Too Proud to be Bought (3 page)

‘Let’s go,’ he murmured.

A
BLACK
limousine was waiting as they emerged from the ambassador’s residence into the fragrant warmth of the evening and Zara felt as if she were stepping into a different world. Smoothly, the chauffeur opened the door for her and she sank onto the back seat and started looking around with a sense of wonder. What a car! The interior looked and smelt of pure luxury, all subtle and intoxicating and soft cream leather. And when Nikolai slid his long-legged frame in beside her and turned his head to look at her she could feel the sudden thunder of her heart. In the dim, enclosed space his proximity seemed even more potent than it had done on the dance-floor and Zara found herself wondering about the wisdom of travelling home with such a devastatingly sexy stranger.

‘You know, it’s still very early,’ he observed slowly, watching the tiny pulse which flickered so frantically at her temple.

Zara found that there was nowhere to look other than at the compelling gleam in his eyes. ‘So it is,’ she observed lightly.

He liked the way that her hair was a woven mass of caramel and sunshine and he wanted to remove all the clips and see it tumble down around her shoulders. He
could see the outline of her legs through the silk of her dress—slender, lean legs—and he felt another sharp ache of desire. ‘And we’re very close to my house,’ he said, as if the thought had only just occurred to him. ‘You could always come in for a quick drink, if you wanted.’

Zara’s thoughts were scrambled by the frantically conflicting messages firing between body and brain. A strange man inviting you into his house for a nightcap was a definite no-no. And yet this was not any man—this just happened to be the most devastatingly attractive man she’d ever met. Wasn’t Cinderella allowed a little glimpse of the prince’s palace before her clothes returned to rags?

‘I
could.’

‘But you’re not sure?’

‘What do you think?’

‘I think you want to.’

Zara gave an uncertain laugh. ‘It isn’t always wise just to do what you want.’

‘No? I’ve always thought exactly the opposite. That life is much too short to be dictated to by social etiquette.’ His eyes narrowed. ‘What if I give you my word that we’ll have one quick drink and then my car will take you wherever you want to go? How does that sound?’

It sounded like mad-ness—complete and utter mad-ness—and yet it also sounded like the most tantalising offer she had received in a long time. Zara’s world had been coloured bleak and sombre by recent events—could anyone really blame her if she wanted to peek at a more vibrant version of how life could be lived? One where shiny limousines picked you up from fancy parties and silent drivers sat and took you wherever you wanted to go.

But something stopped her and maybe it was the
realisation that this was outside her realm of experience on so many levels. Instinct told her she was dealing with a seasoned and experienced man. He was like a lion, she thought suddenly, her eyes straying to his thick mane of hair—deep and lustrous as beaten-gold. And a woman should not go into a lion’s lair unless she was expecting to be eaten …

She shook her head. ‘It’s very sweet of you,’ she said, and drew a breath with the same kind of determination which had seen her successfully battle with the doctors to keep her godmother at home during the final days of her life. ‘But I don’t think it’s such a good idea.’

He could see that she meant it and for a moment Nikolai was surprised. Usually, he had to fight women off and had taken her acceptance as a given—especially when invitations to his home were precious and few. Yet her refusal intrigued as well as surprised him.

‘Are you sure?’ he questioned.

‘Quite sure,’ she said, with more conviction than she felt.

‘Well, in that case …’

There was a heartbeat of a pause as he leaned across the space and stared down into her widening eyes and soft lips. ‘I’ll just have to kiss you goodnight right here—won’t I,
milaya moya?’

Her fingers gripped the soft leather seat. ‘And do you always kiss women you hardly know goodnight?’ she asked breathlessly.

‘Not always,
net.
But you have been tantalising me all night—ever since you started running away from me at the party. And I can’t remember the last time I had to chase a woman, quite literally in your case.’

If only he knew
why
she had been running! Suddenly Zara felt stricken with guilt. ‘But—’

‘Shut up,’ he said, almost gently as he bent his mouth to hers.

Afterwards, she blamed the champagne—and his experience—because she did nothing to stop him. But it was more than cold wine on an empty stomach. It was hunger and it was curiosity. It had been a long time since Zara had been kissed. And no man had ever kissed her the way Nikolai Komarov proceeded to do in the back seat of his chauffeur-driven limousine.

All it took was one careless graze of his mouth and she began to tremble in response, causing him to make a small sound of assertion underneath his breath as he pulled her closer. And perhaps it was the comfort of being held like that which made Zara want to melt against him. The warm human contact which made her feel normal again, instead of the person who had become invisible and isolated from the rest of the world by sickness. How long since she had been cuddled—or felt any kind of security? With a hungry little cry, she lifted her fingers and tangled them in the thick, beaten gold of his hair and lost herself in the sweetness of his kiss.

Nikolai gave an unsteady laugh as his hand slid across her back, the rawness of her response startling him a little. He had expected sophistication—an erotic routine which she had gone through many times before. And yet the helpless trembling of her body did not go with her smooth, sleek image. Not at all. And wasn’t there more than a little
tenderness
about the way she held him? He swallowed as he drew his mouth away and smoothed a fallen strand of hair away from her cheek—because tenderness wasn’t something he encountered very often and it was curiously persuasive.

‘You have great passion, I think,’ he murmured.

‘Do I?’ she breathed.

‘Da.
Beautiful passion.’

His mouth sought hers once more and it was then that the kiss began to change. Zara gasped as his lips suddenly became more seeking and she found her own opening beneath them. She could sense the tension in his body as his hands splayed over her back, where her flimsy evening dress was cut away to reveal a large keyhole in the material. She could feel his fingers kneading against her bare skin as time slowed and she felt as if she had entered an intimate little world. One where Nikolai’s tongue inside the warm cavern of her mouth made her feel as if she were being dragged down into some dark and erotic vortex.

‘Nikolai—’

‘What?’ he growled.

‘This is—’

‘Amazing,’ he purred, briefly lifting his head so that his eyes glittered out their unashamed desire, before tracing his finger over the fleshy trembling of her bottom lip.
‘Da. Da.
I know it is.’

She had been about to say that it was wrong—and yet her body was telling her otherwise. Could something be wrong when it felt so right? she pondered distractedly. When his fingers were now tiptoeing down her neck towards her breasts, before skating with practised ease to alight on the aching swell of one silk-covered nipple.

Zara swallowed down the dryness in her throat. ‘This is cr-crazy,’ she gasped as his mouth bent to one aching breast.

Nikolai flicked his tongue over the thin silk, which was the only barrier between him and her bare nipple, as he heard her whispered little gasp. Did it make her feel better if she let herself protest about what they were
doing, he wondered cynically, even though she clearly wanted him just as much as he wanted her?

But women were contrary creatures—he knew that. Often they liked to disguise their own earthy desire for fear that a man was judging them for being too ‘easy'. Should he reassure her now that he didn’t give a curse about convention and that she could be as ‘easy’ as she liked.

He drifted his hand down over one slender hip, his mouth briefly leaving the now-moist material of her gown and noting that he had left a darkened ring over her breast. ‘You do realise that you have the most fantastic body?’ he questioned. ‘And that your dress shows it off quite beautifully.’

She shook her head, only dimly aware that she was blowing the opportunity to talk about the dress. ‘St-stop it,’ she whispered.

‘Stop complimenting you? I thought all women liked to be complimented.’

‘That’s not what I meant,’ she breathed. ‘I meant, that you shouldn’t be doing…that.’

‘But you like me doing
that.’
He felt her little squirm of acquiescence. ‘And you don’t want me to stop it, do you?’

‘I…do.’

‘No, you don’t. You want me to move my hand down to your ankle, don’t you? Like this.’

‘Nikolai!’ Zara swallowed as his index finger made a provocative little circling movement there.

‘And then I think you want me slowly to slide it up underneath your dress. Like this,
da?’

‘Nikolai,’ she breathed as she felt the brush of his hand resting on the curve of her calf.

‘Why, you’re not even wearing any stockings,’ he
observed unevenly. ‘Just bare legs. What a very wicked young lady you are. No wonder that dress was clinging so provocatively to you as you walked into the ballroom.’

‘Oh!’ She could feel the sudden spring of her body in response to his feather-light touch—as if it had been woken from a deep, deep sleep and all her senses had suddenly come to urgent life.

‘Listen, we’re really very close to my house,’ he said unevenly as the car slid to a halt at some traffic lights. He was so aroused by their encounter that he could barely get the words out and only supreme self-control stopped him from continuing what they were doing. But he really couldn’t make love to her in the middle of a busy London street, could he? Not with his chauffeur sitting behind the darkened screen and the possibility of some damned traffic warden rapping on the window. ‘Why don’t you change your mind and come up for a drink?’

Zara stilled. Perhaps it was the blatant falsehood about having a drink when they both knew what was
really
on his mind—and on hers—which made common sense crash into her mind like a dark spectre. That and the fact that she was making out in the back of a car with a man she barely knew
—and she was risking ruining her friend’s precious dress along with her own reputation!

Her heart thudding, she pushed his hand away and slithered to the far end of the seat, her trembling fingers groping for her feathered handbag, which lay beside her like a wounded bird. ‘No!’

His eyes narrowed but he felt the unmistakeable flicker of irritation. ‘Isn’t it a little late in the day for game-playing?’

‘I’m not playing …’ But the words died on her lips because she
was.
She
was
playing games. Dangerous games.

Pretending to be something she wasn’t. Masquerading as his wealthy equal. Maybe that kind of women did make easy love to men they’d just met at a party—but she wasn’t one of them. She amended her choice of words to allow her to extricate herself with a modicum of dignity. ‘I’m sorry, but it’s very late—and I’m tired.’

Nikolai felt the sharp spear of disappointment. Saw from the look on her face that she meant it—and he bit back his frustration. Of
course
she was playing games, probably in the mistaken belief that her refusal would make him think more highly of her. His mouth hardened. Did he have the time or the inclination to go through the necessary number of dates which she decreed obligatory before she let him take her to bed? Was she, he asked himself brutally, worth it?

His eyes drank in the wide green eyes, the flushed cheeks and the kiss-bruised lips and he felt a pulse begin to flicker at his temple. Yes, she was worth it—for novelty value as well as her curiously fresh-faced appeal. Because when was the last time a woman had actually turned him down?

‘Well, I think that’s a pity,’ he said softly, reaching for his jacket pocket. But before Nikolai could extract one of the business cards he kept there he saw that she was pushing open the car door and swinging her shapely legs out and his brows knitted together in disbelief.

‘Where the hell do you think you’re going?’

‘Home.’

‘I told you that my driver would take you wherever you wanted to go.’

Zara shook her head. ‘And I’ve changed my mind. I don’t want a lift, thank you.’

‘You don’t?’ His eyes narrowed incredulously. ‘Why not?’

Zara shook her head as she tried to calm her frantic
thoughts. Before she had been ashamed and worried that he might judge her humble little home if he saw it, but now it was much more than that. There was still shame, yes—but the overriding sense of shame was directed at her own appalling behaviour. She had behaved wantonly with a man she barely knew, displaying a fierce sexual hunger which was slightly terrifying. And Nikolai Komarov was the man who had made her feel that way. She didn’t want another thing from him—and she certainly didn’t want his driver reporting back where she lived.

Why not?
questioned a rogue voice inside her head.
Are you afraid that if he turned up unexpectedly on your doorstep, you might not be able to turn him away?

‘I think we both know why,’ she said quietly. ‘We hardly know one another and we’ve just behaved in a way which was very…inappropriate.’ She gazed into the ice-blue eyes and steeled herself against their sensual impact. ‘And in view of that I think it’s probably better if I make my own way home. It was nice to have met you…Nikolai.’

Stepping onto the pavement and taking a moment to steady herself on her high heels, Zara tugged down the silk-satin of her crumpled dress and turned to dart through a gate which led straight into the park, determined that this time he should not follow her.

For a moment Nikolai didn’t move, frustration warring with admiration at her unexpected display of independence and feistiness and, yes, downright
prudishness.
She had walked away without taking his details and she had left him wanting more.
She had walked away.
He felt the drumming acceleration of his heart and the hot rush of blood to his groin. Now his hunter instincts were screaming to be satisfied and he slid his cell-phone
from the pocket of his jacket and dialled up one of his aides.