CHAPTER NINE

      IVAN stood in the open doorway, seeming to fill it. His arms were crossed over his mouthwateringly bare chest, his tattoos sinuous and seductive over all of that hard male flesh, his black eyes trained on her just the way she’d seen them in all of those hot, naked dreams that still moved in her, making her head spin. Or perhaps that was the ordinary, inevitable effect of Ivan standing only a few feet away wearing nothing but a pair of loose black trousers low on his hips, leaving even his feet bare.

      Miranda’s mind went blank. Her body exploded into a host of reactions she would have thought meant the onset of an intense and sudden illness had she not known better. Had she not understood by now that it was him. It was all Ivan. This desert in her throat, this flood of scalding heat between her legs. This breathless whirl of sensation, this spinning wilderness in her head.

      Ivan.

      Their gazes clashed. Burned.

      Miranda thought there should have been a storm—sudden thunder, torrents of hail, the sizzle and pop of summer lightning—but the California sky was a calm and sleepy blue all around them.

      It was Ivan. He was the storm, and Miranda was terribly afraid he was already inside of her, changing her, uprooting her and destroying her, without his having to do anything more than look at her like that.

      His hard mouth curved, though she didn’t make the mistake of thinking he was truly amused. Or even really smiling, come to that.

      He lifted one of his hands and crooked his finger at her in the universal signal to come, just as he had once before in a Parisian dressing room.

      Like he was some kind of Russian prince after all, beckoning the peasants near, wearing so little, wanting only her instant obedience in return.

      Expecting it.

      “Do you think I’ll come running?” she asked, not moving. Hardly daring to breathe. Afraid her feet would betray her of their own volition.

      That curve of his mouth hardened, made her chest feel tight. “Feel free to crawl.”

      Miranda reminded herself that she was brave. That she was strong. That he was, as he’d once told her himself, only a man. Not a monster, despite what she’d long wanted to believe about him. Not capable of making war on her unless she let him. He was only as in control of this—of her—as she allowed.

      “I’ve had a long flight,” she said. She smoothed her hands down the front of her floor-length black sundress, hoping it hid her nerves but suspecting from the way he tracked the movement that it did the opposite. She pushed on anyway. “I want something to drink. Maybe a nap. I don’t have the energy for this.”

      “‘This?’” he echoed, and now he did sound amused.

      “You.”

      Ivan’s dark eyes narrowed slightly. He didn’t move. He simply stood there like the warrior he was, and he was, she thought, the most intimidating man she’d ever seen. The most formidable. And he terrified her, but not, she’d come to understand over the past ten days, in any of the familiar ways.

      Miranda made herself walk toward him. She told herself there was no need to be the least bit intimidated, and still, that thunder rolled inside of her, that lightning crackled deep beneath her skin. That storm raged inside of her, mocking the perfection of the day.

      You can do this! she congratulated herself. You can’t control him, but you can control yourself—

      Ivan reached out again when she drew up next to him, and caught her by the elbow.

      “Miranda.”

      That was all. Just the lightest of touches, a brush of his hand. Her name.

      But that was all it took.

      The world sizzled, burned to white, then simmered red. Like everything simply burst into flame, incinerating her. Leaving her nothing but red-hot embers and that driving, incapacitating need.

      For him. For more.

      She didn’t know who moved first. Who closed the distance between them. But his mouth was on hers, hard and hot. Her hands were buried in his thick dark hair as she kissed him back, greedy and wild. There were no cameras here. No one to watch them, record them. Report back.

      So there were no brakes. No boundaries. Nothing to stop the impossible rush of pure sensation.

      Miranda stopped fighting and wrapped herself around that hard, tough body of his. That warrior’s physique, so roughly hewn and finely muscled. Finally, her breasts crushed into the great wall of his chest. Finally, she explored that breathtaking sweep of hot, chiseled male beauty that was his back, his waist, with her own hands. Finally.

      He kissed her like a starving man. And she was just as hungry. Just as desperate.

      She felt the world tilt and spin, more than usual when he was near, and he was lifting her up, pulling her legs around his waist, then taking her mouth again.

      As if she was his in every possible way.

      And she exulted in it. She loved the hardness of his strong, callused hand against her cheek, giving him total control over the depth and fire of the kiss. His other hand was hot and delicious against her bottom, holding her against the hardest part of him, making her feel shivery and glazed with heat. She loved the thrust of his tongue, the press of his lips, the way he teased and took in turn. He stood there like a rock, holding her so easily, as if she was made of something as insubstantial as cotton, and that made her tremble all the more.

      He was so massive. So incontrovertibly male. Sinew and muscle like marble, as if he’d been carved from stone, and yet he was so hot to the touch. So hot.

      He began to walk, still kissing her with all of that intensity, all of that insistent fire, and she was aware of only a jumble of things around her as he carried her into his house. There was blue everywhere—endless sky and sea through the glass on all sides, a huge abstract painting on a whitewashed wall. Wide-open rooms in that sleek modern style with unusual pops of color here and there.

      But mostly she saw that hard face of his, taut with the same mad desire she felt eating her alive. Then everything shifted again and she was flat on her back on some kind of soft white rug near a fireplace that dominated one stark wall, and he was coming down over her with the kind of fluid ease and heart-stopping masculine grace that reminded her, forcefully, that his body was a sleek machine under his command, and he could make it do anything he wished.

      Anything at all.

      He stretched out beside her, running one of his hands down the length of her slowly, as if claiming her. Learning her. A languorous sweep from the side of one breast to the indentation of her waist, over the curve of her hip, then down the outside of her leg. It was like being bathed in lightning; electrified. One searing burst then another, the voltage of it jolting through her, making her close her eyes against the madness of this. The insanity.

      He whispered that phrase again. “Milaya moya.”

      “I don’t think I want to know what that means,” she whispered, hardly recognizing her own voice when she heard it, so glutted was it with the wildness inside of her, the riot of the storm he’d raised. The storm that showed no sign of easing.

      When