How was she going to survive weeks of this? When she wasn’t sure she could survive another three seconds?
“Look at me,” he ordered her, his voice soft and yet no less authoritative, directly into her ear. She felt the tease of his breath, imagined she felt that clever mouth directly against her skin. Miranda shuddered, but opened her eyes, afraid of what she would see.
He loomed there behind her, not quite touching her. His dark head was bent to hers, and he was so big—so big—his wide shoulders and his height making her seem slight and small before him. He exuded power like a searchlight, blinding and unmistakable.
And he was breaking their agreement, and she couldn’t let that happen. For far more reasons than she was prepared to admit to herself.
“You promised,” she whispered, her voice only the faintest scratch of sound, hardly audible over her own heart beat. “You can’t do this kind of thing when we’re alone. You can’t shift.”
She could feel the heat he generated, and there was nothing but smoke and flames in his dark gaze as it slammed into hers in the mirror. Nothing but that consuming, impossible fire that echoed in her, simmering and treacherous, no matter how she ordered it to stop.
“There are security cameras in the corners,” he murmured, so that only she could hear, and then he touched her.
And Miranda told herself she was the kind of woman who kept her promises, no matter how difficult, so she let him.
Ivan traced a lazy path from her wrist to her upper arm with one hand, then back down again. He could feel the way she shook with the effort of not moving, not wrenching herself away from him, and it nearly made him smile. It nearly made him spin her around and take her mouth again, and this time, with no intention of stopping.
But this was supposed to be a seduction. It was too soon.
He traced the length of her elegant spine, and ordered the fire in him to subside. But she was wrapped in a glorious spill of fabric that made her skin look like cream, and he wanted a taste.
He wanted.
He bent his head closer, his lips so close to the line of her neck, so close that he could inhale her delicate scent. It worked through him, making him crazy. Making that razor’s edge of need sharper. Making him entertain the possibility that he, too, could be seduced.
And he could see it all in the mirror. He could see that dizzy, unfocused gleam in her dark eyes, see the way his lips hovered so close to her soft skin. So close. He could see the immensity of his battered champion’s body, the way he stood behind and all around her, the hulking brute to all her fragile, supple femininity.
The sight of it should not have made him that much hotter. But he had never been politically correct, had he? Especially not in bed.
He made himself go slowly, carefully, as if he was as in control of this, of himself, as he should have been. He held her wrist in one hand, the other moving from the small of her back to grip her hip as if he owned her. He held her the way he’d kissed her across the world in Georgetown, as if they’d been lovers a thousand times before. As if his smallest touch was a preview to a show they both knew by heart. As if he had spent hours already today thrusting hard and deep inside of her, shattering her into millions of pieces, the way he assured himself he would. And soon.
Very soon, Professor, he promised her silently.
In another life, where they were already lovers and there were none of these games, this scene would be very different. He would simply take. What he wanted. What he felt was his. Her. He would brace her against the mirrors, or have her kneel across his lap on that settee, and he wouldn’t care who might be watching them. And in that life, neither would she. She would welcome it—him—with none of her suspicious frowns or patrician pearl-clutching. She would meet his every touch, his every thrust. Ivan felt that work through him, as if it was real. As if it had happened—was happening. That hard fist of desire in his belly clenched ever tighter.
“Milaya moya,” he murmured, as he had before. But this time it came out like some kind of incantation. “What if I am shifting after all?”
She jerked against him, and he could see her pulse go wild at her throat. Her gaze was black, and he had no doubt at all that she would call what she felt then any number of names, but he knew what it was. He knew what her body was begging for, even if she denied it.
And it was harder than it should have been, far harder than he’d anticipated, to keep himself from claiming her right here and right now, and to hell with any security cameras.
This is an act, he reminded himself coldly. You are supposed to be acting.
He raised his head, slowly and deliberately, because he did not want to move at all. He did not want to let go of her. But this was meant to be a seduction wrapped inside a masquerade, and this was only the beginning. Why was that so hard to remember?
But he knew why. And he couldn’t let his suicidal fascination jeopardize all he and Nikolai had worked for. Not even if she was the first woman to get beneath his skin, to make him forget himself, in as long as he could remember. Something he had no intention of letting this haughty little aristocrat know. He could imagine all too well how she’d enjoy using it against him.
He let go of her wrist and plucked at the fabric draped all around her, still holding her gaze, his other hand hard and possessive on her hip, because, he assured himself, it was part of the act. And because he was only a man.
“This one is perfect, I think,” he said after a moment, when he was certain he would sound nothing but calm. Casual. He pretended he didn’t see the shock in her gaze, the fiery passion mixed with something like betrayal. He pretended he didn’t care that she thought he’d played her, because he shouldn’t. Because, in the end, he was. “I like the color.”
Horrible man.
“I’ve hired a team of stylists to attend to you,” Ivan said offhandedly when they returned to his plane, as if he was addressing the help. Horrible, awful man. “They can accomplish a great deal in an hour-long flight. Do not argue with anything they suggest, please. I picked them for a reason.”
“This is completely unnecessary,” Miranda said, in a scrupulously polite undertone that felt like glass against her tongue, so badly did she want to scream at him for that little performance in the dressing room. Scream, yell. Something.
But there were people around, and she’d agreed to this charade. They’d even signed a few documents on the plane ride to France, just to make sure everything was perfectly clear. And more than that, her demons were her business. He didn’t get to know them, which she feared he would if she let herself scream at him. He didn’t get to know her—no matter what darkness he’d churned up in her with his little act for the cameras, what nightmares that performance would inevitably wreak upon her. It didn’t matter anyway. She was going to play this role, get close to him for her own purposes and then do exactly as she liked with what she learned.
It will be worth it, she chanted to herself. It will.
“I don’t need stylists,” she told him now, impressed with how in control she sounded, when she still felt so raw inside. When she could still feel his hands on her body, like third-degree burns. “I don’t need anything
