The Man She Shouldn't Crave

‘The Wolves?’

‘Da, the Wolves.’ Neutral ground.

‘They’re your family?’

He shrugged. ‘Maybe. Yeah, if you want to look at it that way.’

Rose gazed at him steadily, then said, ‘So how did you get from street kid to guy with big bucks?’

She was letting it go, and Plato could feel himself relaxing. He could paper over the rest. Instead he heard himself telling her the truth. ‘I got a girl pregnant when I was seventeen. I was ready to marry her. I got a wedding coat and a job at the local mine. But she was smarter than me. She wanted out of that town, and she insisted we go to Moscow. I had this crazy idea it could work out—I’d do for my kid what my father had never done for me. But the truth was she just wanted the train fare. She had a guy in the city. There wasn’t even a baby.’

‘What did you do?’

‘What do you think I did? I stayed. I took a chance, because there didn’t seem much to go back for, and I built this life.’

‘I understand. You did the only thing you could do,’ murmured Rose, and she did understand.

When she’d left Houston she’d known there would be no going back to Fidelity Falls. Her four years with Bill had taken that possibility away from her. Changed her. You couldn’t go back.

Rose settled her hands on his shoulders, brought her lips to his and kissed him. Gave him her understanding in the only way she knew. Because of that it wasn’t a gentle kiss—it wasn’t anything like that which had gone before.

Plato splayed his hand through her hair to deepen the kiss, rolling her under him to take what she was giving—and that was when he felt it. The force of what Rose held inside her, what she was communicating.

This wasn’t just sex. Not for her, and certainly not for him. If this was just about sex he’d have had her four ways to Sunday, moving through his repertoire of positions and some of hers, until he was sated and she was telling all her girlfriends what a phenomenally good time she’d had. She wouldn’t be outside his apartment before she started making calls…he was a trophy for women in this town.

Instead Rose had fallen asleep in his arms. Now they were eating in bed. Rose was asking him about his mother, his grandparents, and he was telling her. He was telling her things he hadn’t revealed to another living soul. And now she was kissing him, and he was kissing her—not as a prelude to sex, although it was about to go that way, but because she wanted to share her feelings with him. And he was taking what she offered.

He lifted his head, looked down into her big blue eyes as he cradled her…

Since when had he cradled a woman in his arms?

The nimbus of her dark hair was drying around her face. He made a study of the classic contours of that face, those unplucked dark brows of hers that just made her eyes seem more intensely blue, her mouth more ruby than red. She gazed back at him steadily, mirroring everything he felt…

What had he done to deserve all this?

Nothing. You deserve nothing.

Hell.

He needed to get this back to basics before he said or did something he would regret. He sat her up, disengaged her from his arms. Rose didn’t seem nonplussed, but she was looking at him curiously.

He checked his watch.

‘What is it?’ she asked.

He thought fast. ‘There’s a party tonight, detka, how about we make an appearance? Introduce you to a bit of Moscow nightlife?’

He was getting off the bed. He was going to break up this little exercise in bonding with lots of people, lots of noise—a reminder of who he was and what she was doing here.

Rose didn’t say anything. She didn’t look hurt or confused or about to lose it with him. All she was doing was sprawling on the bed, incredibly sexy, bunching the sheet around herself, looking so at home Plato felt the muscles in his gut contract.

‘What sort of party?’ She didn’t sound offended, merely surprised.

She didn’t know.

‘Opening night for a nightclub. I own it.’ He forced himself to smile, forced

easy cynicism onto his lips, gave her the knowing look that made other women curl their toes. He knew what he was doing.