‘A beautiful name,’ he mused softly, observing that cute tremble of her lips. ‘To go with a very beautiful woman.’
The throwaway compliment made her skin glow—it seemed like for ever since someone had paid her one, and nobody had ever called her beautiful before. But Zara told herself that she mustn’t fall for his charm. He probably came out with statements like that every minute of every day—slick, perfectly timed statements, which were guaranteed to have women falling under his spell. She opened her mouth to say something smart and instead it came out as a breathless little ‘th-thank you’ and she could have kicked herself.
‘Can I get you a drink, Zara?’
She shook her head. ‘No, thanks—I’ve already had one.’
‘Oh, I think you’re allowed more than one.’ He stared straight into her eyes. ‘Though no more than two.’ He smiled slightly to show he was teasing her.
He was making it sound as if the two of them were involved in some kind of conspiracy and the thought of that made Zara draw herself up short. What the hell did she think she was doing? This wasn’t why she was supposed to be here—and if she had lost her nerve about foisting one of Emma’s cards on him, then she ought to make herself scarce.
Because this man was dangerous—hadn’t he told her so himself? ‘Actually, I’d better go.’
‘Why?’
‘Because …’ Her words tailed away as she tried to think of a good reason why she might wish to leave a party when she had only just arrived.
‘You don’t really have a reason, do you?’ he questioned as he saw her bite her lip in a moment of indecision, which was oddly appealing. ‘Not when there is music playing and I’m being plagued by an urgent desire to dance with you, which simply won’t go away. So come here.’
To Zara’s horror, he reached out and laced her fingers with his and began to lead her through the throngs of people. Well, maybe horror wasn’t the right word, she conceded as people began to part to let them through. Excitement might have been more accurate. She could feel hot colour flaring at her cheeks as she became aware of heads turning to watch them and the pulse at her wrist began to hammer wildly beneath his fingertips. But it wasn’t until he had halted by the small space of floor directly in front of the musicians that she tipped her head up to gaze at him.
‘We can’t dance!’ she whispered.
‘Why not?’
‘Because—’
‘Stop saying “because”. Come and dance with me instead.’ His icy eyes glittered out a cool challenge. ‘You know you want to.’
And the awful thing was that he was right. She did. There was a melting, yearning pool in the pit of her stomach, which was longing for him to pull her into his arms—and when he did she gave an instinctive intake of breath, which caused his fingers to tighten around her waist.
‘You see?’ he murmured. ‘It’s what you wanted all along.’
Zara felt dizzy. What could she do? His hands had moved down and were now lying on her hips, the fingers splayed against the silk of her dress with a lazy and proprietary ease so that for a moment it felt as if he were touching the bare flesh beneath.
‘Relax,’ he instructed softly.
‘How can I relax when everybody is looking at us? ‘
‘You should just ignore them—or get used to it. The men are looking at us because they envy me, and the women because they wish they were standing where you were standing, milaya moya.’
It was an arrogant assessment, though Zara doubted that the first part was true. Why would the men envy Nikolai? Especially when there were loads of women in the room who were more attractive than her—rich, titled women who would probably be dancing confidently instead of worrying that they were going to spear his foot with one of their lethal heels.
Yet the soft music was very seductive and more seductive still was the way in which he pulled her towards him—almost before she realised he’d done it. She could feel the jut of his hips against hers and suddenly she became aware of the formidable heat of his hard body pressing into hers and could sense the desire which radiated from his powerful frame. Zara swallowed.
‘Relax. You seem rather uptight,’ he commented as an irresistible tug of desire shot through him.
She felt the almost careless caress of his thumb at her waist. What could she say—that the last time she’d had a slow dance with a man had been at some awful, noisy club, and it had felt nothing like this?
‘I’m not used to dancing,’ she said.
‘Why not?’
Her face inches away from his shoulder, Zara wondered h
ow best to answer him. Even if she hadn’t been tied to the sickroom for the past however many months, she still couldn’t have imagined herself whirling around a formal ballroom like this. It seemed rather old-fashioned.
She risked a glance up at his hard-boned face. How old was he? Difficult to say, but certainly a lot older than her. He had experience written on every sculpted angle and there were faint lines of cynicism etching the sides of his mouth. Yet there was nothing old-fashioned about the way he was holding her, or the way it was making her pulse rocket. It felt elemental. As if dancing were something far too intimate to be doing in front of a crowd of people…‘Because—’