LITMIR.BIZ

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forward in a dark swirl to hide her face. She looked young and fragile and Sergei could still taste her on his lips. He almost spoke. Then she lifted her head, her eyes darkened to the deepest violet, and took a step forward. She laid her palms flat on his chest, and he could feel the warmth of her hands through the silk of his shirt. His heart thudded hard under her palm. He stared at her, inhaled her honeyed scent, and his heart beat harder.

      ‘I suppose,’ she said softly, tilting her head back so she could look at him, her hair cascading down her back in a glinting chestnut river, ‘it all depends on whether you mind.’

      ‘Mind?’ he repeated blankly. The honest, artless placement of her hands on his chest—especially when he’d just, through silence, rejected her—made him incapable of thought.

      He’d never been so blindsided by a woman before, not just by her touch but by her whole self. He could see such an openness, such a willingness to be hurt in Hannah’s eyes that it humbled and amazed and angered him all at the same time. No one should be so vulnerable. It could only lead to disappointment and pain.

      ‘Mind me being an idiot,’ she clarified in a whisper, her voice lilting and playful even though her eyes were dark and wide and he felt her fingers tremble against him. Sergei knew this needed to stop. He also knew how to do it.

      ‘Oh, I don’t mind,’ he assured her in a lazy murmur, and then he closed the space between their mouths in a kiss that was nothing like the gentle embrace of a moment ago. This kiss was hard, demanding, a proof of power.

       You don’t move me.

      He felt Hannah’s yielding response and he slipped his hands from her shoulders to her hips, pulling her to him in shockingly intimate contact. At least she was shocked, innocent that she was, for he heard her gasp against his mouth before he deepened the kiss once more, an endless demand for her surrender.

      And surrender she did, her body becoming soft and pliant, melting towards his as her mouth slackened under his onslaught and her hands came up to clench his hair. Her heart trembled against his and her breath came in mewing gasps; Sergei lost all conscious thought, blindly driven by a need that was far more than merely physical.

      Why did this woman—this irritatingly optimistic Pollyanna of a woman—make him feel so much? Need so much? Remember?

      His hands slid under her bottom and he pressed her against the door, pulling her legs around his waist, his hands rucking up her skirt. Needing to feel skin against skin. Forgetting that this was just meant to be a way to make her push him away.

      Her arms locked around his neck, her head thrown back, her lips parted as her heart thundered against his. His breath came in harsh, tearing gasps, and his fingers brushed the lace of her underwear. ‘Sergei,’ she said, his name a ragged whisper, and the desire and anger that had been rushing through him in a molten river of emotion so he couldn’t tell one from the other froze to an icy stream of lucidity.

      She was a virgin.

      And he was mauling her against a door, her mouth swollen and maybe even bruised from his kisses.

      What was he doing? What had he done? He’d meant to scare her off with a kiss, but this … willing or not, she still didn’t know what she was doing.

      He did.

      He pushed away from her, half stumbling, a self-loathing so deep and consuming it felt like acid corroding the soul he’d thought he’d lost long ago.

      ‘Sergei,’ she said again, and this time he knew it was a question, one he couldn’t answer.

      He ran his hands through his hair, dragged a breath into his lungs and then let it out in a long, slow shudder. Hannah straightened, fixed her dress. Her hands trembled.

      Sergei looked away. It was better this way, he knew. Better to end something he never should have begun … for both their sakes.

      It wasn’t supposed to go like this. She might be a virgin, innocent and optimistic as Sergei had said, but even with the most positive outlook possible Hannah knew this wasn’t good. Sergei wasn’t even looking at her. And after his mouth—and his hands—the places they’d been on her body, the way they’d made her feel—

      Until now. Now she felt pretty close to wretched. She swallowed, her throat dry and aching. ‘I guess I’m more of an idiot than I thought,’ she finally said, trying to sound wry although her voice was little more than a croak. Still she tried to smile. She didn’t know what else to do.

      ‘Yes, you are,’ Sergei returned, his voice a savage hiss. Hannah jerked back at the fury in his tone. Even though he’d just pushed her away from him, she hadn’t expected it. Yet as she stood there, conscious of her tousled hair and swollen lips and rearranged clothing, her mind started to catch up to where her body had been blazing ahead. And she wondered what would have happened if Sergei hadn’t stopped … and if she would have regretted it.

      Even now with her clothes in disarray, her body aching, the only sound their still-ragged breathing, she didn’t think she would have.

      ‘Sergei, why—?’

      ‘Don’t.’ He raked a hand through his hair once more, then dropped it to his side. ‘Go to your room,’ he told her, as if she were a naughty child. ‘Grigori will deal with you tomorrow.’

      ‘Deal with me?’

      ‘Your passport. Your flight.’ His lips curved in a grim smile. ‘You can be out of this country this time tomorrow night, milaya moya.’

      She recognised the Russian. My sweet. And Sergei had never sounded more cynical than when he said the endearment. ‘Why did you push me away?’ she asked quietly.

      Sergei’s nostrils flared, lips thinned. He looked so angry, yet minutes ago he’d been kissing her. Touching her. His hands—

      ‘Don’t, Hannah.’

      ‘Don’t what?’

      ‘Don’t be so bloody naive!’ He took a step towards her, his eyes blazing. ‘You want to know why I pushed you away? Because I don’t do virgins, milaya moya, especially not ones who barely know how to kiss.’

      Ouch. Hannah blinked, swallowed again, and lifted a chin. ‘I don’t believe—’

      Sergei let out a sharp bark of laughter. ‘Believe it.’

      ‘You’re just saying that,’ she insisted, because Sergei was too angry to have pushed her away out of boredom or even disgust.

      His mouth twisted in a sneer. ‘There’s optimistic and then there’s deluded. You’re leaning towards the latter.’

      Hannah folded her arms. Sergei’s sudden rejection didn’t make sense. She knew she was inexperienced, he’d known that, but she wasn’t so naive that she hadn’t felt the evidence of his desire. She’d felt it in his kiss too, in the way he’d reached for her. She’d felt the answer in herself. ‘I’m not deluded.’

      He arched an eyebrow, so coldly in control. ‘Really?’

      ‘Really.’ Although she was starting to feel that maybe she was. She was so out of her element, beyond her experience, yet she still felt instinctively that Sergei wasn’t telling the truth. He hadn’t pushed her away because he’d stopped wanting her, so why?

       Because he didn’t want to hurt her.

      The thought popped into her mind like a translucent bubble, shining and perfect. Fragile too. For if that wasn’t a deluded thought …

      Sergei was surely the coldest, most cynical man she’d ever met.

       Cynical about himself.

      ‘I don’t believe you,’ she said slowly.

      He let out a harsh laugh. ‘You really are some kind of Pollyanna, always

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