He almost growled with frustration. What was it about death and sex? Maybe that was why his body had gone there and his head had followed. Leo was dead. Leo’s child was now his lifetime responsibility, and he took his responsibilities seriously. Sitting in front of him was something both life-affirming and yet not serious at all. Sex with a real woman—not a sprayed, painted, waxed, plastic actress/model perfume commercial. Hell, she wasn’t even wearing make-up. She didn’t really need it, she had great skin, and that hair …
Suddenly she stood up. ‘Mr Ranaevsky—’
‘Alexei,’ he offered.
‘Alexei.’
She took a deep breath, and he registered she was about to make some sort of speech. That was never good.
‘I didn’t catch your name.’
‘Maisy. Maisy Edmonds.’
Maisy.
‘Sit down, Maisy.’
‘No, I need to say this standing up.’
‘Sit down.’
She sat. It was a good sign. Pliable.
She stood up. ‘No, this is important. I want to come with Kostya. I don’t know what your circumstances are, or what you have organised, but I want to stay with him until he’s settled. And he doesn’t know yet. When he’s told, I need to be there.’
Alexei frowned heavily. ‘He doesn’t know his parents are dead?’
Maisy shook her head, the pain rushing through her.
‘I had no intention of leaving you behind,’ was his only comment. ‘Do you have a valid passport?’
‘Yes,’ said Maisy. ‘But why—?’
‘Pack a bag. We move in twenty.’
‘But—’
He gave her a brief, almost offended look. ‘I’m not accustomed to explaining myself.’
To staff, added Maisy silently, biting down on a sharp retort.
Alexei registered her frustration, thinking wryly it was nothing next to his own. He had to get out of there before he did something stupid. He had overlooked momentarily who this woman was—a future employee. And he didn’t bed his female staff. He left her to it, reaching for his pager as he plunged down the stairs to alert his men to the changed situation.
It took Maisy twenty minutes to bag up enough of Kostya’s belongings for a week’s stay. She assumed the rest of his life would come later. Her own would take considerably longer to assemble, but fortunately she still had that suitcase she had packed for France on Sunday. Only five days ago, but it felt a lifetime.
But before she took a step out that front door she was going to have a shower.
Downstairs, Alexei consulted his watch for the third time. Half an hour. It wasn’t as if he wasn’t used to waiting on a woman. He had yet to meet one whose ‘five more minutes’ meant anything less than twenty. But Maisy Edmonds wasn’t in any way, shape or form a date, and he didn’t have time for this.
He never dealt with the small stuff, and he could have sent someone up for her, but with his libido humming he realised he actually wanted her at his side. The sparks at least were keeping him awake and functioning.
Her bedroom door was slightly ajar. He gave it a push, half expecting to find her knee-deep in clothes. Instead he found a naked wet woman wrapped in a little white towel, with ringlets of damp hair cascading down her back.
Lust roared through him like a hot desert wind, obliterating thought.
She didn’t cry out, or protest, or do any of the things an outraged woman should do in this situation—something that would make him turn around and leave her alone. She just gaped at him, clutching at the towel, her eyes growing wider, and then she actually stepped towards him.
He crossed the space between them, caught her around that surprisingly small waist and pulled her into his body, half dragging the towel off in the process. He was conscious of her making a noise as he hungrily took her mouth with his own, his tongue invading the sweetness inside. She was stiff in his arms, and he could feel her hands pushing at his biceps, but the rest of her was soft and pliant. Everything about her was everything he wanted in that moment; she was all feminine roundness and softness and warmth. He could bury himself in her and forget everything that had happened, everything that was going to happen. Sweet oblivion inside sweet Maisy.
Maisy could hardly form a coherent thought. Shock had turned to humiliation as she felt her towel shift and drop, and she was aware that at any moment she would be completely naked in a strange man’s arms. This man was kissing her with a passion that went beyond expertise, as if his mouth and his tongue and his touch were desperately searching for something from her. And Maisy found something in herself was tentatively responding. The resistance melted out of her hands as she nestled closer to the source of this warmth that was spreading through her, seeking the shelter his arms offered, leaning into the strength that seemed so much a part of him. His hunger softened into something else as she began to respond.
It was almost too much. Her heartbeat was speeding out of control and his arms around her were almost too powerful, too possessive. She struggled a little, but only to drag his head back down to hers as he shifted in response, and she felt him laugh uninhibitedly against her mouth. He half lifted her and swept her up against the back of the door. It slammed with a thud, his forearm taking the brunt for her back, and Maisy felt his other big, callused hand smooth up her inner thigh. She grabbed it, muttered, ‘No,’ against his hair, and his mouth dropped to the pulse-point throbbing at the base of her throat. He licked her like a big cat, right there, his tongue rough and wet and hot.
Oh, Lord, thought Maisy, her body on fire. I can’t do this. I’m not ready to do this.
‘Lose the towel, Maisy,’ he murmured hotly against her ear, his hands at her hips, moving around to cup her bare bottom.
‘I can’t,’ she winced, embarrassment crawling through her.
And then it was over. It all happened in a moment. His mouth was gone, his hands were gone and she was leaning up against her bedroom door, clutching a towel to her near nakedness and staring into the eyes of a man who looked shell-shocked.
He rubbed the back of his hand over his mouth, as if removing the taste of her, and said in a low, fractured voice, ‘That was inexcusable. I’m tired. I made a mistake. Forget it ever happened.’
Maisy’s hazel eyes prickled. A mistake? Forget it ever happened?
Alexei knew he wasn’t thinking straight. The girl in front of him was staring at him as if he was mad, and he couldn’t blame her. He’d started something he couldn’t finish. He’d left her high and dry, and the ache in his body wasn’t going to go away any time soon.
What in the hell was he doing here? He had twelve security personnel scoping the property, a car waiting and a jet on the tarmac at Heathrow. And he, Alexei Ranaevsky, was tupping the nanny in an upstairs bedroom.
The goddamned nanny!
And doing a spectacularly lousy job of it.
Shoving aside the useless introspection, Alexei sized up the woman huddling against the door.
‘You need to move so I can get out of here,’ he directed. ‘And for God’s sake put some clothes on.’
Maisy flinched, but she still didn’t move. She wanted desperately to be away from him, to be behind the bathroom door, to sink to the ground and wish away all her humiliation, but she knew the moment