The Russian's Acquisition. Dani Collins

to all but the pleasure flaring up from her abdomen, filling her with a blossoming sense of rightness. She didn’t know she was moaning with gratification until he drew away and she heard her own mewl of distress.

      With a final nip of his teeth over her swollen lips, he released her, letting her crumple with dazed clumsiness onto the bed’s pillows.

      He made an adjustment to himself, his stature powerful as a warrior’s, his harsh breath moving through parted lips, the grim line softened by the sheen of their kiss. “We can wait until morning if you really want to play hard to get, but I don’t think you do.”

      “I do,” she gasped, struggling to sit up. The laundry basket tumbled off the narrow bed, dumping all her packing onto the carpet at his feet. “I don’t sleep with men for money. I’ll transfer the money right back to you. You can’t force me into bed with you.”

      “I don’t have to,” he said on a snort, shoulders pinned back in a hard flex. “You just proved you want to.” He paused to let her absorb what she couldn’t deny.

      An awful telltale heat suffused her, making her dig her fingernails into the edge of the mattress. It was true, she wasn’t immune to him. He kept effortlessly brushing past the invisible shield that usually protected her and branding himself against her core.

      “So what if I do? My instincts are warning me that it would be a bad idea,” she told him, holding his gaze and trying to listen to those instincts even as everything in her reached longingly toward him. She could barely think of anything but sating this unfamiliar hunger when he looked at her as if he wanted to flatten her onto the bed and finish what he’d started. Her breath stuttered and her nipples contracted to tight, painful points. All of her felt magnetized toward him, but she stayed put, maintaining the distance.

      Something flashed in his eyes. Frustration maybe, but it had a flicker of desperation that quickly dissolved into triumph. “And of course there’s your reputation. Wouldn’t you like to preserve that?”

      She frowned. “Sleeping with you would ruin it!” Her voice came out throaty and oddly tinged with anticipation. She was struggling for logic, but all she could wonder was, how would it feel to have him on top of her? Inside her? An earthy part of her desperately wanted to know. No one had ever made her feel so much, and the feelings weren’t emotional and painful, but physical and exciting. Thrilling. Her lips were still burning, aching for the return of his.

      She didn’t even know him.

      But she wanted to. From the second he’d stepped off the elevator, she’d been wondering who he was. Her online search had turned up dry details about his business interests, nothing about his background. Where had he come from, besides the biggest country in the world? Why had he singled her out? Why did she react to him like this?

      “You read the memo,” he said, interrupting her thoughts with grating flatness. “A full investigation has been launched at the firm. Anyone found to have colluded with Victor’s illegal activities will be terminated. I expect more than a few rats to jump ship before they’re fired.”

      It took a moment for his statement to penetrate. She knew she wasn’t a rat, so she hadn’t been frightened. Until now. “I didn’t know what he was up to,” she reminded him, experiencing the stabbing sense of being falsely accused. “You don’t think people will say I was fired because— I would never take what I didn’t earn!”

      “Says the woman who just accepted a hundred thousand pounds for a charity that doesn’t exist.”

      “I didn’t ask for that!” She scrambled to her feet. “You’ll never prove any wrongdoing on my part.”

      “Nevertheless, you’ve been sacked. People will draw their own conclusions. Something you’re comfortable with, I believe?”

      “That was different! And if I slept with you after seeming to be with Victor, I’d look like—” The biggest gold digger in the world. Her heart plummeted.

      “Better to be called what you are than presumed a criminal. I’m well known for drawing a hard line against cheaters and thieves. I wouldn’t have one in my bed, and the world knows it. Sleeping with me would clear your name, whereas walking away would heighten speculation. I don’t think you’d find another patron after that. Not one able to keep you in the style to which you’ve grown accustomed.”

      She wouldn’t find a job frying chips with rumors of lawbreaking dogging her. “You could clear my name! You only have to speak up.”

      “Make it worth my while,” he countered, not bothering to hide his superior enjoyment at having her exactly where he wanted her. He really was conscienceless.

      “Why are you backing me into a corner like this?”

      “Why are you fighting me when you know you’ll enjoy it?”

      “You won’t,” she blurted, shoulders hunching. Her appalling lack of experience would bore him out of his skull before the first act was over.

      Triumph flashed in his eyes and a satisfied smile drew the corners of his mouth back, revealing a wolfish grin. “I have no problem communicating what I like, and you seem receptive. We’ll do fine together,” he assured her.

      She folded her arms, fingers plucking self-consciously at the cables knit into her sleeves. The thought of his laughing at her for being a virgin didn’t appeal, but she had to tell him. “Look, I’m not…what you think I am.”

      “What I think,” he said, nudging aside a pile of tumbled clothing as he stepped closer, “is that you’re something Victor wanted.” He clasped her arms above her bent elbows, gently straining them backward so her breasts arched into his muscled chest.

      She gasped, stiffening in shock, hands splaying over the ridges of his ribs, fingertips unconsciously moving to trace the powerful cage beneath warm fabric. Rivulets of heat poured through her taut abdomen to a place where need pooled, making her flesh tingle and ache to be touched. “Wh-what?”

      “Victor couldn’t have you and that means I must. Do you have a passport?”

      She couldn’t think when he touched her, but couldn’t draw away, trapped by his strength and her own weakness. But he was talking as if she were mere spoils of war.

      “Did you travel with him?” he asked with exaggerated patience.

      “I was supposed to, but he died before I went anywhere. Go back to that bit about why you…” She couldn’t bring herself to say “want” when it sounded as though the sexual attraction drowning her wasn’t affecting him. She shivered in a hot-cold shudder of uneasiness while blood rushed under her skin, flushing warmth into her chest, making her breasts feel swollen and sensitized. Her hips longed to press into his, seeking the hard length that had nudged her when they kissed.

      He knew what he was doing to her. A smug gleam lit his narrowed eyes as his gaze dropped to her lips. He started to lower his head.

      Jerking hers back, she gasped, “I haven’t agreed.” But did she really want to step onto the street at midnight with her meager possessions and become one of the homeless? Her few shallow friendships were all with people she worked with. They wouldn’t take her in for fear of losing their jobs. She didn’t have a cushion of savings, just a credit card she couldn’t pay off if she didn’t have an income.

      The direness of her situation began to hit home. At least this afternoon she’d been sure she could find some kind of menial work, but not now. Any character reference out of the firm after today would be career-stoppingly negative. Flicking a look from his set jaw to his penetrating eyes, she whispered, “You’re a real piece of work, you know that?”

      “I lost my redeeming qualities years ago,” he agreed, something dark flickering in his gaze. “Which means there’s no appealing to my better nature. Make this easy on both of us and give in, Clair.”

      She was tempted to. She didn’t have anything to lose and no one to answer to while he was dangling—what?