“That, yes,” he agreed, laughter in his voice. “And also because I like sex. A pity you do not. We could have had such fun.”
“Somehow I don’t think fun is the word I would use to describe sex with you,” she’d said drily, and then everything had tilted and rolled when he’d reached over and slid a hand onto the nape of her neck, pulling her head around to his. Controlling her.
Thrilling her.
Stop talking about sex with this man, she ordered herself with no little desperation. You can’t handle it. Or him.
“No,” he said in that way of his that seemed to cast a shadow over her, as if he could block out the sun if he chose. “It’s not the word I would choose, either. But it’s the only one that wouldn’t scare you.”
“I am not—” she began, but his scorching black eyes dropped from hers to her mouth, and it shut her up as easily as if he’d used his fingers once more. Or, worse, his lips.
When he looked up again, she was mute with anxiety and he was smiling.
“No,” he said, mocking her. He slid his hand away, leaving only confused longing in its wake. “Not scared at all.”
Miranda couldn’t seem to catch her breath. Or find her balance.
And Ivan, it turned out, was very, very tactile. She would have said that he did it simply because he knew she didn’t like it, but there was a certain wildness in his gaze when he looked at her that kept her from accusing him. That made her think he liked touching her, and not simply because he was playing a game. That made her wonder what words he would have chosen, after all.
But she didn’t want to think about that.
The days became a dizzy mess of his hands at her waist, on her hips, at the small of her back. Always on her, always warming her, possessive and demanding at once, as if they were not only the lovers they pretended to be, but also as if he was very much in command of their affair. The idea made her shiver. There was that fire always burning in his dark eyes, keeping them both alight. There was his warm, strong hand around hers, helping her from the car or tugging her down the narrow bustling lane of Rue Meynadier in Cannes to look at the souvenirs and nibble on olives and cheeses and sweet macarons from the local emporiums.
Ivan offered her a piece of local cheese out in the busy pedestrianized street that first day, but wouldn’t let her take it from his hand. As he’d promised he’d do, she remembered, while delicious heat flooded through her, making her stomach tighten.
“Open your mouth,” he ordered her, not particularly nicely, that steel beneath his voice again. That command. “Pretend you’re at Communion, if you must. I have no doubt there are sins aplenty you’d do well to confess.”
“I am neither a child nor an invalid,” she replied with that forced smile that she’d kept welded to her face since they’d left the villa. “I don’t think anyone will want to see you treat me—”
“As the shy and biddable maiden you play on television?” he asked blandly, popping the cheese into her mouth. She was aware of too many things at once, then—the burst of savory flavor, her own annoyance mixed with that dangerous yearning and that sardonic gleam in his dark gaze in the crisp brightness of the French afternoon. “No, you’re right. That would be too unbelievable a character change.”
She glared at him. He smiled at her.
But in the glossy pages of the tabloids the next day, it looked like sex. Like giddy laughter between lovers. Like foreplay, it pained her to admit. Hot and wild and delicious, as if they were consumed with desire right there on the street, surrounded by so many gawking tourists. As if he’d done exactly what he’d promised he could do, and well.
She felt invaded, encroached upon. Under constant attack. How could she feel anything but? And still, when they returned to the villa and to themselves, to the reality they could only indulge in private, there was some part of her that missed his hands, his smile, that harsh masculine beauty that was so much a part of him and that she was growing used to having so close to her at all times.
It should have appalled her.
“Can I help you with something?” he asked one evening as they stood in the marble entrance of the villa.
They’d spent a long day in one of the quintessentially European hill towns that clung to the side of a particularly steep slope far above the sparkling sea. They’d leaned into each other as they’d navigated the winding, twisting little streets that circled all around and seemed to tie themselves in knots, the stone walls echoing back their own footsteps like the insistent sound of Miranda’s heart all the while, drumming away behind her ribs, too fast and too hard, and all because he was touching her like that.
“What?” she asked now, only realizing as she said it that she’d been staring at him, the foyer seeming like a vast, chilly expanse between them when she was used to him plastered up against her. When she was used to the scent of him all around her, even on her own skin. His heat, his casual strength. She swallowed nervously. What was happening to her?
“Is there something you want, Miranda?” he asked, and that tone of his licked into her, fire and velvet. Ache. Want. His eyes met hers. “You need only ask.”
“No,” she whispered, because her throat didn’t seem to work, her skin felt stretched thin and she knew exactly what that look in his dark eyes meant. In some deep, feminine way. She knew. “I don’t want anything.”
Ivan only watched her for a long, searing sort of moment, leaving her in ragged pieces without saying a word.
“If you say so,” he murmured when it was almost too late, when she’d almost surrendered to the heat behind her eyes or, worse, to that demanding fire deep in her belly, that only seemed to grow in intensity and scope the more time she spent with him.
“I say it because it’s true,” she lied, and then bolted for her bedchamber without a backward glance, not trusting herself enough to stay and prove it.
Not trusting herself at all.
Preferring the inevitability of her nightmares to all the unknowns Ivan made her think about.
One sleepy morning they strolled hand in hand along the Promenade de la Croisette that stretched the length of the Cannes coastline, packed with splendid luxury boutiques, grand five-star hotels and, at this time of year, the rich and the famous from all corners of the globe and all the paparazzi and energy that went along with them. One bright, clear evening they had drinks at the Carlton, surrounded by film stars from several countries and the people connected to them, one group more impressive and luminous than the next. Another night they ate by romantic candlelight at the world-renowned La Palme d’Or restaurant overlooking the Bay of Cannes in the art deco landmark Hôtel Martinez, Ivan feeding her bites of a crème brûlée so decadent, so intense, that she thought she might black out from the sheer pleasure of it.
Or maybe, more terrifyingly, that was him. Maybe it was the way he looked at her, that famous smile on his hard face. Maybe it was the memory of those too-confident words, that pure masculine promise, emblazoned across her like the dangerously seductive serpent that was inked into his skin.
Maybe he was much too good at his job.
He held her against him near the water in Antibes, tucking her under his chin as they stared out at the yachts and other boats dotting the azure expanse of sea before them, looking, no doubt, as if they’d been having a blissful moment instead of a whispered argument about where he’d chosen to put his hands. He kissed her temple, her forehead, as they browsed an open-air market in the old part of Nice, then he threaded their fingers together as they walked, gazing down at her as if utterly besotted.
“This is what love is supposed to look like,” he told her when she rolled her eyes