‘Can you talk to Nadia?’ Alina asked.
‘We are so past talking.’ he said. ‘She’s counting on it, though. She will have something up her sleeve, you can be sure of it.’
Alina had nothing up her sleeve—in fact, it was Demyan’s last card that she brought to the table now. ‘There’s been an offer on the penthouse, a good one. After you left this morning, Libby rang.’
‘I assume, given the buyers, it’s not subject to finance?’
It was a very thin joke and they chose not to smile. It was a mere matter of signatures now.
‘I have no choice but to let him go. Maybe some time in the future we can talk...’
Alina took a deep breath. ‘Will you make Russia your base rather than Sydney?’
Demyan didn’t answer. He could feel the clock ticking down on Alina and him and there was so much he still had to find out, so much she still held back.
He felt her hands on his shoulders and on instinct he shrugged her off and then relented, but only, she realised, because he had a question.
‘Why were you crying?’ He felt her hands pause. ‘Alina?’ He wanted now to get to them, he wanted to know more about the woman who might just be capable of changing his mind.
‘I think we both know.’
‘Say it.’
‘Because we’ll be over soon,’ she said simply.
Say it isn’t necessarily so, her eyes begged, give me one shred of hope. But he kissed her instead, a deep, deep kiss that tasted urgent, a hungry kiss that stripped them in moments, and as he pushed her to the bed, Demyan chose not to think about anything that might possibly hurt.
Alina defied him. Slow were the kisses that met his mouth, far from urgent the body beneath him, for she wanted more than the urgent sex that displaced her and so she fought to explore every inch of him. Instead of succumbing, she etched him to memory with her mouth.
‘Alina...’ Her lips brushed over his eyes and it was the most intimate kiss Demyan had ever allowed, and they were unfamiliar waters he was sailing on as he rolled to his back and she kissed down his cheek and chin and he tried to claim her mouth but she resisted.
She kissed his eyes again and he could not stand the bliss, could not bear to succumb, to give in to her mouth, so he chose words to halt her.
‘I know about your art...’ Her mouth paused, but she would not let him distract her. ‘That you don’t have the guts to display it.’
She would not give in to his taunts, she would not stop, she would explore every inch of him in her own time. Her tears fell on his lips and he tasted her salty warning and stayed silent as she worked her way down.
Alina shaded the dark of his nipples with feather-light strokes and added a dash of desire and cardinal red to her palette and resumed, sucking on the flat nub, hearing his ragged breathing, his hand trying to guide her head down.
No. Still, she did not relent.
It was time for his stomach and she painted seashell white with a dash of linen as she deep-kissed his pale skin. Demyan’s hands pushed at her head but she denied him. Instead, she shaded in the snake of hairs, and each slow brush of her lips had his fists clench tighter.