No More Sweet Surrender (8 page)

She could see the storm brewing there, behind those impossibly dark eyes of his, though his expression remained calm—and would photograph, no doubt, as if he was gazing at her in some or other sensual form of rapture.

“If you want to know something, ask it,” he said lightly, though she could hear the steel blade beneath a seemingly mild tone like that. She could see it in that warrior’s face of his. “If you are waiting for me to spontaneously volunteer something, it will be a very long wait.”

“Why are you giving up Hollywood for philanthropy?” she asked.

He shifted in his chair, and rubbed those letters over his heart with one hand absently.

“There are other ways to fight,” he said after a moment, in an odd tone. “Perhaps better ways.”

“Why did you start fighting?”

His brows arched slightly, and there was a kind of very old, very deep hardness in his gaze then.

“I was good at it.”

She blew out a breath when he didn’t elaborate. When she could tell that he wouldn’t. “That’s not an answer.”

“It is the correct answer to that particular question.” His voice was implacable, and there was something terrible and ruthless in his gaze. Although she wondered, suddenly, what was behind all of the harsh power he carried with such seeming ease. All of that heavy steel. Was it that darkness she saw glimpses of now and again? Or something else—something worse?

“That’s not much of an answer, either.”

“Perhaps you should ask better questions.”

“If you can’t tell your own story,” she said softly, “how can I trust that you’ll tell me anything at all?”

“I know what you want to hear,” Ivan said, and there was no doubting that deep, inky darkness in him then, something sharp and sad and fierce in his black eyes, in his rich voice. “Was I born the vicious monster you see before you today, made of equal parts temper and violence, a perfect fighting machine? Or did I perhaps do only what I had to do out of desperation, using my fists to escape far worse? I already know what you think of me, Professor. I have no doubt that you expect a tale that perfectly matches the character you’ve had in your pampered head all these years.” That hard mouth moved, as if he was biting back something far worse than the bitter words that fell like bullets between them on the small table. “But only one of those things is what actually happened.”

“Is this how you keep your promises, Ivan?” she asked, fighting to keep her expression smooth, her posture easy against the hard chair. As if she hadn’t felt every last one of those bullets. As if she didn’t feel riddled with them. “I’m bending over backward to do the things you want me to do, and you can’t even answer a simple question?”

“Yes, of course,” he said, and there was that hard edge to his voice then. “This is a great and terrible sacrifice for you. I keep forgetting.”

She hated the way he said that, as if she’d insulted him. And hated even more that she cared whether or not that was true. When had that happened? What could it mean? She was afraid she wouldn’t much like the answers to either of those questions, and so she shoved them aside.

But she couldn’t pretend he hadn’t pushed her off balance again, without even seeming to try. Dizzy, confused—she was sick of feeling this way. She wanted to believe it was just the jet lag. The relentlessness of her recurring nightmares that she knew were because of him. She told herself it was.

“Of course it’s a sacrifice,” she choked out heedlessly. Foolishly. He only looked at her in that dark, cold way, and she felt it inside of her like a blow. And hated that, too. “I don’t like to be touched.”

Miranda could not believe she’d said that. Not out loud. If she could have snatched the words back from the air between them, she would have.

Ivan stared at her as if she was an insect.

“By the likes of me,” Ivan said, his voice a kind of harsh, terrible growl, and that hurt even more. “Rough and uneducated brute that I am. I understand. It is a tremendous sacrifice indeed. You might as well fling yourself on the nearest bonfire for relief, such is the extent of your suffering at my hands.”

“I don’t mean that,” she blurted, flustered, something about that awful look on his face twisting through her, making her ache in new and strange ways, making her doubt herself and hate herself all the more, and she wasn’t even sure why. Or why she couldn’t seem to stand the thought of this man in pain. “I mean—at all. In general. Not just by you.”

* * *

She could not possibly be saying what Ivan thought she was saying.

It was impossible. He knew it was impossible—he’d been the one touching her in Paris, for God’s sake. He’d kissed her in Georgetown. He’d watched her fight it, yes, but then lean into it, soak it up. He’d drunk in all her exquisite responses, the shivers she couldn’t hide and the tremors she fought to repress, the glaze in her eyes, the softening of her body when she’d stood tucked up beneath his arm. And he forgot, then, that all of that had been supposedly calculated on his part. He just knew it was real on hers.

“Exactly what are you saying?” he asked, searching her face for clues.

He saw only that delicious heat, climbing up her cheeks, and the sheen of acute embarrassment in her dark jade gaze, making them seem blacker, deeper. She swallowed, and then pressed her lips together, firmly, as if fighting to calm herself.

“What I just said.” She shrugged, a defensiveness to the movement that he imagined she had no idea betrayed her as much as it did. Why he found it fascinating was something else entirely. “I believe in mind over body. That’s what matters to me. My mind. Everything I’ve done to get to where I am is because of it.” She looked at him as if she expected an argument, and when he only regarded her in silence she sat up straighter, taller. Gathering herself. “I graduated from high school at sixteen. I entered my Ph.D. program before I was twenty. I was always focused on work. Touching is...” The flush on her cheeks deepened. Her eyes looked almost glazed.
Panicked
, Ivan thought. “Has always been completely incidental to my life in every way.”

“So you are frigid.”

He knew, categorically, she was no such thing. But did she know it? Was it possible she didn’t? Or was this some kind of twisted mind game women like her played with men like him?

“Of course not.” Her eyes cleared slightly, then narrowed as she looked at him. As if she was offended by the question.

“Are you a virgin, then?” He couldn’t help the way his mouth curved at the idea, as if he was the very caveman she’d accused him of being. He shouldn’t have cared. He shouldn’t have wondered, suddenly and with far too many detailed images, what it would be like to be her first. “Chaste and untouched?”

“Yes,” she replied, her voice tart. Offended, perhaps. Or simply annoyed. “And I am also a unicorn. Surprise!”

“Then tell me what you mean,” he said, ignoring the sarcasm. Almost enjoying it, if he was honest. “Because the mind and the body are not separate entities, Miranda. Surely they taught this in one of your Ivy League schools. You cannot choose between them. They are one and the same.”

“I’m sure that you think so.” She did that dismissive thing with her hand again, waving it at him as if to encompass everything he was. He wanted to catch it with his. Bite it. Put it to far better use. “You would.”

“Tell me,” he said then, as mildly as he could, which was perhaps not so mildly after all, “how do you suppose I became the greatest fighter in my generation? Because that is what I am. How do you imagine I forced myself to train when I was no more than a collection of agonies and bruises, and there was nothing ahead of me but more of the same?”

“Masochism?”

Ivan eyed her for a moment. Training had not brought out the masochist in him, but she might.

“My mind.” He almost smiled at her expression. “Yes, Professor. I have one.”

“If you say so,” she replied, sweet and acid all at once.

“So tell me about these lovers of yours instead,” he said then, lounging back in his chair. He didn’t know why he cared what lies this woman told herself. How could it possibly affect what would happen between them—what he would make happen? And yet here he was asking anyway. “The ones for whom touch was as unimportant as it is for you.”

“Some men are motivated by intellect,” she said loftily, clearly insinuating that he was not one among them. Reminding them both of his place—but he couldn’t tell if it was a deliberate slight or not. He let it go. “And there are more important things than sex.”

He only looked at her, brows high.

“I never said I didn’t have sex,” she said, scowling at him. “Only that it wasn’t the central focus of the relationships I’ve had.”

“I understand,” he said, almost amused then. He felt very nearly benevolent, while anticipation nearly crippled him with its intensity. “None of them satisfied you. No wonder you think such things.”

She sighed. “Because you, of course, believe that you deeply satisfy every woman who’s ever crossed your path, is that right?” She rolled her eyes. “What a shock.”

Ivan discovered, to his great surprise, that he was enjoying himself.

“My woman,” he said, very distinctly, “is, by definition and my personal preference, satisfied.”

Miranda looked unimpressed. “I think you should consider the possibility they were all faking to preserve your obviously gigantic ego.”

“Shall I prove it to you?” he asked silkily. And he wanted to. He did. More than was either wise or safe.

His challenge sat there for a moment. Her dark red hair caught the light, gleaming like a simmering fire, and he wanted her the way it seemed he always did. Despite his own intellect and reason, the very things she clearly thought he lacked. Perhaps she was right—perhaps, around her, he reverted to the animal she already believed he was.

“Why would you?” she asked, and he heard that catch in her throat, betraying her all over again. “I’m not your woman.”

“I could still make you come,” he told her quietly, not only to see her jerk in her chair, though he could admit he enjoyed that far more than he should have. “And I will. It is inevitable.”

“Back again to sex,” she began, in that professorial way of hers, as if her cheeks weren’t that intriguing shade of scarlet. As if she wasn’t breathing too fast or moving in her chair like that, as if she ached the way he did.

As if she thought he couldn’t tell.

“This is all about sex,” he said, cutting off the lecture before she could start. “That’s what the world wants to see. That’s what we’re giving them.”

“That’s the game.” But her soft mouth trembled slightly, and there was that anxious line between her brows. “It’s not real.”

“You’re forgetting all of this chemistry,” he said. He tapped his fingers against the papers spread across the table when she frowned at him. “Do you really believe this would look as good as it does if there was no connection between us?”

“Of course it would,” she whispered. As if she was trying to convince them both. Almost as if she was desperate. As well she should be, he thought, and not that it would save her either way. Not now. “You’re an actor.”

“Yes, Miranda,” he said gently. He deliberately held her gaze with his, daring her to deny it. “But you are not.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

O
NE
day bled into the next. The beckoning blue of the sea, the cerulean sky arched high above, the dazzling beauty everywhere she looked—and then Ivan there in the middle of it, darkly compelling and far too powerful, playing his part too easily and too well.

Whenever they left the hotel, the cameras followed and their every movement was recorded, just as he had promised would happen. That meant she had no choice but to play the adoring mistress in the middle of a blistering affair, whatever that meant.

The truth was, she had no idea what it meant. How could she? But she was quickly learning what it
looked
like.

“I’m sorry you don’t like touching,” he said on that first day, after that uncomfortable conversation on the balcony, as he started the car and slid it into gear. “But I’m afraid we have no choice.”

“I didn’t ask you to change your behavior in public,” she told him, irrationally furious suddenly.

Because of that sly, mocking tone in his voice. Because she hated that he knew anything about her, especially something so personal, when she was supposed to be the one learning key details about him. Because of all of this madness and trouble, none of which would be happening if he hadn’t kissed her in the first place.

Because he thought he could make her come.

“I didn’t complain,” she continued stiffly. “You were the one who started talking about sex—no doubt to divert attention from the fact that you refuse to answer any of my questions.”

“That, yes,” he agreed, laughter in his voice. “And also because I like sex. A pity you do not. We could have had such fun.”

“Somehow I don’t think
fun
is the word I would use to describe sex with you,” she’d said drily, and then everything had tilted and rolled when he’d reached over and slid a hand onto the nape of her neck, pulling her head around to his. Controlling her.

Thrilling her.

Stop talking about sex with this man
,
she ordered herself with no little desperation.
You can’t handle it. Or him.

“No,” he said in that way of his that seemed to cast a shadow over her, as if he could block out the sun if he chose. “It’s not the word I would choose, either. But it’s the only one that wouldn’t scare you.”

“I am not—” she began, but his scorching black eyes dropped from hers to her mouth, and it shut her up as easily as if he’d used his fingers once more. Or, worse, his lips.

When he looked up again, she was mute with anxiety and he was smiling.

“No,” he said, mocking her. He slid his hand away, leaving only confused longing in its wake. “Not scared at all.”

Miranda couldn’t seem to catch her breath. Or find her balance.

And Ivan, it turned out, was very, very tactile. She would have said that he did it simply because he knew she didn’t like it, but there was a certain wildness in his gaze when he looked at her that kept her from accusing him. That made her think he liked touching her, and not simply because he was playing a game. That made her wonder what words he would have chosen, after all.

But she didn’t want to think about that.

The days became a dizzy mess of his hands at her waist, on her hips, at the small of her back. Always on her, always warming her, possessive and demanding at once, as if they were not only the lovers they pretended to be, but also as if he was very much in command of their affair. The idea made her shiver. There was that fire always burning in his dark eyes, keeping them both alight. There was his warm, strong hand around hers, helping her from the car or tugging her down the narrow bustling lane of Rue Meynadier in Cannes to look at the souvenirs and nibble on olives and cheeses and sweet
macarons
from the local emporiums.

Ivan offered her a piece of local cheese out in the busy pedestrianized street that first day, but wouldn’t let her take it from his hand. As he’d promised he’d do, she remembered, while delicious heat flooded through her, making her stomach tighten.

“Open your mouth,” he ordered her, not particularly nicely, that steel beneath his voice again. That command. “Pretend you’re at Communion, if you must. I have no doubt there are sins aplenty you’d do well to confess.”

“I am neither a child nor an invalid,” she replied with that forced smile that she’d kept welded to her face since they’d left the villa. “I don’t think anyone will want to see you treat me—”

“As the shy and biddable maiden you play on television?” he asked blandly, popping the cheese into her mouth. She was aware of too many things at once, then—the burst of savory flavor, her own annoyance mixed with that dangerous yearning and that sardonic gleam in his dark gaze in the crisp brightness of the French afternoon. “No, you’re right. That would be too unbelievable a character change.”

She glared at him. He smiled at her.

But in the glossy pages of the tabloids the next day, it looked like sex. Like giddy laughter between lovers.
Like foreplay
,
it pained her to admit. Hot and wild and delicious, as if they were consumed with desire right there on the street, surrounded by so many gawking tourists. As if he’d done exactly what he’d promised he could do, and well.

She felt invaded, encroached upon. Under constant attack. How could she feel anything but? And still, when they returned to the villa and to themselves, to the reality they could only indulge in private, there was some part of her that missed his hands, his smile, that harsh masculine beauty that was so much a part of him and that she was growing used to having so close to her at all times.

It should have appalled her.

“Can I help you with something?” he asked one evening as they stood in the marble entrance of the villa.

They’d spent a long day in one of the quintessentially European hill towns that clung to the side of a particularly steep slope far above the sparkling sea. They’d leaned into each other as they’d navigated the winding, twisting little streets that circled all around and seemed to tie themselves in knots, the stone walls echoing back their own footsteps like the insistent sound of Miranda’s heart all the while, drumming away behind her ribs, too fast and too hard, and all because he was touching her like that.

“What?” she asked now, only realizing as she said it that she’d been staring at him, the foyer seeming like a vast, chilly expanse between them when she was used to him plastered up against her. When she was used to the scent of him all around her, even on her own skin. His heat, his casual strength. She swallowed nervously. What was happening to her?

“Is there something you want, Miranda?” he asked, and that tone of his licked into her, fire and velvet. Ache. Want. His eyes met hers. “You need only ask.”

“No,” she whispered, because her throat didn’t seem to work, her skin felt stretched thin and she knew exactly what that look in his dark eyes meant. In some deep, feminine way. She knew. “I don’t want anything.”

Ivan only watched her for a long, searing sort of moment, leaving her in ragged pieces without saying a word.

“If you say so,” he murmured when it was almost too late, when she’d almost surrendered to the heat behind her eyes or, worse, to that demanding fire deep in her belly, that only seemed to grow in intensity and scope the more time she spent with him.

“I say it because it’s true,” she lied, and then bolted for her bedchamber without a backward glance, not trusting herself enough to stay and prove it.

Not trusting herself at all.

Preferring the inevitability of her nightmares to all the unknowns Ivan made her think about.

One sleepy morning they strolled hand in hand along the Promenade de la Croisette that stretched the length of the Cannes coastline, packed with splendid luxury boutiques, grand five-star hotels and, at this time of year, the rich and the famous from all corners of the globe and all the paparazzi and energy that went along with them. One bright, clear evening they had drinks at the Carlton, surrounded by film stars from several countries and the people connected to them, one group more impressive and luminous than the next. Another night they ate by romantic candlelight at the world-renowned La Palme d’Or restaurant overlooking the Bay of Cannes in the art deco landmark Hôtel Martinez, Ivan feeding her bites of a crème brûlée so decadent, so intense, that she thought she might black out from the sheer pleasure of it.

Or maybe, more terrifyingly, that was him. Maybe it was the way he looked at her, that famous smile on his hard face. Maybe it was the memory of those too-confident words, that pure masculine promise, emblazoned across her like the dangerously seductive serpent that was inked into his skin.

Maybe he was much too good at his job.

He held her against him near the water in Antibes, tucking her under his chin as they stared out at the yachts and other boats dotting the azure expanse of sea before them, looking, no doubt, as if they’d been having a blissful moment instead of a whispered argument about where he’d chosen to put his hands. He kissed her temple, her forehead, as they browsed an open-air market in the old part of Nice, then he threaded their fingers together as they walked, gazing down at her as if utterly besotted.

“This is what love is supposed to look like,” he told her when she rolled her eyes at one of his particularly love-struck expressions.

“In the movies, maybe,” she replied. “Real love rarely comes with so many handy photo opportunities.” She shook her head. “But then, you only date women who crave publicity, don’t you? Maybe that’s what love is in your world.”

“I wouldn’t know,” he said with a kind of matter-of-factness that made Miranda’s breath catch.

Everything froze. The whole of Nice seemed to fade into a bright blur around him, as both of them recognized that he’d shared something with her. Of his own volition. His black eyes looked bleak.

“Wouldn’t you?” she asked softly.

“There were not a lot of luxuries where I grew up,” he said gruffly. “We learned to do without.”

And she was too thrown by the fact he’d told her anything at all to protest when he indicated the subject was closed by pulling out his phone and calling for his driver.

They attended parties on the luxury yachts that clogged the harbors, gatherings in the splendid, glittering hotels that commanded so much attention along the sparkling coastlines, all of them filled to capacity with the gorgeous and the gleaming, all of whom knew Ivan and in front of whom he seemed to have no problem whatsoever acting the lovesick fool. The most famous Bollywood actress to the right, the newest French sex symbol to the left, and yet Ivan looked only at a professor known primarily for her well-publicized disdain of him.

And he was so good at it, she almost believed it herself.

Almost, but not quite. That would be more foolish than she could bear, the most foolish thing imaginable. It might actually kill her.

Tonight he held her in his arms on the crowded dance floor of the opulent yacht of a revered Italian director, bursting with celebrities and press from all over the globe. Miranda reminded herself that this was not a fairy tale as they glided across the floor, as he gazed down at her as if he was madly in love with her—it only needed to look like one. He wasn’t particularly charming despite his smile and she wasn’t under any kind of enchantment, so there was no reason to feel as if this was magical. It wasn’t.

It wasn’t.
It was only a dance, a performance. It wasn’t by choice. It wasn’t real.

And still she felt his hands like brands, one at the small of her back, one holding hers tight, both searing into her. She was afraid to move—afraid to find he’d left marks on her skin. Her other hand rested uneasily on his wide, wide shoulder, and she told herself it was only logical that he should have a shoulder like that, like molded steel. That he’d fought in all of those rings across the planet to earn a shoulder like that. And it made sense that he should wear a light-colored jacket over a crisp white shirt with so much careless elegance, as if he’d tossed it on without thought and his insouciance was effortless. He looked every inch the movie star he was, sleek and beautiful in his particularly bold and undeniably physical way, turning heads even in a crowd like this one, packed full as it was of impossibly gorgeous people.

No doubt it was even reasonable that he should hold her so close that she almost brushed against him—that every step, every movement, was
this close
to pressing her breasts against the hard wall of his chest, until it was all she could think about, all she wanted, all she could imagine ever wanting—

“Are you ready for tomorrow?” Ivan asked. But there were whole other worlds in his gaze then. The heat between them, the dark night all around them, and so many speculative eyes on them. She could feel all of that, and his hands on her body, and the near miss of his chest a whisper away from hers.

For a moment she didn’t know what he meant.

“The red carpet,” she said finally, hoping he hadn’t noticed her hesitation. Hoping even more he didn’t think she’d been so distracted by him that she’d forgotten herself. Even if she had.

“Are you ready?” he asked again, his dark eyes cool and distant as he scanned the crowd around them. Always in character, save that one moment in Nice. Always seeking out the cameras, as if he could sense them.

It was all too much. The music, the crowd. Ivan. The carelessly commanding way he held her to him, making her body act in ways she didn’t understand or want. All of this was too much, and she couldn’t seem to think her way out of it the way she wanted to do. The way she
needed
to do.

“I don’t care about the red carpet,” she said quietly. “You do. What I care about is finding out about you, and despite our bargain you’ve deliberately kept me at arm’s length. Mostly.”

“My parents died in a factory fire when I was seven and Nikolai was five,” Ivan said abruptly, turning his head to look directly at her, his steps slowing, though he still moved to the music. And he still held her in that impossible grip of his, as if he had no intention of ever letting go. “We went to live with our uncle. He liked nothing but vodka and sambo. Nikolai eventually took up the vodka. I preferred sambo.” His gaze was so hard. So pitiless. She could feel it drilling into her, through her. Hurting her. “And I quickly learned to hate my uncle, so I got very good at it. I wanted to make sure that one of those drunken nights, when he thought he could beat us both into a pulp simply because we were there, he’d be wrong. And, eventually, he was.”