Prince of Secrets

She wasn’t stupid. She knew losing the two people in her life who had loved her unconditionally at the tender age of eight had made her reticent about opening up to others, particularly men.

Her father and grandfather.

Chanel’s stepfather hadn’t loved her at all, never mind without limits. As for her mother, Chanel was twenty-nine and the jury was still out on that one.

Which, as an adult woman, had nothing to do with the question of if and how Chanel should offer her invitation to Demyan.

His car slid to a halt by the curb outside her apartment building. He cut the engine, reaching to unclip his belt in one smooth move.

Maybe she wouldn’t have to figure it out, after all.

“You’re coming up?”

“I will see you to your door.”

“It’s not necessary.” She could have smacked herself. “I mean, only if you want to.”

Oh, that was so much better.

One dark brow lifted as he pushed his door open. “Have I ever left you to see yourself inside?”

“It’s only our third date.” Hardly enough time to set a precedent in stone.

Her own words hit her with the force of a solid particle mass traveling beyond the speed of light. What was she thinking? Sex with him when they’d barely spent more than a minute in each other’s company?

Still remembering the pleasure of his kiss earlier, her body screamed yes while her mind sounded a warning Klaxon of nos.

No closer to a verdict about how to handle the rest of the night, she stalled in frozen indecision.

Her door was opened and Demyan bent toward her in his too-darn-sexy dinner suit, his hand reaching toward her. “Are you coming?”

She fumbled with her seat belt, getting it unbuckled after the second try.

The knowing look in his dark eyes said he knew why she was so uncoordinated.

“Don’t,” she ordered.

The knowing glance turned into a smirk. “Don’t?”

“You’re smug,” Chanel accused as she climbed from the car, eschewing the help of his hand.

Ignoring her attempt to keep her distance, he put his hand around her waist, tucking her body close to his as they approached her building. “I am delighted by your company.”

Heat arced between them and, that quickly, she remembered why after only three dates she was ready to break a lifetime habit of virginity.

“I’m still not sure why we’re here.”

“You live here?” Amusement laced his voice as he led her into the unsecured building.

The lack of a doorman was a bone of contention between Chanel and her mother. If the older woman had been concerned for her safety, Chanel might have considered moving, but the issue was in how it looked for her to live in an unpretentious, entirely suburbanite apartment complex.

“I do not like the fact that the entrance to your home is so accessible. This dark cove outside your door is not entirely secure, either,” Demyan complained as he took her keys and unlocked the door.

She hadn’t quite decided if the action was some throwback to old-world charm or simply indicative of his dominating nature when he ushered her inside.

They moved into the living room and he shut the door behind them. There was meaning in that, right? The shut door. If he’d wanted only to see her inside, he could have left her on the landing.

“Would you like a drink or something?” Like her?

Was she really going to do this? Chanel thought maybe she was.

“Not tonight.” The words implied he planned to leave, but the way he stepped closer to her gave an entirely different meaning.

She didn’t reply, his proximity stealing her breath just that fast. For the first time in her life, she began to understand how her mother, Beatrice, had ended up pregnant by a man so very different from herself.

Sex was a powerful force. “Body chemistry is so much more potent than I ever believed.” She sounded every bit as bewildered as she felt.

“Because you have never felt it so strongly with someone else.” There was no question mark at the end of that sentence.

Chanel would take umbrage at the certainty in his tone if Demyan didn’t speak the absolute truth.

“I’m sure you have.”

Something strange moved across his features. Surprise? Maybe confusion. “No.”

“You stopped earlier, not me.”

“It was not easy.”

Was that supposed to make her feel better about the fact he’d been more determined to go to the lecture than she’d been? Sarcasm infused her voice as she said, “I’m glad to hear that.”

His eyes narrowed, a spark of irritation showing before it disappeared. She wasn’t surprised. Demyan might not be the corporate shark her stepfather was, but he was not a man who liked to lose control, either.

Not that he had. Now, or earlier.

He had stopped after all, and right now, as much as she could read desire in his dark gaze, he wasn’t acting on it.

She, on the other hand, was seconds away from kissing him silly. She, who had never initiated a kiss in her life.

“Do you want to stay?” she asked baldly.

Subtlety was all well and good for a woman who found the role of flirt comfortable, but that woman wasn’t Chanel.

He smiled down at her. “Do you want me to?”

“I don’t know.”

Shock held his face immobile for the count of three seconds. “You don’t know?”

She shook her head.

“You didn’t seem unsure about what you wanted earlier tonight.” Disbelief laced his voice.

She nodded, making no attempt to deny it. Subterfuge was not her thing. “I barely know you.”

“Is that how it feels to you?”

She experienced that strange sense of disparity she’d had with him before. The words were right, the expression concurrent and yet, she felt the lack of sincerity.

Only, unlike at the dinner, there was a vein of honesty in his words that confused her.

“You already know you could take me to bed with very little effort.”

“I assure you, the effort will not be minimal.” Sensual promise vibrated in every word.

Chanel felt his promise to her very core and her thighs squeezed together in involuntary response, not because she feared what he wanted but because it made her ache with a need she’d never known.

“That’s not what I meant.” Her voice cracked on the last word, but she pretended not to notice.

The slight flaring of his nostrils and the way his eyes went just that much darker said he had, though. “What did you mean then, little one?”

“I’m hardly little.” At five foot seven, she was above average in height for a woman.

“Do not avoid the question.”

“I wasn’t trying to.” She’d just been trying to clarify, because that was familiar territory.

The rest of this? Was not.

Only he knew how tall she was, so if he wanted to call her little one, maybe that was okay. “I suppose I do seem kind of short to you. You’re not exactly average height for a man in North America, though maybe I should be comparing you to Ukrainians, as that’s your country’s formative gene pool.”

In fact, he was well above average height, certainly taller than most of the men in her life, and that gave her a peculiar kind of pleasure. Which, like many things she’d discovered since meeting him, surprised her about herself.

She’d never thought she would enjoy feeling protected when she was with a man, or that the difference in their height would even succeed in making her feel that way. Maybe it wasn’t just that difference but something else about Demyan entirely.

Something intangible that didn’t quite match his casual designer sweaters and dark-rimmed glasses.

“You do not seem short.” He tugged at one of her red curls, a soft smile playing about his lips as if he could read her thoughts and was amused by them. “You are just right.”

This time there was no conflict between the words and sincerity in his manner.

But it put the times there was in stark relief in her mind. “I can’t make you out.”

“What do you mean?” He looked surprised again and she got the definite impression that didn’t happen a lot with him.

“Sometimes I think you mean everything you say, but then there are times, like at dinner tonight, when it seems like you’re saying what you think I want to hear.”

“I have not lied to you.” Affront echoed through his tone.

“Haven’t you?”

“No.” Dead certainty, and then almost as if it was drawn from him without his permission, “I have not told you everything about myself.”

“I didn’t expect you to bring along an information dossier on our first date.” Of course she didn’t know everything about him; that was part of the dating process, wasn’t it? “You don’t know everything about me, either.”

His gaze turned cold, almost ruthless. Then he adjusted his glasses and the look disappeared. “I know what I need to.”

Sometimes there was a glimmer of another man there—a man that even a shark like Perry would swim from in a frantic effort to escape. Then Demyan would smile and the impression of that other man would dissipate.

CHAPTER THREE

DEMYAN DIDN’T SMILE now, but she knew the man in front of her wasn’t a shark.

Not like the overcritical Perry, and definitely not like someone even more ruthless than her stepfather. There was too much kindness in Demyan, even if he was wholly unaware of it, as Chanel suspected he was.

“What did you mean earlier?” he asked, pulling her back to the original question.

Oh, yes…right.

“It’s just…you must realize I’m a sure thing. Even if I’m not sure I want to be.”

“Why aren’t you sure?” he asked, deflecting himself this time.

Or maybe he just really wanted to know. Being the center of someone else’s undivided attention when she wasn’t discussing her work wasn’t something Chanel was used to.

When she was with Demyan, he focused solely on her, though, as if nothing was more important to him. He wanted to know things others reacted to with impatience, not interest. It was a heady feeling.

Even so, peeling away the layers to reveal her full self to him wasn’t easy. “You’ll laugh.”

“Is it funny?”

“Not to me.” Not even a little.

“Then I will not laugh.”

“How can you be so perfect?”

“So long as I am perfect for you, that is all that matters.”

“Do you mean that?”

“Yes.” There could be no doubting the conviction in his tone or handsome features.

“Why?”

“Are you saying you feel differently?” he asked in a tone that implied he knew the answer.

“Love at first sight doesn’t happen.”

“Maybe for some people it does.”

All the breath seemed to leave the room at his words. “Are you saying…” She had to clear her throat, suck in air and try again. “Are you saying you feel the same?”

“I want to be your perfect man.”

“You mean that.” And maybe it was past time she stopped doubting his sincerity.

How much of her feeling he was saying what she wanted to hear stemmed from her own insecurities? Why was it so hard for her to accept that this man didn’t need her to be something or someone different to want to be with her?

The answer was the years spent in a family she simply didn’t fit, the daughter of a mother and stepfather who found constant fault with a child too much like her own father for their comfort.

“I do.”

She nodded, accepting. Believing. “I’ve never had sex.”

Once again she’d managed to shock him. And this time she didn’t have to look for subtle signs.

His whisker-shadowed jaw dropped and dark eyes widened comically. “You are twenty-nine.”

“I’m not staring retirement in the face, or something.” She had eleven more years of relatively safe childbearing, even.

Not that she thought she was going to marry and have children. She’d given up on that idea when she realized that even in the academic world, Chanel was a social misfit.

“No, I didn’t mean that.” But his voice was still laced with surprise and his superior brain was clearly not firing on all cylinders. “You’re educated. American.”

“So?” What in the world did her PhD in chemistry have to do with her virginity?

“Are you completely innocent?”

Man, did he even realize how that sounded?

And people thought she was old-fashioned. “Even if I’d had sex, I would still be innocent. Sex isn’t a crime.”

“You know that is not what I was referring to.”

“No, I know, but innocent? Come on.”

The look he was giving her was way too familiar.

“I’m awkward,” she excused with a barely stifled sigh. “I told you.” Had he forgotten?

“You are refreshingly direct.” That wasn’t disappointment in his tone and the look she thought she recognized.

Well, it wasn’t. He almost looked admiring. If she believed it, and hadn’t she diced to do just that? “Mother calls it ridiculously blunt.”

“Your mother does not see you as I do.”

“I should hope not.”

They both smiled at her small joke that did nothing to dissipate the emotional tension between them.

He put his big hands on her shoulders, his thumbs brushing along her collarbone, the hold possessive like before. And just like earlier, she found a new unexpected part of her that liked that. A lot.

“Demyan.” His name just sighed out of her.

She didn’t know what she meant by it. What she wanted from him.

He didn’t appear similarly lost, his gaze direct and commanding. “You say you’ve never had sex. I want to know what that means.”

It took two tries to get words past her suddenly constricted throat. “Why does it matter?”

“You can ask that?”

“Um, yes.” Hadn’t she just done?

“You are mine.”

“Three dates,” she reminded him.

“Love at first sight,” he countered.

“You…I…”

“We are going to make love. What I want to know is what you have done to this point.” His thumbs continued the sensual caress along her collarbone. “You are going to tell me.”

“Bossy much?”

“Only in bed.”

She wasn’t sure she believed him, was even less sure if it mattered. She wasn’t worried about standing up for herself. She’d never conformed when it counted, no matter how much easier it would have made her life—especially with her family.

Right now she found she wanted to answer his question, needed to. Still, she kept it general. “Heavy petting, I guess you’d say.”

“Be more specific.”

“No.” Heat crawled up her neck.

He shouldn’t care, should he? Virginity wasn’t an issue for modern men. Or modern women, her inner voice mocked her, and yet you are a virgin.

He bent so close their lips almost touched. “Oh, yes.”

Thoughts came and went, no words making it past her lips until she made a sound she’d never heard from her own vocal cords before. It was something like surrender, but more.

It was sexual.

The air between them grew heavy with the most primal kind of desire, pushing against her, demanding her acquiescence.

In a last-ditch desperate bid for space, she shut her eyes, but it did no good. She could feel his stare. Could feel his determination to get an answer.

She was super sensitive to his nearness, too, her body aching to press against his, her lips going soft in preparation for his kiss.

The kiss didn’t come.

“Tell me,” puffed across her lips.

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