Ava cleared her throat and shifted nervously. The thought of Otto didn’t cause her pain anymore, but she didn’t know this man well enough to tell him just how badly she’d been deceived.
A sudden, crazy panic seized her. “No one.”
No one...sure! But he changed subjects, more interested in her present than in her past. “Are you an actress, or a model, perhaps?”
“I’m a doctor,” she blurted out.
Odd. She looked too young to be a doctor already and his instincts were usually keen about such matters, but nothing was functioning correctly at the moment. “Really?”
“Yes. Really.” She rolled her eyes at him and said mockingly, “Even though everyone knows we’re repressed old ladies with hypochondriac manias and too many cats.”
He laughed. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to sound so sexist. I’ve just never seen such a beautiful doctor. It took me by surprise.”
She took a last sip from her champagne and mumbled to herself, “How am I going to stay up all night now?”
“If you need to stay up all night,” he grinned when her eyes grew wide, “I’d be happy to stay up with you and listen if you want to talk.”
“Trust me, I’m not worth staying up for.” Ava shook her head.
He was sure she wanted to say more, but she turned her head and gazed at the door. Maybe she wanted him to retreat. Perhaps most men would, but he couldn’t force himself to budge. He wanted to know more.
“Oh, yes?” Aleksander leaned forward. Her cheeks were pink, her eyes bright. She wasn’t flirting with him, but there was something undeniably sexy about her—they way her lips were parted, the way her breasts moved when she gesticulated. He reached out, forked one of the croquettes on the plate in the center of the table and placed it to her mouth.
Such a small gesture, but it sent her pulse racing and made the hairs on the back of her neck tingle, as she nibbled the delicacy.
“You’re blushing,” he said, flirting outrageously but keeping his expression perfectly serious. “Why? Do I make you nervous?”
“A little, I suppose,” she confessed. Something about this man—and she knew it went way beyond the fact that he was stunningly, shockingly beautiful—went straight through her sexual reserve and struck at the very core of her. “Can I ask you something?”
“Anything you like.” Aleksander leaned back on the sofa, sipping his wine and watching her carefully over the rim of his glass.
“Are you flirting with me?”
Taken aback by the directness of the question, he was stumped for words. “Beg your pardon?”
“Are you flirting with me?”
He finally answered her question with one of his own. “What if I were?”
“I would ask you why.”
This was not a conversation Aleksander had ever conducted with a woman before, but then he had to concede that this woman was not quite like any woman he had ever encountered before. “Because you are a gorgeous woman.” And because…hell, because I have to.
She looked up at him, frowning. “You think I’m gorgeous?”
That’s an understatement. “You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.”
Ava laughed. It was an unexpectedly infectious sound, something between a guffaw and a giggle—unlike most women who thought that tittering was the ladylike thing to do. “Really? That’s another one of your lines?”
“You sound shocked.” He gave her a half smile that made her pulse race. “And I assure you, I do not have or use lines.”
“Hmm.”
Aleksander experienced a moment of slight disorientation. “You’ve got to know that’s what we were doing. Flirting, I mean. And I’d like to segue right into talking about what we’re doing after here, because if I can’t buy another bottle of champagne, we’re about done eating, and that’s pretty much a tragedy.”
“After here?” she repeated with a chuckle. “After here, I’m going home. I’m doing some catch-up on my studies and then I’m going to bed. There you go. My plan for the night. Not sure how exciting it is to hear about, but you asked.”
That’s a crying shame. “Ah,” he said, trying to contemplate his options, but then he shrugged and rose. “I’m taking you home, then.”
“I don’t go home with strangers.”
Stranger? Aleksander was amazed by the ease he felt in her company. Like a man in a trance, the words escaped his mouth before he could filter them, “Odd that you consider me a stranger since I feel as though I’ve known you for ages.”
She frowned. “Some men can be…sensitive.”
“Sure, sensitive. Men who cry watching sad movies and think that knitting shouldn’t be a sexist thing.” He finished off the last of his champagne, wiped his mouth, then dropped his napkin onto his plate. “Besides, how well do we ever know someone else?”
“That’s a silly excuse.”
“Silly? Oh, no. Noooo.” He put a hand over his chest.
“No what?”
“I can’t recall anybody ever telling me that something I’ve said is silly…and my memory bank is quite good.”
She laughed. “You’re making fun of me.”
“Perish the thought!” He discreetly signaled his brother to take care of the check, receiving a double thumbs up and a delighted grin in return. Then he sat back, relaxed, and waited to hear where she would go from here.
“I guess I deserve it, since I’ve insulted you twice already, calling you sensitive and silly,” she said, and starting laughing.
Even with all the loud music around them, the sound was clear and infectious. “When is the last time a stranger made you laugh? Answer quickly!”
Ava opened her mouth to speak, but had no response. “I don’t know. I can’t recall such a thing.”
“That settles it then. I can’t possibly be a stranger. I’m driving you home.”
Still smiling, she said, “Okay. You win.”
He shepherded her across the bar with a hand resting lightly on the small of her back.
“Got a ticket?” Aleksander asked when they reached the foyer.
He gestured at the cloakroom and looked at her.
“I do.” But Ava didn’t move. So what if I’m going to walk out of the bar with a man I’ve never seen before?
She had done exactly what her grandmother had been exhorting her to do: talking, drinking, and flirting, and as an added bonus, she’d have a fantasy or two to help her through the lonely nights.
Even when she’d been with Otto, she’d needed the fantasies.
Maybe because Otto had never looked at me like Aleksander does. And he’d sure never affected me like this. She shook her head. Otto has always and foremost loved himself first.
The sad truth was, it hadn’t been any better with Otto than it was by herself, so what was the point of finding someone new, somebody she could have in the flesh?
Besides, she had her future to think of, and no man would take that from her.
“So…coat?” He held up his ticket.
But a fantasy is something else and the mere feel of this man’s hand over my back is doing more than the real, solid, and naked Otto ever had. It’ll be just a ride to enhance a fantasy. She tried to tell herself that was the reason she was doing it, and she knew she was lying. She took her ticket from her bag and handed it to him. “Yes, please.”
Chapter 3
Ava felt Aleksander’s fingertips brush her nape as he helped her into her coat and lifted her braid from beneath the collar. She hoped he didn’t notice that she trembled ever so slightly at his touch.
His car, a sleek black Ferrari—Ava decided then and there that he didn’t have kids—was already parked at the curb with a doorman holding the door open for him.
Aleksander opened the passenger door, and after Ava was settled, walked around to get behind the wheel.
Soon they were streaking toward her apartment in East Village and in the small space, Ava’s sweet scent again clouded his senses. It had
a sexy, almost narcotic quality, and at the same time, it was safe.
The song on the radio spoke of love betrayed, but Ava heard only poetry. It wasn’t until he switched on the windshield wipers that she realized it was raining.
“Have you lived in New York long?” he asked, hating to break the comfortable silence but curious about the beautiful woman beside him.
“For three years now,” she answered. “What about you?”
“Manhattan’s home,” he replied.
“Have you ever wanted to live anywhere else?”
He smiled. “I have, in fact. I was born in Norway. My father was working there.”
“Really? Where in Norway?”
“Oslo. And my older brother, Thaddeus, is from Trondheim.”
“What a coincidence. I’m from Trondheim,” she said, surprised. “Some days I wake up and ask myself what am I doing in New York. Is it ever like that for you?”
Ava had expected a quick, light denial. Instead she received a sober glance and a low, almost whispered response.
“Sometimes, yes. Things might have been very different if I’d never come to New York.”
For some reason Ava’s gaze was drawn to the pale line across Aleksander’s left-hand ring finger. Although the windows were closed and the heater was going, she suppressed a shiver.
She didn’t say anything until her building came into sight. Since the holidays were approaching, the place was even more of a spectacle than usual. “It looks like a tangle of Christmas tree lights.”
Aleksander surprised her with one of his fleeting grins. “You have a colorful way of putting things, Ava.”
She smiled.
He pulled up to the curb in the front of her apartment building, and turning to her, he asked lazily, “Would you believe me if I told you that I’ve never met anyone like you before?”
“Would you say that that’s a compliment?”
“Isn’t it always a compliment to be told that you’re unique?” he asked.
For a few seconds Ava thought that he hadn’t exactly answered her question, at least not in a very satisfactory way. But her thoughts scattered as he looked at her, his grayish-green eyes intense.
His gaze transfixed her and brought all coherent thought skidding to an abrupt stop. She watched as his hands rose and captured her braid on her back and all she could do was keep on breathing.
Is he going to kiss me? For one crazy moment, she wished he would. For reasons quite beyond her, he had awakened something in her, a sexual side that had been in hiding, waiting for the right moment. Even though he might not be the right man, he still did things to her, made her feel alive, sent all her senses on red-hot alert. And she couldn’t help but think that she did things to him, too.
Leisurely, he began to loosen her hair, working his fingers through it until it pooled over her shoulders and cascaded down over her back.
“I’ve wanted to do that since I saw you. It’s hair to get lost in.” His voice was soft as he took a generous handful in his fist, staking claim.
His voice was low but clear, capturing the senses, running along the back of her neck like a caress, making her shiver in delight.
“You’re trembling.” He could feel the light tremor of her body as he brought her closer. And when he circled her throat with his hand and pressed his fingers against her pulse, it was fluttering wildly.
“Is it fear?” he asked, as his thumb brushed over her lips. “Or excitement?”
“Both,” she answered in a husky whisper.
With his eyes glued to hers, he let his hand glide slowly down and she made a tiny, confused sound as his palm covered her heart. Its desperate thudding increased.
“Are you…” She stopped a moment because her voice was breathless and unsteady. “Are you going to kiss me?” Did I just ask that?
He didn’t know whether it was the hesitancy of the question or the implication behind it, but the result was explosive. “Beautiful Ava,” he murmured, as his mouth lowered to hers. “No pretensions, no evasions…irresistible.”
One minute he was coolly playing with the notion that this woman, unexpectedly, might very well be more than just another beauty and the next minute his body was reacting to the simple contact of her lips with his as if she were the first woman to have laid hands on him. In that moment everything seemed heightened: every sense, every noise, the faintest flutter of her heartbeat under his hand.
He didn’t stop to question his reaction. He caught her bottom lip between his teeth, nibbling delicately, in a slow, sensually sweet seduction. Then he whispered against her lips, “Open.”
Following her heart, she obeyed his command.
Instantly. Irresistibly. Irrevocably.
She didn’t expect him to be gentle and he wasn’t.
When her lips parted under his, Aleksander crushed her mouth beneath his in fiery urgency. He dived into it, into her, with a speed and force that left her reeling, then fretting for more. His mouth was hungry, and her response leaped past all caution, not in surrender but in equal demand.
That hidden pocket of yearning that she’d sewn up tight years ago—his kiss ripped it open at the seams. A flood of emotion poured forth, overwhelming her. A surge of passion and desire and…and something else. Something she didn’t want to acknowledge, much less name. She’d pore over it later. Much later, one day. But as long as his lips touched hers, she could delay that dreaded reckoning.
Her hand had gone to his chest in an automatic defensive movement. Yet she wasn’t fighting him. She met his hard, almost brutal kiss with passion laced with a trust she didn’t know where it came from.
Her sigh was spontaneous, filled with wonder and delight. He softened the kiss; kept her shimmering on the razor’s edge of passion. His mouth teased, promised, then fed her growing need.
Aleksander felt like he was spinning in a gentle eddy, floating softly around the edges of passion as it pulled them in tighter, closer to the center.
He took the kiss deeper. Slower. Their tongues danced, sliding hot and slick against each other. In and out, twirling and licking.
Ava no longer trembled but became pliant; she leaned closer, her body responding to the rhythm he set, her hands burying in his hair and tugging.
Heaven. He’d never believed in heaven, but the flavor was on her lips, pure and sweet and promising.
His mind emptied. It was a terrifying experience for a man who kept his thoughts under such stringent control.
Then it filled with her: her scent, her touch, her taste. His hand cupped her breast, more insistent, his thumb caressing her peaked nipple.
Emotions funneled from one to the other, then merged in a torrent of need.
Just the anticipation of his hand on her breast was making her shudder. Her legs became rubbery, and a tingle sprinted up her spine. Her body ached.
She wanted to be touched, she wanted him to come up to her apartment and make love to her.
So this is what drives people to do mad, desperate acts. This wild, painful pleasure, once tasted, will never be forgotten, will always be craved. Her heart raced to her throat. She didn’t want to be acting wild and mad anymore. Stop, Ava.
Slowly, reluctantly, she forced herself to pull away from the most delicious kiss of her life. Her lashes fluttered as she made herself meet his gaze.
“Thanks,” she said after a moment. “For the ride, I mean.”
But Aleksander’s grip remained firm, keeping her in place. “I need to see you again.”
For a moment, she felt emotions pour out of him, almost frightening in their speed and power. Emotions like that could hurt not only the one who felt them but also the one who received them.
They left her dazed and aching—and wishing. She was thrilled at the thought of him wanting to see her again but she couldn’t mistake desire for something else.
Where can this possibly lead? She gathered up her purse and keys. “I must go.”
As she turned to leave, he blurted out
, “Wait!”
She stopped but didn’t turn back around.
Aleksander struggled to think. It’d been so long since he’d been on a real date and actually wanted to do it again. Finally, his brain and mouth made a connection. “I don’t have your number.”
She delved in her purse, took her personal card out, and turned around, facing him.
“If you must,” she said, handing it to him, then quickly opened the door and rushed off.
Aleksander watched Ava leave. He couldn’t resist watching her for a few seconds more. His eyes had been riveted to her since they landed on her in the bar. When was the last time a woman had turned me into a walking hormone? Never.
She shone with light and energy, but was contained, controlled. She reminded him of a Viking warrior, a Valkyrie.
There was a quiet grace to her, like a lioness pacing in its cage. There was majesty in the firm chin, a regal quality in her squared-shouldered proud bearing. The somber beauty of a caged beast just wanting to be set free.
And he wanted to be the one who did the freeing.
He couldn’t remember the last time he’d held a beautiful woman in his arms and wanted to take her home. Oh, yes, he had had women after Rachel but it had been only for sex.
That led him to think of Rachel.
He clung to the memory of her smile, her laughter, her perfume. She’d been tiny and spirited, with dark hair and eyes, and it seemed to Aleksander that she’d never been far from his side, even after her death.
He’d loved her to an excruciating degree, but for the last three months he’d been steadily making peace with her death and the pain had begun to recede from his heart.
And from Rachel, his thoughts turned to Olivia. From Olivia to cancer, and reality, and present time.
Until this moment, I’ve been preoccupied, completely and utterly focused on Olivia. He shook his head and started the car again. This thing with Ava…it was just a typical male reaction to a beautiful woman.
Maybe it was just several things combined: unconscious memory, artifacts from past emotional highlights in life, reactivated by something about Ava.
And his mind, not understanding, was overwhelmed and sought a mystical explanation, when it was all really nothing.