He had barely begun to scratch the surface of those fantasies. And he was running out of time.
But he wanted her with him, every step of the way. He wanted her fully aware of it when he took her, every inch and every thrust, not blissed out with what he was fairly certain, with no little smugness, was her very first orgasm.
A feeling wholly new to him moved through him then as he looked down at her. He couldn’t recognize it. He wasn’t sure he cared to. She still breathed so heavily. Her eyes were still shut tight, her face flushed red. She was making the slightest, smallest sound; it was so close to a moan, and it made him want her even more.
He settled himself beside her, propping himself up on his elbow and drew her name on the bare skin of her arm in Russian. Milaya moya. His from the start, little though she might know it. And despite what was to come.
But when her eyes finally opened, that dark jade gone green, she looked distressed. Panicked. And when she focused on him, she went pale.
“No,” she said, but her voice was strained. Choked.
She pushed against him wildly and he let her go at once, going perfectly still as she rolled and then scrambled away from him. She threw herself back against the nearest bright white couch, her dark red hair and black dress a punch of color against the pale cushions, the stark room; poignant and loud. She tugged her dress down to cover her legs and then she pulled her knees up to her chest and hugged herself.
Like a scared child, not like the woman he knew. Not his bold, fearless professor, who had never met an opponent she couldn’t argue down, no matter how foolhardy that argument might be.
“Miranda.” He made his voice calm. Soothing. “What is the matter? There is nothing to be afraid of here.”
“This can’t happen,” she said in a heartbreakingly small voice, that was not in any way hers, and then she buried her head against her knees.
A dark suspicion uncurled inside of him, making him deeply, almost incapacitatingly furious. At himself. Her insistence on the separation of mind and body. Her bloodless previous relationships, all talk and so little sex. Her hatred of what he stood for from afar, her stunned, uncertain fascination with him in person. The way she kissed him, as if she couldn’t believe he was real, as if she’d never felt anything like it before. As if some part of her was afraid. Ivan seethed. How had he managed to overlook that? But he knew. He’d been focused on the game. And that glorious heat, that want. That incandescent fire. On having her, not reading her as he should have.
He forced himself to breathe, to focus. To concentrate on here, now. Miranda.
“But it’s already happened,” he said quietly. “And here we are, all in one piece. Safe.”
“Ruined,” she whispered, more to her legs than to him, but he heard her all the same, and it felt like a sucker punch, hard and fast to the back of the head, taking him down to his knees. “You’ve ruined me.”
“I don’t have that power, Milaya,” he told her, not permitting his voice to betray a single shred of the fury that roiled inside of him. The fury or the deep sympathy he wished he could express in more than just a few paltry words in his third language. “And neither does anyone else.”
He heard a sound that was like a sob, and it broke what was left of his useless old heart into a thousand pieces. He pulled himself up into sitting position, but he didn’t go to her, though every part of him wanted to. He watched her delicate head, bent over her knees. Watched her lithe body shake slightly. Listened to the way she breathed, ragged and shallow. And he waited.
Outside, the afternoon wore on. The light thinned, the shadows began to form. The wind picked up, making the palm trees dance slightly. And still he waited.
Eventually, she lifted her head, her face wet with tears and her eyes, those beautiful, defiant eyes, too wide and much too troubled. He hated it. He wanted her dark, clever jade. He wanted that green flash of outrage, that dazed black of passion. Not this.
“This is all I have,” she told him, her voice harsh and tight with emotion. She brought up one hand and held it against her forehead, the side of her face, indicating the whole of her head as if she was no more than a brain in a jar. “This is all I have. I can’t... I don’t...”