The Russian's Ultimatum Read online

  Her hand snaked around his head to cradle his skull and pull him down for another kiss. Devouring the sweetness of her mouth, he roved a hand down her side, exploring the soft, creamy skin. Her bikini top was secured by a tie around her back. It took no effort to untie it and whip the top away.

  The feel of her naked breasts crushed beneath his chest fired him anew and he dipped his head down to capture a dusky nipple in his mouth.

  She responded to his caresses with more passion than he could ever have dreamed.

  He needed to kiss her again and, as he lost himself in the headiness of it all, Emily twisted from beneath him and climbed on top, straddling him.

  For what felt an age in which his heart beat a thousand times she did nothing but stare at him, her eyes scanning every inch of his face.

  She traced a thumb over his lips, a feather of a movement that was both tender and erotic, before replacing her thumb with her mouth.

  His hands reached round and held her tightly against him as she ground against his erection.

  She gave a low moan followed by the breath of a sigh, then nibbled at his neck, teasing, painless.

  Covering his face and neck with kisses, tasting the muskiness of his skin, Emily slipped a hand between their meshed bodies, running her fingers down his lightly haired chest all the way to his mass of dark, wiry hair.

  A deep pulsation seeped through her when she encircled his erection. She closed her eyes and thrilled at its heavy weight, the silken feel of its length.

  Never, never had she imagined she could feel like this, feel such a need to be possessed. And it was all him: Pascha. He did something to her, ignited feelings—sensuous and emotional—she had never known existed within her. And those feelings were growing.

  When she opened her eyes, she found his gaze locked upon her, his magnetic eyes stark with his desire. For her.

  Whatever his reasons for keeping his distance last night, at that moment it didn’t matter. All that did matter was this moment, and this moment was with Pascha, the man who made her body come alive and her heart sing.

  He cupped her cheeks and half-rose to meet her mouth, devouring it with his hot tongue, their kisses becoming increasingly desperate.

  His fingers played with the ties holding the sides of her bikini bottoms together. She raised her hips a touch, her gasps deepening when he untied them and pulled the scraps of material off, discarding them on the grass beneath them.

  Now they were both naked, the burn inside her turning to lava.

  His mouth closed back over hers, large hands running over her back, tracing the arch of her shoulder blades and up, digging into her scalp, dragging through her hair. And all the while the tension within her grew. She’d never known desire could be a living thing.

  And then she remembered where they were. And remembered that Pascha had lost his shorts in the pool. Even if he carried condoms with him they would be gone.

  It took every ounce of her control to break away from his kisses and the heavenly things he was doing to her, grab his wrist and pin him to the grass.

  Still straddling him, she gazed down at the face she could never grow tired of staring at. ‘I’m not on the pill.’

  The intensity in his eyes concentrated, a pulse firing from them that made her belly somersault.

  ‘Emily, I can’t...’ He swallowed. ‘All my treatment as a child left me sterile. I promise I am clean and I promise you’ll be safe.’

  Her heart twisted. She returned the strength of his stare, trying to reach through and read his mind. Read his heart.

  He was sterile...?

  He was asking for her trust...?

  She did trust him.

  She might have been forced to the island but he was doing everything in his power to keep her safe while she was there.

  Pascha did not take risks. Making unprotected love definitely constituted risky by anyone’s standards, but doubly so for him.

  Her heart twisted again as she realised that this promise meant that he must trust her too.

  He’d trusted her enough to make the jump...

  He’d trusted her enough to share his secret—one which, instinct told her, haunted him.

  Unable to stop herself, she released his wrists and planted her lips on his, a hard yet tender kiss that he responded to with a growl, his arms snaking around her waist.

  The tip of his erection pressed against her opening, almost teasing her. She raised her groin a little higher, consumed with the need to be consumed.

  The strong thud of his heart hammering against his chest reverberated through her skin, matching the unsteady tempo of her own.

  Slowly she sank onto him, finding his lips, his breath flowing into her pores and filling her mouth with his heat just as he was filling her.

  Skin on skin.

  There were no words.

  Nothing could ever describe the total bliss filling her.

  With Pascha’s hand steadying her, she started to move. Gripping the sides of his head, her sensitised breasts brushing against his chest, she ground against him, a steady, almost lazy tempo, the pulsations within her deepening.

  A glazed look came into his eyes but the total connection between them remained, fusing them so deeply that she lost any sense of where he began and she ended.

  Pure, pure pleasure.

  Her orgasm started out as a low surge rippling through her, setting alight every atom of her being. Higher and higher it climbed until it peaked in an explosion of colour.

  A strangled groan escaped his lips and he bucked into her, holding her tight against him, prolonging the moment for them both.

  She rode the crest for as long as she could before floating back to earth, the softest landing.

  Emily expelled a contented sigh.

  Her face was buried in his neck, his strong hands stroking her back, holding her tight to him,

  Pascha twisted onto his side so he could look down at her.

  A lock of ebony hair lay damp across her forehead. He smoothed it away, pressing a kiss to the newly exposed skin.

  ‘Why are you staring at me like that?’ she asked, tracing a lazy finger up and down his forearm.

  ‘Because I like staring at you. You’re beautiful.’

  ‘I think you’re beautiful.’

  ‘A very macho description,’ he said with a laugh, and rolled onto his back, pulling her with him

  The sun’s rays were increasing, bathing them in a warm pool of light. Pascha could almost imagine it was just the two of them on the planet. If it were just the two of them left on Earth, Pascha reflected, he doubted he would ever be bored. Emily kept him on his toes.

  ‘What possessed you to make the jump?’ he asked after long, serene minutes had passed. ‘Anything could have happened to you.’

  ‘But it didn’t.’

  ‘But it could have.’

  She raised her head and smiled. ‘Pascha, this waterfall has clearly been evolving for hundreds of thousands of years, and the pool with it. I knew it would be deep.’

  ‘But you couldn’t have known what was beneath the waterline. There could have been rocks or anything. You could have killed yourself.’ A coldness crept into his bones at the thought.

  ‘But I didn’t.’

  ‘But what if you had? Where would that leave your father? Your brother?’ Me, he almost added, the thought coming from nowhere.

  ‘I don’t know.’ She bit into her lip and stared at him. ‘They have each other. It was on James’s watch that my dad got out of bed.’

  ‘You’ve been there the rest of the time.’ From what Pascha understood, Emily had been there the whole time. She’d given up the independence of her home and put her job in jeopardy for her father.

  ‘From what’s happened since
I left, it’s obvious that the only person my dad needed was James. Not me.’ She broke the stare and tugged herself out of his arms, sitting up. ‘I’ve tried so hard. All my life I’ve tried.’

  ‘Tried for what?’

  She turned her face back to him and raised her shoulders. ‘To be enough.’

  ‘Enough for what?’

  ‘For him to hold on to.’ She shook her head. ‘In all honesty, Mum was the only one he really responded to when he was ill, but James would tell him a joke and sometimes Dad would smile. I’d tell him a joke—normally the same one as James—and he never responded. Never. When he was well, he was wonderful with me, but when he was ill it was as if I didn’t exist. I was never enough. I guess I’m still not.’

  ‘I don’t believe that,’ he said carefully, rubbing a hand over her naked back. She had the softest skin. ‘Your father loves you.’

  ‘I know he loves me.’ Her voice was sad. ‘It’s just not enough, is it? Not if I can’t help him.’

  He placed a kiss to the small of her back. ‘You’ve done more for your father than anyone could have wished. It is time for you to forget about your relationship with him as a child. Focus on the future.’ He kissed her again, a little higher. ‘I would sell my soul if I could have a future with my father.’

  ‘I know. You’re right.’

  ‘Of course I’m right.’

  ‘Your arrogance never gets old.’

  He swiped at her nose before wrapping his legs around her and pulling her so she leant back against him.

  ‘Can I ask you something?’

  ‘You’re asking my permission?’ He was certain she was going to ask about his sterility. As if there was anything to be discussed. It was a fact of life—a fact of his life—something he’d long ago accepted. Just as he’d accepted it prevented him from having the future he’d always craved.

  ‘It was something you said before about you and your father building Plushenko’s between you. I always thought it was a really old firm, like Fabergé.’

  ‘That was clever marketing—we wanted people to believe that.’ He breathed in a sigh of relief as he realised it wasn’t the subject he’d thought she was going to broach. At that moment, wrapped around Emily, he was as close to peace as he’d ever been.

  He couldn’t regret making love to her again. He would never regret it. For now, all he wanted was to hold onto it for a little longer.

  As he inhaled, he captured the scent of her hair. Even with her swim in the pool and the spray of the waterfall he could still catch the faint scent of the light, fruity shampoo she favoured.

  ‘In a way, you can thank my leukaemia for the founding of Plushenko’s,’ he said. ‘I had to undergo five years of chemotherapy and steroids and a host of other medicines. To keep me alive cost money. The only way to afford it was for Andrei—the man I called Papa—to work all the hours he could. At the time he was earning minimal wages as a jewellery maker for a middle-of-the-road Russian jeweller. He started to produce his own bespoke pieces, working every spare hour in the workshop he built at the back of our house. Those pieces paid for my medications and, unwittingly, formed the basis of the company known today as Plushenko’s.’

  ‘He sounds like an amazing man.’

  ‘He was,’ Pascha agreed.

  ‘Do you think all the attention Andrei paid you, and all the hours he spent working to earn money for your treatment, made Marat jealous?’ she asked.

  He breathed her in deeply. ‘I don’t remember Marat ever liking me.’ Knowing how much Marat loathed his very existence had done nothing to stop Pascha’s idolisation of him. For years he’d wanted nothing more than Marat’s acceptance. A part of him still longed for it.

  ‘Have you thought of trying again with him?’ she said. ‘I know you said you offered to buy Plushenko’s a number of years ago, but you were probably both feeling raw; it was so soon after your father had died. Maybe time has mellowed him.’

  ‘I can’t take the risk.’

  ‘Why not?’

  Because if it blows up in my face I will lose the chance to save Andrei’s legacy. And if I lose that I will never be able to convince my mother how sorry I am.’

  ‘Are you still estranged from her too?’

  He nodded. ‘I sought her out after Andrei’s funeral. I apologised for our estrangement. I told her about the island I’d bought in her name but she didn’t want to know.’ She’d rejected him, just like Pascha had rejected her.

  ‘Words aren’t always enough,’ she said softly. ‘It’s our actions that prove our love.’

  ‘Is that why you went out of your way, at your own risk and with a real possibility of arrest, to help your father?’ he said with more acid than he would have liked. ‘Is that why you’ve given up your home and sacrificed your job, so he has living proof of how much you love him?’

  She froze in his arms. When she next spoke, her words were measured but had a definite catch to them. ‘The one thing I know with any certainty is that our time on this earth is limited. And you know it too.’

  She didn’t say anything else. She didn’t need to.

  They’d both lost people who’d meant the world to them.

  But Emily’s situation was different and not just because she’d been secure in her mother’s love. Emily had never wounded someone she loved so badly that forgiveness was only an elusive dream. And, if she ever did wound someone she loved to that extent, she would be forgiven without having to prove her worth. Whatever darkness resided in her father’s head, he did love her. She wasn’t inherently unlovable. She didn’t have something missing like he did. The blood that ran through the Richardson clan’s veins tied them together, made them a part of each other.

  He shared his mother’s blood but still she couldn’t forgive him.

  With a start he realised it had been almost three years since he’d asked her forgiveness at Andrei’s funeral.

  Emily had lost her mother three months ago and the pain was still very much there on the surface.

  He’d lived through a dark fog for at least a year after Andrei had died.

  His mother and Andrei had been soul mates. Was it any wonder she’d lashed out at him when he’d said, five years too late, that he was sorry?

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he whispered, brushing her hair with the flat of his hand. ‘I know your need to help your father comes from the love you have for him.’ She had more love in her heart than anyone he’d ever met before.

  Emily rubbed his arm in silent understanding then leaned forward slightly to swipe a small bug off her thigh. As she did so, his attention was captured by a tiny blue blur on the base of her spine. ‘Sit forward.’

  She shifted a little and he was able to see it clearly: another butterfly tattoo, smaller yet more intricate than the one on her ankle.

  ‘I got it done just after my mum died,’ she explained, craning her neck to look at him. ‘We had our ankle ones done together.’

  ‘Your mum had a tattoo?’

  She nodded with a whimsical smile. ‘She’d always wanted one. When we got the diagnosis that her illness was terminal, we went to a tattoo parlour and had identical ones done. I wanted this one as my own private memory of her.’

  Pascha stared at the private memorial a beat longer, feeling like he had just had his own butterfly let loose in his chest.

  He gently pushed her forward some more so he could kiss the butterfly. She truly tasted like the honey scent she carried.

  A gasp escaped her throat as he trailed his tongue up her spine, all the way to the base of her neck.

  ‘Enough talk.’ He knelt behind her and cupped a breast, savouring its creamy weight. He felt as if he could savour it—savour her—for ever.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  HE MUST HAVE dozed off. Totally spent, Pascha had g
athered Emily into his arms and lain back down on the grass with a heart hammering loudly enough to frighten any wildlife.

  He’d held her close, inhaling the musty scent of their sex, and a solid form of contentment had stolen over him.

  For the first time in his life, he’d truly let go of himself. Emily did that to him. Somehow she was able to tap into parts of him he’d hidden for so long he’d forgotten they’d ever been there.

  As a child he’d dreamt of driving fast cars. Now, as an adult, he owned more fast cars than his childhood self had known existed—but he drove them cautiously, all too aware of what other drivers on the road could do.

  His childhood self would have been disgusted that he’d never taken one of his fast cars onto a track and put his foot down just for the sheer hell of the ride.

  He had no way of knowing the time but, judging by the position of the sun almost directly over them, it must have been getting on for midday.

  Emily looked so sweet curled on him with her hair spread across his chest that he felt cruel waking her. But he had no choice. He should have headed back to the lodge hours ago. Before he’d made love to her. Before he’d been foolish enough to go against everything he believed in and jumped off the ledge.

  Both were equally dangerous in their own way.

  He had a sudden image of his small childhood self, fist-pumping at seeing him fly off the ledge and into the pool. Yes, younger, childhood Pascha would have approved of that. But that was before he had learned how precarious life could be.

  ‘We need to go back,’ he said, kissing her shoulder before giving it a gentle shake.

  She opened her eyes and smothered a yawn. ‘Already?’

  ‘I should have word if someone is available to get me to the mainland.’ For all he knew, someone knowledgeable about the coral reef might have already made the trip to Aliana Island and, unable to locate him, returned to their own island. Try as he might, he couldn’t bring himself to care. He wanted to hold onto this moment while he was living it. Before he had to say goodbye to her.

  Emily got to her feet and tied her bikini bottoms back together.