With Demyan she felt it.
It was giddying, stepping out to the cameras and to the shouts and cheers because Zukov was there, but who was this woman on his arm?
‘Your friends will get a surprise...’ Demyan said, as they danced through to the small hours, for they would be all over the papers tomorrow.
‘My friends won’t even recognise me,’ Alina said, and it came with a bit of a jolt that Demyan had. That this version of her, the one who felt more like herself than she ever had, was one that neither her friends or family had met.
They headed to the gaming rooms and, yes, Alina turned heads.
What was it? she mused.
Because she’d have felt like a Christmas decoration had she worn this dress just a week ago. Now, though, she was on fire.
‘I’m going to win.’ She knew that she was as he kissed the dice in her palm and his tongue met her skin.
She was.
Alina simply knew it.
Tonight a win was inevitable.
‘No!’ Alina screamed, when the gods didn’t oblige.
‘Again,’ Demyan said, urging her on.
‘Ow!’ she screamed, when still the stars did not align.
‘Again,’ he urged. People were starting to gather and she turned to him, to his kiss, to her winnings.
‘I can’t wait for the beach...’ Demyan moaned to her mouth, for he had organised a helicopter while she’d shopped.
‘I can’t either.’
‘I mean, I can’t wait.’
‘Me too.’
He kissed her all the way up in the elevator, his tongue almost savage, but Alina’s was too. He nearly had her in the hall. She was vaguely aware of a butler rapidly disappearing as they fell through an open door.
Those tiny poppers that had been so hard to do up were her undoing now for Demyan was inside before the door even closed. Frantic, urgent sex where she could barely even lift her legs, such was the force of the man pinning her down.
‘God, Alina...’
It was new-shoes-worthy sex, it was amazing sex. There was nothing she could complain about for she was shouting his name too and coming as rapidly as Demyan...
It was the aftermath that confused.
She lay there, staring up at the ceiling with Demyan on top of and inside her, and then turned her head slightly and looked around.
They were in a very luxurious suite, but a different one. Though it was similar to the one she had become used to.
It took a moment to register that he must have booked them into the casino hotel.
What man kept two presidential suites on the go?
It took another unsettling moment for Alina to realise that she hadn’t even known where she was.
CHAPTER TEN