‘So...?’ Nikolai prompted, watching a strand of bronze hair fan out across her white throat as she lifted her head high, her pale skin accentuating the luminous green of her eyes and the succulent pink of her lips. He tensed, fighting the incipient throb at his groin with annoyance.

‘Would...?’ Ella breathed in deep and straightened her spine. ‘I’m here to ask if one night would do.’

‘One night of what?’ Nikolai queried blankly.

‘You know, sex, for goodness’ sake!’ Ella launched back at him in furious embarrassment. ‘I mean, if that’s all you want, I hardly need to go to London and live with you for it!’

Nikolai surveyed her in shock and it took a great deal to shock him. ‘Let me get this straight...you’re offering me a night of sex instead?’

‘Don’t make it sound so sordid!’ Ella lashed back at him.

‘It wasn’t me who made the offer. No, the night of sex wouldn’t meet my...requirements.’ Nikolai selected the word and voiced it smooth as silk. ‘I also assume by that offer that you’re not a virgin?’

‘And why would you think I was at my age?’ But Ella thought better of lying because there was always the hope that the truth would be a total turn-off for him. ‘Actually, I am inexperienced but...’

Distaste at the entire conversation was filling Nikolai. Of course she had assumed he wanted her for sex. What else was she supposed to think? But he wasn’t a ball of sleaze like Cyrus, who treated women like toys he enjoyed breaking. And as it occurred to Nikolai what a challenge making that offer must have been for an innocent like her, he almost swore and had to fight back an angry sense of discomfiture. For the very first time he appreciated that he had recklessly plunged himself into a scenario that was not at all his style.

‘One night won’t work for me,’ Nikolai admitted in a driven undertone.

Ella’s heart was thumping at what felt like a mile a minute behind her breastbone. Relief and dismay assailed her in equal parts. Naturally she was very relieved not to be asked to immediately deliver on the shameless proposition she had just made, but she was taken aback by the speed and power of his repudiation as well. What did he really want? What on earth more could he possibly want or expect from her?

‘Then I only have one other...suggestion to make,’ she murmured tightly. ‘You marry me.’

‘Marry you?’ Nikolai exclaimed after an unnervingly protracted pause while he studied her with incredulous force. ‘Are you out of your mind?’

She had finally got an honest and true reaction out of Nikolai Drakos, Ella realised, and a curious feeling of triumph mingled with her mortification. The idea of getting married had shattered him, scoring colour along those amazing high cheekbones, widening his stunning dark-fringed golden eyes. Evidently he had not been prepared for that idea.

CHAPTER THREE

‘IT WAS A purely practical suggestion from my point of view,’ Ella told him curtly.

‘You need to change your point of view,’ Nikolai retorted with sardonic bite.

Her face was burning with embarrassment and her hands had closed into tight little fists of restraint. If he couldn’t be more frank about exactly what he needed from her, then he could take the rough with the smooth and it would be his own fault. ‘I can’t. You would have to marry me to persuade my father that it was acceptable for you to write off his debts. He’s no freeloader.’

‘There is no way that I will marry you to get what I want!’ Nikolai cut in with a raw edge of impatience to his dark deep drawl.

‘Then that concludes our discussion,’ Ella stated without heat, simply desperate to escape the opulent hotel suite and forget that she had ever met him. As her father had said when he had put the family home on the line and lost it, well, at least he knew he had tried. Well, she now knew what it was like to try hard and still fail too.

‘Diavole, Ella!’ Nikolai bit out as she reached the door. ‘There has to be another way!’

Ella spun round. ‘No, there honestly isn’t. My father couldn’t live with the idea that his daughter would move in with some man to clear his debts.’

His melted caramel eyes suddenly flashed as brilliant a gold as sunlight. ‘You have the rare ability to make everything sound sleazy!’

‘No, you just don’t like plain speaking...unless it’s you doing it. And you talk in riddles. You asked me to be your mistress yet you say no to the chance to sleep with me.’

‘Obviously I want more from you than sex. I can get sex anywhere, any time,’ he assured her dismissively.

Frustration roared through Ella. ‘I’m not a secret heiress, am I?’

‘What the hell are you talking about?’

‘I thought I might be the sixth cousin of some distant relation who’s worth a fortune and that you had found out and that maybe—’

‘Your imagination is more inventive than mine. But in that situation a man would want marriage to secure his share of the inheritance. However, in this instance...’ Nikolai compressed his wide sensual mouth.

Marriage, even a fake marriage, was out of the question. Nikolai had never wanted to get married. From the little he remembered of his irresponsible parents, they had fought continually and spent their money on alcohol and drugs while neglecting their two children. He probably wouldn’t have survived early childhood without the loving care of his older sister, who had had a real live baby to look after instead of a doll. No, Nikolai would be perfectly happy to leave the world without descendants of his own. Nor could he imagine wanting one woman for the rest of his life and shunning all others. He barely repressed a shudder because he set a high value on his freedom of choice.

‘In this instance?’ Ella prompted.

‘I need you with me in London.’

‘But as I’ve already explained, you can’t have me without a wedding ring. You know, I don’t want to marry you either,’ Ella admitted shortly. ‘But if it makes my family happy and secure again, I would do it for their sake.’

‘I wouldn’t even consider it. I will deal with your family,’ Nikolai said flatly.

‘What on earth do you mean?’

What it really came down to was how far he was prepared to go in his efforts to punish Cyrus, Nikolai reflected. A fleeting image of his sister’s gentle smile, brought to the surface by memories of his background, froze him in place. There should be and there would be no limits to his desire for revenge. If others got caught up in the backlash, what was that to him? He could not afford to have a conscience. Ella was a pawn, nothing more.

‘I will tell your family that we’ve been seeing each other and that now we want to be together in London,’ Nikolai explained smoothly. ‘Your father cannot struggle to settle debts that no longer exist. He will not have the luxury of choice.’

‘You think it’s a luxury for me to be able to choose to be your mistress?’ Ella launched at him furiously, rage bubbling up through her slight body like a hot spring at the prospect of that indignity. ‘But I’ve already said no to that option!’

‘Which is wasting my time and your own! You can’t renegotiate the terms just because you don’t like them. I won’t let you. There will be no single night, no marriage either,’ he asserted in a harsh undertone, his lean, darkly handsome features forbidding in cast, his stunning eyes hard as black diamonds. ‘Either you come to London to be with me or I walk away. That’s the only choice you have!’

The raw tension straining the atmosphere sent a wave of dizziness through Ella. Consternation brought her defensive barriers crashing down. He had ruthlessly rejected her options. Her head swimming a little, she closed her hands over the back of a tall chair to force her body to stand steady. She stared back at him with a sinking heart. It was the moment she had been fighting to avoid since he’d first confronted her earlier that day. The ‘grit your teeth and deal’ moment when there was no room left to wriggle. Perspiration dampened her skin.

‘Your sole source of interest here should be the pay-off,’ Nikolai reminded her drily. ‘And learning to do as you are told.’

In the rushing silence, Ella wrinkled her nose. ‘If I don’t agree with something, I’m hopeless at doing what I’m told.’

‘But you can learn,’ Nikolai sliced in, his tone as glacial as ice water. ‘Don’t sign up for this if you can’t respect the rules.’

‘Perhaps you could tell me how I’m supposed to respect a man who wants me even though I don’t want him?’ Ella shot back at him in scornful challenge.

‘Do you always lie in preference to telling the truth about yourself?’ Nikolai enquired dangerously softly as he strode closer.

Ella found herself backed up against the door before she could grab the opportunity to make the swift exit she had originally planned. ‘I’m not lying—’

Nikolai rested the palm of one hand against the door and gazed down at her with hard dark eyes. ‘The worst of it is that you know you’re lying...but I don’t play that game.’

‘I want to leave.’

‘Not until I say you can,’ Nikolai fenced, so big he was like a wall blocking the rest of the room from her view and cutting out most of the light, so that for the first time she wished she were wearing heels to cut the ridiculous height differential between them to a more reasonable level.

Ella turned up her face, chin tilted at an obstinate angle, green eyes sparkling. ‘I could use my knee to persuade you.’

‘Why would you damage a part of me you hope to enjoy?’ Nikolai countered.

‘It would take an avalanche to crush your ego, wouldn’t it?’

‘If I was modest you would walk all over me with pleasure.’ Nikolai was entranced by the glorious green of her eyes against the smooth, fine grain of her porcelain skin. ‘But that’s not what you want from me, is it? You’d much prefer me to take your choices away and give you the excuse to be with me.’

‘That’s rubbish!’ Ella gasped, barely able to credit that he had made such an allegation. ‘I don’t want or need an excuse to be with you!’

‘Ne...yes, you do,’ Nikolai insisted, pinning her up against the door in blatant entrapment. ‘You want excuses and persuasion and, sadly, you’re not going to get them from me. That’s not how I am with a woman.’

‘Fascinating as this dialogue no doubt is to a man who likes to listen to the sound of his own voice, I’m not interested.’

‘Every time you lie to me I’ll punish you.’

‘Punish me?’ Ella parroted, blinking in bewilderment.

Nikolai bent down and scooped her up, disconcerted by how very light she was. Yes, she was small and slight in build but he was convinced she weighed too little to be healthy. Nikolai walked through the room into the bedroom with her in his arms. ‘You’ll like the way I punish you.’

‘What are you doing?’ Ella exclaimed as he swept her off her feet.

‘Sealing our agreement.’

‘What agreement?’ she demanded rawly as he dropped her down on a bed so well sprung that she bounced.

‘Your agreement to be my mistress.’ He savoured the word.

As Ella made a sudden sidewise motion intended to remove her from the bed Nikolai came down and imprisoned her with the vastly superior weight and strength of his big, powerful body. ‘Get off me. Let go of me...right now!’ she raked at him.

‘I really hate being shouted at,’ Nikolai confided a split second before his hard, sensual mouth claimed hers.

And for that same split second it was as though Ella’s world stopped turning and she was jolted off course, sent breathless and spinning into the unknown. Heat surged up through her like an invasive weapon. He eased her out from under him but kept her trapped in his arms. Irritation flamed through her because inexplicably she had liked his crushing weight on hers. Her fists struck at shirt-clad shoulders as unyielding as rock. The tip of his tongue flicked inside her mouth and she shivered violently, the clenching at her secret core almost painful in its intensity. He nipped at her lower lip, sucked and soothed it with his tongue. She wanted more, she wanted more so badly it hurt to be denied and the rushing tide of that hunger shocked her back into her mind again.

His kisses were like nothing she’d ever experienced before. A lean hand tunnelled below her tee and closed round a small, high breast, long fingers stroking the throbbing tip and lingering to rub and tug until her spine arched in response and her hips jerked up and a helpless sound of craving was released from low in her throat.

He pushed up the T-shirt and replaced his fingers with his mouth. She was so sensitive there that she quivered beneath every lash of his tongue, every teasing brush of his teeth, and the molten heat pulsing between her thighs was swelling and swelling in an unstoppable rise. Her hips shifted, the driving need for relief powering her every instinctive movement, and then the surge at the heart of her became so urgent, so utterly overpowering that a jagged climax took her by storm. The wave of excitement that jerked her in his hold left her sobbing for breath and mental clarity as shock seized hold of her instead.

In a driven movement that took him by surprise, Ella rolled off the bed and yanked down her T-shirt with shaking hands. Her face was hot as a fire and her entire body was throbbing and trembling in the backwash of an orgasm more powerful than anything she had ever experienced. Her nerves were shot to hell. She couldn’t even breathe normally. Momentarily she closed her eyes tight, praying for self-control. He could make her want him. He touched her, he kissed her and everything, including her proud protest of indifference, went haywire. Her body raged wildly out of control around him, which was just one more reason for her to hate him.

Dry-mouthed, Nikolai studied her, fighting his raging libido. He literally ached. He wanted to haul her back to the bed and pin her under him to drive into the hot, sweet release of her tiny body, and the intensity of his desire sent a chill of recoil snaking through him. He didn’t do intense in any form. He didn’t get excited about sex. He didn’t do exclusive. He steered clear of entanglements and complications. Revenge and work motivated him. He had never needed anything else. He had never needed a woman and, if he had anything to do with it, he never would.

‘I’m leaving,’ she told him flatly while she fought harder than she ever had in her life to rescue some kind of composure. After quivers of reaction were still travelling through her treacherous body, while she tried not to question her total loss of control, keen not to think along such demeaning lines in his presence.

Nikolai sprang off the bed, shoving his shirt back below his belt. ‘I’ll follow you back.’

‘Follow me where? What are you planning to do?’

‘Ease your move to London.’

‘Don’t you dare go near my family!’ Ella warned him furiously. ‘You’re a stranger to them.’

‘But I won’t be a stranger for long,’ Nikolai asserted, picking up a jacket.

‘You don’t know what you’re doing. They’re not stupid. They’re never going to believe that I’ve been seeing some man in secret!’ she told him with scorn.

Nikolai elevated a fine black brow. ‘People believe what they want to believe and they’ll be relieved that you’ve started living again.’

Ella’s face shuttered. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘I’m not stupid either. You’re a woman and most women are dramatic. I bet you swore you’d never love again after your fiancé died. I bet you’ve hugged your grief to you like a security blanket ever since,’ Nikolai opined.

Ella had turned white as bone. She flung him a look of loathing. ‘How dare you drag Paul into this? How do you even know about him?’

‘I know enough about you to make an educated guess or two,’ Nikolai drawled coolly.

‘Well, you got it wrong, badly wrong,’ she assured him, but she was lying because although she would never have admitted it he had got it all frighteningly right. In fact his accuracy was both uncanny and mortifying. She had sworn that she would never love again, that she would never date another man after Paul. Her grief had been so great that she had voiced bitter self-destructive sentiments that had contained little common sense. The last thing she needed to hear now was Nikolai Drakos implying that she had acted like a drama queen craving sympathy and attention.

‘So, quite naturally, your family will be delighted to believe that you have moved on after your loss and their pleasure in that reality will help them gloss over any inconsistencies in our story. They will want us to be real,’ Nikolai declared with a sardonic smile. ‘Your only role is to act happy about moving to London to see more of me.’

Something akin to panic assailed Ella’s breathing process, tightening her chest, closing her throat. Act happy? She wasn’t sure she knew how to do that. Life had been too challenging in recent years to offer many such opportunities but she had learned to smile and fake it for her family’s benefit. No, it was the idea of moving to London and an unfamiliar environment to be with Nikolai that shocked and dismayed her most. And the concept of living with a man, being intimate with a man like Nikolai Drakos utterly unnerved her. Yet if she didn’t agree to Nikolai’s demands her family’s life would be ruined. And after the setbacks and upheavals her father and Gramma had already lived through, how could they possibly cope with more at their age?

Almost three hours later, Ella let Gramma herd her into the kitchen for a private chat. She went reluctantly because she was straining to eavesdrop on the conversation that Nikolai was having with her father in the dining room the older man had long used as an office. The men’s voices rose and fell, Nikolai’s deep-pitched drawl soothing the rising note in her father’s audible objections.

‘I want Ella happy and she won’t be happy if she’s worrying herself sick about her family back home,’ Nikolai asserted forcefully.

Ella paled. Nikolai would be saying all the right things and wearing all the right expressions, she reflected bitterly. He was clearly a consummate liar and smooth as molasses in a situation that would have sent nine out of ten men running for the hills. In action he was a breathtakingly quick study. He had arrived just after the family finished dinner and joined them for tea and carrot cake. He had grasped Ella’s hand to declare that they had been seeing each other for months, ever since they had met the night she was parking cars. He had been very convincing, very persuasive and she had little doubt that he would soon crush her father’s protests and persuade him to accept that his debts were being written off.

‘Do you know what surprised me most about all this? Nikolai is so different from Paul,’ Gramma remarked as Ella began to load the dishwasher to keep her restive hands busy. ‘He’s a real man’s man.’

Ella’s soft mouth compressed. The older woman had a traditional outlook. She liked men who could hunt a wild boar before breakfast and reduce a pile of logs to wood chips by dinner time. Paul’s lack of interest in traditional male pursuits had bemused Gramma. She had liked him and treated him like a son but she had never understood him, Ella conceded with regret.

‘I never thought that you would go for someone like Nikolai. Of course, he’s very good-looking and obviously successful. Are you sure you know what you’re getting into with him?’ the older woman pressed. ‘I know living together is very popular these days but I noticed that there was no talk of an engagement in the future or anything like that.’

‘Let’s see how it goes first. We may be too different. It may not work out between us,’ Ella commented, dropping the first hint towards her eventual breakup with Nikolai. ‘Who can tell when we haven’t been able to spend much time together here?’

‘Why didn’t you tell us about him?’ Gramma demanded for at least the third time. ‘Are we so unapproachable?’

‘I said a lot of stupid stuff after Paul died,’ Ella muttered numbly.

‘You were hurt, grieving. It was normal for you to feel that way,’ Gramma assured her. ‘I only want to be sure you’re not leaping into this too fast with Nikolai. You’re turning your whole life upside down for him. I did like the fact though that he said you might choose to pick up and continue your veterinary training again.’

Yes, if there were any right impressive things to say, Nikolai had contrived to corner the market on those sentiments, Ella ruminated bitterly. He came, he saw, he conquered. Her father and her grandmother had sat in awe while Nikolai shared his supposed thoughts. Acting as though he loved her had come so very naturally to him that it had spooked Ella. He had never said the words, but his behaviour had convinced his receptive audience that he cared deeply for Ella and only wanted her happiness.

‘He’s what you need,’ the older woman murmured. ‘A fresh start somewhere new. However, I suspect that this development is going to come as a huge shock to Cyrus.’

‘I expect so,’ Ella remarked uncertainly, thinking that it had come as a huge shock to her as well, although she could hardly admit the fact.

‘You haven’t a suspicion, have you?’ Gramma grimaced. ‘I don’t think Cyrus sees you only as Paul’s former fiancée. In fact I believe his interest is a lot more personal.’

Ella studied her grandmother’s troubled face in consternation and winced. ‘No, you’re totally wrong about that. What on earth gave you such a horrible idea?’

‘It would be horrible to you, then...’ The older woman gathered with a hint of relief. ‘For a while I was a bit worried that his attentions might be welcome?’

‘There hasn’t been any attentions,’ Ella contradicted defensively.

‘The flowers...the lunch dates...that big charity do...him asking you to check his house while he’s away.’

‘For a start, Cyrus has only sent me flowers a couple of times and the charity thing was a special favour. There’s only been a couple of lunch dates and those were only casual catch-ups,’ Ella protested. ‘And me calling in to check his house when he has a resident housekeeper was just Cyrus being plain silly! I think he got all riled up about that spate of country-house robberies last year. Honestly, Gramma, Cyrus has never done or said anything that would give me the idea that he sees me as anything other than his late nephew’s fiancée and a family friend.’

‘Well, I think you’ve missed the signs. I don’t like the way he looks at you and I wouldn’t let your father approach him for a loan because I was worried it might come with strings attached,’ Gramma confided uncomfortably.

Had Ella been in the mood to laugh, she would have laughed then at the irony of her grandmother’s misgivings. Evidently the older woman had misread Cyrus’s motives and distrusted him but she had offered Nikolai and his honeyed hollow lies a red-carpet welcome.

‘Ella...?’ Nikolai called her from the hall.

Grudgingly she went to the doorway. Butch pushed out past her to caper round Nikolai’s feet. From the instant of first laying eyes on Nikolai the tiny dog had been inexplicably smitten and craving his attention.

‘Show me out. I need to get back to the hotel and start organising everything. That animal is insane,’ he breathed, stepping carefully to avoid his canine companion.

‘What do you have to organise?’ Ella queried, shooing her pet away while wondering why Butch wasn’t picking up on her hostility towards his new idol.

‘Arrangements for your move,’ Nikolai advanced, pulling open the front door with a lean, powerful hand and stepping out into the cool evening air.

As Ella closed the door in the little dog’s face he began to fuss and bark in annoyance. ‘You think you’ve won, don’t you?’ she whispered bitterly as soon as she was free from the risk of being overheard by her family.

Nikolai swung round, dark golden eyes as bright as torches, a satisfied half-smile lifting his sardonic mouth. ‘I know I’ve won and you should be pleased. Everyone’s happy.’

‘Everyone but me,’ Ella cut in curtly.

‘I’ll make you happy. You’ll have fabulous clothes and fabulous jewellery,’ Nikolai assured her, one hand splayed across her spine to hold her still in front of him as he lounged back against the wing of his spectacular sports car.

Ella bristled like a cat stroked the wrong way, scorn lightening her bright green eyes to palest jade. ‘Those things aren’t going to make me happy.’

‘What about the even more fabulous sex?’ Nikolai husked, both arms locking her into place in front of him, his keen gaze watching the rise of colour in her cheeks.

He couldn’t stop touching her. He couldn’t stop noticing things about her either. It was as though he went into supercharged observation mode in her presence. She was blushing and for some reason he revelled in having that effect on her even while he was continually surprised at the level of her innocence. How could she have been engaged and yet remain so naive? True, the fiancé had been ill but the couple had been together for years. It must’ve been quite a particular relationship, he reflected in sincere puzzlement.

After all, Ella seethed with so much outright passion. At the hotel she had flared from a spark into a wild hot flame in his arms and her fiery generous response had been incredibly exciting. Indeed it was years since Nikolai had found any aspect of sex exciting. On a scale of one to ten his hunger for Ella had now veered into the seriously uncomfortable zone. The image of her lying against him quivering and gasping with release, her languorous green eyes pinned to him, would stay with him for ever. He didn’t think he had ever wanted a woman so much and that seriously bothered him. Did it bother him enough to stop the whole scheme in its tracks?

He was promising her fabulous sex. Of course he was, Ella reflected in exasperation. Nikolai was incredibly confident of his own abilities. And maybe there was some excuse for that, she conceded as her body leant forward seemingly of its own volition, drawn by the heat and dominance of his sizzling sexual charisma.

Nikolai bent his head and kissed her. It was a slow claiming as the tip of his tongue traced the lush fullness of her lower lip and then delved gently between. A breathy little gasp erupted from her parted lips and she stepped closer. His arms snapped round her and it was the work of a moment for him to swing round and press her back against the car, his sensual mouth driving down hard on hers, his lean, powerful body crushing her against the unyielding metal.

Her every skin cell seemed to erupt into life as heat raced through her bloodstream and a bolt of naked yearning surged from low in her pelvis. His mouth was all she cared about. She couldn’t get enough of him, was convinced she would never get enough of him. She gloried in the thrust of his arousal against her, the knowledge that Nikolai Drakos wanted her and couldn’t hide the fact.

I want this man, she acknowledged, shocking herself rigid. Not someone she loved or respected or even liked. He exerted a primitive pull on her senses, which she could only compare to an utterly mindless desire to put her hand in a fire. But was it so destructive? So wrong? Wasn’t it normal, even natural, that the physical side of her nature, which she had long been forced to suppress, should finally demand expression? And Nikolai was magnificent...

Nikolai wrenched himself free of her, breathing hard. She made him feel like a teenager with his first girl. It unnerved him and made the equivalent of defensive barriers of iron bars spring up inside him to police his very thought and reaction. She knocked him off balance, tore his control to shreds and he hated it. ‘I’ll be in touch,’ he said without any expression at all.

Ella backed on hollow legs to the doorstep and watched him drive off. He had behaved as if nothing had happened. The hard, high planes of his lean dark features had betrayed no emotion. His eyes had been veiled by those ridiculously long lashes of his and his voice had been cool in tone. So where did that leave her?

Set on the road to making the biggest mistake of her life? Or to making the biggest discovery? She would make that choice, Ella promised herself squarely, not him. Wanting him wasn’t going to make a fool out of her. She was bright enough to see that what he made her feel had nothing to do with love and caring. She wouldn’t let him hurt her. She wouldn’t let him use her. If there was any using to be done, she would be the user. And if he thought otherwise, he was in for a very big surprise...

Bepul matn qismi tugadi. Ko'proq o'qishini xohlaysizmi?