Читать онлайн книгу «Scandalously Expecting His Child» автора Olivia Gates

Scandalously Expecting His Child
Olivia Gates


“When were you going to tell me, Scarlett?”
“Tell you what?”
“That you’re pregnant.”
If Raiden had told her he was an alien, then flew around the room to prove it, she wouldn’t have been more stunned.
Slowly, carefully, as if testing her voice for the first time, she said, “Never, I guess. Since I’m not.”
His eyes suddenly took on a faraway look. “I have been feeling it in every inch of you. But I didn’t reach the obvious conclusion because I thought you’d tell me if it was true. But you didn’t.” His eyes focused on hers again, something enormous roiling in their depths. “Why, Scarlett? Was it because you thought we’d say goodbye and I didn’t have to know?”
* * *
Scandalously Expecting His Child is part of The Billionaires of Black Castle series: Only their dark pasts could lead these men to the light of true love.
Scandalously Expecting His Child
Olivia Gates


www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
OLIVIA GATES has always pursued creative passions such as singing and handicrafts. She still does, but only one of her passions grew gratifying enough, consuming enough, to become an ongoing career—writing.
She is most fulfilled when she is creating worlds and conflicts for her characters, then exploring and untangling them bit by bit, sharing her protagonists’ every heart-wrenching heartache and hope, their every heart-pounding doubt and trial, until she leads them to an indisputably earned and gloriously satisfying happy ending.
When she’s not writing, she is a doctor, a wife to her own alpha male and a mother to one brilliant girl and one demanding Angora cat. Visit Olivia at www.oliviagates.com (http://www.oliviagates.com).
To Stacy Boyd, my incredible editor, who’s supported me throughout the toughest two years of my life.
Contents
Cover (#ucb2f44ab-7c33-53de-b616-2dd5e368432d)
Introduction (#u5ffacea6-4ae4-506c-9f95-d35724acccb5)
Title Page (#ub4b6df47-aec6-5fd8-8ee3-afd76f7ee003)
About the Author (#uf74449a7-9dd8-54ed-a86a-28e24a23fbd4)
Dedication (#u14b962ff-3692-5a88-bbb7-c0c6113cf30e)
One (#ulink_496827ef-9d4c-5e4a-bc5e-135220118c74)
Two (#ulink_55b8f3e6-d0a2-5dab-95bc-0f2071efa2da)
Three (#ulink_20dd78b4-d0f8-5f6a-8d25-768dd1b02fc3)
Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Extract (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
One (#ulink_350f264d-7831-5b17-b1c9-992dbc00c43a)
Raiden Kuroshiro looked down at the woman standing beside him. Megumi was indeed her name. A beautiful blessing. With flawless white skin, gleaming raven hair and naturally red lips, she looked like a real live version of Snow White. And with her small, svelte body wrapped to perfection in that vivid blue dress, she did look like a fairy-tale princess. There was something regal about her bearing as she received everyone’s congratulations on their engagement. Their wedding was exactly ten weeks from tonight.
And he felt absolutely nothing for her.
Thankfully, her feelings for him were as nonexistent.
Which was as it should be.
The reasons he was marrying Megumi, and the ones she had to marry him, didn’t necessitate they even tolerated each other. Theirs would be a pure marriage of convenience.
Megumi looked up at him, ultrapoliteness playing on her dainty lips. Though smiling wasn’t one of his usual activities, it was easy to answer her smile. Not that he had anything to do with it. Known as an angel, Megumi would get along with the devil himself. Which she did. Raiden was known as a fiend. He’d been called that during his years as a mercenary, and worse as he’d slashed his way to the top of the venture capitalism field and carved himself a permanent place there.
“I can join my mother if you like.”
He barely heard Megumi over the traditional gagaku court music and the loud drone of the five hundred people filling the ballroom. It was the first time he’d been with that many members of Japanese society’s upper crust in one place. It was his goal not only to belong to that class but to rule it. Megumi knew that, and she was thoughtfully offering to slip away so he could make the most of the event without her hindering presence.
Though it was a tempting offer, he shook his head. He was under said upper crust’s microscope, and he knew it would be frowned upon to leave his bride-to-be in their first public appearance together, especially one dedicated to celebrating their impending union.
But at least he didn’t have to play the besotted groom, as he would have had to in Western societies. It was a relief that in Japanese society prospective partners in traditionally arranged marriages demonstrated nothing more than utmost courtesy to each other. Which was easy with Megumi. He didn’t have to feign gallantry with her.
Not that he liked her. He didn’t like anyone. Apart from his Black Castle “brothers”—who were integral parts of his own being—he categorized people in limited roles. He had allies, subordinates and enemies. Megumi fell somewhere between the first two categories. He’d made her position in his life clear, and she seemed accepting of it.
Which she should. He was the wealthiest, most powerful husband and future father of her children she could have. Even if he weren’t already the ultimate catch, as an obedient daughter, Megumi would have still married him. Her father wanted Raiden as family at any cost.
And that was the main reason he was marrying her. She was his only path to the one thing he’d dreamed of all his life, what he’d been working to achieve for the past ten years.
Reclaiming his birthright.
But though everything was going according to plan, one thing niggled at him. The other reason he was marrying Megumi was to have full-blooded Japanese heirs. Which meant he would have to...perform. He worried he wouldn’t be able to. Not without falling back on what managed to thaw his deep-frozen libido. Fantasizing about her.
It was galling he’d have to resort to this measure to...rise to the occasion, but he was brutally pragmatic. He’d resort to whatever worked. Hopefully only once. With careful timing, it might be all it took to impregnate Megumi.
After conception, it was another major relief that most Japanese wives in arranged marriages mostly retreated to their own quarters, with their lives from then on revolving around their baby. From what he’d been hearing about the society that was still alien to him, in the kind of marriage he was entering, it was accepted that a husband’s role was as a sperm donor and financier. His wife mostly relegated him to public social activities and appearances, with his intimacy sought again only when another baby was needed. Which was exactly the kind of marriage he wanted. The only kind he could stomach.
He looked at Megumi as she graciously smiled at another congratulator and wondered at his intense aversion to the idea of sex with her. If anyone knew he thought having sex with such a beauty was such a terrible fate, they’d question his virility. If they knew he’d have to invoke another woman’s memory to go through with it, they’d think him pathetic. If they knew that woman had been a fraud, they’d question his judgment. But if they knew that not even finding out the truth about her had lessened her hold over him, it would totally decimate the uncompromising identity he presented to the world.
Not that anyone would ever learn of her. Or of any of his other dark secrets. He’d accumulated unspeakable ones during the twenty years when he’d been The Organization’s slave. It was imperative the persona he’d built since his escape ten years ago remained unimpeachable. He wasn’t letting anything threaten his chances of reclaiming his heritage.
To that end, he had to follow this society’s rules until they became second nature to him. As they were to Megumi and her family. The family that had no idea he was one of them.
They’d never find out he was. But he would become one of them. He’d become a Hashimoto through marriage to—
Suddenly, a jolt speared through his body. It originated at his nape and forked down to his toes.
But the all-out alarm wasn’t one of danger. He was versed in recognizing threats. This red alert was one of awareness.
Without any change in expression or posture, he threw the net of his senses out before yanking it back, eliminating everything but the source of the disturbance.
The next second, Megumi gripped his forearm.
He frowned. Megumi never touched him. So had his reaction been in anticipation of her touch? But why would she suddenly wring such a jarring response from him?
Turning his gaze down to her, he was relieved to feel no reaction to her sight and now touch, as usual. But the awareness searing through him was intensifying. It took all his control not to look around for its origin.
“Matsuyama-san is approaching.”
So that was why she’d grabbed him so urgently—to draw his attention to the approach of their host. Hiro Matsuyama. The man who’d gone all-out holding this ball in his mansion. And his bitterest business rival in Japan.
It still felt weird being honored by an adversary. But that was an expected ritual in Japan. A necessary one even. Tradition and decorum were valued above all in business as in society. It would take him a while to get used to that, along with everything else, as he hadn’t been raised Japanese.
But then, he hadn’t been raised at all. From the age of four years old, he’d been forged. Into a lethal weapon.
He let adversaries glimpse that side of him to keep them in check, showing them what they were really up against. But though Hiro posed his biggest business threat, compared with the monsters Raiden had vanquished in his time, Hiro was harmless. No, his senses couldn’t be going haywire to herald his approach.
Turning to Megumi, he saw her eyes fixed, vaguely noted the glazed look in them, the tremor in her lower lip. His focus left her behind as the disruption grew in intensity.
Then he was facing Hiro...and the woman he had on his arm. And the realization was instantaneous.
She was the source of the disturbance.
She was the only female around who wasn’t Japanese. Even the non-Japanese businessmen in attendance were married to Japanese women. It was the only way to truly enter society, the path to the most solid form of business alliances in Japan.
Every eye in the ballroom seemed to be following her. The Japanese had strict parameters for their women’s beauty. But most were enamored with Caucasian beauty and coloring. Most men obsessed about Western women, even if few approached them, because many of the qualities they so admired in the safety of fantasy proved intimidating in reality. All of those qualities were present in this woman.
She towered above everyone, flaunted her height even more with high heels. Hiro was tall for a Japanese man at almost six feet, and she stood taller. Only a couple of inches short of looking six-foot-four Raiden in the eyes.
She stood out in every other way, too. Among all the dark-haired people around, she looked like a flame-haired Amazon, tanned, curvaceous, bodacious, oozing sexuality and confidence. And among all the women in soft or bright colors, she was the only one in fathomless black. She looked every voluptuous inch the femme fatale, the opposite of everything considered desirable in a Japanese woman, the antithesis of the petite, porcelain-skinned, delicate and demure Megumi. Though one look at prevalent Japanese porn said she was the epitome of the nation’s not-so-secret fantasies.
But he didn’t share those fantasies, had none really. That came from the total discipline he’d trained in from early childhood, to hone his skills to inhuman precision. During his years with The Organization, he hadn’t made use of the choice female companionship they’d provided to keep their agents placated. Since his escape, he’d remained as fastidious. The one time his shields had come crashing down had been with her.
But this woman was evoking the same...compulsion. When she wasn’t even looking at him.
His awareness clung to her even as he forced his gaze to pan to Hiro as he bowed to Megumi. Raiden barely registered that her hand dug deeper into his forearm. Everything in him was focused on the other woman.
Hiro bowed stiltedly in answer to his own compulsory bow, before resuming looking at Megumi. “May I introduce Ms. Scarlett Delacroix, Megumi-san?”
As the ladies exchanged bows, his eyes were dragged back to the woman’s profile. He barely tore them away as Hiro turned to him, his gaze colliding with his, the arm around Scarlett Delacroix’s nipped waist visibly tightening.
Was Hiro announcing his claim? Telling Raiden not to think of making a move? Hiro assumed he would, with his brand-new fiancée standing at his side?
That would make Hiro more astute than Raiden had thought. He did want to make a move. Which stunned him, because he never did.
But maybe Hiro wasn’t reading his aberrant reaction specifically, just believed Scarlett Delacroix was irresistible to any male. He would be right about that, too. If he with his ironclad control felt those unstoppable urges toward that vivid creature, other men must be champing at the bit.
But his reaction was indeed abnormal. He waded in gorgeous women and gave none a second glance. But this woman’s effect had nothing to do with her physical attributes. It was identical to her effect. His every sense was clamoring so loud, as if in recognition...
This was beyond pathetic. Projecting his reactions to a long-gone and deceitful lover onto other women.
But then he’d never had anything approaching this reaction to any other woman. It was only this woman, this Scarlett....
“Scarlett, please meet Raiden Kuroshiro.”
Hiro’s grudging introduction yanked him out of his insane musings to find her extending her hand. His rose involuntarily to meet it...and static sparked at their touch.
Her hand lurched away, a gasp escaping her full lips, before they spread in an exquisite bow. “Serves me right for going for an all-synthetic, antiwrinkle gown,” she said, explaining away the spark. “Now I need grounding.”
Her accent was American, her voice too low to fathom clearly in the background din, but its warmth speared through his loins, made him grit his teeth.
Hiro pulled her more securely to his side. “It must be a mere manifestation of your electrifying personality.”
Raiden aborted a snort at Hiro’s hackneyed comment. But what he couldn’t rein in was his rising hackles at Hiro’s possessive attitude. He couldn’t believe his reaction. He’d never felt confrontational with another man over a woman.
Then she turned fully to him, the smile on her lips not reaching her eyes as they met his for the first time. The bolt that hit him this time almost rocked him on his feet.
Those eyes. Those intense, luminescent sapphire blues. They were the same color of her eyes.
It was really getting ridiculous how he was trying to find similarities between the two completely different women.
“I hear congratulations are in order,” Scarlett murmured, her gaze flitting from his eyes to Megumi’s before he could hold it.
It couldn’t be she was shy. This was a woman who knew her power over men, a power that must have been perfected through years of practice and exercised at will. He was certain there wasn’t a diffident cell in that voluptuous body. So why didn’t she want to look him in the eye?
“Scarlett had a prior engagement.” Hiro turned to Scarlett, his gaze taking on a besotted edge. “But she still honored me with consenting to grace the ball.”
“How could I not, when you organize the best balls in the northern hemisphere, Hiro?” Scarlett turned to Megumi with a warm smile. “Between you and me, I was hoping that by meeting the guests of honor of this ball, I might get my first invitation to a high-society Japanese wedding.”
“If I’m invited—” Hiro shot Megumi a brief glance before resuming his adoration of Scarlett “—you certainly will be.”
“We’d be honored to have you both grace the wedding.” Megumi felt nowhere her usual serene self, her words brittle, her expression forced.
She didn’t like Scarlett? Probably not many women did. Scarlett must be an ego crusher, especially to those females who considered themselves beautiful. For she was magnificent.
“I trust this is also Kuroshiro-san’s sentiment?” Hiro asked, turning his challenging gaze to him.
In their previous meetings, Hiro had been reserved, but he’d made it clear their enmity would be kept to the financial battlefield. This time, though, he was struggling to hold back his aggression. Because he felt territorial over Scarlett?
Not that she’d given Hiro any reason to fear him. She’d barely looked in his direction so far.
Hiro, on the other hand, was still glaring at him, waiting for his corroboration. Raiden gave it to him with an inclination of his head.
Megumi’s hand tightened. Was she urging him to vocalize his response? He knew he had to comply, or it would be taken as an offense. His silence so far had been bad enough.
He didn’t feel like making a response. Right now the only thing he felt like doing was snatching Hiro’s arm off Scarlett’s waist and dragging her away from him.
Still, he said, “Matsuyama-san, Ms. Delacroix, your presence at our wedding isn’t only our privilege, it’s a necessity.”
His deferential words didn’t seem to appease Hiro. The man’s response was perplexing, since Hiro had not only insisted on holding this ball, but had brought to his attention the very woman he was visually wrestling him over.
Thankfully, the stilted meeting came to an end shortly afterward, and Hiro and Scarlett moved on. Raiden forced himself not to watch them walk away. Not to watch her. But he could no longer bear having Megumi by his side.
Looking down at her, he tried to smile, failing this time. “If it’s okay with you, Megumi, I’ll now take advantage of your kind offer to go make the rounds.”
“Of course.” Megumi stepped back, looking as relieved as he felt to finally separate.
Walking away, he forced himself to stop by a few congratulators. As soon as he saw an opening to get out of the ballroom, he took it. On his way out, he again saw Scarlett. She was heading out, too. Even from the back, and from a distance, the sense of familiarity swamped him all over again. The same intensity he’d experienced when he’d first seen her.
Her. That was how he’d always thought of the woman he’d known by the name of Hannah McPherson.
He’d met her in New York one bright summer afternoon five years ago, when she’d swerved her car to avoid hitting a reckless biker and crashed into his car instead.
From the moment she’d stepped out of her car, everything else had ceased to matter to him. The inexorable attraction he’d felt toward her had been something he’d never thought he could experience. He’d always told her she’d literally crashed into his life, and pulverized all his preconceptions and rules.
Ignoring his usual precautions, he hadn’t even performed the most basic investigation on her. It had been through her that he’d known her to be a kindergarten teacher by morning, and a florist who ran an inherited shop by afternoon.
When he’d taken her out that first night, she’d made it clear it wouldn’t go any further because he inhabited a world alien to hers. She hadn’t budged when he’d insisted that attraction like theirs bridged all differences. It had taken their first kiss for her to capitulate, concede that what had sprung between them had been unstoppable. And from that first night, he’d plunged with her into an incendiary affair.
Then after five delirious months, a single inexplicable discrepancy had led him to unravel an ingeniously spun web of fraud. And to an appalling verdict. That her identity had been manufactured just prior to meeting him.
It had all been a setup. Starting with the accident that had brought them together. She must have been sent by some rival to spy on him. And in their intimacy, he’d left himself wide-open. Whatever she’d been after, she could have found it.
But since no one had used privileged information against him yet, either she hadn’t found what she’d been looking for or she was waiting for the right time to leverage her intel from her recruiters. Or him. Or both.
Pretending to be oblivious until he’d decided how to deal with her, he’d called her. She’d been her usual bright, eager self at first, then as if hearing through his act, her voice had changed, becoming a stranger’s. Then she’d asked if he preferred she called him Lightning, or if he’d left that name behind when he’d escaped The Organization. And he’d realized it had been far worse than his worst fears.
It hadn’t been corporate espionage material she’d managed to get her hands on, but his most lethal secret. His previous identity. And she’d known its value, its danger. That its exposure would bring The Organization to his and his brothers’ doors. The Organization that needed them all dead.
His blood had frozen and boiled at once as she’d said it was just as well he’d brought the charade to an end so she could make her demands. Some money in exchange for her silence.
“Some money” had turned out to be fifty million dollars.
Enraged, he’d assured her he didn’t negotiate with blackmailers. He took them out. So it was in her best interest to keep what she knew to herself.
Unfazed by his threat, she’d said he’d never find her to carry it out, but that she’d had no wish to expose him, just needed the money. It was pocket change to him, so he should just pay without involving payback or pride. He also shouldn’t fear she’d ever ask for more or hold her knowledge over him in any other way. Once the transaction was complete, he could consider that she’d never existed. As she’d never truly had.
Though bitterness and fury had consumed him, cold logic had said that while he couldn’t trust his instincts or her, he could trust her sense of self-preservation. She’d already known how lethal he could be, and she wouldn’t risk extorting him again. This would be a one-off thing. It would end this catastrophic breach to his and his brothers’ security.
But he’d found himself wondering. If she really needed the money, he’d gladly help her, if only she’d tell him she’d been forced to spy on him, and that it hadn’t been all a lie.
His need to look the other way in return for such a reassurance had made him even angrier. At himself. Deciding to end the sordid interlude, he’d transferred the money to the offshore account she’d provided, what had been untraceable even to his formidable resources. As per her declaration, he’d never found any trace of her again. It had been as if she’d never existed. It had been truly over.
But it hadn’t ended. Not for him.
His obsession with her continued to torment him. It sank its talons the deepest when he was at his lowest ebb. It was at such times he yearned to turn to her, the only woman who’d touched his innermost being, to feel her vitality filling his arms, her empathy touching his soul, her passion igniting his cravings. Every time, he’d cursed her even more, for needing her still.
But his anger remained mostly directed at himself—the master of stealth who’d failed to detect the least trace of duplicity in her. And who, even after it had been proved, had remained inextricably under her spell.
Shaking himself out of the bitter musings, he now exited the ballroom in pursuit of that other woman who had wrung the same reactions from him.
Scarlett Delacroix was gracefully gliding across the mansion’s expansive terrace, descending the stairs to the traditional tea garden. In the light of a gibbous moon, her red tresses were the only splash of color and heat in the scene’s monotone coldness. The layered skirt of her black dress trailed after her like a piece of night that worshipped her lush figure.
Noting that Hiro’s bodyguards were monitoring her progress, he waited as she crossed the wooden bridge to the garden house, then set off in the opposite direction.
In minutes, he entered the building soundlessly from its southern entrance. The warmth of the interior advanced as if to greet him, but it was her aura that reached out and enveloped him as she stood looking out the screen window.
It was uncanny. His reaction to her was identical to his reaction to Hannah, when physically she couldn’t be more different. Still, he couldn’t shake that insane feeling. Or resist the preposterous impulse.
He stepped out of the shadows and strode toward her.
Without turning, she only shot him a sidelong glance. There was no doubt about it. She’d felt him there all along, had been waiting for him to make a move.
His heat rose as she resumed looking out to the exquisite moonlit garden. No one, no woman, certainly not Hannah, had ever treated him with such nonchalance.
He stopped a breath away, bent and placed his lips an inch from her ear. His words rustled the hair tucked behind it. “Why are you out here and not in that ballroom soaking up the collective adulation?”
Without giving any indication if his nearness affected her in any way, she said, “Not that I noticed such generalized fascination, but I came out for some fresh air and solitude. I’m a touch claustrophobic and agoraphobic. A full ballroom is my ultimate aversion.”
“Is it? Or are you just giving Hiro something he’s never experienced—a woman who can leave his side, who isn’t trying to court his favor with her every breath? If you walked away to test how deep your hook has sunk into him, are you now disappointed he hasn’t come running after you?”
“I plead not guilty to all of your assumptions, Mr. Kuroshiro. But the question is, why are you here? Why aren’t you back in that ballroom collecting oaths of allegiance and obedience? Can I assume my so-called hook has inadvertently sunk in you instead, and it has brought you running after me?”
“You can indeed assume, Ms. Delacroix.” He paused for a second, then decided to act on the unstoppable compulsion, no matter how absurd it was. “Or should I say Ms. McPherson?”
For an interminable stretch, there was absolutely no reaction from her. Nothing but total stillness and silence.
Then she turned her head to him, her heavily fringed, vibrantly blue eyes looking up at him in what looked like amusement. “I heard that right, didn’t I? You just implied I’m someone else? Someone you know?” A brief, tinkling chuckle escaped her dimpled lips. “That’s one line I was never given.”
His hands itched to clamp over the flesh that pulled at his instincts like inexorable gravity. He barely fought the temptation. “Because men approach you with protests that you’re like no one they’d ever met? Take heart. You’re still unique. So much so, even a totally different face and body didn’t stop me from recognizing you.”
There. The words were out. And they sounded ludicrous. At least, to his logic. His instincts said different. He’d follow those wherever they willed until it all played out.
Her eyebrows rose in incredulity before a considering expression came into her eyes. “Is this a game? You want me to pretend I’m this...McPherson woman? And will you be someone else, too? Someone free to indulge himself with a total stranger?” She turned fully to him, leaned back against the window frame over arms tucked behind her back. “I did hear role-playing is huge in Japan, but I wouldn’t have thought you’re the type who’d be into it. But then, maybe you’re just that. Someone who became a billionaire so young must lead a very stressful life. Maybe it’s your preferred method of defusing the pressures.”
Her every calm syllable, her steady gaze, made everything inside him churn.
His lips twisted grimly, mocking his runaway reaction, conceding her effect. “Your on-the-fly performance is impressive. But then, you always were the most spontaneous, undetectable imposter I’ve ever encountered.”
Only one delicately curved auburn eyebrow rose this time, and what seemed so much like real interest entered her gaze. “Have you encountered that many?”
“Hundreds. And I’ve seen through each of them at a hundred paces. It was only you who took me in, all the way. But I’m now immunized for life against falling for your charades again.”
She shook her head as if she’d had enough of playing his game. Then suddenly she tilted it at him, her gaze shedding its mockery, becoming smoldering. “You don’t need an outrageous approach to hook me, Mr. Kuroshiro. I’m already interested.”
That was something he hadn’t expected her to say. Not that he’d expected anything. He was flying blind here.
“You are?”
“Every female with only a brain wave would be.” She sighed. “Pity you’re engaged.”
“Does that even matter?”
“I guess it wouldn’t to someone like you. Even if I suspect that such a someone doesn’t exist, that you’re one of a kind. I expect you’re bound by no rules and consider no one in your decisions.”
“You already know this about me.”
“You mean this McPherson woman knows this about you.”
“Will you keep pretending you’re not her for long?”
She sighed again. “I already told you I’m interested. And since being engaged doesn’t deter you, it’s something actually in your favor, since you must only want something intense...and transient. The only kind of liaison I’m open to.”
“So Hiro hasn’t reserved a place in your bed yet?”
“Hiro, like everything else in my life, is of no concern to you and is off-limits to discussion. I do as I please, and no one has any claims on me.”
“I bet Hiro doesn’t know this part. Or he does, and you’re still dangling the bait. And while you wait until he swallows the whole fishing rod, you welcome diversions?”
“Why not? I’m a free agent so far.” She uncoiled to her full statuesque height. “But I’ve had enough of indulging your role-playing fetish. Let’s revisit this when you decide to talk to me, not your imaginary character.”
Without lingering one more second, she turned away. He watched her receding, a flame-haired goddess of the night dissolving into her domain, his thoughts tangling.
Had he made a gigantic fool of himself? All evidence said so. His instincts, however, still screamed their contradictory verdict.
Exasperation rumbled from his gut as he lunged after her, grabbed her by the waist and slammed her against his length.
A gasp swelled in her chest as he stabbed a hand into the heavy silk at her nape, tethering her head. In the golden illumination of fire-lit lanterns, her eyes held his in utmost composure, belying her ragged moan at his roughness. And he crashed his lips over hers, swallowing the intoxicating sound.
Her lips parted wide under his onslaught, letting him plunge into her depths, her flesh softening to accommodate his impacting hardness. Her surrender blazed through his nerves. But it was certainty that singed his every cell.
This. This was her unforgotten feel and taste, her inimitable delight. This was her.
The beast that had been perpetually clawing inside him finally tore free. It devoured her, everything inside him roaring with remembrance. Of every minute of deprivation of the five years after she’d left him. Craving more. Needing closure.
Then it swelled. Disgust. With himself. Over the only weakness he’d ever suffered, this susceptibility to her. It towered, then crashed, made him tear his lips from hers, push away from the body that had seemed to melt into his every recess.
Stumbling back at the abruptness of his withdrawal, she leaned against the nearest wall, the only discernible reaction to his explosive kiss her faster breathing.
Then, through those lips he’d just ravished, her voice washed over him, calm, collected...but hers at last.
“What gave me away?”
Two (#ulink_a63dc345-0848-59d8-9f5b-d07d6456e29f)
“Everything.”
The word boomed in the silence of the garden house. Its reverberations hung in the charged air between them, dripping with bitterness, heavy with five years of unresolved anger.
Not even a blip in her gaze or posture demonstrated any agitation. Only a slight tremor of her now-swollen lips betrayed any reaction to his fury. One that stilled at once, making him think he’d imagined it.
Which he probably had. Meeting him hadn’t fazed her at all. And why should it have? She’d come to the ball knowing she’d see him. It was he who’d gotten the shock of his life.
Then, as calmly, she said, “We both know that can’t be true. Not even I recognize the woman who looks back at me in the mirror as myself.”
She was right. Even on such close-up inspection, there wasn’t the least trace of his treacherous lover in her. He’d changed his looks to eliminate perfect resemblance to his old self, but she had totally different facial features and bone structure. Even her complexion looked different. Hannah had had alabaster skin, the kind he’d thought would burn, not tan. But this Scarlett’s tan looked effortless, her skin even, velvet honey. And the deep shade of burgundy of her hair looked natural, too, when Hannah had been an equally convincing platinum blonde. All those changes were certainly artificial, even if their result looked 100 percent real. The only changes that could be natural were her body’s. Maturity and heels could account for the appreciation in her curves and height.
But all in all, this woman bore no resemblance to the one who’d been in his bed every day of those five months, whose every inch he’d memorized and worshipped.
He cocked his head at her, drenching her from head to toe in disdain. “I assume this is my money’s worth? This total and undetectable transformation?”
Her expression remained tranquil, assessing him back. “I wouldn’t call it undetectable. At least, not anymore. You detected me.” She let out a conceding sigh. “I did have some incredibly costly surgeries to reconfigure my face from the bone structure up. And though your money did foot the bills, along with the other cosmetic and stylistic measures needed to complete the transformation, not even all that cost anywhere near fifty million dollars. The whole thing cost around two million. A couple more financed the creation of my new identity with a whole history and paper trail for it.”
“So you still have millions to spare. Or did you invest those into billions? Was that how you got into Hiro’s inner circle, through the doors only that kind of money opens?”
Her lashes lowered before rising to strike him with a flash of azure. “I sort of...crashed my way into that.”
His simmering blood tumbled in a boil. “So you’re still using your old tried-and-true methods.”
“Why change what works?” Suddenly her expression became distant, as if reversing into the past to the crash she’d manufactured to enter his life. “It was a different sort of crash.” Her eyes refocused on him, resumed being supremely placid. “Even if just as effective. But though I put your money to the best use possible, alas, the Midas touch that turns millions into ever-increasing billions remains firmly yours.”
Teeth gritting, he bunched hands stinging with the need to grab her again at his sides. “You seem very much at ease with divulging your machinations and secrets now.”
A graceful shoulder rose in an easy shrug. “You already found me out. And I’m still waiting to hear how you did.”
“It was your eyes.”
Those eyes filled with mock reprimand. “They were what I worked on most, so I’m pretty sure they’re unrecognizable.”
“I recognized the color.”
“You can’t possibly have recognized me from just that.”
“It’s a unique color, and changes hue in as unique a way. I used to be fascinated by its fluctuations, thought they corresponded to shifts in your emotions. Then I found out you have none, and those were just a response to variations in lighting.”
A still moment, then a tinge of sarcasm entered those eyes that were totally different, yet, to him, somehow exactly the same. “Are you telling me I owe being exposed to a fixation you had with my eye color and some trick of light I wasn’t even aware of? And you’re sticking with that story?”
“I felt you.”
His hiss wiped the provocation off her face. She’d cornered him into admitting her relentless hold over him, and that even without evidence, he’d always know her.
Now that the admission was out, he might as well go all the way. “I felt you before I turned to see you on Hiro’s arm. Not even millions of dollars’ worth of permanent disguise was able to wipe off the inimitable imprint you left on my senses.” He cocked his head, his gaze spearing hers. “How about that story? You find it more plausible? More satisfactory?”
Her gaze had emptied, and now her voice followed suit. “I had no idea I’d left such an indelible mark. It’s why I thought it okay to come here tonight. I thought there was no danger you’d sense the least familiarity, let alone recognize me outright. I met many people who knew me well in my previous...incarnations, and none even felt any vague resemblance.”
“I’m not ‘people.’”
Her nod conceded that. “I know in your previous incarnation you were said to have senses so acute, it made you a ninja in a class of your own. I couldn’t tell if those reports were exaggerations. Now I know they weren’t.”
“You had reason to believe they were outright lies, with the way said senses were disabled around you. I had no inkling of your deceit for five straight months of ultimate intimacy.”
Her fixed glance remained unchanged as her head tilted to one side, sending the curtain of her loose silk curls swishing over her polished shoulder. “Speaking of that, I always wondered what finally gave me away that time.”
He was damned if he’d give her the satisfaction, and the security, of knowing it had been total chance that had finally alerted him, and not his allegedly infallible abilities.
“You want to find out so you’ll never repeat the lapse, hone your deception powers to perfection? Sorry, you’ll have to keep on wondering. And worrying.”
“Oh, I never worry. Even in the rare times I slip up, I always manage to compensate. As I did when I preempted you.”
How she’d realized he’d found her out back then had remained a major question mark. Needing an answer to it had even outstripped his need to find his lineage in the past years.
Wrestling with the urge to pounce on her and force her to tell him now, he tried to match her nonchalance. “And now? How will you preempt me this time?”
A sigh accompanied a regretful shake of that elegant head. “It really would have been better for everyone if you didn’t recognize me.”
“Everyone meaning you.”
“Everyone meaning everyone. Starting by you.”
A vicious huff crackled from his depths. “You’re implying knowing your real identity poses danger to me, too?”
“It poses danger to you...only.” Before he processed that outrageous statement, she added, “And you don’t know my real identity.”
Giving in, he obliterated the distance he’d put between them. He needed a physical reinforcement of his dominance, feeling he was on the losing side of this confrontation.
He regretted it the moment he drew his next breath. Though she’d been so thorough in her disguise to the point of changing the soap and perfume she’d used before, her own scent deluged him, even through the masking of new adornments. Hot, vital, intoxicating. The exact bouquet that had been the only one to activate his libido.
Glaring down at her, as if it would shift the balance of power in his favor, he said, “I know this one is fabricated. As was the one before it. Which should be enough. So explain to me how this knowledge, when it’s clearly a secret you’ve kept from everyone here, wouldn’t impact you.”
“It would cause me intense inconvenience. But it’s you who stands to suffer major damage if you expose me.” Before he scoffed at that preposterous declaration, she asked, “But really, why would you want to expose me at all?”
“To stop you from setting Hiro up.”
After a moment, when it looked as if she didn’t get his meaning, incredulity coated her face. “What makes you think I’m doing any such thing? Because you consider I set you up?”
“And you don’t? What do you call what you did to me?” He waved, stopping any argument in its tracks. Haggling over facts turned them into points of view that could be contested and rewritten. And he was damned if he’d let her do that. “Whatever you’re doing, it’s criminal.”
“Because I’m withholding my real identity? Pot calling the kettle black much?” Her full lips twisted. “And if you’re citing my past actions in your unsubstantiated accusations, I did nothing criminal with you. I actually...helped you.”
It was his turn to cough in disbelief. “Sure, by systematically deceiving me for five months, then leaving a fifty-million-dollar gaping hole in my liquid assets. I bet that’s every man’s idea of ‘help.’”
“It isn’t a crime to con a con man. I was sent to expose an assassin who was posing as a squeaky-clean businessman. The only crimes were in your past, not mine.”
He gaped at her, astounded all over again. Even after he’d found out she’d conned him, after she’d blackmailed him, he’d thought she’d held her own with him only because he’d been in a precarious position, and more important, because they’d had their confrontation over the phone. If they’d been face-to-face, he’d always thought she wouldn’t have been able to maintain her poise.
But this woman with the steely self-possession could stare down the scariest monsters he’d ever dealt with and not turn a hair. If she could hold him at a disadvantage with such effortlessness when he’d thought she would be vulnerable and off balance, no one else would stand a chance against her.
He shook his head. “I didn’t choose my old persona. It wasn’t the real me. This new one I created is. I bet you can’t say the same about yourself. So whatever you call what you do for a living, I call you a professional fraud, out of choice. And whatever elaborate deception you’re perpetrating now, I will stop you. I let you get away with deceiving me once. I’m not letting you get away with anything again.”
He’d let his lethal side surface as he talked. Expecting exposure to it to shake her at last, he was again amazed when she met his menace head-on.
“You can only ‘stop’ me if you expose me. And you can’t, because it would mean exposing yourself.”
He coughed in incredulity. “Are you threatening me?”
“You’re the one who’s threatening to strike me down like your old code name. I’m just pointing out that your righteousness is blinding you to the fact that it’s in your best interests to keep my secrets. Why do you think I was so free with them?”
“Because you think I can’t do anything with what I know?”
“Not if you want what I know to remain buried.”
“You are threatening me, then.”
Something like exasperation tinged her gaze. “I once promised I’d never hold my knowledge over you, and I remain at my word.” When he glowered at her, failing to find any words to express what collided inside his head and chest, she exhaled. “Listen, Raiden, you’re the one who can create this impasse, and you mustn’t. Not when you’re mere steps from attaining the family and the status you’ve craved all your life.”
His heart convulsed. She knew this?
Though it shocked him, it stood to reason. Through his obliviousness, his misplaced trust, this woman had somehow once found out his every secret. It must have been easy for someone of her shrewdness to extrapolate his life goals and future plans. Now that she knew the arrangement he had with Megumi and her father, as it had been announced in society already, the details must have been as obvious to her.
It made sense, but it still galled him that she knew so much about him when he knew nothing about her, except what she made him feel, how she still had such power over him.
As if reading his mind, something like gentle persuasion entered her gaze. “Whatever you feel about me, no matter your burning desire to punish me for my transgressions against you, I’m not worth tarnishing the perfect image you’ve worked so hard and long to create. And that would certainly happen if you expose me. For what would you say I blackmailed you for? You can’t say that you succumbed to my blackmail, since it would make you look weak, or that you needed to hide something that badly. If you expose me anonymously, once the mess is out in the open, details have a way of surfacing, of becoming land mines you never know which step will set off.”
Fury, and something else he hadn’t felt since he was a child—futility—mushroomed inside him.
Everything she’d said was true. Any action against her now, in this delicate time, would have consequences, and the fallout would inescapably harm him. If not now, then later. Whatever impacted him, it would surely drag his brothers in by association. So he couldn’t act on the burning desire to punish her, as she’d so accurately put it.
When he made no response, she prodded, that same chafing gentleness in her tone. “Why don’t you let me be and go about your business? Your wedding and adopting your family name are just over two months from now, and you can’t afford to let anything sabotage that.”
She was right again. Damn her.
But there was one thing he wasn’t backing down from. “I will let you be, on one condition. That you keep away from Hiro. I’m not letting you exploit him as you did me.”
It seemed he had finally managed to surprise her. Her eyes, those eyes that in spite of everything he wanted to drown in, widened. “You’re really worried about him? I thought, as his number one rival, you’d welcome whatever misfortune befell him.”
“I certainly wouldn’t. I fight my adversaries with merit. I wouldn’t want to win dishonorably.”
“It wouldn’t be dishonorable if someone else felled him for you.”
“It would be if I knew of his jeopardy and looked the other way. And I won’t.”
“This is about honor, isn’t it? You’re really taking integrating into your new society to the limit, huh?”
“You may never understand what honor is, but it’s the most important thing to me, and I would do anything to satisfy mine. Even if it means risking my plans.”
He held her incandescent gaze as it fluctuated through the range of blue-and-violet spectrum in the softly shifting lights. He imbued his own with his contempt, and his conviction.
She finally shook her head. “You don’t have to do that. And you don’t have to worry about Hiro. I’d never hurt him.”
A skewer twisted in his gut. The way she’d said that... That look in her eyes... It was as if she truly cared for Hiro.
Then the icicles of memory sank into his core, numbing the ache. She’d once looked at him with the same profound emotions. Her ability to project genuineness was unheard of. She could be doing the same now. She must be.
“I can almost see you rejecting what I just said as more fraud.” Her eyes were opaque, her voice hushed. “I can’t do anything about that, but I can about something else. Before anyone realizes you’re here with me, leaving your fiancée back there, and you cause yourself unneeded scandal, I’ll do you a favor and do what you seem unable to do. I’ll walk away. Let me do that and you can forget all about me again.”
With that, she strode to the door she’d entered from. At the threshold, she paused, turned, and the crisp night wind blew her hair toward him like tongues of flame.
Before he could storm after her as every cell in his body was screaming for him to, her voice carried to him across the still warmth, lilting, husky, exactly what had poured into his brain on their transfiguring nights of passion.
“You won’t believe this either, Raiden, but it was...nice seeing you again. This time, I at least get to say goodbye.”
* * *
Scarlett walked away steadily. Her five-inch heels clicked on the wooden bridge leading away from the garden house over the pond in a rhythmic, deliberate staccato.
Inside her, absolute chaos raged.
This confrontation with Raiden had been a total shock. It hadn’t even been a possibility in her mind coming here.
When Hiro had called her a few hours ago, insisting that she attended this ball, she’d been loath to agree. Even with a new face and identity, she dreaded social functions and suffocated under scrutiny. Looking the way she did now, and being a gaijin, as foreigners were called in Japan, and Hiro’s personal companion to boot, she’d been certain she’d be put under the microscope of public interest. But she’d agreed without letting Hiro know of her aversion. She’d do anything for him.
Then he’d told her he was sending her the dress he wanted her to wear, and her dormant curiosity had been roused. But it had been when she’d noticed he’d sounded nothing like his warmly indulgent and coolly humorous self, but nervous, urgent and sour, that she’d gently probed.
And he’d told her what he’d withheld from her for months—why he’d been holding this ball, and for whom. The woman he wanted. She’d become engaged to another, obeying her family’s demands. He’d wanted to show her he wouldn’t be mourning her loss, had an exotic beauty on whom to bestow the affections she’d rejected. Then he’d told her the name of the man he’d lost his woman to. Raiden.
After that, she’d been as anxious as he about this ball.
During the past three years, after she’d resurfaced with her new identity, she’d seen Raiden many times, all from afar. He’d even been the indirect reason she’d come to Japan. Seeing him up close again was a whole different ball game, the anticipation eating her up with agitation and eagerness.
So she’d dressed up as Hiro had wanted, played the role he’d wanted her to play when he’d taken her to Raiden and his fiancée. Empathy at Hiro’s suffering at Megumi’s sight had been intensified by her upheaval at Raiden’s nearness. Seeing him face-to-face had felt like a direct blow to the heart.
But she’d played her part for Hiro’s sake, and had almost sagged in his stiff hold when he, too, hadn’t been able to bear Megumi’s nearness any longer and cut their confrontation short. She’d thought that had been it.
Not for a second had she considered Raiden might see any similarity between the new her and the casually dressing, flat shoe–wearing, slim blonde he’d once known. So even when she’d felt him following her, she’d thought he’d been pursuing Hiro’s new romantic interest. The Raiden she’d known wouldn’t have struck at an adversary that way, but then he could have changed since she’d betrayed him.
Then he’d confronted her, and every meticulously erected pillar maintaining her cohesion had crumbled in shock.
But she’d been trained too well, through too many brutal tests. She’d acted her way to perfection through her life’s worst situations. And she’d had plenty of nightmarish ones. None, however, had ever affected her as her time with Raiden had.
In the garden house, she’d still fallen back on her fail-safe maneuvers, trapping her agitation in her deepest recesses, plastering one of her automated reaction modes on the surface. But then he’d taken her in his arms, drowned her in a kiss that had dissolved the last vestiges of her facade. And she’d given up the pretense.
What had followed had been agonizing. But she hoped she’d maintained a semblance of indifference all through.
One thing held her together now as she walked away from Raiden. Knowing that he’d heed her warning and leave her alone. She’d never see or hear from him again. Or if she did, he’d pretend she was the total stranger he’d just met tonight.
Not that he didn’t hate it. She’d felt him seething to obey the urge to do her major damage, equivalent to what he considered she’d caused him. She could feel his gaze on her all the way to the mansion’s entrance, bombarding her with his pent-up rage and contempt.
By the time she reached one of Hiro’s limos, she’d expended the last of her balance. After forcing her rented apartment’s address in Shibuya out of unsteady lips to the unknown driver, she flopped back in her seat, her nerves in pieces, her muscles like trembling jelly.
Exhaling forcibly to expel her agitation, she tried to luxuriate in the sights of Tokyo at night. The city was one of the most exotic and exciting places she’d ever been, and her life had taken her almost everywhere.
She soon gave up, resigned she’d see nothing during the hour’s drive but Raiden’s magnificent, wrathful face. Would feel nothing but regurgitated turmoil and searing memories.
Had it really been five years? The insane whirlpool of events as she’d reinvented herself since made her feel as if it had been fifty years. But his memory was so intense, it could have been five days since she’d last seen him. She hadn’t forgotten a thing about him. His beauty was as indescribable as she remembered, and his effect on her was as overpowering.
When she’d been sent to spy on him, all she’d known was that he was an American billionaire venture capitalist of Japanese origins. His business past was impeccable and his personal one unremarkable, having been born to a single mother who’d died when he’d been ten, placing him in the foster system until he’d been eighteen. Then he’d traveled the world before coming back to the States at twenty-six, and he’d been soaring through the venture capitalism field since. He’d been twenty-nine when she’d met him and already a billionaire. Now at thirty-four, he was at the undisputable top, with a handful of others, one of whom was Hiro.
But her recruiter was convinced Raiden was a former assassin, and had sent her to get intimate with Raiden and get solid proof. And she had. Through the full access Raiden had given her to his domain, she’d used her special training to breach his secret records and gotten that proof.
But it had been years of research later that had put together his real life story. What he himself hadn’t known when he’d been with her. It had been just months ago that she’d worked out just how he’d become that ninja assassin called Lightning.
He’d been two when he’d lost his family in an earthquake and tsunami that hit the rural Akita Prefecture in Japan. Taken to a shelter in the aftermath, he’d remained there for two years until his extraordinary agility had brought him to the attention of a “recruiter” for The Organization, a shadow operation that took children and turned them into unstoppable mercenaries who executed top-risk operations for the highest bidders. Pretending she was a relative, the recruiter had taken him only to sell him to The Organization.
He’d been among hundreds of boys taken from all over the world, kept segregated in a remote area in the Balkans, viciously trained and molded until they graduated to fieldwork. They performed missions under strict surveillance from their personal handlers. Death was the only punishment for any attempts at subordination or escape. But he’d been one of a few who’d ever escaped. She suspected some or even all of his partners in Black Castle Enterprises were also escapees.
She’d often wondered if he’d called himself Raiden, the god of thunder and lightning in Japan, to reflect his code name when he’d been the ultimate ninja warrior, so certain no one would ever tie him to his former identity. His cover was ingenious, after all, and it was a common enough name. As for Kuroshiro, that literally meant Black Castle. She’d also wondered if he’d picked it after the name of his joint enterprise with his partners, or if they’d taken his....
Suddenly she almost spilled out of the limo. Her driver had opened her door. She hadn’t even noticed they’d stopped.
Pulling herself together and out of the past, she thanked him, stepped out and walked into her building.
Looking around the chic foyer on her way to the elevator and her thirtieth-floor unit, she felt thankful all over again to Hiro for making it possible for her to be here.
When she’d first come to Japan just over a year ago and tried to rent a place, she’d learned what the Japanese phrase hikoshibimbo meant. It literally meant “moving poor.” The humongous sum of cash that renters had to dish out up front invariably left them impoverished.
Since she’d had no cash in any sums, it hadn’t been an option. After she’d met Hiro, and he’d discovered she’d been sleeping on the floor of the UNICEF regional office where she worked, he’d been appalled and insisted on accommodating her.
She’d refused to stay in his mansion, since being in someone’s debt and in their domain was anathema to her. Autonomy and seclusion were a vital necessity to her. She’d also declined the exorbitant apartment he’d gotten her near his home. He’d protested that he had billions, was still around to spend them only thanks to her. She’d argued that even if the place came for free, it was too far from her work downtown.
In the end, he’d still gotten her a “mansion,” as recently built large apartments were called in Tokyo. The place was expensive, but now that she did some part-time consulting work for him, she could accept the home in lieu of a salary.
She now entered the apartment, sighed in pleasure at feeling cocooned in its sound-insulated exquisite mixture of modern and traditional Japanese ambiance. Kicking off her towering sandals, she moaned in relief as her feet flattened against the tatami, the traditional Japanese flooring made of rice straw with a covering of soft, woven igusa straw. Walking on it was physiotherapy all unto itself.
Tossing her wrap onto the coat rack, she wanted only to fall facedown on her equally therapeutic traditional Japanese bed and descend into a deep coma. It was a small blessing she had no work tomorrow.
Hopefully, after a day in her pajamas, she’d regain a semblance of the normalcy she’d worked so hard to achieve. A normalcy that seeing Raiden had pulverized all over again.
Crossing the living room on her way to her bedroom, she suddenly stopped when an electrifying sensation skittered up her spine. All her senses went haywire, telling her she wasn’t alone. Before they could tell her more, a voice came from behind her, sending her every cell screaming.
“Welcome home, darling.”
Three (#ulink_7b95e65c-0107-5d22-818c-6a3e2cc06d16)
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.”

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