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‘What else have you learned?’
‘Not to take you out to dine. Whenever we are in a restaurant, malenki, it always ends in you storming out.’
‘True.’ Rose buried her smile in the bronze hair curling over his chest, arrowing down towards the taut musculature of his belly. Her hand followed. He was so male, as if every other man she’d ever met was a faint copy of this original.
Plato smoothed a hand over her rounded thigh, sliding up the silk she still wore. In a minute he’d strip it off her, learn every luscious inch of her centrefold body and anchor himself to the physical. But right now the femaleness of her body brought him back to how intimate this had been, how right it had felt.
He looked down at her face, her flushed cheeks, her closed eyes, the upward ruby curve of her lips. What was going on in that pretty head of hers? Was she judging him for the complexities of his life she couldn’t possibly understand? Surely what she’d seen today in the street had shocked her, and yet…she seemed fine. She was smoothing one gentle hand over his chest as if she were offering comfort in turn, and something tightened in him.
‘You will have to get used to the security,’ he said, his voice a low rumble in his chest, and waited for a reaction.
Rose sighed, snuggled a little closer. After today she would be glad of ten good men and a titanium wall between her and that explosion of male aggression and intimidation.
Running her hands over her own personal titanium wall, she wondered at what that meant. Get used to. He had to know she wouldn’t be staying here with him. It needed to be a fifty-fifty thing. She moistened her lips, knowing it was the moment to say something but unable to form the words. Did it really matter? They’d work something out. They had to work something out, because she wasn’t giving this up.
Nothing in the world could make her give this up.
Plato eyed her carefully, trying to read her. She seemed utterly compliant, and he felt that tightening in his chest again.
‘Malenki?’ he said in that deep, dark voice, his big hand closing proprietorially around the curve of her bottom.
‘Yes, cowboy?’ She blinked slowly at him, feeling as if the sun had just come out blindingly after a long winter.
‘Have I told you it was my lucky day when you wrote your number on my hand?’
‘I think you just did.’
Yet even lying in his strong arms she could feel the wariness in him as if talking intimately with a woman like this wasn’t something he had much experience of. Or maybe it was just her.
If both of them were gun-shy of taking a risk it was hard to see a future together.
She sighed as his hand began to drift again, covering her breast, thumbing her nipple through the lace. He bent his head and closed his teeth ever so gently over her now perky nipple, all rosy and pleased to see him through black lace.
He was rucking her slip up, and she lifted her arms above her head for him to ease it off. He reached under her to unfasten the tricky three hooks on her bra. She imagined he was accustomed to women who didn’t need so much support. It made her feel shy and a little exposed—until he peeled the lace and satin away slowly, unbearably slowly, and his eyes told her everything she wanted to know. Because he wasn’t looking at her breasts. He was looking into her eyes.
* * *
In the shower the water was warm, pulsing over her ivory skin. Her luscious, odalisque’s dream of a body was climbing his. Plato’s hands knew what they were doing even as his mind went to all sorts of places he didn’t want to investigate, and Rose lifted herself to him, as wild for him as he was for her. For the first time since he’
d arrived in this cursed city a decade ago something felt right and natural and good.
Wrapped in a towel, her hair damp and toppling over her shoulders, Rose sank onto the bed, reaching for him. But almost the minute her head touched the pillow she was out like a light.
He’d never seen anything quite like it, and he sat for a while, just watching her. Then he hooked one arm behind his head, wrapped the other around Rose, and tucked her up against him, his shoulder her pillow. She was still damp from the shower, fragrant from the shampoo and her own warm, female skin. In the shower she had tasted under his tongue like every flavour he craved. She slept in his arms as if she were a sea creature who had found her shell.
Yet he hadn’t kept her safe.
No matter how many times he told himself what had happened today had been a matter of fate, they had been in the wrong restaurant in the wrong street at the wrong hour. He kept coming back to the indisputable truth that he had been hard pressed to protect her, and no matter how much security he carried there was always going to be a level of danger in this city for him. He had made enemies here; even building a legitimate business he couldn’t avoid it.
She didn’t belong here, and it was just a matter of time before that became clear to her too… Again he felt that odd clenching sensation in his chest.
She was safe in Toronto. He had never visited a safer city. He remembered the vital interest her neighbours took in her welfare, how she left her damned doors open in the middle of the day, how trustingly she had come with him, a virtual stranger, halfway around the world to this place.
This beautiful, historical, treacherous city, with currents that could sweep you under just like that. He knew. He knew better than most. Because he had been both under and on top, and he knew which position he liked best.
He had learned to swim with sharks to survive; he could tear apart flesh with the best of them.
Yet in his arms lay this girl who melted him.
