FINDING herself in a situation she had both feared and yet secretly longed for, Ellie let her nervous gaze move slowly round Nikolai’s sumptuously designed bedroom, with its silk wallpaper and antique furniture. She heard the ominous click of the door shut behind her. Sensing his eyes burning into her back in the way that she’d often found him studying her—with the most disturbing and yet heart-stopping intensity—she felt her mouth go dry and a quiver of excitement ripple through her.
It was hard to take her own eyes off the stately and astonishing four-poster bed that loomed up in front of her. Complete with mirrors in the headboard, and enough brocade and silk cushions on top of the luxurious purple counterpane to please Cleopatra herself, surely it was a bed made for seduction? What was she thinking of?
Ellie grimaced at her own question. The problem was that she wasn’t thinking. Her brain was not the part of her anatomy she was engaging at all! All she knew was that this man made her feel something deep and powerful…something she hardly dared to feel…And she wanted—no, needed to sample more of that spell-binding sensation. It might not make any sense to an outsider, given their past traumatic history together, and yet there it was.
All through the evening spent with Paul and his two cheerful companions she had hardly been able to think about anything but Nikolai, immersed in his work again. Didn’t he ever long to make a real connection with someone? she’d thought, almost desperately. With Arina and work his two main priorities, had he relegated any hopes he might have had for a deeper relationship with a woman to a completely lost cause? After all, he had strongly asserted that he was only interested in a marriage of convenience now, after his first marriage had failed so miserably.
All evening the strongest impulse to return to the house and be with him had been building inside Ellie. Despite his anger towards her over the past—despite all of that—she knew something inside him was trying to reach out to her, and from the moment she had seen him again, she had been slowly and inevitably moving towards that call.
She turned round to face him. ‘This is a lovely room.’
Nikolai smiled at the comment. And this time the only danger reflected in that riveting gesture was the seductive promise that glinted in his eyes and lingered round the edges of his compelling mouth. ‘Made all the lovelier by your presence, my angel.’
Struck dumb as he approached her, it seemed to Ellie that every inch of her skin was alive with the sensation of his touch—even though he hadn’t physically made contact with her yet.
Also silent, Nikolai reached out for her, to slide his arm round her waist and lift her up high against his chest as easily as if her weight amounted to nothing. His glance boring into hers like simmering blue flame, he laid her down on the sumptuous bed, and with another enigmatic smile drew his hand lightly down the centre of her chest.
Ellie gasped as one by one he flicked open the three half-moon-shaped mother-of-pearl buttons on her blouse, discovering that she had a penchant for very feminine underwear. She saw the pleasure in his sexy blue eyes deepen as they skimmed the semi-sheer floral bra she was wearing, with its pink satin bow in the centre and prettily decorated straps.
Murmuring, ‘Beautiful…’ Nikolai reached behind Ellie’s slim back and undid the fastening.
When his hands palmed her exposed breasts she bit her lip and briefly closed her eyes, hardly prepared for the storm of need that rippled hotly through her. When he pinched her aching, tingling nipples and sublime languorous heat invaded her—the aroused velvet tips surged hotly into his hands and made her gasp again.
Leaning back to shrug off his shirt, Nikolai smiled lazily. Getting the distinct message that he planned to take his time making love to her, and would relish every moment, Ellie sighed, surprisingly content and quite prepared to wait. After all, what did she have to complain about? Just the sight of him was a feast for the senses.
Bare-chested now, he was long bodied and lean-waisted, with heavenly broad shoulders that she longed to rest her head against. The sight of his golden-tanned torso, silky smooth and perfect, with its mouthwatering display of toned lean muscle and smattering of dark blond hair over flat male nipples, made another surge of heat flow into Ellie’s already melting centre, and her thighs quivered to contain it.
‘Now we have to get rid of some of these clothes, don’t you think?’ Smiling like the cat that got the cream, Nikolai peeled off his own jeans and then Ellie’s.
While she still reeled with the new sense of urgency and demand in his touch, he covered her near naked body with his and kissed her. It was the most deeply erotic and exploratory kiss she had ever encountered. Her senses were already saturated with the clean, yet musky warm scent of the man as his hard body pressed her down into the bed—and the taste of him was like hot summer nights under the stars. Ellie could have wept with pleasure.
What Nikolai did not know was that no man had ever held her this intimately before—but very soon he would find out. A small stab of unease stole away her joy for the briefest moment, but then her lover moved his sensuous velvet mouth from hers onto her breasts, and she forgot everything but the sheer ecstasy that she was drowning in.
Her hands were moving over his body too, in an instinctive need to give him back some of the pleasure he was giving her. As her palms cupped the tight smooth buttocks beneath his black silk shorts, she felt them clench and his sex—already like steel against her belly—seemed to grow even harder. Emitting a sound that was very like a satisfied growl, he lifted his head, gave her a wicked smile, then kissed her passionately on the mouth, his tongue thrusting hotly inside her.
Disengaging himself only temporarily, Nikolai started to inch Ellie’s delicate floral panties down over her hips and then with the minimum of fuss deftly removed his shorts. Kissing her again, as though he could scarcely bear being apart from her for even a second, he slid his hand down between their bodies over the soft tiny curls between her quivering thighs. While Ellie was absorbing this new, fiercely erotic delight he stroked his fingers across her hot moist centre. She sighed out her pleasure and shock on a husky breath.
The feelings that this most intimate of touches elicited were so intense that shuddering emotion brought tears to her eyes. It was frightening to sense all her defences being as expertly and vividly demolished as they were being now. Vulnerability was always scary, but she was so tired of being numb with grief and pain and regret. To feel anything was surely better than that?
Now Nikolai was murmuring to her in Russian, and it was the sexiest sound Ellie had ever heard, even though she didn’t know what his words meant. Her hands moved tenderly over his short fair hair and round the rough coating of stubble that studded his hard jaw.
‘What are you saying?’ she asked softly, with a helpless catch in her voice as he inserted a finger deep inside her. Her muscles tightened in shock around him.
‘I am saying,’ he began, ‘that you look and feel and taste like heaven to me, my bewitching, lovely Ellie…And that…’ he spread her a little more with his fingers and she gasped ‘…I want to be inside you…right now.’
As he positioned himself at the apex of her thighs and started to slowly inch himself inside her Ellie knew great relief that Nikolai didn’t just thrust into her without care, thinking only of his own urgent need for satisfaction. It made her heart swell with tenderness towards him even more. But she couldn’t help but freeze for a moment as he started to fill and stretch her, and he glanced down at her with the faintest suggestion of a frown on his handsome face.
‘I am not hurting you?’ he asked with concern.
‘No.’ Her smile was quick to reassure him.
‘Then it has been a long time, perhaps?’ He frowned again.
Unable to bear the idea that he clearly thought she had shared her body with other men before him…namely his brother…Ellie reached out to touch his cheek. ‘I’m fine, Nikolai…really. It’s just that—’
‘What?’ Now his whole body stiffened, and he stopped moving inside her, the honed muscles in his biceps taut as iron as he held himself above her.
‘I’ve never been with a man like this before,’ she breathed, anxiety making her bite her lip.
‘You have never? You are telling me you are innocent?’
‘Yes.’
Would he stop making love to her now that he knew the truth? Perhaps even believe she was using her virginity as some kind of manipulative tool?
But Nikolai wasn’t regarding her with disapproval at all. Instead there was the most beguiling smile hovering about his delectable lips.
‘You are so beautiful,’ he murmured, before claiming her mouth in another all-consuming and avid kiss.
Slowly he started to move inside her again, encouraging her to wrap her firm, shapely legs around that perfect lean waist of his, so that he could go deeper. Surprised, and secretly delighted at how her body responded so meltingly to his possession, realising that pain had hardly featured at all, Ellie finally allowed her tense body to relax. It would be all right. This was a totally natural and beautiful experience between a man and a woman. It was only her past anxieties around men in general that had made her resist sampling it before. But then no man she had ever met apart from Nikolai had made her want to surrender her virginity before.
Giving herself up to the sensations of joy and ecstasy that were building like a storm about to break inside her as Nikolai’s thrusts became more rhythmic and urgent, it was Ellie who confidently and eagerly sought his mouth and claimed it. Soon after that her huskily voiced gasps littered the air as wild sensation dissolved into never-before-imagined bliss.
As she fought to gain purchase on the torrent of emotions that engulfed her, her lover held himself still above her, groaned out loud, then slowly lowered himself against Ellie’s chest as she registered a sensation of scalding heat and dampness drench her insides. As he cupped her face, his blue eyes had never regarded her with such searing scrutiny before.
‘Why did you wait so long to be with a man?’ he asked.
‘I’ve never met a man I wanted to be with like this before…that’s why.’ For Ellie there was no conflict involved whatsoever.
‘Not even my brother?’ Nikolai’s gaze was fierce again, and she saw doubt and deep inner turmoil flit across the brilliant azure irises.
‘I was never with Sasha in an intimate situation—and I was certainly never attracted to him either!’
‘I have been tormented these past five years, thinking of you and him together in just such a situation as this!’
‘But now you know that can’t be true!’ Ellie’s chest was tight with fear that Nikolai would somehow not believe she’d been a virgin after all. She was also stunned to learn of his torment about her and his brother, and to hear such jealousy in his voice.
Sighing heavily, he moved his hands into her silken blonde hair. ‘Yes…I know that you were innocent until you gave yourself to me just now. It is a gift no man should take for granted, angel moy, and it was wonderful! It makes me more certain than ever that it is right you should become my wife.’
Why? Because he wanted to possess her? Own her instead of love her? Her heart hurt at the very idea. Surrendering her innocence to Nikolai had been no small thing for Ellie. And now she had to face the most unexamined but possibly terrifying idea of all…She loved him—and on some deeply shocking level she knew that she always had.
‘Why did you break up with your first wife?’ she asked, aware that she was potentially ruining something precious by stirring up the past again.
But she wanted to know about Nikolai and Veronika—the woman who had seemed to have made him so cynical and hard about marrying for love again.
Rolling away from her to lie on his back, Nikolai stared up at the ceiling. Feeling chilled without the warmth of his heavenly body, Ellie pulled an edge of the silk counterpane across her breasts.
‘She was unfaithful to me…maybe more than once. I was away working a lot of the time, and she did not always want to come with me. You must have been aware when you came to live here after your sister died that my marriage was a sham. It had been over for a long time, really. When I look back now, I wonder how I could ever have chosen such a woman to be my wife! Apart from our Russian heritage we never did have very much in common. But I was young when I met her, and she acted like I hung the moon!’ He lifted a shoulder. ‘I suppose I fooled myself she was genuinely in love with me, and with all the responsibility of the family business thrust upon me I needed an ally. I was looking for a companion and friend as well as a lover Ellie…’
Turning his head, Nikolai studied her closely. Ellie wanted to say to him You’re so far away, lying over there…come back to me… But because she had no certainty of anything right then as far as their relationship was concerned she held back the words.
‘I’m sorry for the pain she must have put you through,’ she said softly instead, genuinely meaning it.
His eyes widened. ‘You never cease to astonish me—do you know that? You always seem to be thinking about somebody else’s suffering and not your own! Why is that?’
‘I don’t particularly want to dwell on my own pain. I’ve sought to come to terms with it as best as I can, but I decided long ago that the past wasn’t a good place to live and it was better to concentrate on trying to build a healthier future instead.’
‘I feared that you would die when you were in the hospital.’
As he leaned up on an elbow, Nikolai’s glance was grave and concerned. Her heart turning over in surprise and sorrow, Ellie sat up too. ‘No!’ she exclaimed. ‘I was hurt badly, yes…But I knew I would recover. I’m a survivor, Nikolai. I do know that about myself.’
As soon as the words were out of her mouth she flinched—because Sasha had not survived. Would Nikolai resent her for that for ever? How would they make this planned marriage between them work if he could never let go of blaming her?
Thinking about the memory that had partially come back—no doubt stimulated by her return to this house—Ellie felt her stomach knot painfully at the idea of telling him just why she had been in the car with Sasha that day. He’d loved his brother so much, and he’d already suffered such great torment and grief over his death. Even if it meant exonerating herself at last, she was still torn about telling Nikolai what she now knew to be the truth about the events of that day.
‘I saw you limping the other day, when I picked you up from the studios,’ he remarked thoughtfully. ‘Did the surgery leave any scars?’
Tucking some hair behind her ear, feeling suddenly shy, Ellie held the edge of the sheet over her breasts as though it were a life-raft. ‘It did…but they’re actually not too bad.’ Smiling, she moved some of the fabric away from her legs to reveal the two long scars that were about half an inch in width, running up the front of each bare, shapely thigh.
There was also one at the side of the ankle she had broken too. That was the cause of her limp. The surgeon concerned had done a fantastically neat job of sewing her up again after the operation, and Ellie had never wasted time fretting over the appearance of her scars. That had partly been because up until now—until she’d known for certain she had not voluntarily got into the car with Sasha and taken Arina with her—she had been racked with such terrible guilt and thought she’d deserved them.
Now Nikolai was touching each pale pink slightly raised blemish in turn, gently stroking his fingers across the tight repaired skin, his fascinating cheekbones appearing even more hollow and defined as his gaze became almost hypnotised by what he was viewing.
‘Now it is my turn to tell you that I am sorry you endured so much pain…I truly regret that. But the truth is, Ellie, there is nothing that could spoil such incandescent beauty as yours…nothing!’
The hands that were touching her were suddenly coaxing her trembling thighs apart, running up the insides of them with renewed mesmerising purpose. Shivering, Ellie barely had time to register her surprise when Nikolai ripped away the silk that she was modestly covering her nakedness with and covered her trembling form with his body instead.
‘Now that I have you right where I want you I find that I cannot get enough of you! Something that I secretly always knew would be the case!’
And his velvet tongue slid in between the moist seams of Ellie’s quivering mouth and made her forget both the past and the future, to concentrate vividly and unequivocally on the present…
The hands that covered the soft leather of the steering wheel were damp and slightly shaking. All through the nightmare car journey through London’s busy traffic Ellie drew on every resource she had—mental, physical and emotional—to get her through the dreadful ordeal. Once they reached Sasha’s friend’s house she told herself that she would seize the chance…any chance…to get Arina safely away and back home to Nikolai—to the man she knew loved her more than he loved his own life.
But the alcohol and drugs he had taken were seriously messing with Sasha’s head, and all through the drive he had been alternately muttering and then falling into a trance. Ellie seriously feared for him if she left him with this so-called friend, but she would cross that bridge when she came to it. Right now, for Arina’s sake if no-one else’s, she simply had to focus all her concentration on the road ahead.
She was momentarily and shockingly distracted when Sasha suddenly grabbed the wheel, babbling something about someone trying to get him, and shouting in terror. Frantically trying to get back control of the careening vehicle, Ellie inadvertently veered to the right of the queue of traffic in front of her. Before she could straighten the wheel she had to deliberately yank it even further right as an oncoming Land-Rover headed straight for them. Suddenly they were motoring towards a nearby lamppost instead.
From that moment on, time had taken on a slowed-down almost dream-like quality…and Ellie had watched events unfold as though she was an observer looking down on the scene instead of being part of it herself. The last thing she remembered was Sasha yelling and Arina crying, and then…and then nothing.
Merciful blackness had descended like a stormy rain-cloud blocking out the sun, and the next thing she recalled was waking up in hospital with the too-harsh lighting on the ceiling almost blinding her with its vulgar and painful intrusion…
‘Sasha!’ she cried out loud—a final picture flashing through her mind of his head slumped forward onto the dashboard covered in blood.
With her heart beating as if it would beat right out of her chest, Ellie opened her eyes to discover she had been dreaming, and was still in the opulent bed she had been sharing with Nikolai for most of the night.
But it was not just a distressing dream, she realised…It was the full and complete return of her memory of what had happened that day—and why the accident had occurred.
Pressing her hands either side of her head, Ellie couldn’t help murmuring beneath her breath…‘Dear God!’ Now a little more conscious, she glanced round. Disturbingly, there was no sign of her attentive and ardent lover. All that remained of his presence was the sexy aroma of the aftershave that he wore and—as she discovered, touching the sheet—the warm imprint where his body had so recently been…