Too close, she’d thought in a rising panic. He wore a white button-down shirt, crisp and untucked, that only hinted at the impressive strength beneath. And those intriguing tattoos—the one she’d seen on his arm and the teasing hint of another she could see in the open neck of his shirt, inked black on his golden skin. He’d been sitting much too close, and he’d been much too compelling, and she’d had no time to process any of this.
She’d returned home from Washington the day after their kiss to find paparazzi camped out outside her apartment building high on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. She’d holed up indoors, grateful that Columbia’s commencement ceremony had been the week before and that she’d finished teaching all of her classes for the semester. She’d pretended that none of this was happening, that everything was as it had been, that she’d never met Ivan Korovin. Or kissed him. Much less made this devil’s bargain with him.
And when the denial had run its course, she’d planned out her new book and calmed herself with bright and happy visions of her future. When he was out of her life. When she could analyze and shape and process all of this as she wished. When she could discuss that kiss in her own terms, on all the networks that had been clamoring to interview her.
When the nightmares faded away again, the way they had before she’d met him, and let her sleep.
She hadn’t been ready for him so soon after Georgetown. She hadn’t been prepared for the shock of it when he’d greeted her in the sleek silver car that had whisked them both to the airport, much less the scorching force of him once they’d found themselves alone in the sitting area of his private jet, his men up in the front or disappeared into the staterooms.
“We did not agree.” He’d drunk from his glass with apparent unconcern. “You made an announcement. I sense you do so often.”
She’d ignored that last part.
“Does that mean you don’t agree, then?” she’d asked tightly, aware only when his gaze had flicked down to her hands that she’d been clenching them too hard against the armrests of her deep leather seat. She’d forced herself to let go.
“As a matter of fact, I do not.” He’d met her glare with that irritatingly calm gaze of his, that had held, as ever, a simmering amusement in its brooding depths. She hadn’t wanted to ask herself why that affected her so much. Why it burrowed so deeply beneath her skin. “We will put on this little act, as you call it, when we are in public. Only when we are alone, just the two of us, will we drop it.”
“But—”
“Cameras are everywhere,” he’d said quietly, with that edge of quiet, implacable certainty. “Eager eyes and mobile phones set to record. Gossiping mouths with instant internet access. You think you know what it means to be in the public eye because you have appeared on some television programs, because your name is known in some circles.” His mouth had curved slightly. Mockingly. “You don’t.”
There had been something in his gaze then, something dark and almost painful that made her heart seem to beat too hard in her chest. She’d cleared her throat, more confused by her insane urge to offer him some kind of comfort than anything that had come before. She’d tried to shake it off.
“That seems extreme,” she’d said. “And unnecessarily paranoid.”
“Yet it is precisely how I have managed to be a major movie star, featured in the number-one summer action movie for four years running, and still considered mysterious and reclusive,” he’d said without the faintest shred of arrogance or pride. Only stark, indisputable fact. “This is my game, Professor. If you want a book out of it, we will play it my way.”
Public.
Miranda flushed slightly now, holding his gaze in the mirrors of the opulent Parisian dressing room, as chastened as if he’d reprimanded her out loud. She forced herself to breathe. And then, impossibly, attempt a smile.
It was anemic, she thought, studying herself in the wall of mirrors, but it was there.
Ivan only watched her for another moment, and she again got the sense that she amused him, though he neither smiled nor laughed. Then, his eyes still so dark and commanding on hers, he lifted up a single finger of one hand and wordlessly commanded her to turn around in a circle.