Читать книгу The Dreaming Of... Collection - Оливия Гейтс - Страница 57
ОглавлениеThe meeting with Ferreira took place the very next afternoon. During lunch hour so it would be brief, at Eliana’s request.
Rafael picked Casa de Feijoada, a busy spot in the posh beachside Ipanema district, a mile away from Eliana’s place, and Ferreira’s offices, for their convenience. The restaurant was cozy, with a tropical, rattan-walled look and family-style table service. He came a bit early to arrange a table on the beach and order the lunch courses in advance so no unnecessary delays would occur during their hour-long meeting. They arrived at one o’clock sharp, and Eliana greeted him with the same ardent kiss with which she’d said goodbye when he’d left her apartment at 2:00 a.m.
Though she’d confided that she’d told her father everything, so he must have an idea how things stood between them, he glimpsed a spurt of anxiety in Ferreira’s eyes as he witnessed that intimacy. But like the gentleman everyone believed him to be, the impeccably dressed and behaved Ferreira made no comment. Not on that nor on Rafael’s offensive behavior during the last ball, nor his no-shows in the previous ones.
From then on, they settled down to the smooth flowing lunch courses. Apart from the effort Rafael expended to sit across from Ferreira—the man he’d once loved as an uncle and who’d betrayed him in the most unspeakable way—pretending this was their first real meeting, nothing of note happened.
Ironically, the man who’d been trying to meet him for the past two months didn’t seem to care that Rafael possibly held his professional future in his hands, only that he might affect his daughter’s adversely. Ferreira spent the entire lunch watching them interact, saying little. He never once broached the subject of the partnership. The only questions her father asked him were when Eliana went to the ladies’ room: oblique ones probing his intentions and warning him against toying with her. In turn, Rafael as indirectly let Ferreira know that where Eliana was concerned, they were on the same page. She came first to him, too.
That seemed to disturb Ferreira instead of reassure him. He considered Rafael’s statement an exaggeration, since the sum total of their liaison had taken place over three days. But when Rafael told him that the power of their connection had dispensed with the usual stages needed to reach their current level of involvement, Ferreira finally relaxed. Though he’d evidently never thought Rafael was capable of forging such a connection, from what he’d heard about him, he confessed that he knew how it could be that way from intimate experience. It had been the same between him and Eliana’s mother. They’d married a week after meeting and had lived ecstatically ever after—until aggressive pancreatic cancer had taken her from him.
On Eliana’s return, the conversation turned to anecdotes about Eliana’s mother, and her half brothers and their mother. Ferreira had had two extreme opposites in the marriage department. The first one when his father had arranged his marriage to his partner’s daughter and the battlefield that marriage had turned into. Then the marriage to the love of his life, which had started with love at first sight and had ended with him living in her memory and for their daughter.
The lunch ran thirty minutes longer than the agreed on hour before Ferreira rose to leave. As Rafael shook his hand, the man gave him a pointed look. Don’t hurt my daughter was the gist of the volumes it spoke. His answering look said I would never hurt her. He hoped the but I’ll hurt you...bad part went unsaid.
The moment her father disappeared, Eliana dragged Rafael by his tie and planted a hot kiss on his lips.
Starving for her already, he moved to deepen it, and she pulled away, chuckling, eyes heavy with hunger. “I shouldn’t be kissing you after I just binged on that feijoada. Rinsing my mouth can’t begin to counteract its garlicky goodness.”
Brazil’s national dish was indeed an antisocial stew. This restaurant that proclaimed itself the meal’s house was lauded by Cariocas, Rio’s residents, as serving the best feijoada in Rio. Even after he’d ordered their best meal, he hadn’t expected the giant pot of meats swimming in saucy black beans they’d gotten. The tureen had been piled high with smoked and peppery sausages, carne seca ham and an assortment of other pork cuts. He was glad he remembered to tell them not to serve the pig’s ears, tail and tongue.
He pulled her back against him, claiming her lips. “Having binged on the same pungent bomb, all I taste is your sweetness.” Another savoring kiss. “And the tartness of acai and maracuja and dragon fruit from that Amazonian fruit smoothie.”
She suddenly yelped, pulling back once again. “You always scorch me, but now you literally do. Those deadly malagueta peppers you gobbled are still lacing your lips and tongue.” Licking the burning away, she smiled. “Thank you.”
He pressed his lips as if to secure her kisses there. “What for?”
“For being so nice to my father.”
“He’s a nice man.”
He didn’t even have to lie. Apart from the sadness he glimpsed in Ferreira’s eyes—which Eliana said had been there since her mother’s death—and his wariness of how the power Rafael wielded would affect his daughter’s well-being, Ferreira was apparently the kind and agreeable man he remembered. The evil he’d committed against him had carved no visible telltale signs on his visage.
Eliana sighed. “I actually think you didn’t like him much, but you were still extremely nice to him. So thank you.”
Deus. Those instincts of hers continued to prove sharper than he’d even thought. He’d thought he’d been seamless.
Before he could say something to alleviate her suspicion, she added, “But it’s expected on a first meeting with my wary father hen. He spent lunch watching your every move. And you’re a man who suffers no monitoring or judgment.”
Relieved she’d found a benign reason for the hostility she’d felt from him, he exhaled. “It’s only natural he’d be worried about how fast things developed between us. I think I ended up allaying his anxiety.”
“I know.” She smiled up at the waitress, who put the bill before him. “Why do you think I went to the ladies’ room?”
“And there I thought you didn’t have a wily bone in your body.” He grinned as he got out his credit card.
She chuckled. “No wiliness involved, I assure you. I was instructed to do so. On the way, Daddy begged me to give him any chance to be alone with you. He claimed there was no way he could ‘read’ you as long as I was around. He also begged me not to be my shockingly candid self while he’s around.” She shot him a devilish look. “I did manage not to say things like, ‘Don’t worry about Rafael seducing me, Daddy. I spent a whole night slithering all over him and begging him to have sex with me, and he was the one who held back and reprimanded me about my language, too!’”
Rafael threw his head back on a guffaw. “It’s a good thing you exercised some self-control. You would have given him a heart attack.”
Her laugh tinkled like crystal. “I did give him a minor one with that kiss when we first came in. The poor man always bragged he was the only man he knew whose daughter never gave him any nightmares about boyfriends, since I never had any. Then I go and get all mixed up with someone who’s as much trouble as ten thousand men put together.”
“So I’m all his postponed nightmares come all at once.”
And she didn’t know how literally true that was.
“Exactly.” She laughed, her gemlike eyes radiating mischief and joy in Rio’s midday sun. Entranced as he gazed into them, he threw some bills down, and she giggled harder. “That tip could make you a partner in this restaurant.”
“The food and service were impeccable. They earned it.”
“It was lovely. But then it didn’t have to be. Just being with you would make anything wonderful.”
He knew she meant every word. She was the first woman, the first person, who’d ever told him everything she felt, no games. And it was intoxicating.
“I also want to thank you for not talking business.”
“I want to discuss a few things with you before I bring up anything with him. I have reports, but I want what only an insider would know.”
“Let it go altogether, okay? Even my father didn’t bring up business. Now that he saw us together, I believe he won’t.”
“I know he has big problems, Eliana.”
Dismay flooded her eyes. “I guess it was too much to hope that you of all people wouldn’t find out. But we’re working on a resolution, and I’m hopeful we’ll soon have it.”
“I know a partnership with me would help resurrect his business. Even if I don’t give it to him, I still want to help.” He did intend to save her father’s business, for her, to preserve her legacy. He’d seen Ferreira’s will, and she was his only beneficiary. No matter what he felt about her father, he wouldn’t let her inherit an ailing enterprise. He buried his lips in her palm. “Let me help.”
She caressed his cheek, hand trembling as it was singed by his passion, her gaze softening with gratitude. “It doesn’t matter if you can help, it’s enough you want to.”
“I can do anything, remember?”
“Oh, yes, you can.” Her smile was tenderness itself. Then suddenly she pushed her chair back and stood up.
He rose at once. “Where are you going?”
“Back to work. Then to the orphanage.” She grinned as she reached for her coat. “As you already know.”
He helped her on with the coat that matched the deep royal-blue dress he’d spent much of the lunch hour fantasizing about ripping off her.
She hooked her purse across her body. “See you at my place later? Or would you rather I come to yours?”
“I’ll come to you. And I don’t want you driving on that road alone again, so whenever you want to come to my place, I’ll pick you up. Eight o’clock?”
“Make it nine.” Her smile lit up the whole world as she walked into his arms and met him halfway in a kiss that had the whole restaurant watching.
After she left, some men gave him the thumbs-up. One was giving him two.
Mock bowing to them, he walked out into the hubbub of Rio’s midday congestion. Cariocas filled the streets as they did every hour of the day. Anyone coming to Rio came for its laid-back beach culture as much as its breathtaking landscapes and abundant tourist attractions. And everyone got the impression the Cariocas were on perpetual vacation.
He breathed deep of the ocean breeze and the unique scents of this city he’d spent his formative years in. It was strange how alien he felt here. His kidnapping had truly cut all the ties he had with his past, with the being he’d been.
But Rio was still the place he’d been taken from, and it was where he’d returned to enact the vengeance he’d waited for almost a quarter of a century. Three quarters of his life.
Then in three days, Eliana had turned his world upside down and shifted his priorities.
But his plans were only postponed, not cancelled. He would still punish her father.
Just not before he secured her.
* * *
At eight o’clock sharp, that Amazonian parrot she had for a bell burst into song.
Ellie flew to the door, heart soaring as she snatched it open, expecting to see Rafael. He was there. Only not alone.
“Please meet my boor of a partner, Richard Graves.”
Her heart plummeted as she leveled her eyes on that menace, before turning her scowl on Rafael. “You shouldn’t be walking around with him so blithely. Without a leash, too.”
Rafael laughed. “I promise you I have him well in hand. Invite us in, querida.”
“No.”
Rafael’s smile tried to coax her. “Not even now that he got what he deserves?” He shoved Graves forward.
Graves rolled his eyes, moved into the light of her foyer and showed her the right side of his face. It was a swollen deep purple beneath the beard he now sported. After he’d given her a good look, he stepped back, resettled that harsh gaze on her.
She blinked dazedly up at Rafael. “You hit him?”
“You think I’d do anything less once I found out what he’d done? What he’d said to you?”
She turned her gaze to Graves. “You told him about propositioning me, huh?”
“Of course.”
Suddenly, a realization hit her, made her turn anxiously back to Rafael. “Is that how you hurt your hand?”
Rafael nodded. “You think anything less than his concrete jaw can break my bones?”
She gaped at him. “Your hand is really broken?”
“I do have fissures in two metacarpal bones.”
She dragged him inside, heart squeezing as she feathered anxious touches over his splint. “God—and I made fun of your injury! I thought it was a sprain or something and you were only teasing me.”
“No teasing.” Graves walked in without invitation and closed the door behind him. “Under your thrall, he went and broke his hand. After I spent years teaching him how to fight without ever injuring himself. Terrible student.” A mirthless laugh. “And he didn’t even get his boo-boo kissed for his trouble.”
She took Rafael down on the couch with her and glared up at Graves. “Oh, he will now. And then he’ll get everything kissed. Anything that hasn’t already been, that is.”
At Graves’s raised eyebrows, Rafael turned to him with a triumphant smile. “For the record, I didn’t employ your generously imparted techniques because I just wanted to hurt you. And myself. I was the one who gave you the impression you can be rude to Eliana when I walked away from her.”
“Is he always that vicious to women he thinks you’re done with? Or is he that brutal by default? Which wouldn’t surprise me. He doesn’t feel quite human to me.”
Graves turned his gaze to Rafael. “Very astute, this one. Foolishly outspoken, too. You may have to keep her.”
Rafael’s eyes ate her up. “Oh, I am keeping her.”
She mock scowled at him. “How kind of you both. But I’ve been known to keep myself, thank you. So why don’t you unstoppable forces of nature just run along and go exude charisma and testosterone all over someone else?”
Graves’s lips spread. “It really looks like you’ll have to keep her.”
Rafael gave an exaggerated sigh. “If only she keeps me.”
Graves tsked. “I trained you better than that, Numbers.”
“Seems all your efforts went down the drain, Cobra.”
She gaped at them. “Numbers? Cobra? You have code names in that brotherhood of yours?”
Graves raised one eyebrow at Rafael. Seemed he was surprised Rafael had told her about that. Not that Rafael had told her much. Rafael gave him a “deal with it” shrug.
“Numbers...” she mused. “I don’t really see why you got named that. But Cobra is definitely apt. Though a more accurate name would be the raw material of deadliness. Like Venom.”
This time Graves guffawed. “You’re definitely keeping her.”
Rafael’s smile widened before it faded gradually. “Now, apologize to Eliana or I’ll break my other hand and your jaw this time.”
Ignoring him, Graves fixed his gaze on her, his British accent deepening. “He talks big, even when he knows he’s in one piece because I have this inexplicable fondness for him. That said, and knowing that I’m doing this out of my deeply buried gentlemanly tendencies, I do apologize. If only for...”
She raised both hands. “Stop. Quit while you’re ahead.”
Rafael gathered her to him. “Is he forgiven?”
A harrumph. “On probation.”
He chuckled and devoured her lips. She smiled against his lips at Graves’s vocal disgust.
After Rafael released her reluctantly, she kissed his splint, then each finger. “No more breaking anything for me, okay?”
His head shake was adamant. “No promises.”
Sighing her frustration at his terminal machismo, she looked between him and Graves. “At least no more fights between you two because of me, hear?”
Richard bowed in mock deference. “I’ll do whatever it takes to keep your boy toy in optimum working condition.”
And she laughed. That daunting dude had a sense of humor after all. She might even end up liking him.
Jumping up, she looked between the two men. “If you’re good tycoons, I’ll invite you to eat my magical seafood medley. You even get to help prepare it.”
Rafael sprang to his feet. “I’m very, very good.”
“I’m very, very nauseous” was Graves’s contribution.
She and Rafael laughed, then headed to her kitchen. Muttering what sounded like paint-peeling expletives, Graves followed.
* * *
The evening turned out to be an unqualified success.
Eliana was the perfect hostess. She orchestrated all the details with ease and efficiency and handled them, men the world bowed to, with utmost confidence and grace. Richard miraculously kept his snark to a minimum, even followed her lead as she made them her sous-chefs while preparing the seafood medley, which did turn out to be magical.
Time flowed over and after dinner as they cleaned up then adjourned to her living room to drink hot yerba maté, eat cocadas—a traditional coconut confection—chat and verbally duel. Eliana held her own with Richard like no one he’d ever seen. Then, nestling into him on the couch, she started yawning.
Kissing her forehead, he gestured to Richard, who rose to his feet at once.
As he made to follow, she clung to him. “Stay.”
His blood hurtled through his veins with temptation. “You need to sleep.”
She rubbed her sleepy face into his neck, burning him wherever she touched. “I need to sleep with you.”
“Tomorrow. I’ll come alone.”
She looked across at Richard. “You can go home on your own, right, Graves?”
“It’s Rafael who can’t. I have to tuck him in.”
“Should have known you’d be no help.” She clung to Rafael’s neck. “At least carry me to bed.”
“You, my enchantress, are wily.”
“I just want you.”
“And I want nothing but you.” He kissed her pout as he rose and her arms fell off his shoulders like petals. “Lock up after us.”
He rushed Richard out before he succumbed. They strode to the elevator with him already suffering withdrawal.
“What are you going to do with her?”
At Richard’s quiet question, he exhaled. “None of your business, Cobra. Your role here is done.”
Richard pressed the elevator button. “One piece of advice. A warning, really. This woman will turn you inside out.”
“Don’t you believe she already has?”
“I thought so. But now that I’ve been exposed to her, to this...live thing between you, I know I’ve been optimistic in my evaluation. This?” He made a gesture at all of him. “What you’re feeling now? Is nothing to what you will feel a week from now. In a month’s time, you’ll be totally lost in her.”
He cocked an eyebrow as they entered the elevator. “So you like her now?”
“I don’t like anyone. But her? She’s lethal.”
He frowned. “You still think she’s her father’s accomplice? That her orphanage work has sinister motivations? You think I’d look the other way if I suspected such a thing?”
Richard shook his head. “I actually believe your verdict of her benevolence. And that’s what makes her deadly. She’s for real. You’ll have no defenses against her.”
“Who says I want any?”
Richard fell silent as the elevator crowded with more and more people in this city that didn’t sleep. Once out on the street, and before they went their separate ways, he said, “Are you giving up your revenge?”
His heart fisted. “I will never do that.”
“Then do you have any idea how to have it and have her, too?”
“I’ll figure out a way.”
Richard only gave him a “sure you will” scowl before turning and walking away.
He watched Richard recede, his mind in an uproar.
He would destroy her father. He had to. But if she ever suspected he was the one who had done it, he could lose her. He couldn’t even contemplate that.
This meant that his plan to let Ferreira know it was him who destroyed him was out of the question. He’d have to burn every bit of evidence leading back to him so she’d never know.
The one way this wouldn’t be necessary was if in a month’s time he cooled toward her. He could strike at her father and not fear the fallout to their relationship.
But he didn’t need time to know it would only intensify, this all-consuming passion he felt for her.
And that was his verdict as the man who was never wrong.
* * *
They stumbled all the way from the mansion’s doors to Rafael’s master suite, snatching at each other with wrenching lips, straining against each other as if they’d merge.
It took a while to get there, as Rafael’s suite spanned the whole fourth level. At least he’d made sure the mansion was empty before he got her here, after everyone who worked there had managed to walk in on them during the past three weeks.
He threw her down on his extra-large king-size bed and she slid over the satin sheets to its middle as he launched himself over her. She bowed up to intensify his impact, loving his weight and ferocity as he bore down on her.
His lips mashed against hers, his tongue plunging inside her while his hips rammed between her splayed thighs through their clothes.
He rose to snatch her top over her head, bunching her skirt to her waist then tearing her panties off her hips. As her legs fell wide apart for him, his hands, big enough to span her waist, raised her against the headboard. Then he buried his face in her confined breasts.
The sight of the dark majesty of his head against her made her keen, pressing his head harder to her aching flesh.
He muttered something deep and driven, the sound spearing her heart as his hands went to her back, releasing breasts now peaked and swollen for his ownership.
Imprisoning her hands above her head in his good one, he drew back to gaze at her. His eyes crackled with lust at how she must look. Like she had that first night, almost naked, the image of pure wanton abandon.
Growling, he let go of her hands to greedily take her breasts in his hands. She arched off the bed in the shock of pleasure, making a fuller offering of her flesh. He kneaded her, pinched her nipples, had her writhing...begging.
He tore his shirt off, exposing the body she’d told him made Greek gods seem like weaklings. Her awed hands shook over his burnished, sculpted perfection. His growls roughened as he rubbed his chest against her breasts until she thrashed.
“Querida...” He bent and opened his mouth fully over her breasts as if he’d devour her. Pleasure jackknifed through her with each hard draw of his lips, each hot swirl of his tongue, until she was shuddering all over, her readiness flowing down her thighs.
She lay powerless under the avalanche of need as his hand glided over her, taking every liberty before settling between her thighs. His strong, sensitive fingers slid to her intimate flesh, now throbbing its demand for his touch. As his lips clamped hers, his fingers opened the lips of her femininity, slid between her folds, soaking in her arousal.
It took only a few strokes of those virtuoso fingers to spill her over the edge. She convulsed with pleasure, screeching it into his mouth.
His stroking fingers completed her pleasure, circling her nub soothingly. Desire seared through her again instead, that emptiness that gnawed her all the time now unbearable.
She drummed her feet against the bed in a fit of frustration. “Just take me.”
He cupped her core, gathered her still trembling body to his, shushing her. And she knew he still wouldn’t take her.
She turned her face into his chest, sobbed. “You once said you didn’t want my heart pounding or me agitated. My heart is hammering, and I’m far beyond agitated...all the time.”
“You’re just aroused.”
She glared up at him. “Gee...I didn’t realize that!”
His face was a mask of savage hunger even as he smiled at her. “I mean you’re too aroused to think straight. Three weeks ago you didn’t want to see me again.”
“Three weeks ago I asked you to take me. Just like I’ve been doing every day ever since.”
“You were trying to get rid of me then.”
“Maybe I just couldn’t wait to have you. Just like I can’t now. Didn’t you think of that?”
“I want us to have this first, querida, the courting, the anticipation, all the routes to pleasure but the ultimate one. When I join our bodies I want you certain that you want me inside you, not just the release I’ll bring you.”
Her fingers twisted in his hair, eyes pleading. “I am certain. I’ve been certain since the moment I saw you.”
“But when you were thinking straight, you knew what was best for you, for us, wanted me to slow down.”
“Not to this extent.”
“You sound as if I’ve been tormenting you for months.”
“It feels like years.”
His smile devoured her brimming with pure male satisfaction. “I love you on fire for me like that.”
She almost blurted out “I love you” but bit it back at the last moment.
She had no illusions about the nature of his involvement, didn’t want her far different and more intense feelings to alarm him or put him off. There was no way a man like him would be hers except transiently. And she felt as if the more time that passed, the shorter the time she’d have him in full intimacy.
And now he was going away. He was traveling with one of his “brothers” to Japan. Even though he promised it would be only for a few days, it felt as if it would curtail her time with him further.
All troubled thoughts came to an end as he spread her thighs wide and slid down her trembling body.
Then he spoke against her molten feminine lips. “Let me ease the burning in your blood, querida.”
He had been doing so in every way but the one she craved.
She tried to close her legs, needing him, not release. “What about the burn in your blood?”
“You can ease that if you wish.”
“Oh, I wish, I so wish.”
It was what ameliorated the gnawing, when he let her worship him. Getting intimate with the daunting beauty and massive proportions of him sent a frisson of danger through her as she wondered if it was possible he’d fit inside her. But she couldn’t wait until he did, yearned for the pain she knew he had to inflict. She wanted it to hurt at first, needed him to brand her with agony as his.
But though the intimacy gave him release, it only drove her madder with hunger, and left him harder and more on edge.
“Then you shall have your wish. Right after I have mine.”
And he took her core in a hot, tongue-thrusting kiss and the world vanished in a whiteout of sensation....
* * *
“Can you please turn the anxious vibes down? They’re drilling holes in the hull.”
Rafael’s head snapped up at the sarcastic tone. He watched its owner blankly as Raiden sat down in his private jet’s plush seat, facing him.
As Raiden buckled his seat belt with a bedeviling look in his slanting eyes, Rafael’s aggravation shot to maximum again.
“I would,” he snarled, “if your damn pilot picked a route where I got cellular coverage.”
Raiden aka Lightning had asked him to accompany him to Tokyo five days ago. He’d had the biggest lead yet in his quest to establish his bloodline and he needed him to examine records that couldn’t be moved out of their institutes and temples and to come up with a pattern. He had. And Raiden had finally uncovered his legacy.
Rafael had only uncovered the meaning of agony.
Richard’s prediction about time worsening his condition had come to pass. But then, hadn’t it always been that bad? It was now a full month since he’d met Eliana, and he was fully submerged.
Since he’d left her side, he’d called her a dozen times per day. Given the opportunity, he would have had her on speakerphone all day. Would have had her on webcam all night.
Then came the torture of the twenty-four hour flights from and back to Rio. For twelve of those, cellular transmission was cut. Being unable to call her for that long frayed his nerves. On the outbound flight, he’d managed to rein in his discomfort. Now, he was going ballistic.
Raiden had remained respectful of his agitation at first. But now he was outright making fun of his condition.
“My pilot says there should be transmission any time now.” Raiden smoothed back the hair he’d cut short for the first time in his life, in preparation for entering the conservative upper crust of Japanese society. “But you still can’t turn on your phone, since we’re starting our descent.”
Rafael hurled at him an infuriated glance. “Why are you talking when you don’t have something useful to say?”
“Whoa, Numbers.” Raiden grinned, stretching his long legs, the eyes he knew froze people in their tracks twinkling with mischief. “You were the last one, after Richard and Numair, that I thought I’d ever see in this state over a woman.”
“And in this state, I’m liable to do things the Numbers you know wouldn’t. So shut up, Lightning.”
Raiden didn’t shut up. Not until Rafael hurled state-of-the-art headphones at his thick skull. He outright guffawed then.
Caring nothing about their descent, Rafael had his phone out and turned on. Hands shaking with inexplicable and all-encompassing anxiety, he accessed his voice mail. There was one from Eliana.
Then the message began.
“Rafael...I—I’ve been in an accident.... They’re taking me to Copa D’or Hospital. Oh, God...where are you?”
A loud clattering noise followed, as if she’d dropped the phone.
Then there was nothing more.
