Not Just The Boss's Plaything. Caitlin Crews

shouldn’t have this longing to take his time, to really explore her. He shouldn’t hunger for that lush, full mouth of hers again, or want to taste his way along that elegant neck for the simple pleasure of making her shiver. He shouldn’t find it so impossible to look at her without imagining himself tracing lazy patterns across every square inch of the sweet brown perfection of her skin. With his mouth and then his hands, again and again until he knew her.

      He’d asked her name, as if he’d needed it. He’d wanted her that much, and Nikolai knew better than to want. It could only bring him pain.

      Vodka had been his one true love, and it had ruined him. It had let loose that monster in him, let it run amok. It had taken everything that his childhood and the army hadn’t already divided between them and picked down to the bone. He’d known it in his sober moments, but he hadn’t cared. Because vodka had warmed him, lent color and volume to the dark, silent prison of his life, made him imagine he could be something other than a six-foot-two column of glacial ice.

      But he knew better than that now. He knew better than this.

      Alicia’s eyes fluttered open then, dark brown shot through with amber, almost too pretty to bear. He hated that he noticed, that he couldn’t look away. She glanced around as if she’d forgotten where they were. Then she looked at him.

      She didn’t smile that outrageously beautiful smile of hers, and it made something hitch inside him, like a stitch in his side. As if he’d lost that, too.

      She lifted one foot, shaking her head at the trousers that were still attached to her ankle, and the shoe she’d never removed. She reached down, picked up the tangle of her bright red shirt and lacy pink bra from the pile on the floor of the car, and sighed.

      And Nikolai relaxed, because he was back on familiar ground.

      Now came the demands, the negotiations, he thought cynically. The endless manipulations, which were the reason he’d started making any woman who wanted him agree to his rules before he touched her. Sign the appropriate documents, understand exactly how this would go before it started. Nikolai knew this particular dance well. It was why he normally didn’t pick up women, let them into the sleek, muscular SUV that told them too much about his net worth, much less give them his address....

      But instead of pouting prettily and pointedly, almost always the first transparent step in these situations, Alicia looked at him, let her head fall back and laughed.