Ruthless Russian, Lost Innocence - Shaw Chantelle - Страница 13

‘Close your eyes and open your mouth,’ he ordered, his deep, accented voice as sensuous as crushed velvet. His brilliant blue eyes burned into hers, and the atmosphere between them was suddenly charged with electricity as the restaurant, the other diners and the hubbub of voices all faded and there was only Vadim.

Utterly transfixed, Ella obediently lowered her lashes and felt the cold edge of the spoon against her lips, followed by the curious texture of smooth, round berries on her tongue. The taste was indescribable: slightly fishy, slightly salty and overwhelmingly rich, she noted, as her taste buds were seduced by the intensity of flavour. Her eyes flew open and locked with Vadim’s piercing gaze. He was watching her reaction intently, and the whole experience was so incredibly sensual that Ella could not restrain the little shiver that ran down her spine.

‘What is your verdict?’

She swallowed the last morsel of caviar and touched her tongue to her lips to catch the lingering taste, the unconscious action causing heat to burn in Vadim’s groin. ‘Heavenly,’ she murmured huskily.

He inhaled sharply and forced himself to sit back in his seat, shattering the sexual tension that had held them both in its grip. ‘Then eat,’ he invited. ‘Top a blini with sour cream, add a little of the caviar, and enjoy.’

As Ella followed his instructions she was shocked to find that her hands were shaking. For a moment there she had been completely bewitched by Vadim, and in all honesty she knew she would have been powerless to stop him if he had walked around the table, pulled her into his arms and made love to her right there in the middle of the crowded restaurant. Panic surged up inside her and she suddenly longed for the evening to be over. Vadim was too much. He overwhelmed her and made her feel things she had never felt before. Her body felt taut, each of her nerve-endings acutely sensitive, and when she glanced down she was horrified to see that her nipples were jutting provocatively against her red silk dress.

She shot him a furtive glance, and swallowed when she discovered that he was watching her, his eyes gleaming beneath his hooded lids before he deliberately dropped his gaze to her breasts. ‘Do you go back to Russia often?’ she asked him, in a desperate attempt to break the sensual spell he had woven around her.

‘I own a house on the outskirts of Moscow, but I only go back once or twice a year now that most of my business interests are in Europe.’

‘What about your family? Do they still live in Russia?’

For a second something flared in Vadim’s eyes-a look of such raw pain that Ella almost gasped out loud. But then his lashes swept down and hid his expression, and when he met her gaze across the table his face was a handsome, unreadable mask. ‘I have no family,’ he said bluntly. ‘Both my father and my grandmother, who helped to bring me up, died many years ago.’

Still shaken by the look she had glimpsed in his eyes, Ella took a sip of her wine, feeling instinctively that the loss of his father and grandmother had not been responsible for the savage emotion that had flared in his brilliant blue depths.

‘What about your mother?’

He shrugged. ‘She left when I was seven or eight. My father was a dour man, who spent most of his time at work or busy with his duties as a communist party official. As far as I know, my mother was much younger than him. I vaguely remember her smiling occasionally, which my father and grandmother never did, and I assume she wanted a better life than the one she had.’

‘But she left you behind,’ Ella murmured. She stared at Vadim’s hard-boned face and felt something tug on her heart as she pictured him as a lonely little boy who had been abandoned by his mother. ‘Was your grandmother kind?’ What a ridiculous question, she berated herself impatiently, but for some reason his answer mattered. ‘I mean…did she take good care of you?’

He gave a sardonic smile. ‘My grandmother came from a remote village in Siberia, where winter temperatures regularly drop to minus thirty degrees centigrade, and she was as tough as the climate she grew up in. She was in her seventies when I was born, and I doubt she welcomed having to take on the role of parent in her old age. She certainly never seemed to find any pleasure in my presence, and despite her elderly years she had a heavy hand with the belt-until I learned to run fast enough to escape her, when she passed the duty of beating me over to my father,’ he said, in a voice devoid of any emotion.

‘That’s horrible,’ Ella said, paling. ‘It sounds like you had a tough childhood.’

Vadim thought briefly of the relentless greyness of his early years, and gave another shrug. ‘I survived. And compared with the two years I spent in the army my boyhood was a picnic.’

He said no more, but his silence was somehow more evocative than words. Ella recalled a newspaper article she had once read about the institutional violence and bullying that was regularly meted out to young recruits in the Russian army, and she guessed that Vadim had learned to be physically and mentally tough to cope. She tore her gaze from him and forced herself to eat her dinner. The Dover sole was delicious, but her appetite had disappeared. She could not forget the flash of pain in his eyes when she had first asked about his family, and she couldn’t help feeling that there were secrets in his past he had not revealed.

‘Have you ever tried to trace your mother? I mean, she might still be alive.’

Vadim ate the last of his fish and took a long sip of his wine. ‘Very possibly, but I have no interest in her. Why would I?’ he demanded coolly. ‘She walked away when I needed her most, and I learned from the experience never to put my faith in another human being.’

He had clearly been more affected by his mother leaving than he admitted, perhaps even to himself, Ella brooded. She knew from experience that the emotional scars from an unhappy childhood still hurt long into adulthood, and now she had a better understanding of why he had earned a reputation as a womaniser who refused to commit to any of his lovers.

She and Vadim shared a common bond in that they had both been affected by their upbringing, she realised. Having witnessed the misery her mother had endured at the hands of her father, she was not looking for commitment, and certainly not for marriage. She valued her independence as much as Vadim did-but could she have a no-strings affair with him, as he had suggested, and emerge with her heart unscathed? Her instincts warned her that she would be playing with fire, but the feral gleam in his eyes stirred a feeling of wild recklessness within her and a longing to experience the hungry passion he promised.

She darted a glance across the table and discovered that he was watching her with a brooding intensity she found unnerving. In an effort to lighten the curiously tense atmosphere that had fallen between them she gave him a tentative smile.

Why did Ella’s smile remind him of Irina? Vadim asked himself savagely. With her pale blonde hair and English rose colouring she bore no resemblance to his wife, who had been olive-skinned, like him, and had had thick, dark brown hair. But the two women shared the same smile. He closed his eyes briefly, as if he could somehow blot out the pain that surged through him. Irina’s face swam before him, and her gentle, hopeful smile tore at his heart. She had been a quiet, shy young woman, as gentle as a doe with her soft brown eyes. She hadn’t asked for much from life, he acknowledged grimly-just that he should love her. And he had, Vadim assured himself. He had loved Irina-but to his lasting regret he had not appreciated how much she had meant to him until he had held her limp, cold body in his arms.

Ella’s smile faded when Vadim’s hard expression did not lighten, and her stomach lurched with a mixture of embarrassment and disappointment when he continued to stare at her meditatively. She had the impression that although he was looking at her he did not see her, and she wondered where his thoughts had taken him.