She just didn’t understand why a single touch from him and she lit up inside, melting and clenching, as if he’d done much more than caress her so lightly in that dressing room. As if she’d wanted him to.
As if she was the kind of woman who wanted.
“Do you want the relationship we agreed upon?” she asked in a pointed undertone, pulling her arm out of his grip, entirely too aware that he lazily permitted it. “Or do you simply want to see me surrender to you in every possible way?”
His mouth curved, hard and fierce, searing into her, connecting hard to her core. Her belly. The swell of her breasts. Then deepened, as if he could see all the ways she wanted him despite herself, as if he knew exactly what she’d felt, what she still felt. What she so desperately did not want to feel at all.
But the fear of what she wanted, the fear of what she felt, the fear that these were all baby steps toward losing control and the horror she knew followed that kind of folly—that was hers. Yet somehow it made the fire inside of her burn all the brighter, as if to taunt her. She blamed him for that, too.
“Ah, Professor.” It was the closest to laughter she’d ever seen him come, and something about it terrified her, as if that was a cliff she didn’t dare fall over. As if that really would be the end of her, once and for all. “You say that as if I must choose.”
CHAPTER FIVE
THE team of stylists presented his angry, posh professor to him with a flourish when his plane landed in Nice an hour or so later.
Ivan swept a critical gaze over her as they brought her out to him on the sun-drenched tarmac, expecting the jolt of desire that seared through him at the sight of her, but surprised by its intensity all the same. It was getting worse, he thought grimly. He’d come far too close to losing it in that dressing room in Paris, and some part of him regretted that he hadn’t. It was the way she’d looked at him. It was the elegant scent of her, the heavy red flame of her hair. The impossible softness of her patrician skin. Her delicious little shivers—
It was madness. She was madness. He needed to stick to his plan. This was supposed to destroy her, not him.
They’d dressed her all in white, as he’d requested, the better to appear fresh and lovely next to all of his brute strength that she’d spent so much time criticizing these past years. Soft white trousers clung to her long legs, then flared gently over skyscraper wedged sandals and her brightly painted toes, which he found far more erotic than he should. They’d layered white and cream strappy tops, one over the next, to lick over her small, perfect breasts and flirt with her enticing hips. Her hair was the focal point, tumbling down in a dark enchantment of red, looking slightly tangled, as if someone—and how he wished it had been him—had been dragging his fingers through it while engaged in far earthier pursuits.
“Do I pass inspection?” Miranda asked in that tone of voice that he was developing a small obsession with. It was her snooty, ivory-tower attempt at being polite. Or doing her best to pretend she was being polite, more likely—to act the appropriate part. Her hands were on her hips, the way he’d like his to be. Not that he was at all sure he would stop the next time he got his hands on that lithe, lean body.
A dangerous game, indeed.
He wanted her in ways that worried him. And after that scene in Paris, he couldn’t help but think that seducing her might come at a cost he wasn’t prepared to pay.
But that wasn’t anything new.
He didn’t answer her, knowing full well it would infuriate her, and seeing from the flash of temper in her dark jade gaze that it did. He took the oversized sunglasses one of the stylists had handed him and slid them onto her face, covering up those mysterious eyes of hers, and indulging himself in the fleeting sensation of her skin against his fingers, the fine silk of her hair. Her hands slid from her hips, and her lips softened slightly, and he almost smiled then, because he knew exactly what burned in her then. He felt it, too.
“Come,” he said. He reached over and took her hand in his, amused at the way she flinched and then ruthlessly controlled it in almost the same instant.
He doubted she understood what a lifetime of martial arts did, the ways it forced a man to be aware of his environment. That he knew when she breathed, when she held a breath instead; when she tensed, when she softened. And more. He let their fingers tangle and slide, enjoying the hitch in her breath and the deliberate way she forced herself to curl her hand around his. As if she would much rather dig her nails into his skin until he bled.