intense personality whirled into her psyche like a restless summer wind, scattering her thoughts and inducing an instant, fluttering sensuality that reached toward everything in him.
“We’re here.”
The lights of Paris came to sparkling life around her. The scent of rain-damp streets smelled promisingly fresh as he left the car. The strength in his hand as he took hers to help her exit made her heart trip in a nervous rhythm against her breastbone.
She paused as he steered her toward a building, turning her face up to the sprinkling black sky to take in the facade of elegantly lit stone. It wasn’t a towering structure of glass and steel, but an old-world walk-up with wrought-iron balconies and planter boxes already blooming with spring. “This is very—” charming, she almost said “—nice.”
“It’s a good investment,” he dismissed.
The statement chilled her. “If you’re so keen on good investments, why did I hear you dumping all of Victor’s properties?” He’d been positively ruthless, speaking harshly into his mobile as she’d moved through the flat collecting her few sentimental items. He hadn’t taken any losses that she could discern, but he hadn’t seemed concerned with making huge profits either. “I’m sure his family would have kept what you didn’t want.”
“His sons kept enough,” he said bluntly, pausing on the top landing to open a door by punching a code into the security pad. “I left them their homes because they have innocent wives and children, but they knew enough about how their father made his fortune that they didn’t fight my takeover. I didn’t have the evidence to prove Van Eych’s crimes until the firm’s accounting books were in my hands. Now the truth will come out and his sons will change their names to escape any connection to him.”
His mouth curled into a cruel smile as he held the door for her.
Foreboding crawled through her veins. “You think it’s funny to cause the severing of family ties?” Everything in her castaway upbringing was appalled.
“Funny? No. Justified? Yes.”
She stepped into a room lit with intimate golden pools, but she didn’t take it in, too caught up with looking for a crack of humanity in his unyielding expression. Until now she hadn’t worried what would happen to her, aware only that if she walked away from Aleksy’s money, she’d always cringe with regret. Orphaned children needed a voice and it wasn’t as if she could find support for the foundation elsewhere. Victor was gone and who else would sponsor it if rumors started up that its founder had been in collusion with a white-collar criminal? No, if she didn’t do this, the foundation was history, but reality hit as the door clicked shut behind them, loud and symbolic.
Aleksy Dmitriev was a hard man. Not cruel; she believed him when he said he didn’t hurt women. He’d already demonstrated that he held himself to specific, sharply defined ethics. But he wasn’t merely detached like her. She deflected emotions, but he didn’t feel them at all. That made something catch in her. Apprehension, but empathy too. What had made him so devoid of a heart? Had he ever had one?
Did it matter? She belonged to him regardless.
Her heart sank, taking her last chance of protest with it, leaving her feeling naked and defenseless. You’re not naked yet, a lethal voice whispered in her head.
“Dine out or in?” he asked, his accent raspy on her sensitized nerves.
Her breath stuttered and she struggled to catch it, not realizing she’d been holding it. Part of her would rather get the main event over with. It was late enough she was growing tired, but she was also wide-awake with nervous anticipation.
His nearness, the power of his intense glance, stole her voice. His hair had flattened into a dark helmet under the light rain. A shadow had grown in on his square jaw, accentuating everything male in him. She was ridiculously weakened by the sight. Her gaze should have been flashing a back off. Instead she studied his mouth, recalling the feel of those full lips moving with erotic control over hers. Her fingertips itched to trace the smooth curves that were uncompromisingly masculine, yet wickedly sexy.
“This stubble will burn if I kiss you the way you’re begging me to,” he said in a growled voice that slammed her back to reality.
“I—” She strangled on denial, mortified enough to jerk out of his hypnotizing aura and move across the room.
“I’ll shower and shave. You put on one of those cocktail dresses you asked me if you should bring. I want to see your legs.”
She threw him a livid glare, but he disappeared down a hall. What did she have to be angry about anyway? She’d sold herself into his control, hadn’t she?
Clair gripped her elbows, hanging on to her composure with bruising tightness, taking in her surroundings to turn her mind from her precarious situation. The lounge was enormous, tiled in marble and divided into sections with area rugs and attractively arranged furniture. Everything was decidedly masculine, the writing desk set in the corner surrounded by enough space to accommodate its charismatic owner. The rest of the flat took up the entire top floor of the building, incorporating half a dozen smaller flats into a single sprawling living space that one man couldn’t possibly need.
She had thought Victor obscenely wealthy. She shook her head, reminding herself that the real test of a person’s class came from his character, not his possessions. Problem was, Aleksy guarded himself even more closely than she did. She wondered what kind of man lurked beneath that polished granite exterior. One who would laugh her to the curb when he realized what a novice she was?
Stop it. Steadying her knees and pulling her shoulders back, she resolved not to be intimidated. He could laugh all he wanted, but she had her own principles: loyalty, a debt of gratitude and a personal honor that demanded she live up to her word.
She was terrified, but she’d sleep with him because she’d said she would.
* * *
Her luggage was gone from his room when he emerged from his shower.
It was an unexpected slap in the face for Aleksy. Women never rejected him. Given the math Clair had scratched into a notebook on the plane, he had considered their deal more than sealed; was she now trying to get out of it?
Snatching up his mobile, wearing only a towel, he strode from the bedroom to the empty lounge. Down at the far end of the flat, as far as she could get from his master bedroom, the door was shut. He pushed through it, noted her open suitcase on the bed and heard the hair dryer click on in the bathroom.
The release of tension in him was profound—and aggravating.
Get a grip, he ordered himself as he returned to his room. She was only a woman, the same as all the others he’d taken into his bed. Yes, there was a certain satisfaction in claiming what Victor had wanted, but Aleksy had been patient enough to hunt that man down over two decades. He ought to be capable of waiting a few more hours for this final conquest.
The short flight to Paris had been unbearable, though, the drive from the airport eternal. She’d been quiet, almost as if trying to hold herself behind an invisible shell, while his senses had been homed onto her presence, for once hungry to learn about his partner, but he hadn’t wanted to reveal his curiosity.
He didn’t want to feel it. She shouldn’t be drawing him in this strongly.
When
