by Lucy Ellis
Kim was the chatty type, and she seemed to have a comprehensive knowledge of the business. She rolled off the fighters’ agents, the sponsors present, pointed out different key staff, then settled into the nitty-gritty of the fighters, their stats. None of which interested Clementine in the slightest, but as Kim chatted she was able to look around, soak in some of the atmosphere.
About thirty-plus people circulated in the luxurious environment of the glassed-in box, milling with drinks and nibbles. There were little screens everywhere, with different matches being broadcast from outside the arena. Outside the glass windows rock music was pumping, but it was only a rhythmic thump that came to her faintly.
She was suddenly glad to be in here.
‘When it gets going we wander down and take ringside seats,’ explained Kim. ‘Jack, my partner, number-crunches at the top of the tree for the corporation. Completely unglamorous. This is the only exciting part of his job—getting ringside seats.’
‘Where’s Jack?’
‘Over there.’ Kim pointed him out, a rangy-looking guy in his mid thirties wearing jeans and a jacket and somehow contriving to make them look like a suit. Clementine knew the type. She looked at Kim. ‘Do you think I could have a chat to him? I’m interested in how everything works.’
Serge returned to fetch Clementine for the fight. He found her with a male audience—what was new? Two accountants and Liam O’Loughlin, his deputy head of promotion. She’d pushed back her jacket and had her hands on her hips, and whatever she was saying the guys were riveted to her.
‘Why can’t you huddle with the girls and behave yourself?’ he asked as he walked her away.
‘I don’t know, Serge. Maybe I get a little bored talking about nail colour.’
‘That’s not what I mean, kisa, and you know it. A third of my management team are women.’
‘I know.’
He looked as if he was about to say something, but the wall of noise hit them as they stepped out of the box and there was no chance for further conversation. Serge wrapped his arm around her, instantly separating her from the world in his embrace. As she looked up she had her fifteen seconds of fame as she saw them reflected on the huge screen above the ring, and then flashing logos for sponsors, car companies, sports drinks. She tried to catch them all, but Serge was walking her fast.
The combination of lights, music and an excited crowd had Clementine’s blood pumping, and she could see Serge wasn’t unaffected. He might be focussed on the bottom line, but he did enjoy the hoopla on some level. She hadn’t noticed it before but there was a real feel for showmanship in putting on a spectacle like this, combined with meticulous planning. Serge was a planner—she got that—but this was another side to him.
It appealed to her.
Ringside seats meant they were right on the action. This time Serge introduced her in a general way to the people sitting with them, including two famous male faces that had Clementine tugging on Serge’s sleeve as they sat down.
‘Da, kisa, it is,’ he responded, sitting back and stretching out his long legs. He looked like a king on his throne, thought Clementine, highly amused.
‘I’m not impressed,’ she said. She was—but not for any of the more obvious reasons. Having these faces ringside was publicity. It was effectively labelling the brand. The fight game was an old one, but a rap artist and a young Hollywood actor brought a different vibe to the arena. ‘Serge, how much is this costing you? Setting aside the sponsors?’
He gave her a flashing smile. ‘Don’t worry, Clementine. I can still afford to keep you in the style you’re accustomed to.’
For a moment the volume was turned down, and all she could hear was the thump, thump as her mashed-up heart made itself known. Serge hadn’t noticed a thing—his full attention was on something someone was saying to do with the match. Clementine slid her hand away from his and folded her arms. Serge didn’t even notice. He just rested his forearms on his knees and sat forward.
The match was starting, but it didn’t much matter any more. Serge had just made it very clear how he saw her. His feelings for her were about as meaningful as the spectacle they were enjoying tonight.
She was arm candy. She was, to quote, ‘the flavour of the month’. He didn’t take her seriously at all. Showing him her professional skills wasn’t going to change a damn thing.
The fight started and Clementine braced herself. It was the reaction of the crowd more than the thudding contact of bodies in the ring that reverberated through her. She felt each and every time bone hit bone. She could feel Serge’s attention being dragged away from the fight to her, and she kept her chin up, trying not to flinch.
Serge’s arm was around her and his mouth at her ear. ‘What in the hell did you come for, Clementine?’
A job description, murmured a snarky little voice, but she didn’t voice it.
‘I’m okay, Serge. Don’t make a big deal of it.’ She lifted her head, made herself look at the ring.
Serge made a sound low in his chest and stood up, startling the people around him. He had hold of her hand.
She wanted to resist, but it was embarrassing enough. He escorted her towards the exit, ignoring everyone else to get her through, his minders running ahead, clearing a path. Most people were focussed on the fight, but Clementine felt humiliated as Serge dragged her grimly away from the lights and pulsing rock music that had made him his fortune.
Serge was silent as they drove at speed out of the venue and along the highway. He barely said a word to her other than, ‘Get in.’ That suited her. She couldn’t believe how highhandedly he was behaving.
He remained silent as they entered the house. Clementine took off her jacket and went straight upstairs. She didn’t want to go to bed. She didn’t want to pretend this was normal. But it was late, and there was nothing else to do, so she went into the bathroom to take off her make-up and undress. She put on her pyjama bottoms and a T-shirt—the least alluring bed-wear she had.
Then she climbed into bed and sat there and waited. And waited.
He wasn’t coming to bed.
Well, good. She didn’t want him there. All the descriptors went flying around her head: arm candy, flavour of the month, good-time girl. Who in the heck did he think he was, implying she was with him for what he could give her financially? She was independent. She worked. She’d never relied on another person for anything.
Yet the way she had felt tonight hadn’t been all bad. A part of her had liked his high-handedness, had enjoyed being the girl welded to his side. The sheer physical impact of him, his charisma, the way people leapt out of his way—she had seen it through others’ eyes and she’d liked it.
He owned that world in a way she hadn’t quite comprehended before. He was a man who reigned over an empire which celebrated machismo, and apart from the massive profit turnover it came with a huge element of sex appeal.
If you were that kind of woman.
Clementine lifted her hands to her hot cheeks and shook her head in amused despair. He had been drenched in sex appeal tonight, and just thinking about it was making her fidget. Who was she kidding? Everything about Serge got her going, and he knew it.
She’d been doing her best all week to keep him at arm’s length, to protect herself by being the independent woman who had her own life and wasn’t looking to him to offer her anything more than what he had given any other woman. She had her pride, and she’d been stuffing her own needs behind it and leading with her chin.
But now she didn’t bother to hide her relief when he finally came up. Stripped down to jeans and a T-shirt, he looked like the big tough guy he was and she was honest enough with herself to admit she liked that. She liked it enough to want to shove aside her anger and hurt and climb him like a tree. Her pride kept her sitting cross-legged in the middle of the bed, but she was going to be honest with him for a change. He was a tough guy—he could take it. And so could she.
‘We need to talk,’ he said bluntly.
‘Yes, we do,’ she fired back. ‘And I’m going first. Now, you listen up, Slugger. I’m much more than your current squeeze. I’m very good at my job, and your little fighting empire would be lucky to have me, and if you think my living here equals being kept by you, you’ve got another think coming. Okay?’
He was silent, just watching her. He didn’t even blink. The atmosphere began to crackle with something and Clementine shifted uneasily on the bed.
‘Are you listening to me?’ Her voice quavered a little.
In reply Serge stripped off his T-shirt. As muscle and taut male skin came into view Clementine lost a little bit of concentration.
The T-shirt dropped to the floor.
‘Serge?’
‘You went behind my back,’ was all he said, eyes hooded, gaze resting on her mouth.
She moistened her lips, shifting a little on the mattress.
‘Do you have any idea how I felt, seeing your face on that screen and knowing you were out there in that crowd?’
His voice was low, intent, and he wasn’t really asking a question. He was telling her.
Clementine’s heart-rate kicked up and began to gallop.
Yet for some reason she thought this was the best time to throw herself off the emotional pier and blurt out, ‘No, I don’t know how you felt, because you never talk about your feelings.’
A tight smile sat at the corner of his mouth, as if he knew something she didn’t. ‘Well, guess what, kisa? I’m going to now.’
‘That’s good,’ she prevaricated, giving a little ‘oh’ as he yanked down his jeans. He was naked and he was aroused and he was palming a condom from the drawer beside the bed, and Clementine wondered just when the talking part was going to take place.
He flipped her onto her back and came down over her, pinning her with his larger body. He did it so fluidly that one minute Clementine was sitting upright, fretting, and the next she was flat on her back staring into the eyes of the man who had rescued her from those thugs in the underpass.
‘Now,’ he said with slow deliberateness, ‘let’s talk about how I feel, Clementine. How about how I felt when I saw you alone in that crowd?’
He swept her T-shirt up over her head and bent to nudge a pointed rosy nipple with the stubble of his chin.
‘How about how I felt when I saw you flirting with men who work for me?’
He took that nipple deep into his mouth.
‘I don’t know how you felt,’ she gasped, but she was getting the picture.
Her body began to sing as his hand went south under the elastic of her pyjamas, testing her readiness. She’d been ready from about the time he’d said, ‘We need to talk.’
‘I felt like this.’ He stripped her of the pyjama pants and cupped her bottom. Her thighs fell open of their own accord and she welcomed him as he thrust into her, a single stunning stroke. ‘I felt like this, Clementine.’ And he moved inside her harder, with a single-mindedness that wound her up with him, until she felt all the anger and tension in him turning into something that overwhelmed them both.
It seemed to Clementine they lay there for a very long time afterwards, just catching their breath. Her own was coming in rapid pants as she felt the throbbing in her body subside.
What had that been about?
Serge climbed off the bed and disposed of the condom in the en suite bathroom. Clementine watched him as he padded slowly back to the bed. He lay down beside her and pulled her body into the shelter of his. He laid a kiss on her shoulder, saying nothing. It was then Clementine realised he hadn’t kissed her mouth—not once.
Yet this had felt more intimate than anything that had come before. Wasn’t he supposed to be angry? Wasn’t she supposed to be too? Instead she felt closer to him than ever.
Serge pulled her in tighter. What in the hell was he doing? When he’d seen her on that monitor his only thought had been to reach her. Everything else had been blotted out but the need to keep her safe. And he hadn’t. He’d shoved her up ringside and everything had come undone. It was still coming undone. She made him act rashly. He’d taken her home and acted rashly again. And he suddenly had no doubt given any provocation this rashness was going to continue. Unless he made a conscious effort to stop it.
‘Is that how you felt?’ she whispered, turning her head to look at him, her eyes half closed, her expression so sultry he knew they were about to repeat it all over again.
‘I don’t know how I felt,’ he admitted in a deep voice, his accent pronounced, and something in his tone snagged all Clementine’s attention away from her body, still sensitised from his touch. ‘But I do know now you’re safe.’ His arms tightened around her.
‘Yes, I’m safe, Slugger,’ she and answered, and reached up and patted the big arm slung around her, sounding more confident than she felt. Inside everything was knocked off kilter. As if she didn’t quite belong to herself any more.
But what did that mean? That she belonged to Serge?
CHAPTER NINE
SERGE took a coffee and his cellphone out onto the deck and stood in the cool morning light as it dappled down through the leaves above. This was his sanctuary in the city—a green garden, an oasis kept in exquisite shape by people he paid.
Having the people in his life on a payroll made everything so much easier, cleaner. Nobody’s emotions got involved.
Last night his behaviour in bed with Clementine had been the opposite. Hard, messy, and very emotional. The sex as a result had been incredible. The only thing that could have improved on it was not using a condom, and the fact that he’d actually considered that thought put the brakes on any future plans he had with this girl.
He’d never once not used a condom. Ever. He didn’t have the sort of relationships where that was possible.
Yet he hadn’t been thinking last night—not with his head and not with his body. It was how she made him feel that had been driving him, and it had translated into the best sex of his life. He’d shown little finesse, just a need to dominate her, leave his mark. He’d taken her again, with no more consideration than the first time, and she had met him with her own scaling need, and then again, with a slower, more soothing cadence, whispering things to her in Russian he could never get away with in English before sleep claimed them.
But that first time had rocked them both, and everything that had followed held its echoes. And he would have been blind not to see how dreamy she was this morning. He’d heard her singing to herself in the shower. Hell, he’d been humming to himself until he’d realised what he was doing.
This was all without precedent.
Something about seeing her at the show last night—her fragility coupled with her independence, the sheer chutzpah she paraded around, going after what she wanted, and his inability to stop her doing exactly as she pleased—had loosed something primitive in him.
He’d known it was there. His grandmother had told him stories about his father’s legendary passion for his mother, his jealous rages, the theatrics of their marriage. He didn’t remember all of it—only a father whose moods had moved from highs to lows at frightening speed. He remembered that—and a mother who had been frail and ethereal, appearing to be caught up in a drama in which she didn’t quite know her lines. She had only been eighteen when she gave birth to him, and not much older than he was now when she died.
He didn’t want that kind of passion in his life. He didn’t want to be out of control. He needed to take a big step back. Put some air between them.
Clementine came down the stairs in her runners and cargo pants. She hadn’t even fiddled with her hair this morning, just left it to its natural wave. Lipstick and mascara were her only concessions to making an effort. For the first time since she was fifteen she didn’t feel she had to. She felt beautiful. Serge had made her feel beautiful. She could still feel his body stunning hers, the impact of their coming together, the tension winding tighter and tighter in him until it had given way and he had been heavy and peaceful in her arms
. She’d felt so powerful—like a sex goddess. A thought which put a little smile on her lips.
She’d decided before falling asleep last night to drop the whole ‘this is your life and this is mine’ front and give them both a chance. Serge had demonstrated how much she meant to him. Nobody behaved that way without being borne along on strong emotions.
The fact he hadn’t been in bed when she’d re-emerged from the bathroom this morning had been the only blip on her radar. She’d wanted to leap back on him and make him prove to her all over again that she hadn’t dreamt last night.
She planned on taking him market shopping with her this morning, and couldn’t believe how much she was looking forward to it. Back home it was her favourite Saturday morning activity. Stock up the cupboards, have lunch out with friends, maybe see a film in the afternoon. It was the sort of stuff you did with a boyfriend.
She found him on the phone, pacing the long hall between the staircase and the kitchen. His attention was immediately with her, but he averted his eyes as he continued the conversation. She went on into the kitchen to collect the eco-bags.
As she turned around she realised Serge had blocked the kitchen doorway. His hair was all ruffled and he needed a shave. The phone was dangling from one hand.
Her hormones were jumping and she couldn’t wipe the happy grin off her face.
He didn’t even crack a smile. ‘I’m going down to Mick’s gym. I’ll be back around midday.’
He looked and sounded so distant—nothing like the man whose arms she had fallen asleep in last night.
The sun slipped in Clementine’s sky.
‘Then I’ve got a team of people coming over to debrief at one.’
The sun fell out of her world, and it was in that moment as she stood there clutching the bags to her waist that she realised just how deep in she was with this man.
