Billionaires: The Daredevil. Lauren Canan

one long night of bliss.

      His hands were moving over her body, palms undulating over the narrow curves of waist and hips, as if he were discovering them for the first time. She heard his low growl of pleasure as he brought her up against the growing hardness at his groin, mirrored by the molten rush of heat to her sex. He cupped one of her breasts, curling his fingers over the shiny green material, and her nipple pushed insistently against his palm as she teetered on the brink of giving in to the urgent demands of her body. A couple of minutes more and he would be undressing her. He would be kissing his way over her naked body and she would be urging him on, just like last time.

      Until the truth hit her like a bucket of ice water as she realised what he was doing. Once again, she was letting him use her. She had dressed up for dinner and behaved as impeccably as she knew how and he was responding by behaving as if she were nothing more than a decorative object he could take to bed without conscience. As if she were a piece of clay he could mould to his own desires, never stopping to think that she might have feelings—and that he might be trampling all over them.

      Tearing her lips away from his, she used all her strength to plant her hands on his shoulders to push him away and he jerked his head back in surprise.

      His eyes darkened. ‘What’s wrong?’

      She stepped away from him and the temptation he presented. She could feel the heat of her face and the thunder of her pulse as she glared at him. ‘What’s wrong? Are you...serious?’ she demanded breathlessly. ‘Do you really think you can walk back into my life and completely disrupt it—and then expect me to have sex with you, just because you’ve snapped your fingers?’

      ‘But you want me.’

      He said it unequivocally—like someone stating calmly that the sky was blue—and all the anger which had been simmering away inside Erin now came to the boil.

      ‘Oh, I might want you,’ she agreed. ‘My body may have been programmed to react to yours in a way I don’t particularly like, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to follow through. Because you don’t have any respect for women, do you, Dimitri? Not just me, but any woman. You use your undoubted charisma to get them into your bed, but you blaze through their lives without thinking about the consequences. You used me that night because you were in a dark place—and afterwards you just cast me aside, as if I was someone of no consequence. Like I was a thing—not a person.’

      She shook her head as she struggled to get more breath in her lungs. ‘I thought my sister was wrong to tell you about my wedding—but now I can see it was probably the right thing to do. Leo does have the right to know about his father. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to act like...like some sort of convenience by getting intimate with you. Because that night was a one-off and it was a mistake.’

      ‘Erin—’

      ‘No! You aren’t going to change my mind—no matter how hard you try.’ Frustratedly she pushed a handful of hair away from her hot face. ‘While we’re here we can accomplish what we initially set out to do. I will pretend to be your secretary if that’s what you want and we can use the time to decide on a way forward best suited to our son. But I don’t plan on having sex with you, Dimitri—not now and not ever—so you’d better get that into your stubborn head.’

       CHAPTER SIX

      DIMITRI’S BODY ACHED and his blood sang with the most unbearable frustration he’d ever experienced. He still couldn’t quite believe the way the evening had ended—with Erin refusing to have sex with him, even though her body had been screaming out its objections as she’d pushed him away.

      When had a woman ever done that?

      Walking over to the unshuttered windows, he stared out at the clear night sky of Jazratan. With no light pollution, the stars were impossibly bright and they shone down over the desert plains like blazing beacons. He had left the bedroom windows open and the scent of the exotic blooms in the palace gardens drifted in to mingle with the heavy fragrance of the roses which perfumed the room. It was over two hours since she’d kicked him out of her suite and yet still he couldn’t sleep.

      In the old days he might have seen off a shot or three of vodka to chase away the uncomfortable feelings which now gnawed away at the pit of his stomach. If he’d been in a city, he might have ordered a car to drive him to a casino, where he would play cards until daybreak. But it was nearly seven years since he’d drunk vodka or gambled away his money, and so far he hadn’t missed either.

      Until tonight.

      Tonight he would have welcomed the oblivion of something—anything—to blot out these dark thoughts. What he wouldn’t give to forget the accusations she’d flung at him, or to work out why they had cut so deep.

      Because they were true?

      He stared into the sky as a shooting star shot through the inky stratosphere, leaving behind a blurred and silvery trail. Had he treated her like a commodity by kicking her out of his apartment the morning after he’d bedded her—or had he simply been protecting her from the kind of man he really was? He hadn’t wanted to drag someone like Erin into the seedy world he’d inhabited at the time. He had looked into her shining eyes and known that he couldn’t take away any more of her innocence. She deserved better than him.

      He’d convinced himself that he was doing her a favour by making it clear that if she wanted to hold on to her job, they must resume their roles of boss and employee. That was why he’d left the country—to give her time to get used to the fact that the sex wasn’t going to happen again. And when he’d returned she had come round to his apartment with that strange expression on her face and had found him in flagrante with some blonde. He’d thought sexual jealousy had been the motivation behind her decision to resign—and in many ways it had been simpler to let her go. He hadn’t wanted to be reminded of the night they’d shared. He hadn’t wanted to have to fight off any inconvenient feelings of still wanting her...

      But the truth was that he’d missed her. No secretary he’d employed before or since had been able to equal her. They’d always worked well together—even if sometimes she used to regard him sternly with those catlike eyes of hers. He had allowed Erin Turner a cautious proximity which nobody other than his most favoured bodyguard had been granted. And the irony of it was that he’d never even thought about her in a sexual way before that night. To him she’d just been part of the background—as reliable as the cup of strong coffee she placed on his desk each morning. Sometimes they used to discuss the morning’s headlines. Sometimes he used to ask her opinion and, occasionally, act on it. Was it a crazy admission to make that he’d almost forgotten she was a woman, until the night when his spirit had been dark and desperate and she had been standing in his doorway in her sensible navy work suit. He had looked at her and suddenly she had been all woman.

      He thought about her sleeping in the adjoining suite as dawn broke over the Jazratan desert in an explosion of colour—turning the sky an intense shade of rose pink before giving way to gold, then amber. But suddenly his thoughts were far away from the luxurious palace. He thought about the laughing little boy he’d seen running along the London street and his heart clenched with an emotion he didn’t recognise.

      He showered and shaved, but Erin still hadn’t risen when a servant rapped at the door and presented him with a folded pile of riding clothes. Minutes later, he emerged from his dressing room to see that she must have let herself into his suite while he’d been changing. She was staring out at the gardens and she was washed gold with morning sunlight, wearing another of those all-concealing outfits—the ones deemed suitable not to offend the country’s notoriously strict dress codes, but which somehow managed to draw attention to the slender curves of her body. She turned round when she heard him enter and, although her face looked bloodless and pale, he couldn’t miss the way her eyes darkened when she saw him.

      Infuriatingly, he felt his body’s own powerful response to her presence but, ruthlessly, he clamped it down.