by Olivia Gates
But she saw it in his eyes. He had no intention of taking her that way. He came up to silence her protest before she uttered it, his mouth on her lips as his fingers sought her entrance. She lurched with stimulation as he dipped in, each slow inch a red-hot probe of mind-melting pleasure.
But though she was going to pieces with arousal, after her trauma and after being so long without him, her body felt too tight. Even two of his long, thick fingers felt like too much. He held her eyes as he pumped them fully inside her, drawing the admission that there was no way she’d accommodate him right now.
Rising to singe her in the possessive flames of his gaze, he started sliding down her body again, burned his way in licks and nibbles and ragged words down to her core. Her efforts to pull him up ended when his magnificent head settled between her thighs. Every nerve in her body loosened as his lips and tongue soothed and scorched the intimate flesh she could surrender to no one but him.
He strummed her to one body-and soul-racking climax then another, and another, holding her eyes all through. She was lying stunned, sated, unable to move a muscle when he finally came up to stretch against her, cupping her, crooning to her, completing her bliss.
But she felt every inch of him like cabled steel, coiled on his unspent arousal. Needing to give him relief, she started stroking him, but he captured her hand. Burying kisses in her palm, he tucked her more securely against his massive body before taking her lips.
“Shh, zvezda moya.” Murmuring another endearment into her mouth, my star this time, his tongue mated luxuriantly with hers. “I only want to hold you.”
She moaned and burrowed deeper into him. “At least let me feel you. I need your flesh on mine.”
His caresses stopped, then he rose partially, started shrugging off his clothes. As his body came into view, she realized she’d been right. He had become a full-fledged god.
Then she looked down on his promise of endless pleasure lying thick and long and heavy against his chiseled abdomen and nothing mattered but having him inside her.
She tried to wrap her legs around him in silent supplication, but he subdued her with extreme gentleness, wrapped his arms around her instead, letting every inch of his flesh imprint hers.
His lips flowed over her from neck to cheek, his whisper hot and soft against her prickling skin. “Let yourself take what I need to give you, dorogoya moya. Let go.”
When she finally did, sank into his being and giving, the one thing left in her mind was that he was the only man who had ever made her feel this incredible, this protected and cherished. This man alone had the power to revive her. Or finish her.
* * *
Warm, wonderful sensations coasted over Anastasia, making her surface slowly from oblivion. Her eyes cracked open to light peeking between blackout curtains. Blinking, she expected to see herself back in her hospital suite.
In the next second it all came back to her. Everything that had happened since she’d come running home to see Ivan. Ivan, who was still stretched out against her, drenching her in caresses.
But maybe it had all been a dream, and still was. She’d seen and felt him like this on countless nights. And each time she’d woken up empty and alone.
“I’m here.” As if he’d heard her unspoken question, he reassured her of his presence. He smoothed the hair off her cheek, tucking it behind her ear, the heartbreaking tenderness in his caress twisting her heart, spiking desire in her loins.
He’d taken her to bed at sunset. With the sun out again, she’d slept for at least twelve hours. Which might mean that...
He again completed her thought for her. “Your parents came to check on you. They were more than surprised to find me in bed with you.” At her embarrassed gasp, something she hadn’t seen since he’d come back played on his lips—the tiniest of smiles. “Don’t worry, I’d already made us...decent.”
It was only then she realized she was in a nightgown, her favorite one, a deep burgundy silk that felt like a second skin. He’d somehow picked it out of all her sleepwear and put her in it while she slept. He was fully dressed again.
“Did they...?”
“They just asked if you were okay. I assured them you were, and your mother insisted I have something to eat.”
“Yeah, that’s my mom for you. Though she is a scientist, the cure to everything in her opinion is a good meal.”
“I ended up accepting tea and a huge slice of delicious homemade apple pie. She served them to me right here.”
Her cheeks flamed as she imagined that scenario. With her being a recluse, her parents had never had to deal with any man in her life. Her liaison with Ivan had been a secret, even from Alex. It had been the one thing she hadn’t confided in him. And just as she’d thought it time to do so, Ivan had disappeared.
There’d been no one else since. It had been the main reason she’d never moved out of the family home. She’d had no personal life that she’d wanted privacy for.
Suddenly the indulgent gleam in his eyes dimmed, tension replacing it as he got out of bed.
He was going to say goodbye now.
She sat up, her heart suddenly thudding so hard she felt it rattling her whole body.
He looked breathtaking yet haggard. Longing almost stopped her pounding heart as his heavy-lidded gaze raked her, filled with disturbed and disturbing emotions. And she realized.
He didn’t know how to say goodbye.
But neither did she. She couldn’t say it. She needed him. In whatever way she could have him.
Not knowing how to tell him that, she rose on stiff legs, tried to postpone the inevitable. “You shouldn’t have let me sleep all this time. And it doesn’t seem you’ve had any sleep.”
His jaw clenched. “Anastasia, we need to talk.”
She groped for lightness, even though she was going to pieces. “That sounds ominous.”
He clenched his fists, unclenched them. Then he squared his shoulders and stood straighter, as if he was readying himself for a frontal assault. “I tried, Anastasia. Tried to leave you alone, so you can restart your life. But you can’t start again. Not yet. And I—I can’t leave you.”
Her heart did stop this time. Then it stumbled into a gallop of brutal anticipation. Did he mean...?
His next words ended all speculation. “Tell your family you need time to heal, which you do, and come with me.” Before elation took hold, he added, “Let me do all I can to heal you.”
The plummet from the heights of hope left her unable to breathe for long moments.
When she could finally draw breath, her voice was a rasp. “Is that what this is about? You feel responsible? Sorry for me? Guilty?”
He took an urgent step toward her, his eyes like emerald fire. “I sure as hell feel responsible. For your well-being. And I’m so sorry for what happened, I can barely breathe. And I feel so guilty it erodes my sanity. Guilty that I wasn’t good enough or fast enough to prevent it. I want you to come with me so I can take care of you to my obsessive heart’s content. But if you’re asking if that’s all, then no. I would want you with me without any of that. I’ve never stopped wanting you. I don’t think I ever can.”
Anastasia gaped up at him, this man she now needed more than life itself. Though he couldn’t want her nearly as much, she believed he did want her, as much as he was capable of.
And he was right. She couldn’t restart her life yet, couldn’t resume her research without Alex, couldn’t go back to the same place of work. He’d also been right to try to shield her from the world. It hurt even more being among her family now. And if there was anything she’d ever wanted, the one thing she’d been deprived of, it was being with Ivan.
His eyes seemed to seethe with anxiousness as he waited for her response. But before she gave it to him, she asked, “How long?”
“As long a
s it takes. As long as you want. Say yes.”
Was there really any other answer?
“Yes.”
His sharp inhalation said her acceptance took him by surprise. He’d actually expected her to refuse, or at least not to succumb right away.
“Don’t you want to know where I’ll take you?”
“It doesn’t matter if I’m with you. If you want me...”
He gathered her to him, and she felt a tremor in those hands that were powerful enough to crush monsters. “I don’t even have words for how much I do.”
She fitted into his burning body, felt hers ignite. “Then I’ll be with you, for as long as you do.”
Five
A frisson of unease slithered down Anastasia’s spine.
With a last look at her phone after she ended her latest call with her parents, who called almost every day, she exhaled.
It had been ten weeks to the day since she’d come with Ivan to Russia. And the ten-week mark didn’t have a fond correlation in her mind. Not when it came to Ivan. It had been exactly ten weeks into their first relationship that he’d suddenly ended things. Just days before Alex and Cathy’s wedding.
Not that she thought he was about to end it now. This time Ivan seemed bent on being with her, being there for her, for as long as she needed him. His constant dedication to her well-being seemed to be unlimited and unending. She had to continuously try to dial down his indulgence, pull him back from extravagant gestures. To generally convince him she no longer needed any special care.
And though he now let her do things for herself, and for both of them—cooking dinner had become her enthusiastic responsibility almost nightly—she kept learning what it meant to be with one of Russia’s, and the world’s, premier oligarchs.
Sure, she’d known he was a billionaire, had seen evidence of his wealth and power in so many ways, but the more she saw, the more it shocked her all over again.
Entering his mansion had been like stumbling into a level of existence she’d only dreamed of. She made—or had made—what she’d considered a very good living being a top researcher for an elite private conglomerate, had lived her life in her parents’ million-dollar house, but this... This was just mind-boggling. His wealth had multiplied a hundredfold since she’d been with him in the past. And it made her...uncomfortable, feeling this unbridgeable gap between them.
This place alone cost forty million. When she’d said she’d never thought he would go for such extravagance, he’d confirmed that. He’d bought this baronial castle with its own lake, sweeping grounds replete with pine trees and a staggering forty thousand square feet of living space only after she’d agreed to come to Russia with him. So she’d have all the space and facilities to be entertained without leaving home.
He’d dropped forty million just so she didn’t have to go out!
But she’d realized he’d been right. For weeks she’d been unable to contemplate being out in public, to see even strangers on the streets. The idea of meeting any of his acquaintances and interacting with them made her break out in cold sweat.
She had, however, insisted he go out alone. He’d refused. He’d locked himself up with her, so that he even worked across from her in the same room, or in the room he’d made into the nerve center of his cyber tech empire, running one of the major tentacles of Black Castle Enterprises right next to her favorite living room. Apart from the fleeting presence of Fyodor and his team of guards and hired help, Ivan had had no one for company but her.
He assured her he was a loner, with the only company he’d ever had in his life Dr. Balducci and his other partners. Even them he saw only sporadically since they were all so busy with their businesses and now with their families. And he insisted he didn’t want anyone else’s company but hers anyway.
But even if none of his assurances were to make her feel better, he couldn’t enjoy being cooped up in the same place for that long, not even if it was acres wide. But her efforts to get him to go out met with dismal failure. He wouldn’t budge from her side.
But for the past couple of weeks, she’d been feeling much better, regaining the desire to actually walk the streets and see people, and yesterday she had actually done it. He’d taken her on a tour of Moscow. She’d been predictable and chosen to start with the famous attractions.
The whole morning yesterday had been spent visiting the Krasnaya Ploshchad, or Red Square, followed by the nearby and stunningly beautiful St. Basil’s Cathedral, which exemplified Russian architecture. The two landmarks, now starting to get covered in snow, seemed to embody everything she’d ever imagined as Russian. The land she was born in but had never returned to, until now.
Today, it was the Kremlin’s turn, where he’d made them jump queues and enter places no tourist was allowed, all through the five palaces, four cathedrals and the enclosing Kremlin Wall and Towers.
“Having a man of your influence for a guide obviously has its perks,” she’d told him.
A teasing look had lit up his face as he’d winked at her. “You haven’t seen anything yet.”
She’d wondered what more there could possibly be as he’d taken them through a heavily guarded wing and into a massive, imposingly ornate office. It had only been when she’d found a man surrounded by half a dozen hulking bodyguards advancing eagerly to greet them that she’d realized what he’d meant, how accurate his words had been.
She really didn’t remember everything that had happened in the time they’d spent in that man’s company. A normal side effect, she was sure, of finding herself face-to-face with the President of the Russian Federation!
The meeting, an impromptu one that could only have been planned at most the day before, lasted for half an hour. During the surreal time, both men had made her the focus of attention and conversation, with the president himself pouring her tea and asking her all kinds of courteous questions.
Then Ivan had said he was taking her to dinner and the president had stood up at once, asking Ivan for an extended one-on-one meeting. Instead of jumping to ask when, Ivan had actually given him an inconclusive answer.
Still stunned from that, and from the whole momentous event, she’d let Ivan sweep her out of the palace complex. Only now, when they’d been in his car for at least ten minutes, did she finally get over her shock enough to speak. She turned to him.
“Seriously? ‘I’ll see when I can clear a morning for you’? That’s what you say when the second-most powerful man on earth asks you for a personal meeting?”
Keeping his eyes on the road as he negotiated Moscow’s downtown traffic, he gave that lopsided smile that had been coming easier to him and that twisted everything inside her. “It’s the only answer I had to give him.”
“You direct your sprawling business empire from home these days, and you have the most efficient system humanly possible in place anyway. You can certainly ‘clear a morning’ at once for the President of the Russian Federation when he asks you to.”
At a traffic light he slid her one of those heated glances that brought her blood to an instant boil. “It’s not only my business empire I have to take into account while clearing mornings.”
“Seriously?” Her exclamation was almost a squeak this time. “You might have incurred the wrath of one of history’s most powerful and dangerous men on my account?”
His lips spread wider at her burst of incredulous anxiety. “I’m too valuable to incur anyone’s wrath. I’m also too dangerous that no one, not even him, would act on it even if I do.”
Her heart drummed in rising apprehension. “C’mon, Ivan. Even you shouldn’t risk putting that to the test, certainly not so you can babysit me. When will you believe I can spend time on my own and bring your obsession with watching me under control? For God’s sake, I’m healed, fully, totally. Inside and out. And you have me ensconced in this fortress of y
ours with enough black ops guards to thwart a military invasion.”
His gaze lengthened as he seemed to realize that her mortification was real. Then, putting the car in motion again when the light turned green, he pushed the hands-free button on the wheel.
In seconds the call connected and a voice she’d always recognize now emanated from the surround-sound system, answering in that heavily accented English. The president!
“Mr. Konstantinov, so good to hear from you again so soon.”
Ivan’s eyes briefly landed on her in an intimate caress. “You have Ms. Shepherd to thank for that, Mr. President. She convinced me I could leave her side and come to meet you whenever you wish. You understand that with her recuperating from major surgery, her well-being comes first to me.”
“I wouldn’t have it any other way. I’ll be only too happy to receive you whenever Ms. Shepherdova can spare your vigilant services.”
Then with no closing words, both men hung up almost at the same moment.
Ivan turned those incredible emerald eyes to her, that indulgence that always filled them choking her up yet again. “Happy now?”
All tension drained from her body in a rush, making her slump back in the plush leather seat of his Rolls-Royce. “If you call feeling as if I’ve dodged a bullet happy, then yeah.”
The smile froze over his magnificent face. “It really worried you that much?”
“Hello? I had a dozen scenarios scrambling my mind and in every one of them you were targeted for any level of disciplinary action!”
A frown crept over his face. “I wouldn’t have arranged that meeting in the first place if I thought it would upset you. I wanted it to be a surprise you’d remember fondly.”
“And boy, will I.” At his darkening expression, she rushed on. “I will remember it in the best way, up until you offhandedly disregarded his request. Then it turned memorable for all the scary reasons.”
