His entire body stiffened as he tried to walk around them, and they stubbornly refused to acknowledge he was trying to get past. Twice, he lifted his arm up high, reactions almost catlike, as he dexterously avoiding tipping his tray with a pot of coffee on the loudest girl’s head.
When he cleared his throat and four sets of eyes swivelled up to meet him, I almost snorted hot chocolate the wrong way. Suddenly, the kids were solidly in their seats and impeccably well behaved.
“You don’t like kids?” I asked as he joined me at the table, his shoulders still stiff.
“I don’t like other people’s kids.”
“You have your own?”
He almost looked wounded at the suggestion. “No.”
My eyes lingered on his for a lot longer than I should have let them. My heart was pounding. It was ridiculous that I should even care what he thought about children. The man was staking out my house, following me to the place I worked out, turning up at my school to take advantage of me and my virgin ways.
Who was I kidding? I’d practically begged him for more.
He plunged the coffee, pushing down on the little handle with a steady force. I realised he’d brought two cups over on the tray as well as a little jug of what I thought was milk, but turned out to be cream, when he poured it in it settled on top, rich and pale, until he stirred it in.
“Coffee?”
“No, thank you. I have this.”
He eyed my hot chocolate and the vanilla millefeui on my plate and I straightened up in my seat a little defensively. Mum and I used to get hot chocolate and cake on the weekend sometimes, or after school if she got out of work early enough to come and pick me up. I was being nostalgic, but he didn’t know that and I wasn’t about to apologise for it.
“In Russia we do better cream cakes than this.”
I tilted my head, peering down at my plate and then looking back up at him.
“You don’t sound very Russian.”
“I came over here as a boy. Now, I am a citizen of the world. I go where my work takes me, but London is my base.”
“What brings you here?”
“I think you already know.”
My eyes went to his and I felt myself breathe in all too raggedly. Under the table I could feel the heat coming off his leg, even though he didn’t so much as brush his thigh against mine. I wished he would. The urge to spread my legs for him had never been so strong and I hated that, as predicted, this was all about Sutherland.
If this was what having a crush was like I couldn’t understand how any of my classmates got anything done. The only thing I could focus on was how much I wanted him to kiss me, to touch me and teach me everything my body had to offer.
I’d never understood the fascination with cocks, but I was thinking about his, and what it would take to get it hard for me. What it would feel like in my hand, and how I’d fit my lips around it and learn to suck him off with half as much talent as he’d displayed eating me out. Maybe I’d be good at it, and he’d keep looking at me the way he was looking at me now.
“You want to know what Pierce is planning to publish.”
Maxim’s head tilted very slightly in a nod to the affirmative that I would have missed had I not been watching him so closely.
“My employer is very keen on the information staying out of the public eye.”
He reached into his pocket and drew out a large-screened mobile phone and opened it up. “I want something quite different.”
“What is that?”
“To get you out.”
He tilted the phone so that I could see the screen, and I drew in a sharp breath when I realised I was looking at a picture I’d taken not two weeks ago, of the bruise Pierce had left on my left hip. Instinctively, my hand went to the site of the injury.
I felt more exposed than when he’d seen me fully naked.
“How the hell did you get that?”
“I’m sorry, Elizabeth that your privacy has been violated in the process of our investigations. I didn’t want it to be this way.”
I glared at him and put the phone back on the table top, turning the screen face down.
“I don’t need you to rescue me. If that’s what this is. How dare you go through my things?”
“I can assure you I’ve never set foot in your house. Our hackers were very targeted. I’ve not seen anything other than these photos and your notes on them from your computer.”
He sounded almost pained, and it made some of the tension in me fade. “Is that supposed to make me feel better?”