The Millionaire Affair Read online

  He raised his head and looked down at her body. Her breasts were hot and swollen. He drew a startled breath. Then suddenly he was pushing her back among the pillows, his hands urgent on her skin. He was no longer in such exquisite control.

  She was wearing nothing but those sheer tights now. Nikolai began to roll them voluptuously over her hip bones. His mouth followed the same path. His hands were agonisingly slow but his mouth was passionate. Lisa sobbed aloud.

  And then she was naked. The pre-dawn air made her breasts start. But although she was shivering helplessly, it was not with cold. Nikolai kissed her stomach, the jut of her hips, her quivering thighs. His breathing was ragged.

  The ache between her thighs was like a scream. She had no will left for anything except the one, the only goal. And Nikolai knew it. He set his mouth to the sweet pulsing centre of her and Lisa cried out in raw need. She didn’t recognise her voice. It sounded like a little girl’s. And as old as time.

  Nikolai paused. He raised his head. In the near dark, he and Lisa stared at each other.

  Tiny tremors took her, like the precursor of an earthquake. She did her best to ignore them. Oh, yes, she had been right. The attention he bent on her was concentrated, terrifying. And utterly seductive.

  He said harshly, ‘This is not sex with a stranger.’

  Lisa was beyond pretence, beyond shame. She flung up her chin. ‘Then take your clothes off.’

  It was a challenge. They both knew it. For a moment they glared into each other’s eyes like enemies.

  ‘Then help me,’ said Nikolai, in a fierce challenge of his own.

  She thrust herself up from the pillows, reaching. A jacket flew through the shadows and he began to tear at his shirt. Lisa plucked at the bow tie, her fingers frantic with the unfamiliar thing, her blood roaring.

  ‘Please,’ she said under her breath. ‘Please, please, please.’

  She didn’t know if she was talking to herself or him or the damned tie. Nikolai had no doubt. He detached her fingers, flicked the tie free and cast it away. Lisa fell back as he rid himself of the rest of his clothes.

  He bent over her, his eyes relentless in the grey dawn. ‘A stranger?’

  She was reverberating like a plucked string, hardly daring to breathe.

  ‘Nikolai—’ It was half-plea, half-groan.

  ‘The man who came over to us this evening,’ he said at last roughly. ‘Was he the one who didn’t turn up? At the awards, I mean.’

  ‘What?’ For a moment Lisa didn’t know what he was talking about. When she realised, she couldn’t believe it. It was so ridiculous she could have laughed. Or she could if she hadn’t been so close to the edge of distraction.

  ‘Was he?’ His tone demanded an answer.

  Lisa made a ragged sound of protest. ‘No.’

  ‘Then who was it? That boy said you were angry because some man wasn’t there. Who?’ He sounded as if he was on the rack.

  Lisa’s body was arching, way beyond her control.

  ‘Sam,’ she gasped.

  He thrust a powerful thigh between hers, kissing her forcefully. Lisa’s eyes fluttered shut uncontrollably. She reached for him. But he still held off from the ultimate invasion.

  ‘Who is this Sam? Sam Voss, from work?’

  ‘What?’ Lisa’s head tossed on the pillow. ‘Why? Oh, Nikolai—’

  But he was implacable. ‘Who is he?’

  ‘Yes, my boss.’ Her breathing was a wild sob. ‘Why—?’

  ‘I’m going to make you forget him,’ said Nikolai.

  He tugged her limbs around him. She felt the shock of masculine muscles contracting, the absolute potency of his knowledge of her body, and then—at last—his hardness inside her. Lisa strained to meet him, driving, driven, her whole body slamming in shockingly powerful demand.

  He didn’t ask her what she wanted. Or not in words. He let her body tell him. And it did.

  ‘You—want—me,’ he said.

  And took her over the edge.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  AFTERWARDS Lisa lay in his arms, utterly content. The darkened room was lit only by fuzzy reflected light from the street. In the Gothic shadows she could feel Nikolai watching her. She liked him watching her.

  His hand stroked her shoulder rhythmically, almost absently. It was a gesture of total possession. To her private astonishment, Lisa gloried in it. She rubbed her face against his chest, savouring the roughness of hair under her cheek, the unique smell of him.

  ‘Tell me now that I don’t know anything about you,’ he invited. There was a smile in his voice.

  She kissed his chest drowsily. ‘Oh you do. You do.’

  ‘Are you still quite sure you don’t need a man to sort out your life?’ he teased.

  But Lisa was hovering on the edge of sleep.

  ‘Whatever you say,’ she murmured.

  ‘Excellent.’

  Nikolai paused, waiting for an indignant rebuttal. But Lisa was asleep.

  In the darkness, his smile died. He gathered her closer; so close, indeed, that she turned, murmuring a small protest in her sleep. He relaxed his grip fractionally and she subsided against him with a sigh of satisfaction.

  ‘Lisa,’ he said. Then, louder, as if he were testing it out, ‘Lisa, darling.’

  She murmured indecipherably. Nikolai waited, but she didn’t make another sound. He shifted her, very gently, and drew the covers up over her naked shoulders. He kissed her hair.

  And then he, too, slept.

  In the cold light of day, of course, everything changed.

  Lisa woke up in a rush, bounced out of a dream in which she was walking down an endless staircase in wobbly heels towards a man who kept hiding his face from her. She sat bolt upright, exclaiming ‘No!’ before she even realised that it had been a dream.

  Nikolai appeared in the bedroom door. He was wearing horribly sexy black jeans and nothing else. Even his feet were bare. Lisa went scarlet.

  He, however, was completely unembarrassed. ‘Sorry, missed that,’ he said cheerfully.

  Which reminded her all too effectively of what she had thought last night: He has done this before. Many times, if she was any judge.

  She hauled the sheets up to her chin, and said with as much dignity as she could manage, ‘I was dreaming.’

  He grinned. ‘Who needs to dream?’

  Lisa met his eyes. Suddenly all the things they had done to each other last night were there in the room with them, like music. Her pulses began to beat in slow, thunderous tempo.

  Nikolai discarded his jeans. Lisa’s lashes fell to her suddenly hot cheeks.

  His hands knew her now. He hauled her up against his body, knowing exactly how the sweet friction of skin on skin would drive her wild. Lisa’s breath quickened and her head fell back.

  His mouth tugged and sucked at her breast until she was mindless. She kicked the sheets away, pulling him back onto the bed with her. Nikolai responded by swirling her up out of the ruin of the sheets and turning her over.

  ‘Not fair,’ said Lisa, drumming her fists on the pillow. She was half laughing, half seriously off balance. ‘Let me touch you.’

  ‘In a minute.’ His voice was husky.

  Nikolai caught her wrists in one hand and held her down. His lips travelled softly along the line of her ribs, her spine. Lisa shivered in an agony of exquisite anticipation.

  ‘I always knew I liked butterflies,’ he murmured.

  Lisa felt his lips against the tattoo on her shoulderblade. It became difficult to breathe.

  ‘I promised myself this weeks ago.’ His voice was ragged.

  Lisa’s body was juddering. He can’t make me feel like this with just a kiss, she thought. He can’t.

  But he did.

  She buried her face in the pillow and came to a moaning climax.

  ‘Not fair,’ he said in her ear.

  And turned her over again. He scanned her flushed face as if every tiny ripple of sensation was a personal triumph.

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p; Lisa’s head whirled. She felt proud and yet humble, shy and yet shameless. Utterly in his power and yet, when she folded herself round him and let her confident hands move, as powerful as a goddess.

  He shuddered, groaning as she wrapped her legs round him like a vice.

  ‘Not—yet—’ His voice was almost unrecognisable. But he was still master of her responses.

  Lisa writhed as he used hands and mouth to bring her again and again to the point of dissolution.

  ‘What are you doing to me?’ she gasped.

  His eyes burned into hers. They were on the floor by now, in a mess of sheets, blankets and pillows.

  ‘What are you doing to me?’ he flung back at her.

  Even his immaculate control seemed to be deserting him now. He was breathless and his voice shook.

  For a moment he held her beneath him, one hand running through her damp hair, his eyes blazing like the heart of a furnace. Lisa’s lips parted.

  ‘Oh, God, you only have to look at me.’ It was only a whisper, but it sounded as if it was torn out of him.

  Lisa couldn’t endure the waiting any longer. Shaking, she reached for him and guided him inside her. His face tensed until she could see the bones under the tautened skin. A muscle throbbed in his cheek.

  For a moment his expression was wild. And then his eyes shut and he abandoned himself to a passion that took her, violently, on the rollercoaster with him.

  They both cried out. Only in her case it felt like weeping.

  Later—much later—he stirred and said lazily, ‘What do you normally do on Saturdays?’

  Lisa was beyond embarrassment. She was not, however, beyond cold. She sat up and looked for something to put round her.

  ‘Washing,’ she said literally. Continuing, ‘Haven’t you got anything I can wear?’

  He propped himself up against the wall and surveyed her. He looked inordinately pleased with himself.

  ‘What’s wrong with your own clothes? I rather fancy you in a Krizia Karlton original.’

  ‘You fancy me in anything,’ said Lisa drily.

  His eyes were golden, and so warm she hardly recognised him.

  ‘Or nothing,’ he reminded her.

  Lisa choked. ‘How could I forget?’

  ‘Not good for my morale,’ he agreed. He stood up, magnificently naked, and rootled behind a dressing stool. ‘There you are,’ he said retrieving a glittering piece of cloth with triumph.

  He gave it to her.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Lisa without enthusiasm. She held it up between finger and thumb. It looked even more revealing than she remembered. ‘How am I going to walk home through the Saturday shoppers in this?’

  ‘You’ll just have to stay here till dark.’

  ‘A gentleman would lend me something to wear.’

  ‘Well, you’re welcome to anything that fits,’ he offered wickedly. ‘There are some tasteful tablecloths in the bathroom airing cupboard. Try one of them.’

  ‘I might,’ she said with dignity. ‘After my bath.’

  ‘I’ll put the coffee on.’

  Lisa filled the bath with steaming water, added some drops of a luxurious essence of white lilac that she found on the shelf, and sank back luxuriously. She had never felt so utterly physically content in her life.

  Nikolai, she thought, stirring the water dreamily, was a wonderful lover. He seemed to pour the whole of himself into it, as if he could make time stand still by the very intensity of his feelings. It must be his passionate Russian blood, she decided.

  Of course, he hadn’t actually said he loved her. But then who needed him to, when he touched her the way he did? His body said it for him. Besides, as she had told Alec, she had learned long ago not to trust declarations of love.

  Who am I kidding? I want him to say he loves me. I want it more than anything in the world.

  ‘Top marks for consistency, Lisa,’ she muttered.

  But somehow the thought spoiled her sybaritic enjoyment. She got out of the bath.

  It was only when she came to put the dress on that she saw the label. ‘K2’ it said in discreet embroidered script. Lisa grinned, remembering how easily Nikolai had identified the designer. Krizia Karlton was presumably ‘K2’.

  Altogether too practised, she thought, and went looking for him to tease him on his knowledge of female designer wear.

  And as she went past the books, the gleaming antiques, the picture-hung walls, she began to think. She had never heard of Krizia Karlton. And the label, though it was a clue, was not specific. So how did Nikolai know who had designed her dress?

  By the time she reached the kitchen, her body was taut with suspicion. Even so, if he had denied it, or given a halfway plausible excuse, she would have accepted it. She so wanted to accept it. But he did not.

  He shrugged, unconcerned. ‘OK. It’s a fair cop.’

  ‘A fair cop?’ Lisa didn’t understand.

  ‘I wanted you to have something pretty to wear. It was such a waste, Tatiana getting you to buy all that stuff from thrift shops, no matter how up market they were. I told her to get you a real dress.’

  ‘You—bought—my—dress?’

  ‘So what? You liked it, didn’t you?’ He gave her a wicked grin. ‘I certainly did.’

  It was Terry Long, all over again. You’re fun trash, Lisa Romaine. Her eyes hurt.

  ‘Were you afraid of what I would wear to Glyndebourne? Didn’t you want to risk me disgracing you? After all, we might have seen some of your friends there, mightn’t we?’

  He blinked at her savage tone.

  ‘Hey, I wanted to give you a present, that was all.’

  ‘No, it wasn’t.’ Her voice was so quiet it was almost inaudible. ‘If you’d wanted to give me a present, you would have given it to me. Not conspired with Tatiana so that I thought I’d bought it myself—’ She broke off and swallowed several times. ‘Tell me the truth, Nikolai.’

  He sighed impatiently. ‘All right. The truth is that I knew you wouldn’t take it from me. And I was—’

  ‘Planning,’ supplied Lisa. She thought her heart would break.

  ‘What?’

  ‘That’s what this is about, isn’t it? The Ivanov family plan to protect their own.’

  Nikolai began to be seriously alarmed. ‘Don’t be ridiculous. I wouldn’t have gone to bed with you or any woman to protect Tatiana.’

  ‘No,’ Lisa agreed. She sounded, even to herself, as remote as the moon. But at least she sounded in control again, thank God. ‘No, I imagine taking me to bed was a bonus.’

  ‘That’s crazy.’

  Lisa was very cold. She clutched her arms round herself protectively. When her hand touched her own bared shoulder she shuddered in shocked recollection. Her chin came up.

  ‘My mother always told me that if you let a man buy you clothes, he’d expect to take them off,’ she said conversationally. ‘And you did, didn’t you?’

  At last Nikolai realised that this was serious.

  Very pale, he said, ‘You can’t believe that rubbish.’

  Lisa was in anguish, as pale as he now. She waited, thinking, He has to say he loves me. Nothing else will do now.

  He said, ‘It’s no big deal. I’ve bought clothes for lots of women.’

  Lisa gasped as if she had been shot.

  Nikolai exclaimed at once, ‘No. I didn’t mean that. Lisa—’

  But she had gone.

  She got home without noticing the shoppers, or the fact that she was barefoot. In fact, if she hadn’t dropped her bag on the tallboy by the front door when they’d arrived last night she wouldn’t have found her key either.

  She didn’t care. She’d just had to get out of Nikolai’s flat and into her own burrow. She locked the door, unplugged the phone and disappeared into the bath.

  Her own bath preparations were simple herbal oils from a chainstore chemist. She scrubbed herself to get rid of the expensive scent of white lilac. Presumably he had bought that for her to use. Before or after he sed
uced her? Lisa asked herself, raging.

  Oh, he had planned it like a military campaign. She wondered how many generals he had in his family tree. She would ask him the next time she—

  She stopped the thought right there. She was not going to see him again. He had planned his last plan for the downfall of Lisa Romaine.

  How certain of her he must have been. Rage dying, Lisa cringed. This was worse than anything that Terry Long had done to her. She had never trusted Terry Long. Or not as she had trusted Nikolai.

  Which was when she stopped scrubbing at her skin, lay back in the bath and let the tears seep out of her eyes like blood from a wound.

  She would survive. Of course she would. But just this morning she needed to let herself know the hurt before she gathered herself together and started to repair the damage Nikolai Ivanov had done.

  It was one Saturday without laundry or shopping or going through the post. For once she didn’t even phone her mother and Kit. If they had difficulties they would have to sort them out without Lisa this time. She needed all her courage for herself.

  Eventually, of course, she had to emerge. Feeling rather as if she were recovering from flu, she went quietly out into the garden and sat under a tree. That was where Tatiana found her.

  Tatiana had received a startling visit from her distraught nephew. It had only been after she had physically barred him from the outdoor staircase to Lisa’s flat that he’d admitted Lisa had run away from him.

  ‘Then go away and think about it before you try to see her again,’ his fond aunt had advised him briskly.

  Nikolai’s eyes had been wild. ‘I’ve got to see her.’

  ‘Find a way to put it right first,’ Tatiana had said. ‘And don’t think you can use me. I don’t interfere between lovers.’

  She’d paused hopefully. Nikolai hadn’t denied it. She’d hidden a gleeful grin.

  ‘You’re on your own,’ she’d informed him, and escorted him relentlessly to the front door.

  Nevertheless, when she’d looked over the balcony and seen the small figure under the tree she’d gone out to join Lisa. Not interfering, she told herself. Concerned.