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“So you’re asking only to marvel at how good you are?”
“I know exactly how good I am.” The way he said that... The ache deep inside started to throb. “I don’t need validations nor do I indulge in self-congratulations.” Eyes narrowing, his focus sliced through her. “Why the reluctance to tell me? We’re laying our cards down now that the game is long over.”
“You laid down nothing.”
“I’ll lay down whatever you wish.” When she opened her mouth to demand he start, he preempted her. “You first.”
Knowing she’d end up giving him what he wanted, she sighed. “When the blows to Burton started coming out of the blue, I just thought he’d slipped in his secrecy measures. One day, when he was finally on his knees, he asserted that the breach hadn’t come from his side, that I was the only one who knew everything he did. I thought he was just looking for someone to blame, but that didn’t change a thing. I believed he’d soon make up his mind that I betrayed him. So I ran.”
Draining his glass, he grimaced, set it down on the coffee table. Then he sat back, his eyes so intense it felt as if he was physically attempting to yank the rest out of her.
Torrents of accusations almost spilled from her. Forcing them down, she skipped over the two worst years of a generally hellish existence, and went on, “I only revisited his accusations much later, started to wonder if I’d been somehow indiscreet. That pointed me in the direction of the only one I could have been indiscreet with. You. That led to a reexamination of our time together, and to realizing your ingeniousness in milking me for information.”
“And you realized it was I who sent him to hell.”
She nodded, mute with the remembered agony of that awareness. She’d felt such utter betrayal, such total loss. Her will to go on, for a while, had been completely spent.
“It dawned on me that you had targeted me only to get my insider info and asked me to leave with you to agonize and humiliate him on every front. Everything made so much sense then I couldn’t believe I didn’t suspect you for years. Who else but you could have devised such a spectacular downfall for him? It takes a monster to bring down another.”
His watchfulness lifted, fiendishness replacing it. “Monster wasn’t what you screamed all those times in my bed.”
“Don’t be redundant. I already admitted I was too oblivious to live. But once the fog of my obliviousness cleared, I only wished I could forget ever meeting you.”
“Don’t hold your breath. Even if our meeting wasn’t spontaneous, it wasn’t only memorable, it remains indelible.”
The fateful encounter that had turned her life upside down had been that way for him, too?
His cover story had been arranging security for the humanitarian organization she’d been working with. He’d demanded to meet all volunteers for a dangerous mission in Colombia to judge who should go.
Her first glimpse of him remained branded in her mind.
Nothing and no one had ever overwhelmed her as he had. And not because he’d been the most gorgeous male she’d ever seen. His influence far transcended that. His scrutiny had been denuding, his questions deconstructing. He’d rocked her to her core, making her feel like a swooning moron as she’d sluggishly answered his rapid-fire questions.
After telling her she’d passed his test, she’d exited his office reeling. She hadn’t known it possible for a human being to be so beautiful, so overpowering. She hadn’t known a man could have her hot and wet just by looking at her across a desk. She hadn’t been interested in a man before, so the intensity of her desire for him, for his approval, and her delight at earning it had flung her in chaos. She’d never known such excitement, such joy...
“The changes become you.”
She blinked, realized she’d been staring at him all the time. As he’d been staring at her.
“The sculpting of your body and features...the darkening of your hair. An effective disguise, but also an enhancement.”
“I wanted to look different for security reasons, but ended up not needing to do anything. Time and what it brought did it all.”
“You talk as if you’re over the hill.”
“I feel it. And that’s my real hair color. No longer bleaching my hair was the second best thing I ever did, after getting rid of Burton himself, who insisted I looked better as a blonde.”
His lips compressed. “Burton wasn’t only a depraved wanker, but a gaudy maggot, too. The feast of caramels and chocolates of your hair pays tribute to your creamy complexion and jeweled eyes far better than any blond shade would, framing them to the best effect possible.”
She blinked again. Richard Graves paying her a compliment? And such a flowery one, too?
And he wasn’t finished. “Before I approached you, I had photos, knew of your unusual beauty. But when I saw you in the flesh, the total effect punched me in the gut and not just on account of your looks. Time had only scraped away whatever prettiness youth inflicted and brought you profound beauty in its place. I believe it will only keep bestowing more on you. You were stunning, but you’ve become exquisite. With age, you’ll become divine.”
She gaped at him. Once, when she’d believed him to be a human being, not a machine that made money and devised plans of annihilation, she’d believed him when he’d praised her beauty. But even then, when he’d been doing everything to keep her under his spell, he’d never done it with such fervor and poetry. That he did so now...offended her beyond words.
Fury tumbled in her blood. “Spare me the nausea. We both know what you really think of me. Is this one of the ‘other things’ you had in mind? To ply me with preposterous flattery and have some more sick fun at my expense?”
“I was actually trying my hand at sincerity.” He turned fully to her. “As for the ‘other things’ I had in mind, it’s...this.”
And she found herself flat on her back with Richard on top of her, his chest crushing her breasts, his hips between her splayed thighs.
Before her heart could fire the next fractured beat, he rose over her and stopped it.
This was how a devil must look before he took one’s soul.
Inescapable. Ravenous. Dreadfully beautiful.
“Eight years, Isabella. Eight years without this. Now I’ll have it all again. I’ll consume every last inch and drop of you. That’s why I brought you here. And that’s why you really came.”
Three (#u837d9eb7-7b86-502d-a824-23652df9e9a0)
Time congealed as she lay beneath Richard, paralyzed. Even her heart seemed afraid it would rupture if it beat.
Then everything that had been gathering inside her since he’d walked away—all the betrayal and despondence and yearning—broke through the cracks and she started to tremble.
A shudder traversed his great body as if her tremors had electrified him, making him crush her harder beneath him, crash his lips on her wide-open ones.
His tongue thrust deeply and his scent and taste flooded her bloodstream, a hit of a drug she’d gone mad for since she’d been forced to give it up cold turkey. Gulping it down, she rode rapids of mindlessness as he filled her, drank her the way she remembered and craved. Richard didn’t kiss. He invaded, ravaged.
He didn’t only catapult her into a frenzy, but sent her spiraling into a reenactment of that first kiss that had launched her addiction.
That day he’d materialized like an answer to a prayer, cutting down the guerillas who’d been threatening her team with death...or worse. She’d been so shaken thinking she could have died without having the one thing she’d ever wanted—him—had been so grateful, so awed, she’d gone to offer him what he’d seemed to want so relentlessly. Herself.
He’d let her into his room, his gaze consuming her, letting her see what he’d do to her once she gave him consent. And she had, melting against him, giving him permission to do anything and everything to her.
He’d taken her mouth for the first time then, with that same thorough devouring, that coiled ferocity. From that moment on her body had learned what heart-stopping pleasure his kiss would lead to, had afterward burst into flames at his merest touch, the fire raging higher with each exposure.
The conflagration was fiercer now, with the fuel of anger and animosity, with the accumulation of pain and craving and repression. This was wrong, insane. And it only made her want it—want him—more than her next breath.
His roughness as he teased her turgid nipples, his dominance as he ground against her molten core, made her spread her thighs wider, strain to enfold him, her moans rising, blind arousal fracturing the shackles of hostility and memory, drowning them and her.
Suddenly he severed their meld, wrenching a cry of loss from her as he rose above her.
His gaze scalded her, his lips filled with grim sensuality. “I should have listened to my body—and yours—and done this the moment I got you in here.”
His arrogance should have made her buck him off. But lust for this memorized yet unknown entity, so deadly and irresistible, seethed its demand for satisfaction.
“Say this is what you wanted all along. Say it, Isabella.”
A hard thrust and squeeze of her buttocks accompanied his brusque order, melting her further. But it was the harshness on his face that jogged her heart out of its sluggish surrender.
The world spun with too many emotions, after years of stasis. Years when she’d felt him this way only in dreams that had always turned into nightmares. In those visions, he’d always aroused her to desperation before pushing her away and taking off his mask. The merciless face he’d exposed before walking over her sobbing body had always woken her in tears then plunged her into deeper despondence.
Dreading those nightmares had robbed her of the ability to rest. It was the memory of them now that made her struggle to stop her plummet into the abyss of addiction all over again.
“What if I don’t say it?” Her voice shook.
At her challenge, his gaze emptied of intensity. He released her trembling flesh and in one of those impossible moves, he separated their bodies and was on his feet.
To her shame, she’d thought his response to her challenge would be to take his onslaught to the next level. She still expected he’d pick her up and carry her off to bed.
He only sat on the coffee table, clearly deciding to end their encounter. The letdown deepened her paralysis.
His brooding gaze made her acutely aware of how pathetic she looked prostrated as she was, sending chagrin surging through her numb limbs. Feeling she’d turned to jelly, she pulled herself up and her dress down.
Once she’d tidied the dishevelment he’d caused, he drawled, “Now that there’s no hint of physical coercion...say it.”
Her heart skidded at his deceptively calm command. “You mean there’s no coercion because you’re not on top of me anymore? I’m here purely by coercion.”
“I submit, this is false. I only gave you an excuse to have your cake and eat it, too, a justification you can placate your dignity with. But it’s easy to invalidate your self-exonerating assertion. I’ll escort you to the door, activate it for you and you can walk right out.”
“And then you’ll call my friends.”
“There are things you could do that would make me do that. None of them include choosing to walk out now.” He rose to his feet. “Shall we?”
She scrambled to her feet only when she found him striding away for real and had to almost run in his wake.
“That’s it? You go to all this trouble to get me here, interrogate me for a bit, then abruptly shift to what seems to be your real objective, and when I refuse to ‘say it’ you show me the door?”
“I have to. It won’t open unless I tell it to.”
His derision, and the fact that he’d shrugged off what had happened when it had turned her inside out had her fury sizzling.
Catching up with his endless strides beside the pool, she snatched at his arm. Her fingers only slipped off his rock-hard muscles. It was he who stopped of his own accord, daring to look as if he had no idea what was eating her, but was resigned to putting up with an inexplicably hysterical female.
“Why do you want me to say it?” she seethed. “Is your ego that distorted? You want me to admit how much I want you when you never wanted me in the first place?”
His winged eyebrow arched more. “I didn’t?”
“If we’re both certain of one thing, it’s that.”
“And you’ve come to that conclusion, how?”
“Like I did all the rest. Seduction is no doubt your weapon of choice with women, and pretending to desire me was only to turn me into your willing thrall. The info I had was my only real use to you.”
He inclined his head as if examining a creature he’d never known existed. “You think I spent four months in bed with you and didn’t desire you?”
“You’re a man, and an overendowed one. I bet you could...perform with any reasonably attractive female, especially one in heat.”
“That you were.” His reminiscent look made her want to smack him across that smug mouth. “I never thought a woman could always be that hot and ready for me.” Before she lashed out, he sighed. “I would have seduced you even if you’d been a slime-oozing monstrosity. Stomaching a mark was never a prerequisite in my search-and-seduce missions. But even based on my indiscriminate libido, as you presume, I would have still suffered the minimum of physical contact to keep you on the hook. I wouldn’t have gone to lengths you can’t imagine to create a rendezvous almost daily, and then to have sex with you as many times as could be squeezed into each encounter. Even with my ‘endowments’ I couldn’t have performed that repeatedly or that...vigorously if I wasn’t even hotter and readier for you than you were for me. And I was. None of that was an act.”
Her heart stuttered as she met the gaze that suddenly felt as if it held no barriers. As if he was telling the truth, probably for the first time.
He’d really wanted her?
But... “If you wanted me as much as you claim, and still used and discarded me like any other woman you didn’t want, that makes you an even colder bastard.”
His gaze grew inscrutable again. “I didn’t discard you. You chose Burton.”
“Is that what you call what I did? I had no choice.”
“You always have a choice.”
“Spare me the human-development slogans.”
“A choice doesn’t have to be an easy one, but it remains one. Every choice has pros and cons. Once you make one, you put up with its consequences. You don’t blame others for those.”
“I categorically disagree. I certainly blame others, namely Burton and you, for making it impossible for me to have a choice. Leaving him was out of the question.”
“You did end up leaving him.”
“I didn’t leave, I ran for my life.”
“You could have done so with me.”
“Could I? And where would I have been if you failed to destroy him, then had enough of me, as I’m sure you would have sooner or later, and discarded me then, after I made a mortal enemy of him?”
His glance was haughtiness itself. “There was no possibility I wouldn’t destroy him.” His eyes narrowed with...reproof? “And I promised you protection.”
“You dare make it my fault I ended up in mortal danger when you executed your plan? When I couldn’t have known your promise would amount to anything, when you didn’t tell me anything of your real abilities, let alone purpose?”
“You dare ask why I didn’t when you were his accomplice?”
A bitter scoff escaped her. “You promoted me from passive accessory to active accomplice in under an hour? Wonder what you’d make me by the end of this conversation.”
“Whatever you call what you did, my desire for you didn’t blind me to the probability you’d run to him if I confided in you. It would have been an opportunity to entrench yourself further in his favor, adding indebtedness to his already pathological infatuation with you. And I was right.”
She closed the mouth that had dropped open at his preposterous interpretations. “Yeah? How so?”
“When a choice was to be made, not knowing my real ‘abilities,’ you chose the man you thought more powerful. This indicates what you would have done had you thought I was a threat to your billion-dollar meal ticket.” He shrugged his massive shoulders. “Not that I blame you. You thought you made the right choice based on available information. That you were grossly misinformed and therefore made a catastrophic mistake doesn’t make you a victim.”
Protests boiled in her blood. But there was no point in voicing any. She had no proof, as he’d said.
Even if she did, to whom would she submit it? To him? The mastermind of her misery?
Her shoulders slumped as the surge of aggression he’d provoked drained. “You have everything worked out, don’t you?”
“Very much so.”
