by Maisey Yates
He hadn’t wanted to touch her, and yet he had. Then he had wanted her, and he had not got her.
He didn’t know which was worse.
Today saw the harsh New Orleans sun shining brightly in the sky, and he had immediately decided to go for a run in the obstacle-ridden streets before going back to the suite to face both the day and his accomplice from last night. She had been sleeping when he left, but he knew she would be awake now. It was after nine, and Victoria seemed very much like the kind of person who was up with the birds. Especially when there was a project to be done, and today definitely had a list of projects to tackle.
He stepped into the living area that he and Victoria shared just as Victoria was emerging from her bedroom. She froze like a startled cat when she saw him, her hands drawn up against her chest as though she were looking for pearls to clutch.
She was not wearing pearls; a polka-dot dress fell down past her knees, a wide patent leather belt highlighting her narrow waist. The neckline was high, demure almost, as all of her clothing seemed to be. And like the rest of her clothing he found it unbearably sexy.
“Good morning,” she said, her tone crisp.
“Yes, good morning.”
She appraised his appearance, and clearly found him wanting. Or at least, he was certain that was what she wanted him to think. But he didn’t miss the blush that stained her cheeks as she took in the sight of him. “You are not ready to go to the venue.”
“Why? Will there be anyone there?”
“You are sweaty.” She said it as though it was the most distasteful thing she could even imagine.
“It’s New Orleans. A quick jaunt outside and everyone is sweaty.”
“It looks like you’ve had more than a quick jaunt.”
“I had some energy to burn off.”
Tension crackled between them as he let the meaning hit her fully. He shouldn’t push her, because when he did they ended up where they had ended up last night. And he knew that he couldn’t allow it to happen again. This did not control him. There were so many paths he could take. All roads did not lead to her.
“Did you?” she asked, her tone starchy. “I slept very well.”
He let silence stretch between them. “Yes, I imagine you did.”
Her cheeks darkened a shade, and he could tell she was thinking of last night. “I refuse to feel guilty about it.”
“What about? That you managed to...get sleep when I didn’t?”
“Yes.” She elevated her chin and sauntered past him at a brisk pace, snatching her purse off the end table by the couch. “Shall we go?”
“The venue is here in the hotel, is it not?”
“Yes, it is.”
“I am sweaty, as you said. Would you like to wait for me to rinse off?”
“I feel like we’ve played this game before. I would rather not be present every time you shower. We are just going downstairs, so your running clothes should be fine, and I will bear your sweat with as much grace and poise as I can.”
“You are a consummate lady.” He followed her out of the suite and into the hall.
“I do try to be.”
She was so stiff and prim, but he knew better. And he would not allow her to pretend he didn’t. “I especially admire the way you keep your composure as you come.”
She whipped around to face him, her eyes wide with shock, her cheeks red now, not from embarrassment, but rage. “I cannot believe you mentioned that.”
“I’m sorry. Were you dedicated to the idea of speaking about it in euphemism for the rest of our time together?”
“I had rather hoped we wouldn’t speak of it at all.”
“You were the one rather flagrantly flaunting your good night’s sleep. And I’m the one who administered nature’s sleeping pill—therefore, I think I have room to comment.”
He shouldn’t be discussing it, as he had just purposed that he would not press this issue with her. Because there was nowhere it could go.
But perhaps this was what he needed. Perhaps it was what they both needed. To allow a slight release on their control so that in all major areas that control could be retained.
It made sense. It was what he had done back when he was fighting MMA professionally. It had given him a chance to get release without ever descending back into the dark place he had been in. A chance to burn off steam while retaining the most essential elements of his control.
“That’s crass.” She pressed the button for the lift and proceeded to stare at the metal doors determinedly.
“Perhaps. But you did not seem to find it so distasteful last night.”
“Until I could think again.”
“I take that as a high compliment. The ability to make a woman like you mindless is not a small one.”
She tilted her head to the side, her eyes narrowed, glittering with barely suppressed rage. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Do not sound so offended, Victoria. It’s a compliment.” He examined the elegant line of her neck, a rush of desire coursing through his veins. “You are very present. Brilliant. Nothing gets past you. To force you to stop thinking for a moment shall be remembered as one of the greatest achievements of my life.”
“Well, it shall go down in history as one of my biggest failures. Congratulations.”
“Most women don’t consider an orgasm of that quality a failure.”
She made a frustrated sound and pressed the button for the lift again. “Honestly, it seems like this is taking forever.”
“You’re just saying that.”
“So what is it you want, Dmitri?” she asked, the color high in her cheeks. “You just want to... What? Have sex?” Her prim and proper accent curving around that oh-so-evocative word wrenched his arousal up to a higher level. And he saw his paths narrowing. Saw his choices diminish. He should be angry, but his blood was burning with a different kind of fire altogether. “We both know it won’t go anywhere. And we both know it might distract us from what we have come together to do.”
He reached out and took her left hand in his, sliding his thumb over the ring that rested on her fourth finger. “I fail to see how sex could do anything but enhance what it is we are trying to do.”
Why was he pushing this? Why was he letting this pull to her, this situation he did not choose, dictate his wants, his needs, his actions?
Because you want to give in... This time at least, you want to have the choice taken...
“Oh, is that so?” Her voice sounded thin now, breathy. Different.
Dammit all to hell. He wanted this. Wanted to pull the trigger.
“We are supposed to be lovers, after all.” He looked up, his eyes clashing with hers. “Sex would add authenticity.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
“I’M GOING TO choose to ignore that,” Victoria said, her tone strangled, betraying just how affected she was by his bold statement.
The doors to the lift slid open and she called herself a whole list of vile names. She could not believe she was having this conversation with him, she could not believe she had let him touch her the way she had last night and, worst of all, she could not believe that she was tempted by what he was suggesting now.
She blamed... Well, she honestly had no idea what she blamed. Except for her own weakness. Apparently, she wasn’t as strong as she’d imagined. Or, she had never been adequately tempted.
Not since Nathan. But even then...that had been different. It had been this hazy, romanticized thing. All bound up in fluttery feelings and breathless touches.
This was not fluttery. It was dark, sweaty and deep. Made her crave things she’d never imagined could possibly appeal.
Dmitri, it turned out, was her personalized brand of temptation. She was not sure how she felt about that.
She had alw
ays imagined that men like Nathan were her kryptonite. Men who talked a smooth game and wore well-fitted suits like a second skin.
And yet, here she was falling all over herself, breaking vows that were more than a decade old, and all over a man who, when he wore a suit, looked as though he wanted to tear it from his body as soon as possible. A man who was rough, profane and seemed to take great joy in shocking her. A man who had access to parts of herself that were previously unknown. Parts of herself that wanted, craved, a chance to be wicked. To say to hell with everyone and everything else and dive into her own desires. Her own pleasures. A man who had thought nothing of touching her intimately on a balcony where anyone could see.
And you let him...
Well, that was beside the point. Or maybe it was exactly the point. She didn’t know.
Dmitri got next to her in the lift, and the door slid shut. She felt as if she could barely breathe. And if she did breathe, she was certain she would inhale the scent of him, of his skin, of his sweat, and she knew full well that did not have the effect on her that she wished it did. She wished that it disgusted her. When she had walked into his gym only a few short weeks ago she had been filled with disdain for testosterone. Now she found it all much more appealing than she would like.
The elevator stopped on the ground floor and the doors opened. Victoria stepped down, not waiting for Dmitri, desperate for some distance. Of course, she had a feeling that as large as the continent was she wouldn’t have enough distance from him if she was on an opposite coast. Better if she were back in England and he were here.
“The ballroom is this way,” she said, without looking back at him. She could hear his heavy footfalls behind her, and more than that, she could sense his presence.
She led him down the hallway, her shoes loud on the marble floor. In contrast, his trainers kept him almost silent, and made her increasingly self-conscious. It wasn’t fair—he should be the one feeling self-conscious, as he was in athletic clothing and casual shoes. Alas. Dmitri never seemed to feel uncomfortable, even though he never quite fit in to his surroundings. He simply didn’t care. She had no idea how he managed such a thing.
She had no idea how he managed much of what he seemed to manage. Least of all his ability to reach into her and take control of her desire.
She had lost herself completely last night, and she would love to blame the city, she would love to blame the wine, but she knew it was him. Because the changes had started long before they had left England. They had started the moment she had walked into his gym and seen him standing there, looking like a bare-chested warrior from another age.
And she had thought herself immune because she had imagined he wouldn’t be her type. It was laughable.
Another issue with having not had much experience with men since she was a girl. Victoria the woman obviously had no use for the smooth sophisticate. Which made no sense, since she fancied herself a smooth sophisticate, and one would think that she would be attracted to the sort of man whose lifestyle was compatible with hers.
Nothing about Dmitri would be compatible with her lifestyle and the long term.
But who’s thinking about the long term?
No, she silenced that treacherous voice in her head. She was not going to allow herself to lose her sanity that way.
Who was she kidding? Her sanity was gone. There was no other way to look at it. Thinking about his footsteps in relation to hers, and how well he fit into his surroundings or, rather, how well he didn’t? And obsessing about the sound of her own shoes?
She had to stop obsessing about him.
So he had given her an orgasm. It wasn’t as though she’d never given herself one.
And when she did, it wasn’t as if she went around thinking about it all day after the fact, either. There was no reason she should think about it so much just because someone else had done it. It wasn’t as though they’d had sex. He’d touched her—that was all.
And kissed her, and caressed her in ways no other man ever had.
But still, all of it was irrelevant. She needed to keep her focus. She needed to think about what was important and that was the gala that was happening tonight.
She walked through the elegant double doors at the end of the hall and gestured for Dmitri to follow.
“I think this will do,” she said.
“Do you?”
“I do.” She was irritated, and it wasn’t really warranted. But, oh well. She was feeling annoyed, even if he wasn’t deserving of the irritation in question. “Yes, this is the venue. If you have a negative opinion about it I suggest you keep it to yourself. If you wanted to choose, then you should have done so.”
“I did not say I didn’t like it,” he said.
“You had a tone,” she said, her tone clipped.
“Did I?” He chuckled, and she was really starting to hate when he did that, because she could not hear it and remain unaffected. “I didn’t know you were so in tune to the changes in my voice inflection, milaya moya.”
“I am not, and you can spare me your foreign endearment.” Even she was annoyed with her responses at the moment, but she couldn’t seem to hold them back. He had too much power over her. Over how she felt.
“They aren’t foreign to me.”
She bristled, feeling very much as if he had the upper hand, and there was nothing she could do to reverse their roles. “Fair point.”
“Yes, this will do nicely. I gather you’re expecting a good turnout tonight?”
This was her area of strength; this was her confidence. The upper hand was here, and she was grabbing it. “That I am, Dmitri. That I am.”
“You should be very proud. All you have to do is beat a few bushes and celebrities fall out. I would wager that would not be the case for me.”
Because she was better with people than he was. And better at this. And that thought cheered her immensely. “You don’t think?”
“No, I do not think. Unless said celebrity wanted to install a cage in the midst of a gala and arrange a fight, then have me seduce his wife, I fail to see why I would be included in something of this nature. That’s what I am, after all. That’s why my reputation is what it is.”
She looked at Dmitri, his broad shoulders and well-defined muscles tapering down to a slim waist. The way the slight bump in his nose added to the look of him, to the danger. He certainly wouldn’t blend in at a social event like this one, but then, there was something nice about not blending in. At least when it applied to other people. She had always gone out of her way to blend in as best she could.
“You’re more than that,” she said, and she wasn’t sure why.
“Do you think?” he asked. “I’m not certain. But we had better make everyone think so, yes?”
She nodded slowly. “Yes.” She cleared her throat. “So, there will be tables and chairs set over here. Dinner will be served around nine, then it will be dancing and live jazz music. It sounds nice, doesn’t it?” She was desperate to change the subject, to get things back on track. To ignore all of the electricity that crackled between them.
“You’re avoiding looking at me, Victoria.”
She kept her eyes fixed on the stage. “I am not avoiding looking at you, Dmitri. It’s just I can look at you anytime, and we came down here to look at the venue. I don’t see why I should need any of this special, allotted venue time to examine you.”
He made a low, musing noise in the back of his throat, and the hair on her neck stood on end. “And you are acting prickly. You’re prickly when things don’t go your way.” He started to pace the length of the room. “I have been perfectly agreeable, so I know it is not myself making you feel like things aren’t going your way. Which makes me wonder...is your body disobeying you, Victoria?”
She stiffened. “Why would you think that?”
“I only wonder if your body is still obeying me.”
Oh, that...
She made a sound that was somewhere between a snort and a growl. “I have no idea what that’s supposed to mean. At no point has my body ever obeyed yours.”
“Last night,” he said, the words dark and sensual, wrapping themselves around her body. No. No, no, no.
She gritted her teeth. Part of her was begging her to retreat, while the bolder part, the part that hated to lose, that seemed to be in top form when he was around, urged her on. “Stop feeling so proud. It’s nothing I haven’t done for myself.”
He arched a dark brow. “On a balcony in front of the sea of strangers? You are a much more adventurous woman than I have given you credit for.”
She ignored the heat sizzling beneath her skin. “We are not going to talk about this again. We are going to talk about the gala tonight.”
“All right, Victoria, we can play your way. But before we do, I have one question for you.”
“What?” She braced herself mentally for what he might say.
He was silent for a while, the silence winding itself around the line of tension that already stretched between them and pulling it tight. Finally, he spoke. “Do you want me? Do you want more than what happened last night?”
“I don’t see what that has to do with anything.” Being curt was her last line of defense. And even it was hanging on by a thread.
“It doesn’t matter if it’s relevant or not, this is what I’m asking you right now. I told you, one question. And then we can get back to being relevant.”
She took in a deep breath, deciding yet again that she was going to pursue honesty. Because after what had transpired between them the night before it would be foolish of her to try and deny that there was something between them. Ignoring it wasn’t working anyway. “Obviously, I am attracted to you. It would be disingenuous of me to say otherwise. As to the question of whether or not I want you, that’s a different story.”
“Is it? Do you think wanting me and wanting to want me are the same?”
She felt some of the defenses around her crumble. “Aren’t they?”
