He tugged her closer to him with embarrassing ease then, plastering her against him as if she had no will of her own, which was, frighteningly, exactly how she felt—and then he simply bent his head and claimed her mouth with his.
She had no time to think.
His lush and beautiful mouth was shockingly carnal against hers, wicked and clever, demanding and hot.
Physical.
He took her over, as if it was his right. As if she’d begged him to do it. She felt his hard hand against the side of her face, guiding her mouth to his with an easy, almost offhanded mastery that made her whole body pull tight in sensual delight. Heat exploded inside of her, volcanic and stunning. She didn’t fight. She didn’t so much as whimper. She didn’t even want to. She simply … let this man she imagined disliked her as much as she did him kiss her as if they were moments away from tumbling into the nearest bed. She simply surrendered to his endless, impossible, unspeakably erotic kiss—
When he finally lifted his head, his black eyes were burning with the same fire Miranda felt consuming her. There was a ringing in her ears, and she couldn’t feel her own hands where they were braced against his great wall of a chest. She had the vague thought that she might actually be having a heart attack. And then, a moment later, she knew she only wished she was—the better to avoid, forever, what had just happened.
What he’d done and, worse, what she’d felt. What she hadn’t so much as offered up a token protest against. What was still raging through her like an electrical storm, knocking down power lines and leaving her stunned.
He muttered a pretty word that she was certain was a curse, but speared through her like a wild flame. “Milaya.”
It was something about the way he said it, or perhaps it was that stirring, considering look in his black gaze. It flipped some kind of switch in her, and what washed over her then was nothing as simple as fire. It was dark and complicated and new, and left her feeling starkly, nakedly vulnerable, and worse, convinced that he could see it—
For a wild, panicked moment then, she thought she really had burst into flames after all. Bright lights exploded all around her and she realized, dazedly, that they’d been flashing for some time.
It took her one ragged breath, then another, to understand that it was not his kiss—though she could still feel it storming through her, shuddering and spinning out that wild heat, making her something like nauseated and restless and humiliatingly desperate for more, all at once—or even that demanding, challenging way he was looking at her now. It wasn’t his hard, capable hands that still held her against him. It wasn’t even that sudden slap of fearful vulnerability that she was still too afraid he could read.
It was the cameras. The paparazzi who hung on Ivan Korovin’s every taciturn word and calculated deed, recording the entire insane situation for posterity and plastering it all over those glossy supermarket magazines. And they’d certainly gotten a show today, hadn’t they?
The angry man was gone, as if he’d never been. There was only Ivan Korovin and the aftereffects of that searing kiss. And Miranda was forced to face the unsavory truth: she’d just been caught with one of her staunchest opponents, the man who had once dismissed her by calling her a tiny, yipping dog on a famous nightly talk show to the sound of much approving applause.
Kissing him, no less. In public.
At an international summit teeming with policy makers, academics and delegates from at least fifteen countries, all as deeply and philosophically opposed to everything he stood for as she was.
Miranda had to assume that every last moment of it was on film. The avid, delighted expressions of the jostling throng of reporters surrounding her assured her that it was.
Which meant, she knew with a terrible sinking sensation inside, that her entire career had just taken one of the knockout body blows for which Ivan Korovin was so famous.
To say nothing of the rest of her.
If looks could kill, Ivan reflected a short time later, the redheaded professor would have eviscerated him while the cameras still rolled.
He’d moved fast after he’d kissed her, that serious lapse in judgment he was still having difficulty justifying to himself. He’d had his security people clear a path into the conference hotel. Once inside, he’d directed her into a secluded seating area behind a riot of plants.
She hadn’t looked at him again and he’d imagined she was fighting with a truth that must have been wholly unpalatable for this self-appointed harpy who fought against all he wanted to accomplish: she owed him her thanks. Her gratitude. A better man might not have taken such satisfaction in that, but then, Ivan had never pretended to be anything but what he was. What would be the point?
But when she lifted her gaze to his—that slap of dark jade that he found intrigued him far more than it should, far more than he was comfortable admitting, even to himself—he understood that she had no intention of thanking him.
She was furious. At him.
He wasn’t surprised. But he was too much the fighter, still and always, not to see a flare of temper in another and want to meet it. Dominate it and control it.
Her.
After all, he thought with a certain grimness, he owed her. She’d been making his life difficult for going on two years now. Was there any name she hadn’t called him? Any lie she wasn’t prepared to tell to make her point, no matter what it cost him? Her voice echoed in his ears even now, painting him in the worst possible light, turning public opinion against him, announcing to anyone who would listen that he was exactly the kind of monster he’d spent his life fighting—
Oh, yes. He owed her.
“What,” she asked, her voice dripping with a mix of ice and fury, as if he was nothing more than a naughty student misbehaving in one of her classes, as if she was unaware of her own peril, “was that?”
“Did I startle you?” he asked idly, as if fighting off deep boredom. As if he’d already half forgotten her. It made her dark eyes glint green with outrage. “I thought it best to act swiftly.”
She moved up from her seat and on to her feet. She was not one of those drearily serious American women who feared heels, apparently. Hers were sleek and sharp and at least three inches high, and she looked entirely too comfortable in them as she stood there with a certain bravado meant, he knew, to tell him without words that she refused to be dominated by him.
But it was too late. He knew she tasted like fire.
“You grabbed me,” she bit out with that same controlled flash of temper that made him think of long, icy winters. And how they melted into summer, all the same. “You manhandled me. You …”
Her face flushed then, and Ivan found himself unaccountably fascinated by the stain of red that worked its way from her smooth cheeks down to her elegant neck. Kisses could lie, he knew. But not that telltale flush of color, making her eyes glitter and her breath come quicker. He couldn’t look away.
“Kissed you,” he affirmed.
He should not find an opponent fascinating. Especially not this opponent, who had judged him so harshly and unfairly condemned him years ago. This particular opponent whose well-timed, perfectly placed barbs always seemed to hit at exactly the right moment to make him seem like some kind of deranged comic book character—hardly the reputation he wanted to have when he needed to use his celebrity brand to bolster his brand-new charity foundation. He certainly should not make the fatal mistake of noticing she was a woman, and far more compelling than simply a voice of dissent.
“That is true,” he said darkly. “I did all of those things.”
“How dare you?”
“I