Читать книгу Modern Romance October 2015 Books 1-4 - Эбби Грин, Annie West - Страница 16

CHAPTER SEVEN

‘I’VE NEVER SEEN anything so reckless. Or so...so...stupid,’ said Erin, her voice trembling with rage and fear as she held a golden goblet to Dimitri’s parched lips. ‘Here. Drink this.’

From his prone position on the velvet divan, Dimitri winced. ‘What’s in it?’

‘Nothing stronger than water. And it’s good for you. Which I suppose means you don’t want it.’

He winced a little as he shifted his position on the divan. ‘Are you angry with me, Erin?’

‘Too right I am.’ Unwanted emotions were exploding like fireworks inside her and she gritted her teeth as she registered the ashen colour of his face. ‘You could have died out there!’

‘But I didn’t.’

‘That’s not the point,’ she said stubbornly.

They were back in the palace after an incident which had clearly rocked all the spectators and left everyone in the palace reeling as they considered how much worse it could have been, if Dimitri hadn’t prevented Saladin from falling beneath the hooves of the galloping horse. But the Sheikh had emerged from the incident unscathed and it was Dimitri who was hurt. Dimitri who had winced with pain after the doctor had examined him and ordered a full-body X-ray. With Erin at his side he had been taken to the nearby hospital and given the all-clear, but the bruising was bad and he’d been told to take it easy.

Erin had stuck to his side like glue and accompanied him back to his suite and soon after their arrival Saladin had turned up, still in the same robes he’d worn while riding. His face and hair had been covered in fine dust and he had looked dark and very sombre—but his gratitude had been heartfelt as he’d thanked Dimitri.

‘I owe you,’ he had said in a low voice. ‘I owe you my life. And that means that we are now as brothers. Do you realise that, my friend?’ And then he had embraced the Russian with a powerful bear hug, which had made Dimitri wince again, before sweeping out, his retinue following closely behind.

‘You told me that you didn’t do that whole danger thing any more,’ Erin accused as she held the goblet of water to Dimitri’s lips and made him drink another mouthful. ‘You said you were respectable these days. You made out like you were a changed man. That you didn’t drink vodka any more—’

‘Which I don’t.’

‘Or embrace danger just for the sake of it.’

‘Which I don’t.’

‘Oh, really?’ She glared at him. ‘So what was that all about out there? How long since you’ve ridden?’

He shrugged. ‘I don’t remember.’

‘So what made you think you could take on one of the most celebrated horsemen in the world and win?’

‘I did win.’

Erin glared. ‘Only because the Sheikh nearly fell.’

‘Exactly.’ Dimitri stretched his long legs in front of him and through his half-closed eyes he subjected her to a mocking stare. ‘And if I hadn’t stopped to assist him, then I would have won by a much greater margin. We both know that.’

‘Why accept the challenge in the first place when anyone else would have defined it as reckless?’

‘Because I wanted to,’ he said flatly. ‘And because I’m doing business with a powerful man who might have considered it a sign of weakness if I had refused, thus putting the deal in jeopardy.’

‘Your business deals are more important than your life, are they, Dimitri?’

‘They are important,’ he said, his voice suddenly cooling. ‘They are a quantifiable success, unlike most other things in life.’

There was a soft rap on the door and Erin walked across the room to answer it, frustration simmering away inside her. Who was it this time? Why couldn’t they just leave him alone and let him recover?

She didn’t know who she expected to find but she was surprised to see a robed woman standing on the threshold—maybe because this was the only other woman she’d seen since she’d arrived in Jazratan. Petite and slender and wearing a silvery veil, which provided the perfect backdrop for her lustrous ebony hair, she was holding a small pot in her hands. Rather surprisingly, her smile was confident and she didn’t appear in the least bit shy.

‘The Sheikh has sent me,’ she said, in the loveliest accent Erin had ever heard. ‘To minister to the esteemed Russian who today risked his life to save our beloved monarch.’

Erin’s hackles started rising; she couldn’t help herself. Was she imagining the gleam in the woman’s doe-like eyes or the anticipatory curve of her soft smile as she looked over towards where Dimitri lay on the divan? A whisper of apprehension washed over her skin. No, she was not.

‘What do you mean, “minister”?’ she questioned, more sharply than she had intended.

The woman’s smile grew serene. ‘This rare cream has many healing properties,’ she said softly. ‘It is made from the fire berries which grow in the foothills of the mountains to the far north of our country and after I have applied it the Sheikh’s saviour will feel no more pain, and the bruising on his skin will disappear as if by magic.’

Erin wasn’t sure if it was paranoia or just a powerful sense of something territorial, but she knew that no way was this gorgeous young creature going to start slapping cream all over Dimitri’s chest. A thought occurred to her. It came out of nowhere but for some reason it stuck firmly in her mind and wouldn’t seem to budge. Did Saladin realise that she and the Russian weren’t having sex—had Dimitri told him that? And was he sending this luscious woman to Dimitri’s suite as some primitive way of thanking him? Nothing would surprise her about an autocratic king like Saladin, who ruled a country where the opposite sex seemed almost invisible.

Coolly, she removed the pot from the woman’s hands and smiled at her. ‘Thank you so much for taking the time to bring this, and please convey our deepest gratitude to His Royal Highness,’ she said. ‘But I think Dimitri would prefer me to minister it.’

She closed the door in the woman’s startled face and turned around to see the faintest glint of humour lighting Dimitri’s eyes, before he winced again—as if it hurt to attempt to smile.

‘You meant it, didn’t you?’ he said weakly as she began to walk across the room towards him. ‘You’re going to apply the cream yourself.’

‘I did,’ she said. ‘And I am.’

‘Be gentle with me, Erin.’

‘Why wouldn’t I be?’

‘The look on your face does not suggest gentleness.’

Putting the fire-berry potion down on a table beside the divan, she began to unbutton his silky riding shirt, aware that it was clinging like damp tissue paper to the sweat-sheened muscles. She told herself that this was exactly the reason why she had gained a first-aid certificate and remembered the need to remain completely impartial. To treat him as she would treat anyone else requiring medical assistance. But the moment she began to massage the cream into the honed torso, she understood the challenge that impartiality presented. Dimitri’s eyes were fully open now and there was a mocking light in their depths, as if they were asking a silent question which she didn’t dare interpret—let alone answer.

Her fingers slid over his chest. It was sheer torture to touch him with this near-intimacy, even though she was doing her best to concentrate on the healing aspect and not on how delicious it felt to glide the cream over hard muscle covered by silky skin. But when he shifted his jodhpur-covered groin, it took all her determination not to be distracted by the distinct bulge there. Yet she couldn’t look away, could she? She couldn’t just stare at the wall. Instead, she focused intently on the bruises he had suffered and not the soft sigh which escaped from between his parted lips.

She continued to massage him, working intently and silently until she saw some of the tension leave his body. She put the pot down and went off to wash the cream from her hands but when she returned to the divan, she stared at his torso with a feeling of disbelief.

‘Good grief,’ she said faintly. ‘Just look at that.’

Erin had spent years working for Dimitri, but she’d never seen that look of genuine astonishment on his face before, as he followed the direction of her gaze. And no wonder—for the bruises had reduced dramatically. The livid purple marks which had stained the golden skin had faded several shades lighter.

His eyes narrowed. ‘What the hell happened? Did you wave a magic wand or something?’

She could see the flicker of a pulse at his temple. She saw the gleam of his torso and suddenly her throat grew dry. ‘It must have been the potion,’ she managed.

His gaze mocked her. ‘Is that what it was?’

Erin stood there, knowing she ought to get the hell out of there while she still could, but something was keeping her rooted there—as if her feet had been superglued to the spot. Her heart began to pound. Was it the magnificence of touching his half-naked body after all this time, or just the memory of how it had felt when he was deep inside her? She shook her head slightly, trying to erase the image from her mind, only the image was stubbornly refusing to budge. She swallowed. ‘Perhaps you need to rest now.’

‘Perhaps I do.’

He stretched out on the divan, his body outlined against the rich velvet and brocade cushions, but she noticed that his eyes were only half closed. She could see the icy glint of blue from between the thick lashes and she felt as if he was observing her. Watching her. Waiting to see what she would do next. She knew she ought to turn and walk away from him. She knew a lot of things, but the thing she knew above everything else was that she wanted to kiss him. To lose herself in his arms and shudder with pleasure. And it wasn’t going to happen. She swallowed. There was a whole stack of reasons why intimacy would be a bad thing, and none of those had changed. But she was still standing there, wasn’t she? Standing there feeling conflicted while she dug her fingernails into the palms of her hands and longed for what she knew she shouldn’t have.

‘Can I get you anything else?’ she questioned stiffly.

He gave a slow, watchful smile. ‘Like what?’

The tension shimmering between them was now so intense that Erin felt as if a single word or movement would shatter it, but his expression gave nothing away. He was a contradiction, she realised. He was stubborn and proud and angry with her for keeping Leo hidden from him, but he still wanted her. She could read it in the smoky smoulder of his blue eyes and the tension in his body. He wanted her, but he wasn’t going to act on it. Instinct told her the next step was all down to her. That the ball was in her court. She had turned him down last night and his pride would not allow him to be turned down again. If she wanted him, then she was going to have to reach out to him. Still she hesitated, because wasn’t this yet another way of Dimitri exercising his power over her?

‘I think you’ve had enough rehydration and fire-berry potion for the time being, so I’ll let you rest,’ she said, even though the words felt as if they might strangle her.

But then he smiled again—and that smile changed everything. Something inside her snapped, like a piece of elastic which had been stretched too far, and suddenly she was doing what she’d only dreamed of doing in her most forbidden fantasies. She was leaning over him and brushing her lips over his—like a role reversal of the prince trying to waken the sleeping princess with his kiss.

Only, Dimitri was awake. Wide awake. The smile died on his lips. His calculating gaze lasted only a second before he hooked his hand behind her neck and brought her face back down to his.

She stared into his blue eyes. ‘I...I shouldn’t have done that.’

‘Yes, you should,’ he growled. ‘And now you’re going to do it all over again.’

He smelt of horse and dust and desire, underpinned with the faint scent of fire berries, and Erin trembled as he pulled her close and kissed her. She worried about her weight pushing against his battered body, but he didn’t seem to care. He didn’t seem to care about anything except deepening the kiss so that she quickly became weak with longing, but she drew her head back when she heard him moan.

‘Am I hurting you?’ she whispered.

‘No.’ Grabbing her ponytail as if it was a rope, he tipped her head back so that she was caught in the spotlight of his eyes. ‘But I am at something of a disadvantage, since the doctor has suggested I avoid any strenuous movement.’ His eyes gleamed. ‘And since I am in no position to undress you or to master you—I think you will have to play the dominatrix this time.’

Erin froze. Until her sister had lent her that book last year, she hadn’t even known what the word ‘dominatrix’ meant. She wondered if he was expecting some kind of souped-up sexual performance from her. Yet here was she—not a virgin, but very nearly. Did she come straight out and tell him that?

‘You know,’ he said, filling the silence, ‘the suggestion wasn’t supposed to make your eyes widen with horror. That is not what a man intends when he wants to have sex with a woman.’

‘I don’t want you to be disappointed.’

His hand still wrapped around her ponytail, he steered her face towards his. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘I’m not very...experienced.’

‘Some men might consider a lack of experience to be a positive advantage.’

‘And are you one of those men?’

He shook his head. ‘Not now, Erin. I know how much you love to talk, but now is not a good time to discuss my sexual preferences.’ His expression changed. ‘Because every time you react to one of my remarks, you jerk your head back—causing your hips to slide over mine. And as a result, my erection is getting stronger by the minute—a fact which cannot have escaped you, zvezda moya.’

No, of course it hadn’t escaped her. She didn’t need to be experienced to realise just how aroused he was. She could feel the unfamiliar ridge pressing hard against one of her thighs and she told herself that now was the time for her to get off the divan and suggest putting more distance between them, not less. Because surely that was what any sane person in her position would do.

‘We aren’t supposed to be doing this,’ she whispered as the finger which had been at the base of her neck began to slide slowly downwards.

‘This?’

She forced herself to say it. To say it as it was and not how she’d like it to be. ‘Sex.’

His finger stilled in its tantalising journey towards her breast. ‘Do you want to stop?’

She closed her eyes, as if blotting out the distraction of his face could help her come to the right decision, but even that didn’t help. She wriggled and shook her head. ‘No,’ she breathed.

‘So stop analysing,’ he instructed. ‘And take off my clothes.’

Dimitri could feel her trembling as she unclipped the waistband of his jodhpurs and heard her unsteady rush of breath as she eased down the straining zipper. He shifted uncomfortably on the divan, trying to focus on something other than his body, trying to slow down the race of his own desire—because he could never remember sexual desire feeling quite so potent, nor so dangerous.

As she began to peel the jodhpurs down over his thighs he forced himself to remember that, for all her supposed sweetness and innocence, he couldn’t trust her. He’d put Erin Turner in a different category from any other woman he’d ever known, and he was a fool to have done so. Because she wasn’t different. She was exactly the same. Selfish. Calculating. Single-minded. She hadn’t even given him a chance to get to know his son, or to see whether he’d changed, because it hadn’t suited her to do so. And because children were nothing but pawns in the lives of women. How could he have forgotten a truth as fundamental as that?

His anger had made him even more aroused—something he hadn’t thought possible—and he enjoyed the darkening of her eyes as he breathed out a series of instructions to her. ‘Go over to my wash bag and find my condoms. No, let me put it on—you just concentrate on taking off your dress. Mmm... That’s better. Now your panties. And your bra. And then climb on top of me and take me inside you. Da. Just like that. Oh, God, Erin—just like that.’

With his hands on her narrow hips and her small breasts positioned perfectly for his delectation, he watched as she came very quickly. And so did he. Too quickly, perhaps. He could have carried on having sex with her for hours and already his desire was returning with an intensity which took his breath away, but he forced himself to roll to the other side of the large divan—as if putting distance between them was the only sensible thing he’d done all day.

‘What did you mean?’ he asked, when eventually his breathing was steady enough for him to make himself understood. ‘When you said you weren’t very experienced?’

Her eyes were wary as she looked at him—like a small animal who had inadvertently wandered into a hostile domain—and she shrugged, as if embarrassed.

‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘It does,’ he contradicted.

‘Because you say so?’

He smiled. ‘Precisely.’

She began to play with the ends of her hair. ‘You’re the only man I’ve ever had sex with.’

A sudden silence fell between them. Her answer was so unexpected that it took a moment for him to process it.

‘Why?’ he said, at last.

‘Why do you think?’ Her words came out in a rush, as if she had been bottling them up for a long time. ‘First I was pregnant and then I had a tiny baby who wasn’t very fond of sleeping, which meant I kept dozing off at various points during the day and forgetting to wash my hair and my tops always seemed to be stained with milk. That’s never really a good look. And then the baby grew into a demanding toddler who was into everything, so that I felt like some kind of maternal health and safety expert trying to keep him out of trouble. I was helping my sister with the café and trying to keep our heads above water and I...’ Her words faded away and a shuttered look came over her face, as if she’d said too much and only just realised it. ‘There was never really time for men.’

‘So if I was your first lover—’

‘You knew that?’

He gave a faint smile. ‘Of course I knew it. I may have often been accused of a lack of sensitivity towards women—but never when it comes to sex.’

Her green eyes looked confused. ‘But you didn’t...you didn’t mention it at the time.’

‘And neither did you.’ He shrugged. ‘That night was supposed to be about pleasure—not an anatomical discussion about why your hymen was still intact.’

Her green eyes spat fire as she pulled the coverlet up over her breasts. ‘How callous you can be, Dimitri!’

‘You think so?’ He narrowed his eyes as he looked at her. ‘Don’t you think that after everything which has happened between us, we now deserve the truth?’

‘Even if the truth hurts?’

‘But being hurt is a part of life. A big part of it—as is regret,’ he said. ‘And if you must know, I was angry with myself for having sex with you that night.’

‘Angry?’ She sounded bewildered. ‘Why?’

‘Because you were an employee and I liked you that way. I had crossed a line I never intended to cross. And because it is a responsibility when a man takes a woman’s virginity.’

‘Responsibility?’ She repeated the word in horror.

‘Of course it is,’ he said. ‘I didn’t want you fixating on me, or clinging to me or deciding that I was the man who was going to make you happy. And I just couldn’t work out how it had happened, that was the most frustrating thing. How years of a perfectly satisfying platonic relationship had suddenly erupted into something which was so unbelievably X-rated. So tell me, Erin—since we’re being truthful—did you choose me because you were aware of my reputation as a lover and considered me the most suitable candidate to take your virginity? Because you knew that I was the man most likely to give you pleasure?’

She didn’t answer straight away and when she did, her voice was shaking. ‘You flatter yourself,’ she said. ‘As well as misjudging me, if you think I could have been that cold-blooded about it. I didn’t choose you. It just happened.’

‘You just happened to bring a totally unnecessary batch of paperwork round to my apartment when it could have waited until morning?’

‘I was worried about you,’ she said. ‘Worried sick, if you must know. You seemed to have a permanent hangover and to exist on no sleep. Your bodyguard told me you were living like a vampire. And then he resigned and there was all that trouble in Paris and I didn’t trust your new bodyguard one bit. Every time the phone rang I thought it was going to be the hospital telling me you’d been admitted. Or the morgue telling me you were lying on a slab...’

‘So you thought a little creature comfort might bring me to my senses?’ he mocked as her words tailed off. ‘That a taste of the pure and innocent Erin Turner might be enough to make me see the error of my ways?’

‘You are hateful, Dimitri.’

‘Maybe I am. But I’ve never pretended to be anything else,’ he said, steeling himself against the hurt which was clouding her green eyes and telling himself it was better this way. Because although she’d told him she didn’t believe in love, he wasn’t sure he believed her. Women were programmed to believe in it, weren’t they? Better she didn’t start thinking he was someone who was capable of providing her with happiness. Especially not domestic happiness. ‘Didn’t anyone ever teach you that it’s a bad idea to go to a man’s apartment late at night, looking so unbelievably sexy?’

‘I was wearing my navy work suit and a white shirt!’ she protested. ‘It was hardly what you’d call provocative.’

‘Not intentionally, no.’ His voice deepened. ‘But you were. I’ll never forget the sight of you standing there, all wide-eyed and soaking wet.’

‘I didn’t know it was going to rain!’

‘And I wasn’t expecting my secretary to ring the doorbell looking as if she’d just taken part in a wet T-shirt competition.’

He hadn’t been planning to kiss her, either. It had been a combination of factors which had made something inside him snap. Her wide-eyed look of concern, which had contrasted with the erotic spectacle of that forbidding suit clinging to her slim body. Her complete obliviousness as to how sexy she looked had sealed her fate. He had been existing in such a dark place for so long and in that moment Erin had looked like a beacon of light. He’d given in to impulse and kissed her. And hadn’t the way she’d responded driven him wild? He remembered being taken aback that his unassuming secretary should suddenly morph into a little wildcat when he’d taken her in his arms. He remembered telling himself he would stop. Just one more kiss and he would definitely stop...

But he hadn’t stopped, had he? He had been unable to prevent himself from plunging into her tight, wet warmth and being the first man ever to possess her. He remembered that he had never come quite so many times in one night. That he seemed to have a permanent hard-on whenever he looked at her. Yet his conscience had troubled him afterwards and that in itself was unusual, for he had been brought up to believe that conscience was a waste of time. Had he known on some subliminal level before he’d even kissed her that she was innocent—and didn’t that make his subsequent self-contempt seem a little hypocritical?

The only honourable thing he’d done was to make sure he’d used contraception—even if it had subsequently failed. And then he had left the country.

Had he been afraid that desire would overcome him again? That he would become one of those clichéd men who slept with their secretary and she’d end up knowing everything about him, instead of just the lion’s share? Or was he just afraid that he would hurt her very badly—and someone like Erin did not deserve to be hurt.

But it seemed that he had been regarding her through rose-tinted spectacles and that she had been perfectly capable of her own brand of deception and lies. Her own brand of hurt.

An uneasy silence had fallen again and he didn’t object when she climbed off the divan and bent down to pick up her discarded clothes. He felt more in control when she was away from him and control was vital. Especially now. Because nothing had changed, he reminded himself grimly. She had kept their son hidden from him. She was no friend to him.

The armful of clothes was concealing her naked breasts, but her neck was flushed pink and the dark triangle of hair at the fork of her thighs made his body flood with another powerful wave of lust.

And it wasn’t going to happen, he told himself grimly. There was going to be no more intimacy, no matter how much he wanted it. Because sex with Erin Turner didn’t feel anonymous—it made him feel exposed and weak. And he didn’t do weak.

‘So what do you think we should do now?’ she questioned, her voice breaking into his uncomfortable thoughts.

‘Now?’ He could hear the uncertainty in her voice and it pleased him. It made him feel in control again—even if he had to shift his body beneath the coverlet to hide his growing erection. ‘I shall rest for a while as the doctor instructed—and after that I shall meet with the Sheikh, as was originally planned. I’m sure you can find plenty with which to amuse yourself in the meantime. There is a magnificent library here in the palace, or you could ask one of the servants to show you around the gardens. I believe they are very famous.’ He let his heavy eyelids fall and failed to stifle a yawn as he blotted out the unsettling look of distress in her eyes. ‘But I am weary now, Erin—so let me sleep.’