She found him in one of the yacht’s many salons, a sleek celebration of marble and glass down an ostentatious spiral stair that was as gloriously luxe as everything else on this floating castle he’d won in a late-night card game from an old Russian oligarch.
‘It was easy to take,’ he’d said with a small shrug when she’d asked why he’d wanted another yacht to add to his collection. ‘So, I took it.’
Andrey sat now in the sunken seating area with one of his many… anonymous companions melting all over him, all plumped-up breasts and sheaves of wheat-blond hair cascading here and there.
He had discarded his jacket somewhere and now looked deliciously rumpled, white shirt open at the collar and his olive skin seeming to gleam. T
He could smell the faintest hint of something sweet… soap or perfume, he couldn’t tell. But desire curled through him, kicking up flames. He remembered burying his face in her neck, and the need to do it again, now, howled through him, shocking in its intensity. And Andrey didn’t know if he admired her or wanted to throttle her when she didn’t move so much as an inch. When she showed no regard at all for her own safety. When, instead, Addison all but bristled in further defiance. Andrey had the strangest feeling - he wouldn’t call it a premonition - that this woman might very well be the death of him. He shook it off, annoyed at himself and the kind of superstitious silliness he thought he’d left behind in his unhappy childhood.“Why are you so concerned wit
She had actually thrown herself off the side of the damned boat. Andrey stood at the rail and scowled down at her as she surfaced in the water below and started swimming for the far-off shore, fighting to keep his temper under control. Fighting to shove all of that need and lust back where it belonged, shut down and locked away in the deepest recesses of his memory. How had this happened? Again? And yet, he was all too aware there was no one to blame but himself. Which only made things worse.“Is that Addie?” The voice that came from slightly behind him was shocked.“‘Addie’?” Andrey echoed icily. He didn’t want to know she had a casual nickname. He didn’t want to think of her
The engine roared to life, drowning out whatever she might have said next. Addison stopped swimming then and trod water, watching in consternation and no little annoyance as the small craft looped around her, leaving her to bob helplessly in a converging circle of its wake. Addison got a slap of seawater in the face and had to scrub at her eyes to clear them. When she opened them again, the engine had gone quiet once more and the boat was much too close. Again! Which in turn meant that he was much too close. How could she be in the middle of the sea and still feel so trapped? So hemmed in?“You look like a raccoon, Miss Bryant,” he said in his blunt, rude way. As if he was personally offended by it.“Oh,” she
There was a brief, intense sort of moment, and then Andrey leaned over, slid his hands beneath her arms, and hoisted her up and out of the water as if she weighed no more than a child. Water sluiced from her wet clothes as Addison’s feet came down against the slippery bottom of the small boat, and she was suddenly aware of too many things. The sodden fabric of her skirt, ten times heavier than it should have been, wrapped much too tightly around her hips and thighs. The slick wetness of her blouse as it flattened against her skin in the sea breeze. The heavy tangle of her wet hair, tumbling this way and that in a disastrous mess. All of which made her feel much too cold, and, oddly, something very much like vulnerable. But then she looked up, and the air seemed to empty out of her lungs. And she didn&
Instead, Addison had let her hair dry naturally as she’d taken her time dressing, and now it hung in dark waves down her back. She’d found a pair of white denim jeans in one closet, much snugger than she liked, which was only to be expected given the gazelle-like proportions of most of his usual female guests, and a lovely palazzo top in a vibrant blue-and-white pattern in another, which was loose and flowy and balanced out the jeans. She had tossed on a slate-gray wrap to guard against the sea air now that evening was upon them and the temperature had dropped and had left her feet and her face entirely bare. Miss Bryant disappeared leaving her place to Addison. She looked like… herself. At last. Yet Andrey stared at her as if she were a ghost.“Is this another version of thr
He should’ve been happy or at the very least, satisfied. Andrey lounged back against his chair and gazed around the white linen-draped table that stretched the length of the formal dining room in the Presidential Suite of the ‘Principe di Savoia’ Hotel in Milan, surveying the small dinner he’d had Addison throw here in one of Europe’s most prestigious spaces. The rooms of the vast suite gave the impression of belonging to royalty perhaps, so stunning were they, all high ceilings, carefully selected antiques, and the finest Italian craftsmanship on display at every turn. Wealth and elegance seemed to shimmer up from the very floors to dance in the air around them. The investors were duly impressed, as expected, and that would no doubt, be reflected in the size of their
In fact, that was all they expected of him. That was, the whole of the small town and his grandfather agreed… his destiny. His fate. That was what became of kids like him, conceived in disgrace and summarily discarded by both his parents. And yet, despite this, he had tried so hard, always looking for a kind word or just a nod from the only man he knew as being his family. His lips curled now, remembering those empty, fruitless years. He’d wanted so badly to belong, since he’d first understood, as a small boy, that he didn’t. He’d obeyed his grandfather in all things. Andrey Romanoff had excelled at school. He’d worked tirelessly in the family’s small shop, and he’d never complained, while other boys his age played soccer and roamed about, carefree, no respon
In the middle of the night, on a terrace in Italy, Addison was forced to admit the fact that she had never truly got a handle on just how devastatingly attractive Andrey Romanoff was, or how much it had always affected her. Even before that night in Cadiz.“Oh… s-sorry… I didn’t know you were out here,” Addison said, and she could hear it in her voice, that slight quaver that gave her away. That all but shouted the things she didn’t want to admit to herself and certainly didn’t want him to know. How she melted for him, even now, even after all he did to her… or how he behaved… How she ached in all the places she wished he would touch her with those capable hands or with that difficult, addicting mouth. Her lips, her breasts… And that hu