It was a sweet feeling, almost euphoric, rushing through his mind. Sublime in the sense that everything he’d ever wanted was nearly his, yet could easily be taken away at any moment. And it was while he was lost in that delicious imagining that Roman first laid eyes on his prey.
He stopped short. His breath stolen from his lungs.
For there she was, walking through the forest at this ungodly hour of the morning as if she’d just stepped out of the pages of his mother’s favourite fairy tale. His eyes snagged on the black ball gown visible through the opening of a scarlet velvet cloak. The hood had fallen back to reveal the creamy swanlike curve of her neck, framed by tendrils of blonde hair that had escaped a complicated plaited knot. She was exquisitely beautiful. He’d known that, of course, from the photographs and extensive research he’d had his people compile. But nothing had prepared him for the effect of seeing her in person.
His swift gaze crossed her features back and forth, hunting for a blemish or flaw, but none were detectable beneath the overall impression of perfection. His pulse thrummed as he took in high cheekbones that perfectly framed an oval-shaped face, high arched brows that gave as much space as possible to large cornflower-blue eyes. Desire wound through him, as unwelcome as it was fierce, and he cursed this unexpected weakness within himself. The delicate arms holding the cloak against her waist looked almost vulnerable and for a moment he debated whether to stop, to turn back. But he knew he wouldn’t.
She looked impossibly innocent—no sign of the hard edges that he had been forced to develop by her age of twenty-two years. How that had been achieved under the guidance of such a monster as Vladimir Kolikov he simply couldn’t fathom, and as such cast it aside as an impossibility. Her beauty, her apparent innocence, was simply fancy dressing around one thing and one thing only.
The key to his revenge.
Exhaustion had settled deep into her bones and Ella barely knew where her feet were stepping. But years of summers spent walking the forest that bordered her grandmother’s cottage had left the path indelibly inked on her mind and body. Her grandmother. Ella’s heart ached, worry and grief twisting in her chest like a living thing. She had been at a party in Moscow when she’d received the phone call informing her that her grandmother had been found unconscious at the bottom of the stairs in her cottage and taken to hospital. Ella’s mind had gone instantly blank and if it hadn’t been for her guardian she didn’t know what she would have done. He’d arranged for a car to retrieve her from the birthday party of the British Ambassador to Russia, a private jet to fly her to an airfield just outside of Limoux, and another car to take her to the hospital.
If any of the hospital staff had thought it odd that she had arrived dressed in a ball gown and velvet cloak, none had said as such. The doctor had explained that her grandmother had suffered a broken hip and fractured shoulder from the fall but the knock to her head had been what had worried him the most. Strange medical terminology, stretching her usually quite good hold on the French language, had made her want to shake the man and demand he tell her that her grandmother was going to be okay. But after nearly thirteen hours in the hospital, Claudette hadn’t yet regained consciousness and the medical staff had ushered Ella out of the building to get some rest. And to change. Because if she’d looked dishevelled when she’d first arrived, Lord knew what she looked like now.
When she’d asked the taxi to stop on the other side of the woods, she’d given no thought to her clothing. Instead she’d wanted to make her way to her grandmother’s cottage on the path that felt achingly familiar and yet strange and unknowable at this time in the morning. But the hems of the cloak and dress had dragged along the floor, soaking up the damp earth, making them impossibly heavy. As the material caught on twigs and thorns, Ella felt as if she were battling something physical, not just emotional, on her journey back to her grandmother’s.
She pulled up short, wanting to wrench the damn thing from her shoulders, wanting to wail and shout and cry all at once. She forced herself to breathe in a long, slow breath, in and out. She had almost recovered when she heard the snap of a twig. The hairs on the skin of her arms rose in the early morning air, sending tingles and shivers down her back. Casting a glance around her, Ella’s gaze snagged on something in the dense foliage and she took half a step towards the bush before she saw the gleam of yellow eyes staring at her. Before she could run, the beast crashed out of the tree cover and loped towards her in an alarmingly lazy gait that covered the distance between them in seconds and, just as it was about to pounce, she closed her eyes and—
‘Dorcas, sit!’
Prising her eyes open, she watched as the massive beast careened to a halt barely a foot from Ella and sat on its hind legs, tongue lolling out of its mouth and a look of almost indescribable happiness at having found something for its master spread across its wolfish features.
An almost hysterical laugh of relief bubbled in her chest, until it caught there the moment she saw the beast’s owner making his way towards her.
He was over six feet fall, more lean and lithe than broad,
