“I am becoming resigned to your lack of appreciation for my stunning achievements,” he dryly admitted, “but you could occasionally offer some well-deserved words of gratitude.”
?
?Gratitude?” She jerked as if he had slapped her. “For what? For deceiving me? For luring me onto this ship under false pretenses?” There was a sharp pause, her hazel eyes darkening with pain. “Oh, my God.”
“Now what?”
“Vanya knew this was your ship.” She glared at him as if he were responsible for the older woman’s decision to conceal the truth from her. And…he was. He had insisted that no one know that he was in pursuit of his father’s boat. Or that Emma was traveling with him. He would not risk alerting Count Nevskaya that he was in danger of having his sins revealed. “She was a part of your plot. How could she betray my trust? I thought she was my friend.”
Gathering her hair in his fist, he tugged the satin strands until her head tilted back, revealing the flashing hazel eyes and the lush temptation of her lips.
“It is because she is your friend that she is determined to protect you,” he growled.
He was tired of battling this woman. He wanted her in his bed. He wanted her beneath him as he parted her legs and sank into her feminine heat with a deep, hungry pace that would tumble them both into paradise.
As if sensing the sudden tension in the air, Emma sucked in an unsteady breath, a visible pulse fluttering at the base of her throat.
“By putting me at the mercy of a ruthless criminal?”
“At my mercy, eh?” Unable to resist temptation, Dimitri leaned down to touch his lips to that revealing pulse. “Mmm. Now that is a delicious notion.”
Her hands pressed against his chest. “Dimitri.”
“Yes, milaya?”
“I demand that you return this ship to St. Petersburg at once.”
He nipped her sensitive skin, a smile curving his lips as she trembled in pleasure.
“Do you truly believe you are in a position to demand anything?”
“I mean it, Dimitri. Return me to St. Petersburg or—”
“Or what?” he challenged. “You will swim back to Russia?”
She arched her back, clearly attempting to avoid his seeking lips. “Do not mock me. I will never forgive Vanya.”
Pulling back, he studied her sulky expression, his fingers covertly unfastening the buttons that ran the length of her spine. He needed to feel the warm satin of her skin.
“Vanya is considerably older and far more experienced than you. Can you not accept she made a choice she thought best?” he coaxed. “And that she simply desired to protect you?”
“I can protect myself,” she muttered.
His teeth clenched at her stubborn refusal to admit she needed him. Why did she have to be so damnably independent?
“Truly?” he rasped, easing the heavy gown down her body. “You have just admitted you are at the mercy of a ruthless scoundrel. And you have no one to blame but yourself.”
Intent on their argument, Emma appeared unaware of his skillful disrobement, not even when the gown was pooled around her feet.
“I trusted Vanya,” she hissed.
“You have relied upon blind luck since arriving in St. Petersburg.” His gaze searing over her slender body. “And if not for the kindness of Herrick Gerhardt and Vanya you most likely would be a captive with your sister upon my father’s ship or already sold to a brothel.”
“And instead I am trapped with you.”
Trapped? Could she possibly be more insulting?
He would prove that for all her spitting fire, she was eager to be trapped with him. Pressing her back against his body, he yanked at the ribbons that held up her linen shift.