Ruthless Russian, Lost Innocence - Shaw Chantelle - Страница 10
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- 10/39
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‘I had no idea you could play the piano with the same skill with which you play the violin.’
Ella shrugged. ‘I don’t play to performance standard. My mother was an astounding pianist. She could have had a wonderful career; should have done, but-’ She broke off abruptly, feeling the familiar pain in her heart as she recalled her mother’s gentle smile and her unending patience when she had tutored her daughter to play. Instead of enjoying the glittering career as a pianist that she had deserved, Judith Stafford had fallen in love and sacrificed her ambitions for a husband who had expected her to devote her life to being his social hostess. In return the Earl had broken her heart with his brazen infidelity. She would not make the same mistake as her mother, Ella vowed. And she would certainly never fall in love after she’d witnessed the devastation it caused.
Vadim flicked back the cuff of his jacket to glance at his watch, and Ella felt a peculiar sensation in the pit of her stomach when she glimpsed his olive-skinned wrist overlaid with dark hairs. He was so innately male, and so big, his broad shoulders sheathed in a black Armani jacket that he wore with the easy grace of a man who possessed supreme self-confidence.
She was conscious of his brief appraisal of her jeans, and blushed at his faintly sardonic smile. ‘I assume you lost track of time. I’ll phone the restaurant and tell them to hold our table while you get changed.’
She snatched a breath and said quietly, ‘If you had given me a contact number, I would have phoned to explain that I’m unable to have dinner with you tonight-’ she hesitated ‘-or any other night. This is a very busy time for me right now,’ she added quickly, her blush deepening beneath his cool stare.
‘But you do find time in your hectic schedule to eat, I take it?’ he drawled. ‘Although from what I saw of your body the other night, you clearly don’t eat enough.’
‘Well, I’m sorry if you found me a disappointment,’ Ella snapped, infuriated by his reference to the embarrassing episode she would prefer to forget. If she hadn’t been in such acute agony that night she wouldn’t have allowed him to lay a finger on her, let alone undress her. As it was, Vadim had helped her out of her dress, but from the sound of it the sight of her bony figure and pathetically small breasts had not sent him wild with desire. A good thing too, she assured herself, suppressing a stupid wish that she possessed voluptuous curves like his glamorous ex-mistress Kelly Adams. She did not want Vadim to be interested in her, and perhaps now he’d discovered that she had the allure of a stick-insect he would leave her alone.
‘I didn’t say I found you disappointing,’ he murmured, the sudden gleam in his eyes causing her heart to miss a beat as he strolled towards her. He was impossibly handsome, she recognised numbly, unable to tear her gaze from his sculpted features. The razor-sharp edges of his cheekbones and the hard planes of his face were cruelly beautiful, softened only slightly by the sensual curve of his mouth. He was almost unreal-like a marble figurine by one of the Old Masters, or one of those male models from the glossy magazines, who had been airbrushed to perfection. But Vadim was very real, a flesh-and-blood man who was standing unnervingly close to her, so that she could see the tiny lines that fanned around his piercing blue eyes.
‘You know I am attracted to you. I have made no secret that I desire you,’ he said, in such a bland tone that he might have been discussing the weather. But the expression in his eyes wasn’t cool, it was scorching hot, and Ella caught her breath when he slipped his hand beneath her chin and lowered his head.
‘But I’m not…I don’t want…’ She trailed off helplessly, transfixed by his mouth hovering tantalisingly close to hers.
‘You don’t want to date? Perhaps not other men,’ he conceded arrogantly, ‘but I’m different. I unsettle you,’ he reminded her when she opened her mouth to argue, and then took advantage of her parted lips by covering them with his own and kissing her with a ruthless efficiency that blew her mind.
An instinct for self-protection warned Ella to resist, to freeze in Vadim’s arms and jerk her head away so that he was denied access to her mouth. But another instinct, as old as womankind, caused molten heat to flood through her veins and evoked a shocking hunger inside her that was new and terrifying and yet utterly consuming. She wanted him to kiss her, taunted a voice in her head. For the past week she had been unable to forget the demanding pressure of his mouth on hers when he had kissed her at Amesbury House, and her dreams had been full of erotic images of what might have happened if they had not been disturbed. Now those dreams were reality, and his lips were once again working their sensual magic, coaxing her response until she opened her mouth for him and he thrust his tongue deep into her moist warmth.
No man had ever kissed her the way Vadim was doing. In the past she had dated a couple of musicians from the RLO, but her innate wariness made her seem cold and uninterested, and the relationships had quickly petered out. With Vadim it was different. He seemed to view her diffidence as a challenge, and had bulldozed through her defences to awaken her sensuality. For the first time in her life Ella felt the piercing intensity of sexual desire, and any idea of resisting its lure flew out of her mind as she sagged against the solid wall of his chest and felt his arms tighten around her.
He slid one hand into her hair and tugged, angling her head and deepening the kiss so that it became a sensual feast, hot, hungry and fiercely possessive, escalating her excitement so that the pressure of his lips and the bold thrusts of his tongue were not enough and she wanted more. His other hand roamed up and down her body and cupped her bottom, hauling her close so that she was made shockingly aware of his powerful arousal pressing against her pelvis. She should not be allowing him to do this, a warning voice whispered in her head. But he dominated her senses, and a little shiver of need ran through her when he slid his hand beneath the hem of her tee shirt and skimmed his palm over her flat stomach, the sensation of his fingertips stroking her bare flesh intensifying the hot, throbbing ache between her legs.
His hand continued its determined journey upwards. Any second now he would discover that she wasn’t wearing a bra. His questing fingers brushed the underside of her breast and Ella snatched a sharp breath, lost to everything but her longing for him to touch her where she had never permitted any man to touch her before, to curve his hand around the small, firm mound and caress the swollen nipple at its centre.
But, to her shock and scalding disappointment, he abruptly ended the kiss. ‘We need to leave soon, or we’ll lose the restaurant booking,’ he murmured coolly as he dropped his hand and stepped away from her. ‘You’ve got five minutes to get changed.’
Ella stared at him dazedly, her heart-rate gradually slowing as shame at her wanton response to him replaced the frantic drumbeat of desire. How could she have been so weak-willed and so stupid? she wondered bitterly. She had given Vadim completely the wrong idea about her, and now he no doubt believed he could buy her dinner in exchange for sex. For a wild moment she debated locking herself in her bedroom until he went away-but what if he refused to leave? He had already demonstrated his determination to get his own way, and she had a strong suspicion that in a battle of wills he would emerge the victor. Besides, she would be safer with him in a busy restaurant, she reasoned as she marched, stiff-backed, into her room and flung open her wardrobe. She thought it unlikely that he would make a public spectacle by kissing her in front of the other diners, and hopefully over a meal she would be able to convince him that she was serious about not wanting to have an affair with him. But as she stared at her face in the mirror, saw her swollen, reddened lips and her glazed eyes with their enlarged pupils, she acknowledged that the difficulty was going to be convincing herself.
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