Could the atmosphere in the luxurious cabin get any colder? Ria asked herself as she swallowed down his statement. Could there be any less emotion in his tone?
A sudden violent jolt, the screech of brakes, the rumble of tyres on the runway brought her to the realisation that they were down, had landed and the plane was now taxiing towards the airport building. They had arrived; they were on Mecjorian soil.
Peering out of the window, she saw the sun-baked countryside that was familiar, the range of mountains over in the distance, their tops covered in a coating of snow. It should have felt like coming home. It was home. She had only been away for less than a week, one hundred and twenty hours at the most, but it seemed that everything had changed totally. Her life was no longer her own; her future had taken a totally different path from the one she had believed it would follow. She had thought that she would persuade Alexei to take the throne and then she could quietly retreat into the background, live her life in private. Now it seemed that instead she was going to have to be up front and centre.
With Alexei.
Awkwardly she fumbled with her seatbelt, feeling imprisoned, tied down and needing desperately to be free. But the way her future was going it seemed she would never be free. She had gone to Alexei in the hope of being freed from the future that her father had planned for her but instead she had come up against a man who was even more ruthless and controlling than Gregor had ever been.
As a result she had jumped out of the frying pan and right into the fire. And she faced the prospect of being burned alive as a result.
CHAPTER EIGHT
‘LET ME...’
Alexei had already dispensed with his seatbelt with clinical efficiency and he was standing beside her, his hand reaching out for the awkward buckle on hers. When he bent his head to deal with it the softness of his dark hair brushed against her cheek, caressing her skin and sending shivers of response down her spine. She could smell the citrus shampoo on his hair, the clean scent of his skin, and up this close she could see how already, even at this stage of the day, the dark shadow of the growth of beard marked his cheeks.
Her heart thudded in her throat and she had to sit back and clench her hands into tight fists down at her sides to stop herself from giving in to the urge to reach out and stroke his cheek, feel the contrast between warm satin skin and the rough scrape of hair against her fingertips. Heat flooded every part of her, pooling at the spot just between her legs, so close to where those strong, square-tipped fingers had just completed their task.
Would this instant, shockingly primitive reaction to his nearness make the future he had dictated to her so much easier or so very much harder? She didn’t know and with sparks of response flaring in her brain, spots rising in front of her eyes, she couldn’t even begin to think of finding a way to answer her own question. She didn’t even know if she could get to her feet, the muscles in her legs, even her bones, seeming to have melted in the burn of response that possessed her.
‘I can’t...’ she began but then, afraid of what she might be revealing, swallowed down the admission and changed it to, ‘I don’t think I can do this. How does a devoted fiancée—your devoted fiancée—behave?’
‘You need to ask that? Here...’
Those strong hands came down again, clamping over hers as he straightened up. He hauled her upwards, lifting her to her feet, so fast so roughly that she fell against him, her breasts thrust into the hard, muscled planes of his chest, her face pressed to the lean column of his throat, her senses swimming from immediate sensual overload.
‘Of course I need to ask!’ Her physical response thickened her tone, making it husky and raw, alien in her own ears. ‘I’m not your fiancée—nor am I devoted to you. We have nothing between us.’
‘Nothing?’ His laughter made it only too plain what he thought of that. ‘Lady, if this is nothing...’
His dark head came down fast and hard, those beautiful lips finding hers and clamping tight against her mouth, crushing hers back against her teeth so that she could only gasp in shocked response.
As a kiss it was cold and cruel, more like a punishment than a caress, but appallingly it didn’t matter. She didn’t care, couldn’t think, could only feel. And the feeling that was uppermost in her thoughts, pounding through her body, was a raw hunger, a desperate need for this—and so much more. She would have flung her hands up around his neck, bringing his head down even closer, to deepen and prolong that burning pressure, but the way he still held her prevented that. She couldn’t hold back and she crushed her mouth against his, strained her body closer, feeling the heat and hardness of his erection that pushed against the cradle of her pelvis, telling her of his desire and feeding her own until she was swimming on a heated tide of longing, losing herself in him.
The moment when he broke off the kiss, snatched his mouth from hers, dropped her back down on to her feet—feet that she hadn’t even been aware had left the floor—was like a brutal slap to her face. His name almost escaped her in a cry of shocked distress but she dragged her hands from his and flung them up and over her mouth to hold back the revealing sound.
‘I think that showed you—showed both of us—how this will work. You say you don’t know how to do this but it’s so easy. I want you...’
Reaching out, he stroked a finger down the side of her cheek, watching intently as in spite of herself she shivered, her eyes closing in instinctive response.
‘And I can have you if I want.’
That brought her eyes flying open again to stare, shocked, into his.
‘No!’
He ignored her furious protest. ‘Because you want me just as much. You responded. More than responded. You know as I do that if we’d been somewhere more private then things would have gone so much further.’
Breathing unevenly, he smoothed a hand over his face, brushed the other down his body to straighten the shirt her actions had creased, pulling it from his trousers at his waist.
‘Perhaps it’s best that things can’t go any further now—before I do something that we’ll both regret.’
‘You’ve already done something I regret—something I wish had never happened!’
Was it the fact that it was a lie that made her voice so shrill? Or the way that her body was still struggling with the aftershocks of the reaction his kiss had sparked off in her, sparks fizzing along every nerve, burning up in her blood?
‘Really? Then if that’s the case, you’ll not want this, either.’
She knew what was coming, and the tiny part of her mind that was still rational told her to step back, move away. Fast. But that tiny part was totally submerged in the burning flood of sensual need that swamped common sense, drowning it in the heat of the hunger that still throbbed deep inside. She saw the change in his eyes, the switch from ice to smoky shadows that matched her own mood, and her breath caught in her throat, her lips parting, ready for the very different kiss she knew he planned.
And the kiss she really wanted.
This time it was warm and gentle. It gave instead of taking. His mouth caressed hers, teased, tantalised, tempting it further open to allow the intimate invasion of his tongue. The cool, fresh taste of him was like a powerful aphrodisiac exploding against her lips, totally intoxicating, instantly addictive.
She melted into that kiss, almost swooning against him as the throb of desire took all the strength from her legs, made them feel like damp cotton wool beneath her. And when Alexei’s arms came round her it only added to the sensual overload that had her at its mercy. The heat and scent of his body was like the burn of incense in her nostrils making her head swim.
This was the kiss she had always dreamed of, the kiss she had been waiting for all her life. The kiss she had once lain awake imagining long into the night as she felt the awakening of her female sexuality It was a kiss that made her know what it felt like to be a woman.
A woman who had found the man she wanted most in all of the world.
A woman who had discovered the man she...
Oh no! No, no, no!
Panic-stricken she froze, jerked back, tore herself away from him. What was she thinking? Where had that come from? How had she let that thought—that terrible, foolish, dangerous thought—creep into her mind?
Was she really so weak that she was allowing her adolescent self to resurface with all her foolish, gullible dreams, the fantasies she had indulged in when she couldn’t face reality? The fictions she had created for herself when she had let herself pretend that perhaps one day, Alexei, the boy she had had such a heavyweight crush on, would turn to her and want her as a man would want a woman.
Well, yes, he wanted her now, there was no denying that. And she wanted him. He was right, he could have her if he wanted her. There was no way she was going to be able to resist him if he turned on the true high-octane power of his sensuality, the enticement of the seduction she knew he could channel without trying. But was she going to mistake the white-hot burn of adult sexuality for anything more?