that mean you don’t agree, then?” she’d asked tightly, aware only when his gaze had flicked down to her hands that she’d been clenching them too hard against the armrests of her deep leather seat. She’d forced herself to let go.
“As a matter of fact, I do not.” He’d met her glare with that irritatingly calm gaze of his, that had held, as ever, a simmering amusement in its brooding depths. She hadn’t wanted to ask herself why that affected her so much. Why it burrowed so deeply beneath her skin. “We will put on this little act, as you call it, when we are in public. Only when we are alone, just the two of us, will we drop it.”
“But—”
“Cameras are everywhere,” he’d said quietly, with that edge of quiet, implacable certainty. “Eager eyes and mobile phones set to record. Gossiping mouths with instant internet access. You think you know what it means to be in the public eye because you have appeared on some television programs, because your name is known in some circles.” His mouth had curved slightly. Mockingly. “You don’t.”
There had been something in his gaze then, something dark and almost painful that made her heart seem to beat too hard in her chest. She’d cleared her throat, more confused by her insane urge to offer him some kind of comfort than anything that had come before. She’d tried to shake it off.
“That seems extreme,” she’d said. “And unnecessarily paranoid.”
“Yet it is precisely how I have managed to be a major movie star, featured in the number-one summer action movie for four years running, and still considered mysterious and reclusive,” he’d said without the faintest shred of arrogance or pride. Only stark, indisputable fact. “This is my game, Professor. If you want a book out of it, we will play it my way.”
Public.
Miranda flushed slightly now, holding his gaze in the mirrors of the opulent Parisian dressing room, as chastened as if he’d reprimanded her out loud. She forced herself to breathe. And then, impossibly, attempt a smile.
It was anemic, she thought, studying herself in the wall of mirrors, but it was there.
Ivan only watched her for another moment, and she again got the sense that she amused him, though he neither smiled nor laughed. Then, his eyes still so dark and commanding on hers, he lifted up a single finger of one hand and wordlessly commanded her to turn around in a circle.
For his pleasure.
And Miranda loathed herself, deeply and totally. But she did it.
Because that was the deal. And she would be damned if she was the one who would break it. Not when she had so much to gain from simply … submitting to this, to him, for a scant few weeks. Surely she could do that.
Ivan’s dark eyes gleamed hot when she met them again, a kind of promise there that she refused to let herself understand, even as a deeper, purely feminine knowledge fanned the flames of it across her skin. His mouth moved into something like a smile, dangerous and edgy. It made her feel too warm, as if the fabric wrapped around her had shrunk two sizes as she stood there before him.
He held her gaze, looking like some kind of pagan god of war, so tough and hard and obviously dangerous. Capable, she thought wildly, of absolutely anything.
And then, sprawled there like that with attendants on either side, he lifted up his hand and beckoned for her to come to him. Peremptory. Commanding. With only his lazy fingers and that hard, intent look on his face.
Miranda felt it like a detonation, deep inside of her, setting off a chain of explosions throughout the rest of her body. She trembled. She wanted things she refused to name, things that made her soften and burn—things she wasn’t sure she understood, and told herself she didn’t want to. But she didn’t look away from that midnight gaze of his in the mirror. And despite a kind of deep, ravenous craving she’d never felt before, and found wholly terrifying, she didn’t move.
She couldn’t. She knew, with a deep certainty she’d never felt before, that if she did, if she followed the demands of this shocking, surprising yearning that ate her up inside, she would lose herself in ways she was afraid to imagine. In ways she couldn’t even foresee. Forever. And she knew better than to lose her head over a man. She knew better.
She had to fight to keep from jumping when he stood, abruptly, scattering his admirers as he rose. Her heart seemed to drop in her chest, then started to pound, hard and slow.
Fear, she told herself, and that was what it felt like, though she knew, somehow, it was more than that. Different. Panic.
“Leave us,” Ivan commanded in French to the people surrounding him, and Miranda didn’t miss the arched, knowing looks the couturiers and assistants shot at each other. Just as she didn’t miss the soft click of the door they closed behind them, leaving her all alone with him.
Alone and half-naked. Supposedly his mistress. She knew what they were imagining on the other side of the door. His hands, all over her. Pulling up the length of expensive fabric she wore, exploring beneath it. His mouth, hot and hard on hers. And elsewhere. She was imagining it, too.
Miranda couldn’t tear her eyes from his. She couldn’t bring herself to move, not even to turn around and face him. She wasn’t sure she breathed.
Ivan roamed toward her in that predatory way of his, loose and yet certain, as if he could as easily take down sets of attackers with one hand as cross the elegant, high-ceilinged room to the small dais where she stood. His battle-tested ferocity was stamped all over him, on that hard warrior’s face of his, on the tough and ruthless body he’d packed into dark trousers and another expensive-looking T-shirt that licked over his muscled torso, and even the tailored jacket that trumpeted his wealth at high volume, so well did it mold itself to his titanlike shoulders.
There was no mistaking who or what he was. Ivan Korovin. Desperately rich. Shockingly famous. And in complete and utter control of this situation, no matter how keenly Miranda might feel she was flying apart at the seams. Or even because of it.
Her limbs ached with the effort of keeping her upright, even her neck seemed too weak to support her head, and it was not until she saw the movement of her own chest in the mirror that she realized she was breathing shallow and fast.
Like prey.
“I don’t want—” she began, panicked beyond endurance, and he was so close—
“Quiet.”
Miranda didn’t know what was worse: that he believed he could speak to her like that, that he had the right, or that she heard that autocratic command and obeyed.
Instantly.
It was, she knew, representative of everything she hated about herself.
Ivan stepped up onto the raised platform and stood behind her, and it was too much. Too much. Her eyes eased closed, as if that might protect her, from him or from herself she wasn’t sure she could tell. There was too much noise in her head, too much chaos, and she was aware that she was trembling—that her heart was fluttering wildly against her ribs, and she knew, somehow, that there was no way he would miss that. He would know—but she couldn’t do anything to help herself. She felt caged. Trapped.
And somewhere deep inside, she was very much afraid that she didn’t hate that feeling as
