Maureen Child - Mistresses - Enemies To Lovers - No More Sweet Surrender / A Deal with Di Capua / Her Return to King's Bed

“Why are you giving up Hollywood for philanthropy?” she asked.

He shifted in his chair, and rubbed those letters over his heart with one hand absently.

“There are other ways to fight,” he said after a moment, in an odd tone. “Perhaps better ways.”

“Why did you start fighting?”

His brows arched slightly, and there was a kind of very old, very deep hardness in his gaze then.

“I was good at it.”

She blew out a breath when he didn’t elaborate. When she could tell that he wouldn’t. “That’s not an answer.”

“It is the correct answer to that particular question.” His voice was implacable, and there was something terrible and ruthless in his gaze. Although she wondered, suddenly, what was behind all of the harsh power he carried with such seeming ease. All of that heavy steel. Was it that darkness she saw glimpses of now and again? Or something else—something worse?

“That’s not much of an answer, either.”

“Perhaps you should ask better questions.”

“If you can’t tell your own story,” she said softly, “how can I trust that you’ll tell me anything at all?”

“I know what you want to hear,” Ivan said, and there was no doubting that deep, inky darkness in him then, something sharp and sad and fierce in his black eyes, in his rich voice. “Was I born the vicious monster you see before you today, made of equal parts temper and violence, a perfect fighting machine? Or did I perhaps do only what I had to do out of desperation, using my fists to escape far worse? I already know what you think of me, Professor. I have no doubt that you expect a tale that perfectly matches the character you’ve had in your pampered head all these years.” That hard mouth moved, as if he was biting back something far worse than the bitter words that fell like bullets between them on the small table. “But only one of those things is what actually happened.”

“Is this how you keep your promises, Ivan?” she asked, fighting to keep her expression smooth, her posture easy against the hard chair. As if she hadn’t felt every last one of those bullets. As if she didn’t feel riddled with them. “I’m bending over backward to do the things you want me to do, and you can’t even answer a simple question?”

“Yes, of course,” he said, and there was that hard edge to his voice then. “This is a great and terrible sacrifice for you. I keep forgetting.”

She hated the way he said that, as if she’d insulted him. And hated even more that she cared whether or not that was true. When had that happened? What could it mean? She was afraid she wouldn’t much like the answers to either of those questions, and so she shoved them aside.

But she couldn’t pretend he hadn’t pushed her off balance again, without even seeming to try. Dizzy, confused—she was sick of feeling this way. She wanted to believe it was just the jet lag. The relentlessness of her recurring nightmares that she knew were because of him. She told herself it was.

“Of course it’s a sacrifice,” she choked out heedlessly. Foolishly. He only looked at her in that dark, cold way, and she felt it inside of her like a blow. And hated that, too. “I don’t like to be touched.”

Miranda could not believe she’d said that. Not out loud. If she could have snatched the words back from the air between them, she would have.

Ivan stared at her as if she was an insect.

“By the likes of me,” Ivan said, his voice a kind of harsh, terrible growl, and that hurt even more. “Rough and uneducated brute that I am. I understand. It is a tremendous sacrifice indeed. You might as well fling yourself on the nearest bonfire for relief, such is the extent of your suffering at my hands.”

“I don’t mean that,” she blurted, flustered, something about that awful look on his face twisting through her, making her ache in new and strange ways, making her doubt herself and hate herself all the more, and she wasn’t even sure why. Or why she couldn’t seem to stand the thought of this man in pain. “I mean—at all. In general. Not just by you.”

She could not possibly be saying what Ivan thought she was saying.

It was impossible. He knew it was impossible—he’d been the one touching her in Paris, for God’s sake. He’d kissed her in Georgetown. He’d watched her fight it, yes, but then lean into it, soak it up. He’d drunk in all her exquisite responses, the shivers she couldn’t hide and the tremors she fought to repress, the glaze in her eyes, the softening of her body when she’d stood tucked up beneath his arm. And he forgot, then, that all of that had been supposedly calculated on his part. He just knew it was real on hers.

“Exactly what are you saying?” he asked, searching her face for clues.

He saw only that delicious heat, climbing up her cheeks, and the sheen of acute embarrassment in her dark jade gaze, making them seem blacker, deeper. She swallowed, and then pressed her lips together, firmly, as if fighting to calm herself.

“What I just said.” She shrugged, a defensiveness to the movement that he imagined she had no idea betrayed her as much as it did. Why he found it fascinating was something else entirely. “I believe in mind over body. That’s what matters to me. My mind. Everything I’ve done to get to where I am is because of it.” She looked at him as if she expected an argument, and when he only regarded her in silence she sat up straighter, taller. Gathering herself. “I graduated from high school at sixteen. I entered my Ph.D. program before I was twenty. I was always focused on work. Touching is …” The flush on her cheeks deepened. Her eyes looked almost glazed. Panicked , Ivan thought. “Has always been completely incidental to my life in every way.”

“So you are frigid.”

He knew, categorically, she was no such thing. But did she know it? Was it possible she didn’t? Or was this some kind of twisted mind game women like her played with men like him?

“Of course not.” Her eyes cleared slightly, then narrowed as she looked at him. As if she was offended by the question.

“Are you a virgin, then?” He couldn’t help the way his mouth curved at the idea, as if he was the very caveman she’d accused him of being. He shouldn’t have cared. He shouldn’t have wondered, suddenly and with far too many detailed images, what it would be like to be her first. “Chaste and untouched?”

“Yes,” she replied, her voice tart. Offended, perhaps. Or simply annoyed. “And I am also a unicorn. Surprise!”

“Then tell me what you mean,” he said, ignoring the sarcasm. Almost enjoying it, if he was honest. “Because the mind and the body are not separate entities, Miranda. Surely they taught this in one of your Ivy League schools. You cannot choose between them. They are one and the same.”

“I’m sure that you think so.” She did that dismissive thing with her hand again, waving it at him as if to encompass everything he was. He wanted to catch it with his. Bite it. Put it to far better use. “You would.”

“Tell me,” he said then, as mildly as he could, which was perhaps not so mildly after all, “how do you suppose I became the greatest fighter in my generation? Because that is what I am. How do you imagine I forced myself to train when I was no more than a collection of agonies and bruises, and there was nothing ahead of me but more of the same?”

“Masochism?”

Ivan eyed her for a moment. Training had not brought out the masochist in him, but she might.

“My mind.” He almost smiled at her expression. “Yes, Professor. I have one.”

“If you say so,” she replied, sweet and acid all at once.

“So tell me about these lovers of yours instead,” he said then, lounging back in his chair. He didn’t know why he cared what lies this woman told herself. How could it possibly affect what would happen between them—what he would make happen? And yet here he was asking anyway. “The ones for whom touch was as unimportant as it is for you.”