Purchased For Revenge

She was blonde. Incredibly blonde. Pale hair and pale skin. With the fine-boned looks that only the English possessed.

And she was stunning with it. Perfect wide-set grey eyes, a slender nose, and a mouth that was slightly, very slightly parted.

Her body was tall, graceful, and perfectly proportioned. Long legs, rounded hips, hand-span waist and two perfect orbs for breasts. All covered by a silver-grey evening dress that was as subtly understated as her extraordinary beauty was not.

He felt the tightening again.

Hell, this was not the moment for this to happen—

He didn’t need this. Not now. Not here. Not when all his energies had to be focussed on the one thing he was so close, so close, to achieving. The thing that had driven him, possessed him, all his adult life.

I haven’t got time for this…

The hard, pitiless knowledge slammed through him.

He had to stop this. Now.

It was too late. His eyes had locked on to hers.

It lasted only a few seconds, but it was enough. Enough to send a shockwave through him that he could feel resonating in every cell in his body.

Desire bit through him.

And something else. Something he was not used to feeling. Something he could not identify.

For a handful of seconds his eyes held hers, as the distance between them shortened. She stood absolutely immobile, doing nothing, nothing at all, except locking her eyes to his. As if that was all that was keeping her upright.

He felt his stride slowing, preparing to stop, to pause. To veer towards her…

No! He hadn’t got time for this—this was the wrong time, the wrong place.

But the right woman?

The voice whispered in his head. He silenced it. Ruthlessly he slammed it down with all the rigid self-control he steered his life by. He swept his lashes down over his eyes to shut her from his sight.

As the lashes swept upwards again he realised that she had gone.

Eve bolted. Slipping sideways, she twisted away and hurried as fast as her high heels would let her towards the plate glass doors that led out towards the pool deck overlooking the sea. Her heart was beating like a wild thing, and her cheeks were suddenly burning.

Oh, dear heaven—

Her mind was in chaos. She felt as if a jolt of electricity had just been blasted through her body without warning.

Those eyes, looking straight into hers…

Heat fanned through her again. She took a tumbling breath and kept walking as rapidly as she could, not paying the slightest attention to where she was going.

Nothing like this had ever happened to her before! Where on earth had it come from? What was it about that man that had overset her like this? She sucked air into her stomach and tried to steady her breathing, deliberately slowing her hectic pace.

As she did, determinedly calming her breath, even if there was nothing she could do for her racing heart-rate, she tried to get a grip of herself.

You just saw a fantastic-looking male. That was all. You’ve seen a lot of them in your time. They’re not exactly uncommon in the world.

Even as she reasoned with herself, she knew what she said was not true. There might be fantastic-looking males in the world, and she might have seen a lot of them—but none had ever made her react like that to them. None had made her just want to stare, and stare, and stare at them, while her heart-rate went crazy inside her and her breathing stopped.

His image leapt into her mind’s eye. She could recall it perfectly, and even just recalling it sent a frisson through her.

Something about him…

Again she felt that frisson go through her, as she remembered the endless moment when his eyes had locked to hers, jolting electricity through her with a voltage she’d never experienced before.

His eyes had done something to her that she couldn’t explain. It wasn’t lust. God knew she’d been on the receiving end of looks like that ever since she was a teenager. This was something much, much more powerful. Much more disturbing.

Much more devastating.

Her heart-rate started to clatter again, and she felt her pace increase. This time she let it. She’d realised where she was now. On a paved terrace that led along the rocky edge of the sea between the hotel’s gardens and the Mediterranean. The path led through pine trees, which blessedly shielded the lights from the hotel, and ended, she knew from previous visits to the hotel—one of her father’s favourites, thanks both to the casino and the marina where he had his yacht moored—at a miniature promontory overlooking the sea, set with stone seats from which to look at the view in daytime.

She gained it within a few more minutes, but did not sit down. The stone would be too cold with nothing to protect her but her thin evening dress. Instead she leant against the balustrade, trying to steady her breath, her pulse, and gazed out over the night-darkened Mediterranean, at the tiny waves breaking on the rocks below the terrace. Above her, stars were pricking out, and behind her the moon was starting to rise. An almost imperceptible breeze came off the sea, tugging her hair into tendrils around her face, freeing them from the confines of the low chignon at the nape of her neck. The mild night air netted her, the scent of the sea and the pines quieted her. Slowly she felt the heat seep from her cheeks, her heart-rate slow.

And into its place came a yearning that was almost a sadness.

What did it matter that she’d just set eyes on a man who had had such an extraordinary effect on her? It was pointless thinking about him. Quite pointless. She was unlikely to see him again, as he had clearly been heading out of the casino, and very probably the hotel, but even if he weren’t, so what? Nothing whatsoever could possibly come of her reacting to him like that.

Nothing.

All he could ever be was a fantasy. No one real. No one who could possibly have anything to do with her. Just a vague dream of what might have been in a different life.

That was all. Nothing more than that.

She went on looking out over the dark sea, her eyes as shadowed as the night.

She should not have run. That had been a mistake.

Alexei watched for a fraction of a second as she hurried across the hotel lobby to the rear doors facing the sea.

If she’d simply gone on standing there as he’d walked past her he’d have let her be. There was every reason to let her be. None at all for what he was now doing—striding after her with long, lean steps. Deliberately he did not catch up with her. Deliberately he let her reach the outdoors and plunge off to the left of the hotel. He didn’t know where she was going, but he would find out.

The area she was heading into was far less brightly lit than the deck immediately behind the hotel. Only the occasional low-level light marked the pathway she was hurrying along. He watched her for a moment, watched as her speed gradually slowed and she gained a stand of pine trees, then was lost to view in the dim light.

Alexei’s eyes glinted.

At a relaxed, leisurely pace, he set off after her.

He knew he shouldn’t. He knew it was the wrong time and the wrong place.

But she was definitely the right woman.

The most right woman he’d ever seen.