Prince Voronov's Virgin by Lynn Raye Harris Page A

closed his eyes. No, of course not. He must have wanted another woman this badly. What about Fermina, the supermodel? She’d had the longest legs he’d ever seen.
    But, no. She’d been delightful, not compelling.
    He ran through a succession of women in his head. None conjured up more than pleasant memories. None conjured up violent need that spiraled out of his control.
    Perhaps it was the excitement of making love to Chad Russell’s secretary, of taking something from under his cousin’s nose that the man had been too ignorant to see for himself.
    But, no, it wasn’t that, either.
    Paige’s warm body was limp, her breathing even, and he knew she’d fallen asleep. He wanted to sleep as well, but he could not. He was still inside her, still hard, but he needed to withdraw while the condom was still tight.
    Except that he didn’t want to move. He wanted to lie here, sated and content, and enjoy the warm woman in his bed. He wanted to enjoy the companionship with her, however brief.
    Paige knew what it was like to lose family too soon. It was a connection they shared. Another reason everything about this night seemed so strange to him. He didn’t usually share details about his family with the women he dated.
    Hell, he didn’t usually share details of his life and family with
anyone.
He’d learned that life wasn’t fair, and that you couldn’t trust another soul with the burdens of yours. No one was what he or she seemed. Everyone had an agenda of some sort.
    And his was to destroy the Russells.
    Not that he’d told her much, but he’d said more than he usually did. In the instant when he’d told her that his family was in the crypt, he’d felt a wall of loneliness pushing down on him that he hadn’t experienced in a very long time. Somehow, she’d recognized it. He’d wanted to open up to her even more in that moment, but he’d stopped himself from doing so.
    She did something to him, something he did not like. She made him long for things he’d forgotten, and feel remorse for things he could not help if he were to avenge his family. He had no room for sentimentality, no room for tender feelings of any kind.
    A glance at the bedside clock told him it was nearly ten. A few more minutes, and he would wake her—though part of him wanted to keep her in his bed all night, to slide into her body in the dark hours before dawn, to lose himself.
    But he would not. The sooner he returned her to Moscow, the better.
    The sharp, insistent ringing of a cell phone startled Paige into wakefulness. Beside her, Alexei whipped back the covers and shot from the bed. His phone was still clipped onto his trousers, but he managed to grab it before it stopped ringing.
    “Da?”
he barked.
    Paige sat up, her body protesting the movement. Though she wanted to stay snuggled into bed, where it was warm, it was time to return to reality.
    Reality for her was not a naked billionaire pacing the room and barking into his phone in a language she didn’t understand.
    She took the opportunity, while he wasn’t paying attention, to slip from the bed and start collecting her clothes. It took a few moments to locate her underwear, but when she had everything she darted into the attached bathroom.
    Paige leaned back against the closed door, blinking indisbelief. Yet another beautiful, fairy-tale room. Though at least there were modern fixtures—a shower, toilet and claw-foot bathtub with jets. Clearly Alexei had upgraded a few things.
    She wondered why he and his mother and sister had been sent away from this place, but she’d hardly been able to ask. What must it have been like to be so young and to not only lose your father, but to also find yourself thrown out of your home? How had his poor mother handled everything with two young children to look after?
    Paige felt a pang of emotion for the woman lying in the church crypt. And for the man who seemed so in control and detached when he spoke of his family, yet who was so alive and full