childhood. He had loved and pitied his mother and had been powerless to help her. She could imagine the wound of regret and frustration that that must have engraved on his soul.
‘You fight me every step of the way,’ Mikhail pointed out.
‘Maybe you would have preferred a subservient woman—’
‘No!’ The interruption was harsh, unequivocal. ‘I wouldn’t want you if you were scared of me or always trying to impress or please me.’
‘I never really understood why you do want me,’ Kat murmured truthfully.
Mikhail flipped her round and stared down at her with smouldering dark eyes. ‘You don’t need to understand.’
Long fingers were gently smoothing her upper arms, awakening her to the hunger she couldn’t restrain. He mightn’t scare her but the hunger did. It overpowered her will, made her desperate and needy, two things she always hid from him. Even now, when he simply looked at her, arousal ran like a current of fire through her body as her breasts swelled and peaked and liquid heat curled between her thighs.
‘I want you now, moyo zolotse,’ he husked and the dark rough edge of his voice slid over her senses like silk.
‘Because I upset you—’
‘I wasn’t upset—’
Her winged brows arched in disbelief at the claim. ‘You were furious!’
An appreciative laugh was wrenched from Mikhail. His face etched with amusement. He really was a breathtakingly handsome man, she conceded dizzily. He pulled her up against him, fingertips brushing a slender thigh as he lifted her skirt.
‘I was about to say that you’ll never make diplomatic status but perhaps I was wrong. You’re bare and you know how much I like that.’ Mikhail breathed a little raggedly as he scooped her off her feet and carried her back indoors.
Her face was burning with colour. She was a shameless hussy who rarely wore a full set of underwear in his radius. Three weeks as this man’s lover had changed her and she didn’t think she could ever go back to the prim and cautious woman she had been before. Although she was always waiting to see him betray some sign of boredom or lack of interest, he never seemed to get enough of her.
He settled her down on the bed and stood over her, ripping off his shirt to expose the six-pack abs that she so admired and unzipping his chino pants to reveal a very healthy erection. She reached out to touch him, stroking his thick hardness with gentle fingers, watching his eyes narrow below his lush lashes and shimmer with unashamed desire. He came down on top of her and kissed her with hungry driving urgency, his tongue stabbing between her parted with lips with an erotic skill.
He wasn’t prepared to free her for long enough to remove her dress in the proper fashion and as he attempted to impatiently extract her from its folds fabric ripped and she gasped, ‘Mikhail! I liked this dress—’
With a stifled curse he concluded the struggle by pulling it over her head and finally flung it aside. ‘Ti takaya valnuyishaya … you are so exciting. I can’t wait—’
‘We only got out of bed a couple of hours ago,’ Kat reminded him, swiping the tip of her tongue over his wide full lower lip, loving the scent and the taste of him.
‘Obviously you should have given me more attention while we were there,’ Mikhail quipped speciously, his hands cupping the soft full mounds of her breasts and rubbing her straining pink nipples, so that her breath caught in her throat and the smart answer on the tip of her tongue got lost somewhere in the passage from her brain.
Her eyes drifted closed as he kissed her again and stroked between her legs. She quivered, hips rising as he pleasured her with consummate sizzling ease, touching her where she needed to be touched, setting alight every nerve ending in her writhing body until an uncontrollable ache built at the heart of her.
‘You’re so hot and tight,’ Mikhail growled against her throat, pushing back from her to close his hands round her waist and turn her over onto her stomach. ‘I need you now.’
He tugged up her hips and sank into her in one long deep thrust that made her cry out in shock and delight. Her level of pleasure went into overload as he took her hard and fast. Intense sensation laced with wild excitement seized hold of her. The slam of his body into hers kicked off a chain reaction of spellbinding heat in her pelvis. The excitement surged to an unbearable level and she was gasping, whimpering, begging until the skilled brush of his thumb over her clitoris sent her rocketing into a blazing paradise of erotic pleasure that splintered through her quivering length like an explosion. She collapsed down on the bed as he groaned his own release into her shoulder.
‘You’re crushing me,’ she protested, struggling desperately to catch her breath again.
Mikhail expelled his breath and released her from his weight, rolling onto the bed beside her before pulling her back into his arms to kiss her with lingering appreciation. ‘You set me on fire,’ he muttered thickly. ‘But the moment I stop I only want to do it again—’
‘Forget it … I won’t be capable of moving again this side of midnight,’ Kat mumbled, her body still pulsing and thrumming from the intensity of her climax, her limbs resting so heavily on the mattress that they felt like iron weights.
‘I’m ready and willing to do all the work.’ But then, in a disconcertingly sudden movement, Mikhail fell back from her and swore in Russian. ‘I didn’t use a condom!’
Consternation gripped Kat. She sat up, seriously startled by that admission, for he never took risks in that department. No matter when or where they made love he was always careful to use contraception to protect her. Being in a relationship where pregnancy could even be a risk was, however, still so new and surprising to Kat that her mind refused to even estimate the possibility of an unplanned pregnancy.
‘And if my calculations are correct we may have chosen a bad day to be careless,’ Mikhail breathed tautly, his strong jaw line hardening at the prospect. ‘Less than two weeks have passed since your last period, which puts us slap bang in the middle of your fertile phase.’
His intimate grasp of the workings of her female body embarrassed Kat, but there was no hiding such facts in a relationship such as theirs. ‘But I’m at an age where my fertility is probably going downhill,’ she told him thinly, not really wanting to be reminded of that possibility but keen to stop him worrying.
‘These days lots of women are giving birth in their forties,’ Mikhail fielded drily. ‘I doubt that you have any grounds to assume that you’re infertile.’
‘Well, let’s hope we don’t have cause to find out whether I am or not,’ Kat muttered ruefully, sliding off the bed and heading into the bathroom because all of a sudden she needed a moment alone and unobserved.
The Kat she saw reflected in the mirror was all shaken up, her eyes dazed, her face pale and troubled. An affair seemed trouble free until the real world threatened and there could be nothing more real world than an accidental pregnancy. For goodness’ sake, her sister Emmie was pregnant and hadn’t she disapproved, deemed her irresponsible and feared for her sibling’s future? How much less excuse did she have at her age? She should have taken care of birth control even before she got on the yacht. Better safe than sorry should have been her guiding principle. She had been so sure she wouldn’t end up in Mikhail’s bed and where had that belief got her?
Mikhail joined her in the shower. He ran a reproving fingertip along the anxious line of her compressed lips. ‘Stop worrying about it. If you conceive, we’ll handle it together. We’re not frightened teenagers,’ he pointed out levelly.
But the day after tomorrow she would be leaving the yacht and he would no longer be part of her life. He had said nothing to make her think otherwise and she preferred that. She didn’t want him promising to phone and then not bothering. She had fallen in love with him but that wasn’t his fault. He had made her no promises and told her no lies. So, how had she managed to fall for him?