Instinctive Male (13 page)

Ellie did need him, at least on one level, but did she want him on a deeper one?

“I don’t suppose you need me.”

He needed her physically and in ways that were new to him, but he wouldn’t admit it, not now. His body aching, he smiled tightly at the taunt and walked from her office.

He paused when something soft and fragrant hit his back. He picked up a daffodil from the scattered bouquet on the carpet, broke off the stem and stuck the flower in his lapel. “Thank you so much.”

Five long hours later, in front of Jarek’s oceanside cabin, Mikhail sat looking out into the night, the moonlight trailing over the water to him. His emotions swirled around him like a storm. The need for Ellie was more than a physical one, it was one of the heart, and he was pushing, wanting her….

A sound told him he wasn’t alone and then he caught Ellie’s fresh scent. “Mikhail?”

He didn’t want her to see him now, to know how deeply he hurt.
She didn’t trust him.
“Don’t touch me. If you do, I won’t be responsible.”

She eased onto the worn beach towel beside him. “You’re always responsible. You’ve done so much for everyone.”

Don’t touch me.
That was what Ellie had said after arguing with Hillary. He knew now how Ellie felt, as if one touch would shatter her control.

The moonlight settled, silvery upon her hair, the slight breeze lifting, toying with the silky strands. She was wearing his brown leather jacket with her jeans and that pleased him. “I’m wearing this because I miss you, Mikhail. It feels like you and you’ve been so distant. I know I hurt you…. I didn’t mean to, but… Is there someone else?”

As if he could hold anyone else, share his body and his life with another woman. He looked down at her. “You could ask that?”

In the moonlight, her blush rose to fascinate him.

Ellie looked out at the ocean and her hand trembled as she smoothed her hair, a very good sign—but then, when a man is desperate for a sign that he affects a woman…

“You are a potent, attractive man, Mikhail. Very potent. It’s difficult to think around you, especially when you turn on the charm.”

Well, he thought, that compliment did help. “So I have charm.”

“Just a bit. It’s rough and edgy and stormy, but charm, just the same. Don’t let that fact go to your head.”

“And I make you nervous. Why?”

“Because you can be very difficult when you want, and you know good and well that I’ve come to apologize. You’re making me grovel, Mikie, and I really wouldn’t advise that. You came bristling into my office today, attacked me, and kissed me to prove your point—okay, I’m susceptible to you—and then you walked off. You’re cocky and arrogant, and I don’t know why I want you, but I do.”

“Ah, just that touch of anger. So I’ve gotten to you, have I?”

Her eyes were silver in the night, burning him. “You know you do. You always have since I met you years ago.”

Proof that she cared would help, Mikhail thought as he
lay back, his hands behind his head, waiting…. “Convince me.”

“Ohhh!” Ellie threw herself over him, holding his wrists with her hands. “You’re so irritating. You know just how to set me off.”

He moved slightly, enjoying the feel of her curves over him and allowed his pleased smirk to wrap around one word: “Sometimes.”

She stared down at him and blinked.

“I love it when you think, darling,” he said, enjoying her expressions.

“I am thinking that sometimes I set you off, Mikie,” she challenged.

This time, Mikhail didn’t hide his grin. With Ellie, he felt young and impetuous and certain. “Of course.”

Ellie’s smile stopped his thoughts, and he waited, enjoying the moment and wondering what she would do next. “You can have me, if you want,” he offered softly.

She tapped his lips lightly with her fingertip. “But then, you would have me, wouldn’t you? That’s generally how it works.”

“With us—yes.”

Sadness lurked in Ellie’s expression as her hand smoothed his cheek, her eyes searching his face, and he wondered if she understood how another woman hadn’t wanted him, how much that had hurt….

He needed this, Mikhail thought as Ellie dived in to prove her point, kissing him hungrily, her mouth open and hot upon his. There would be tender moments, but now he needed the fire between them to burn away any doubt of how he felt.

Mikhail eased Ellie away and stood, hurrying to scoop her up into his arms. “I’ve been staying here,” he whispered as he carried her up the steps. “I could not sleep so close to you and not want you.”

Without her, anywhere, he ached to touch her, to hold her, to see her. He’d never been lonely before, always push
ing himself, immersed in work, but Ellie had changed his life, enriched the fabric, his senses. The nights were endless, haunting him with her scent, the sounds of her passion, the sheets raw against his skin when he would have her body touching his. Was it the same for her? Did she ache for him as much?

Did he give her what she needed most?

“Mikhail, hurry….” She snuggled against him, her arms tight around his shoulders as he carried her into Jarek’s simple cabin.

Mikhail placed her on her feet. He reached for a small box on the table and opened it. “For you.”

He lifted his hand to smooth her hair from her cheek. “I want you to wear these and think of me. That you are not alone anymore, that you have me.”

Inside the box gleamed elegant feminine earrings, a lacy length of gold with beads of rose quartz and drops of moonstone. In Mikhail’s big, dark hands, they seemed alive, so fragile, as intricate as the woman he loved. “My grandmother’s,” he said quietly. “It would please me if you accepted them.”

Ellie stroked them with her finger. “They’re lovely, but I couldn’t. They belong to your family.”

“No other woman has worn them, and it’s time. This is how I see you, soft and feminine, yet with strength and love.” Mikhail took her hand and lifted it to his lips, pressing his lips into her palm. “Take them. Take me.”

Would she have him? Would she trust him? Would she…?

Mikhail caught his breath as Ellie’s soft cry echoed in the spartan room, her arms circling his neck. The impact of her body thrown against him sent him backward and tumbling into the big solid Stepanov bed.

Heads resting on the same pillow, they stared at each other and Ellie ran her fingers through his hair, studying him. “You oversimplify, Stepanov.”

“You complicate.”

Ellie’s hand smoothed his face, his hair. “Let me up.”

He inhaled roughly. She chose to leave him, to retreat. Ellie eased from the bed to walk around the simply furnished room, touching the good sturdy furniture, noting the tiny kitchenette, the basic bathroom. “Was she here?”

“My ex-wife? No.” Mikhail thought of the luxurious home JoAnna had demanded. Stark and furnished with cold furniture and marble, it now belonged to someone else.

“Was she in your suite, your apartment at the Amoteh?”

“Yes. But not as my wife. We were divorced by that time.” JoAnna’s big plans hadn’t materialized as she’d wished and she’d come back for more money. She’d failed to seduce him and had ripped into him, accusing him of ruining their marriage.

“I went into your apartment, missing you. I can feel her there, Mikhail. You loved her. You were still aching years ago when I came to the Amoteh’s opening. You’d been divorced a year then and still brooding. I was so angry with you for letting her hurt you. Even then, I wanted to tear her away from you. And I was angry at you for showing no emotions whatsoever. Now I know how much you ached.”

He sensed that Ellie was picking her moment, making her decision, and he could only wait and hope. Then, in the next moment, his emotions carried him to his feet and he paced the length of the cabin, sorting out the past for Ellie as he had for no one else. “I thought I loved her. I changed, not her. JoAnna needed more than I could give her. I…didn’t satisfy her.”

That was the first time he’d made such an admission aloud, but it was important that Ellie know.

She opened her hand, and the earrings tumbled onto the small table. Would she refuse him, what they could have?

The tiny jingle of gold caused his heart to chill. Was Ellie discarding what ran sometimes hot and feverish and other times gentle between them?

Mikhail forced himself to go on, to finish what he had begun, to give Ellie the truth that had gnawed at him for years. He stared out of the window, the continuous flow of waves as they had been through the years. “We had grand plans—a resort chain of our own. I wanted it as badly as she—money, prestige, world travel…. Then I changed, I saw what I could do here, to help Amoteh, and then I knew JoAnna wouldn’t be happy here, I took the job Paul offered—a trade-off to manage a top resort, set in Amoteh. JoAnna was furious, and I thought a house would settle her—and a baby. She took the house, which was more than we could afford, but rejected my child. Then I learned that she only became pregnant to use my child as leverage to get what she wanted. I changed,” he repeated. “I wanted more.”

“For those you love,” Ellie said softly.

“I should have been—We grew apart, and when I looked back, I saw that the intimacy wasn’t there, the friendship and the respect and the sharing. We were separate people.”

Mikhail smiled briefly, contrasting his description of his relationship with JoAnna with how complete he felt with Ellie. “We were ‘unlinked.’ I come here sometimes to get away from what could have been, what I could have done, the mistakes I made, the reasons our marriage failed.”

“I like this place better,” Ellie said firmly as she removed his leather jacket and hung it over the back of a chair. “And I like wearing your clothes. Do you mind?”

He leaned back against the kitchenette counter, crossing his arms so that he wouldn’t reach out for her. “Yes, now I do. I mind you wearing clothes of any kind.”

She nodded and kicked off her sneakers. Ellie slowly, thoughtfully bent to place them beside his boots. Then, with those same careful movements, as though she were making an important decision, working her way through to the final solution, she eased away her long-sleeve sweater and folded
it neatly, placing it on the table. “I like this place. With you.”

In the moonlight sliding through the windows, she was silvery soft curves, graceful as she slid from her jeans and folded them neatly, too. It was a feminine ceremony, Mikhail realized, and one that was slowly killing him.

He couldn’t move, every muscle tense as Ellie picked up the earrings and studied them before sliding them into her lobes. The movement fascinated him; Mikhail had never seen such grace, the shift of her body, the silvery lights of her hair sliding around her face.

She walked slowly toward him, her face in shadow, but the gold gleaming softly as it swayed seductively amid her hair. Moonlight caught the tilt of her breasts, the rounded curve of her hips, the darker shadows between her thighs—

When she stood close, the scent of her skin beckoning, Mikhail couldn’t speak; he could only put out his hand to stroke her thigh, to trail his fingers along her hip. She quivered at his touch. Then her hand was in his, soft and feminine and yet strong as he brought it to his lips.

“You’re wearing too many clothes, Mikie,” Ellie whispered.

As he undressed, she touched him softly on his shoulders, the muscle of his arm, on his hip, winnowing her fingers through the hair on his chest. Each touch, each look aroused, until his blood pounded and heated and knew….

“So here we are,” she whispered as he eased her body close to his, the curve and flow of man and woman, so near and yet not one.

This was the mating, he thought as he cupped her breasts, cherished them with his lips, savoring the taste, the feminine scent of her skin. Her sigh took his desire higher, his body taut and aching, and yet he was determined to give her everything as he eased her onto the bed, covering her with his body.

She opened to him, easing to take him tightly, slowly, within her, and Mikhail fought release, his body humming
for it. Half-closed, silvery in the night, Ellie’s eyes watched him, her cheeks flushed, her lips moist, the earrings gleaming amid the tousled silky strands. She was magic and desire; she was his, the woman who was the other part of him, who was his life.

She was mysterious, waiting, hot, holding her secrets, beckoning him on with the flow of her hips and her breasts nudging his chest, her stomach supple and undulating, those long legs trapping him, her hands caressing….

The storm came too quickly, a flurry of passion and heat and cries that pulsed around them, in them, as Mikhail met her there, fought to hold her, a primitive claiming driven by her sounds, her mouth on his flesh, her hands roaming his back—

They fought on that plane, no gentle taking for either of them, each burning into the other, forging a new level to their relationship, raw and clean and true.

Mikhail felt her body tense as his own tore from his control, and then the world spiraled around them, twisted and made them one….

With his face against her throat, he could feel her pulse slow and treasured what she had given—what she had taken—as her hands soothed and caressed in the aftermath of their passion.

She was complete.

Ellie gave herself to the peace only Mikhail could bring her, and then he began to move again, rising above her, fierce and demanding, and she would have no less….

He eased the hair from her cheek, her ear, and in the moonlight his expression was primitive, all glittering eyes and hard planes. She knew what pleased him, that she wore his mark, that she was his, and she reveled in that, because she held him within her and reminded him by clenching her body.

She met his dark look, challenged him, enjoying the seduction of this man, this wonderful, exciting man, this war
rior, making her feel like a woman, to know a woman’s heart and strength and hungers….

Mikhail pressed his hot, hard face against the spot between her throat and her ear and his hands caressed her, and suddenly her body flew into the storm again, the hunger renewed.