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

When she became herself again.

“I hope you didn’t ruin my lipstick,” she told him then, managing, somehow, to force herself back into the role she’d agreed to play. To keep that threatening heat behind her eyes from betraying them both. She even smiled again, carefree and amused. In on the joke.

Maybe she was more of an actress than they’d thought.

But then his midnight eyes met hers, so hard and so uncompromising, and there was nothing but agony there. Loss. Grief for something that never could have been.

It shouldn’t have mattered .

But it did. So much more than it should have. So much more than she could bear.

“Of course I didn’t,” he said quietly. “I’m a professional.”

And then he kissed her again, because he had to or because he wanted to, or maybe something caught somewhere far too complicated and breathless between the two, and none of that seemed to matter anyway when his hard mouth claimed hers.

Hot. Demanding. Ivan .

Miranda kissed him back.

She knew it wasn’t real. She knew it didn’t count. But he tasted like smoke and Ivan and all of that longing she’d kept bottled up inside of her all this time, without ever knowing it was there. And there were truths she didn’t want to accept, especially not here. Terrible truths that worked through her like pain, like heat.

Like falling in love with the man she’d vowed to hate, when she knew he was only playing. But she couldn’t let herself think about that. She had the terrible suspicion it would lead only to tears, and she was in public. This was a performance.

So she kissed him instead, with all of those things she knew she’d never say, with her scared little heart and that pounding heat in her sex that was only for him, and told herself it was the best she could do. The best she would do.

And it was searing and right, terrible and heartbreaking, changing her forever right there in the glare of all those cameras and the whole of the watching world, damning them both.

But Miranda most of all, she feared. And possibly for good.

The plane hung high above North America, arcing its way from New York City toward Los Angeles, and Ivan stared out the window beside him as if there was something more than clouds below and sky ahead to see.

“It seems you were right after all,” Nikolai said, dropping into the wide leather seat opposite Ivan, his lethal blade of a frame seeming too primal, somehow, for the sleek executive luxury of the jet all around them.

“I am always right,” Ivan replied, smirking out at the empty sky. “I am Ivan Korovin. I read today that I am one of the sexiest men alive, according to a selection of fans in the Philippines. Can you say the same?”

“A great accolade indeed,” Nikolai said drily. “And no doubt a tremendous comfort to our parents, had they only lived to see it.”

Ivan remembered them only vaguely, gray and brisk and humorless, and felt certain that his entire life would have seemed, to them, like nothing but foolishness and vanity. That was no doubt Nikolai’s point. And tonight, Ivan agreed.

“Perhaps I underestimated you, brother,” Nikolai continued when Ivan offered no retort. Was that a note of admiration in his voice? Why did that make Ivan feel so cold, suddenly? “When we left your little professor in New York, she was significantly subdued. It shouldn’t be at all hard to break her now.”

But Ivan worried she was already broken, and unlike Nikolai, took no pleasure in it.

He’d escorted her down the metal stairs onto the tarmac in New York, then walked her to the waiting car, not wanting to admit to himself that he didn’t want to let her go. He didn’t want her out of his sight, or out of his reach. He didn’t know what had happened in Cannes, what had blown up between them like that on the red carpet. He didn’t want to think about it. But he could still feel her mouth on his, hot and sweet. He could still see that shattered look in her eyes that had had no business being there, that made no sense at all, and yet had lanced through him just the same.

He could see the photographs of the two of them in his head, as glossy and bright as they’d been in the papers. That first, hot kiss on the Cannes red carpet. The way she’d gazed at him, as if theirs really was a love affair too intense for words. And that aching blast of need that had nearly made him forget where they were when he’d taken her mouth that second time, because he’d had to taste her once again, or die. All of it on film, splashed across the papers and the internet. All of it available to anyone who cared to look, when it still moved in him like something highly charged, electric—and private.

None of this should have been happening.

His goals were very clear. First he would seduce her. Then he would toss her aside, brutally and publicly, tainting anything further she ever said about him as the unhinged rantings of a woman scorned. Simple. Easy. Exactly what she deserved after all these years.

Except nothing was going as planned.

He’d expected to want her, because he had a weakness for smart and haughty and unimpressed with him, apparently, wrapped up in one aristocratic, obstinate package. He’d always wanted the things he shouldn’t, the things not only likely to destroy him, but also certain to do so in the most painful way possible. It was a Korovin family trait. But he’d also expected to hate her, disdain her and her Ivy League snootiness at the very least, and he didn’t quite understand how that hadn’t happened. Or why he’d found himself telling her things he’d never told anyone before.

Or what had sprung up and taken him over like this, making him all but unrecognizable to himself. He was not a man who formed attachments. He knew better. He’d loved his parents as any son did, despite their coldness, and they had died. He’d wanted to love his uncle, until the drinking and brutality made that impossible. He had deeply admired his first trainer, the man he’d considered his savior, until he’d tried to steal the bulk of Ivan’s money after the championships had started mounting up. And he loved Nikolai, still and always, and look what he’d done to him. Look what Nikolai had become.

Damn her .

“I will see you in ten days’ time,” he’d told her, unnecessarily, standing in the open door of the car, holding her captive between him and it.

“Yes.” But she’d been hiding from him even as she’d tilted up her chin and met his gaze, that dark jade too black, too dark.

“Miranda …”

But there’d been nothing to say, and he couldn’t have said it even if there had been. How could he have? She was Miranda Sweet. His loudest critic. His enemy. They’d set all of this in motion that night in Georgetown, and there was no stopping it. There was no changing course. Not now. The benefit gala drew closer by the day, and with it, the end of all of this. His revenge and her comeuppance. As planned from the start.

“Do you really think they’ll hound me?” she’d asked then, her voice too quiet. Too unsure. He’d hated it. He’d wanted her spark back, her fire. He’d wanted her to feel this wildness, this madness, that lived in him now. He’d wanted her any way he could have her, no matter what it did to either one of them.

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