No More Sweet Surrender

“What’s a little foreplay next to that?” he asked silkily, though there was a flash in those dark eyes that made her think he was choosing his words far more carefully than it seemed. “You should try it.”

She rolled her eyes at him as if he didn’t get to her at all. As if she was as unimpressed with and unmoved by him as she wished she was.

“How depressingly predictable,” she said, temper in her voice, though she wasn’t sure if she was angry at herself or at him. Or both of them. “Is there a man alive who doesn’t think his magical penis can somehow cure a woman’s dislike of him? It would be funny if it wasn’t so sad.”

“Enough of your wild generalizations and crackpot theories, Professor,” he said, not in the least cowed or shamed by her words. If anything, his black gaze seemed hotter, and he was closer to a smile than she’d ever seen him get. In private, anyway, and she was annoyed that she even noticed the distinction. “Let’s talk about you. And how obsessed you’ve been with me for all these years.” He opened his arms wide, the kind of arrogant display only an excessively confident man could manage with such decidedly masculine grace, and it should have been ridiculous. “With this.”

It should have been ridiculous. But instead, Miranda’s head seemed to go entirely blank. His chest was hard and chiseled and acres wide. This close to him, she could sense that roaring heat and power that was so uniquely his and worse, that terrifying, betraying lassitude inside of her in response that threatened to make her simply sag against him. Simply...lie down on the vast bed she’d somehow failed to notice she was standing beside and pray he came with her. On top of her. Into her.

What is the matter with you? She didn’t know how to want these things. She never had before. It was as if he’d cast some spell on her that made her someone else entirely.

“I don’t want you,” she bit out, desperation making her voice harsh. “Any of you.”

She blinked at him, the great expanse of him. All of those smooth, hard muscles, all of which, she was far too aware, he knew exactly how to use. She’d seen his fights on television. She’d seen his movies. She wished she didn’t notice that he smelled fresh and clean, of soap and warm male.

She wished she was as unmoved as she should have been.

“I want what we agreed to, and nothing more.” She nodded at his chest. “Certainly not any of that.”

It shouldn’t have been so hard to say, and he laughed then, dropping his arms but not backing up an inch.

“Keep telling yourself that.”

“You unbelievably arrogant—” she began, furiously.

“Did I ever pretend to be anything else?” he asked, his head tilting slightly to one side, cutting her off ruthlessly. His voice was calm, dark. Well nigh imperial, which was precisely how he looked as he gazed down at her. “You claimed you studied me. That you knew me. How did you think this was going to go?”

“I thought you were serious about this,” she accused, suspecting that the person she was truly furious with was herself. “Instead it’s been nothing but games and absurd demands, your hands on me and your constant attempts to—”

She cut herself off, but it was too late. His dark eyes seemed to glow.

“To what?” She heard it all in his voice then. Sex. Fire. Need. It pulsed in her, too. “Why don’t you say it, Miranda? You might just get what you want.”

God, her name in that mouth. Had he said it before? In that way of his, rich and Russian and so seductive it hurt her not to reach out and touch him? It hurt, and she was getting tired of all the ways she hated herself today, all the ways she continued to betray herself, all the ways this man was turning her into someone she couldn’t recognize or understand.

“Oh, good,” she said, proud of the way she sounded then, so close to her usual cool, almost as if she wasn’t losing herself here. “Another attempt to intimidate me.”

The corner of his wicked mouth simply kicked up into that mocking, compelling curve, and her mouth went dry.

“I don’t have to attempt anything,” he pointed out with a quiet certainty that pounded in her like a drumbeat. “I only have to enter a room and you begin to tremble. I only have to put my hands on you to feel you come apart.”