The Ruthless Magnate's Virgin Mistress

The Ruthless Magnate's Virgin Mistress
LYNNE GRAHAM

Purchased by the ruthless tycoon From the moment he sees Abbey at a charity fashion show, Russian tycoon Nikolai Arlov wants every inch of that curvy, creamy body. When she refuses him, he ruthlessly switches tactics, aiming straight for her vulnerable heart…With her family’s business in serious trouble, Abbey knows Nikolai’s money is their only hope. She submits to his lethal brand of seduction and blackmail – ready and willing to do anything he desires. Only Nikolai has no idea his reluctant mistress…is a virgin… Virgin Brides, Arrogant Husbands Book Two in a new trilogy by Lynne Graham

‘You are the most amazingly sexy woman,’ he breathed thickly.

It was not how Abbey saw herself, and the comment stunned her back into possession of her senses. Suddenly she felt naked and exposed and foolish. She reached down and yanked her clothing back up over her bare skin, struggling with clumsy hands to retie the straps. He dragged her hands out of the way and performed the task for her.

‘I don’t do stuff like this,’ she muttered, as if she was excusing herself, but her eager body refused when he tugged her back into his arms.

‘I want you now…I don’t want to wait,’ Nikolai growled.

That uncharacteristic sense of daring that had momentarily fired Abbey shrivelled and died. She whipped her hand away from him, shattered by her total loss of control. ‘This is wrong…this is not me. I hardly know you.’

VIRGIN BRIDES, ARROGANT HUSBANDS

Demure but defiant… Can three international playboys

tame their disobedient brides?

Lysander, the gorgeous, dynamic Greek tycoon…

Nikolai, the ruthless, charismatic Russian magnate…

Leandro, the sexy, aristocratic Spanish billionaire…

Proud, masculine and passionate,

these men are used to having it all. But enter Ophelia,

Abbey and Molly, three feisty virgins to whom their

wealth and power mean little. In stories filled with

drama, desire and secrets of the past, find out how

these arrogant husbands capture their hearts…

THE GREEK TYCOON’S DISOBEDIENT BRIDE

THE RUTHLESS MAGNATE’S VIRGIN MISTRESS

THE SPANISH BILLIONAIRE’S PREGNANT WIFE

THE RUTHLESS MAGNATE’S VIRGIN MISTRESS

BY

LYNNE GRAHAM

www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)

PROLOGUE

THE setting was a grand mansion in the most prestigious area of St Petersburg, its soaring majestic windows giving exclusive views across the Fontanka River. The enormous room was packed in the aftermath of a memorial service, yet many of the guests had not even known the departed. The lure that had brought them was the towering presence of Nikolai Danilovich Arlov, the oil magnate, whose vast wealth was the stuff of legend.

Indifferent as always to being the centre of attention, Nikolai was heavily engaged in a business phone-call. A tall, powerful figure, with cropped black hair and eyes as dark and hard as rain-washed stone, he was a breathtakingly handsome man with a smouldering sexual charisma that radiated masculinity. Women watched him with unhidden hunger, while his minders and aides studiously screened him from every possible approach. Few of those present received more than a distant nod from their host. But many would dine out for weeks on the social cachet of having been a guest in his jaw-droppingly fantastic home.

Nikolai ignored virtually everyone. As tough as an Arctic winter and as relentless as a juggernaut, he was a maverick who played by his own rules. He loathed time-wasters and tedious social events. It was the pursuit of power and profit that energised and drove him. He had attended his late father’s memorial service purely as a matter of form, for close connections of the family kind were utterly unknown to him. He could not even recall when he had last spoken to the old man. His father had hated and resented him almost from the day of his birth and his two older half-brothers feared and envied their fabulously successful sibling. However, neither of those undisputed facts had prevented Nikolai’s relatives from begging him to take charge of the dead man’s tangled affairs and ensure that the estate was settled without cost or inconvenience to themselves. It had not once occurred to them that Nikolai might have a more private and personal motivation for agreeing to carry out that thankless task.

When a dazzling blond beauty in a power suit appeared in a doorway invisible tension surged through Nikolai’s lean, powerful frame, but it lasted only for a split second. His classic, high, carved cheekbones might have been chipped out of solid bronze. One glance at Sveta’s expression told him that she was the bringer of bad news and that the questions that had plagued him as a child were to remain unanswered: the search of his father’s personal effects had proved fruitless.

‘Nothing.’ Frustration and annoyance laced Sveta’s low-pitched voice when she drew level with him. Like her colleagues, Olya and Darya, she was a high achiever, never satisfied with anything less than positive results.

‘Nichivo—no problem.’ His tone was one of dismissal and as he spoke, so he believed. He saw no reason why the mystery of his exact parentage should keep him awake at night. All the documents his father had left behind had now been examined; safes had been opened, desks emptied, deposit boxes tracked down. What had appeared to be a promising opportunity had failed to deliver even a jot of new information. He didn’t know the name of his mother and he didn’t know where or why he had been born. And now he most probably never would.

But so what? Nikolai asked himself with a mental shrug. Such paltry facts were irrelevant to a male who had always known who he was and where he was going. At the age of thirty-three he had realised his every ambition a thousand times over. He had nothing to apologise for and nobody to impress. Investigating his maternal ancestry was a waste of valuable time and energy.

At the precise moment that Nikolai reached that conclusion a commotion was breaking out at the lower end of the room. Heads were turning to a buzz of excited comment. A frown was indenting his brow even before he was informed that his current lover, Brigitta Jansen, had just made her entrance. She had flown in from Paris without an invitation. Cold displeasure gripped him because he considered her arrival as that of a gatecrasher and an intrusion on his privacy. A smile on her flawless face, the Dutch movie actress walked towards him, basking in the attention she was attracting.

Fifteen minutes later, Nikolai was on his way to the airport alone. He had left Brigitta in hysterics, surrounded by her sycophantic staff of hangers-on. If her intent had been to make him feel guilty for ditching her, she had failed abysmally. Emotional blackmail was no more to his taste than feminine demands or the suggestion that he might be anything other than a single guy, free to sample other company and other beds as and when he liked.

He wondered why he always landed bunny-boilers who started out cool and calm but speedily went into the pursuit mode of deadly missiles. He told no lies; he was direct about what he wanted. Sex was as necessary to his health and comfort as food. It had nothing to do with the mythical L word that women flung as an excuse to try to change the ground rules. Love wasn’t in his vocabulary. Why was something as basic and simple as sex a continual flashpoint for trouble? Perturbed by that unprecedented train of philosophical thought and by the dark mood he was determined not to acknowledge, he took another business call with alacrity.

An hour after dining on his private jet, Nikolai left Sveta and her colleagues at work and went for a shower. Fifteen minutes later, he answered the knock on the bedroom door with only a towel wrapped round his lean bronzed hips. His black brows drew together in astonishment when Sveta walked in. Her suit had vanished and her remarkable body was now embellished only by an apricot silk corset-and-knicker set. ‘What the hell—?’

‘Please don’t say anything until I’ve finished, sir. Olya, Darya and I thought that you might be in the mood to be distracted,’ Sveta murmured softly.

Olya, a voluptuous brunette, strolled in, wearing a similar outfit in emerald green. ‘You’ve had a tricky week. A little down time in the right female company could help you to relax.’

Darya, the third of his aides, her platinum-blond hair cut razor-short above her strikingly attractive face, entered sporting turquoise lace lingerie and struck a provocative pose. ‘We know what you need. We also believe that we can deliver. Choose one of us and there will be no repercussions, emotional or otherwise.’

His hard, handsome face unrevealing, Nikolai studied the three women and wondered why on earth he had assumed that there was safety in numbers. No repercussions? Who did they think they were kidding? As sharp as blades in the intelligence stakes and as effective in business as sharks in a wildlife pond, each of them was ferociously loyal to him. No man could have equalled their single-minded devotion to his interests. And like him they never forgot what they came from.

‘But if you feel that one-to-one might be too personal or divisive to team spirit…’ Sveta leant back against the door to close it with her shapely derriere and gave him an understanding smile ‘…we have no objection to sharing you and every expectation that you will rise to the challenge.’

CHAPTER ONE

‘YOU look amazing,’ Sally, the beautician, chattered as she fanned out Abbey’s unruly mane of flame-coloured curls over her slim shoulders. ‘You’re going to be the star tonight.’

Abbey seriously doubted that forecast and reckoned that only a woman confident of her face and body would actually want to take part in a fashion show. She was only there by default, stepping in last minute for the amateur model who had twisted her knee in a fall during the dress rehearsal. Abbey had never liked either her face or her body. When she was a child the mirror had been her enemy, destroying her every dream of being a fairy princess in disguise.

One of her earliest memories had been of hearing her father complain that she was an ugly duckling. Sadly for her, however, the swan phase had failed to transpire, Abbey reflected wryly. Her hair had stayed defiantly red, her freckles had increased and her elongated gawky legs had continued to ensure that she towered over most people at a comfortable five feet nine inches in her bare feet. In her opinion, her unfashionably large breasts and hips only increased her oddness. Only once in her life had Abbey considered herself blessed by any claim to attraction. That had been the miraculous day when Jeffrey Carmichael had asked her out. During the months that had run up to their wedding day the world had truly seemed to be a joyous place sprinkled with stardust and happiness. But even Jeffrey had once suggested that she might look better as a blonde.

‘Caroline is incredible,’ Sally commented as a fair-haired woman in a wheelchair sped busily past. ‘I really do admire her. To have lost so much and still be so keen to help others.’

‘That’s Caroline all over,’ Abbey agreed as she admired her brother’s wife equally. Caroline might have lost the power of her legs six years earlier, but she still cared for her husband and two children, met the demands of a full-time job and made room for fund-raising activities to support Futures, the spinal injuries charity that had helped her in her hour of need. The fashion show that Abbey had helped to organise was being held in aid of Futures.

‘Someone told me that she got hurt in a car crash on her brother’s wedding day…’