“I am always right,” Ivan replied, smirking out at the empty sky. “I am Ivan Korovin. I read today that I am one of the sexiest men alive, according to a selection of fans in the Philippines. Can you say the same?”
“A great accolade indeed,” Nikolai said drily. “And no doubt a tremendous comfort to our parents, had they only lived to see it.”
Ivan remembered them only vaguely, gray and brisk and humorless, and felt certain that his entire life would have seemed, to them, like nothing but foolishness and vanity. That was no doubt Nikolai’s point. And tonight, Ivan agreed.
“Perhaps I underestimated you, brother,” Nikolai continued when Ivan offered no retort. Was that a note of admiration in his voice? Why did that make Ivan feel so cold, suddenly? “When we left your little professor in New York, she was significantly subdued. It shouldn’t be at all hard to break her now.”
But Ivan worried she was already broken, and unlike Nikolai, took no pleasure in it.
He’d escorted her down the metal stairs onto the tarmac in New York, then walked her to the waiting car, not wanting to admit to himself that he didn’t want to let her go. He didn’t want her out of his sight, or out of his reach. He didn’t know what had happened in Cannes, what had blown up between them like that on the red carpet. He didn’t want to think about it. But he could still feel her mouth on his, hot and sweet. He could still see that shattered look in her eyes that had had no business being there, that made no sense at all, and yet had lanced through him just the same.
He could see the photographs of the two of them in his head, as glossy and bright as they’d been in the papers. That first, hot kiss on the Cannes red carpet. The way she’d gazed at him, as if theirs really was a love affair too intense for words. And that aching blast of need that had nearly made him forget where they were when he’d taken her mouth that second time, because he’d had to taste her once again, or die. All of it on film, splashed across the papers and the internet. All of it available to anyone who cared to look, when it still moved in him like something highly charged, electric—and private.
None of this should have been happening.
His goals were very clear. First he would seduce her. Then he would toss her aside, brutally and publicly, tainting anything further she ever said about him as the unhinged rantings of a woman scorned. Simple. Easy. Exactly what she deserved after all these years.
Except nothing was going as planned.
He’d expected to want her, because he had a weakness for smart and haughty and unimpressed with him, apparently, wrapped up in one aristocratic, obstinate package. He’d always wanted the things he shouldn’t, the things not only likely to destroy him, but also certain to do so in the most painful way possible. It was a Korovin family trait. But he’d also expected to hate her, disdain her and her Ivy League snootiness at the very least, and he didn’t quite understand how that hadn’t happened. Or why he’d found himself telling her things he’d never told anyone before.
Or what had sprung up and taken him over like this, making him all but unrecognizable to himself. He was not a man who formed attachments. He knew better. He’d loved his parents as any son did, despite their coldness, and they had died. He’d wanted to love his uncle, until the drinking and brutality made that impossible. He had deeply admired his first trainer, the man he’d considered his savior, until he’d tried to steal the bulk of Ivan’s money after the championships had started mounting up. And he loved Nikolai, still and always, and look what he’d done to him. Look what Nikolai had become.
Damn her.
“I will see you in ten days’ time,” he’d told her, unnecessarily, standing in the open door of the car, holding her captive between him and it.
“Yes.” But she’d been hiding from him even as she’d tilted up her chin and met his gaze, that dark jade too black, too dark.
“Miranda...”
But there’d been nothing to say, and he couldn’t have said it even if there had been. How could he have? She was Miranda Sweet. His loudest critic. His enemy. They’d set all of this in motion that night in Georgetown, and there was no stopping it. There was no changing course. Not now. The benefit gala drew closer by the day, and with it, the end of all of this. His revenge and her comeuppance. As planned from the start.