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  I was practically salivating just watching him, wondering what he'd meant by sending me this dress. I wanted to go over to him, but didn't dare risk it. I hoped maybe he'd come over to me.

  When he looked up, he held my eye for a long, long moment and I thought my heart was going to beat itself out of my chest. He raised his glass minutely, and if I hadn't been watching him so intently, I would have missed it, along with the tiniest tilt of his head, before he turned away.

  I was about to cross the room to him, to find out what he was playing at. Get to know what his game was, when Pierce's publicist Sandra grabbed me by the arm.

  "Be a dear, Elizabeth, you must come and say hello to Simon. Pierce has been avoiding him all evening, I'm sure you can work your magic."

  I opened my mouth to protest, but her talons that passed as fingernails tightened on my arm and her bright lipsticked smile pulled dangerously thin. "There's a good girl."

  "Fine."

  When I looked back across the room, the guy whose dress I was wearing wasn't looking at me any longer. Sandra's PA, Violet, was laughing orgasmically, leaning on his shoulder, her perfect long legs and air-brushed-on dress making me fume.

  I wanted him to tell her to go fuck herself. I wanted him to look at me again, but he didn't. He refused to meet my eyes as he leaned in and whispered something in her ear. And she laughed again, sliding her hand onto his arm and I wanted to rip her head off.

  I felt like an idiot standing there in the dress he'd sent me, thinking it was anything other than some kind of attempt to buy me off. 'Have a pretty dress, don't tell anyone I'm stalking you with a gun and don't worry about me taking your oral virginity.'

  As much as part of me was seething, I knew that he'd never do that. The way he'd touched me was real. Everything he'd said to me, everything he'd done was true. I just had to trust him. Even as I watched her angle her ample cleavage into his sightline, I knew that he wasn't enjoying it any more than I was. This was his job. That was all.

  He'd be over here with me in a second if it wasn't for that. He would. I knew he would.

  I knocked back a large gulp of my champagne and forced myself to tune back into what Sandra was saying.

  Simon. His tuxedo must have fit him properly some time in the eighties. Now it was pulled out of shape by his solid paunch and the way he rounded his shoulders and slumped where he stood, leaning back on his heels to rock his crotch forward.

  I pulled a tight smile onto my face and held out my hand to shake his. It took every ounce of strength I had in me not to shudder with revulsion. Sandra patted my forearm and her high heels clattered away across the floor.

  The bitch had planned to strand me with him. Of course she had.

  "Was just saying to Sandra, you must be so thrilled the Old Boy's finally pulled something out of the bag, so to speak?"

  "Oh yes. Utterly." That couldn't have been further from the truth.

  "And how about you? Pretty young filly like you must be coming up to University soon."

  "I guess so."

  "May I say, you look quite ravishing."

  I gritted my teeth, ignoring the way his rheumaticky eyes slid over me like he was trying to undress me. I cleared my throat.

  "Will you excuse me, I simply must say hello to somebody else." Mum had taught me that one. She always said if you got it out confidently enough you could walk off with a bright smile and most of the time nobody figured out they'd been snubbed until you were well on the other side of the room. Far enough out of the way to cause trouble.

  I was on my best behaviour, so it was better than stamping on his foot or punching him.

  I wanted to find Maxim, and get Violet the hell away from him. She might be all curves in all the right places and flirty little giggles, but he was meant to be mine, and I wasn't going to let her get in my way.

  I'd never felt territorial before, but it hit me square in the gut that I would cause her proper bodily harm, would relish breaking her perfect nose if it meant she stayed the hell away from him. I'd do it in this perfect white dress and cherish the spray of blood too.

  But we were being shepherded into dinner, and he was nowhere to be seen. I only had my own frustrations to keep me from slumping into a coma over the conversations that swirled around me, Sutherland incessantly the focus of them all.

  Sandra's PA was scanning the table too, and that at least made me smile. She didn't have her claws in him yet.

  Maxim

  Leaning forwards in the high backed wing chair tucked into the corner of the Mayfair gentlemen's club I'd followed Pierce Sutherland and Elizabeth into nearly three hours before, I adjusted my earpiece against a static crackle.

  After the reception, I'd hunkered down away from the party. Having gotten nothing of use from the ditzy PA, who clearly thought I was someone willing to wine and dine her to within an inch of her life, I had to go to work properly.

  In the corner of the dark, well appointed lounge I was sitting so still the bar staff had largely forgotten me. My laptop and large dirty martini I hadn't yet touched provided an excuse for them to leave me alone. My black suit was sharp enough to blend in, basic enough to be forgettable. Clattering away on my keyboard, I'd been polite but unremarkable all evening and I'm sure they had me pegged as some kind of stock broker, wound tight and antisocial. It was an impression to cultivate. But I was outstaying my welcome.

  With one eye on the barman who'd been passive-aggressively stacking glasses for the past hour in an attempt to get me to go home, I cricked my neck from side to side and tugged my tie a little looser, tilting the screen of my laptop closed. From this lounge, I could just peer into the private dining room. A decent suit and appropriate credentials were all I needed to walk right in. Valentin had done me proud. As always.

  The piece of excrement I'd been following so diligently for nearly three weeks, thumped the table, and his mobile phone crushed against the folds of his jacket as it stretched tightly across his ample chest, sending another wave of static through to my receiver. He let out what can only be described as a guffaw and I tried not to growl. Even across this distance, I wanted to punch him. Everything I knew now made him more despicable than before.

  It took all the control I had to keep my distance. I had to bide my time rather than score a cheap point with a fist through his face. When I came for him, I was going to be in and out with a single strike that he'd never see coming, but that didn't mean I wasn't going to make him suffer first.

  Three weeks into my surveillance, I knew without a shadow of a doubt that Pierce Sutherland was the kind of man who ordered too many single malts after dinner and groped the waitress's arse, ignorant to the fact that it was not that kind of Gentleman's Club. He could have cared less that the smile on her face was pinned there solely because she needed her job more than she needed her pride, which unfortunately, was never going to help her pay rent any more than he was.

  He was Oxbridge. He was Eton. And finally he was going to get the recognition he deserved and put the critics who'd torn his last hard-hitting investigation to shreds back in their places. He was on the rise, like a phoenix from the ashes, and he was going to make them eat his dust.

  I knew the script by heart. He'd been boring the entire table with it all evening.

  Ten o'clock Friday night, and he was already steaming. He hadn't even made it to eleven to start coming off the tracks. All I wanted was for him to shut up and go home.

  Red faced, overweight and prone to sweating in the slightest bit of heat, his breathing got heavier as he warmed to his favourite topic, his own cleverness. He was oblivious to the glazed-over expressions of most of his other dinner companions. I'd been reliving the same conversations night after night, and still I was no closer to getting anything useful from the man.

  He liked the sound of his plummy voice too much for just about everyone in most rooms, but he was riding on his secret, getting a thrill out of being the only man who'd dug up the dirt. It was sheer professionalism tha
t kept me tightly tuned to the live stream from the transmitter I'd turned his mobile phone into, and as close to his side as I could be without him noticing instead of putting us all out of our misery by lodging a well placed bullet in his brain.

  Had he been saying anything useful all evening, the waitress would have been the perfect mark to help me finish the job off neatly. I had no doubt I could have been distracting enough for the time it would have taken me to slip something lethal into that third scotch, even though her pouting lips and spiderleg eyelashes did nothing for me. I would have loved to put an end to the venerable Mr Sutherland right then and there.

  But there was no point cutting the head off the snake when I didn't know where he'd laid his eggs.

  I didn't need the waitress to find out what he was talking about. Every single word had come right through to me, crystal clear. None of it gave me what I wanted.

  Man of the moment, his PR company was going to town, pushing the upcoming launch of his new book, in which he was going to name the Russian oligarchs behind the most expensive empty buildings in Belgravia, unmasking the shell companies that owned them. They claimed only one copy of the manuscript existed. That the printers weren't even going to get it until three days time.

  It was why we needed Elizabeth Harrington. She could get us closer in. As long as I could get her trust, and that, I knew as soon as Valentin had sent over those files, was my new reason to live. I needed to get her to trust me so that I could get her out of the nightmare she was living through.

  The rest of it could go to hell.

  CHAPTER 12

  Elizabeth

  Face pressed up to the glass of my bedroom window, I looked out across the silent street with my heart thundering in my chest, trying to calm my breathing. Three in the morning, it was deserted. There was no one around to see me.

  But maybe Maxim was out there. The mysterious man from the boxing gym who'd spoken in riddles and been so serious and disarming. The dress had to be from him. So why hadn't he come up to me? Where had he disappeared to?

  I'd wanted him then and I wanted him now, still on edge from escaping the clutches of Pierce's friends at the promotional evening, and still reeling from seeing Sandra's PA all over him.

  I hadn't been able to get Maxim out of my head for days, and there was nothing I could do about it if he didn't want to be found. It was maddening.

  I peered at all the windows of the building opposite, straining my eyes to make out anything beyond the darkened glass panes. He was out there, watching me, in one of those apartments, just feet away. I knew he was.

  Had he listened in to the whole dinner party? Heard my awkwardness and seen my blushes when Pierce's friends talked about what a 'handsome young lady' I'd become.

  Did he think so too?

  Boxing made my arms too muscular, my chest tight and my breasts small. I never felt feminine, but I felt attractive in this dress, sophisticated, sexy. Like maybe I wasn't so shabby next to all the glamorous people there. It was so much better than the pale yellow dress and the bright white cardigan Pierce would have made me wear.

  But he hadn't come over to me the way I'd hoped he would.

  "Maxim, are you out there?" Even whispering, my voice sounded terribly loud against the silence of the street. I stayed still, up against the glass, watching for any sign he'd heard me.

  And - there.

  Something moved in one of the windows across, one floor down from me. There and gone before I could focus on it.

  "Was that you?"

  The window stayed silent and blank. I let out a short breath, full of impatience. What was I doing? I might as well have been talking to a ghost.

  The thought that it was him excited me more than it should. All this time I'd had a deadly guardian angel waiting in the wing, and I knew now he'd be ready to swoop in and dish out vengeance. For the first time in so long, I wasn't on my own.

  Slowly, I peeled my cardigan off, eyes locked onto the window where I thought I'd seen something move, and there, again, just as fleeting, came a little flash reflected from the streetlights. Binoculars? A camera? Some kind of scope?

  "Come to the window Maxim. I already know you're out there."

  One by one, I lowered the shoulder straps of my dress, sliding them off my shoulders. I held my breath, already knowing what I was about to do - what I wanted to do, before I reached back behind me to slide the zip down.

  Inch by inch, I let the dress fall off my body, my eyes locked onto the window, until I was standing there, in my bra and knickers. I wanted him to show himself. I wanted to know for sure that he was there.

  Down below, the curtain shifted. And a piece of paper with just two words on it appeared.

  Stop it.

  My breath caught in my throat. He was there, and he was watching. Slow and deliberate, I shook my head from side to side. "I don't want to."

  I ran my thumb along the inside of my bra strap, easing it off my shoulder, thinking about Maxim's body, what he was like up close when we had each other on our toes, sparring in the ring. I knew he'd been holding back. But I gave him more of a run than he'd been expecting.

  And I wanted to know what it would feel like to have him up against me in another way entirely.

  Leaning down, I opened my mouth and breathed against the glass enough to fog it. Carefully, I traced letters backwards so he'd be able to read them the right way. Make me.

  The paper disappeared. I watched the curtain for a long stretch of minutes, but he didn't appear in the window.

  I stepped back a little way from the glass, turning around as I unhooked by bra, facing into my bedroom. My nipples were peaked even before the air hit them. I held it out, letting it drop to the ground theatrically by my side.

  This was insanity. I didn't care. The only thing I wanted was for him to see me, the way he'd seen Sandra's bloody PA. I wanted him to want me more than that.

  My heart was pounding as I turned around again, hands at my breasts as much to cover them as to still the need I had to be touched.

  I knew he wanted me.

  I'd seen it in his eyes in the ring and his hunger was more enticing than anything I'd ever known. He looked at me and saw me. It wasn't like the customers at the hotel who just saw a short skirt and a pretty face. I turned him on by pushing through his defences with a tricky uppercut and a pulled suckerpunch.

  But he had to see me as more than someone to fight.

  I didn't want to feel like someone's entertainment. Sutherland's good little stepdaughter who didn't mind his sleazy friends trying to touch me up. I wanted a man like Maxim, who made me feel attractive, like I could be just another woman, sexual and whole.

  Slowly, I lowered my hands away from my breasts, refusing to allow myself any embarrassment. I had nothing to be ashamed of. My body was strong and defiant, and there was nobody else looking out of their window on this street. This entire show was for Maxim. Just like I wanted it to be.

  Slowly I slid my hand across my belly, down in a diagonal line to my hip and I let my fingers drift inside my knickers.

  I bit my lip as my fingers grazed over the hood of my clit, eyes drifting closed as I imagined his rough hands on me instead.

  Again, I leaned down to fog the glass of the window with my breath.

  Keep watching.

  When I looked again, Maxim was standing at the window, a tight, steely glare on his face, arms folded tight across his chest, testing the buttons of his shirt. But there was no mistaking the erection tenting at the crotch of his black jeans. I let out a breath that shivered through me.

  He shook his head slowly, but I didn't care.

  I echoed the motion, feeling the crackle of his eyes meeting mine, even across the distance. No one had ever made me feel the way he did. I needed more. I swallowed to wet my dry throat and turned the shake of my head into a slow nod.

  If he wasn't going to come to me, this was all that was in my power to do, and I was doing it. He had to know that I wanted him
.

  Holding his eye contact as best I could across the distance, I shimmied my knickers down my hips, stepping out of them when they dropped to the floor. Instinctively I pressed a hand to the flat of my stomach, just above the tangle of my pubic hair.

  I wanted him to touch me so badly it hurt, but I was on the wrong side of the road, all by myself in a house that wasn't my home any longer.

  He picked up that piece of paper again, holding the phrase to his chest, and I shook my head again.

  The only way he'd make me stop was by coming over here himself. That was all I really wanted.

  The last thing I was going to do was stop when he couldn't take his eyes off me. Out of all the men I knew in my life, he was the only one I felt like I had some kind of power over, and that was almost ridiculous given how serious and strong he was. He had to be the best part of a foot taller than me and I had no doubt he could snap me in half if he chose to.

  But there had been something in his eyes that told me he'd never even try it, never want to hurt me. And it was so seductive thinking that all that strength was there for me alone.

  All I could do was press myself up against the glass and stroke between my folds, touching myself with careful fingers until I found the perfect spot and my hips rocked to press harder against my hand. I was slick, dripping wetness down between my thighs, and even though I was a virgin I knew this was what my body felt like when it was hungry for him and ready to take his cock.

  I wasn't the good little girl I was supposed to be in another life where everything had gone to plan. I was never going to be her in this one. And moth to the flame, he was drawing me in. I didn't care if he was trouble, he was everything I wanted, and if this was a mistake then I didn't care. It was already better than the life I was trapped in.