The Last Kolovsky Playboy (6 page)

‘You’re selling your home?’ Somehow he managed to talk normally, and Kate tried for the same.

‘My landlord is selling.’

Eyes still closed, he frowned, because of course he didn’t really understand what it meant to her.

‘That’s why I asked my sister to have Georgie—I need to find somewhere this weekend.’ She watched the edge of his eyes scrunch to deepen his frown.

‘Surely he must give you notice?’

‘I got given a month’s notice,’ Kate said. ‘Last weekend you informed me you were flying home. This weekend I start looking. Next weekend I hope I find somewhere…’ She stopped herself before her voice cracked. Kate never took the woe-is-me route, and suddenly she didn’t need to to stop herself from getting upset, because then she got a little bit angry and it crept into her voice. ‘That’s if my employer will give me a reference.’

He opened his eyes to her.

‘I came on too strong, perhaps?’

‘There’s no perhaps about it,’ she retorted indignantly.

‘I can’t afford for you to leave just now.’

‘That’s all you had to say.’

When she looked back on this night—and it was certain that over and over she would—Kate wondered if she’d remember how she came to be touching him. But now, living it, feeling it, when it actually came to it, it was so seamless, so natural, that after a while of talking, after another while of silence and then talking again, when his leg was racked with painful cramping, it was more a response than a thought that led her hand to his thigh. Once it was there, once that jump had been made, she didn’t want to return to a world without the
feel of him beneath her fingers, even if she knew that tomorrow she would.

His skin was warm, firm and taut beneath her fingers, the contact firing her nerves into a frenzied alert. She wrestled to calm them, had to concentrate on slowing her breathing down as she slid her hand over the tight muscle, and then slowly the sirens in her body hushed a little, grew deliciously accustomed to the feel of him, and Kate could breathe more normally as she worked his spasmed flesh. She could see the scars where the pins and bolts had been. She took some baby oil—it was all she could think of—and squirted it on, rubbing the tense mound of flesh, tentatively at first and then more firmly. It took ages, and she wasn’t even sure it was helping, but the muscle finally gave beneath her fingers. Then just after it relaxed it tensed again. She heard his curse, saw him grit his teeth, and she actually knew something about how he felt.

‘When I had Georgie…’

‘Don’t!’ He both laughed and warned her at the same time. ‘Don’t say you know how it feels…’

‘But I do.’ Still her hand worked on. ‘I was on my own, and the nurses kept telling me that I was doing fine, that it was all completely normal, but I was begging for something. I couldn’t believe how much it hurt. I knew childbirth was supposed to hurt, but it was agony. The pain just kept coming…’

‘For how long?’

‘All night,’ Kate said. ‘And I thought I’d never get through it, but I did.’

‘I don’t want drugs,’ Aleksi said, and Kate smiled.

‘I said the same.’ She pressed her fingers harder into the tight knot of his thigh muscle, heard his hiss of breath,
saw his hand go to remove hers. But the muscle finally relented, the tight spasm loosened, and she worked on.

‘Did you give in?’ Aleksi asked.

‘Absolutely.’ Kate smiled. ‘I screamed the place down for everything.’

And Aleksi smiled, too. ‘I won’t give in.’

He wouldn’t—that much she knew.

‘Is it agony?’

‘No.’ His answer surprised her. ‘It’s not so much the pain…more the thoughts.’

‘Thoughts?’ Still her hands worked on.

‘It would be easier to knock myself out,’ Aleksi explained. ‘But I just need to get through this.’

He’d put on muscle in his leg. The last time she had seen it, it had been withered and wasted, studded with pins and bolts. Now it was tanned and lean, with fresh scars and dark hair. When his thigh muscle was pliant she worked down, as the physio had done, and unknotted the calf muscle that bore so much of the strain of his healing thigh.

‘You’ll get there.’ She was absolutely sure of it. ‘Just relax.’

‘Easier said than done,’ he said wryly.

‘Just try,’ she pleaded.

So he did.

He lay there and thought only of her hands.

Listened to the tick, tick, tick of her little alarm clock.

He had loathed this in hospital—the invasion of his body, being told to relax, not to fight—but right now he got what they had been trying to tell him, because when he did relax, when he did let go, it was as if his muscles were melting.

He had never been better looked after.

Aleksi lay back on her bed and stared at the ceiling.

He had never been more relaxed, more comfortable with another soul.

Always he performed.

At dinner, in business, in bed, in hospital—always it was Aleksi driving the conversation, the deal, the orgasm, the recovery. Whatever the goal, he was relentless in pursuing it, but tonight—this morning—he lay there and for a little while just let her…

Let his mind, let his body, let himself just be—till the spasm hit again, his leg contracting, his mind tightening with the pain of recall, memories awakening. The screech of tyres and the smell of burning rubber, his car spinning out of control because his mind had been so full of other things. And as he lay there it was so vivid he had to clench his fists to prevent his arms flying up to shield his face.

Her hands were at the back of his thigh now, working the tight hamstring, and he wanted to shout out because it was sheer hell to remember.

‘Don’t think of anything,’ she said gently.

So he looked at her instead of looking inside his mind. Her eyes were down in concentration. His moved lower too, to her cleavage, and he focused on that for a soothing moment, willing the gown to part, to reveal just a little bit more, but desire alone couldn’t do that. Then he watched her hands work, saw his flesh move with each stroke to his thigh, felt his breathing slow down, and it was almost hypnotic the effect she had on him.

He was covered now by just the small towel which had loosened. His thigh was soft, but her tender ministrations had been recognised by his body elsewhere.

‘Don’t worry.’ Embarrassed, she turned her face away, went to stand, tried to be matter-of-fact. ‘I’m sure
it happens…’ Well, it must—all the physiotherapists, nurses who had touched him…

‘Not once.’

And so here was her guilt.

Her never again.

Because each time he came to her door the bar shifted.

First a kiss.

Then a conversation.

Each a guilty memory that she took out and examined now and then like a precious hidden treasure.

And now this.

Her hand was still on his thigh, not moving. She could have walked away at that point, except she didn’t.

This was the bit she would never understand.

Because here, alone with him in her house, away from it all and only for a short while, she felt beautiful.

For the first time in her life, when those grey eyes looked into hers, she felt as if she were another person entirely.

A bold, sensual woman.

Only she wasn’t.

Sex had been mired in shame for Kate. Her first attempt with Craig had resulted in Georgie, followed closely by Craig insisting that her intention had been to trap him into marriage, then cruelly berating her for putting on weight and finally, on Kate’s insistence, leaving.

Craig’s relief to be leaving her had been palpable; she had actually seen his tension evaporate as she’d exonerated him of any duty to their unborn child. His parents had some contact with Georgie, and on occasion he saw his daughter there. He did send birthday presents and Christmas cards, but that was the sum total of his involvement.

As she had closed the door on him, Kate had sworn
never again.

She was a mother, and she’d be the best mother she could be, and she’d do it without a man rather than subject Georgie to her mistakes.

But now Aleksi lay in her bed, and she was more than a mother tonight. For the first time in the longest time she was a woman again.

His eyes were on her face, and she just stared back at him, her hand still on his thigh. She moved it again, stroked him again, but it was more than a healing touch and they both knew it. She could feel his thigh contract beneath her fingers, feel the waves of pain rising within him again. But she would soothe him with a different touch now.

‘Kate…’ His hand moved over hers as it crept up his thigh. ‘You don’t have to…’

‘I know.’ Except she was mired in want. Yes, this would change things—but they had changed already.

Yes, she knew she could never keep him—but she wanted to have had him, at least for a little while.

She had never held a man in her hand, but she did so now. She held him as if it was her right—her fingers warm from the oil as she slid them around his thick length.

‘Kate…’ He said it again, almost urging her to stop, because there was a strange nervousness for Aleksi. His pain, his guilt and his shame would still be there tomorrow, but for now it all melted away with the bliss of her touch. A touch that wasn’t greedy or demanding, but was instead a slow, rhythmic touch that had him staying silent and instead closing his eyes.

It was an inexperienced touch that he almost wanted to correct—to place his hand over hers in order to show
her how, a better how. Except, Aleksi realised as he gave in to her ministrations, it couldn’t be better than this.

There was a deep pleasure in the unexpected.

A lack of expertise brought a surprise with every delicious stroke.

It was too light.

She was scared to hurt him.

Too rough.

She couldn’t help herself.

Not there.

She cupped him in her hand.

Be careful.
His mind said what his mouth held back from.

Only Kate didn’t hold back.

She cupped him and stroked him and was just so bowled over by his beauty, so lost in this intimate place. He was more beautiful than anyone had a right to be—
this
was more wonderful than she had ever dreamt—and this was real and he was here and she grew bolder.

She stroked him more easily now, finding her rhythm, and she felt a deep pool of excitement swell within her. Now her hands were busy, her mouth craved contact with him.

Guided by want rather than logic, she lowered her lips, kissed his flat nipple, anticipating what she didn’t know—for him to tell her enough? To warn her off? But she heard his ragged breath, and she kissed it as delicately and then as hungrily as she wished he would kiss her.

She felt his hand creep into her dressing gown but she brushed it off. Hungry now for herself, she kissed down his chest and down his flat stomach. She relished each caress, each lick, savoured them because she knew she would live on this for weeks.

Till the master called for her again this would be her escape, this the moment she would relive.

Her mouth was neither skilled nor practised, but it didn’t confuse.

There was a pleasure in its simplicity. He lay there, staring at the ceiling, and for a moment he wanted to climb from the bed, to tell her…what?

Yet he lay there.

She kissed him—not to impress or to please, but to appease her own building need. She tasted and she licked and she felt his fingers knot in her hair as she grew bolder, taking him deeper and relishing him.

For Aleksi it was a revelation.

To just lie there, to do no more than that.

To lie and think of nothing but her lips on him. This from a man who merely tolerated massages—though he was booked in each week.

Always he lay there, willing the hour over. Gave a huge tip, said he felt marvelous. Slipped back into his suit feeling the same, just oiled.

Till now, he had felt the same with this.

Yet for the first time all he did was lie there—no rush, no feigned moans, no urgency.

He lay there.

And then his hips rose.

Except he didn’t want it over so soon.

So he lay there for a moment longer and climbed into a void where all there was was this sensation, just this moment in time.

‘Kate,’ he gasped, and his hips rose again. He felt moisture in his eyes, which he screwed closed.

He could feel her tender ministrations and he didn’t want them to stop—but finally his body was beating its
blessed relief. He had never been in a place like it—a still, silent place, where there was just her tongue and her lips and her breath and an endless night that was now only a little way from dawn.

He didn’t know this place that was devoid of demand, of reciprocal rights—this unfamiliar place where he opened his eyes and looked at his generous bedfellow without resentment, of one with whom he actually still wanted to share a bed.

He pulled her up beside him, liked the curves and the flesh that he tangled into, liked the scent of her hair and the weight of her breast on his chest.

The right word had often evaded him these past months, and he did the usual search, trawled through his mind’s thesaurus in a brain that had gone over its download limit. The search too slow; the answer when it came was surely wrong.

Calm.

He’d never known it or felt it, but even as he disputed it, even as he tried to come up with another word, it remained in his mind as sleep finally invaded and claimed him.

S
HE
awoke to a bed that was, apart from her, empty. She waited for the tsunami of shame to sweep in, waited for regret, for remorse to arrive. But instead Kate just lay for a quiet moment, blinking as she realised those feelings were absent.

There wasn’t a minute of last night that she regretted.

Oh, she did momentarily consider a full-face tattoo to hide her blushes when she faced him on Monday, but even as she climbed out of bed still regret was absent, still she considered that last night was very possibly the most wonderful of her life.

Kate pulled on her dressing gown, splashed her face with water, and on autopilot brushed her teeth.

She had three rental properties to look at this morning, plenty to get on with today, and she would do everything in her power not to think about Aleksi till later tonight, when she could quietly sit and go over the night they had shared.

Refusing to check her phone to see if he’d texted her, she padded out to the mail box and collected the newspaper, then headed into the kitchen.

‘I’ve been thinking…’

‘Ah!’ she gasped, and almost dropped the newspaper.

It hadn’t even occurred to Kate that he might still be here! Always he was gone by dawn, and the dark hours prior were conveniently forgotten by Monday. Yet here he was, in the morning sun, in her kitchen, pouring scalding water into two mugs!

‘Where are the coffee beans?’ he asked.

‘In Kenya,’ Kate said, opening a jar of instant and trying not to let him see how rattled his presence made her feel. The sight of him in her dingy kitchen brought her no comfort; she didn’t actually want her two worlds colliding. Last night had been fantasy, escape—it suited her that they didn’t speak about it, didn’t acknowledge it, that their private moments weren’t analysed in the cold light of day.

But here he was.

He had on only the bottom half of his suit. Despite arduous work-outs to regain his strength he had lost weight, and the pants sat a touch lower on his hips. Usually that would have been sorted. He had an army of designers at his disposal, after all, and Aleksi Kolovsky would have utilised them.

It was the tiniest detail, yet she noticed it.

Liked it, even.

Liked the extra glimpse of toned flat stomach and the glimpse of dark hair that led to where she had kissed him last night.

No, she did
not
like her dreams invading reality like this!

Didn’t like facing him in her tatty dressing gown with her morning hair, and was painfully aware of her shabby kitchen, and that he was no doubt regretting coming to her door.

Again.

‘I thought you’d be gone,’ she commented.

Aleksi had thought he would be gone by now too.

Always he rose early, but since the accident it had been ridiculous. His eyes snapped open long before dawn and he listened to the world wake up as he lay there, racked with exhaustion but unable to rest. Except this morning. For the first time since the accident, for the first time since way before then, even, the sun had beaten him in rising.

Refreshed, even relaxed, he had left Kate sleeping, his intention to call a cab. Yet he had been reluctant to leave, reluctant to face what needed to be faced, and, attempting to locate coffee, had seen the neat stack of bills by the microwave, recalled the ‘For Sale’ sign outside the house and his solution had been found.

Aleksi didn’t slowly form ideas, but neither did he mull. His mind was too rapid for rumination; he scanned details most legal eyes would take hours to ponder. He cut straight to the chase. ‘Move in with me.’

Kate rolled her eyes.

‘You have to find somewhere to live. I have a huge home you could stay in for a couple of months…’ His idea stalled as the scruffiest dog he had ever seen strolled past and Kate let him out to the back yard. ‘You’re not saying anything.’

‘Because it doesn’t warrant a response,’ Kate said dryly, and got on with making a much needed cup of coffee.

‘You, Georgie…’ he hesitated, but only for a second ‘…the dog…’

‘Bruce.’

‘I’m going to London in a few days, to meet with Belenki,’ Aleksi said. ‘We need to do some straight
talking. So I’ll be away and you and Georgie will have the place to yourself for a while—I’d hardly be there…’ Still she didn’t respond. ‘It could help us both out.’

‘Ah, now we’re getting somewhere.’ Kate handed him a mug. ‘How, precisely, would a single mother and her entourage living in your home help you, Aleksi?’

‘It would show responsibility. It would prove to the board…’ He hesitated. ‘I thought about what you said—maybe I do need a change of attitude to win the board over. Let them see that I am settling down, that I am serious about the business of Kolovsky.’

‘Settling down?’ she repeated flatly.

‘We could say you were my fiancée. Just for a couple of months—just till I get the board’s vote.’

‘No.’

It was a definite answer, but one Aleksi refused to accept. ‘The board thinks—’

‘You’ve never cared what the board thinks before.’

‘I’ve never needed to. They know I do a brilliant job, they know I can run the place blindfolded, but always there is greed.’

‘No.’ She said it again, even shot out an incredulous laugh at his ridiculous thought process.

‘You would be remunerated.’

‘Two months’ worth of free rent in exchange for messing up my life? I don’t think so!’

‘Of course not.’

And then a dream came true.

Or rather the fantasy that soothed her late in the night sometimes—the times when she lay racked with worry, scared for Georgie’s future. The dream where all that was waved away by some strange miracle—only this
wasn’t a winning lottery ticket, nor some unknown ancient relative’s legacy.

No, six feet two inches of arrogant male Kolovsky looked her straight in the eye and offered her such an outlandish sum that the third no, though on the tip of her tongue, wasn’t quite so speedily delivered. The synapses in her brain were firing in rapid calculation of the future she could achieve if only she had the nerve to say yes to him.

‘No,’ Kate said again, except it was preceded by a swallow.

‘Think about it.’ He drained his mug and then walked over to her, shrinking the kitchen and making her feel impossibly claustrophobic as he stood before her. He leant forward a touch, to place his mug on the bench behind her. She could smell him, smell the danger of him, and in that moment Kate knew he was deadly serious—she had worked with him long enough to know that Aleksi didn’t make idle offers.

To know that Aleksi
always
got his way.

‘I’ve given you my answer.’ She would not be intimidated. She refused to look at him, and took a sip of her drink instead.

‘If I don’t sort out this chaos my mother is creating, if I don’t halt Belenki in the next few days, then I’m walking away from the company completely,’ he said.

She felt as if she were standing on a trampoline, unsteady and unsure, watching as the springs snapped away one by one. ‘You’d never leave Kolovsky!’

‘Oh, I’d leave it in a heartbeat,’ Aleksi responded.

‘It’s your life.’

‘It’s just business,’ Aleksi answered.

Another spring snapped and any minute she’d be
falling. Without Aleksi there, she’d certainly be fired. Where else could she earn so much for so few hours?

‘You’d get another job, of course.’ Aleksi smiled.

‘You’re blackmailing me,’ she whispered.

‘Not at all.’ He shook his head. ‘Before I leave I’d give you a glowing reference, saying what a brilliant PA you are—you know a Kolovsky reference will open any door. How could I possibly be blackmailing you?’

Because she didn’t want to be a full-time PA—didn’t want to work from seven till seven and then spend half the night on the computer and the phone.

‘I am offering you a future—whatever happens at Kolovsky your future can be secured.’ Aleksi’s voice was like silk—raw silk, though. ‘Georgie’s future…’

‘What about Georgie?’ She was angry now—angry at him offering this without true thought, angry at herself for even letting her mind dance down the delicious path he was offering. She tried to push past him, but he caught her arms. ‘What would I tell her, Aleksi?
Oh, Mummy’s engaged, we’re moving in…’

‘If she sees you happy and relaxed…’

‘And when it ends?’ Still the springs snapped and, glimpsing the ending, she felt as if she were finally falling. ‘What do I tell her then?’

‘Relationships don’t work out sometimes.’ Aleksi shrugged, and then his voice was serious. He held her elbows, spoke very slowly, very clearly, because there was one thing it was imperative she understood. ‘So long as you’re okay, Georgie will be okay. But it
will
end, Kate. You’re right about that. I don’t do love. I don’t do for ever.’

‘You’re not going to break my heart, Aleksi.’ Kate’s voice was firm. She almost managed condescending—only
inside she didn’t feel so brave, because seeing him for a few hours did enough damage to her mind. To live with him, to sleep with him, to be with him all the time with the guarantee of losing him…

She was hurting already, and he must have picked up on that.

‘I’m a good lover, Kate.’

‘Oh, so sex is part of the deal?’

‘Of course it’s not mandatory…’ Aleksi said, but then he pulled apart her dressing gown.

The belt was still tight, so only her breasts were exposed, and he pulled her just a small fraction closer, not enough to be touching, but almost,
almost,
and her breasts yearned for more, instantly hardening till his skin grazed her.

‘What, Kate?’ His whisper was cool on her flaming cheek. ‘Do you want me to say that we share a bed and don’t touch? That we deny ourselves such an obvious pleasure?’ He was stroking her nipple now, caressing it as he had last night, only his movements were more skilful than intuitive, driven by a goal other than lust.

She flicked his hand off. ‘It’s not going to happen.’

‘As I was saying…’ He ignored her words and lifted her onto the bench as if she was as featherlight as Lavinia, and suddenly she was at eye level with him. ‘We get on, Kate, and I am a good lover. I know what to say…’ he was playing with the tie of her dressing gown ‘…and I know how to make you happy—but you have to know that it can’t last.’

‘Haven’t you heard a word I’ve said?’ she demanded.

He just smiled that slightly mocking smile, and then it widened as a thought struck him.

‘You’re on the pill.’

‘If you think—’

‘I’m as clean as a whistle, Kate—had it confirmed at the hospital. I knew anyway. I always wear protection.’

‘There’s been no one since the hospital?’

‘Actually, no!’ He sounded as surprised with that fact as Kate was. Then that devilish smile was one of the cat with the cream. ‘We can play at monogamy…’

‘It’s all just a game to you!’ She went to climb down but he held her waist.

‘What’s wrong with that?’ Aleksi challenged. ‘I play nicely…’

And then he wasn’t nice at all. A skilled negotiator, Aleksi knew
exactly
when to change his tune. He dropped his hands, released the pressure and showed her a different way. ‘Carry on with your life, Kate. Go and spend your weekend looking for a rental that takes pets. Oh, and in a couple of weeks you can look for work—because after all this trouble with Nina I won’t be there much longer.’ She could have stepped down but instead she sat. ‘And don’t forget to keep looking for schools for Georgie…’ He mocked her with a wicked smile then. ‘Only you’ve already found the one you want, haven’t you? The offer’s there, Kate. You can have everything you want for Georgie.’

‘You’re rushing me!’

‘How?’ Aleksi challenged. ‘I’m not demanding a response—think about it over the weekend, let me know next week. I’m not rushing you into anything…’

He did this.

Kate had watched him work and she knew he did this.

He was both good cop and bad cop rolled into one—his words were like a relentless slap on alternate cheeks
and then the confusion of a soothing palm. Only she had never been the recipient of his tactics before.

‘Carry on juggling and living in dreary homes, paying someone a mortgage or rent.’

Slap.

‘I’m offering a solution.’

Soothe.

‘Promise yourself that you’ll find Georgie a tutor in a couple of years to make up for the education she’s missing…’

Slap.

‘I can help you do better for Georgie.’

Soothe.

‘And sex isn’t part of the deal. I don’t need to pay you for that.’

Slap.

‘We can make love because we
want
to…’

He soothed her not with words but with his mouth, kissing her hard till she was too dizzy to think, muddling her, blurring all the edges. And then those hands were back, only lower, visiting a place they had never been, and had she had time to think she might have guessed that tenderness would be his next weapon, that his hands would gently beguile, but this was Aleksi and she’d just been soothed.

His fingers were precise, insistent, the pad of his thumb bringing her rapidly close to a place she had never shared with another, his mouth on her neck sucking her, almost bruising her, his other hand at his zipper and…

What did this man do to her?

Whatever it was—he just did.

She was putty in his warm, skilful hands.

She was strong and independent and a survivor—
yet in this, only in this, she was weak and needy and it was delicious.

‘Take it off.’ He wanted to see her, but his hands were too busy. He felt her momentarily freeze, but he wanted this. He had only had glimpses before, and he wanted the full view now. His mouth was nuzzling her breasts, his forehead butting and pushing the fabric of her dressing gown apart, and he did not care if she was embarrassed—did not give a thought to her hang-ups about her figure. All he could think of was her, and the lush spill of flesh as she shrugged off her robe, and he was lost.

Sex for Aleksi was an escape, but this was different. He could hear the little whimpers from her throat and feel the swell of her breasts in his mouth, feel this shy, guarded woman ripple into sensual life. And he wasn’t escaping—he was gone. Lost in a world that was absent from pain and the bleak abyss of confusion. He remembered her soft lips last night and he wanted her to have the same.