‘I wouldn’t put up with it, milaya moya. Just like I won’t stand another man laying a single finger on any part of you while you’re supposed to be mine,’ he added with a studious casualness that somehow made what he was saying all the more riveting. ‘With me there are boundaries and you must respect them. Do I need to say any more?’
Picking up on the intimidating chill in his intonation, Alissa almost shivered, but she was bone-deep resistant to domination of any kind. ‘Were you born a bully? Or do you find you have to work at it?’
Sergei was utterly poleaxed by that impudent comeback. Black brows descending over grim dark eyes, he stared down at the shining blonde head that barely reached the centre of his chest, his long brown fingers still instinctively engaged in stroking the fine-boned fragility of her wrists. She was the size of a doll and she was fighting him every step of the way. He could not even begin to credit her bravado.
‘Your silence tells me that it comes naturally to you,’ Alissa answered for herself and even she was wondering why she was going out on a limb to hit back at him. Was it the effect of the vodka? Or his behaviour with female admirers, which had paraded his total lack of interest in her feelings? Or the ghastly embarrassing truth that she found him stupendously attractive in spite of his overpoweringly masculine ways?
Sergei bent to clamp his hands to her waist and then he lifted her bodily around to face him. ‘By the time I’m finished with you, you will love football—’
Seriously vexed at being lifted off her feet and treated like a child, Alissa focused on him with blazing aquamarine eyes. ‘Dream on!’
‘And once you get used to me you’ll be jealous and clingy and adoring just like all the other women I’ve ever known,’ Sergei completed with raw conviction.
In the hold of his hands, her fingers balled into furious fists. ‘I don’t think you can ever have met a woman like me before.’
His brilliant dark eyes flamed golden as the heart of a fire and he looked dangerous, his lean, dark, handsome face taut. ‘Stoy…stop!’ he spelt out with critical cool. ‘Have you forgotten why you are here with me?’
Her lashes lowered and she was suddenly still and fighting to get a grip on her angry discomfiture. His reminder had been timely: she had forgotten. He had hired Alexa to carry out a role and so far Alissa had annoyed him, disagreed with him and argued with him. She breathed in slow and deep to calm herself.
‘That is better,’ Sergei pronounced and he lowered his arrogant dark head and pressed his lips gently to her lush pink mouth.
And for the merest fraction of a second she resisted the urge to part her lips before the throb of the blood in her veins and the acceleration of her heartbeat combined to vanquish her defenc
es. Suddenly, without even being aware of the prompting, she tipped her head back and let him taste her again, glorying in the shimmering, prickling mist of coming-alive sensation surging through her again. The flick of his tongue against the tender roof of her mouth made her shiver and press forward, instinctively wanting more.
‘Now we will go outside,’ Sergei breathed, lifting his handsome dark head and tugging her beneath one arm.
The bank of cameras and shouted questions that greeted their appearance made her shrink back against the arm locked to her slender spine. Aquamarine eyes huge, she contrived an uncertain smile while his bodyguards fanned out around them to prevent anyone from getting too close. She didn’t breathe again until she was safe inside the limousine and invisible behind the tinted windows. She was in a daze, unable to credit that she had let him kiss her again and that, in truth, she could hardly wait for a repetition. It was as if one little taste of him had created a terrifying craving she could not suppress.
‘You didn’t enjoy the attention,’ Sergei remarked, his questioning gaze locked to her pale face. ‘It frightened you—why?’
‘I suppose I’m rather a private sort of person.’
‘That is not the impression you gave in your interviews.’
Alissa had felt safe from detection in his presence because he had never met her sister. But evidently her sister’s interviews had been recorded in some way and he was aware of the content and had formed advance opinions about her personality on that basis. Suddenly she was very tense. ‘Everyone puts their best foot forward in an interview situation.’
Sergei made no comment but he noticed her evasiveness and wondered what lay behind it. ‘You have to learn to relax with me. In less than a week we’re flying to Russia for our wedding.’
‘Russia,’ Alissa echoed weakly, plunging into even deeper consternation at the concept while she asked herself if she could possibly go through with the role her twin had agreed to play.
‘This is for you.’ Sergei handed her a parcel. ‘We’ll be able to keep in touch now. I’ve been too distant from this process, milaya moya.’
It was Alexa who took the trouble to rip the wrapping off the parcel twenty minutes later. Goggle-eyed, she studied the mobile phone she had extracted and she let out a sudden whoop. ‘Oh, wow, I can’t believe it. He’s given you only one of the most expensive phones in the world! See those…’ She extended the phone to her sister. ‘Those are real diamonds.’
‘Are they?’ Alissa was unable to share her excitement for, while she could admire the glitter of the diamonds, she could not see the point of such decoration on a mobile phone. Indeed that level of adornment struck her as an embarrassingly pretentious display of wealth.
‘This is worth thousands and thousands of pounds and I’m more entitled to it than you are!’ Alexa suddenly concluded, shooting Alissa a resentful glance. ‘I’m the one who won this job and now you’re getting all the stuff that should have been mine—’
Alissa was less interested in the phone than in the wedding on the horizon. ‘Why do you think Sergei Antonovich wants a wife in the first place? Aren’t you curious?’
Alexa’s face shuttered and she pursed her lips. ‘Not really. As long as it’s nothing illegal, I couldn’t care less why. Maybe it’ll give him some sort of tax or business or inheritance advantage, or perhaps he wants a wife to give him a breathing space from all the pushy women who target him.’
‘Sergei certainly didn’t strike me as the marrying type,’ Alissa confided. ‘He also asked me to spend the night with him—’
Eyes rounding in shock, Alexa studied her twin with a dropped jaw. ‘He did? He found you that attractive? I bet you thought all your Christmases had come at once. Why did you leave him to come back here, for goodness’ sake?’
Her face hot in receipt of that revealing response, Alissa murmured, ‘The point is…why did he ask? Since when was sex part of the arrangement?’