The Darkest Temptation: Part 1 – Chapter 7

la vie en rose

(n.) life through rose-colored glasses

My dress was yellow and flowy with an umber crocheted bodice. It was modest except for the inch it showed of my midsection and the slit up the thigh. The heels I wore were clear and sparkly, lacing halfway up my calves to show off my best feature. I was the queen of ponytails, but I chose to leave the straightened locks down, and as usual, I applied a light amount of makeup.

I was ready an hour early and spent the rest of the time chewing my glossed lip and pacing back and forth. Nerves swam in my stomach, making me lightheaded. I should have eaten something earlier, but I had an unhealthy habit of forgetting until food was placed in front of me.

I didn’t believe Ronan thought of this as a date, but I couldn’t stop the whisper of anticipation that tightened my lungs. A very stupid, romantic part of me had hearts in her eyes. Never mind the fact I was soon to accept an archaic proposal from a man who was probably screwing some Texan oil heiress right now.

Ronan knocked on the door at eight on the dot.

He consumed the entire doorway. Dark eyes, broad shoulders, and smooth black lines. He filled out a suit better than any man I ever saw, though his presence seemed to overwhelm the seams as if they could barely contain him.

We only stared at each other for a second longer than comfortable, and when my breath began to slow beneath his penetrating silence, I forced a word past my lips.

“Privet.” Hello.

He raised a brow. “So you do know some Russian?”

A flush crept up my neck. “A little.”

I stepped out, closing the door behind me. He didn’t move back like I expected him to, and it left only a couple of inches between us. We were so close I couldn’t breathe. So close, yellow and black almost touched. So close, I could kiss him with a small rise to my toes. In four-inch heels, I stood eye level with his mouth, which put him at a solid six foot five.

“You’re kind of tall for a girl,” he mused, looking down on me.

I released a shallow breath. “Thanks.”

When he laughed softly, I sighed in my mind. My crush couldn’t be any clearer if I waved an “I LOVE YOU!” sign like a fangirl at a boy band concert.

As we walked down the hall, I told him, “You didn’t have to pay for my room.”

“I wanted to.” He said it as if when he wanted to do something, he did it, and I shouldn’t even be questioning him. It was a little intimidating, so I didn’t press the matter further.

“Well, thank you . . . for everything.”

He turned his head toward me, and the look in his eyes was thoughtful but also tinged with something so profound my heartbeat tripped over itself. He didn’t say anything until we stepped outside and I shivered as the cold rushed through my sheer cardigan.

“Where is your coat?”

I should have bought one while I was out today, but Ivan’s phone call and the impending maybe-date had pushed the need to the back of my mind.

“I lost it . . . last night.”

His eyes flickered with recollection and then darkness. He slipped off his wool suit jacket and put it on my shoulders. It was heavy, and it smelled so good my blood warmed, descending to a spot between my legs. He wore a dress shirt and vest underneath it, but still, it was a bitter cold that singed my lungs with each breath.

“What about you?” I asked.

A hint of amusement touched his voice. “As you said, kotyonok, I am very Russian.”

How silly of me to think this man could ever get cold. He was a dark force of nature, heated by testosterone and muscle. He was probably hot all the time.

Albert leaned against a car at the curb smoking a cigarette. Ronan opened the back door and held out his hand to me while saying something in Russian, his attention on Albert. When I only stared at the hand he offered, his gaze came my way. My shallow breath misted in front of my face as I slid my hand into his. Ivory and tan skin. French-tipped nails and tattoos. Soft and rough. The difference flared in slow motion. Dark eyes, slightly narrowed, dropped to our hands before he helped me to step off the curb and into the car.

Silence and his presence crowded the back seat. Ronan’s arm brushed mine, the small contact taking hold of my entire body. An electric current fizzed like that green can of soda in the space between us.

He kept his gaze out the window, but I couldn’t stop drinking him in. How his shirt and vest fit his body like a second skin. The way the black fabric molded his thick arms and chest. Every inch of him seemed hard and formidable. A curious heat inside of me craved to run my hand down this stranger’s stomach and find out if it was as tight as it looked. I’d never felt an attraction like this, and my inexperience threatened to bubble over like a pot of boiling water.

During the ride, he never looked my way once. I wondered if he felt anything I did, or if he only saw me as a nineteen-year-old responsibility.

We pulled up to the curb of a quiet building with gold doors and dim lighting. It didn’t look like our destination, but I held in my questions while Ronan opened the door for me. It was a department store, with marble floors and a sparkly chandelier, and it sat empty except for one wide-eyed saleswoman who stood behind a glass counter.

“I think they’re closed,” I said quietly.

A corner of his lips tipped up. “Pick out a coat, kotyonok.”

I stared at him for a moment, my breath slowing in surprise. Get this fangirl some markers.

Heels clicking on the marble, I walked toward a clothing rack and ran my hand down a mink coat so soft it challenged my principles. Anything here would cost an absolute fortune. I wouldn’t be surprised to find three zeroes on the price tag.

With my back to him, I said, “I hope attacked tourists don’t end up at your door often, because this is turning into a very expensive venture.”

His only response was a smile I felt on my spine.

I turned to tell him I couldn’t accept this, but when my gaze met his, my breath twisted in a knot, the space between my heartbeats zapping like a hot wire. Ronan’s hands rested in his pockets, his watch glinting in the low light. His eyes burned deep, dark, intimidating, but I knew up close, they were an entrancing blue.

I swallowed. “I can’t let you buy me a coat. It’s too much.”

His gaze flickered with displeasure. “Nobody tells me what I can or cannot do.”

I believed him with every cell in me.

What did he do, exactly?

I bit my lip and admitted, “I don’t do fur.”

He raised a brow and drawled, “Don’t tell me you’re a vegetarian too.”

“Ah . . .” I gave him an apologetic smile. “Vegan.”

He regarded me heavily, as if I was an odd breed of woman. His gaze set me on edge, so I distracted myself by perusing the clothing racks. Nothing had a price tag, to my dismay. Or relief.

I ran my hand down a white faux fur coat that had to be the cheapest of the lot and said, “This one.”

His eyes narrowed—apparently, he was on to me—but he didn’t voice his disapproval.

On the way back to the car, a flurry landed on my lashes. I stopped on the sidewalk and lifted my eyes to the sky to watch snow fall for the first time. It was like someone above had torn their wedding dress apart and let the pieces of tulle float to the pavement. I caught a flake in my palm, studying how it melted on my skin within seconds.

Looking up, I noticed Ronan watching me, and warmth rushed to my cheeks at his heavy attention. Quelling the unladylike impulse to catch a snowflake on my tongue, I continued walking to the car.

We arrived at the Moskovskiy ten minutes later. Elegantly dressed couples milled in through the front doors, hand in hand. My palms and neck itched when some slowed to look at us, the eyes on my skin bringing Ivan’s earlier warning back. Goose bumps ran down my arms beneath my thick coat. Ronan didn’t even put his jacket back on.

His Russian blood, I supposed.

We stepped inside, and I took in the high painted ceiling and gold crown molding. It was beautiful, and I wondered if my mother stood in this exact spot.

“You’ve never been to the opera?” Ronan asked.

I shook my head. “Never.”

Eyes on the glittering chandelier, I followed him through the theater, up marble steps, and down a corridor, where a red-vested attendant silently opened the door to a private box giving a perfect view of the stage. Doors simply glided open for this man, while other guests seemed to require the use of their own commoner hands for access within.

“Are you a politician?” My curiosity slipped free as I stepped into the warm box, but on second thought, I wasn’t sure what kind of politician hung out in a dingy restaurant on the wrong side of town while wearing an Audemars Piguet on his wrist.

He smiled. “No.”

It was the only answer I got before we took our seats and watched people file in and take theirs below. In the comfortable yet electric silence, my attention caught on his fingers tapping the armrest, the black raven so close to my own unblemished hand. I had a feeling he understood what I said to him last night, and it was only confirmed when he spoke a single word now.

“Nevermore.”

Ronan pulled his gaze to me and winked.

He had tattoos on his fingers and he just quoted a famous poet. It made me feel ridiculously hot all over. So hot I pulled the blanket of hair off the back of my neck, but the flush only spread further when his stare lit a line of fire down the exposed skin, sliding over my collarbone to settle on the star pendant between my breasts.

A theater attendant stepped into the box, diffusing the thick tension in the air like smoke. He asked for our drinks order, which seemed to be a service only we were experiencing.

“Kors. Chilled,” Ronan replied for both of us.

“I’ll just have water, please,” I countered.

The attendant didn’t pause as he rushed off to do Ronan’s bidding. Alone again, Ronan cast me a dry look.

“You are in Russia, kotyonok.”

And that was the end of that.

I accepted a tumbler of clear liquid knowing it wasn’t water. At home, I only drank the occasional glass of champagne besides a single drunken incident with a bottle of UV Blue and 7UP.

It took one night on a yacht that bobbed in the water and a smug dare to know alcohol and Mila Mikhailova didn’t mix. I’d stripped out of the modest swimsuit Papa had approved of before the party and then dove off the bow of the boat into open water, masculine cheers swallowed by the waves of the Atlantic. Ivan ended up carrying me home, grumbling about how heavy I was the whole way, and once there, the severe, quiet reprimand I received from my papa killed my buzz on impact.

I swirled the liquid with a frown, my father’s rebuke somehow still haunting me, even though, in his eyes, hopping on a plane to Moscow was much worse than skinny-dipping.

“You’re the first woman I’ve seen frown at a ten-thousand-dollar glass of vodka.”

My lips parted in shock, and I glanced at Ronan to see a lazy light in his eyes. He’d apparently learned I’d be horrified to know—let alone drink—something he bought me that cost so much. This was his payback for my picking out a cheap coat.

I stared at him in realization.

He stared back.

“Do you always get what you want?” I asked boldly.

His response was a clink of his tumbler against mine. “Na zdorovie.” Cheers.

I wasn’t going to win this one, but I didn’t want to torture myself by nursing the glass of pure liquor either. I tossed it back in one go.

Keeping his eyes on the stage, Ronan chuckled softly while I coughed and choked at the burn in my throat.

With the liquor settling like fire in my stomach, something magical electrified the air and swept over the hush of the crowd as the curtains opened and the performance began.

The opera was called The Queen of Spades. Since it was in Russian and my brain-to-mouth filter was impaired by two fingers of million-proof liquor, I asked a lot of questions. Ronan didn’t seem to mind, often translating what happened after a sip of vodka he savored on his tongue in such an impassive way it made it look like water.

“I’ll be disappointed if they don’t all die,” I announced to the mess onstage.

A corner of his mouth quirked. “I thought you would be the kind of girl to hope for a happily ever after.”

My happily ever after came on the lips of a mad fortune-teller, and sadly, I gave up on fairy tales and superstition long ago. Eyes settling on the stage, I pulled my star pendant back and forth, the heated lull of vodka in my belly softening my words. “I believe in happily-for-nows. They’re . . . real. Unique.” Dropping my necklace, I glanced at him, warmth and lightness pervading every cell in me. “I like unique.”

I sat in a red velvet chair in the heart of Moscow, holding this man’s stare through the vibrations of an opera singer’s soprano, buzzed on vodka and fascination, and it was the best happily-for-now I’d ever experienced.

The longer we stared at each other, the faster the intoxication spread through my bloodstream. Eyes half-lidded on his, I rested my head on the back of my chair.

“I’m thirsty.”

“You’re drunk.” It was practically an accusation.

Laughing softly, I said, “You made me drink it.”

“I didn’t know you would down it like a fraternity pledge.”

I smiled at the visual coming from his lips. “You can’t have everything your way.”

The expression he cast me said he absolutely could, and the dry, authoritative spark only stole the remaining wetness from my mouth.

“So thirsty,” I echoed with a soft, languid lilt.

He stared at me for a moment, thoughtfully and with something darker than a cloudy night, then he handed me his glass, which was already refilled. I thought he might snap his fingers and a Perrier would appear on a silver tray, but I wasn’t going to complain about sharing with him. I took a sip of vodka that didn’t burn as hot as his eyes. After returning it to him, I pulled my attention back to the stage to silently watch and listen to Liza’s hypnotic voice.

I was either drunker than I thought, or Liza kept glancing my way between her lines. She was gorgeous, with long black hair and exotic looks. It took a moment to realize she wasn’t looking at me but at Ronan.