The Russian's Ultimatum (9 page)

Emily’s fingers skimmed up his chest and her hands hooked around his neck. She pressed into him, moving against his erection, her breasts crushed against him.

Unable to bear the thought of breaking contact with her luscious soft flesh, Pascha half-dragged and half-carried Emily to the bed. There, they fell onto it in a heap, her melodious easy laughter like music.

He gazed in wonder, taking in all the features of her face, from the large brown eyes that glowed with sensuous promise to the heart-shaped lips curved in a half-shy, half-wanton smile. He took in the faint smattering of freckles the sun had exposed on her delicate skin and wondered if a more beautiful woman existed—but, no; in his eyes, that would be impossible. Perfection was lying beneath him hooking an impatient arm around his neck and tugging his head down to capture his lips in a deeply passionate kiss that made his blood burn into a fever.

‘You’re beautiful,’ he whispered before burying his face in her neck and kissing his way down to her perfectly ripe breasts.

Moving his lips over each of them in turn, his need deepening with every second, he forced his mind to detach. He was close to the edge. He could feel it.

Reluctantly he abandoned the softness of her breasts and snaked his way down her body, smiling at her jolt as he moved lower. How many more of her secrets were there to uncover?

Casting his head lower still, over her dark, downy hair, he felt her body tense slightly when he gently prised her thighs apart and laid between her parted legs. Gazing up at her through hooded eyes, he was gratified to see her head thrown back, her breathing shallow through her parted lips.

He dipped his head, his tongue immediately homing in on the nub of her pleasure. She tasted wonderful, of musky, sexy woman. Her breathy, responsive whimpers only served to fire him further, and when her fingers clasped his hair, and she raised her buttocks and writhed beneath him, he feared his own peak was nearing.

And then he felt her stiffen, her whole body lifting from the mattress, her fingers digging into his scalp as her orgasm rippled through her.

The white light flickering behind Emily’s eyelids slowly dispersed. The deep pulses flowing through her body dissolved into a trillion tiny tingles that burrowed from the tips of her toes all the way up to her scalp. Dazed, she lifted her head up and opened her eyes. Pascha’s chin now rested on her abdomen and he was gazing at her with something akin to wonder.

Wordlessly he crawled up the length of her body until he was on top of her, his nose touching hers. Their lips came together and she wrapped her arms around him, the bodies pressed together so tightly it was impossible to know where she began and he ended.

A whimper of panic flew from her mouth when he pulled—ripped—away from their embrace.

Placing a tender finger to her lips, he smiled crookedly. ‘I must get some protection.’

She twitched a nod and attempted a smile in return. As she watched his retreating figure head to the bathroom, she took deep breaths, trying desperately to contain the ragged beat of her heart.

Pascha was back by her side in less than thirty seconds yet those beats seemed interminably long.

Her gaze moved to the square silver packet in his hand.

He gathered a handful of curls and moved them aside to place a solitary kiss on her neck. Looking back at her, his eyes burned, sparkles flying into her and liquefying her core all over again. ‘Do you want to put it on?’

But Emily’s hand was shaking. It was nothing but anticipation, she frantically told herself. She was a twenty-first-century woman.

So why, then, did she suddenly feel so vulnerable?

She wanted this more than she had wanted anything in her life. And that was terrifying.

He leaned forward and kissed her, a kiss full of passion and hunger, a kiss that blew everything else from her mind. She slipped a hand down his arm and caught hold of his fingers. Together, their lips still locked, they rolled the condom on. Done, Pascha smoothly manoeuvred her onto her back and pushed her legs apart, his big hands stroking her thighs before curving up her sides, up the sides of her breasts, up to her neck, before resting on the pillow either side of her head.

Her lips suddenly cold as he broke the kiss, Emily’s eyes fluttered open and locked onto his.

The sensation of drowning flooded her. She could feel the strong thud of his heart hammering against his chest, reverberating through her skin and burrowing through her ribcage to match the unsteady tempo of her own.

Pascha placed his lips on her mouth, just a light pressure, his breath flowing into her pores and filling her mouth with sweet heat and moisture. Every nerve-ending in her body burned, demanding his possession, and when he finally entered her she had no control over the high-pitched moan that flew from her mouth.

Keeping her eyes wide open, she raised a hand to his cheek, savouring the feel of him inside her, filling her completely.

His movements were torturously controlled as he began to move, his kisses intensifying as he deepened the penetration, their bodies fusing into one pulsating, rhythmic mass.

Emily was helpless in his arms, unable to do anything but clasp tight to him and repeat his name over and over in a desperate voice that was not her own, taking every ounce of the pleasure he was bestowing. Pascha began to drive harder and faster into her and still all she could do was cling to him, nothing but willing putty in his hands until, finally, the tension tightening in her core exploded. Waves of pulsating ripples tore through her into a crescendo of colour that blinded her in its brilliance.

Dimly she was aware of his movements becoming more frantic, his groans deepening until he gave one last powerful thrust and crashed on top of her.

For long minutes her head was nothing but mist. Pascha’s breath was hot on her neck. Her fingers idly caressed his scalp and the nape of his neck, her eyes locked on the ceiling.

As the mist began to clear and the sensations absorbing her body started to lessen, the world came back into focus. But it was all wrong. It was nothing she could put her finger on; it was like looking at the world through a different lens, a tiny shift in the spectrum.

But that tiny shift was enough to tell her she would never be the same again.

CHAPTER NINE

T
HE
STORM
HAD
cleared when Emily awoke, a beam of light pouring through the small porthole.

Pascha’s side of the bed was empty.

She looked at her watch. It was only eight a.m. and she’d only had minimal sleep but it had been enough to see her through what she already knew was going to be a long day.

The bathroom was empty. She dived inside and locked the door. A minute later she stood under the steady stream of the shower. For an age she did nothing other than let the hot water pour over her body. The same body that had woken barely two hours before to make love to him all over again.

She could still feel the press of his lips to hers...

She could still taste him...

A flush swept through her that had nothing to do with the steam of the shower.

Every atom of her body danced with an energy she had never experienced before.

But mixed with the dancing was a deep feeling of dread right in the base of her stomach, a warning that she had made what could be the biggest mistake of her life.

However much she wanted to, she couldn’t hide in the shower for the rest of her life. She had to face him under the light of day sooner or later.

Dressing in a clean black bikini and a sheer viridian-green sarong, she made herself a cup of tea then opened the door of the shelter.

The early heat of the day hit her immediately, warming her skin. She breathed it in, eyeing her surroundings, looking at the destruction from the night before. Dozens of trees had been felled, the clearing in front of the shelter littered with leaves and snapped-off branches. The shelter appeared to have escaped unscathed. She doubted the lodge had got off so lightly.

There was no sign of Pascha.

She sat back on the same bench from the night before; it was bone-dry, as if the rain had never lashed it. In the daylight she saw it had been welded to the concrete beneath it, a sign of Pascha having taken no chances, not even with a bench. The thought brought a wry smile to her lips.

The man thought of everything.

Inhaling deeply, she looked around. All the stars had gone; the sky was bright and cloudless. For the first time she was able to appreciate the view, a vista even more spectacular than the one from her veranda. In the distance were the neighbouring islands cresting out of the calm, sparkling ocean. She hoped they hadn’t suffered too much in the storm.

She sensed rather than heard movement. Holding her breath, she waited as Pascha sat next to her, keeping a respectable distance between them. Her heart hammered painfully beneath her ribs.

‘What’s the damage?’ she asked. At least her vocal cords worked. That was something.

‘I haven’t been to the lodge yet. I was waiting for you to wake.’

She supposed this was her cue to get to her feet and get her stuff together.

Closing her eyes briefly to brace herself, she fixed a nonchalant look on her face and turned her head to look at him.

At some point that morning he’d shaved. His hair had resumed its usual immaculate state. Somehow the chinos and polo shirt he’d changed into were properly pressed.

An ache bloomed low in her abdomen, climbing all the way up to tighten in her chest.

Pascha stared at the beautiful face he’d woken up to.

He’d had possibly the worst sleep of his life but also, somehow, the best. He’d listened in the dark as Emily’s breathing had deepened and slowed into a regular drawn-out beat. At one point she’d turned in her sleep, her face just inches from his own. He’d gazed at her lips, barely visible in the darkness, and had pressed the lightest of kisses to them. His body hardened at the memory of her taste, a sultry sweetness that fired his loins anew.

Her hair smelt like raspberries.

Everything inside him tightened.

Mingling with his desire was guilt. It plagued him.

If he’d known Malcolm Richardson’s wife had died only a few weeks before the money had disappeared, he would have handled the matter differently. He wouldn’t have suspended him summarily without giving him a chance to put his side across. He would have been far gentler in his approach.

Pascha had been so wrapped up in the Plushenko deal that he’d put everything else on the back burner, including the internal investigation into the missing money. So wrapped up had he been that not one employee who knew Malcolm Richardson had dared tell him of his recent widowhood.

He put himself in Emily’s shoes. If it had been Andrei accused of stealing money...

He would have done anything to clear his name. He would have believed in his father’s innocence every bit as fiercely as Emily believed in Malcolm’s.

‘I’m sorry.’

A groove appeared in her brow that he wanted to smooth away. ‘I should have known your father had been so recently widowed.’

Her gaze remained steady but something flickered. ‘Yes; yes, you should have.’

He sighed heavily. ‘I really am very sorry. I wish I’d known about your mother. I would have handled things a lot differently if I had.’

She nodded and sank her teeth into her lips before saying, ‘Please, do me a favour and clear his name. I know you’re going to drop the suspension and everything, but he still needs to be cleared properly for his peace of mind. I swear he never took that money.’

‘I will get it prioritised.’

‘Thank you.’ Her eyes held his, something swirling in them that disappeared before he could read it, and she straightened, as if giving herself a mental shake-down.

‘I’ll get my stuff together and we can go back to the lodge.’ She didn’t wait for his response before disappearing back into the shelter.

* * *

‘What’s that place?’ Emily asked shortly after they started the walk back to the lodge, spotting a pretty concrete hut through the foliage.

‘One of the guest shelters.’

‘Like the one we stayed in?’ She mentally applauded her outward nonchalance. So long as she kept the conversation impersonal she would be fine. Her stomach felt all knotted and twisted, though, and she inhaled deeply, trying to loosen all the constrictions within her.

She was reading too much into her jumbled emotions. So they’d made love; that didn’t have to mean anything. People made love all the time. Well, other people did.

She’d been single for too long, that was her problem. Her emotional state made her vulnerable too. It was no wonder her heart raced when she was around him.

‘It’s identical. There are three of them for guests to shelter in if a storm hits so they can retain their privacy.’

‘Why didn’t you put me in one?’

He turned his head to look at her. ‘I didn’t want you sitting through that storm alone.’

The warm glow his words evoked in her made her feel flustered.

Why, oh why couldn’t he be the evil monster she’d assumed him to be at the beginning?

But then, if he had been that evil monster, she would never have made love to him. She would never have clung to him for support and comfort when her grief had threatened to drown her with its strength.

The further down the trail they went, the more the wreckage from the storm became apparent. The majority of the pathway was covered with felled trees, branches and tiny twigs sharp enough to cut into flesh. Pascha enfolded her hand in his, helping her clear it all, his care expanding her heart so much it threatened to smother her lungs and stop them working.

The main house of the lodge appeared to have survived the storm without any damage. It was lucky. Devastation abounded everywhere else.

Half of the roof was missing from the hut where all the game paraphernalia was stored, a yellow cordon already erected around it. A tree had fallen onto the roof of the dining hut and had cut straight through it like a hot knife slicing through butter. Everywhere the eye could see lay scattered debris.

But it was at the jetty that the real destruction had occurred. Pascha’s yacht, the beautiful vessel due to take Pascha back to Puerto Rico later that day, and her ticket home in five days, had toppled over in the storm and beached on its side.

* * *

Pascha held onto his temper by a thread.

Were the fates conspiring against him? How else to explain the run of luck, all of it bad, that had blighted him the past couple of days?

Until Emily had stolen into his office, everything had been running smoothly. Marat had been too taken with the number of zeroes on the buy-out offer to look closely into the provenance of RG Holdings. Not that it would have mattered if he had. So complex was the structure disguising Pascha’s involvement, he was certain it would withstand any vigorous scrutiny. And yet...there was always room for doubt. Marat was lazy but there was no telling how deep his lawyers would dig.

There always existed the possibility something could go wrong.

Emily, who had kept her distance while he’d spoken to his staff, joined him and gave a sympathetic grimace. ‘Is it salvageable?’

‘It’s on its side and filling with water as we speak. The chances of getting a crew here within the next few days to attempt a rescue are remote at best.’

‘So what happens now?’

He dragged a hand down his face. ‘I don’t know.’

He moved away from her, crossing over to Luis, who was speaking on his mobile phone. When he got a minute, he would get his charged. For the moment the yacht was taking all his attention. Once he’d got this sorted he would go back, check the dozens of messages that would undoubtedly have piled up and call Zlatan, his lawyer. One thing at a time. Right now it was the loss of his only means of getting off the island that was his priority.

‘Any news?’ he asked Luis when he disconnected the call he was on.

‘The soonest we can get a boat to you is likely to be two days. The other islands took a real battering—the few boats that aren’t destroyed are needed to get the injured to the mainland hospital.’

One consolation Pascha could take was that none of his staff here on Aliana had been injured. They’d all escaped with a solitary scratch between them.

He nodded curtly. ‘Keep trying,’ he said, doing his best to keep his tone moderate. He could easily pull some strings and get any number of boats to come for him from the mainland. If he were to do that, he could be off the island within a couple of hours. But the real issue was the coral reef. The local islanders knew it well, knew which sections were safe to sail through and which would rip the hull to shreds. Outsiders, the yachtsmen that could come to his rescue, did not. To call them would be to place lives at risk.

For the first time he cursed his refusal to build a landing strip or heliport on the island. He hadn’t wanted to destroy the qualities that made Aliana Island so special. It just went to prove that sentimentality got you nowhere.

‘Is there anything I can do to help?’ Emily asked quietly, appearing at his side.

‘Speak to Valeria. At the moment, it’s all hands on deck.’ He shook his head at the inappropriateness of his comment. The deck of his yacht was submerging by the minute.

It suddenly occurred to him that Emily would want to hear news of her father.

‘Let’s go to my hut and check my phone for messages.’

However much he would like to blame her—blame anyone—none of this mess was Emily’s fault.

There was nothing else he could do here at the jetty. The clean-up was under way. The storm had knocked the power out but the generators were working and would keep them going for at least a fortnight.

They made the short walk to his hut in silence.

He unlocked the door and held it open for her. Her petite figure brushed against his as she passed.

His jaw clenched.

With everything that was going on, the adrenaline pumping through him—the urge to bury himself in her softness, even if just for a short while—was strong.

Instead he sucked in a breath, plugged his charger in and turned his phone on. It lit up immediately, two dozen beeps ringing out in rapid succession.

He listened to his voicemail messages first. Six missed calls: two from his lawyer, one from his PA and three from James. He listened to the latter first.

‘Well?’ Emily asked, her arms folded so tightly across her chest a sliver of paper would have struggled to get through. Worry was etched all over her face.

‘Three messages from James. One asking how to work the dishwasher, one asking if it’s okay to cook a pizza in a microwave and one asking where the iron is.’

She relaxed her stance slightly. ‘At least we know they’re alive.’

‘If your brother hasn’t killed them both with food poisoning.’

‘My dad’s not eating anything so he’ll be safe.’

He saw straight through her vain attempt at humour. ‘He’s not eating?’

‘All he does is sleep.’ She shrugged helplessly. ‘Sleep is good. Eventually he comes out of the darkness. Well, normally he does.’

‘And James is capable of caring for him?’ Now he knew the man microwaved pizza, real doubts had set in.

‘Yep. All he has to do is make sure Dad takes his pills and keep an eye on him throughout the night.’

He could see how badly she was struggling to keep herself together and he admired her efforts. There was so much he admired about her. ‘I’m surprised James didn’t ask you to pop home and iron for him.’

‘He can ask all he likes—I’m happy to cook for my brother but when it comes to ironing he can jolly well do it himself.’ She grinned, a forced smile that tugged at his heart. ‘I swear, if I ever have a boy I’m going to train him to do every domestic chore going before I let him loose on the world.’

Of course Emily wanted children. A woman as devoted to her family as she was wouldn’t think twice about it. It was in her DNA.

A lancing pain settled in his guts. Once, a long time ago, he’d dreamed of having children. A family linked by his blood.

‘So you don’t completely baby him, then?’ he said, forcing his own grin.

The groove in her brow deepened. ‘I never baby him. He’s just hopelessly undomesticated.’

‘I understand that it’s normal in a lot of families for the baby to keep the baby role even into adulthood.’ That didn’t apply to him, though—Marat had gone to great lengths to ensure Pascha never felt like a brother to him, younger or otherwise. Pascha had grown up feeling like an only child with a stranger living in the room next to him. A stranger he had wished with all his heart would accept him.