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  The breath he had been holding now left his lungs in an audible whoosh as Kat unbuttoned and unzipped her jeans before pushing them down as far as her thighs, revealing that she wore those brief cream lace panties beneath, panties that barely covered the darkness of her curls.

  Dair’s cock gave a painful lurch as she wriggled her hips to shimmy out of her jeans, the fullness of her breasts jiggling enticingly.

  Not that he wasn’t enjoying the strip show, far from it, but—“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he rasped harshly, his voice coming out as a growl.

  Kat straightened, completely naked now except for those cream lace panties. “The water looks so inviting, I thought I might go in for a swim,” she answered softly, one brow arched questioningly.

  Shit. He’d obviously misunderstood, had thought—thought what? That the strip show was for his benefit?

  Idiot, he instantly berated himself. Kat was traumatized, for so many reasons, and now she was just enjoying the freedom to do what she wanted, not trying to seduce him.

  Idiot, he remonstrated a second time.

  Every overture Kat had made towards him since escaping the clinic had been in her sleep, or as a reaction to being free, including those kisses she had showered on him after he had thrown her onboard the jet.

  Besides which, it was doubtful she was even strong enough to withstand the physical pounding Dair wanted to give her right now; he wanted to take her, possess her, fill her up completely.

  The way Kat looked right now, she would be crushed under the onslaught.

  “Come and join me…?” Kat held her hand out invitingly.

  Dair fought a battle within himself as he stared at that hand, tempted, so very tempted, his cock especially as it clamored inside his jeans to be set free, so hot and turgid that the thought of a swim was more than welcome. But not, most definitely not, with an almost-naked Kat.

  As for holding her hand—? He hadn’t held a woman’s hand since Karin—

  Desire fled as he thought of that teenage romance. Of the woman who had betrayed him and then left him for dead.

  His mouth thinned. “I have other things I need to do right now. The cream and gold bedroom is Lucien and Nicky’s, but choose any of the others and I’ll bring your case up shortly,” he added off-handedly before turning and walking away.

  Kat sighed her disappointment, dropping her hand back to her side as she watched Dair leave without so much as sparing her a second glance, his rejection hurting as much as a slap on the face would have.

  But what had she expected? That Dair was going to be so overwhelmed with lust, at seeing her almost naked, he would continue on where they had left off on the plane?

  She gave a self-derisive snort; Dair’s response to her on the plane had been the same as any other red-blooded thirty-something man when faced with a woman bent on satisfaction.

  But the bulge in his jeans just now, before he turned away, had definitely been in response to her near nakedness.

  Proving that parts of Dair definitely wanted her.

  Just as there was no denying that Kat wanted him.

  Seducing a man like Dair was a challenge Kat certainly hadn’t expected in her near future.

  But she wanted to.

  Oh yes, Kat most definitely wanted to.

  “What the fu—I didn’t buy those for you!” Dair came to an abrupt halt in the kitchen doorway later that morning, as he stared askance at the denim shorts and the shirt Kat was now wearing as she pottered about the kitchen preparing lunch for them both.

  Very, very short shorts.

  So short, in fact, they revealed the bottom of the cheeks of her curvaceous ass, and the bared length of her shapely legs.

  As for the top she was almost wearing—

  “Of course you did; where else would I have gotten them from?” she dismissed as she opened the fridge door and bent over to look inside, apparently searching its contents for some ingredient to add to the salad she was mixing in a bowl.

  At the same time giving Dair even more of an eyeful of her bare ass cheeks.

  He gave a shake of his head. “They didn’t look like that on the hangers.”

  He did vaguely recognize the shorts and sleeveless red blouse as being something he had picked out for her earlier in the week on his shopping trip in New York, clothes he had chosen with the heat of the island in mind. But other than the color of the material, there the similarity ended.

  The shorts definitely hadn’t looked that skimpy when he chose them, and Kat had left the top three buttons of the blouse undone, revealing the tops of her creamy breasts. Completely bared breasts, despite the fact that Dair had embarrassed himself totally by going into the lingerie department of the store to pick out several bra and panty sets for her to wear.

  Kat also seemed to have done something to the bottom of the blouse. Pulled it up somehow and tied it at the front, revealing her creamy smooth midriff.

  Dair had spent the last few hours checking the generators and the water supply, at the same time as he tried to convince himself that he really didn’t want to push Kat up against a wall and thrust his cock into the burning heat between her thighs.

  One look at her in these revealing clothes and all that convincing was totally forgotten.

  “No. Well.” Kat gave a grimace. “The shorts were a bit long in the leg, so I cut them down a little. And the blouse looks much better like this, don’t you think.” She straightened to give him a better look.

  Right now Dair thought a cold shower before lunch seemed like a good idea. And another one after lunch, if Kat was going to keep bending over in front of him in that provocative way.

  Kat had called this an island paradise when they arrived earlier, but Dair had the feeling it was going to become his own private hell; just looking at her was becoming fucking torture!

  He stepped forward to sit down abruptly on one of the chairs at the kitchen table in order to hide the visible swelling at the front of his jeans. “This all looks good.” He kept his gaze down on the fresh baked bread, cold meats and fruit already laid out on the tabletop.

  Kat placed the salad down in the center of the table before sitting down opposite him. “There’s enough food in the fridge and freezer to feed us both for a month.”

  A month? With the amount of cold showers Dair would need to take in that time, he was going to look like a shriveled prune—not a good look on anyone—by the end of it.

  “Let’s hope we aren’t here for as long as that,” he muttered with feeling.

  “So what is the plan?” Kat kept her expression deliberately neutral as she offered him the salad.

  A month alone on this island with Dair sounded like heaven to her, but she appreciated that he wasn’t going to feel the same way about it. Not only did he have a business to run, but she also doubted—although she could be wrong—that he had ever spent a month alone with any woman.

  The information he had given her about how he’d spent the past fifteen years had been sketchy at best, but Kat could tell from looking at him that it had been a life of action, not idleness. Dair hadn’t gotten that perfectly toned body from sitting behind a desk. Or lazing about on a beach for month, with one of his charges.

  Even if that ‘charge’ was now more than willing to show him she would do her best to make their time here entertaining for him.

  That would certainly take up some of the time they spent here, but there was only so much time a couple could spend in bed together, so many ways to enjoy each other—at least, she thought so—and sooner or later they would have to actually get around to talking to each other too. Dair didn’t give the impression that he talked much to anyone. About his life or himself.

  Any more than Kat did.

  Or wanted to.

  “Gregori didn’t seem to know when I spoke to him on the plane.” Although, in truth, Kat hadn’t wanted to talk about the past or present with her brother, so she hadn’t exactly pressed him for answers about the immediat
e future, either.

  “That’s probably because what happens next all depends on you.” Dair shrugged.

  “Me?” Kat paused in helping herself from the salad bowl Dair had just handed her; it had been a very long time, if ever, since anyone had actually asked her what she wanted. For her life, or her future.

  Her marriage to Sergei had been a business arrangement, between her father and his, and Ivan had ruled over that marriage in the same way he ran the rest of the Orlov empire. Before Kat’s pregnancy he had often voiced his displeasure that she hadn’t produced the Orlov heir yet.

  When she had lost that heir, and Ivan discovered the reason for it, even his own son hadn’t been immune to his retribution. Sergei had suffered a severe beating. Nowhere that it showed, of course, but Sergei had sported bruises on his chest and back, as well as sore ribs, for some days after the beating.

  Ivan may love his son, but he wasn’t averse to giving Sergei a salutary lesson in order to remind him he was the one who ran the Orlov family. And as the head of that family, he wanted a grandson. A grandson born from Katya Markovic.

  Allowing Kat to leave, to reveal the truth, that her marriage had never been legal, certainly hadn’t been an option. Ivan had instructed Sergei to do what it took to ensure it didn’t happen.

  For Dair to now tell her that ‘what happened next’ was her choice was—

  What Kat wanted was to be free of it all. Sergei. The Orlovs. The Markovics. To be able to live her own life. Alone, if necessary.

  She put the salad bowl carefully back down onto the table. “And what would ‘happen’ if I said I just want to stay here, or somewhere very like it? To never have to go back?”

  “Is that what you want?” Dair studied her closely. “To divorce Sergei and live your life somewhere like this in solitude?”

  Her mouth firmed just hearing Sergei’s name. “I asked what happens if I decided I never want to go back.”

  Dair shrugged. “Then I think Gregori would do everything in his power to ensure that’s what happened.”

  Yes, Kat had no doubts Gregori would do that for her if she asked him to. “At what price?” she sighed.

  There would be a price, Dair acknowledged grimly. Not in money, but blood.

  And Kat knew it too.

  He could clearly see that knowledge in those sad and shadowed eyes. “Would you like to know what Gregori said when I asked him the same question?”

  Kat’s smile was tinged with that same sadness. “What did he say?”

  “Fuck them. ‘Them’ being the Orlovs.” Dair reached across the table and placed his hand on top of Kat’s as she seemed unaware she was crumbling the bread on her plate into oblivion. “Gregori is willing to do whatever it takes to ensure your happiness.”

  Her hand trembled slightly beneath his. “And if I choose to return to Sergei?”

  Dair’s fingers tightened painfully about hers, until he saw her wince and realized what he was doing and eased the pressure. “If that’s what you decide, then yes, Gregori will make sure it happens.”

  She gave a shake of her head. “And what if I chose not to do that? Is Gregori willing to allow other people to die in order to protect me from the Orlovs?”

  “Kat—”

  “Is he?” she pressed emotionally.

  “Yes,” Dair nodded slowly. “Yes, I believe he is. Damn it, Kat,” he added impatiently. “Once Gregori has my report of what’s been happening to you the past two months, someone has to pay! You were heavily drugged in that clinic, strapped to a chair for hours at time. For that alone, Gregori is going to want to rip someone’s throat out!” Dair would be one of the first to volunteer to lead that particular mission.

  She released a ragged breath. “As I thought.” She nodded. “This is why I needed to talk to you before you could speak to Gregori. Because you can’t tell him about any of that, Dair, not the clinic, the meds, none of it.” She pulled her hand out from beneath his. “And neither can I.”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  “It’s the way it has to be,” she insisted dully.

  Dair didn’t accept that. And not just because he now wanted Kat himself.

  He eyed her impatiently. “Do you understand that the Orlovs could kill you, rather than just lock you up, the next time you and Sergei have a falling out?” The bitterness in Kat’s laugh, in response to the question, jarred on Dair’s nerve endings. “What aren’t you telling me, Kat?” he probed shrewdly. “What are you still hiding?”

  “The locking me up and strapping me to a chair so I didn’t stab Sergei through the heart isn’t bad enough?” she taunted.

  Dair saw red every time he thought of the state he had found Kat in at the clinic yesterday. If Kat had been his sister Dair would have strung Sergei Orlov up by his balls by now. Made the other man suffer for the way he had made Kat suffer.

  As things stood, Kat wasn’t his sister, wasn’t his anything, and the retribution wasn’t his to take.

  “What are you still hiding, Kat?” he pressured again determinedly.

  She smiled without humor. “If I told you that they would have to kill you too.”

  “Too?” Dair repeated sharply.

  “Just a figure of speech,” she dismissed.

  Dair didn’t believe her. Because Kat’s gaze would no longer meet his. Because her answers were always evasive. Because he wanted to roast Sergei fucking Orlov over a slow fire!

  “Kat,” he spoke slowly, succinctly, “if I think for one moment the Orlovs are going to hurt you then I can assure you it wouldn’t be you or me who would die.”

  “And so it begins.” Kat sighed, wishing they had never started this conversation.

  But she had wanted to know—to hear—if there was any possibility at all that there was a way out of this that didn’t involve bloodshed or her complete disappearance. Dair’s reaction now told her there wasn’t.

  He was responding as a man who had known her briefly as a child—she didn’t fool herself into believing she meant any more to him than that—but Gregori was her older, protective brother, and he wouldn’t hesitate to go to war over what Sergei had done to her.

  Her choices were limited. In fact, she really only had that one choice.

  She would contact Gregori once she was somewhere safe, of course, and he could hardly go to war once she had assured him that disappearing was her own choice. She was absolutely certain the Orlovs would never reveal the truth to Gregori.

  The peace between the Markovic and Orlov family would no doubt be an uneasy one, but it would be peace of a kind, rather than the war the truth would unleash.

  She straightened. “We really should eat our lunch before it gets cold.” As an attempt at humor it was pretty poor, but it was all Kat had at the moment.

  Because she knew what she had to do, she just wanted more.

  So much more.

  It was too much to ask, she knew that, but she dearly wished that none of the past five years of her marriage had ever happened, and that she and Dair had just met again as adults, with both of them free to explore the almost primitive desire she had seen burning in the depths of Dair’s eyes on the beach earlier, and when he first came into the kitchen just now. The same desire she also felt for him, so deeply it hurt.

  Perhaps she couldn’t have what she wanted, but maybe what she needed? And right now she needed a few days, even hours, of being wanted and desired. Of just being with Dair. That wild and primitive Dair who could arouse her with just a look.

  If she could have that, those hours or days would have to sustain her for a long, long time. The rest of her life, probably.

  “Eat up, Dair,” she encouraged brightly. “And after lunch, if you can snorkel, maybe you can show me how to use the gear I found in the pool house down on the beach? Of course you can snorkel,” she teasingly answered her own question. “All superheroes know how to snorkel!”

  Dair gave a derisive smile. “If I were a superhero we wouldn’t have needed the plane to fly
us here.”

  Nor was he fooled for even a minute by Kat’s attempt to change the subject. It was obvious to him that she was living in fear of the Orlovs, and what would happen if/when she went back to Sergei.

  And Dair intended to find out what had happened, why things had suddenly changed between Kat and Sergei after she lost her baby.

  Losing a baby was a tragedy, granted, and not one Ivan Orlov would have taken well. But Kat was young, only thirty; there was still plenty of time for her to conceive and have a dozen more babies, if that’s what she wanted.

  No, something about this situation still didn’t add up—and before he and Kat left this island Dair was going to find out exactly what that something was.

  Chapter 8

  “That was absolutely incredible!” Kat laughed with joy as she threw herself down onto the white-gold sand.

  Dair had never seen Kat this carefree, and all because they had been snorkeling together for most of the afternoon.

  Kat had taken to it literally like a duck to water, so much so that after the first few minutes of instruction, Dair was the one following her, as she explored the rocks and caves in the bay.

  Not that it was any hardship for Dair to follow Kat, not when she was wearing one of the three bikinis he had purchased for her. This one was comprised of two scraps of stretchy orange material that barely covered the sweet curve of her ass and those tight little breasts.

  Dair had been preparing the snorkeling gear when Kat walked down from the villa and joined him on the beach, her short hair shining ebony in the sunlight, her eyes alight with anticipation, her skin like ivory against the bright orange of her bikini, revealing every inch—almost—of that tall and willowy body.

  No, it had been no hardship at all for Dair to follow along behind those long and slender legs, or gaze his fill of that deliciously taut and curvaceous ass.

  It was a little less comfortable to follow her out of the water with a raging hard-on filling the front of his trunks.

  Kat turned to look up at him now from where she sat on the sand, leaning back on her hands, her eyes widening as she obviously saw that telling bulge. It was a little difficult not to, Dair had to admit.