It was like stepping into Paris in the eighteenth century. She loved it.
‘I’m not wearing perfume.’
‘Whatever.’ He inhaled deeply as he nuzzled her neck.
Prickling all over in a good way, Maisy heard herself babbling, ‘I just use this tangerine soap. That’s probably what you smell …’
‘I smell you, Maisy,’ he growled in her ear, his big hands splaying over her waist as he dragged her in against him.
It was early morning and they had landed at Orly only an hour ago. Alexei had a long day ahead and they had both been up since 4:00 a.m. Admittedly she had slept on the plane and in the limo. Now she was wide-awake, her body starting to climb as his need for her made itself known.
‘You smell good to me too,’ she admitted, turning in his arms.
‘Aftershave and soap,’ he countered. ‘Nothing fancy.’
But everything about him was fancy, thought Maisy, feeling utterly adored in his arms. He screamed wealth and good taste and leashed power—except when he was with her, in bed, and that was when she had him on her level. It was a strange alchemy of him being stripped to the essential bone, of him just being a male—albeit a very fine specimen—and her losing all of her everyday ‘Maisyness’ and becoming his equal, the woman he wanted.
The curves she despaired of back in London were all he wanted in his bed. Nothing she said or did with him in bed was ever wrong. His praise and response to her had given her such new-found confidence. Yet the rest of the time she didn’t feel quite right.
They were constantly moving from Naples to Rome to Moscow to Madrid. She was always in limos, by herself or with Kostya, entering empty suites or apartments he kept in so many cities. Alexei sent stylists and personal shoppers to prepare her for dinner, usually in out-of-the-way places. He certainly didn’t flaunt their relationship. Some evenings she ate alone. He claimed she would be bored at business dinners, and she was too unsure of her position to press the point. She now had clothing and jewellery brought to her by strangers to be worn for his pleasure. None of it was hers. She was always very careful. They didn’t belong to her. She didn’t want to damage them. She didn’t know how to ask Alexei in the cold light of day what she should do with them.
So on this, her day in Paris, with Alexei tied up in talks and Kostya booked in with the children of friends of the Kulikovs, who were overjoyed to see him again, she hit the pavement in comfy flats and went shopping for herself.
She was footsore and faintly depressed on her return at seven. The personal shoppers had made it seem so easy, but the experience of trying on endless pieces that either didn’t fit or made her feel dumpy or wrongly shaped or both hadn’t been quite the fun she had anticipated.
Alexei was disconcerted that he had arrived home early, intending to surprise her, and learned she had gone out. He regarded the shopping bags on the bed as if they were alien.
She dragged out a pair of jeans and some comfy T-shirts, putting them in a neat pile, then produced the lovely fuchsia silk dress that had been the stellar purchase of her day, holding it up to show him.
‘The shows are on next week, dushka,’ he asserted dismissively. ‘I will take you.’
Maisy hung on to her silk dress. That was his comment?
‘I can’t afford couture,’ she said in an undertone.
He frowned.
‘I mean, I know you want me to dress that way, and I appreciate it. But I wanted to get some clothes for myself today. It’s a bit weird, always wearing borrowed clothes.’
‘Maisy, the clothes belong to you. I got them for you. The clothes, the jewellery—whatever. It’s yours.’
Maisy sat down on the bed, holding on to her dress. ‘Oh.’
‘Most women would be pleased,’ he said.
It was the ‘most women’ that did it. Maisy smoothed out her new dress. ‘Is that how it worked in the past? You dressed the women you were with?’
It was the first time she had raised the subject since the villa at Ravello, and Maisy experienced a wave of vertigo at the immensity of what lay underneath her question.
‘No …’ Alexei spoke slowly.
‘Tara Mills, Frances Fielding, Kate Bernier.’ She rattled off the names as if she were reading them from the tag on the back of her dress, because that was where her eyes were. She couldn’t look at him. ‘I don’t suppose any of them needed help dressing up.’
‘How in the hell did you get those names?’
The tightly leashed aggression in his voice brought her chin up. She wasn’t backing down now. She had a right to know where she stood. He shouldn’t be so defensive in telling her.