‘Well, if you need to work, then you can’t allow sentiment to cloud your judgement,’ he said, his voice heavy with frustration. ‘You will accept the money that I owe you for the south of France job—and then we won’t speak of it again. Is that understood?’
She nodded, lifting her throat so that he could run his mouth over it—revelling in the warm brush of his breath and the fact that now she didn’t have to bear the consequences of her rash action. ‘Yes.’
‘And tomorrow, you will pack a bag—with everything you need—and you will spend the night at my house. Okay?’
‘Okay.’ His fingers were brushing negligently over the warm fuzz at the juncture of her thighs and she squirmed impatiently beneath them. ‘And n-now …?’
‘Now?’ He dipped his hand, pleased that she was naked beneath the little nightdress, his fingers delving into her moist heat as she bucked with pleasure. One more night, he told himself—a week at most—and then he would be free of her. He could feel her hunger, could detect the evocative scent of sexual desire which throbbed in the air around them, and felt himself harden even more. Nikolai swallowed. He could take her here. It would be so easy. On that rather beaten-up old sofa over there—or even up against the wall. With aching clarity, he could imagine her thighs wrapped fervently around his back as he drove into her long and deep and brought them both to orgasm. He could carry her upstairs and share what would doubtless be a cramped bed—but who cared about that when two people felt like this?
Or he could make her wait—as she had made him wait! The tip of his tongue edged over his dry lips. It would be a lesson to her—and to him. Show her that she wasn’t the only one who could hold out. Remind him that, yes, he was hot for her—very hot—but he didn’t let women walk all over him. Certainly not more than once. He was the boss and she had better accept that fact and start fitting in with his plans.
His fingers stilled and he moved his hand away from her slick heat to the accompaniment of the slump of her body against him and a whispered little moan of disappointment.
‘Now you need your sleep, I think,’ he said pleasantly. He tugged her nightdress back down and saw her lips shiver with disappointment—but he steeled his heart against their appeal. ‘And so do I.’ His kiss was perfunctory because he didn’t trust himself to stay there a moment longer and his voice was cool and matter-of-fact. ‘Phone my secretary tomorrow and she will arrange for a car to collect you.’
CHAPTER TEN
IT WAS only supposed to be one night.
One night to rid himself of her hypnotic spell—that was all. But one night somehow became two and two became three. Before Nikolai fully appreciated what was happening, Zara seemed to be firmly ensconced in his Kensington home. She was the face he awoke to each morning. The person he found himself eager to see at the end of a working day. The reason he refused every one of the swathe of invitations which regularly dropped through his letter box—for why would he want to make small talk with high-flyers when he could be at home in bed with his green-eyed beauty? One who had stubbornly insisted on continuing with her waitressing, despite all his enticements for her to be at his beck and call whenever he wanted her. And he hadn’t been able to change her mind, no matter what tactics he employed. Why, he didn’t think he’d ever met a woman as stubborn or as independent as Zara Evans!
Was that all part of her appeal, he mused, that determination not to let him call all the shots? The recognition that here was a woman who worked just as hard as he did—albeit in a much more modest field. And once the novelty value of all that had faded, then surely this hunger for her would have burnt itself out—and he could get back to living normally. Alone.
It was just that he seemed to have forgotten how to do normal. Here he was, standing shaving, his mind completely preoccupied—while through the open door leading to his bedroom lay the source of his preoccupation, her hair all tousled and a lazy smile of satisfaction curving her lips into an upward tilt.
Was she aware that she was weaving some strange kind of spell over him? he wondered savagely. And wasn’t it time he tried to break free from it?
‘You look miles away,’ he commented as he walked back into the bedroom.
His deeply accented voice cut into her thoughts and Zara looked up, her stomach dissolving with familiar lust as she watched him. He was wearing nothing but a white towel knotted at the hips, while he rubbed a smaller version through the damp tumble of his dark gold hair. Droplets of water gleamed like precious metal on his bare torso and she swallowed down a feeling of disbelief. That she should be here, in Nikolai’s bed. And that he should be looking back at her with that familiar spark of hunger in his ice-blue eyes.
She sighed. The bed was nearly as big as her entire bedroom back home a
nd her body felt all warm. She ached, yes—but it was a luscious kind of ache, which reminded her of all the things her Russian lover had done to her in the long night which had passed. And all the nights before that …
‘How can I be miles away when I’m right here?’ she questioned, with a shy smile.
With a ragged sigh, Nikolai dropped the towel, hearing her stifled little gasp as he treated her to a back view of his naked body. He felt the answering pull of arousal and knew that if he turned around and walked over to the bed he could be inside her eager body within seconds. And that he wanted to be. He wanted to get on the phone to his secretary and tell her to cancel all his meetings for the rest of the day just so he could stay home with Zara. Savagely, he pulled a silk shirt from his wardrobe.
Because hadn’t he expected her allure to have faded a little by now? It had been over a month since they had returned from France—and three weeks since she had first shared his bed in England. Usually, he rationed out his time and women were grateful for whatever they got. A couple of nights here and there, depending on how the mood took him. Some nights he preferred to work late and to sleep alone. Or he liked the freedom to go and play cards until dawn. Or to fly to the other side of the world with only his closest staff knowing his exact whereabouts.
But with Zara it was as if he had thrown the rule-book out of the window. It was as if he couldn’t get enough of her and he couldn’t for the life of him work out why. As if her tender kisses and amazing body had sparked off some kind of powerful addiction, which kept needing to be fed.
Why, just the other night he’d woken up and lain staring at the ceiling, with her all snuggled up beside him, her silken hair spread over his chest. He’d tried to move and she had made a gurgling little murmur of protest in his ear—and he hadn’t wanted to wake her because he’d known she had an early shift in the morning. He hadn’t wanted to wake her because she had a shift in the morning! So he’d stayed in an uncomfortable position until she’d rolled away of her own accord. Leaving him wondering whether he was losing his mind as well as his independence.
Was she aware that somehow she’d lured him into her little honey trap and was she building up little fantasies about the future even now, while fixing him with that dreamy smile? Was she perhaps thinking that the sexual compatibility they shared might overlap in a more general way? Nikolai’s face hardened. Some women didn’t need very much to let their minds wander down the white lace and diamond route—especially when a man had never been married before and had been tagged with that tiresome ‘eligible’ label. And if Zara was doing that—could he really blame her? Wasn’t it time that she got some sense of what he was really like—the kind of man he really was? To warn her that any kind of long-term wish fulfilment was a waste of her time?
‘You’re not working tonight, are you?’ he questioned idly.
Zara swallowed as he began to pull on a pair of silk boxers. Sometimes when she watched him getting dressed it seemed even more intimate than when they’d actually been having sex. It was intimate, she realised. Why, when she’d seen Emma at the book-launch party yesterday lunchtime, her friend had exclaimed that she and Nikolai were practically living together. And when Zara had protested—rather feebly, it was true—Emma had said something on the lines of did-she-realise-what-kind-of-man-she-was-dealing-with? That a man who was known as a commitment-phobe was not the kind of person you should lose your heart to.
And Zara had shrugged and said that there was no way she was losing her heart to him—and she certainly wasn’t stupid enough to imagine that she and Nikolai might have some kind of long-term future together.
Except that wasn’t entirely true, was it? Even when common sense told you one thing, that didn’t seem to stop your heart from longing for the complete opposite…Hadn’t she seen him lying asleep beside her one morning, his dark lashes feathering into two arcs above his high, carved cheekbones—and hadn’t she started to wonder what his son or his daughter might look like? His daughter would be very beautiful, she mused—if she inherited those ice-blue eyes and dark gold hair.
Coming out of an engrossing daydream about little Svetlana Komarov’s first birthday party, she realised that Nikolai was standing there, half naked and waiting for an answer to his question, and for a minute she blushed. Imagine if he’d been able to read her mind!
‘No, I’m not working tonight. I…well, you know I requested daytime shifts wherever possible? And Emma’s mum is still absolutely fine about it, so I’ve got most evenings off.’