Читать книгу Scandalously Expecting His Child - Olivia Gates - Страница 9

Three

Her heart lodged into her throat, fright mingling dizzyingly with incredulity, dismay...and exhilaration.

Raiden.

He was here.

Feet away... Inches away... A breath away now.

Every nerve in her body fired in remembrance, in jubilation at the approach of the essence that had once been as familiar to her as her own. For five blazing months of pure passion and pleasure, before she’d had to sever the bond. She’d been bleeding inwardly ever since.

She had no idea how he was here. But from what she’d learned about him, in her constant search for his news, in her obsessive research of his past, she knew one thing. Raiden could do anything.

As to why he was here, did it matter? It was one more chance to be close to him. A chance that she’d thought she’d never be given again. An unexpected, priceless gift.

That, she knew, was the last thing he wanted to give her. Judging from his tone, dripping in bitter sarcasm and suppressed aggression, he probably wanted to give her five to ten, minimum.

In fact, logically speaking, he should be here to...eliminate her danger. She was the only one who possessed detailed knowledge of the secrets he’d gone to unimaginable lengths to bury. Her existence posed a threat not only to the persona he’d built and the plans he’d worked for since he’d escaped The Organization, but to his very life.

But though he’d assassinated countless people, and she probably deserved to be, in his opinion, she didn’t fear for a second that was why he was here. This lethal man with the staggering body count in his past didn’t scare her at all.

Not that anything did. With the kind of existence she’d had, she’d never valued her life enough to be afraid for it. The only true fear she’d ever felt had been on his behalf.

“Feet aching, my love?”

Nostalgia skewered through her, made her squeeze her eyes, bite down on the moan that almost escaped her lips.

Welcoming her home, calling her “my darling” and “my love”... They were the same phrases he’d greeted her with that last time in his penthouse in New York five years ago. It had been the first time he’d said things like that...out of bed.

It had been then she’d realized he’d decided to take their relationship to the next level. And that she’d soon be forced to put an end to it.

Unable to face putting a time frame on “soon,” that night she’d thrown herself into being with him with all the passion he’d ignited inside her, gulping down every second as if each had been her last ever. But even in her worst nightmares she hadn’t expected they would be that for real, that the very next day it would come to such a jarring and dreadful end.

After it had, she’d had no doubt it would remain over.

Then came tonight. Then now. And the bridge into the past she’d thought had burned to ashes had somehow been rebuilt. Because she seemed to have branded him as he’d done her.

He’d already told her that it had been how he’d recognized her in someone else’s body. Which flabbergasted her. Even if he’d formed an emotional attachment to her in the past, it had been to the persona she’d played. She’d thought that if he remembered her at all since, it would be with rage and repugnance. She’d never thought he’d obsess over her in any other way.

But by reciting the exact words he’d said that last time they’d met as lovers, he was letting her know he had. From the way he’d drawled the memorized words, he was also letting her know such a hold over him made it more imperative to him to exact revenge for every wrong she’d dealt him, with five years’ worth of compound interest.

She would have let him, if it were only she who’d pay the price. But he was in a far more sensitive position than she was. Any impulsive actions would harm him far more than her. And she couldn’t let him do this to himself. Not after what she’d done to protect him. She would protect him again, at any cost, even from himself.

It was time to do so, to end this, and this time, make sure it was over for good.

Feeling the heat of his body radiating at her back, tasting the intoxication of his breath as it filled her lungs, she turned slowly, carefully. Her balance was already compromised, and she didn’t want to end facedown at his feet instead of on the bed as she’d previously planned.

She almost did so anyway when she laid eyes on him.

Earlier tonight, she’d realized he’d done the impossible, had become even more magnificent than he’d been, his assets having appreciated with maturity, and would no doubt continue to do so. He’d become a god for real, not just in name.

But now... It shouldn’t be possible, but he looked even more awe striking than he had an hour ago.

He’d taken off his tuxedo jacket, undid his bow tie and a few shirt buttons, exposing a tantalizing expanse of the burnished flesh beneath. His muscled shoulders and chest seemed wider with just a sheer layer of silk covering them, and in contrast with the now-apparent sparse hardness of his abdomen. And if he looked like this with clothes still on, she didn’t want to dwell on the details of his upgrades with them off.

But it was his face that as usual arrested her. His hair was no longer meticulously groomed, the raven-wing, rain-straight locks slightly mussed. It gave him a wild, raw look that made his heart-stopping cheekbones even more prominent, his slanting caramel eyes even more fiery, his sculpted lips more erotic and his chiseled jaw more rugged.

His whole package was enough to compromise her sanity. Not that she’d ever had much to speak of where he was concerned. And that was on the mental and emotional level. On the physical one, just being around him, just thinking of him, made her melt, throb...ache. Her body had been hammering at her, demanding his since she’d laid eyes on him across the ballroom tonight.

His answering appraisal made her core simmer. Then the velvet depths of his baritone drawl almost made it combust.

“Your surgeon didn’t only make you a totally different woman, but the most beautiful model possible, too.”

She met the eyes that flayed her with contempt with a look of long-perfected equanimity. Even as her insides raged, she injected her voice with the same inexpression.

“Surgeons, in the plural. This result is a collaborative effort, performed over many stages. But it was I who provided them with this ‘model.’ I needed to be beautiful.”

“You were always beautiful.”

Her heart forgot a few beats before it resumed sputtering. Outwardly, she knew he’d see no evidence of the effect his words had on her. “Nowhere like this.”

“So you thought you needed to intensify your beauty, to boost your effectiveness as a siren? I thought you’d know from intensive experience that outward beauty only lures men, but what traps them are the brains and wiles behind the looks.”

“Since I have those, too, I more than ever have the perfect package.” His gorgeous eyes narrowed, his edible lips filled, as if her brazenness aroused him even as it angered him. She pretended to sigh, but really expelled the air that clogged her lungs. “But beauty alone does open doors.”

“Doors that might open into untold trouble.”

She gave him her best self-assured glance. “True. To inexperienced innocents whose beauty is a bane that makes them a target for exploitation. I, on the other hand, am a seasoned professional who uses my assets as precisely as the situation necessitates. I downplay my looks or even negate them when I want to, and play them to maximum advantage when I need to.”

The heat in his eyes rose, even as his expression became arctic. “It must be so freeing, being able to brag about your strategies with someone you’ve already played. Someone who can’t share his insider knowledge with your future victims.”

“No bragging involved. Just facts.” Before he volleyed a response, she preempted him, turning the focus on him before her heart burst. “Now it’s my turn to ask questions.”

His lips twisted. “Since you must know everything about me, the only question left in your mind must be how I’m here.”

“I do know everything about you,” she conceded. “But that. So how did you manage to beat me here? And how are you inside my apartment without any sign of breaking and entry? Did you ninja scale your way up here to the thirtieth floor?”

“Contrary to movies, we ninjas don’t perform death-defying feats just because we can. We do go for the path of least resistance whenever possible.”

“I don’t remember ever seeing a ninja bribe a concierge.”

“I didn’t do that, either.” Before she made another comment, he raised his hand, his eyes reflecting his mirthless smile. “I won’t tell you how I arrived before you, or how I came in, so save your breath. I’m through sharing secrets with you. And you’re finding out no more on your own, either.”

She held his gaze. Before she melted into a puddle at his feet, she said, “I bet you didn’t sample any of Hiro’s first-class sushi or sip his fine shochu. I didn’t.”

His eyes widened at her sharp detour. Before he could adjust, she turned and crossed to her kitchen.

Once there, she looked back over her shoulder. “Seems this is going to be a long night. Want to eat something?”

* * *

Raiden watched the one woman he’d been truly intimate with sashay away in that stranger’s body.

And his own body roared in unremitting rage...and hunger.

She’d walked away earlier saying, “Forget all about me again.” As if he’d ever forgotten about her at all.

But it had been the sane thing to do, to heed her advice. To go back to the ball and his fiancée, to his plans and life, and forget that she existed. Because she in fact never did. Her current identity was just another fictitious figment that would disappear without a trace soon enough, once she’d gotten whatever she was after here. She’d done it once before when he’d been of no further use to her.

But there was nothing sane about what she made him feel. Never had been, and, it was clear by now, never would be. Renewed exposure to her had caused the fever in his blood to relapse as if it had never subsided at all. As it never had.

The need to have it all out with her ate through his restraint. He’d only ever had speculations about her, didn’t have a single fact to quench the maddening thirst to know the truth.

But if he and his brothers had wiped their pasts and created new, perfectly verifiable identities, she’d far surpassed their combined undercover prowess. What they’d done only once, she’d done so many times she seemed to have never had an original identity.

As for their time together, which had scarred him in a way not even his nightmarish existence before it had managed to, he had only theories, no real answers to satisfy the gnawing uncertainty that never stopped asking how. Why?

Now he needed to know the truth.

Though he was certain she’d kept her end of the bargain, since there’d been no hint of suspicion in his identity, he needed to know everything to guard against any breach like hers ever happening again.

Or that was what he’d told himself as he’d torn his way over here. That it was a necessity, a prophylactic measure.

Slow steps finally took him to the semi–open plan kitchen. He found her flitting around, her hair up in a wonderfully messy mass.

As soon as he entered, she looked over her shoulder again, nodding toward the island. “Pull up a chair. I won’t be long.”

He walked up to her instead, struggled not to pull her back against his aching body.

She continued to work with fast, precise movements, pausing only when he tucked a lock of hair that had fallen over her shoulder back into her impromptu hairdo.

He bent, murmured in her ear, “Don’t you think it weird, with our history, for you to be inviting me to a meal?”

She straightened, continued to work with renewed zeal. “Why? I invited you to meals before.”

And he’d thought everything she’d served him had been ambrosia. “You were someone else then. Actually you weren’t someone at all, just a role. One that necessitated satisfying my every hunger to mollify me enough so you could dupe me. Which you did. No more reason for you to feed me.”

She flashed him another look over her shoulder that struck his heart like a bolt, before resuming work. “It’s the least I can do after I made a fifty-million-dollar-shaped hole in your pocket.”