By the time the first person appeared and started up the stairs, Sage and Raven were back in their seats, innocently focused on the movie lighting up the screen.
CHAPTER FIVE
It was at times like this, she heartily cursed her fair complexion, Sage thought, blushing furiously as Raven waggled his brows at her as they exited the movie theatre, two hours later.
She had watched the rest of the movie in a state of heightened awareness and helpless sensual daze because Raven’s hands had kept creeping into her dress and caressing her until she was near to fainting from sheer desire. The man was insatiable, she thought. After the explosive orgasm he had experienced, she would have thought he would not be able to have sex immediately after, but instead, he had been hard as a rock all through the movie.
Now, as he led her out, the gleam in his dark, slumberous eyes told her plainly that he hadn’t had enough of her.
“Will you come home with me tonight?” he asked, his eyes resting on hers as he watched her carefully.
Ever the gentleman, he had just had unbridled, passionate sex with her and yet, here he was, courteously asking her permission to have more sex with her. He seemed almost too good to be true, she thought, her eyes misting a little as she considered it.
She nodded almost shyly, and he grinned at her, with something almost like relief on his face. He leaned down and kissed her cheek gently, the unexpected motion making her eyes fly to his in surprise.
His eyes were so tender as he gazed back at her, and Sage swallowed nervously. Raven turned away then, to hail a cab, and she relaxed a little.
What was going on? Why had he looked at her with such emotion in his eyes? This was all just sex and fun for both of them, wasn’t it?
A cab slid to a smart halt in front of them just then and she stopped analyzing. Minutes later, the taxi pulled up to the same hotel she was lodged at and she looked at him in surprise.
“You are lodged here?”
He shook his head. “No. I am not lodged, per se. I actually own the hotel, so I have my own suite here, for whenever I’m in Spain.”
“Oh. Of course.”
He hadn’t been kidding, then, when he told her that he owned the restaurant she had been at earlier with her friends and had threatened to throw her out.
The lift took them to the highest floor and her breath caught in her throat at the plush luxury of the place. She stared around, her eyes almost falling out of her sockets in sheer wonder and amazement. The entire ninth floor of the hotel was built as a suite for his sole use. It was a veritable palace! It had to be the most luxurious room she had ever seen in real life or, indeed, in any other life.
Sage stared, mouth agape, at the ridiculously expensive furniture gracing different parts of the living room, pure gold ash trays, the thick, exotic rug that swallowed her feet, a chandelier that had to have cost an arm, a leg and a few other body parts, and several other choice furniture.
Raven turned to face her, his eyes darkening with passion as he reached for her. Sage automatically turned her face up for his kiss, her arms winding around his neck as his large hands kneaded her soft skin and molded her soft, womanly curves to the hard strength of his masculine body.
“From the moment I saw you in that lobby, I wanted you,” he whispered against her lips.
Sage rolled her eyes as she leaned back in his hands. “I sincerely doubt that. Come on, you looked so disgusted with me. I was amazed you didn’t spit on me or something. I don’t blame you,” she added with a smile to show she wasn’t angry.
His arms tightened about her, keeping her from pulling away from him. “I reacted so aggressively because I wanted you so much it was all I could do to keep my hands off you. I couldn’t get you out of my mind for a minute, and I even rushed back out to apologize, but you and your friends had disappeared,” he said. “Then, when I walked into the restaurant, minutes later, and saw you seated there, I thought my mind was playing cruel tricks on me.”
Sage frowned dubiously at him, “You didn’t seem inclined to apologize for anything when we met at the restaurant. You were going to throw me out, remember?”
Raven laughed, shook his head. “You really don’t understand men, do you? That was a jealous rage, nothing more.”
Sage stared in surprise. “You’re a very weird man, Raven Hawthorne.”
“So I’ve heard tell,” he murmured huskily as he lowered his head and took her lips in a slow drugging kiss that curled every last one of her toes and made her cling to him lustily.
“Make love to me, Raven,” she said simply.
His heart skipped a beat at the expression in her chocolate brown eyes. “Are you ready?” he asked, leaning down to lightly brush his lips against hers again.
When he lifted his head for a second, she said, staring up at him, honesty shining in her eyes, “Apparently, all you have to do is touch me and I’m wet and ready.”
Raven lifted her into his arms, his lips still joined with hers and carried her into a huge bedroom with a mighty king-size bed adorning the middle. As he lowered her onto it, Sage knew without a shadow of doubt that it was going to be a long, sensual night; very long indeed.
* * *
Sage came awake with a start, wondering what had woken her. She was so exhausted she could barely see straight and she stared around in disorientation at the strange surroundings, trying to place where she was. Her phone vibrated beside her again and she stared at it, realizing then that this was what had woken her up.
Awareness returned in seconds and she looked over at the other occupant of the bed; Raven Hawthorne. The man had to be the most passionate male of the species alive! After the movie theatre, he had made love to her five more times in one night, his appetite for her as intense as it was insatiable. A blush of pleasure stole up her cheeks as she recalled the various positions they had tried; positions she never even knew existed. They should have felt kinky and bad, but with him, everything just, somehow, felt right.
She leaned up on an elbow to stare down at him and an unexpected wave of tenderness swept through her, shocking her in its intensity.
She cared for him, she realized, her wide brown eyes widening further in shock. Heck, she loved him, she realized.
Her heart thudded in her chest with that realization and the sheer shock of it sent her moving. She scrambled out of the bed in a flurry of long limbs and tangled sheets, and her eyes widened as she realized that she had, indeed, managed to fall for a total stranger after just one night together.
She stared down at him in half-shock, half-tenderness, unconsciously memorizing his face as her eyes scanned his features. His long lashes framed his cheeks, resting against his cheekbones in a way that softened the firm, hard angles of his face. Sage slowly leaned down and caressed his cheek with the back of her hand, noting with surprise that his face was soft.
He looked so peaceful as he slept, almost like a baby, and was it her imagination or were his red lips somewhat puckered in slumber, she thought with a delighted grin.
Raven stirred in his sleep and murmured, “Sage.”
Her heart skipped a beat; how could he be murmuring her name in his sleep already?
Panicked, she edged away from the bed, moving as silently as possible. A quick glance at the alarm clock told her it was just 4:00am. Slowly, she struggled into her dress and picked up her strappy sandals in her hand. As her hands brushed against her naked breast, she blushed anew, remembering how Raven had worshipped them during their lovemaking. As she turned to leave, she subconsciously looked around for some sort of keepsake to remember him by.
Her eyes alighted on the wallet flung carelessly on the tabletop; she didn’t dare take his wallet, that would be too cheap. As though on cue, her phone beeped again, and this time, she looked at the screen. It was a message from Eden that said simply, “Don’t forget the last leg of the bet; snatch his wallet!”
She turned away, resolutely, to face the door, determined to just leave before he woke up.
The rest of her life seemed to stretch emptily in front of her and with a frustrated sigh, Sage slowly turned back toward the bedside table and picked up the wallet. This was a very personal belonging and would remind her of him. Her eyes went to his gold watch resting beside the wallet. She returned the wallet to its position and picked up the watch instead; it was cold to the touch, but it was customized with his initials stenciled at the back of the watch and his picture inserted as the background on the face of the watch.
As she left the room, his watch dangling in her hand, she cast one last look over her shoulder, bidding him a silent goodbye.
Sage didn’t notice the tears streaming down her face as she went downstairs to her own room with the girls; she didn’t notice that her hair and clothes were tellingly disarrayed; she didn’t notice that other guests stared at her with curiosity as she descended; all she knew was that her heart was breaking into tiny pieces with every step that took her away from the one man that had touched her heart so profoundly in a matter of hours and left an indelible mark of his essence on her soul.
CHAPTER SIX
Raven Hawthorne steeped his fingers together in front of his face as he stared with acute displeasure at the bumbling private detective in front of him. The man was Irish with freckles on every inch of his face and eyes that seemed smart and intelligent, but so far, he wasn’t impressed.
“Are you telling me that, in two months, you have been unable to find even one of the three women?” he inquired silkily.
The man paled, his thin upper lip trembling as he croaked, “We have expended considerable resources, Sir. We can’t trace the women. They might as well have dropped off the face of the earth for all the clue they left us.”
“But I gave you the name of one of them…Sage! Sage Talbot.”
“We doubt if that is her real name, Sir, and even if it were, there are over three thousand Sage Talbots living in the States alone,” the private eye wheezed.
Raven hid his disgust behind a polite smile as he rose to his height and offered the man a parting handshake. This man was wasting his time and if he didn’t get rid of the loser in under two seconds, he would probably be tempted to strangle the man.
In the two months since he had woken up to find Sage if that was even her real first name gone, he hadn’t been himself. He had become unusually cold and ruthless, firing employees at the drop of a hat and driving bargains that were so hard that most of his business associates were openly becoming wary of him.
She’d had the unmitigated gall to screw his brains out and then steal away in the dead of night, taking his favorite wristwatch with her, like a common thief. A hitherto unrevealed and lame sentimental side tried to tell him that perhaps she had taken the wristwatch to serve as a keepsake; a memento to remember him by. He ruthlessly shoved that thought aside. There was no justification for what she had done; she had stolen from him and he would hunt her to the ends of the earth, if he had to, to take back what she stole from him.
His hotel records had not been able to yield much about the three friends because they had paid cash, but he had a friend in the FBI who might be able to help him. He recalled that he had managed to take a picture with her in one of those public photo booths. He ripped the picture out of his wallet, breathing a sigh of relief that at least she had not taken his wallet as another souvenir.
He would send the picture to a friend at Quantico; see if he could use some sort of face recognition software to help him.
He spun his chair around to stare out the huge French windows at the bubbling streets of New York. Somewhere in this world was the woman who had stolen his wristwatch, the last gift his mother had given him before she died and he would find her, or die trying.
She had stolen something else too, he admitted to himself, but he didn’t want to examine it too closely to ascertain what it was.
* * *
Sage Tariq bent over the toilet and emptied the contents of her stomach, her face twisted in a grimace as she stared at what she had thrown up.
It wasn’t every day a person learned she had gotten pregnant by a faceless stranger with the unlikely name of Raven Hawthorne. She could track him down, she knew, but she didn’t want to. She knew his hotel in Spain and his restaurant too, but he wasn’t a Spaniard; he was American. She had never tried to find out if he lived in America or Europe, but she knew one thing, she wanted this baby. It was unexpected, yes, but it would be a reminder of the most magical night of her life. She stared, with regret, at the wristwatch she had taken from him as a keepsake; if she had known he had given her something as precious as the life she carried beneath her breast, she would never have taken a mere watch. Eden and Beth had not even remembered to ask if she picked his wallet in line with the bet’s rules; they had been too involved in getting the details of their lovemaking.
She missed him, she realized. She had not been herself since she returned from her trip, and she had even quit her job because everything that used to interest her, suddenly did not.
Her friends were worried about her; according to them, she had been moping around, as though her heart had been broken, since they got back from Spain and they didn’t understand it or like it. But try as she might, Sage could not dredge up much interest in anything. Flowers seemed dull and lifeless, work was a monotony she had to escape by resigning, even her usual evenings with the girls hardly appealed to her. Maybe because she hadn’t told them she was pregnant. It didn’t help, either, that Brent had been inundating her with calls since she returned; apparently, he had had a change of heart. Well, as far as she was concerned, he could take his changed heart and shove it!
Lately, she had taken up her one true passion; painting. She painted on large canvasses, from morning till night; bright, bold, exotic colors that reminded her of Spain and a passionate dark-haired lover with smoldering eyes as black as night.
On impulse, she ripped away a canvas she had been doodling aimlessly on for days and placed a fresh, blank, paper on the easel. She impatiently grabbed the tendrils of blond hair falling all over her face and did them up in a haphazard knot at the very top of her head, knotting it firmly and holding it securely in place with a rubber band.
Sage closed her eyes, letting her mind drift over the streets of memory. Images of Raven, lying peacefully atop the bed, his eyes shut in slumber, floated through her mind and she licked her lips slowly, almost feeling his lips on hers.
With a sigh, she let her brown eyes flicker open and with that image in her mind’s eyes, she started to paint, drawing large, bold brush strokes across the blank canvas, enjoying the feel of the brush beneath her hand as she drew him from memory. She must have sat there for hours, but it felt like mere minutes; when she looked out of the window though, night had fallen.
With a sigh, she turned away from the canvas, not stopping to admire her work as she strolled toward the kitchen for a snack. This baby would have her fat in no time, she thought. She had been eating every chance she got of late when she wasn’t puking her guts out, that is.
She grabbed a jar of peanut butter from the kitchen cabinet and used a spoon to scoop some out of the jar. She licked the spoon, shutting her eyes in bliss as the tangy flavor of the peanut butter hit her tongue.
A knock at the door drew her attention and with a weary sigh, she headed toward it. As she passed the partially open curtains of the living room, she spied Eden’s Yaris parked outside.
“Eden, you really need to get off my back,” she sighed as she opened the door.
She froze.
Eden and Beth stood on the doorstep with identical wary expressions on their faces; behind them stood Brent, sweating profusely.
Sage glared at the trio, disbelief and betrayal roiling through her. “What is this?”
“Sage, hear him out,” Beth began.
Eden was nodding vigorously, her large green eyes earnest in her pretty face. “You do need to hear him out. I chewed him out when he came to us, but he’s sincere.”
“Just as he was sincere the last time he strolled off with Jessamine on his arm after calling me fat!”
“Sage” Brent began.
“No! You don’t get to say my name,” she cut in icily, swinging her head around to glare at him. She must have moved too fast because, suddenly, she was dizzy. “I’m going in to sit down,” she declared weakly.
“Are you all right?” Beth asked, concern etched on her small face.
“You two muttonheads may come in if you want,” she declared. “But Brent, if you so much as set one foot past that door, so help me, I will chop it off!”
Brent paled, sweat standing clear on his upper lips. Then, just when she thought she would have to physically shove him out, dizzy or no, he mercifully turned around and skulked away.
As she watched him leave, Sage couldn’t help comparing the twerp to Raven and she wondered for the umpteenth time what she had ever seen in Brent Davies; the man was not in the same league as Raven. Heck, he was not even in the same stratosphere!
Another wave of dizziness assailed her and she turned away and slowly walked into her living room, sinking onto the nearest sofa and shutting her eyes.
Eden and Beth followed her worriedly, identical expressions of guilt etched on their features. They were so worried they left the front door wide open, but Sage was too busy trying not to keel over to notice.
“Sage?”
“I need to rest, please.”
“You don’t look good, honey. What’s wrong? You’ve been acting weird since we got back from Spain and you keep saying nothing’s wrong,” Beth said, biting her lip.
HAMMER (Forsaken Riders MC Romance Book 16) Page 72
