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CHAPTER 8
She had actually thrown herself off the side of the damned boat. Andrey stood at the rail and scowled down at her as she surfaced in the water below and started swimming for the far-off shore, fighting to keep his temper under control. Fighting to shove all of that need and lust back where it belonged, shut down and locked away in the deepest recesses of his memory.
How had this happened? Again? And yet, he was all too aware there was no one to blame but himself. Which only made things worse.
“Is that Addie?”
The voice that came from slightly behind him was shocked.
“‘Addie’?” Andrey echoed icily.
He didn’t want to know she had a casual nickname. He didn’t want to think of her
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The engine roared to life, drowning out whatever she might have said next. Addison stopped swimming then and trod water, watching in consternation and no little annoyance as the small craft looped around her, leaving her to bob helplessly in a converging circle of its wake. Addison got a slap of seawater in the face and had to scrub at her eyes to clear them. When she opened them again, the engine had gone quiet once more and the boat was much too close. Again! Which in turn meant that he was much too close. How could she be in the middle of the sea and still feel so trapped? So hemmed in?“You look like a raccoon, Miss Bryant,” he said in his blunt, rude way. As if he was personally offended by it.“Oh,” she
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There was a brief, intense sort of moment, and then Andrey leaned over, slid his hands beneath her arms, and hoisted her up and out of the water as if she weighed no more than a child. Water sluiced from her wet clothes as Addison’s feet came down against the slippery bottom of the small boat, and she was suddenly aware of too many things. The sodden fabric of her skirt, ten times heavier than it should have been, wrapped much too tightly around her hips and thighs. The slick wetness of her blouse as it flattened against her skin in the sea breeze. The heavy tangle of her wet hair, tumbling this way and that in a disastrous mess. All of which made her feel much too cold, and, oddly, something very much like vulnerable. But then she looked up, and the air seemed to empty out of her lungs. And she didn&
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Instead, Addison had let her hair dry naturally as she’d taken her time dressing, and now it hung in dark waves down her back. She’d found a pair of white denim jeans in one closet, much snugger than she liked, which was only to be expected given the gazelle-like proportions of most of his usual female guests, and a lovely palazzo top in a vibrant blue-and-white pattern in another, which was loose and flowy and balanced out the jeans. She had tossed on a slate-gray wrap to guard against the sea air now that evening was upon them and the temperature had dropped and had left her feet and her face entirely bare. Miss Bryant disappeared leaving her place to Addison. She looked like… herself. At last. Yet Andrey stared at her as if she were a ghost.“Is this another version of thr
SLAVE TO YOUR LOVE CHAPTER 12
He should’ve been happy or at the very least, satisfied. Andrey lounged back against his chair and gazed around the white linen-draped table that stretched the length of the formal dining room in the Presidential Suite of the ‘Principe di Savoia’ Hotel in Milan, surveying the small dinner he’d had Addison throw here in one of Europe’s most prestigious spaces. The rooms of the vast suite gave the impression of belonging to royalty perhaps, so stunning were they, all high ceilings, carefully selected antiques, and the finest Italian craftsmanship on display at every turn. Wealth and elegance seemed to shimmer up from the very floors to dance in the air around them. The investors were duly impressed, as expected, and that would no doubt, be reflected in the size of their
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In fact, that was all they expected of him. That was, the whole of the small town and his grandfather agreed… his destiny. His fate. That was what became of kids like him, conceived in disgrace and summarily discarded by both his parents. And yet, despite this, he had tried so hard, always looking for a kind word or just a nod from the only man he knew as being his family. His lips curled now, remembering those empty, fruitless years. He’d wanted so badly to belong, since he’d first understood, as a small boy, that he didn’t. He’d obeyed his grandfather in all things. Andrey Romanoff had excelled at school. He’d worked tirelessly in the family’s small shop, and he’d never complained, while other boys his age played soccer and roamed about, carefree, no respon
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Andrey was in a very bad mood. He sipped his espresso, as black as his current mood, and eyed Addison over the top of it when she appeared at breakfast the next morning. He had spent what was left of the night chasing the ghosts of his past out of his head and failing miserably. Now, in the bright morning light, the opulence of the suite’s great room like a halo all around her, Addison looked her usual, sleekly professional self, and he found it profoundly irritating. The woman he’d been unable to keep from touching on the terrace in the dark was gone... like she never existed. Gone as if she had been no more than a particularly haunting dream. And still, Andrey wanted Addison. Then… Now… Always…“We are going to Bora Bora,” Andrey announced out of the blu
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She thought of Lowell’s ashes, packed away in the tin that functioned as an urn and sat in the center of her bookshelf back in London. And of the promises she’d made, to him and to herself. That she would let him go into the wind, the water. The least she could do was honor the man he might’ve been, had he made different choices, or been stronger against his own demons. And she knew that she needed closure too.“Something like that,” she said now, not quite meeting Andrey’s eyes.“Such depravity…” His tone was taunting. And it hit hard, though she should’ve been impervious to him.“A word you know well, Mr. Romanoff,” she snapped. Unwisely. Everyth
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