The elevator stopped on the ground floor and the doors opened. Victoria stepped down, not waiting for Dmitri, desperate for some distance. Of course, she had a feeling that as large as the continent was she wouldn’t have enough distance from him if she was on an opposite coast. Better if she were back in England and he were here.
“The ballroom is this way,” she said, without looking back at him. She could hear his heavy footfalls behind her, and more than that, she could sense his presence.
She led him down the hallway, her shoes loud on the marble floor. In contrast, his trainers kept him almost silent, and made her increasingly self-conscious. It wasn’t fair—he should be the one feeling self-conscious, as he was in athletic clothing and casual shoes. Alas. Dmitri never seemed to feel uncomfortable, even though he never quite fit in to his surroundings. He simply didn’t care. She had no idea how he managed such a thing.
She had no idea how he managed much of what he seemed to manage. Least of all his ability to reach into her and take control of her desire.
She had lost herself completely last night, and she would love to blame the city, she would love to blame the wine, but she knew it was him. Because the changes had started long before they had left England. They had started the moment she had walked into his gym and seen him standing there, looking like a bare-chested warrior from another age.
And she had thought herself immune because she had imagined he wouldn’t be her type. It was laughable.
Another issue with having not had much experience with men since she was a girl. Victoria the woman obviously had no use for the smooth sophisticate. Which made no sense, since she fancied herself a smooth sophisticate, and one would think that she would be attracted to the sort of man whose lifestyle was compatible with hers.
Nothing about Dmitri would be compatible with her lifestyle and the long term.
But who’s thinking about the long term?
No, she silenced that treacherous voice in her head. She was not going to allow herself to lose her sanity that way.
Who was she kidding? Her sanity was gone. There was no other way to look at it. Thinking about his footsteps in relation to hers, and how well he fit into his surroundings or, rather, how well he didn’t? And obsessing about the sound of her own shoes?
She had to stop obsessing about him.
So he had given her an orgasm. It wasn’t as though she’d never given herself one.
And when she did, it wasn’t as if she went around thinking about it all day after the fact, either. There was no reason she should think about it so much just because someone else had done it. It wasn’t as though they’d had sex. He’d touched her—that was all.
And kissed her, and caressed her in ways no other man ever had.
But still, all of it was irrelevant. She needed to keep her focus. She needed to think about what was important and that was the gala that was happening tonight.
She walked through the elegant double doors at the end of the hall and gestured for Dmitri to follow.
“I think this will do,” she said.
“Do you?”
“I do.” She was irritated, and it wasn’t really warranted. But, oh well. She was feeling annoyed, even if he wasn’t deserving of the irritation in question. “Yes, this is the venue. If you have a negative opinion about it I suggest you keep it to yourself. If you wanted to choose, then you should have done so.”
“I did not say I didn’t like it,” he said.
“You had a tone,” she said, her tone clipped.
“Did I?” He chuckled, and she was really starting to hate when he did that, because she could not hear it and remain unaffected. “I didn’t know you were so in tune to the changes in my voice inflection, milaya moya.”
“I am not, and you can spare me your foreign endearment.” Even she was annoyed with her responses at the moment, but she couldn’t seem to hold them back. He had too much power over her. Over how she felt.
“They aren’t foreign to me.”
She bristled, feeling very much as if he had the upper hand, and there was nothing she could do to reverse their roles. “Fair point.”
“Yes, this will do nicely. I gather you’re expecting a good turnout tonight?”
This was her area of strength; this was her confidence. The upper hand was here, and she was grabbing it. “That I am, Dmitri. That I am.”
“You should be very proud. All you have to do is beat a few bushes and celebrities fall out. I would wager that would not be the case for me.”
Because she was better with people than he was. And better at this. And that thought cheered her immensely. “You don’t think?”
“No, I do not think. Unless said celebrity wanted to install a cage in the midst of a gala and arrange a fight, then have me seduce his wife, I fail to see why I would be included in something of this nature. That’s what I am, after all. That’s why my reputation is what it is.”
She looked at Dmitri, his broad shoulders and well-defined muscles tapering down to a slim waist. The way the slight bump in his nose added to the look of him, to the danger. He certainly wouldn’t blend in at a social event like this one, but then, there was something nice about not blending in. At least when it applied to other people. She had always gone out of her way to blend in as best she could.
“You’re more than that,” she said, and she wasn’t sure why.
“Do you think?” he asked. “I’m not certain. But we had better make everyone think so, yes?”
She nodded slowly. “Yes.” She cleared her throat. “So, there will be tables and chairs set over here. Dinner will be served around nine, then it will be dancing and live jazz music. It sounds nice, doesn’t it?” She was desperate to change the subject, to get things back on track. To ignore all of the electricity that crackled between them.
“You’re avoiding looking at me, Victoria.”
She kept her eyes fixed on the stage. “I am not avoiding looking at you, Dmitri. It’s just I can look at you anytime, and we came down here to look at the venue. I don’t see why I should need any of this special, allotted venue time to examine you.”
He made a low, musing noise in the back of his throat, and the hair on her neck stood on end. “And you are acting prickly. You’re prickly when things don’t go your way.” He started to pace the length of the room. “I have been perfectly agreeable, so I know it is not myself making you feel like things aren’t going your way. Which makes me wonder...is your body disobeying you, Victoria?”
She stiffened. “Why would you think that?”
“I only wonder if your body is still obeying me.”
Oh, that...
She made a sound that was somewhere between a snort and a growl. “I have no idea what that’s supposed to mean. At no point has my body ever obeyed yours.”
“Last night,” he said, the words dark and sensual, wrapping themselves around her body. No. No, no, no.
She gritted her teeth. Part of her was begging her to retreat, while the bolder part, the part that hated to lose, that seemed to be in top form when he was around, urged her on. “Stop feeling so proud. It’s nothing I haven’t done for myself.”
He arched a dark brow. “On a balcony in front of the sea of strangers? You are a much more adventurous woman than I have given you credit for.”
She ignored the heat sizzling beneath her skin. “We are not