“I do understand you correctly, Katya? You are now willing to work for me?”
Well, you knew he was going to rub it in, didn’t you, Katherine? This was the very reason you didn’t want to see him—well, one of them. Listen to your heart racing and you know the other reason.
“I don’t know if I would call it work,” Katherine answered tightly. “I will help your sister because she appears to be in need. Your sister, Alexandrov,” she emphasized, “not you.”
“It is all the same, since I pay her expenses.”
“Expenses? You aren’t going to mention money again, are you?”
He had been going to. Working for him, she would earn ten times what she could have earned in England for the same job. Any other woman would want to know that. But the slant of her eyes warned him not to mention it to this one.
“Very well, no talk of wages,” Dimitri conceded. “But I am curious, Katya. Why did you change your mind?”
She countered his question with one of her own. “Why have you been in such a foul temper these last days?”
“How did—what the devil has that to do with anything?”
“Nothing, probably, except I was told I was the cause. I didn’t believethatfor a minute, of course, but then I was also told that everyone on the ship was walking around on eggs because of this temper of yours. That’s really rather insensitive of you, Alexandrov. Your people do so try to please you, even to the detriment of others, and here you don’t even notice when you’re frightening them out of their wits. Or did you know, and just not care?”
He was frowning long before she finished. “Are you through criticizing me?”
Her eyes widened with mock innocence. “You did ask why I changed my mind, didn’t you? I was only trying to explain…”
He knew then that she was taunting him deliberately. “So you have capitulated for the sake of my poor servants, have you? If I had known you were going to be so noble, my dear, I would have ignored my sister’s needs and insisted you attend to mine instead.”
“Why, you—”
“Now, now,” he admonished, his humor restored enough to tease her. “Remember your sacrifice before you say anything that might provoke my temper again.”
“Go to the devil!”
He threw back his head and laughed delightedly. How her fury contradicted her demure appearance. Sweetly innocent she looked in her watered-silk dress of pink and white, modestly high-necked and unadorned, her hair tied back with a simple ribbon as a young child would wear it. And yet her lips were compressed tightly, her eyes sparkled with rancor, and her square little chin jutted out mutinously. Had he really worried that her refreshing spirit might be broken by his callous treatment? He should have known better.
Laughter gone, but still smiling, Dimitri met her furious gaze and found himself caught once again by the curious effect she always seemed to have on him. “Do you know this temper of yours excites me?”
“I can’t say the same of yours—” Katherine began, only to fall abruptly silent as his meaning dawned on her.
Her heart seemed to flip over. Her breath stopped. She was mesmerized, watching his eyes turn more black than brown. And when his hand gently slipped under the hair on her neck and slowly drew her toward him, she was powerless to prevent what she knew was coming.
Every single erotic sensation she had felt while under the influence of that exotic drug returned to Katherine the moment his lips touched hers. Her limbs turned to jelly, her mind to mush. His tongue slid unhindered between her teeth to leisurely explore her mouth and heat ignited in her loins. Her hips thrust forward instinctively without any encouragement from him. In fact he still only held her neck. It was she who pressed her body close, needing the contact, needing…
Dimitri was utterly amazed by her response to him. He had expected arms to flail and legs to kick, not for her body to turn soft and yielding. Instead of trying to coerce her into his bed, as her firm resistance to him indicated was the only way he would get her there, he should have kissed her sooner.
What a fool he had been. He had not placed her in that well-known category of women who said no when they really meant yes. And yet—and yet there was no coyness about Katherine. There was no pretense to her fiery emotions. She didn’t belong with the artful, deceptive women he was used to, and that left him floundering in confusion even as he delighted in his sudden good fortune.
Katherine felt bereft when the kiss ended. Dimitri’s hand slid around to the side of her face, and just as she had done that fateful night, she turned her cheek into his palm, unaware that she was doing so. It was hearing his sharply indrawn breath at this tender gesture that brought her back to her senses. Her eyes opened to reality and she groaned miserably, even as she sprang into motion.
She placed her hands flat on Dimitri’s chest and pushed hard. He didn’t budge, but because he hadn’t been restraining her in any way, she nearly stumbled from her own impetus, falling back into her cabin. The distance between them now was all she needed to regain control, even though her pulses were still racing.
She glared at him and threw up a hand when he took a step toward her. “Don’t come any closer, Alexandrov.”
“Why?”
“Just don’t. And don’t you dare try that again.”
“Why?”
“Blast you and yourwhys. Because I don’t want you to, that’s why!”
