It was a very thin joke and they chose not to smile. It was a mere matter of signatures now.
‘I have no choice but to let him go. Maybe some time in the future we can talk...’
Alina took a deep breath. ‘Will you make Russia your base rather than Sydney?’
Demyan didn’t answer. He could feel the clock ticking down on Alina and him and there was so much he still had to find out, so much she still held back.
He felt her hands on his shoulders and on instinct he shrugged her off and then relented, but only, she realised, because he had a question.
‘Why were you crying?’ He felt her hands pause. ‘Alina?’ He wanted now to get to them, he wanted to know more about the woman who might just be capable of changing his mind.
‘I think we both know.’
‘Say it.’
‘Because we’ll be over soon,’ she said simply.
Say it isn’t necessarily so, her eyes begged, give me one shred of hope. But he kissed her instead, a deep, deep kiss that tasted urgent, a hungry kiss that stripped them in moments, and as he pushed her to the bed, Demyan chose not to think about anything that might possibly hurt.
Alina defied him. Slow were the kisses that met his mouth, far from urgent the body beneath him, for she wanted more than the urgent sex that displaced her and so she fought to explore every inch of him. Instead of succumbing, she etched him to memory with her mouth.
‘Alina...’ Her lips brushed over his eyes and it was the most intimate kiss Demyan had ever allowed, and they were unfamiliar waters he was sailing on as he rolled to his back and she kissed down his cheek and chin and he tried to claim her mouth but she resisted.
She kissed his eyes again and he could not stand the bliss, could not bear to succumb, to give in to her mouth, so he chose words to halt her.
‘I know about your art...’ Her mouth paused, but she would not let him distract her. ‘That you don’t have the guts to display it.’
She would not give in to his taunts, she would not stop, she would explore every inch of him in her own time. Her tears fell on his lips and he tasted her salty warning and stayed silent as she worked her way down.
Alina shaded the dark of his nipples with feather-light strokes and added a dash of desire and cardinal red to her palette and resumed, sucking on the flat nub, hearing his ragged breathing, his hand trying to guide her head down.
No. Still, she did not relent.
It was time for his stomach and she painted seashell white with a dash of linen as she deep-kissed his pale skin. Demyan’s hands pushed at her head but she denied him. Instead, she shaded in the snake of hairs, and each slow brush of her lips had his fists clench tighter.
‘Alina!’
She ignored his protest, though, and down her mouth slid till she painted his intimate length, holding it, exploring it at her leisure, denying him as he tried to thrust it in her mouth and just soft-kissing the swollen head.
His hand pushed her down. ‘I show you how,’ he said, yet she refused to be one of Demyan’s perpetual puppets.
‘I don’t need to be shown,’ Alina said. ‘I’ve never tasted you there before and I want to take my time...’ He was the best thing she had ever tasted and she relished him with her mouth. Lost to his intimate scent, she curled her tongue around his length but Demyan did not want her to take time, he did not want the mouth that moved slowly back up his stomach and left him aching. Demyan did not want more colour added to his chest.
‘Why can’t you relax?’ Alina asked.
‘Because the second I do, the ground cracks, the sky...’
‘No.’ She kissed his mouth but he turned his head away.
‘I’d prefer your mouth somewhere else.’
‘Tough,’ Alina said, because no longer did he offend her. ‘I want to kiss.’
‘I want to come.’
‘Why the rush?’ she said, though her mouth did move back down to meet his aching length.
He wanted to give in, to just lie there and let her; he wanted, he wanted so much so that even as his hand pushed her head down he almost regretted it, for her kisses were so teasing and sweet.
She was swirling his head with her tongue, soft, gentle sucks, rising instead of lowering when he thrust his hips. It was driving him insane. If she would just obey his hands he would bury himself in her and force her to a more rapid conclusion, yet she would not move.
Demyan went to her hair, tried to guide her with his hand.
He had to come.
‘If you push my head down one more time,’ Alina said, ‘I’ll tie your hands to the bed...’ She faltered. She hadn’t meant it like that but as their eyes met for a long moment, perhaps, Alina realised, she had.
‘Other way round,’ Demyan said.
‘Not always.’ She smiled and got back to teasing his length but as she gave him head she was struggling to keep hers, to be strong, to be herself, to not submit to a man who refused to submit. Alina adored the taste of him, loved the feel of him almost writhing as he tried to stay still. There was a building tension in him and it was flaring also in her. Slowly she relished him, took him just a little deeper, teased him some more, but as she pulled back and blew on him, then, just as she was about to give in, to take him deeper, to succumb to his will, Demyan got there first.
He rolled her, a wedge of muscle hauled her up the bed and onto her back. A shocked, excited laugh came from Alina, as he held her wrists over her head.
She was laughing as he parted her thighs, ruing that her game had gone on just a little too long, but next time...
He felt her writhing, fighting the constraint, burning beneath him but laughing too, and then he felt her start to come.
‘Always,’ Demyan said, as he pulsed inside the malleable mystery woman beneath him and, hell, who could resist exploring that side of her?
Not he.
‘Nearly always.’ His mouth smothered hers and he brought her back to the world with a kiss he had so often refused as his last two words played repeated in his head. Demyan was, for the first time, factoring a known woman into his future, bringing her into his world. ‘Maybe there is something to stay for,’ he said.
‘Don’t.’ Alina shook her head. ‘Don’t say things that later you might not mean.’
‘I might mean it, though.’
‘Now,’ Alina pointed out, ‘and then you might not.’
‘What are you scared of?’
‘The truth?’ Alina asked, and he nodded. ‘I’m scared of spending the rest of my life looking out for a man and wondering if he’d even recognise me if we saw each other again.’ She was trying not to cry. ‘I still look for my dad. That first day we met, when you were having lunch, I was eating my sandwich...’
‘Hotdog,’ Demyan corrected.
‘You were watching me?’
‘I couldn’t take my eyes off you,’ he said. ‘I still can’t.’
That post-orgasm high was fading, but Demyan’s feelings were still there. He was actually relieved by the alert on the intercom because he was precariously close to telling her he loved her again, but in English this time.
‘Roman?’ Demyan called out, because only Roman could let himself in like that and he could hear him punching in the code. He pulled some clothes on as Alina scrambled out of bed and pulled on her skirt and searched desperately for her bra as quickly as she could, hearing the footsteps on the stairs and the door opening.
‘Just me, Demyan,’ Nadia said, and, completely naked, she walked into the bedroom.
CHAPTER TWELVE
IT WASN’T THAT Nadia was naked that froze Alina, instead it was the look, or rather the non-look, she briefly gave her.
Dismissive, just so, so dismissive.
Without so much as a word Nadia told Alina that she didn’t factor
a jot in this.
‘Demyan, ya khochu—’ Nadia started.
‘It isn’t about what you want!’ Demyan both shouted and translated. ‘You will speak in English in front of Alina.’
It was perhaps the polite thing to do but Alina rather wished she’d never had to hear it.
‘I want us to be together again—a family,’ Nadia rasped. ‘I think I’ve made the most terrible mistake...’ She started sobbing. ‘Demyan, what I said about Roman, it was a lie. I wanted to make you jealous, hell, I wanted you to react...’
‘You come here to tell me you lied?’ His voice was clipped but his breathing ragged. ‘You show up here in my bedroom... How the hell did you get the code?’
‘Roman,’ Nadia said. ‘Roman gave it to me because he wants us to get back together too, Demyan...’ She continued, ‘I don’t want to take Roman from you. This way we can be together.’
It was too much for Alina, and with a sob she turned to run.
‘Alina!’ he called. ‘Alina,’ Demyan roared as she fled down the stairs.
He caught up with her in seconds.
‘If we have any chance, you have to hear this...’
‘I shouldn’t have to hear this,’ Alina flared. ‘I shouldn’t have to see this. You’ve been divorced for years.’
‘You know the reasons why she’s here, though.’ Alina was the one person he had told, and his eyes demanded that she understand. ‘You need to hear it firsthand.’
‘Demyan, your ex-wife is naked in your bedroom...’
‘This has nothing do with Nadia,’ Demyan said, and to prove it he picked up the clothes Nadia had strewn on her ascent up the stairs.
‘Get out,’ he said to her. It was a voice only a fool would argue with and Nadia, Alina knew, was no fool. Her beauty mocked Alina over and over as she dressed, her confidence, her absolute assuredness that Demyan was hers taunting Alina as she walked past.
‘I fly tomorrow,’ Nadia said, and blew him a kiss. ‘Come and say goodbye if you choose.’
* * *
Alina went upstairs and retrieved her bra and she turned from him as she put it on.
‘We need to talk.’
‘Oh, that’s rich, coming from you,’ she said.
‘We need to talk,’ Demyan said again.
‘Then answer this—have you thought about getting back with her?’ She turned and looked into eyes that looked straight into hers as his mouth lied to her.
‘No.’
‘I hate that you just lied.’
‘I hate that you gave me no choice but to lie. If I’d said yes you’d have run off before I’d even finished the sentence. What are you running from, Alina?’
‘You!’ Alina shouted. ‘All this. I can’t do it, I don’t want to do it.’
‘I tell you why you run from me. I make you be yourself. When you run from me you are running from you. Why are you dressing in a suit, trying to be a PA...?’
‘Trying?’
‘You’re actually not very good!’
‘Bastard.’
‘Of course I am, but if I said that about your artwork, you’d have slapped me.’
Colour scalded her face. ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’
‘No, you want it hidden in a wardrobe, or hung on a wall in someone’s home when you should be showing it to the world.’
‘Actually, you’re wrong. I’ve just booked a stall at the market.’
‘Market...’ Alina could not possibly have chosen a filthier word for Demyan. His mind flicked back thirty years to a life that every day, every hour, every minute he did his best to forget. To hunger and filth and the tricks his mother had been reduced to just to make the rent. ‘You won’t be working in a market. Your work should be in a gallery. I can—’
‘You’ll buy me a career, will you?’ She didn’t want to hear it, he turned everything on to its head. ‘You’ll give me everything and then leave me with...’ She was almost gagging, trying to hold back tears, because he was offering more and then he would leave.
‘I’m not your father, Alina.’
‘Don’t even go there.’ Her face twisted in suppressed rage. ‘Don’t make promises you can’t keep.’
‘Talk to me...’ Demyan urged. ‘Alina, please...’ He was locked in urgency; the whole of Sydney glittered behind her shoulders, and it was a view that almost soothed him. ‘Alina, I am trying to make the biggest decision—’
‘Get on your knees, Demyan.’ She hurled his crude words back at him, assumed he was talking about Nadia, and right now she would prefer torrid sex than confrontation, but he gave just a wry smile because on his knees he wanted to be...
...in proposal.
‘Talk,’ Demyan said. ‘Row if we must but I’m not the only one who has stuff to sort out, Alina.’
‘Then sort it,’ she said. ‘But, please, do it well away from me. She shook her head. He was just way, way too much for her. ‘I want my life back, Demyan.’
‘Alina...’
‘I mean it, Demyan. I want my life back. I want to go home.’
‘No, you don’t,’ He was sure of it. ‘Come on, Dorothy, click those heels...’
‘I don’t want your black brick road, Demyan.’ She didn’t, she wanted safe, she wanted this done, she wanted this over, so she could commence her healing now rather than later.
He would be gone, Alina knew.
‘You’re sure about that?’
‘Very.’
‘I don’t nag.’
‘Beg,’ Alina corrected.
‘I don’t do that either.’
He wanted to call her back but stood there. For a small moment he had glimpsed a different world and he truly did not know if he was capable of it, this home filled with laughter and fat babies and telling Roman at the airport tomorrow that he always had a home here, in Sydney, with him and Alina...
He looked out of the windows at a view that had for a second again soothed him, but the magic was gone now.
Fool to think it could be different.
Alina was right: she was better away from him.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
HE NEITHER NAGGED nor begged.
Alina wanted him to, though, but it was all over by ten past nine on Monday.
‘Well done!’ Elizabeth said. ‘Demyan called and said how well you’d done and he’s forwarded a very glowing reference.’ Alina closed her eyes. ‘You’ll go places now, Alina.’
Places that she didn’t want to go, yet in his black way, with his glowing reference behind her, Demyan was pushing her towards her vision of safe, rather than towards being the woman she really wanted to be.
‘I’ve got a very nice position in the CBD,’ Elizabeth went on. ‘It’s for three months and it’s a full-time position.’
‘I’ll get back to you.’ Alina said, when usually she’d have jumped at the chance of three months’ full time work.
She should have stood her ground with Demyan, Alina knew that. She knew she should have had a little more faith in them.
But, simply, she didn’t.
When the doorbell rang her heart leapt in foolish hope. She peered out of the window and saw the silver of Demyan’s car.
She almost wept in relief as she opened the door but instead of Demyan it was Boris with a leather-bound folder.
‘Mr Zukov has asked for the return of any keys and also the elevator pass.’
‘Of course.’ She got them from her bag and signed them over.
‘He’ll organise the leased paintings to be returned once the property sale has been confirmed.’
‘Leased?’
He handed her a contract.
When it was over with Demyan it was completely over.
‘Tha
t’s not necessary.’
Alina took the paper, and stared at it for a moment.
‘Could you pass on a message?’ Alina asked.
‘Of course.’
‘Remind him that the seemingly worst PA in living memory had his home sold in just over a week.’
She closed the door but less than twelve hours after she’d denied him she was calling his phone—she didn’t need Boris to pass on her messages, she would tell him herself.
Of course Demyan had blocked her number and it hurt, it hurt like hell, it hurt way more than it had when her father had done the same.
He had severed every avenue.
* * *
Over the next couple of weeks Alina became almost as superstitious as Demyan.
If she turned off her phone and didn’t check it for an hour, with no cheating, he’d call her.
He didn’t.
If she was cheerful and happy at the restaurant, maybe she’d turn around and find him watching her.
It never happened.
She turned down another job offer from Elizabeth but, the golden PA she was now, Elizabeth persisted.
‘Two months’ work in London?’ Elizabeth offered. ‘It’s an amazing package, actually...’ And Alina listened as she heard she’d be flown there and her rent would be paid, because with Demyan’s reference behind her there was nothing she could not achieve.
‘No, thank you.’
‘We have had a call though that you might be able to deal with. Apparently he left a jacket at a property in the Blue Mountains.’ Alina frowned. As far as she could remember, his jacket had been in the car. ‘Normally you’d tell people to post it, but given it’s Demyan I’m sure he’d expect the golden gloves. It will add up to four hours’ work for you. If you want to drive over and get it I can ask where to forward it.’
‘I could drop it into the hotel.’ Alina’s voice was a husk. Finally there was an almost legitimate reason to see him.
‘Oh, no,’ Elizabeth said. ‘He’s back in Russia.’
Stupid to expect or hope for anything else really.
No goodbye, no kiss, nothing.
It wasn’t as if she hadn’t known how it would end from the start, Alina told herself. After all, her first introduction to Demyan had been that teary trio leaving.
The Only Woman to Defy Him Page 13
