“I want you to say it, Isabella.”

The devouring note in his voice and the look in his eyes had her heart ramming against her ribs as if unable to bear the confinement.

“I want you to say you’ve craved reclaiming what we had. That every time you closed your eyes, I was there, in your mind, on your tongue, all over you and inside you, giving you everything only I could ever give you.”

Every word he said, soaked in hunger, seething with demand, brought a wave of wet heat surging in her core, her body readying itself for its master doing all the things she’d yearned for, as he’d said, for years, during every moment she had to herself.

Yet she still had to resist. Because of what he’d done to her in the past. And now.

* * *

Claiming His Secret Son is part of The Billionaires of Black Castle series: Only their dark pasts could lead these men to the light of true love.

Claiming His

Secret Son

Olivia Gates

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.

To the romance writing community—editors, authors, reviewers and readers—who helped me realize not one but two major life goals. This one is for you. Love you all.

Contents

Cover

Introduction

Title Page

About the Author

Dedication

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Extract

Copyright

One

Richard Graves adjusted his electric recliner, sipped a mouthful of straight bourbon and hit Pause.

The image on the hundred-plus-inch TV screen stilled, eliminating the unsteadiness of the recording. Murdock, his second-in-command, had taken the footage while following his quarry on foot. The quality was expectedly unsatisfactory, but the frame he’d paused was clear enough to bring a smile to his lips.

The only time a smile touched his lips, or he experienced emotions of any sort, was when he looked at her. At that graceful figure and energetic step, that animated face and streaming raven hair. At least, he guessed they were emotions. He had no frame of reference. Not in the past quarter of a century.

What he remembered feeling in his youth was so distant, it was as if he’d heard about it from someone else. Which was accurate. The boy he’d been before he’d joined The Organization—the criminal cartel that abducted and imprisoned children and turned them into unstoppable mercenaries—though as tough as nails, still held no resemblance to the invulnerable bastard everyone believed him—rightfully so—to be.

From what he remembered before his metamorphosis, and even after it, the most he’d felt had been allegiance, protectiveness, responsibility. For his best-friend-turned-nemesis Numair, for his disciple-turned-ally Rafael and to varying degrees for the Black Castle blokes—his reluctant partners in their globe-spanning business empire, Black Castle Enterprises—and their own. But that was where he drew the line in noble sentiments. What came naturally to him were dark, extreme, vicious ones. Power lust, vengeance, mercilessness.

So it never failed to stun him when beholding her provoked something he’d believed himself incapable of feeling. What he could only diagnose as...tenderness. He’d been feeling it regularly since he’d upgraded his daily ritual of reading surveillance reports on her to watching footage of what Murdock thought were relevant parts of her day.

Anyone, starting with her, would be horrified to learn he’d been keeping her under a microscope for years. And interfering in her life however he saw fit, undetectably changing the dynamics of the world she inhabited. He broke a dozen laws on a daily basis, from breach of privacy to coercion to...far worse, in his ongoing mission of being her guardian demon. Not that this was even a concern. The law existed for him to either break...or wield as a weapon.

But he was concerned she’d ever sense his surveillance or suspect his interference. Even if she never suspected it was him behind it all.

After all, she didn’t even know he was alive.

As far as she knew he’d been lost since she was six. He doubted she even remembered him. Even if she did, it was best for her to continue thinking him gone, too.

Like the rest of their family.

So he only watched over her. As he had since she was born. At least, he’d tried to. There’d been years when he’d been powerless to protect her. But the moment he could, he’d given her a second chance for a safe and normal existence.

He sighed as he froze another image. He vividly remembered the day his parents had brought her home. Such a tiny, helpless creature. He’d been the one to give her her name. His little Rose.

She wasn’t little now and certainly not helpless, but a surgeon, a wife, a mother and a social activist. He might help her here and there, but her achievements had all been ones of merit. He just made sure she got what she worked so hard for and abundantly deserved.

Now she had a successful career, a vocation and a husband who adored her—one he’d thoroughly vetted before letting him near her—and two children. Her family was picture-perfect, and not only on the outside.

Unfreezing the video, he huffed and tossed back the last of the bourbon. If only the Black Castle lads knew that he, aka Cobra, the most lethal operative The Organization had ever known and who was now responsible for their collective security, spent his evenings watching the sister they didn’t know existed, who didn’t know he existed, go about her very normal life. He’d never hear the end of it.

Suddenly he frowned, realizing something.

This footage didn’t make sense. Rose was entering her and her husband’s new private practice in Lower Manhattan. Murdock always only included new developments, emergencies or anything else that was out of the ordinary.

So watching Rose was his only source of enjoyment. But when he’d told Murdock to provide samples of Rose’s normal activities, he’d stared emptily at him then continued to provide him only with what he considered worth seeing.

Had Murdock now decided to heed him and start giving him snippets of Rose walking down the street or shopping or picking her children up from school?

He snorted. That Vulcan would never do anything he didn’t consider logical or pertinent. Even if he obeyed him blindly otherwise, Murdock wouldn’t fulfill a demand he considered to be fueled by pointless sentiment and a waste of both their time.

This meant there was more to what he was watching than Rose entering her workplace.

What was he missing here?

Suddenly his heart seemed to hit Pause itself. Everything inside him followed suit, coming to a juddering standstill.

The person who entered the frame, the one Rose turned to talk to in such delight... Though the image was still from the back with only a hint of a profile apparent, he’d know that shape, that...being...blindfolded in a crowd of a million.

Her.

Sitting up, exercising the same caution he’d approached armed bombs with, he reached to the side table, vaguely noting how the glass rattled as he set it down. It wasn’t his hand that shook. It was his heart. The heart that never crossed sixty beats per minute even under extreme duress. It now exploded from its momentary cessation in thunderclaps, sending recoil jolting through every artery and nerve.

The once waist-length, golden hair was now a dark, shoulder-length curtain. The body once rife with dangerous curves was svelte and athletic in a prim skirt suit. But there wasn’t the slightest doubt in his mind. That was her.

Isabella.

The woman he’d once craved with a force that had threatened the fulfillment of his lifelong obsession.

He’d long resolved it according to his meticulous plan. It was her issue that hadn’t been concluded satisfactorily. Or at all. She’d been his one feebleness, remained his only failure. The only one who’d made him swerve from his course and at times forget all about it. She remained the only woman he’d been unable—unwilling to use. But he’d let her use him. After their incendiary fling, when a choice had had to be made, she’d told him he’d never been an option.

Not that the memory of his one lapse was what had set off this detonation of aggression.

It was who she was. What she was.

The wife of the man who’d been responsible for the deaths of his family and for orphaning Rose.

He’d gone after her almost nine years ago as her husband’s only Achilles’ heel. But nothing had gone according to plan.

Her impact had been unprecedented. And it had had nothing to do with her rare beauty. Beauty never turned a hair on his head. Desire was his weapon, never his weakness. He’d been the one The Organization sent when women were involved, to seduce, use, then discard with utmost coldness.

But she’d been an enigma. At once clearly reveling in being the wife of a brute forty years her senior, who doted on her and submerged her in luxuries, while studying to be a doctor and involving herself in many humanitarian activities.

Going in, he’d been convinced her benevolent facade had been designed to launder her husband’s image, in which she’d been succeeding, spectacularly.

But after he’d been exposed to her, this twenty-four-year-old who seemed much older than her years, he’d no longer been sure of anything. Seducing her had also proved much harder than he’d anticipated.

Though he’d been certain she’d reciprocated his unstoppable desire, she wouldn’t let him near. Thinking she’d been only whetting his appetite until he was ready to do anything for a taste of her, as her husband had been, he’d intensified his pursuit. But it had only been after he’d followed her on a relief mission in Colombia—saving her and her companions during a guerilla attack—that her resistance had finally crumbled. The following four months had been the most delirious experience of his life.

He’d had to force himself to remember who she was to continue his mission. But it had been the hardest thing he’d ever done. When he’d had her in his arms, when he’d been inside her, he’d forgotten who he was.

But he’d finally extracted secrets only she’d known about her husband without her realizing it. Then he’d been ready to make his move. Not that it had been that easy.

Putting his plan into action had meant the end of his mission. The end of them. And he’d been unable to stomach walking away from her. He’d wanted more of her. Limitlessly more.

So he’d done what he’d never thought he’d do. He’d asked her to leave with him.

Though she’d claimed she couldn’t think of life without him, her rejection had been instantaneous. And final. She’d never considered leaving her husband for him.

In his fever for a continuation of the affair, he’d convinced himself she’d refused because she feared her husband. So he’d pledged carte blanche of his protection.

But playing the distraught lover seamlessly, she’d still refused, adamant that there was no other way.

It had been only then that the red heat of coveting had hardened into the cold steel of cynicism. And he’d faced the truth.

She’d preferred her protection and luxury from the less-demanding man she’d married when she’d been twenty and had wrapped around her finger. Him, she’d only replace in her bed. There’d never been any reason she’d choose him over her decades-older ogre.

But he was certain she’d long regretted her choice when he’d shortly afterward destroyed her sugar daddy, protractedly, agonizingly, pulverizing her own life of excess with him.

Not that he’d cared what had happened to her. She’d made her bed of thorns thinking it was the lap of eternal luxury. It was only fitting she’d be torn apart lying in it.

But this searing vision from his past looked patently whole. Even in the video’s inferior quality, he could sense her sangfroid. None of the hardships she must have suffered had come close to touching her.

Then it was over. The two women entered the building, and the video came to an abrupt end.

He stared at the black screen, questions an erupting geyser.

What was she doing at Rose’s practice? This didn’t seem to be a first-time meeting. So how had he missed the earlier ones leading to this level of familiarity? How had she come in touch with Rose at all?

This couldn’t be a coincidence.

But what else could it be? There was no way she could know of his connection to Rose. His Richard Graves persona—the one he’d adopted after he’d left his Cobra days behind—had been meticulously manufactured. Not even The Organization with its limitless intelligence resources had found a shred of evidence tying him to their vanished agent.

Even if she’d somehow discovered the relationship between him and Rose, their affair had ended in unequivocal finality. No thanks to his own resolve. While he’d sworn he’d never check on her, he’d weakened on another front. He’d left the door ajar for a year afterward, in case she’d wanted to reestablish contact. Which she hadn’t. If she’d wanted to do so now, she would have found a way to bring herself to his attention. It didn’t make sense she’d target Rose to get to him. Or did it?

He exploded to his feet, snatched his phone out and punched Murdock’s speed-dial number.

The moment the line opened, he barked, “Talk to me.”

After a moment Murdock’s deep voice was at once composed and surprised. “Sir?”

Impatience almost boiled his blood. “The woman with my sister. What was she doing with her?”

“It’s all in the report, sir.”

“Bloody hell, Murdock, I’m not reading your thirty-page report.”

Silence greeted his snarl this time. Murdock must be stunned, since that was exactly what Richard had been doing for the past year. Murdock’s documentation of Rose’s every breath had been getting more extensive at his own demand. But right now he couldn’t focus on a single paragraph.

“Everything I found out about Dr. Anderson’s liaison with the woman in question is in the last two pages, sir.”

“Did you sustain a serious head injury lately, Murdock? Am I not talking the Queen’s English? I’m not reading two damned words. I want your verbal report. Now.”

At his barrage the man’s chagrin almost crackled down the line, reminding him again that Owen Murdock was a relic of a bygone era.

Richard had always thought he’d be more at home in something like King Arthur’s round table. He did treat Richard with the fervor of a knight in the service of his liege.

He’d been the first boy Richard had been given to train when he’d first joined The Organization as a handler...six years old to his own sixteen, making Murdock Rafael’s age. He’d had him for six more years before Murdock had been taken from him and Rafael given to him instead.

Murdock had refused to accept anyone else’s leadership, until Richard had been summoned to straighten him out. Richard had only told him to play along, that one day he’d get him out. Murdock had unquestioningly obeyed him. And believed him.

Richard had fulfilled his pledge, taking him away with him when he’d left, manufacturing a new identity for him, too. But instead of striking out on his own, Murdock had insisted on remaining in his service, claiming his training hadn’t been complete. He’d actually been on par with the rest of the Black Castle chaps from day one, could have become a mogul in his own right, too. But Murdock had only wished to repay what he considered his debt to Richard before he could move on. Knowing how vital that had been to him, Richard had let him.

Now, ten years later, Murdock showed no signs of moving on. He’d have to shove him off the ledge soon, no matter if it would be like losing his right arm for real.

Murdock’s current silence made Richard regret his outburst more. His number two prided himself on always anticipating his needs and surpassing his expectations. The last thing he wanted was to abuse such loyalty.

Before he made a retraction, Murdock talked, his tone betraying no resentment or mortification.

“Very well. At first, that woman appeared to be just another colleague of Dr. Anderson’s. I ran a check on her, as I always do, and found nothing of note. But a development made me dig deeper. I discovered she’d changed her name legally five years ago, just before she made her first entry into the United States after a six-year hiatus. Her name was...”

“Isabella Burton.”

Murdock digested the fact that Richard already knew her. He’d told neither him nor Rafael about the intensely personal mission he’d undertaken, or about her.

Murdock continued, “She’s now Dr. Isabella Sandoval.”

Sandoval. That wasn’t either of her maiden names. Coming from Colombia, she’d had two. She must have been trying to become someone else when she’d adopted the new surname, after what had happened to her husband. That would also explain the changes in her appearance. And she was a doctor now.

Murdock went on, “But that wasn’t what made me wary—what made me single out her meeting with Dr. Anderson to present to you. It’s because I found a gaping thirteen-year hole in her history. From the age of twelve to the age of twenty-five, I couldn’t find a shred of information on her.”

Of course. She’d wiped clean the time she’d been Burton’s wife, and for some reason only known to her, years before that. No doubt to hide more incriminating evidence that would prevent her from being accepted by any respectful society.

“The information trail starts when she was twenty-six, when she started a four-year surgical residency in Colombia, in affiliation with a pediatric surgery program in California. It was a special ‘out of the match’ residency arrangement with the chief of surgery of a major teaching hospital. She obtained her US credentials and board certification last year. Then a week ago, she arrived in the United States and signed a one-year lease on a six-bedroom house in the Forest Hills Gardens section of Queens. She is here at the behest of doctors Rose and Jeffrey Anderson to start working in their private practice as a full partner, major shareholder and board member.”

After that, Richard didn’t know when he ended the call.

He only knew he was replaying that video over and over, Murdock’s words a revolving loop in his mind.

Isabella. She was going to be his sister’s partner.

Swearing under his breath, he almost cracked the remote in two as he pressed the off button.

Like hell she was.

* * *

Four hours later Richard felt as if the driver’s seat of his Rolls Royce Phantom was sprouting red-hot needles.

It had been more than two hours since he’d parked across the street from his sister’s house. He’d driven here immediately when Murdock had called back saying he’d neglected to tell him Isabella was having dinner there tonight. She had yet to make an exit.

What was taking the bloody woman that long? What kind of dinner lasted more than four hours?

This alone told him things were worse than he’d first thought. Isabella seemed to be a close friend of his sister’s, not just a prospective partner. And though Murdock hadn’t been able to pinpoint the events leading to this bizarre status quo, Richard was certain this wasn’t an innocent friendship. Not on Isabella’s side. She always had an angle. And obtained her objectives through deception and manipulation. Her medical qualifications themselves had probably been obtained through some meticulously constructed fraud.

Yet that was all conjecture. He had nothing solid to explain how Rose and her husband had developed such a deep connection with her that they’d invite her to be their equal partner in their life’s crowning achievement. She’d made herself so invisible, her past so untraceable she’d fallen off Murdock’s radar until now, when she was about to be fully lodged into their lives.

He’d torn over here once Murdock had informed him they’d finished dinner and coffee, expecting to intercept her soon afterward as she left. That had been—he flicked a glance at his watch—two and a half bloody hours ago.

Every minute of those he’d struggled with the urge to storm inside and drag her out.

He hadn’t stayed out of his sister’s life only to let that siren infect it with the ugliness of her past, the malice of her intentions and the exploitation in her blood.

Suddenly the front door of Rose’s two-level, stucco house opened and two figures walked out. Isabella first, then Rose. His every muscle tensing, he strained to decipher the merriness that carried on the summer night air through his open window. Then they kissed and hugged and Isabella descended the stairs. At the bottom she turned to wave to Rose, urging her to go in, before she turned and crossed the street, heading to her car.

The moment Rose closed her door he got down from his car.

In the dim streetlights, Isabella’s figure seemed to glow in a light-colored summer coat unbuttoned over a lighter dress beneath, its supple material undulating with her brisk walk. Her hair was a swathe of dark silk swinging over her face, her eyes downcast as she rummaged through her purse.

Then feet before he intercepted her, he stopped.

“Well, well, if it isn’t Isabella Burton.”

Her momentum came to a startled halt, her alarm a sharp gasp that echoed in the night’s still, humid silence. Then her face jerked up and her eyes slammed into his.

A bolt struck him through the heart.

His sudden appearance seemed to have hit her even harder. If a ghost had stopped her to ask her the time, she wouldn’t have looked more shocked...or horrified.

“What...where the hell did you...?”

She stopped. As if she found no words. Or breath with which to say them. He was almost as shocked as she was...at his reaction. He’d thought he’d feel nothing at the sight of her. He didn’t know what he did feel now. But it was...enormous.

And it wasn’t an overwhelming sense of familiarity. It was her impact as she was now.

She’d changed. Almost beyond recognition. It made it that much stranger he’d recognized her in that video so instantaneously. For this woman had very little in common with the younger one he’d known in total, tempestuous intimacy.

Her face had lost all the plumpness of youth, had been chiseled into a masterpiece of refinement and uncompromising character. If she’d been irresistible before, even with shock still seizing her every feature, the influence she’d exuded had matured into something far more formidable.

But her eyes had changed the most. Those eyes that had haunted him, eyes he’d once thought had opened up into a magical realm, that of her being. They looked the same, glowing that unique emerald-topaz chameleon color. But apart from the familiar shape and hue, and beneath the shock, they were bottomless. Whatever lay inside her now was dark and fathomless. And far more hard-hitting for it.

Her lids swept down, severing the two-way hypnosis.

Gritting his teeth at losing the contact, his own gaze lowered to sweep her body. Even through the loose clothes, it still had his every sense revving. Just being near her had always made him ache.

Then a puff of breeze had her scent inundating him and his body flooded with molten steel. That was the one thing about her that hadn’t changed. This distillation of her essence and femininity that had constantly hovered at the edge of his memory, tormenting him with craving the real thing.

And here it was at last. What he’d once thought an aphrodisiac nature had tailored to his senses. That belief was renewed in full force.

Hard all over, he returned his gaze to hers, eager to read her own response. She poured every bit of height and poise into her statuesque figure, made him feel she was looking him in at eye level when even in three-inch heels, she stood seven inches below his six-foot-six frame.

“Richard.” She gave a formal nod as if greeting a virtual stranger. Then she just circumvented him and continued walking to her car.

He let her pass him, one eyebrow rising.

So. His opening strike hadn’t been as effective as he’d planned. She’d gotten over her shock at seeing him faster than he had and had decided to dismiss him.

Surely she considered anyone who knew her real identity a threat to her carefully constructed new persona. But if there were levels of danger to blasts from the past, she must think his potential damage equivalent to a ballistic missile. She couldn’t end this “chance” meeting fast enough.

Which proved she hadn’t tied him to Rose, wasn’t here because of anything concerning him. But that changed nothing.

Whatever she was here for, she wasn’t getting it.

He stared ahead, listening to the steady staccato of her receding heels, a grim smile twisting his lips.

In the past he’d been the one who’d walked away. But it had been her who’d made the decision. It now entertained him to let her think the choice remained hers. He’d let her strike his presence up to coincidence, think it would cause no repercussions for her. Then he’d disabuse her of the notion.

Last time, he hadn’t been able to override her will. This time, he’d make her do what he wanted. And right now, all he wanted was to taste her once more. He’d postpone his real purpose until he satisfied the hunger that had roared to life inside him again at the sight of her.

He’d much prefer it if she struggled, though.

The moment he heard her opening her car, he turned and sauntered toward her.

She lurched as he passed behind her and murmured, “I’ll drive ahead. Follow me.”

He felt her gaze boring into his back as he reached his car two spaces ahead. Opening his door, he turned around smoothly, just in time to witness her reaction.

“What the hell...?” She stopped, as if it hurt to talk.

He sighed. “My patience has already been expended for the night. Follow me. Now.”

Her eyes blazed at him as she found her voice again. Not the velvety caress that had echoed in his head for eight endless years but a sharp blade. “I’ll do no such thing.”

“My demand was actually a courtesy. I was trying to give you a chance to preserve your dignity.”

Her mouth dropped open. His own lips tingled.

Then his tongue stung when hers lashed him. “Gee, thanks. I can preserve it very well on my own. I’ll drive away now, and if you follow me, I’ll call the police.”

Hostility was the last thing he’d predicted her reaction would be, considering the last time he’d seen her she’d wept as he’d walked away as if her heart were being dragged out of her body. But it only made his blood hurtle with vicious exhilaration. She was giving him the struggle he’d hoped for, the opportunity to force her to succumb to him this time. And he would make her satisfy his every whim.

He gave her the patented smile that made monsters quiver. “If you drive away, I won’t follow you. I’ll knock on your friends’ door and tell them whom they’re really getting into business with. I don’t think the Andersons would relish knowing you were—and maybe still are—the wife of a drug lord, slave trader and international terrorist.”

Two

Isabella stared up at the juggernaut that blocked out the world, every synapse in her brain short-circuiting.

When he’d materialized in front of her, like a huge chunk of night taking the form of her most hated entity, her heart had almost ruptured.

But she’d survived so many horrors, had always had so much to protect, her survival mechanisms were perpetually on red alert. After the initial brutal blow, they’d kicked in as she’d made an instinctive escape. That didn’t mean she hadn’t felt about to crumple to the ground with every breath.

Richard. Here. Out of the depths of the dark, sordid past. The man who’d seduced and used...and almost destroyed her.

That he hadn’t succeeded hadn’t been because he hadn’t given it his best shot. Ever since, she’d been trying to mend the rifts he’d created in the very foundations of her being. She’d only succeeded in painting over the deepest ones. Though she now seemed whole and strong, those cracks had been worsening over time, and she was sure they’d fissured right to her soul.

But she’d just reached what would truly be a new start. Then he’d appeared out of thin air.

It had flabbergasted her even more because she’d just been thinking of him. It had been as if she’d conjured him.

Yet when had she ever stopped thinking of him? Her memory of him had been like a pervasive background noise that could never be silenced. A clamor that rose to a crescendo periodically before it settled back to a constant, maddening drone.

But there was one explanation for his reappearance. That it was a fluke. An appalling one, but one nonetheless. What else could it have been after eight years?

Not that time elapsed was even an issue. It could have been eight days and she would have thought the same thing. She’d long realized he’d left her believing he’d never see her again.

After all, he must have known what he’d done would most probably get her killed.

Believing their meeting to be a coincidence, she’d run off, thinking the man who’d once exploited her then left her to a terrible fate would shrug and continue on his way.

But just as she’d thought she’d escaped, that he’d fade into the night like some dreadful apparition, he’d followed her. Before she could deal with the dismay of thinking this ordeal would be prolonged, he’d made his preposterous demand.

Not that it had felt like one. It had felt like an ultimatum. Her instinct had been correct.

She hadn’t forgiven him, nor would she ever forgive him, but she’d long rationalized his actions. From what she’d discovered—long after the fact—he obtained his objectives over anyone’s dead body, figuratively or literally. She, and everything he’d done to her, had been part of a mission. She only had theories what that had been or why he’d undertaken it, according to the end result.

But what he was doing now, threatening with such patent enjoyment what he must know would destroy everything she’d struggled to build over the past eight years, was for his own entertainment. That man she’d once loved, with everything in her scarred psyche and starving soul, had progressed from a cold-bloodedly pragmatic bastard into a full-fledged monster.

“Don’t look so horrified.”

His bottomless baritone swamped her again, another thing about him that had become more hard-hitting. The years had turned the thirty-four-year-old demigod of sensuality she’d known into an outright god, if one of malice. He still exuded sex and exerted a compulsion—both now magnified by increased power and maturity. But it was this new malevolence that now seemed to define him. And it made him more overwhelming than ever.

But that must have been his true nature all along. It was she who’d been blinded and under his control. She hadn’t even suspected what he’d been capable of long after he’d gotten everything he’d wanted from her, then tossed her to the wolf.

“I’m not interested in exposing you.” His voice had her every hair standing on end. “As long as you comply, your secret can remain intact.”

Summoning the opaqueness she’d developed as her greatest weapon against bullies such as him, she cocked her head.

“What makes you think I haven’t told them everything?”

“I don’t think. I know. You resorted to extreme measures to construct this St. Sandoval image. You’d go as far to preserve it. You’ll certainly give in to anything I demand so no one, starting with the Andersons, ever finds out what you really are.”

“What I am? You make it sound as if I’m some monster.”

“You’re married to one. It makes you the same species.”

“I’m not married to Caleb Burton. I haven’t been for eight years.”

Something...scary slithered in the depths of his cold steel eyes. But when he spoke, he sounded as offhand as before.

“So it’s in the past tense. A past full of crimes.”

“I never had a criminal record.”

“Your crimes remain the same even if you’re not caught.”

“What about your crimes? Let’s talk about those.”

“Let’s not. It would take months to talk about those, as they’re countless. But they’re also untraceable. But yours could be easily proved. You knew exactly how your husband made his mushrooming fortune and you made no effort to expose him, making you an accessory to his every crime. Not to mention that you helped yourself to millions of his blood money. Those two charges could still get you ten to fifteen years in a snug little cell in a maximum-security prison.”

“Are you threatening to turn me in to the law, too?”

“Don’t be daft. I don’t resort to such mundane measures. I don’t let the law take care of my enemies or chastise those who don’t fall in line with my wishes. I have my own methods. Not that I have to resort to those in your case. Just a little chat with your upstanding friends and they wouldn’t consider getting mixed up with someone with your past.”

“Contrary to what you believe, from your own twisted self and life, there are ethical, benevolent people in the world. The Andersons don’t hold people’s pasts against them.”

He gave her back her pitying disdain, raised her his own brand of annihilating taunting. “If you believed that, you wouldn’t have gone to such painstaking lengths to give your history, and yourself, a total makeover.”

“The makeover was only for protection, as I’m sure you, as the world’s foremost mogul of security solutions, are in the best position to appreciate.”

His lethal lips tugged. “Then, it won’t matter if your partners in progress find out the details of your previous marriage to one of the world’s most prominent figures in organized crime. Along with the open buffet of unlawful immorality that marriage entailed and that you buried. Refuse to follow me and we get to put your conviction of their convictions to the test.”

Feeling the world emptying of the last atom of oxygen, she snapped, “What the hell do you want from me?”

“To catch up.”

Her mouth dropped open.

It took effort to draw it back up, to hiss her disbelief. “So you see me walking down the street and decide on the spot to blackmail me because the urge to ‘catch up’ overwhelmed you?”

His painstakingly chiseled lips twisted, making her guts follow suit. “Don’t tell me you thought it even a possibility I happened to be taking a stroll in a limbo of suburban domesticity called Pleasantville, of all names?”

“You were following me.”

The instant certainty congealed her blood. Realizing his premeditation made it all so much worse. And the possible outcomes unthinkable.

He shrugged. “You took your time in there. I was about to knock on the Andersons’ door anyway to see what was taking you so long.”

Not putting anything beyond him, she imagined how much worse it would have been if he’d done that. “And you went to all this trouble to ‘catch up’?”

“Yes. Among other things.”

“What other things?”

“Things you’ll find out when you stop wasting time and follow me. I’d tell you to leave your car, but your friend might see it and get all sorts of worrisome ideas.”

“None would be as bad as what’s really happening.”

His expression hardened. She was sure it had brought powerful men to their knees. “Are you afraid of me?”

That possibility clearly hadn’t occurred to him before. Now that it did, it seemed to...offend him.

The weirdest part was, though she’d long known he was a merciless terminator, her actual safety wasn’t even a concern.

It was in every other way that she feared him.

She wasn’t about to tell him that. But she did give him an honest answer to his query. “I’m not.”

“Good.”

His satisfaction chafed her. The urge to wipe it off his cruelly perfect face surged. “I’m not, because I know if you wanted to harm me, I wouldn’t have known what hit me. That you’re only coercing me indicates I’m not on your hit list.”

“It is heartening that you grasp the situation.” That soul-searing smile played on his lips again. “Shall we?”

She stood there, her gaze trapped in his, her thoughts tangling.

They both knew he’d cornered her from the first moment. But succumbing to this devil without resistance would have been too pathetic. She’d at least let loose some of her anger and bitterness toward him first. What she’d thought long extinguished.

It was clear they’d only been suppressed under layers of self-delusion so they wouldn’t destroy whatever remained of her stability, what everything—and everyone—in her life depended on.

Now that she’d admitted that, it was easier to admit why she’d succumb to his coercion.

The first reason was that she would have, even without his threat. If he’d turned a consummate fiend like Burton into mincemeat so effortlessly when he’d been a younger and less powerful man, she didn’t want to know what he was capable of now. She was nowhere in his league. No one was.

The second was harder to face. But what she’d belatedly learned about his truth and that of what they’d shared and what he’d done to her had left a gaping hole inside her.

She wanted that hole filled. She wanted closure.

Holding his hypnotic gaze, she finally nodded.

He just turned and walked away. Before he lowered himself into the gleaming black beast that looked as sleek, powerful and ruthless as he did, he tossed her an imperious glance over his acres-wide shoulders.

“Chivvy along.”

At his command to hurry up in his native British English, she expelled the breath she’d been holding.

Chivvy along, indeed.

Might as well get this over with as quickly as possible.

In minutes she was following him as ordered as he headed to Manhattan, emotions seething inside her. Fury, frustration, fear—and something else.

That “something else” felt like...excitement.

How sick would that be? To be excited by the man who’d decimated her heart and almost her world, who’d just threatened to complete the job and had her following him like a puppy?

But...maybe not so sick. Excitement could encompass trepidation, anxiety, uncertainty. And everything with Richard had always contained maximum doses of all that. It was why he’d been the only one who’d made her feel...alive. She’d been in suspended animation before she’d met him and since he’d walked away.

For better, or in his case, for worse, it seemed he’d remain the only one who could reanimate her.

* * *

“Get it over with. Catch up.”

Isabella threw her purse on the black-and-bronze Roberto Cavalli leather couch and looked at Richard across his gigantic, forty-foot-ceilinged, marble-floored reception area.

He only continued preparing their drinks at the bar, his lupine expression deepening.

So. He’d talk when he wished. And he hadn’t wished. Yet.

Got it.

Good thing she’d called home during the forty-minute drive to say she’d be very late.

Pretending to shrug away his disregard, she looked around. And was stunned all over again.

The Fifth Avenue penthouse overlooking the now shrouded in darkness Central Park and Manhattan’s glittering Upper East Side drove home to her how staggeringly wealthy he was now. The opulent, technologically futuristic duplex on the sixty-seventh and sixty-eighth floors had to have cost tens of millions.

Among the jaw-dropping features of the fully automatic smart-home was its own elevator, its remote-, voice-and retinal-recognition doors and just about everything else.

It even housed a thirty-by-fifty-foot pool.

As they’d passed the sparkling expanse, he’d told her something she hadn’t known about him. That he hated the sun and preferred indoor sports. She’d already worked out that he hated people, too. A pool in his living room at the top of the world away from the nuisance of mere mortals was a no-brainer to someone with his kind of money.

He’d been saying he’d expand the pool to get a decent exercise without having to flip over and over when she’d stopped listening. The image of him shooting through the liquid turquoise like a human torpedo, then rising from the water like an aquatic deity with rivulets weeping down his masterpiece body had tampered with her mental faculties.

Snatching her thoughts away before they slid back into that abyss, she examined the L-shaped terrace of at least five-thousand square feet. The city views must be breathtaking from there. They were from every corner in this marvel of a home.

Though home sounded so wrong. Anywhere he was could never be a home. This place felt like an ultramodern demon’s den.

Avoiding looking at him, she noted the designer furniture and architectural touches that punctuated each zone, couldn’t guess at many of the functional features. But it was spectacular how the mezzanine level took advantage of the massive ceiling heights and ingeniously provided extensive library shelves. He’d probably read every book. And archived its contents in that labyrinthine mind of his.

But what made the mezzanine truly unique was its glass floors and balustrade, with the staircase continuing the transparent theme. Looking down wouldn’t be for the fainthearted.

But Richard didn’t have to worry about that, since he was heartless. A fact this astounding but soulless place clearly underlined.

That he had other residences on the West Coast and in England, as he’d offhandedly informed her as they’d entered this place, no doubt on the same level of luxury and technology, was even more mind-boggling. Burton had been a billionaire and it had been hard to grasp the power such wealth brought. But those had been a fraction of Richard’s, who was currently counted among the top one hundred richest men on the planet. The security business was booming, and his empire reigned over that domain.

But money, in his case, was the result of the immense influence of his personality and expertise, not the other way around. And then there were his connections. Black Castle Enterprises, which he’d built from the ground up with six other partners, had a major hand in everything that made the world go round and was one of the most influential businesses in history.

“I just learned of your presence in the country today.”

His comment dragged her out of her musings, his deepened voice making the cultured precision of his British accent even more shiver worthy. She’d always thought that killer brogue of his the most evocative music. She used to ask him to speak just so she could revel in listening to him enunciate. It had always aroused the hell out of her, too.

But everything about him always had. During the four months of their affair she’d been in a perpetual fugue of arousal.

She watched him approach like a leisurely tiger stalking his kill, every muscle and sinew flexing and pulling at his fitted black shirt and pants, his stormy sky-hued eyes striking her with a million volts of charisma. The familiar ache she hadn’t felt since she’d last seen him, that had been trembling under the suppression of shock, hostility and anxiety since he’d appeared before her, stirred in her deepest recesses.

Time had been criminally indulgent with him, enhancing his every asset—widening his shoulders, hardening his waist and hips, bulking up his torso and thighs. Age had taken a sharper chisel to his face, hewing it to dizzying planes and angles, turning his skin a darker copper, intensifying the luminescence of his eyes. His luxurious raven hair had been brushed with silver at the temples, adding the last touch of allure. He was now the full potential of premium manhood realized.

As he reached for the cocktail glass, his fingertips grazed hers, zapping her with a bolt of exquisite electricity.

Great. His deceit and her ignorance of his true nature and intentions had had nothing to do with his effect on her as she’d long told herself. He’d almost cost her her life, and she knew what he truly was and how she’d been a chess piece he’d played and disposed of...yet it made no difference to her body. It didn’t deal in logic, cared nothing about dignity and hadn’t learned a thing from the harsh lessons of experience. It only saw and sensed the man who’d once possessed and pleasured it almost beyond endurance.

She sat before he realized he still liquefied her knees...and everything else. When she’d thought she’d irreversibly turned to stone.

But she’d thought that before she’d first met him. It had taken him one glance to get the heart she’d believed long petrified quivering. He remained the one man who could reverse any protective metamorphosis.

Safe on a horizontal surface, she looked way, way up at him as he loomed over her like a mystic knight, or rather a malevolent wizard, from an Arthurian fairy tale.

“So the moment you realized I was on American soil, you decided to track me down and ambush me.”

“Precisely.”

In a heartbeat he was beside her. She marveled again at the strength and control needed for someone of his height and bulk to move so effortlessly. Even though he didn’t come too near, her every nerve fired.

Sipping the amber liquid in his crystal glass, he turned to face her fully. “I’ve been remembering how we met.”

She sipped her drink only to suppress the impulse to hurl it in his face. The moment it slid down her throat she realized how parched she was. And how it hit the spot. Perfect coolness and flavor, light on alcohol, heavy on sweetness.

He remembered. How she took her drinks.

Something suffocating, something similar to regret, swept her.

Suddenly the bitterness that had lain dormant in her depths seethed to the surface again. “We didn’t meet, Richard. You tracked me down then, too. And set me up.”

Nonchalance tugged a corner of his lips. “True.”

She took another sip, channeling her anger into sarcasm. “Thanks for sparing me the aggravation of denial.”

His gaze lengthened, becoming more unreadable and disturbing. Then he shrugged. “I don’t waste time on pointless pursuits. I already realized you know everything. From the first moment, your hostile attitude made it clear I’m not talking to the woman who cried rivers at my departure.”

“Why conclude that was because I know everything? That could have been classic feminine bitterness for said departure. Surely you didn’t expect even the stupid goose I used to be to throw herself in your arms after eight years?”

“Time is irrelevant.” Just what she’d been thinking. “It’s what you realized that caused you to change. You clearly worked everything out.” His gaze intensified, making her feel he was probing her to her cellular level. “So how did you?”

“You know how.”

“I probably do. But I’d still like to know the actual details of how you came to realize the truth.”

A mirthless laugh escaped her. “If you’re asking so you never repeat whatever clued me in, don’t bother. Working it all out wasn’t due to any discernment on my side, and I only did over three years after the fact.” One formidable eyebrow rose at that particular detail. “Yeah, pathetic, right?”

“Not the adjective I’d use.” She waited for him to substitute his own evaluation, but he left her hanging. “I don’t want details as a prophylactic measure for future operations. I know I am untraceable. Your deductions couldn’t have been backed up by any evidence. Even if they were, I made sure your best interest remained in burying any.”

“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

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.”

She exhaled in resignation. “So you orchestrated everything, got the result you desired, while even Fate indulged you and gave you the bonus of a mark to enjoy sexually, huh? That must have made your mission of patiently milking me for all I had more palatable.”

His shrug was indifference incarnate. “More or less.” His gaze shifted to an expression that seemed to sear her marrow. “With one amendment. It wasn’t palatable. It was phenomenal.”

“I—it was?”

“Along with a dozen superlative adjectives. Being with you was the only true and absolute pleasure I ever had.”

He’d already said he’d wanted her. But the way he’d spelled it out now... His words fell on her like a punch, jogging her brain in her skull.

It had been what had most mutilated her, had left her feeling desecrated. Thinking she’d wanted him with every fiber of her being while he’d only reviled her even as he’d used her in every way. Learning that he’d wanted her had just begun to ameliorate her humiliation. But now his claim that it had been as unprecedented to him... It felt genuine. If it was, then at least their intimacies, which had been so profound to her, among all the lies and exploitation, had been real. She could at least cleanse those intensely intimate memories and have them back.

“And that’s why I want you to say it, Isabella.”

The hunger in his voice and eyes had her heart ramming against her ribs as if unable to bear their confinement.

“I want you to say you’ve craved having again what we had all those years ago. That every time you closed your eyes, I was there, in your mind, on your tongue, all over you and inside you, giving you everything only I could ever give you.”

Every word he said, soaked in hunger, seething with demand, brought a wave of wet heat surging in her core, her body readying itself for its master doing all the things she’d never stopped yearning for.

She still had to resist. Because of what he’d done to her. Past and present. Because of what he thought of her. What he was. For every reason that existed, really.

“What if I don’t say it?”

Those incredible eyes crinkled, those lips that made her every inch ache with the memory of what they could do to her twisted.

“You want me to force you to take what you’re dying to take, so you’d have it, and the moral high ground, too? No, my exquisite siren. If I take you now, it will be because you’ll tell me in no uncertain terms that you want me to. That you’re burning for me to. It’s that...or you can go.”

And it turned out every reason under the sun to tell him to go to hell was nothing compared to the one reason she had to give him what he wanted.

That he was right.

Giving in, she reached out, wound his tie around her hand and yanked on it with all her strength.

Which didn’t say much right now. Her tug was trembling and weak like the rest of her. She was that aroused. He wouldn’t have moved if he hadn’t wanted to.

But her action was seemingly enough of an appeasement. He let her drag him down so his face was two inches from hers.

His virility-laden, madness-inducing breath flayed her lips, filled her lungs. “Now say it.”

Voice as unsteady as her legs, she did. “I want you.”

“Say it all, Isabella.”

That cruel bastard had to extract her very soul, didn’t he? Just as he had in the past.

Knowing she’d regret it when her body stopped clamoring, if it ever did—but she’d sooner stop her next breath—she gave him the full capitulation he demanded. “I wanted you with every single breath these past eight years.”

His satisfaction was so ferocious it seared her as his hand covered the one spastically pulling on his tie, untangling it in such unhurried smoothness. Then, like the serpent he was, he slinked away from her. Heartbeats shook her as she watched him sit on the huge couch facing the pool.

After sprawling back in utmost comfort, he beckoned.

“Show me.”

Not knowing whom to curse more viciously, him or herself, she walked toward him as if on the end of a hook.

Once her knees bumped his, she lost all coordination and slumped over him under the weight of eight years’ worth of craving. Barely slowing her collapse with shaking hands against his unyielding shoulders, her dress rode up thighs that opened to straddle his hips. His eyes burned into hers with gratification up until her lips crashed down on his.

He opened his mouth to her urgency, let her show him how much she needed everything he had as her hands roamed his formidable body, convulsed in his too-short-for-her-liking wealth of hair and her molten core rode the daunting rock of his manhood through their clothes.

“I want you, Richard...I’ve gone mad wanting you.”

At her feverish moan he took over, his lips stopping her uncoordinated efforts to posses them. Sighing raggedly, she luxuriated in his domination, what he’d so maddeningly interrupted before.

His hands roved her, melting clothes off her burning body with the same virtuosity that had always made her breathless. His every move was loaded with the precise ruthlessness of a starving predator unleashed on a prey long kept out of reach.

Breaking the kiss, he drew back, his pupils flaring, blackness engulfing the silvered steel as he spilled her breasts into his palms. His homage was brief but devastating before he swept her around, had her sitting on the couch and kneeled before her. After dragging her panties off in one sweep, he lunged, buried his lips in her flowing readiness. She shrieked at the long-yearned-for feel of his tongue and teeth, her thighs spreading wider to give him fuller access to her intimate flesh, which had always been his.

Hours ago she’d been going about her new life, certain she’d never see him again. Now he was here, pleasuring her as only he had ever done.

Was she dreaming all this?

He nipped her bud, and the slam of pleasure was too jarring to be anything but real. One more sweep or suckle or graze would finish her. And she didn’t want release.

She wanted him.

“Richard...you...” she gasped. “I need you...inside me...please...”

Growling, he heaved up, caught her plea in his savage mouth, letting her taste herself on his tongue as he rose, lifting her in his arms. Then the world moved in hurried thuds before it stopped abruptly with her steaming back against cool glass.

The idea that Richard was about to take her against a window overlooking the city almost made her come right then.

Plastering her to the glass with his bulk, he locked her feet around his buttocks, thrilling her with his effortless strength. Then he leaned back, freeing his erection.

The potency that had possessed her during so many long, hard rides had her mouth watering, her core gushing. And that was before the intimidating weight and length of it thudded against her swollen flesh, squeezing another plea from her depths. He only glided his incredible heat and hardness through the molten lips of her core, sending a million arrows of pleasure to her womb, until she writhed.

He didn’t penetrate her until she wailed, “Fill me.”

Only then did he ram inside her.

The savagery and abruptness of his invasion, the unbearable expansion around his too-thick girth, was a shock so acute the world flickered, darkened.

Her senses sparked again to him growling, “Too long...too damned long...” as his teeth sank into her shoulder like a lion tethering his mate for a jarring ride. Then he withdrew.

It felt as if he was dragging her life force out with him. Her arms tightened around his back, her hands clawing it, begging his return. He complied with a harder, deeper plunge, blacking out her senses again with the beyond-limits fullness. After a few thrusts forced her flesh to yield fully to him, he quickened his tempo.

Every withdrawal brought maddening loss, every plunge excruciating ecstasy. Her cries blurred and her muttered name on his lips became a litany, each thrust accentuated by the carnal sounds of their flesh slapping together. The scents of sex and abandon intensified, the glide and burn of his hard flesh inside her stoked her until she felt she’d combust.

She needed...needed... Please...please...please...

He’d always known what she needed, when and how hard and fast. He gave it to her now, hammering his hips between her splayed thighs, his erection pounding inside her with the cadence and force to unleash everything inside her, until he breached her womb and shattered the wound-up coil of need.

Her body detonated from where he was buried deepest outward, currents of release crashing through her, squeezing her around him, choking her shrieks.

Roaring her name, he exploded in his own climax, jetting the fuel of his pleasure over hers, filling her to overflowing, sharpening the throes of release until he wrung her of the last spark of sensation her body was capable of.

She felt him pulse the last of his seed into her depths, and a long-forgotten smile of satisfaction curved her lips as her head slumped in contentment over his chest...

A rumble beneath her ear jogged her back to consciousness. “Not enough, Isabella...never enough...”

Feeling boneless, her head spun as he strode away from the window, still buried within her depths. Knowing he’d carry her to his bedroom now, she drifted off again, wanting to rest so she’d be ready for round two...

She jerked out of her sensual stupor as he laid her down. His scent rose from dark cotton sheets to cloak her in its hot delight, compensating her for his loss as he left her body to rid himself of his clothes. Her clamoring senses needed him back on top of her, inside her. She held out unsteady arms, begged for him again.

This time he didn’t let her beg long. He lunged back over her, had her skidding on the sheets with the force of his impact. Spreading her quivering thighs, he pushed her knees up to her chest, hooking his arms behind them, opening her fully. Then, lowering himself over her to thrust his tongue inside her panting mouth, he reentered her in a long, burning plunge.

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