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  I was ruined for life. No other man was ever going to be able to touch me. I'd be comparing them all to him, and I had no doubt what he'd done with his tongue could never be replicated.

  Cassie offered me a Malteaser from the packet on the desk and took one for herself. I sucked the chocolate off as the biscuit ball crumbled in my mouth, trying not to focus too hard on the first image of him that came up.

  Shades and a sharp suit, he was walking into the airport looking like some kind of billionaire jet setter. I felt my nipples tense uncomfortably, rubbing against the inside of my bra.

  The first search entry was a magazine article titled 'Who is Maxim Toropov?' and I clicked through with trepidation to a spread of useless speculation and pictures of him at the edges of various A-List events, mostly in the background, but occasionally sharing drinks with recognisable celebrities, a few minor royals and cousins of dukes. He always had large sunglasses on, always standing half way in the shadow.

  Not a single picture showed as much of his face as I'd already seen, and his facial hair changed from one shot to the next so I couldn't even be sure they were really all the same man.

  Apparently he was on a list of most eligible bachelors. His profile stated he kept a notoriously low profile, operating his own security company after leaving the army following two tours of duty. He operated internationally but had residency in the UK, although his address was a closely guarded secret. When showing his face at events, he'd been spotted in sports cars of varying models.

  "That's not just some guy." Cassie whistled as she scanned the article. "Holy hell, he's got to be doing something shady. Would you look at that list of cars he's got?"

  I let out a stunted laugh.

  She wasn't wrong.

  There were rumors of his involvement with a Moscow-based crime syndicate, although no allegations had formally been made and there was no evidence to support the claims. Readers were warned he had dangerous associates, that he was a very serious man.

  I felt a thrill go through me when I read that. I knew exactly what they meant by that.

  There was no doubt in my mind he was just as dangerous as his associates, maybe even more so.

  He was no businessman, playing bodyguard to rich celebrities. He was the kind of man who knew how to live in the shadows and show just enough of himself to be able to move seamlessly through the glitzy world when he needed to. He could get close to anybody he wanted in a legitimate manner, or walk up behind them in the street, slide a knife between their ribs and disappear like smoke.

  In the ring, I'd felt the power of him, admired the flash of his predatory nature, and seen the numbed over coldness in his eyes that told me he was capable of anything.

  He was exactly what they thought he was - between the lines it was painted as clear as day - he had to be mafia. Russian Mafia. Nothing else made sense.

  And seeing it in black and white, up on the screen, I was even more drawn in by the idea of him than before.

  Maxim Toropov ran the kind of security that vanished problems entirely. Permanently. And he wanted to help me. Or maybe he just wanted me.

  I barely managed to catch my breath.

  "How did you meet this guy?" Cassie straightened up, frowning at the screen and I could tell from the way she tilted her chin and folded her arms across her chest that she thought I should steer well clear.

  It was too late for that, and I was a moth to the flame.

  "He was visiting someone in my street." It wasn't a lie, exactly. It just wasn't exactly the truth. Unless you counted carrying out surveillance as visiting. Which most people didn't.

  Cassie let out a short, unimpressed sound.

  "You be careful. A guy like him has got to have ulterior motives. He probably thinks you know what your step dad's up to."

  I felt my smile dull just a little bit. That was my worry too. He did this for a living. It wasn't like it was totally out of the realms of possibility that he was flattering me with a bit of attention to get me to do what he wanted. Still, the thought irritated me. Even more so because Cassie was saying it. Didn't she think that he could just like me?

  "I don't think so. Anyway, I don't know anything about any of that."

  "You be careful. Don't get yourself mixed up in something you can't handle."

  I leaned back in the computer chair, looking up at her. "When have I ever done that? You worry too much, Cassie. I'm going to be fine. And look at him."

  I clicked over to one of the pictures that some journalist had clearly taken with a long-range zoom lens. He was on the deck of a super yacht apparently owned by some Russian oligarch whose name I couldn't begin to pronounce, and he was tanned and shirtless and perfect, right down to the small patches of scarring along his right side that couldn't be anything other than bullet wounds and shrapnel remnants, and the clearly inked wings that spread across his chest, just under his collar bone. "I deserve to have a little bit of fun."

  Cassie rolled her eyes. "You watch yourself, Elizabeth, or you might trip over that lolling tongue of yours. Back to work in ten minutes. The bar's getting too busy for me to be paying you to stalk your gentlemen friends."

  "Love you too Cassie."

  "You better."

  *****

  I wandered home from work in a daze, still feeling Maxim's lips on mine. His large, gentle hands drawing me in against his muscled body, letting me feel the power of him.

  A few days ago everything I wanted had been clear, and then this big, beautiful Russian walked into my life and started turning everything on its head.

  My body was buzzing with need for him. Everything turned to him. I couldn't stop myself from looking over my shoulder, wondering whether he was watching me, whether he was following me. Whether he'd be at the window across the road when I got home.

  I wanted him more than I knew was sane, and it was the only thing driving me to stick around. He hadn't asked, and I loved him for that, but I could see the writing on the wall - he needed me to help him get what Sutherland had. I shouldn't have cared. I should have gone home and packed my bag and gone to Cassie's for a few days.

  That had always been the plan.

  But damn it, he'd turned up outside my final exam and swept me off my feet like the perfect gentleman I knew he wasn't.

  I wasn't prepared for that. I don't think any woman ever could be.

  CHAPTER 10

  Elizabeth

  On the weekend, Pierce had brunch booked with his agent, Sandra, somewhere expensive sounding near St Paul's. The Cathedral, with the blue dome, not my school. Thank God.

  It had been on his schedule for weeks. I'd learnt to sneak onto his office computer and check his appointments so that I could avoid being in the house at the same time as him as often as possible. So far, it absolutely paid off.

  Usually avoiding him involved me being out of the house, but that morning was the first time in months I'd have it all to myself and I couldn't wait for him to leave. Especially because I was due to attend some grand publicity event with him, tagging along playing the role of the adoring step-daughter, in the evening.

  All I wanted to do was moon about the house reliving what Maxim had done to me, how his lips felt on mine, and his tongue flickering on my body.

  I stayed up in my room until I heard the front door slam, and watched him get into a shiny black cab. No Uber for Pierce. He liked it all the old fashioned way. Black cabbies had to learn all the streets in London, and take a test. You couldn't just roll up with a GPS, and why would he want an inferior driver taking him all of fifteen minutes, on a journey that the one-way system meant couldn't be navigated any other way?

  Whatever. I had the house to myself. I didn't care what the old fart got up to.

  I trailed downstairs in my dressing gown. The one I pilfered from the hotel laundry room. Cassie and I had matching ones. She reckoned it was a perk of the job, especially since they didn't seem to believe in pay rises. I reckoned she was dead right about that.

&n
bsp; I made myself a coffee and used his full cream organic milk, then spat in the little plastic and shook it hard to mix it in. Small, juvenile little things like that weren't going to get me far, but they bloody well felt good.

  I was making eggs when the doorbell rang. Usually I'd have ignored it, but I peered out of the kitchen window, up to the street, intrigued to see a delivery van outside.

  With an irritated sigh, I jogged up the stairs and pulled the door open, not giving the smallest shit that my hair was messed up, pulling my dressing gown tighter around me.

  "Package for Elizabeth Harrington."

  I frowned at the man as he held out a little electronic device for my signature, and attempted to thrust a wide, narrow box at me.

  "That's me, but I don't think-"

  "Listen Luv, if you don't want it, return it like everybody else does."

  Glare still fixed on my face I signed, and yanked the package out of his hand.

  "The hell's your problem? Got out of bed on the wrong side, darlin'?"

  It took all I had in me to slam the door in his face instead of putting my fist through his face. Appropriate force was a concept I was struggling with.

  Especially before breakfast.

  At the kitchen table, I found myself with a plateful of scrambled eggs, frowning down at a white, solid lace dress sitting amongst a layer of tissue paper. It was beautiful.

  Who the hell had sent this to me?

  It had come from an expensive little boutique around the corner that sometimes I spent too long looking in the window of. I knew, because I recognised it immediately. Pierce would never know to go there. He would never buy me anything like this and the idea that he might made me shudder with revulsion.

  It was going straight back if he had anything at all to do with it. What alternative was there? It wasn't like I had a long line of people just waiting for the excuse to buy me dresses. There wasn't anybody else who would do this. Which meant it didn't matter how much I liked it, the dress was going back.

  "Jesus Christ, you've got to get out of here, Elizabeth."

  I didn't want to think about what it meant if he was sending me things to wear. Hopefully nothing. Hopefully this was from his publicist, who'd seen the clothes I usually wore and probably wanted me in something classier than sportswear.

  It was definitely that.

  Wiping my hands off to make sure I didn't smear grease all over it, I pulled the dress out of the box to hold it against me. Just to have a look, before I packed it up again. The hem came to the middle of my thighs and the cut was perfect. I could tell that even without a mirror.

  I already knew I was going to go upstairs with it and find the packing note, and put it on - just to see what it looked like on. What it would have been like to wear. If it hadn't come from someone I despised.

  As I picked the box up again, a handwritten note fluttered to the floor and I picked it up.

  For tonight, Sugar.

  Shit.

  My whole body flushed hot, stuck on the memory of Maxim's eyes and his large hands and his clever, clever mouth. The way he'd loomed over me in the ring the first time we'd met and how he'd swept me off my feet outside the school gates. Had I been right? He had to be talking about the sugar packet I'd sent back across the road.

  Holy hell, I really was flirting with a guy who was stalking me from the building next door, a guy who had at least one gun on him that he could shoot well enough to break a single pane of glass like it wasn't a bullet at all. A guy who knew my movements well enough to turn up where I was half a city away.

  Shit.

  If I accepted this, what did that mean?

  I didn't care.

  The only thing I was thinking was whether I had the right bloody shoes to match the dress. I wanted to get closer to Maxim Toropov than staring at him from across the street, and maybe he'd come close if he saw me in this. Why else would he have sent it?

  He didn't seem crazy. He was respectful in the ring. He could have grabbed me. Could have tried to make a snatch, or even tried to hurt me. But there was something very controlled about him that I recognised from all the men a the gym, a concise, military way of moving.

  He was here because of Pierce's stupid book.

  He could be a Russian spy, a hitman, looking to take my stepfather out for daring to expose all those oligarchs. Maybe Mrs Koskova had sent him to get back at Pierce for being so horrible to her little dog. No way did Sutherland have some kind of protection detail that he'd arranged, watching the house just in case. He was too arrogant to think he could be touched.

  Maxim didn't have James Bond vibes anyway. He was more rugged than that, like he'd do anything it took to get the job done. And I didn't think he cared whether he was on the right side of the law. It seemed to me he was used to getting what he wanted. I didn't know what I was going to do if that was me.

  Maybe we could work together. I wanted the same thing he did - Pierce Sutherland dead and buried.

  My head was spinning with a thousand different questions. The faster the evening ahead came, the better. One way or another, I was going to get some answers before the night was over.

  *****

  I sat on the bottom step of the staircase, listening to Pierce outline all the rules for the evening.

  "You will stand up straight. And you will smile and make polite conversation. And when they ask you you will tell them how lucky you are to have me as your stepfather."

  My gaze set off into the distance, I was doing a pretty good job of filtering him out. By now I knew from the pattern of rise and fall in his voice when it was time to interject with a nod. "I understand."

  "You better you hear me? I want none of your cheek. No clever little comments. You will not ruin this for me you nasty little whore."

  I clenched my teeth, feeling my jaw tense and my cheeks flush at his accusation. It was nothing new, but it always stung more than it should have. He didn't even care how wrong he was, and for that I was grateful. I couldn't be a whore and a virgin at the same time. And I'd rather that than him ever think to touch me.

  No one wanted the tomboy who never grew up. The spiky girl who was all angles and sharp barbs. There was a running joke at school that I didn't have a boyfriend because the last boy who tried it with me got nothing but a mouthful of teeth in his dick.

  It shouldn't have mattered to me. I didn't want to trail through awkward fumbling eighteen year olds who needed an ego boost so they could become real men. Sucking off some teenage boy who was too horny to remember he was supposed to at least try to get me off too didn't sound like fun. I hadn't met anyone who'd changed my mind on that.

  Call me stupid, but I wanted my first time to mean something. To be with someone who cared about me. Who maybe even might think that we could be together forever rather than just one night. And that was not going to happen with any of the trumped up idiots I came into contact with.

  That hankering for some perfect hero was the only strand of romance I had left in me. My parents had gotten together right out of school, and Mum only had stories of Dad being the perfect man for her. I barely remembered him, but I knew without a doubt that there had to be someone just as perfect for me as he had been for her. No way in hell was I going to wind up getting taken in by some fraudster like Pierce. I wasn't going to settle for anything less than the man who was meant to be mine forever.

  "Are you listening to me Elizabeth? What year did I win the Pulitzer?"

  I wanted to tell him I didn't give a damn, but I knew better than that. I forced myself not to sigh. "The year before last, Pierce. It was in the papers."

  "I know that you imbecile. Right. Stand up, get the door. I'm not having you making us late."

  Out on the street, the taxi was waiting.

  I caught myself looking over to the doorway of the mansion as I climbed into the back seat, straightening out the skirt of the pristine dress that I was certain now he hadn't bought for me. Foolish as it was, I found myself looking for the gu
y in steel-capped boots, as though he'd still be hanging around this late.

  Pierce got in behind me, and kept his distance, sticking to the otherside of the plentiful seat of the black cab, clinging onto the handle above the window as he instructed the driver on exactly which roads he was supposed to avoid.

  The hum of the engine changed, and I glanced back to the shadowed doorway across the street, drawing in a breath at the sight of that same pair of bright blue eyes meeting mine just as the cab pulled away from the curb.

  I whipped around in my seat, determined to keep my eyes on him, but we were already rounding the corner, heading towards Cadogan Square.

  I didn't realise the man was wearing a pristine evening suit and a black tie until the pounding of my heart settled. What was he doing there lurking in the dark?

  The possibilities crowded in on me. Maybe I'd never know for sure, but there was something dangerous about him, and it drew me to him like a moth to a flame.

  "What on earth is the matter with you?" Pierce snapped, frowning hard at me. "You better not be this jumpy all evening."

  "No sir."

  CHAPTER 11

  Elizabeth

  I saw him on the other side of the room when we were in the reception area and everyone was standing around with glasses of champagne, waiting with undisguised hunger for the waiters to bring out their silver trays of doll-sized little bits of food. Pierce's publicist didn't seem to see the irony in putting caviar and cocktail blinis on the menu, and given the speed at which the waiters were being ever-so-politely mobbed, I didn't think anybody in the entire place noticed apart from me.

  And maybe him.

  Out of the scruffy building site clothes, he looked ruggedly handsome. He had a dark beard that was just a little past what was classed as stubble, in here it made him look refined where out on the street it had made him look dangerous. I didn't think one was less true than the other.

  The dark suit jackets was perfectly tailored to accentuate the sharp V of body, broad chest tapering to impossibly slim hips. But his legs were strong. All of him was, and the expensive suit didn't hide that well enough from me at least. I could still see he was the same man underneath. He was as out of place amongst these slim, perfect media people as I was. But he did a hell of a good job of fitting in.