variable, but the outcome certainly wasn’t.’
Indignation bubbling up inside her, she tried to wriggle out from under him, but he wouldn’t let her. The arrogance of the man! ‘Why, do you always seduce your waitresses?’ she demanded.
‘Never,’ he answered simply, his mouth hovering close to hers. ‘Do you always let your bosses seduce you?’
‘Never,’ she answered back, realising that she couldn’t complain that he’d asked an insulting question, when she’d just done exactly the same.
The answer pleased him more than it should have done and he brushed his lips against hers in a lazy kiss. ‘So we’re equal.’
Equal? Was he kidding? How could she ever consider herself the equal of the billionaire oligarch? She shook her head, trying to concentrate—but it was very difficult to think straight when his thumb was stroking reflectively at the curve of her hip like that. ‘I just feel as if I’ve gone back on my word,’ she said.
‘Oh?’
‘Back in London, I told you that if I accepted the job, then I intended our relationship to be professional.’
‘And maybe you meant it when you said it. But deep down you must have known that you were fighting against the inevitable. Just as you must know that it’s pointless fighting it now, angel moy. When this kind of chemistry exists between two people, then it would be a—’ he touched his palm to her breast and saw her fight to stop her eyelids from fluttering to close ‘—crime not to let it combust,’ he finished thickly. ‘In fact, I think it’s going to combust again any minute now.’
‘Nikolais …’
‘Mmm?’
‘What do you think you’re…doing?’
‘Why don’t I give you another clue?’
‘I…ohl’
He hadn’t planned to make love to her again. Not yet. But neither had he planned the urgent stab of desire which was arrowing through him and which made the parting of her thighs as irresistible as the slow and delicious thrust with which he entered her. It should have been wild sex. Dirty sex. But when she whispered her fingertips on his face like that and planted those little kisses on his lips it felt like something he wasn’t used to. It felt like tender sex.
‘Zara,’ he said unsteadily as he felt pleasure begin to pulse through his body.
‘I’m here,’ she whispered, her lips moving over the curve of his jaw and feeling his big body shudder as she traced him with kisses. She clung to him like someone who was drowning—and that was exactly what it felt like, she realised. Drowning in a pleasure which was mingled with a conflicting swirl of emotions. She wanted to burst with happiness at the way he was making her feel—and yet she had to keep telling herself that it wasn’t real. None of this was real.
And when it was over she picked up her scattered clothes from the kitchen floor and began pulling them on over her warm and sated body, aware of his icy gaze raking over her as she tugged the rumpled skirt down over her bottom.
‘Go and take a shower,’ he instructed softly. ‘And I’ll have something sent over for you to wear by the pool.’