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  “Want some of this, Kat?” He deliberately ran the soft pad of his thumb across that bulbous tip, gathering up the creamy cum before lifting his thumb to put it in his mouth and slowly suck.

  Yes, God help her she did want some of that, could almost taste that creamy thickness on her own tongue as she licked and sucked Dair’s cock until he came hot and heavy down her throat and she swallowed down that spicy sweetness pumping into her greedy mouth. Her knees felt weak at the thought.

  “Bastard!” she accused again, still trying to avert her gaze so that she didn’t have to look as he resumed that slow and leisurely pumping.

  “I guess I’ll just go into the bathroom and take care of this myself then—”

  “No!” Kat heard herself protesting the idea before her brain had time to communicate with her mouth. “If you won’t let me touch you, at least let me watch?” Her eyes felt hot and heavy as she watched Dair’s long and lean fingers gripping and pumping his own cock.

  A gutsy lady, Dair acknowledged again admiringly, one very gutsy lady.

  “And what if I’d like a little more stimulation than my own hand?” he prompted gruffly.

  Her gaze flickered up to his and then down again. “You said you wouldn’t let me touch you again until—until after we’ve talked.”

  And Dair still held firm to that decision. But that was no reason for the two of them not to have a little fun while he was waiting for Kat to get her nerve together and start talking. Besides, he was never going to be able to crawl into this bed with Kat and fall asleep until after he had taken care of this raging hard-on.

  “Take your clothes off, Kat, and then get on the bed,” he instructed her huskily.

  Her eyes widened even as she began to strip off her T-shirt and black bra—the latter part of one of the sets Dair had purchased for her in New York—before removing her jeans and the matching thong.

  “I said on the bed, Kat, not in it,” Dair drawled as she turned back the bed sheets. “Better.” He nodded his approval and moved to stand at the foot of the bed as Kat lay on top of the covers. “Draw up your knees and put your feet flat on the bed, then part and spread your legs.”

  “Dair…?” She looked down at him uncertainly.

  “Trust me, you’re going to like it, Kat,” he assured softly. “That’s good,” he nodded as she slowly did as he asked. “Now let your knees fall down to the sides— Oh yes, just like that,” his voice grew huskier as her pussy was fully exposed to him, the lips swollen with arousal, a deep rose in color, already glistening with her juices. “Now I want you to touch and stroke yourself in the same way you do when you’re alone in your bed at night pleasuring yourself.”

  Her cheeks became a fiery red. “I don’t—”

  “Are you about to tell me another lie, Kat?” His voice hardened in warning.

  She swallowed. “How did you know—I’ve never told anyone I do that, let alone allowed anyone to see me doing it. Couldn’t you just—”

  “You’re going to do this for me, Kat, and I’m going to enjoy watching you,” he insisted hardly. “Forget your inhibitions, damn it!” he urged impatiently, his hand still stroking and pumping his own shaft, his pleasure rising just from looking at her so swollen and aroused.

  Inhibitions? Kat didn’t think she had any of those left where Dair was concerned. He knew every inch of her body, intimately, and he stripped her down to the bone emotionally with just a few words.

  Even so, she was embarrassed that he had guessed, that he knew, she pleasured herself, always on the nights Sergei didn’t come to her bedroom, which was often.

  She had thought that touching and stroking herself, pinching her own nipples until she came, was a secret no one else knew.

  Dair knew. He knew.

  And he wanted to watch her while she did it.

  Just the thought of that made her nipples hard, and she could feel the increased flow of juices between her legs.

  “Do it, Kat,” he encouraged gruffly.

  She caught her bottom lip between her teeth as she slowly, tentatively, ran her hands down the side of her body and then up again, cupping her breasts, squeezing them, taking her time as she alternately pinched and flicked her nipples until she began to groan and writhe restlessly on the bed.

  “Part your pussy lips for me, Kat, let me see your deliciously swollen clit.”

  Her eyes widened in shock as she realized she had been so concentrated on what she was doing she had no longer been self-conscious about Dair watching her.

  His eyes were a pale and glittering silver as he looked down at her, lips slightly parted, his breathing ragged and a flush to his cheeks, fingers tight as he continued to stroke and pump his shaft.

  Kat couldn’t break her gaze away from his as her hands now moved slowly down between her thighs, parting the slick wetness of her nether lips.

  “Oh yes,” Dair groaned, pumping harder, faster. “Show me your clit again— God, you are so swollen… Can you feel it pulsing, Kat?” he encouraged as she now swirled a finger around and over that swollen nubbin.

  Never, in all the times Kat had given herself this pleasure, had she known her clit to be so swollen and sensitive to the slightest touch, or felt it’s pulsing, like a small aroused cock. Stroking it, pumping it, was the most erotic sensation, made more so by having Dair watching her.

  “Slide a finger inside you now—no, don’t stop stroking your clit, use your other hand. Yes,” he groaned as she slid a finger into the heat of her channel while continuing to swirl the fingers of her other hand over and around her exposed clit. “And another,” he pressed hoarsely, groaning again as she pushed two fingers up inside her slick and grasping channel. “Don’t come yet, Kat,” he warned as the pleasure surged over her in ever-increasing waves.

  “I’m so close—”

  “You will wait for me!” he ground out fiercely. “Watch me and stroke yourself, thrust in and out with your fingers to the same rhythm. Stroke and thrust, Kat,” he encouraged tautly. “But don’t come.”

  Kat felt totally out of control as her hips arched off the bed to allow for deeper penetration as she imagined her fingers were that hard and thrusting shaft in Dair’s hand, her juices flowing freely now, dampening her dark curls and sliding down and moistening between the cheeks of her bottom.

  And all the time Dair watched her, his hand becoming slick with his own pre-cum as he pumped harder, faster, groaning low in his throat as he reached down to cup and squeeze his own balls. “I’m going to come now, Kat,” he gasped hoarsely several minutes later, head bent as his hips thrust forward into that fisted hand. “Are you ready to come with me?”

  Was she ready?

  The pleasure was now so powerful Kat was about to scream from the intensity of it after holding herself back from coming.

  She did scream as her own climax and Dair’s erupted together, creamy cum shooting from his shaft to land hotly against her own heated flesh, and sending her own pleasure even higher, deeper, as she gasped and writhed on the bed, before squeezing her thighs tightly together, trapping her hand in order to ride out the depths of that climax.

  She was curled into a fetal position when Dair returned from the bathroom with a warm damp cloth and a towel, gently easing her onto her back, not speaking, as he began bathing the cum from her body, his expression unreadable as he cleaned and dried her in slow, soothing motions.

  Kat ran her tongue over the dryness of her lips before speaking. “I really am sorry.”

  The tightening of his jaw was the only sign Dair gave that he had even heard her.

  “For the cell phone thing,” she continued softly. “I honestly didn’t think—it was more of an act of defiance than a real belief that the cell phone would be of any use to me. A hitting back at the woman who had control of my day-to-day living all these weeks. And because of that I put your life in danger as well as my own,” she accepted dully.

  Dair finished drying her, his movements sure and steady, before placing the damp
cloth and towel on the floor and straightening to look down at Kat. “I’m not angry with you, Kat.”

  “Of course you are!” she insisted. “You’re furious. Fist-through-the-wall-seriously-pissed furious!”

  He gave a rueful glance at the silk-covered walls. “Not these walls; they’re at least two feet thick, and made of solid stone.” He sobered. “And it isn’t you I’m angry with, Kat. I’m the one who screwed up. And Sergei almost got his hands on you because of it.”

  “You didn’t screw up, Dair, I did,” Kat insisted as she placed the warmth of her hand on his forearm. “A part of me just wanted to hit out, to show that nurse and Sergei—I messed up. Badly.”

  Dair moved his hand up to gently stroke the damp hair from her temple to take the sting out of his next words. “I’m going to need those answers now.”

  “I know,” she sighed heavily. “And you have more than earned the right to hear them. I could have gotten you killed.”

  He looked down at her searchingly. “You really believe Sergei would actually kill over whatever this is?”

  She swallowed. “Oh yes.”

  “Well you don’t need to worry about me on that count; I’m more than capable of taking care of myself. And anyone else who needs it,” he added grimly. “So, the question is why, Kat? There has to be more to this than a wife wanting to leave her husband.”

  “There is.” Kat could no longer meet his gaze. “Would you—could we get into bed together? And would you hold me in your arms while I tell you?”

  This was starting to sound more and more ominous to Dair.

  More ominous than a perfectly sane Kat being locked away in that clinic? More than having Sergei relentlessly pursuing her? More so than Sergei being willing to kill Kat, if he had to, to keep her quiet?

  Hell, yes!

  Whatever was going on here, Dair knew, just from seeing the return of Kat’s haunted expression that the explanation he had demanded from her wasn’t going to be good.

  “No problem.” He helped Kat to turn back the bed sheets so that the two of them could climb in together, his arms tightening about her as he felt the way she was trembling. “There’s no rush, Kat. Just take your time.”

  She gave a choked laugh. “I really think you’re going to have to get some sleep sometime soon! You must be exhausted.”

  He gave a dismissive shrug. “It isn’t the longest I’ve gone without sleep.”

  “Maybe not, but on those other occasions did you also have a plane trip, two sex sessions, one of them of marathon proportions, as well as fly a helicopter and a plane?”

  “Probably not.” He gave a throaty chuckle, knowing that Kat was still putting off the ‘evil moment’. But as he could feel her trembling starting to ease, he was happy to go along with that for the moment. He was tired of floundering along in the dark on this one, and neither of them was going anywhere until he knew exactly what they were up against.

  Finally, finally Kat drew in a deep breath and began to talk, haltingly at first, and then more quickly, assuredly, as she calmed.

  Or out of relief at being able to share this with someone at last?

  It had the opposite effect on Dair, and the longer Kat talked the more angry and tense he became.

  Kat had absolutely no idea what Dair’s reaction was to the things she was telling him. He had gone very silent and very still from the moment she began talking, and he remained so as she came to a stuttering halt at the point where Dair had broken her out of the clinic.

  She didn’t speak anymore either, just lay in Dair’s arms with her head resting on the solid and reassuring warmth of his shoulder, her arm curved about the hardness of his abdomen.

  Finally he drew a deep and shuddering breath into his starved lungs, rocking Kat’s world as her head moved up with the movement of his chest. “Was your fall down the stairs an accident or did Sergei give you a helping hand?”

  “Sergei wanted the baby as much as I did. Not for the same reason, of course, he just wanted the Orlov heir.”

  “That isn’t what I asked, Kat,” Dair rasped harshly.

  Kat knew exactly what Dair was asking.

  Sergei had been full of explanations and apologies that night he flew back from Las Vegas, claiming it was all a misunderstanding, that the woman in his hotel room had been a maid who didn’t understand English very well.

  As an explanation it wasn’t bad, Kat had conceded.

  Apart from the fact the woman had said she was giong to join Sergei in the shower.

  Except for that marriage certificate Kat had found in Sergei’s bedroom.

  He’d had the unmitigated nerve to be angry that she had gone snooping about in his bedroom.

  Kat’s life, a life that was far from perfect but was still her life nonetheless, had been falling apart in front of her eyes, and Sergei had told her she had no right?

  No right!

  Kat had made her biggest mistake then, when she told Sergei she was leaving him, that she was going back to England to live with her brother until she could find a home of her own, and that she would tell Gregori everything. That the baby she carried was hers, and she intended bringing it up alone.

  Dair was now asking her the same question she had asked herself that night and since; had Sergei deliberately pushed her down the stairs, with the intention of killing her before she had a chance to talk to her brother or Ivan?

  The answer to that question was yes.

  Chapter 13

  It had been chaos that night. Kat’s screams as she writhed on the floor in the agony of the knife-like pains wracking her body as she lost her precious baby. Ivan rushing from his study to see what the noise was about. Several members of the household staff also making an appearance in response to those screams.

  Too many people for Sergei to finish what he had started, and just kill her.

  But Kat had no doubt that he had wanted to. She had seen the hatred glittering in his eyes as he looked at her when the ambulance arrived and she was taken to the hospital.

  Just as she had known, from the bruised ribs Sergei complained of when he came to visit her in the hospital the following day, that he’d been left with no choice but to confess all to his father, and received a beating because of it. Ivan didn’t discriminate between his son and his other employees. If anything he was harder on his son, and Sergei had really messed up this time.

  As Kat had looked into the malevolent coldness of Sergei’s eyes that day she had known that he hated her, with a vengeance.

  Unfortunately for Sergei he was never completely alone with her while she remained in the hospital, Ivan more often than not at his side. Once she was discharged Ivan had called in his own doctor to attend her at his home—Kat had no longer considered it to be her home, and she had told Ivan so. Just as she had told him that she wanted to leave.

  Something Ivan had patiently explained—kindly, if inflexibly—he couldn’t allow her to do.

  His answer to the situation had been the same as Sergei’s.

  Sergei would ‘take care’ of the little problem of his legal wife—Kat hated to think how he would do that, but she very much doubted it would involve a divorce court—and then the two of them could quietly marry again. There was no reason for Gregori, or anyone else, to know anything about this little…mistake of Sergei’s.

  A previous wife was a little mistake?

  Kat’s insistence that she wanted to leave had resulted in her being given the meds ‘to calm her nerves’, and Sergei was charged by his father with the task of persuading her into remarrying him. Kat had refused. Repeatedly. Even in that drugged state she had known she didn’t want to be with Sergei.

  “Kat?” Dair prompted again quietly.

  She gave a shudder before answering him honestly. “Sergei meant to kill me that night, only his father’s presence, and the curiosity of some of the household staff prevented him from doing so.”

  Dair knew of the violence in the world, hell, he lived with it every day. But
just thinking of Sergei killing his unborn child, and almost killing Kat too, made it all so much more personal.

  If any of Dair’s men could see him now, his stillness, the cold glitter he knew was in his eyes, then they would have described him as being in ‘killer’ mode.

  Sergei Orlov deserved to die.

  As if sensing that resolve, Kat shifted restlessly in his arms. “It’s over and done with now, Dair—”

  “It isn’t over until someone dies,” he grated. “And that someone isn’t going to be you.”

  Here, safe in Dair’s arms, Kat could believe that. But she didn’t fool herself that she could stay with him. Or that he would ever want her to.

  Gregori could keep her safe too, she knew that, but she also knew it would be at a price. A price she didn’t want him to pay.

  “Shit, I’ve just realized something—!”

  Dair moved so suddenly that Kat found herself lying on her back with Dair looming over her before she was even aware of his moving, let alone able to voice a word of protest.

  He looked down at her searchingly, his expression becoming grimmer, harder, by the second. “Damn it, you weren’t going back, were you!”

  “I could never go back to Sergei—”

  “To London and Gregori,” he corrected harshly.

  Her gaze lowered from meeting his. “Of course I—”

  “Look at me, Kat!” Dair demanded as his hand curved gently about her chin and he turned her face back towards him. “You didn’t just steal that cell phone to get back at Nurse Palmer, or with the intention of calling Gregori—”

  “I’ve already apologized, repeatedly, for the cell phone thing,” she groaned in protest. “I know how stupid it was, okay!”

  “Not stupid at all, Kat, not when you intended on using it for your escape.” His glittering gaze roamed restlessly over her face, with not a warm green fleck in sight amongst the silver. “How was that going to work out, Kat?” he challenged. “We arrive somewhere, like Venice, or maybe England, and while I’m distracted sorting out the details of whatever, you quietly sneak away and just disappear, with that cell phone your only possession?” His eyes narrowed. “What were you going to do for money, I wonder? Steal it from me, maybe, after I’d fallen asleep following another one of our ‘sexual marathons’?”