“This stubble will burn if I kiss you the way you’re begging me to,” he said in a growled voice that slammed her back to reality.
“I—” She strangled on denial, mortified enough to jerk out of his hypnotizing aura and move across the room.
“I’ll shower and shave. You put on one of those cocktail dresses you asked me if you should bring. I want to see your legs.”
She threw him a livid glare, but he disappeared down a hall. What did she have to be angry about anyway? She’d sold herself into his control, hadn’t she?
Clair gripped her elbows, hanging on to her composure with bruising tightness, taking in her surroundings to turn her mind from her precarious situation. The lounge was enormous, tiled in marble and divided into sections with area rugs and attractively arranged furniture. Everything was decidedly masculine, the writing desk set in the corner surrounded by enough space to accommodate its charismatic owner. The rest of the flat took up the entire top floor of the building, incorporating half a dozen smaller flats into a single sprawling living space that one man couldn’t possibly need.
She had thought Victor obscenely wealthy. She shook her head, reminding herself that the real test of a person’s class came from his character, not his possessions. Problem was, Aleksy guarded himself even more closely than she did. She wondered what kind of man lurked beneath that polished granite exterior. One who would laugh her to the curb when he realized what a novice she was?
Stop it. Steadying her knees and pulling her shoulders back, she resolved not to be intimidated. He could laugh all he wanted, but she had her own principles: loyalty, a debt of gratitude and a personal honor that demanded she live up to her word.
She was terrified, but she’d sleep with him because she’d said she would.
* * *
Her luggage was gone from his room when he emerged from his shower.
It was an unexpected slap in the face for Aleksy. Women never rejected him. Given the math Clair had scratched into a notebook on the plane, he had considered their deal more than sealed; was she now trying to get out of it?
Snatching up his mobile, wearing only a towel, he strode from the bedroom to the empty lounge. Down at the far end of the flat, as far as she could get from his master bedroom, the door was shut. He pushed through it, noted her open suitcase on the bed and heard the hair dryer click on in the bathroom.
The release of tension in him was profound—and aggravating.
Get a grip, he ordered himself as he returned to his room. She was only a woman, the same as all the others he’d taken into his bed. Yes, there was a certain satisfaction in claiming what Victor had wanted, but Aleksy had been patient enough to hunt that man down over two decades. He ought to be capable of waiting a few more hours for this final conquest.
The short flight to Paris had been unbearable, though, the drive from the airport eternal. She’d been quiet, almost as if trying to hold herself behind an invisible shell, while his senses had been homed onto her presence, for once hungry to learn about his partner, but he hadn’t wanted to reveal his curiosity.
He didn’t want to feel it. She shouldn’t be drawing him in this strongly.
When she’d turned that look of longing on him after they arrived in the flat, it had taken everything in him to keep from leaping on her. Whether it had been a tease or real, he had ached to accept her invitation like nothing he’d ever wanted, even his lifetime of revenge. He’d controlled himself because any weakness for women had always been a distraction he couldn’t afford. He wouldn’t let a habit of a lifetime click off like a switch, but he’d been near panting in London when she’d thrown down her condition that the money had to clear.
His saving grace had been that she had been panting too; it was affecting him. The women he usually went for enjoyed sex, but with Clair the chemistry was notched to maximum. She might have an agenda, but her desire was interfering with it. It was an unbelievable turn-on; it enthralled him.
Surely once he’d had her the mystique would dissolve though. It had to. This obsessiveness was intolerable.
He stepped into black jeans and tugged on a light gray pullover, returning to the lounge, where he made a few calls while pacing off his restlessness, mercilessly tying off his need as he waited for staff from a nearby restaurant.
As he waited for Clair.
* * *
Clair forced one foot in front of the other and stepped into the lounge, tensed for the impact of Aleksy’s inspection. He was on the phone, his face and body in quarter profile.
She had expected one of his disturbingly penetrating looks, but found herself doing the appraisal, going weak as she took in the length of his back and the way his jeans hugged the shape of his backside and outlined his muscled thighs. He stood with his long legs braced and shrugged a shoulder, drawing her attention to the powerful layers of muscles bulging beneath the wool. She imagined exploring light fingers over the textures of cashmere, swarthy neck and short, damp hair and had to strangle a moan of longing.