She had no time to think.
His lush and beautiful mouth was shockingly carnal against hers, wicked and clever, demanding and hot.
Physical.
He took her over, as if it was his right. As if she’d begged him to do it. She felt his hard hand against the side of her face, guiding her mouth to his with an easy, almost offhanded mastery that made her whole body pull tight in sensual delight. Heat exploded inside of her, volcanic and stunning. She didn’t fight. She didn’t so much as whimper. She didn’t even want to. She simply...let this man she imagined disliked her as much as she did him kiss her as if they were moments away from tumbling into the nearest bed. She simply surrendered to his endless, impossible, unspeakably erotic kiss—
When he finally lifted his head, his black eyes were burning with the same fire Miranda felt consuming her. There was a ringing in her ears, and she couldn’t feel her own hands where they were braced against his great wall of a chest. She had the vague thought that she might actually be having a heart attack. And then, a moment later, she knew she only wished she was—the better to avoid, forever, what had just happened.
What he’d done and, worse, what she’d felt. What she hadn’t so much as offered up a token protest against. What was still raging through her like an electrical storm, knocking down power lines and leaving her stunned.
He muttered a pretty word that she was certain was a curse, but speared through her like a wild flame. “Milaya.”
It was something about the way he said it, or perhaps it was that stirring, considering look in his black gaze. It flipped some kind of switch in her, and what washed over her then was nothing as simple as fire. It was dark and complicated and new, and left her feeling starkly, nakedly vulnerable, and worse, convinced that he could see it—
For a wild, panicked moment then, she thought she really had burst into flames after all. Bright lights exploded all around her and she realized, dazedly, that they’d been flashing for some time.
It took her one ragged breath, then another, to understand that it was not his kiss—though she could still feel it storming through her, shuddering and spinning out that wild heat, making her something like nauseated and restless and humiliatingly desperate for more, all at once—or even that demanding, challenging way he was looking at her now. It wasn’t his hard, capable hands that still held her against him. It wasn’t even that sudden slap of fearful vulnerability that she was still too afraid he could read.
It was the cameras. The paparazzi who hung on Ivan Korovin’s every taciturn word and calculated deed, recording the entire insane situation for posterity and plastering it all over those glossy supermarket magazines. And they’d certainly gotten a show today, hadn’t they?
The angry man was gone, as if he’d never been. There was only Ivan Korovin and the aftereffects of that searing kiss. And Miranda was forced to face the unsavory truth: she’d just been caught with one of her staunchest opponents, the man who had once dismissed her by calling her a tiny, yipping dog on a famous nightly talk show to the sound of much approving applause.
Kissing him, no less. In public.
At an international summit teeming with policy makers, academics and delegates from at least fifteen countries, all as deeply and philosophically opposed to everything he stood for as she was.
Miranda had to assume that every last moment of it was on film. The avid, delighted expressions of the jostling throng of reporters surrounding her assured her that it was.
Which meant, she knew with a terrible sinking sensation inside, that her entire career had just taken one of the knockout body blows for which Ivan Korovin was so famous.
To say nothing of the rest of her.
* * *
If looks could kill, Ivan reflected a short time later, the redheaded professor would have eviscerated him while the cameras still rolled.
He’d moved fast after he’d kissed her, that serious lapse in judgment he was still having difficulty justifying to himself. He’d had his security people clear a path into the conference hotel. Once inside, he’d directed her into a secluded seating area behind a riot of plants.
She hadn’t looked at him again and he’d imagined she was fighting with a truth that must have been wholly unpalatable for this self-appointed harpy who fought against all he wanted to accomplish: she owed him her thanks. Her gratitude. A better man might not have taken such satisfaction in that, but then, Ivan had never pretended to be anything but what he was. What would be the point?