Bought: For His Convenience or Pleasure?. Maggie Cox

television programme a month ago my sources have revealed that besides your father there is no one in your life… No one and nothing else to care about but your work!’

      ‘You’ve had people checking up on me?’

      ‘Under the circumstances I did what had to be done.’

      Her returning glance was reproachful. Nikolai shrugged it off. It hardly mattered what she thought of his methods when she had treated him and Arina with little or no concern at all!

      Taking a careful sip of his wine, he inclined his head approvingly. ‘A good choice,’ he remarked, allowing a corner of his mouth the briefest lift upwards. ‘Even if I do say so myself!’

      The man had a charismatic allure that would always guarantee him plenty of female attention, Ellie mused somewhat resentfully. She was drawn like a magnet to the arrogant, almost autocratic set of features before her. Imaginative fantasies about what the hard, fit body beneath the expensive tailoring he wore would be like in bed would inevitably always be aroused too. And women would feel that same helpless pull towards him even if he was a pauper!

      Ellie shivered as the familiar unbidden, disturbing fantasy stole into her mind…fuelled by her dizzying recollection of that kiss they had shared five years ago.

      Having only been kissed once before by a boy at college—and pretty clumsily at that—nothing in the world could have prepared Ellie for the barely civilised and frightening passion of Nikolai’s sizzling kiss. Even before his lips had made contact with hers, when he had simply covered her hand with his, an electrical bolt had shot through her insides and flooded her with the kind of heat more generally associated with the tropics. And when he had penetrated her mouth with his hot, silky tongue, Ellie had barely known how she remained standing.