There was nothing but Ivan.
No noise, no screams. No people. No red carpet, no Cannes.
Just that mouth of his against hers once again.
Finally.
She forgot to panic. She forgot everything. She tasted him, wanted him, lost herself completely in the drugging kick and clamor of him, and then, after ages and eras, or perhaps only minutes, he pulled away. But only a little. Only enough for her to come back to herself. His big, tough hands rested at the base of her neck, his thumbs still stroking the line of her jaw, as if he might simply move her mouth back to where he wanted it in a moment, and lose them both to that wild, magical heat all over again.
Her heart thudded hard. And then again.
Miranda understood then, with a kind of painful resignation, that the things she felt about this man were deeper and far more complicated than she wanted to admit. But that didn’t change the fact of them.
And it was only then, when she processed the way he looked at her, something calculating and shrewd in that black gaze, mixed in with the fire she recognized all too well, did she understand that he’d staged it.
Of course he had.
Shame and humiliation fought for supremacy then, and both left scarring marks deep inside. She couldn’t believe how pathetic she was. How gullible. Dreams of Disney movies and a Cinderella dress didn’t change the truth of her situation. It only made her unacceptably, embarrassingly foolish.
And that didn’t change the way she felt about him either, which only shamed her all the more.
“Why here?” she asked, and she couldn’t do anything about her voice, choked and constricted, giving her away. Much less whatever look she had on her face then, that made him look back at her as if he hurt, too, but she couldn’t let herself think about that. It might take her out at the knees. “Why not out in the thick of the things for maximum coverage?”
There was something terrible in his dark eyes then, and that mocking curve to his beautiful mouth. And yet she knew, somehow, that this time, that mockery was not directed at her. She didn’t understand why that made her want to weep.
Why all of this did.
“It would look too staged,” he said, with devastating honesty, a sardonic inflection to his voice then, aimed, she could tell, once more at himself. His gaze was so bleak. And this was all too painful, when it shouldn’t have been. “Too showy. Back here we might have imagined ourselves in a private moment. It looks real. Stolen kisses, forbidden love. Who can resist it?”
Miranda knew, then, that he felt this, too, whatever this thing was that was choking her where she stood. This … shift, after all. It was too big. Too hot and uncontrollable and consuming. Real enough, she understood too late, to hurt this badly, to leave such deep marks inside of her.
Lost before it began.
Had she known all along that it would be like this? Had she sensed it even on that long-ago day, when his picture in a magazine had sent her down the road that had brought her here? Had she suspected that one day he would touch her like this, kiss her like this and tie her into knots she worried she’d never get wholly untied again? Tear her whole world apart so easily?
Except this was no kind of fairy tale, despite appearances to the contrary, and all Miranda was ever going to be was a convenient frog tarted up to look like a temporary princess.
It shouldn’t have hurt.
It shouldn’t have mattered at all. Someday, she thought, it wouldn’t.
In time she would forget that look in his eyes, that shadow across his face, this great and suffocating heaviness in her heart. When this little interlude was over. When she was free of this. Of him. Of all these things she felt without understanding why.
When she became herself again.
“I hope you didn’t ruin my lipstick,” she told him then, managing, somehow, to force herself back into the role she’d agreed to play. To keep that threatening heat behind her eyes from betraying them both. She even smiled again, carefree and amused. In on the joke.
Maybe she was more of an actress than they’d thought.
But then his midnight eyes met hers, so hard and so uncompromising, and there was nothing but agony there. Loss. Grief for something that never could have been.
It shouldn’t have mattered.
But it did. So much more than it should have. So much more than she could bear.
“Of course I didn’t,” he said quietly. “I’m a professional.”
And then he kissed her again, because he had to or because he wanted to, or maybe something caught somewhere far too complicated and breathless between the two, and none of that seemed to matter anyway when his hard mouth claimed hers.
Hot. Demanding. Ivan.
Miranda kissed him back.
She knew it wasn’t real. She knew it didn’t count. But he tasted like smoke and Ivan and all of that longing she’d kept bottled up inside of her all this time, without ever knowing it was there. And there were truths she didn’t want to accept, especially not here. Terrible truths that worked through her like pain, like heat.
Like falling in love with the man she’d vowed to hate, when she knew he was only playing. But she couldn’t let herself think about that. She had the terrible suspicion it would lead only to tears, and she was in public. This was a performance.
So she kissed him instead, with all of those things she knew she’d never say, with her scared little heart and that pounding heat in her sex that was only for him, and told herself it was the best she could do. The best she would do.
And it was searing and right, terrible and heartbreaking, changing her forever right there in the glare of all those cameras and the whole of the watching world, damning them both.
But Miranda most of all, she feared. And possibly for good.
The plane hung high above North America, arcing its way from New York City toward Los Angeles, and Ivan stared out the window beside him as if there was something more than clouds below and sky ahead to see.
“It seems you were right after all,” Nikolai said, dropping into the wide leather seat opposite Ivan, his lethal blade of a frame seeming too primal, somehow, for the sleek executive luxury of the jet all around them.
“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.