Innocent in the Ivory Tower (12 page)

‘Your emergency,’ she said uncertainly. ‘What was it about?’

Alexei was silent for so long Maisy didn’t think he was going to answer her. His words startled her when he did speak. ‘It was to do with a timber company.’

‘Nothing serious?’ She had an excuse now to roll over.

Alexei was lying on his back, naked, one arm hooked behind his head. He was staring up at the ceiling and didn’t look at her, but she could see the tiredness in the set of his profile and for the first time it occurred to her how work never stopped for him.

‘I’ve dealt with the bare necessities. There’s nothing that can’t be cleared up tomorrow.’

She realised he had left things unresolved to return to her. Before she could enjoy the feeling she remembered Carlo Santini. She remembered all the women.

Yet here he was, in bed with her.

Maisy drew the covers more securely around her neck. She was so cold, and it wasn’t going away. She felt cold to the bone.

‘I had an amazing time tonight,’ she said quietly into the dark. ‘I want to thank you.’

Alexei’s head shifted. His eyes welded with hers. ‘You were happy,’ he said. It wasn’t a question, it was a statement. Then he frowned. ‘You’re shivering.’

His whole body shifted then. He lifted the covers and literally dragged her into him, and she was engulfed in Alexei. Cold shower or not, his body was like the sun. He exuded heat and comfort, but she couldn’t relax.

‘Talk to me,’ he murmured into her hair. ‘Tell me about how you came to be at the Kulikovs’.’ When she was silent he prompted, ‘You met Anais at school?’

Maisy didn’t want to go near the Anais and Leo question. He had reacted so strongly the other night she didn’t want to risk it. But with her cheek pressed against his firm, warm chest she felt a little safer to talk about it. It wasn’t as if he’d tip her out of bed, would he?

‘Anais came to St Bernice’s when we were fourteen. She was a skinny beanpole and I was a chubby little swot.’ She said it lightly, but it was forced.

Alexei smoothed his palm over the curve of her hip. Maisy felt something inside give a little, because he’d made it extremely clear since they’d met that the womanly aspects of her body were what he found desirable.

‘You were close?’

‘I was bullied a little, because I wasn’t from the right sort of background, and Anais fought those battles for me. I’ll always be grateful to her for that.’

‘So what happened at the end of school?’

‘Anais went modelling and I—’ Maisy took a deep breath. She had never told a soul this story and it felt strange doing so now. But the dark helped—and the heavy solidity of Alexei wrapped around her. ‘My mum got sick. I looked after her.’

‘I see.’

But he didn’t see. He couldn’t know what a slow descent those two years had been. She’d been on the verge of her adult life and it had all been taken away.

‘Your mother is dead.’ He said it bluntly.

Maisy looked up at him. ‘How do you know? Oh, the investigators.’ She tried to put a little room between them but he refused to let her budge.

‘No, I didn’t get them to dig that far. I know because you haven’t made any phone calls to England. All girls call their mothers at some point.’

‘Even if my mum was alive I probably wouldn’t be ringing her,’ said Maisy frankly.

‘She did a job on you?’ He propped himself up so he could watch her telltale face.

‘She was a single mum. She was only sixteen when she had me. She always told me I’d ruined her life. Then she got cancer and she needed me.’

Alexei rubbed his thumb over the pulse at the base of her throat. ‘Then what happened?’

‘I ran into Anais in a department store in London. It was just weeks after Mum’s funeral. I was—numb. And suddenly there she was. She was pregnant with Kostya and she wanted me to move in with her and help. She didn’t have any sisters and her mum was a bit of a nightmare.’

‘You had that in common.’ He was brushing the hair out of her eyes. She loved it when he did that, felt cherished by him. ‘And you stayed with her thereafter?’

Maisy was silent. She suddenly felt tremulous. He was straying very close to dangerous ground.

‘You never thought about going back to school?’

If there was an implied criticism in there she couldn’t detect it, and it gave her the courage to answer honestly. ‘After Mum died I thought about university. I’d got in, but I couldn’t go because of Mum. And then Anais appeared and I made my decision. I can’t regret it.’

‘Surely Leo could have got you a job in one of his companies? I know you, Maisy. You’re a smart girl.’

It wasn’t the use of the description ‘smart’ that pleased her. It was the assertion
I know you
. He didn’t, but the assurance he had that he did made her feel warm inside. Wanted.

‘I had a baby to look after. It doesn’t give you much room for a social life, let alone a job.’

‘So tell me about this one lover, one time.’

He spoke so casually, just slipped it in, his fingers sliding gently through one of her long curls. But Maisy wasn’t fooled. He was marking his ground.

Maisy
really
didn’t want to discuss Dan with Alexei. It made her feel pathetic, and she desperately didn’t want him to see her as that.

‘Were you in a relationship with him?’

‘Of course I was,’ Maisy answered unthinkingly, then stiffened. She had jumped into bed with Alexei quickly enough, and this wasn’t anything like a relationship. There was no
of course
about it. She waited for him to react, but he was observing her as if what she was saying was fascinating. ‘I don’t really want to discuss it,’ she said quietly. ‘It happened. That’s it.’

‘You were in a relationship, you lost your virginity and that was it? No repeat performance?’

‘I called it quits.’ Suddenly the stitching on the edge of the bedsheet became the most interesting thing in the room.

‘How long were you seeing each other?’

‘Six weeks.’

‘So a long-term thing?’

Maisy felt her temper stir and lift. ‘Okay, you’ve made your point. I’m not sophisticated, and I had crappy sex with a crappy
boy in his crappy bedsit. But look—now I’ve come up in the world. Better sex with a better boy in a better bed.’

‘Better sex?’ He chuckled, the sound a gravitational pull that had her edging back in against him. ‘This is fantastic sex,
dushka
. The best I’ve ever had.’

Maisy spun for a moment on that assertion. He couldn’t be serious?

‘And for your information, Maisy,’ he murmured, his breath warm in her ear, ‘I’m not a boy. I’m a man. And there’s a difference.’

Maisy knew that. Alexei had made it very clear what that difference was since day one.

‘I wish I’d known you then,’ he inserted softly.

‘You wouldn’t have given me the time of day.’

There—she’d said it. Her throat was aching with unexpressed emotions she was finding it difficult to keep repressed.

She felt the change in Alexei’s body and it was like a kick to her belly. He didn’t want to hear her insecurities, but they were all she felt tonight. The day had been too volatile; too much had happened to her. And now she couldn’t sleep. She could only lie pinned to him, baring her soul to a man who probably wanted nothing less.

‘I would have taken you to a luxurious hotel and taken your virginity with a great deal more care than some bloke in a bedsit,’ he said with rough assurance.

Maisy pressed her temple against his chest. For a moment she allowed herself to believe him. He was touching her, his palms and fingertips moving over her waist and back and hips in circular movements, but not in a sexual way. At least she didn’t think so. He was just warming her.

‘Alexei …’ she murmured.

‘Hmm?’

‘I wish it had been you,’ she confessed. ‘I know we’re just having a fling. But I wish it had been you.’

Alexei’s hands had stopped moving and it felt as if he’d stopped breathing.

‘It’s how I feel,’ she said nervously, wondering what the stillness meant.

His big hand tipped her chin up and he brought his mouth down on hers, hard and hot and possessive. She had the fleeting thought,
This is just like London.
And it rocked her.

His hands were suddenly under her T-shirt and around her breasts. Maisy felt her body rev to speed without a second thought. She was still shivering, but she couldn’t
not
respond. He was still hers. She could already feel him at her core, and she was wet for him. He tore her old shirt in two, baring her breasts. He entered her with a single thrust and she rocked into him, not caring about anything but the fury that was driving her upwards. She’d gone from virtually zero in the physical department to Alexei’s level in the span of a day. God knew what he had created. Maisy didn’t even know who she was any more.

She splintered into a thousand pieces so quickly she could have wept, but he was still moving in her, and Maisy clung to him, digging her nails into the slabs of muscle behind his shoulders, feeling it build again. His mouth kept contact with hers, his eyes pinning her so that when she climaxed again he was with her. But it was different this time. She felt him pour himself into her. Sweat glistened on his shoulders where Maisy pressed her mouth, and then he was sinking heavily on top of her. He stayed inside her, not moving. Her heartbeat began to thrum to the rhythm of his and she closed her eyes, the tears rising and choking her.

‘It’s not a fling,’ he muttered. Then he lifted himself up on his forearms and fixed her face in place with his hands. He meshed their mouths. ‘It’s not a fling,’ he repeated.

Just in case she hadn’t heard him the first time.

Alexei gave Kostya his promised three days. He introduced him to the sea, held his tiny barrel-shaped body in the gently breaking surf as it creamed the shore and built sandcastles for the sea to destroy.

Maisy sheltered under a huge hat and a billowy sheer
shirt—the sun had never been kind to her—and feasted her eyes on Alexei in a pair of low-slung board shorts that did nothing to curb her X-rated thoughts. His golden tan made a mockery of her pale, lightly freckled skin. She could blame the heat of the day for her hot flush as he strode up the beach to where she sat under an umbrella, her trashy novel fluttering in the breeze, but his gaze told her otherwise, locking on the sumptuous curves of her breasts and hips in the flattering fifties-style bikini.

Last night had shifted something in their relationship. The tensions between them seemed to have evaporated, and on this private beach, in the full glare of the late-afternoon sun, Maisy felt an enormous clutch of contentment and the wicked stir of her body. It was as if her body was suddenly fully awake after a long sleep, and like Sleeping Beauty she was in thrall to her prince. Her gloriously built prince, with his slumberous smile and Tartar eyes eating her up as she fumbled in her bag for sunscreen to reapply to Kostya’s sand-encrusted nose.

It was her rule that they shouldn’t show physical affection in front of Kostya, but it was a rule she was regretting as six and a half feet of Russian male stretched himself out on the lounger beside her, his long, lean body glistening with seawater and sand, his lashes wet and black, framing his brilliant eyes. He lay there watching her, looking immensely relaxed and happy. The grim, tense Alexei had been banished. She had fallen asleep in the arms of a looser-limbed, becalmed man, and so he remained.

Kostya settled on the sand within the circumference of the umbrella and dug with a stick, making comments about the ant he was tracking. Alexei extended his hand and Maisy broke her rule, giving him hers. The peace and serenity of the moment settled very deeply over them.

It was, Maisy realised, sanctuary.

‘I have to fly to Geneva on Friday,’ he told her, his voice a register deeper, tugging on those muscles deep down inside
her. It made her smile, and a response flared in his eyes. ‘I want you to come with me.’

‘I think Kostya and I should stay here,’ she answered reluctantly. ‘He’s just starting to settle in. It would be wrong to disturb him.’

‘Maria can look after him. It’s only for a couple of days and a night.’

The night. He wanted her for the night. Maisy’s toes curled with delight.

‘A night too long.’ She bit her lip, wishing it could be different. ‘I can’t leave him, Alexei.’

‘No.’ He looked out at the blue horizon, but Maisy knew he wasn’t admiring the view. ‘No,’ he said again, his chest heaving in a deep sigh.

‘You don’t mind?’ She wished she didn’t sound so anxious. It made her sound needy and insecure.

‘I mind, but I understand.’ His thumb was running up and down over the palm of her hand. ‘Leo didn’t have parents for the first eight years of his life. It might explain why he didn’t have as much time for his son as he probably should have. I won’t make that mistake.’

Maisy stared at him. She hadn’t known that, but Alexei’s admission went a long way to healing the wound his words the other night had opened. So he
did
believe her—or was giving her the benefit of the doubt.

‘But I travel a lot, Maisy. Kostya is going to have to get used to that.’

She tried to ignore the absence of herself in that statement. After all, what was between them wasn’t for ever. But it was life for Kostya. ‘Maybe in a few weeks, when he’s secure?’ she suggested.

‘A week. He can have a week. Then I want you with me. I can’t bring my life to a standstill, Maisy. It doesn’t work that way.’ He softened his tone. ‘Besides, you’ll go crazy here on your own. You need me to keep you entertained.’

‘How entertaining will it be if you’re working?’

‘New York, Paris, Rome, Prague. Don’t you want to see those cities?’

‘I want to be with you,’ said Maisy simply, because it was the truth.

He didn’t answer her, but his hand remained secure around her own, and for all the tenuousness of her situation Maisy felt he would continue to hold her hand through this whole experience. She wouldn’t think about it now—how it would be when he finally let her go.

‘Y
OU
smell so good.’ They were in the apartment he kept in the fifth
arrondissement
of Paris. It had spectacular views, taking in the Seine and the spires of Notre Dame. It was the first time Maisy had been here and she was not a little overwhelmed by it all. She had expected sleek lines and into-the-future modernity from Alexei, but all around her was restrained Louis XVI cream-and-gold luxury.

It was like stepping into Paris in the eighteenth century. She loved it.

‘I’m not wearing perfume.’

‘Whatever.’ He inhaled deeply as he nuzzled her neck.

Prickling all over in a good way, Maisy heard herself babbling, ‘I just use this tangerine soap. That’s probably what you smell …’

‘I smell you, Maisy,’ he growled in her ear, his big hands splaying over her waist as he dragged her in against him.

It was early morning and they had landed at Orly only an hour ago. Alexei had a long day ahead and they had both been up since 4:00 a.m. Admittedly she had slept on the plane and in the limo. Now she was wide-awake, her body starting to climb as his need for her made itself known.

‘You smell good to me too,’ she admitted, turning in his arms.

‘Aftershave and soap,’ he countered. ‘Nothing fancy.’

But everything about him was fancy, thought Maisy, feeling utterly adored in his arms. He screamed wealth and good
taste and leashed power—except when he was with her, in bed, and that was when she had him on her level. It was a strange alchemy of him being stripped to the essential bone, of him just being a male—albeit a very fine specimen—and her losing all of her everyday ‘Maisyness’ and becoming his equal, the woman he wanted.

The curves she despaired of back in London were all he wanted in his bed. Nothing she said or did with him in bed was ever wrong. His praise and response to her had given her such new-found confidence. Yet the rest of the time she didn’t feel quite right.

They were constantly moving from Naples to Rome to Moscow to Madrid. She was always in limos, by herself or with Kostya, entering empty suites or apartments he kept in so many cities. Alexei sent stylists and personal shoppers to prepare her for dinner, usually in out-of-the-way places. He certainly didn’t flaunt their relationship. Some evenings she ate alone. He claimed she would be bored at business dinners, and she was too unsure of her position to press the point. She now had clothing and jewellery brought to her by strangers to be worn for his pleasure. None of it was hers. She was always very careful. They didn’t belong to her. She didn’t want to damage them. She didn’t know how to ask Alexei in the cold light of day what she should do with them.

So on this, her day in Paris, with Alexei tied up in talks and Kostya booked in with the children of friends of the Kulikovs, who were overjoyed to see him again, she hit the pavement in comfy flats and went shopping for herself.

She was footsore and faintly depressed on her return at seven. The personal shoppers had made it seem so easy, but the experience of trying on endless pieces that either didn’t fit or made her feel dumpy or wrongly shaped or both hadn’t been quite the fun she had anticipated.

Alexei was disconcerted that he had arrived home early, intending to surprise her, and learned she had gone out. He regarded the shopping bags on the bed as if they were alien.

She dragged out a pair of jeans and some comfy T-shirts, putting them in a neat pile, then produced the lovely fuchsia silk dress that had been the stellar purchase of her day, holding it up to show him.

‘The shows are on next week,
dushka
,’ he asserted dismissively. ‘I will take you.’

Maisy hung on to her silk dress.
That
was his comment?

‘I can’t afford couture,’ she said in an undertone.

He frowned.

‘I mean, I know you want me to dress that way, and I appreciate it. But I wanted to get some clothes for myself today. It’s a bit weird, always wearing borrowed clothes.’

‘Maisy, the clothes belong to
you
. I got them for
you
. The clothes, the jewellery—whatever. It’s yours.’

Maisy sat down on the bed, holding on to her dress. ‘Oh.’

‘Most women would be pleased,’ he said.

It was the ‘most women’ that did it. Maisy smoothed out her new dress. ‘Is that how it worked in the past? You dressed the women you were with?’

It was the first time she had raised the subject since the villa at Ravello, and Maisy experienced a wave of vertigo at the immensity of what lay underneath her question.

‘No …’ Alexei spoke slowly.

‘Tara Mills, Frances Fielding, Kate Bernier.’ She rattled off the names as if she were reading them from the tag on the back of her dress, because that was where her eyes were. She couldn’t look at him. ‘I don’t suppose any of
them
needed help dressing up.’

‘How in the hell did you get those names?’

The tightly leashed aggression in his voice brought her chin up. She wasn’t backing down now. She had a right to know where she stood. He shouldn’t be so defensive in telling her.

‘I read about them in magazines,’ she answered truthfully. ‘It’s okay, Alexei, everyone has a past. I’m not going to go postal.’

‘I don’t appreciate you researching me, Maisy. If you want
to know about my life, you only have to ask me.’ He spoke in a perfectly reasonable tone, but his eyes were as cold as flints of ice.

She had crossed a line, Maisy realised with a sharp twinge of reaction. These were the limits to their relationship. She dressed for him, waited for him, slept with him, but she didn’t ask him personal questions. Whatever he said.

‘I seem to remember you had an investigation done into me,’ she replied jerkily.

‘Yes, because you were looking after my godson.’

Maisy squeezed the silk under her fingers as she made fists in her lap. ‘And I read up about you because I am having sex with you every night.’ And morning, and sometimes in the afternoon …

‘I would rather you didn’t look for information about me in the tabloids.’

‘Fair enough,’ she conceded. ‘So, if you didn’t dress them, why do you dress me?’

‘I imagined it would make things easier for you.’

Yeah, right. This was about him being ashamed of her. ‘I think I need to buy my own clothes,’ she said, her voice amazingly calm given how shaken she was feeling. ‘Buying me a wardrobe isn’t a gift. It’s … impersonal.’

‘Impersonal?’ He sounded as if he was trying out the word.

Maisy took a step into the abyss. ‘It’s kind of like you’re buying me.’

Then he said absolutely the wrong thing. ‘I’ve never paid for sex in my life.’

The aggression coming off him kept Maisy seated. ‘I—I was talking about our relationship,’ she faltered. All the while another voice was saying,
What relationship, Maisy? It’s sex. He’s always said it’s sex. He just said it’s sex.

‘I live a semi-public life.’ He paced out, as tense as she had ever seen him. ‘You need to be dressed for it if you’re going to be with me.’

If.
If you’re going to be with me.
Maisy’s eyes were
starfish-wide as she cottoned on to what he was saying. Struggling to catch up, she recognised it for what it was. An ultimatum.

‘You can’t wear that—’ he made a dismissive gesture at the pink silk puddled in her lap ‘—whatever it is. To dinner tonight.’

She hadn’t been planning to. It was a dress for the daytime. But after all he’d said she was starting to feel completely surplus to his needs—had been feeling that way since they’d started travelling. And it was making her both terrified and very, very angry.

‘There’s nothing wrong with this dress,’ she stated between her teeth.

‘I want you in the champagne silk you wore in Rome.’

‘No.’

‘Fine.’

He turned away from her, removing his watch, his cufflinks. She watched him tumble them onto the bedside table. He headed for the walk-in wardrobe.

‘Where are you going?’

He didn’t answer, but a minute later he reappeared, naked. ‘Shower,’ he said briefly.

‘I’m going to wear what I want to wear,’ she defended herself. Why didn’t he say anything?

‘Do what you want,’ he replied. ‘The invitation is withdrawn.’

Maisy just gaped after him. What did he mean, the invitation was withdrawn? They weren’t going to dinner? She couldn’t believe what had just happened. Was he angry with her because she had bought her own clothes and refused his?

She heard the shower go on. Fine. She stood up too quickly and the room shifted slightly, so she sat down again. It had been such a long day—but, damn him, she wasn’t going to be a pushover. Giving herself a few minutes to calm down, she fetched her brush and toiletries and marched into the bathroom. He was towelling himself dry and seemed a bit thrown
to see her. But Maisy ignored him, shaking her hair out of its pins and pulling the brush through it with rough strokes.

‘I’d like some space, Maisy.’

‘Tough,’ she replied, grabbing her spray conditioner and letting fly.

He wrapped the towel around his hips and left her to it. Maisy pushed down the pain and kept going, taming her curls into a neat chignon and then making up her eyes and mouth. When she emerged into the bedroom Alexei was dressed in trousers and was buttoning up a tailored white shirt. It clung faithfully to the wide expanse of his shoulders and chest like a sleeve, making him seem both overwhelmingly male and yet elegant at the same time. He was going out, she registered. Without her.

‘Where are you going?’

When he didn’t answer she hurled the brush she had in her hand at him, aiming for his legs and missing entirely. Her brush bounced on the luxurious carpet. He merely gave her a quelling look as if to say,
That’s the best you can do?

Not quite knowing what she was doing, but powered by the unfairness of it all, Maisy stripped off the simple shift she had been wearing all day, unhooked her plain cotton bra, slid off her knickers.

She kept her back to him. She had never undressed in front of him in all these weeks. There was something unfailingly intimate about it. Once she was in bed with him it was different. But the act of actually going about her daily robing and disrobing made her feel vulnerable, and she didn’t need more of that.

She emptied out the bag of frothy nothings she had bought to wear for him, picking up a sheer black bra and knickers that had cost more than her pretty dress. The knickers had little bows at the side to be tied, and the bra had a bow at the front. Neither was at all practical for wearing anywhere other than in a bedroom to seduce a man.

Which had been her intention when she’d purchased them. Right now she had no idea
what
her intention was.

She adjusted her breasts into the cups, making sure they were secure, then cast a look at Alexei over her shoulder. He had got no further with his buttons from the moment she’d started stripping.

‘Come and help me,’ she requested, sounding petulant.

He didn’t hesitate, which fired her confidence, and when he was only a hand-span away from her she turned around and untied the bow, so that the weight of her breasts tugged the bra cups apart.

‘Do me up,’ she instructed.

His hands moved obediently to slide under the fabric, his thumbs circling her nipples so that her head fell forward onto his chest. ‘That’s not helping me,’ she murmured.

His voice was gratifyingly a register lower. ‘You started this. I’ll finish it.’

A lick of lust moved over her and she grabbed hold of his waistband, her hands trembling so that she was woeful at disengaging the buttons. But it didn’t matter. He lifted her and she wrapped her bare legs around his hips. Ignoring the bed, he propelled her back against the wall, yanking the bows on her knickers free, testing her readiness with his fingers, lifting her again to slide his erection into her, his back and shoulders bunching up under her hands as he took the strain of doing it slowly and steadily and completely.

Maisy’s head flopped forward, her hair cloaking them both as he buried his face in her neck and began to thrust into her with little finesse but a great deal of energy. Maisy couldn’t stop the noises that were answering his rather effective grunts as she lost herself in the flashing pleasure.

That it could be like this startled her. That he could do this to her was almost overwhelming. No condom, she thought presently, straining against him. It must have hit him at the same time, because he seemed about to pull away from her, but his body continued to thunder forward and won out. Yet as he slid
her down the wall and her feet touched carpet he pulled free and came over her bare stomach, holding himself with such an expression that Maisy never thought she had ever seen anything so beautiful. She felt like a goddess, all of her anger spent, all of him on her.

He was apologising to her, leaning against her, his head heavy, bent low, his breathing laboured, those big shoulders heaving. Maisy loved this. Loved the way she could do this to him. It made everything that had gone before somehow meaningless, as if this thing they shared overwhelmed the prosaic realities of the life they were living together.

Alexei was still in his shirt. He had stepped out of his boxers and trousers and Maisy had pushed the shirt back over his shoulders as they’d grappled. It hung suspended halfway down his back.

‘You didn’t come,’ he muttered in her ear.

‘Doesn’t matter.’ She wound her arms around him, burrowing, needing that closeness.

‘You can wear what you want to dinner. We’ll eat here. Whatever you want.’

Maisy hung on to him, but she had gone very still and quiet inside. Her instincts were telling her something and she didn’t want to hear it right now. Easier just to take him at his word. But those words settled like stones in her belly.

This was her power over him. This was what she used for leverage. She had just manipulated a situation her way with sex. Those games he had tried to play with her early on and quickly given up she had now instigated as her own, however unconsciously.

But something about this relationship—probably to do with how it had started, the imbalances between them and Alexei’s history—was changing her. Changing them.