The Stanislaski Series Collection, Volume 1

by Nora Roberts

  How the hell was he supposed to know he’d fall in love with her?

  And now that she was alone with him again, all that cool reserve was seeping back. He could see it in the way her spine straightened when she stepped out of the car.

  Hell, he could feel it—it surprised him that frost didn’t form on his windshield.

  “I’ll walk you up.” He slammed the door of the car.

  “That isn’t necessary.” She didn’t know what had spoiled the evening, but was ready to place the blame squarely on his shoulders.

  “I’ll walk you up,” he repeated, and pulled her over to the elevator.

  “Fine.” She folded her arms and waited.

  The moment the doors opened, they entered without speaking. Both of them were sure it was the longest elevator ride on record. Sydney swept out in front of him when they reached her floor. She had her keys out and ready two steps before they hit her door.

  “I enjoyed your family,” she said, carefully polite. “Be sure to tell your parents again how much I appreciated their hospitality.” The lock snapped open. “You can reach me in the office if there are any problems this week.”

  He slapped his hand on the door before she could shut it in his face. “I’m coming in.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Sydney considered the chances of shoving the door closed while he had his weight against it, found them slim and opted for shivery reserve.

  “It’s a bit early for a nightcap and a bit late for coffee.”

  “I don’t want a drink.” Mikhail rapped the door closed with enough force to make the foyer mirror rattle.

  Though she refused to back up, Sydney felt her stomach muscles experience the same helpless shaking. “Some people might consider it poor manners for a man to bully his way into a woman’s apartment.”

  “I have poor manners,” he told her, and, jamming his hands into his pockets, paced into the living room.

  “It must be a trial for your parents. Obviously they worked hard to instill a certain code of behavior in their children. It didn’t stick with you.”

  He swung back, and she was reminded of some compact and muscled cat on the prowl. Definitely a man-eater. “You liked them?”

  Baffled, she pushed a hand through her disordered hair. “Of course I like them. I’ve already said so.”

  While his hands bunched and unbunched in his pockets, he lifted a brow. “I thought perhaps it was just your very perfect manners that made you say so.”

  As an insult, it was a well-aimed shot. Indignation shivered through the ice. “Well, you were wrong. Now if we’ve settled everything, you can go.”

  “We’ve settled nothing. You tell me why you are so different now from the way you were an hour ago.”

  She caught herself, tightening her lips before they could move into a pout. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “With my family you were warm and sweet. You smiled so easily. Now with me, you’re cold and far away. You don’t smile at all.”

  “That’s absurd.” Though it was little more than a baring of teeth, she forced her lips to curve. “There, I’ve smiled at you. Satisfied?”

  Temper flickered into his eyes as he began to pace again. “I haven’t been satisfied since I walk into your office. You make me suffer and I don’t like it.”

  “Artists are supposed to suffer,” she shot back. “And I don’t see how I’ve had anything to do with it. I’ve given in to every single demand you made. Replaced windows, ripped out plumbing, gotten rid of that tool-and-knot wiring.”

  “Tube and knob,” he corrected, nearly amused.

  “Well, it’s gone, isn’t it? Have you any idea just how much lumber I’ve authorized?”

  “To last two-by-four, I know. This is not point.”

  She studied him owlishly. “Do you know you drop your articles when you’re angry?”

  His eyes narrowed. “I drop nothing.”

  “Your the’s and an’s and a’s,” she pointed out. “And your sentence structure suffers. You mix your tenses.”

  That wounded. “I’d like to hear you speak my language.”

  She set the purse she still carried onto a table with a snap. “Baryshnikov, glasnost.”

  His lips curled. “This is Russian. I am Ukrainian. This is a mistake you make, but I overlook.”

  “It. You overlook it,” she corrected. “In any case, it’s close enough.” He took a step forward, she took one back. “I’m sure we can have a fascinating discussion on the subtleties of language, but it will have to wait.” He came closer, and she—casually, she hoped—edged away. “As I said before, I enjoyed the evening. Now—” he maneuvered her around a chair “—stop stalking me.”

  “You imagine things. You’re not a rabbit, you’re a woman.”

  But she felt like a rabbit, one of those poor, frozen creatures caught in a beam of headlights. “I don’t know what’s put you in this mood—”

  “I have many moods. You put me in this one every time I see you, or think about you.”

  She shifted so that a table was between them. Because she well knew if she kept retreating her back would be against the wall, she took a stand. “All right, damn it. What do you want?”

  “You. You know I want you.”

  Her heart leaped into her throat, then plummeted to her stomach. “You do not.” The tremble in her voice irritated her enough to make her force ice into it. “I don’t appreciate this game you’re playing.”

  “I play? What is a man to think when a woman blows hot, then cold? When she looks at him with passion one minute and frost the next?” His hands lifted in frustration, then slapped down on the table. “I tell you straight out when you are so upset that I don’t want your mama, I want you. And you call me a liar.”

  “I don’t…” She could hardly get her breath. Deliberately she walked away, moving behind a chair and gripping the back hard. It had been a mistake to look into his eyes. There was a ruthlessness there that brought a terrible pitch of excitement to her blood. “You didn’t want me before.”

  “Before? I think I wanted you before I met you. What is this before?”

  “In the car.” Humiliation washed her cheeks of color. “When I—when we were driving back from Long Island. We were…” Her fingers dug into the back of the chair. “It doesn’t matter.”

  In two strides he was in front of the chair, his hands gripped over hers. “You tell me what you mean.”

  Pride, she told herself. She would damn well keep her pride. “All right then, to clarify, and to see that we don’t have this conversation again. You started something in the car that night. I didn’t ask for it, I didn’t encourage it, but you started it.” She took a deep breath to be certain her voice remained steady. “And you just stopped because…well, because I wasn’t what you wanted after all.”

  For a moment he could only stare, too stunned for speech. Then his face changed, so quickly, Sydney could only blink at the surge of rage. When he acted, she gave a yip of surprise. The chair he yanked from between them landed on its side two feet away.

  He swore at her. She didn’t need to understand the words to appreciate the sentiment behind them. Before she could make an undignified retreat, his hands were clamped hard on her arms. For an instant she was afraid she was about to take the same flight as the chair. He was strong enough and certainly angry enough. But he only continued to shout.

  It took her nearly a full minute to realize her feet were an inch above the floor and that he’d started using English again.

  “Idiot. How can so smart a woman have no brains?”

  “I’m not going to stand here and be insulted.” Of course, she wasn’t standing at all, she thought, fighting panic. She was dangling.

  “It is not insult to speak truth. For weeks I have tried to be gentleman.”

  “A gentleman,” she said furiously. “You’ve tried to be a gentleman. And you’ve failed miserably.”

  “I think you need time, you
need me to show you how I feel. And I am sorry to have treated you as I did in the car that night. It makes me think you will have…” He trailed off, frustrated that the proper word wasn’t in him. “That you will think me…”

  “A heathen,” she tossed out, with relish. “Barbarian.”

  “No, that’s not so bad. But a man who abuses a woman for pleasure. Who forces and hurts her.”

  “It wasn’t a matter of force,” Sydney said coldly. “Now put me down.”

  He hiked her up another inch. “Do you think I stopped because I don’t want you?”

  “I’m well aware that my sexuality is under par.”

  He didn’t have a clue what she was talking about, and plowed on. “We were in a car, in the middle of the city, with your driver in the front. And I was ready to rip your clothes away and take you, there. It made me angry with myself, and with you because you could make me forget.”

  She tried to think of a response. But he had set her back on her feet, and his hands were no longer gripping but caressing. The rage in his eyes had become something else, and it took her breath away.

  “Every day since,” he murmured. “Every night, I remember how you looked, how you felt. So I want more. And I wait for you to offer what I saw in your eyes that night. But you don’t. I can’t wait longer.”

  His fingers streaked into her hair, then fisted there, drawing her head back as his mouth crushed down on hers. The heat seared through her skin, into blood and bone. Her moan wasn’t borne of pain but of tormented pleasure. Willing, desperately willing, her mouth parted under his, inviting him, accepting him. This time when her heart rose to her throat, there was a wild glory in it.

  On an oath, he tore his mouth from hers and buried it against her throat. She had not asked, she had not encouraged. Those were her words, and he wouldn’t ignore the truth of them. Whatever slippery grip he had on control, he clamped tight now, fighting to catch his breath and hold to sanity.

  “Damn me to hell or take me to heaven,” he muttered. “But do it now.”

  Her arms locked around his neck. He would leave, she knew, just as he had left that first time. And if he did she might never feel this frenzied stirring again. “I want you.” I’m afraid, I’m afraid. “Yes, I want you. Make love to me.”

  And his mouth was on hers again, hard, hot, hungry, while his hands flowed like molten steel down her body. Not a caress now, but a branding. In one long, possessive stroke he staked a claim. It was too late for choices.

  Fears and pleasures battered her, rough waves of emotion that had her trembling even as she absorbed delights. Her fingers dug into his shoulders, took greedy handfuls of his hair. Through the thin layers of cotton, she could feel the urgent drum of his heart and knew it beat for her.

  More. He could only think he needed more, even as her scent swam in his head and her taste flooded his mouth. She moved against him, that small, slim body restless and eager. When he touched her, when his artist’s hands sculpted her, finding the curves and planes of her already perfect, her low, throaty whimpers pounded in his ears like thunder.

  More.

  He tugged the straps from her shoulders, snapping one in his hurry to remove even that small obstacle. While his mouth raced over the smooth, bare curve, he dragged at the zipper, yanking and pulling until the dress pooled at her feet.

  Beneath it. Oh, Lord, beneath it.

  The strapless little fancy frothed over milk-white breasts, flowed down to long, lovely thighs. She lifted a trembling hand as if to cover herself, but he caught it, held it. He didn’t see the nerves in her eyes as he filled himself on how she looked, surrounded in the last flames of sunset that warmed the room.

  “Mikhail.” Because he wasn’t quite ready to speak, he only nodded. “I…the bedroom.”

  He’d been tempted to take her where they stood, or to do no more than drag her to the floor. Checking himself, he had her up in his arms in one glorious sweep. “It better be close.”

  On an unsteady laugh, she gestured. No man had ever carried her to bed before, and she found it dazzlingly romantic. Unsure of what part she should play, Sydney pressed her lips tentatively to his throat. He trembled. Encouraged, she skimmed them up to his ear. He groaned. On a sigh of pleasure, she continued to nibble while her fingers slipped beneath his shirt to stroke over his shoulder.

  His arms tightened around her. When she turned her head, his mouth was there, taking greedily from hers as he tumbled with her onto the bed.

  “Shouldn’t we close the drapes?” The question ended on a gasp as he began doing things to her, wonderful things, shattering things. There was no room for shyness in this airless, spinning world.

  It wasn’t supposed to be like this. She’d always thought lovemaking to be either awkwardly mechanical or quietly comforting. It wasn’t supposed to be so urgent, so turbulent. So incredible. Those rough, clever hands rushed over flesh, over silk, then back to flesh, leaving her a quivering mass of sensation. His mouth was just as hurried, just as skilled as it made the same erotic journey.

  He was lost in her, utterly, irretrievably lost in her. Even the air was full of her, that quiet, restrained, gloriously seductive scent. Her skin seemed to melt, like liquid flowers, under his fingers, his lips. Each quick tremble he brought to her racked through him until he thought he would go mad.

  Desire arced and spiked and hummed even as she grew softer, more pliant. More his.

  Impatient, he brought his mouth to her breast to suckle through silk while his hands slid up her thighs to find her, wet and burning.

  When he touched her, her body arched in shock. Her arm flew back until her fingers locked over one of the rungs of the brass headboard. She shook her head as pleasure shot into her, hot as a bullet. Suddenly fear and desire were so twisted into a single emotion she didn’t know whether to beg him to stop or plead with him to go on. On and on.

  Helpless, stripped of control, she gasped for breath. It seemed her system had contracted until she was curled into one tight hot ball. Even as she sobbed out his name, the ball imploded and she was left shattered.

  A moan shuddered out as her body went limp again.

  Unbearably aroused, he watched her, the stunned, glowing pleasure that flushed her cheeks, the dark, dazed desire that turned her eyes to blue smoke. For her, for himself, he took her up again, driving her higher until her breath was ragged and her body on fire.

  “Please,” she managed when he tugged the silk aside.

  “I will please you.” He flicked his tongue over her nipple. “And me.”

  There couldn’t be more. But he showed her there was. Even when she began to drag frantically at his clothes, he continued to assault her system and to give her, give her more than she had ever believed she could hold. His hands were never still as he rolled over the bed with her, helping her to rid him of every possible barrier.

  He wanted her crazed for him, as crazed as he for her. He could feel the wild need in the way she moved beneath him, in the way her hands searched. And yes, in the way she cried out when he found some secret she’d been keeping just for him.

  When he could wait no longer, he plunged inside her, a sword to the hilt.

  She was beyond pleasure. There was no name for the edge she trembled on. Her body moved, arching for his, finding their own intimate rhythm as naturally as breath. She knew he was speaking to her, desperate words in a mixture of languages. She understood that wherever she was, he was with her, as much a captive as she.

  And when the power pushed her off that last thin edge, he was all there was. All there had to be.

  * * *

  It was dark, and the room was in shadows. Wondering if her mind would ever clear again, Sydney stared at the ceiling and listened to Mikhail breathe. It was foolish, she supposed, but it was such a soothing, intimate sound, that air moving quietly in and out of his lungs. She could have listened for hours.

  Perhaps she had.

  She had no idea how much time had passed since he’d
slapped his hand on her door and barged in after her. It might have been minutes or hours, but it hardly mattered. Her life had been changed. Smiling to herself, she stroked a hand through his hair. He turned his head, just an inch, and pressed his lips to the underside of her jaw.

  “I thought you were asleep,” she murmured.

  “No. I wouldn’t fall asleep on top of you.” He lifted his head. She could see the gleam of his eyes, the hint of a smile. “There are so many more interesting things to do on top of you.”

  She felt color rush to her cheeks and was grateful for the dark. “I was…” How could she ask? “It was all right, then?”

  “No.” Even with his body pressed into hers, he could feel her quick retreat. “Sydney, I may not have so many good words as you, but I think ‘all right’ is a poor choice. A walk through the park is all right.”

  “I only meant—” She shifted. Though he braced on his elbows to ease his weight from her, he made sure she couldn’t wiggle away.

  “I think we’ll have a light now.”

  “No, that’s not—” The bedside lamp clicked on. “Necessary.”

  “I want to see you, because I think I will make love with you again in a minute. And I like to look at you.” Casually he brushed his lips over hers. “Don’t.”

  “Don’t what?”

  “Tense your shoulders. I’d like to think you could relax with me.”

  “I am relaxed,” she said, then blew out a long breath. No, she wasn’t. “It’s just that whenever I ask a direct question, you give evasions. I only wanted to know if you were, well, satisfied.”

  She’d been sure before, but now, as the heat had faded to warmth, she wondered if she’d only wished.

  “Ah.” Wrapping her close, he rolled over until she lay atop him. “This is like a quiz. Multiple choice. They were my favorite in school. You want to know, A, was it all right, B, was it very good or C, was it very wonderful.”

  “Forget it.”