Читать книгу Modern Romance October 2015 Books 1-4 - Эбби Грин, Annie West - Страница 19
ОглавлениеIT WAS THE first time in a long time that Erin had been given a room she could call her own. She’d shared a cramped bedroom with Leo since the day she’d first brought him home from hospital and was used to tiptoeing around and condensing her stuff into the smallest possible space while fighting a losing battle against clutter. But Leo was now ensconced in his own cosy set of rooms just along the corridor and playing with every remaining toy from Dimitri’s childhood, which had been dragged down from the attic by Svetlana’s son.
Following her explosive row with Dimitri, he had taken himself off to his study and shut the door very firmly behind him. It had been left to Svetlana to take her and Leo on a guided tour of the house, showing them the countless rooms, the beautiful gardens and finally the indoor swimming pool, which gleamed invitingly and made Leo squeal with delight. Erin felt her heart plummet. She hated swimming at the best of times and was dreading her son’s next inevitable demand, when Dimitri walked into the pool complex.
‘Do you like swimming, Leo?’
Erin’s heart pounded as she looked up to meet the cool blue gaze, but there was no mockery or flirtation there. The briefest of smiles and a cursory nod were his only acknowledgement to her, before he crouched down to his son’s level.
‘He doesn’t swim,’ she said quickly.
‘In that case, I can teach him.’
She didn’t even get a chance to say that Leo had brought nothing suitable to wear in the water, because it seemed that swimming trunks and armbands were readily available and had already been purchased from a nearby department store. It made Erin realise that, behind the scenes, Dimitri must have been making plans for his son’s arrival before she’d even agreed to the trip and that made her feel odd. Manipulated, almost. But she didn’t have the heart to spoil Leo’s fun and her guilty secret was that she enjoyed watching Dimitri put himself out for someone else in a way she’d never seen him do before. And wasn’t the shameful truth that she also enjoyed looking at that powerful body in a pair of clinging swim-shorts, despite her intention to avert her gaze whenever he levered himself out of the water?
Water highlighted his masculinity. It gleamed and highlighted the golden skin and emphasised the honed contours of his powerful physique. It made her body sizzle with desire and she couldn’t work out a way to stop it. And the most infuriating thing was that she could have had him. She could have had him on her first night here, and yet she had turned him down.
By the third day, Leo was not only becoming confident in the water—he was behaving as if he’d spent his whole life living in a luxurious dacha. He listened to Dimitri’s firm house rules and obeyed them. He knew that the swimming pool was out of bounds unless there was an adult present and in the meantime he made friends with Svetlana’s grandson, Anatoly—who was a year older. Erin watched from the sidelines, aware that there was a lot of Dimitri in her son which she’d never seen before. Or never allowed herself to see. With the large grounds at his disposal, a playmate and a football, he was able to enjoy the kind of healthy freedom which wasn’t readily available in London.
She told herself she was grateful to Dimitri for his hospitality, but his polite and non-committal behaviour towards her was starting to drive her insane. Yet this was what she had actually asked for, so she was hardly in a position to complain about it. Was it simply a case of wanting what she couldn’t have? Like when you tried to cut down on sugar and it left you craving something sweet.
Dimitri wasn’t sweet. He was the antithesis of sweet. He was hard and strong and ruthless. But here he was showing a side of himself she’d never seen before. She’d never imagined he could be so gentle, or that his cold face could warm into such a breathtaking smile when he interacted with his little boy.
Suddenly, she felt like someone who had been left out in the cold. As if she were the outsider.
After dinner on the third night she’d gone to her room and shut the door behind her with a heavy sigh. She should have felt, if not exactly happy, then at least content. It had been another successful day. Dimitri had taken them deep into the forest in the crisp cold, and they’d all been worn out with fresh air and exercise. Leo was fast asleep next door and, although supper had been civilised and delicious, Dimitri had been called to the telephone soon afterwards and had excused himself. He had shut himself in his study and showed no sign of coming out and so Erin had come upstairs to bed.
She began to unbutton her cardigan, wondering how he would react if she went and found him and told him she’d changed her mind. That she no longer cared about being treated like a plaything if only he would kiss her again. She hung the cardigan over the back of the chair and pulled a face at her washed-out reflection in the mirror. But that would be the action of an idiot, wouldn’t it? Long-term pain for short-term gain.
She’d just put on her nightdress when there was a knock at the door and, thinking it might be Leo, she sped over to answer it, her bare feet making no sound on the silky antique rug. But it wasn’t Leo; it was Dimitri who stood there and she despaired at the predictability of her reaction as the breath dried hotly in her throat.
‘Is it Leo?’ she questioned.
‘No, Erin—it isn’t Leo.’ He glanced over her shoulder. ‘You weren’t in bed?’
‘Not yet.’ She was grateful for the darkness, which hid her sudden blush. And for the nightdress, which concealed her rapidly hardening nipples. ‘I was just about to turn in.’
‘May I come in?’
She didn’t ask him why and that was her first mistake. Her second was not to move away when he shut the door behind him. To get as far away from the intoxicating closeness of his body as the dimensions of the room would allow.
She tried to match the studied politeness he’d been showing her all day, but suddenly she noticed a new restlessness in his eyes. A certain tension in his powerful body. ‘What is it that you want, Dimitri?’
She was trying to sound matter-of-fact but she failed miserably and something about the thready quality of her voice made his eyes narrow.
‘I’ve come to say some things which I should have said a long time ago.’
She looked at him. ‘What kind of things?’
Dimitri met the question in her green eyes and hesitated, because what he was about to do did not come easily to him. He had grown up in a world where explanations were never given, where feelings were buried so deeply that you could almost fool yourself into thinking they didn’t exist. And he had carried on that same sterile tradition into his own adult life. Never explain had been his motto. People could take him as they found him and if they didn’t like him, then tough. There were plenty more eager to fall into line, because power made people eager to please you.
But not Erin. Erin was different. She did what she thought was right—no matter at what cost to herself. And she was the mother of his child. She deserved his respect—he realised that now. And maybe she also needed to know some of the things he was fast discovering about himself.
‘I understand now why you kept Leo from me for so long,’ he said.
Her eyes were wary. ‘You do?’
He nodded. ‘Why would you want an innocent child being corrupted by someone who saw life through the bottom of a glass, as I did? Whose idea of fun was being the last person left in the casino after he’d emptied his wallet? Who revelled in the sense of danger, as much as the thrill of risk? I don’t blame you for cutting me out of his life, because that’s what any good mother would do and you are a fantastic mother,’ he said slowly. ‘And our son is beautiful. He’s just beautiful, Erin.’
Erin didn’t know what she’d been expecting, but this hadn’t even featured on her list of possibilities. And the crazy thing was that the things he’d said made her want to cry. She found herself wishing he’d come and found her a long time ago to tell her he had cleaned up his act and then he could have met Leo a whole lot sooner. She thought of all those wasted years which they could never get back and suddenly she didn’t want to risk a moment’s more regret.
She blinked away the incipient tears which were pricking at the backs of her eyes. ‘Kiss me,’ she whispered.
‘Erin—’
‘Shut up,’ she interrupted and in the midst of her hunger and heartache she realised that she was one of the few people he would allow to interrupt him like that. ‘Just shut up and kiss me, Dimitri. Please.’
He moved forward and cupped her face in his hands and suddenly he was driving his mouth down onto hers, his tongue coaxing her lips apart as he began to explore her with an urgency which made her feel weak. She wondered if it was her self-imposed embargo on sex which made this kiss seem so...profound, or because it was underpinned by a distinct air of reconciliation?
She didn’t know and, right now, she didn’t care. The only thing she cared about was the way he was touching her—running the flat of his hand down over her flower-sprigged nightdress.
‘Is this what the English call a passion-killer?’ he questioned drily as he peeled off her long nightdress.
‘Why?’ She shivered as the cool air hit her heated skin. ‘Is it working?’
‘Are you kidding? It’s the sexiest piece of clothing I’ve ever seen,’ he growled as he picked her up and carried her over to the bed.
She helped him undress—her inexperience forgotten in the midst of her excitement at revealing the powerful body. She traced her fingers experimentally over his hair-roughened thighs, feeling stupidly pleased by his exultant shiver and the little groan of satisfaction he made. And wasn’t that the thing about Dimitri—that somehow, despite everything, she always felt like his equal in bed?
The sheets felt cool against her naked body but Dimitri was all welcoming warmth as the mattress dipped beneath them. Tilting her chin, he looked at her for one long, wordless moment before slowly lowering his mouth to kiss her.
He wrapped his arms around her—his powerful legs entwining with hers and his fingers stroking her skin, so that at first she shivered and then relaxed. It felt so good to be here with him like this. Unbearably good. She found herself praying that he wouldn’t hurt her—before vowing that she wouldn’t ever allow herself to get hurt.
His hands moved to her hips, urging her even closer, and her nipples grew hard against his chest. She could feel the heavy weight of his erection pushing against her belly and her face grew hot. The blood in her veins seemed to be growing thicker. She could feel the molten heat between her legs and when he slid his fingers there, she writhed with pleasure—moving her body against him in a silent message of invitation.
‘You like that, don’t you, milaya moya?’ he whispered and when she nodded eagerly, he whispered into her ear. ‘Then tell me.’
‘I...love it,’ she whispered shakily. ‘You know I do.’
Somehow he found a condom but his hands were unsteady as he slid it on, before entering her with such exquisite precision that Erin gasped.
He moved slowly at first—as if he had all the time in the world. And wasn’t that exactly what it felt like? That for once there were no constraints, or questions. That she could simply enjoy this for what it was.
She was aware that his eyes were open and she felt confident enough to hold his gaze as each thrust took her higher. Every time he moved it increased her pleasure—tightening it, notch by delicious notch. And just when it became almost unbearable her orgasm hit her in waves so powerful that it felt as if it were tearing her body apart. Her fingers tightened around him as he shuddered inside her with a ragged groan of his own.
It seemed like ages before he withdrew and Erin had to fight the urge to claw at him—wanting to bring him back inside her. She turned to look at him. His eyes were closed and he appeared to be sleeping—and she knew him well enough to realise that he’d probably like her to turn over and go to sleep, too. She remembered once overhearing him saying to his friend Ivan: The trouble with women is that they ask too many questions.
For a long time she had tried to abide by his preferred diktat, because she’d wanted to be the perfect secretary. She had questioned him only when absolutely necessary—but those days were gone. Even if the intimacy they’d just shared didn’t give her any rights—surely the fact that they had a son between them allowed her the luxury of asking questions for once. Wasn’t it time he told her stuff—instead of making out that it was presumptuous of her to dare ask?
‘Dimitri?’
‘Mmm?’
‘I want to ask you something.’
He opened his eyes. ‘Must you?’
She ignored that, positioning herself more comfortably on the pillows so that she was in the direct line of his cool gaze. ‘You know when you were going off the rails?’
‘What about it?’
‘You just never told me why. What made you do it?’
‘Does there have to be a reason, Erin?’
‘I don’t know. You tell me.’
He was so quiet for a moment that Erin wondered whether he was just going to ignore her question, when suddenly he started talking.
‘It was a combination of factors,’ he said. ‘I was living in London—and that was the world I was inhabiting at the time.’
She rested her chin on his chest and looked up at him. ‘What kind of world was that?’
He shrugged. ‘The world of success—and excess. My company was doing better than I could have ever dreamed. Suddenly, I had more time. More money. More everything, really. Whatever I touched seemed to turn to gold. My stocks were touching the stratosphere. Women were throwing themselves at me—’
‘How unbearable that must have been.’
‘At first I can’t deny that I enjoyed it,’ he said, skating over her sarcasm. ‘But it doesn’t take long for an appetite to become jaded. For too much to become not nearly enough. Suddenly, nothing ever seemed to satisfy me. I tried gambling, and then vodka. But nothing seemed to do it. Nothing could take away...’
His voice trailed off as if he’d said too much but Erin was onto it in an instant.
‘Take away what?’
‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘It does matter,’ she said stubbornly.
His voice hardened. ‘The discoveries I had made. The ones which made oblivion seem like a good idea.’
‘What kind of discoveries?’ she persisted.
‘Erin, is this really relevant? We’ve just had some pretty amazing sex...’ he trailed his finger down over her torso until it came to rest comfortably in her belly button ‘...and now you’re ruining it by hurling all these questions at me.’
‘How can talking ruin what’s just happened?’ She pushed his finger away. ‘And it is relevant. It isn’t just prurient curiosity on my part, if that’s what you’re thinking. It’s about a need to know more about my son’s heritage—so I don’t have to look at him blankly when he asks me the questions he will one day inevitably ask. Because I want to be able to tell Leo the truth from now on.’
‘I don’t think these are the kind of things you’d want to tell an innocent young boy,’ he said bitterly.
‘But I’m a grown woman,’ she said. ‘You can tell me.’
Dimitri stared into her green eyes, thinking how catlike they looked against her flushed skin. Her dark hair was tumbling over her tiny breasts and every instinct in his body was urging him to block her questions and make love to her again. But some of her words were stubbornly refusing to shift. Didn’t matter how much he wanted them to go away; they weren’t going to. Because she was right. As the mother of his child didn’t she deserve to hear the truth?
He gave an expansive flick of his hand—as if to draw attention to the dimensions of the huge room in which they lay. ‘You can see for yourself how privileged my background was. I was the only son of a hugely successful businessman and his devoted wife.’ He gave a bitter laugh. ‘Or that’s what I thought I was—until the whole pack of cards came tumbling down.’
For once she was silent, but he felt her grow very still beside him.
‘I discovered that my life was nothing but an illusion based on lies and deception,’ he said. ‘It was all smoke and mirrors and nothing was as it seemed. My father wasn’t the respectable businessman I’d always thought. His respectability was just a front for his underworld dealings. He made the bulk of his money from drugs and gambling, and from human trafficking and misery.’
He could see her eyes widening in shock, but he forced himself to continue—as if suddenly recognising the burden of having kept this to himself for all these years. Because wasn’t that another legacy of criminality—that the secrets it created tainted everyone around with the sense of nothing being as it should be?
‘My relationship with him wasn’t good. He was the coldest man I’ve ever encountered. Sometimes I used to wonder if it was just something inside him which made him so distant—or whether it was something to do with me. I wondered why he sometimes looked through me as if I was invisible, or worse. As if he actually hated me.’ He paused. ‘It took a long time for me to discover why.’
‘Why?’
He could hear her holding her breath.
‘Because he wasn’t actually my father,’ he said slowly. ‘I was the cuckoo child. A product of a passionate liaison between my mother and the family gardener.’
‘Your mother had an affair with the gardener?’
He nodded and waited while she processed this piece of information.
‘And what was he like? This gardener.’
Dimitri frowned. He had been anticipating judgement—not understanding. Was it that which made him stray deeper into the memory—into the dark place he usually kept locked and bolted?
‘A striking man,’ he said slowly. ‘Tall and muscular, with tawny hair and blue eyes. I remember how much the maids used to idolise him and how women turned to look at him whenever he walked by. But most of all, he was kind. I didn’t realise that men could be kind. It never occurred to me to question why he used to spend so much time with me—way more than my father ever did. It didn’t even occur to me until much later that whenever I looked at him, it was like looking in the mirror. But afterwards I wished he’d said something—something to acknowledge that I was his. But he never did.’ He saw how wide her green eyes had grown. ‘Shocked, Erin?’
‘Not half as shocked as you must have been.’ She seemed to choose her next words with care. ‘But if your other father knew you weren’t his child, then why did he stay with your mother? Why didn’t he just divorce her and cut his losses?’
‘And lose face?’ Dimitri gave a hollow laugh. ‘Admit that some labourer had succeeded where he had failed? No. That wasn’t the way he operated. My mother’s punishment was to remain in a loveless marriage. Locked in a relationship based on fear with a man who despised her. And I think she felt the same way about me. I can certainly never remember her being warm towards me.’ He sucked in a breath. ‘Maybe she didn’t dare show me affection because she knew it would enrage my father. Or maybe she saw me as a constant reminder of what she had done. Maybe I represented the failure she’d made of her life and her relationships.’
‘And the gardener? What happened to him?’
There was a long silence before he shrugged. ‘One morning he just wasn’t there any more. I remember it was winter and the front door was open and I went looking for my mother. I found her in the forest, in the little shed where he used to keep his tools. She was curled up on the floor crying her eyes out, half mad with grief.’
‘And did you...’ Erin’s hand crept over his and squeezed it. ‘Did you ever meet up with him again? Did you ever form some kind of relationship and make peace with the past?’
His eyes were icier than she’d ever seen them—and that was saying something about a man who could do every degree of ice.
‘No,’ he said abruptly. ‘Although I tried. After my mother died I attempted to track him and that was when I discovered that he had been executed some years before.’
‘Executed?’
‘Killed by a single bullet to the head in a Moscow alleyway. It was, as they say in the business, a professional hit.’
‘And you think...’ She licked her lips. ‘You think your father was behind it?’
‘I’m no longer a gambling man,’ he said, but she saw the awful knowledge written in his eyes.
Erin squeezed his hand tighter as she began to understand why he’d wanted to escape from the reality of his past. Because he had said himself that everyone was a product of their own experience. And Dimitri’s was darker than most. His was the kind of past which kept psychiatrists in business. A mother who didn’t show her love and a cold-hearted crook who hated you because you weren’t his son. A crook who had probably ordered an execution, thus effectively cutting off any opportunity for reconciliation between Dimitri and his real father. Was it any wonder that he’d gone off the rails quite so spectacularly?
She rested her head against his shoulder, even though she wanted to do so much more. She wanted to hug him tightly and tell him everything was going to be all right. She wanted to cover his golden face with kisses and tell him she was there for him and would always be there for him, if only he would let her. But some instinct stopped her. She reminded herself that she didn’t do emotional stuff like that and, more important, neither did he. Yet it was hard to restrain her instinct to reach out to him and it left her feeling confused.
She told herself that what she was feeling was just natural sympathy after hearing a particularly grim story. Except that it wasn’t—because it felt like something more. Something which she’d tried to convince herself was the biggest con in the world and one she was never going to fall for again.
She swallowed as she turned her face away from his.
It felt uncomfortably like love.
