No More Sweet Surrender

“I called them.”

There was a small, shocked pause.

“Why would you do something like that?” She sounded genuinely baffled instead of angry. That would come, Ivan thought. It was inevitable. “This isn’t one of the events that we agreed on.”

He reached over and rested his hand high on her thigh, a casual possession, the way he would have if he really had been sleeping with this woman. He enjoyed the way her whole body jolted at the sudden contact. He enjoyed the way his did, too. She sucked in her breath with a sharp hiss.

“Smile,” Ivan ordered her quietly as he slowed the car to a crawl. “Let me do the talking. All you need to remember is that ours is a passionate affair.” He threw her a swift glance. “You want me so badly it overcame every last one of your well-documented, widely televised objections. You can hardly bear it if I am not touching you. That’s the story they’re here to see.”

He couldn’t see her eyes behind the dark glasses she wore, but he saw that fascinating color rise to stain her cheeks and the way she pulled her lower lip between her teeth. He could tell she was holding her breath and he could feel her leg quiver, ever so slightly, more a thrill than a shiver, beneath his hand. He’d already told her what those signs meant.

He’d like to tell her what he thought about how incredibly responsive she was to him, to his slightest touch or glance, and how that would work between them in the bed he had every intention of having her in, sooner rather than later. Not that he required a bed. A wall would do. A floor. This car, had they been somewhere less public. But this, sadly, was not the time.

This was work. This was his revenge. This was precisely how he could exact payment for the years of personal slights and lost opportunities. And worse, the things she made him wonder in the dark. What did it say about him that he could ignore the end and concentrate on the means? That he was enjoying it?

But then, he knew the answer to that, too.

She blew out a shaky sort of breath, as if trying to calm herself, and then she turned toward him and showed him her teeth.

He didn’t mistake it for a smile.

“I dislike you,” she said softly. So very softly that it would have sounded like sweet, whispered love words to anyone standing nearby. She deepened that curve of her mouth. “Intensely.”

“Good,” he said in the same tone as he threw the car into Park, putting his mouth near her ear and drinking in another one of her delicate near-shivers. He could start to crave them, he thought then, and he knew exactly how dangerous that was. “That always looks better on film.”

And then they were surrounded.

Questions flew through the quiet air. Ribald commentary in several languages that Ivan chose to ignore for the sake of everyone’s health, to the tune of all of those cameras flashing and filming, capturing every moment, every touch, every breath. He helped Miranda from her side of the car like the gentleman he wasn’t and kept her close, throwing his arm over her shoulders with casual ease. He felt her tense, but she smiled as he’d commanded and nestled against his side, and for the briefest moment the press of her body against his made him almost forget himself again—made him almost forget that he was acting and she was the kind of woman who had looked down her nose at him from the start. That this was another job, a carefully calculated performance. Nothing more.

Idiot. The derisive voice in his head sounded suspiciously like his brother’s.

Ivan ignored it. He fielded the questions, one after the next, with the ease of all these years he’d spent handling press junkets and intrusive paparazzi. How long had this affair been going on? Who had made the first move? What had made them act out their forbidden love in such a dramatic display in Georgetown? Was this a publicity stunt? Could they look this way, please? Smile? Kiss again?

“Surely the entire world has seen quite enough of us kissing,” Miranda said, defying his order to keep quiet, but with a dry humor that Ivan knew would come across as delightfully self-deprecating. He pulled her closer, then gazed down at her as if he was filled with affection. And loved the tremor he felt snake through her, that immediate, helpless response of hers he was rapidly finding addictive. He wasn’t even sure she knew what signals she was sending him, which made it that much better. Seducing her would be easier than he’d anticipated.