She grabbed a fistful of his hair and pulled his head in, forging her mouth hotly to his.
If he had stopped her then she didn’t know what she would have done. Begged? Kept going? Torn at his clothes? Yes, yes, yes—she would have done all those things.
She didn’t have to. She felt the raw power of his lust slam her back against the wall. His hands closed over her bare buttocks, lifted her. The pulsing size of him was welcomed by her slippery heat and he was stretching her, and then he thrust, then thrust again, so deep she moaned despite her determination to be quiet, and he was moving inside her with a ruthless disregard for anything else but their pleasure.
He continued to kiss her, their mouths mating as their bodies moved together, her thighs clamped around his powerful lean hips. His grunts rose and fell in counterpoint to her helpless cries. She didn’t even bother to be quiet. She wanted to wring every moment from this. And as she teetered on the brink of a climax Plato continued to drive inside her, muscles bunched in his shoulders as he kept her suspended between him and the wall. She broke apart and he slammed into her and came with a deep shout, his mouth hot at the base of her throat.
She pressed her brow to his, her breath coming in funny little gasps as she realised she was trying not to cry. Happy, victorious tears. He was hers and she could have him and she was woman enough to take what she wanted.
This was who she became when she was with Plato—this wild woman unafraid of her sexuality.
He let her down on her wobbly legs and pressed a fierce kiss to her temple. She could feel him trembling, his male skin slicked with sweat. Unable to help herself she pressed her face into his shoulder, suddenly overcome by the force of what they had done and what it meant to her, what she hoped it meant to him.
But Plato was pulling himself together. He smoothed his hand over the back of her neck, that gesture of possession and comfort she loved, but when she looked up at him she noticed there was a tension in his eyes that hadn’t been there a moment before.
She stilled.
She wanted to tell him she loved him. It was all there, bubbling up excitedly through her chest, filling her mouth with silly, mushy words.
Instead she reached up and rubbed her thumb to the corner of his mouth, self-preservation throwing her a life-raft.
‘Lipstick,’ she whispered.
For a moment all she could see was his expression, the wild light in his eyes, and the regret in the tension all through his body.
As they re-entered the club, with the noise and press of bodies around them once more, Rose felt a little flutter of panic. She was going to lose him again. She turned to him a little desperately and pressed her mouth up close to his ear. ‘When can we leave?’
‘The night’s young, detka,’ he imparted, his gaze scanning over her head, avoiding making eye contact. ‘Not yet.’
It was like a slap.
‘I want to be alone with you,’ she confessed, but he had already turned away, her words swallowed up by the music and the noise.
People were joining them. Rose was crushingly aware of how rumpled she looked—moreover that Plato was tattooed all over her skin. It would have been different if he had shown by a single gesture that this meant more to him than a sexual encounter, but she just knew now that he wouldn’t.
He sat her down with a couple of other women, put a drink in her hand and said, ‘I won’t be too long—then we make tracks, da?’
She watched his retreating back as he vanished into the shadowy, light-swirling environs of the club—the shift of muscle in his back, his long lean grace. And that was when she knew. He wasn’t coming back. Not the guy who’d showed up on her doorstep back in Toronto, making ridiculous accusations and all the while gazing at her with those hungry, baffled eyes. The man who’d whipped out her v
acuum cord, driven her client down the stairs and told her she was coming to Moscow with him. That guy—the one who’d held her in his arms and made her feel hopeful and bold and special to him and him alone—was gone. She’d had her turn, and right now she was just another girl to him—a face in his crowd. He’d brought her here tonight to make sure she understood that.
She wasn’t stupid. Part of her had known it even as she’d put on her fancy dress, and she’d damned well known it when she’d forced him onto that dance floor. But she hadn’t expected her own reaction to him, and even now the sexual feelings in her body were still surging, making it impossible to deny the raw edge to what was going on between them. If all this was only about sex for him, what did it say about her that she had been right along with him up against a wall? What did it say about her that she hadn’t cared, had just wanted the excitement of being with him, thinking somehow, some way, she’d change his mind?
She’d known his reputation before she got into this. She had chosen to ignore it, decided she was going to be different. But how could she be when there was nothing different about any of this for him? Plato had been here before. She was the one who didn’t know the score.
Oh, yes, she was the big expert on relationships. She’d ignored her own advice to other women. Advice that had been hard-won after four years under Bill’s thumb. You can’t change him. Especially if he doesn’t want to be changed…
When Plato had told her about his mother and his grandmother, as a professional she’d understood immediately what it meant. He’d been starved of love by the two very women he should have been able to rely upon as a young child, and then had it taken away again by the putative mother of his child. It did much to explain the brevity of his relationships with women, the distrust. He was always waiting for it to be taken away.
She’d known then and there she’d taken on a lot more than a spoilt rich guy. But she didn’t want to be his psychologist in this situation—she wanted to offer him up her heart and for him to protect it, just as she would protect his.
The unloved little boy he had been needed that, because God knew she had felt very much the same way as a little girl. But she knew the risk. The man he now was would very likely push her away. She just hadn’t expected it to happen so soon, and she hadn’t known she wasn’t going to be able to handle it. Because she’d been running from this very feeling since she was six years old. Being shut out of someone’s heart. Except it was worse. She hadn’t known it was going to feel worse.
The realisation that she didn’t know what to do ripped through her as she stood up unsteadily to get a sight on him. He wasn’t difficult to find—his height, his build, the way people got out of his way. She watched him approach a conclave of men at one of the bars. It was like watching meat being dropped into a pool of piranhas as women converged on him. Purposely, she reminded herself. He was doing this on purpose.
She almost expected it when a slender redhead, wearing not much more than a slip and skyscraper heels, slid her arm around Plato. It was when he shifted and casually encircled her waist that the glass in Rose’s hand dropped from nerveless fingers, splashing the hem of her couture gown and rolling away. Because, deep down, she hadn’t expected that.
* * *