This book could not have been written without the wonderful ladies on Sharon Kendrick’s gorgeous writing course at the Watermill in Posara, Italy. Thank you so much for all of your encouragement and enthusiasm – it made all the difference!
Victoria Parker, Jennifer Drogell, Lorna Sweeney, Louise Okafor, Ann Burnell, Shirley Knight, and Jane Carling – this one is for you.
Special thanks to the incomparable Sharon Kendrick and the always inspiring Jane Porter: I’ll always treasure what amounted to a Master Class in writing Presents with the two of you – in glorious Tuscany, no less!
And to my private and personal ninja Jeff Johnson, for teaching me about martial arts – and how to breathe.
ONE moment Professor Miranda Sweet was trying to slip through the scrum of people outside the Georgetown University Conference Center, where she’d just delivered her keynote speech to attendees of the Global Summit to End Violence in Media, and the next, someone was gripping her arms. Hard. Mean. Enough to bruise.
She clenched her hands tight on the handle of her bag as she was swung around, wholly against her will—and then there was a man’s face much too close to hers, invading her space. The warm spring afternoon in Washington, D.C., seemed cold and hostile, suddenly. She had the hectic impression of angry words with a belligerent scowl, and the swift and terrifying understanding that this man wished her ill.
And like that, she was a girl again. Helpless and scared and cowering in the corner while her father raged and smashed things, then turned his furious glare on her. Just like the girl she’d been then, she shook.
“What—” she began, shocked to hear the quaver in her voice that reminded her of that helpless version of herself she’d thought she’d buried almost ten years ago.
“You need to listen instead of talk, for once,” the strange man growled at her, his words heavily accented.
Miranda’s instinct was to apologize, to obey. To cower and agree—anything to deflect his anger, to appease it—
But then there was another hand, this one smooth and gentle against the small of her back, though it was also undeniably strong. It felt almost possessive as it drew her inexorably away from the man who’d grabbed her and brought her up against a broad male chest. Miranda lost her breath. She knew she should have protested—screamed, swung out with her bag, perhaps—but something stopped her. It was the strangest sensation, as if she was safe, despite all evidence to the contrary. The hard fingers around the tender flesh of her upper arms dropped away, at last, and she tilted her head back to blink in astonishment at the man who still held her close to him.
Like some kind of protector. Like a lover. But she knew who he was, she realized in astonishment. And she knew he was neither of those things.
“You have made a mistake,” he told the other man, his Russian-flavored voice cold.
He recognized her, too, Miranda knew when he looked down at her again. She saw the flare of it in his deep black eyes, and despite herself, she felt an echoing chill of that recognition shiver down her spine and shake its way through her. She had studied this man, taught his films and his fights in her classes. She had discussed what she felt he represented, at length, in print and on television. But she had never met him before. She had certainly never touched him.
He was Ivan Korovin. The Ivan Korovin. Former undefeated mixed martial arts champion, current Hollywood action movie darling, famous for being exactly what he was and everything Miranda hated: unapologetically aggressive, casually brutal and celebrated hither and yon for both.
He was the tall, dark and entirely too handsome walking embodiment of everything she’d built her career fighting against.
The angry man barked out something then that she didn’t need to speak Russian to understand was cruel and vicious. She’d heard that tone before, and she felt it like a blow to her stomach just the same.
Miranda felt every famous inch of Ivan Korovin, pressed against her as he was—hot and hard and not, it turned out, air-brushed in any way beneath the luxurious suit he wore—stiffen with tension.
“Be very careful you do not insult what belongs to me,” he warned in that low voice of his that was richer and more stirring in person than on film. It seemed to wash over her like a heat rash, making her skin prickle in reaction. It confused her. It came far too close to scaring her in a wholly different way.
It made her almost miss the impossible, absurd thing he’d just said.
What belongs to him?
“I do not mean to trespass, of course,” the other man said then, his small, mean eyes still fastened on Miranda in a way that made her shift uneasily in what no doubt looked like Ivan’s embrace. Though she did nothing to extricate herself, and on some level she thought less of herself for her own cowardice. “It does me no good to have you as my enemy.”
Ivan’s smile then was like one of the weapons they claimed he didn’t even need, so lethal was he without them. With only his hands and his skill. “Then be certain you never lay hands on her again, Guberev.”
Miranda could feel it when he spoke, this man made of brute force and extreme physical prowess, the dark timbre of it rumbling through her like an expensive engine, powerful and low, making parts of her she’d never paid much attention to before seem to … spark.
What was the matter with her? She much preferred brains to brawn, thank you. She always had, due to her father’s reliance on his superior strength and size throughout her violent childhood under his deceptively well-manicured roof in tony Greenwich, Connecticut. And besides … this was Ivan Korovin!
Miranda had been a regular face on the news and talk-show circuit ever since she’d published her doctoral dissertation as a surprisingly well-received book two years back. Caveman Worship focused on the widespread hero worship of particularly brutal professional sports figures. She considered herself a much-needed voice of reason in a tragically violent world that adored brutes like the famously reclusive and tight-lipped Ivan Korovin—both the one he’d been in his mixed martial arts days and the one he’d played in the incredibly violent Jonas Dark action films for the past few years since his retirement from the ring.
She pushed back against his absurdly chiseled chest, ignoring the way all of that smooth muscle felt against her palms. She hardly heard the other man’s insincere apologies then, because she was caught up in Ivan Korovin’s searing midnight gaze instead. And suddenly, a wild staccato sort of pounding seemed to beat through her veins, thick and sweet and dizzying, and she thought her legs might give out from underneath her.
It turned out that the camera did him no favors. On screen he looked tough, dangerous. A lethal killing machine, forged in a bloodthirsty fire. He was usually half-naked and extravagantly tattooed—an extraordinarily powerful punch of sheer masculinity who could mow through his opponents like they were made of butter, and usually did.
A Neanderthal, Miranda had always thought. And had felt comfortable calling him in a variety of public places.
And he was certainly that, as well as tall and hard-packed with all of that sleek and solid muscle, as expected—but this close Miranda could see that he was surprisingly, shockingly beautiful in his ruthlessly male way, for all that he was also so clearly battered from all of his years of fighting. The nose he’d obviously broken a few times couldn’t take away from the perfect lushness of his mouth. The scar on his forehead faded next to the sheer glory of his cheekbones. The gorgeous, expertly