by Raven Dark
That stunning grin flashed all his white teeth and he crossed his massive arms. Damn, he really was huge. “Not a chance. You saw my face, which is more than most people get to see on demand. You’ll have to earn my name.”
I mashed my lips together. “That’s hardly fair.”
“Live with it.”
The man’s secrecy annoyed me, but I sighed and put it aside. “Well, sir. I’m not meeting you, here or anywhere else. I don’t meet strangers on street corners.”
I almost smiled at my cleverness. He’d have to give me his name now, if he wanted me to consider him anything other than a stranger. Not that it would matter. I still wouldn’t meet with him.
His eyes sparkled. It unsettled me that he seemed to like me calling him sir. I didn’t understand why. “You do now.” His finger and thumb retuned to my chin, pinching them slightly. “I expect you here promptly at noon, Anika.”
“Jesus Christ. Are you always this much of an ass? Do you always get what you want?”
“Yes.” He turned to head back toward his car. “And just for that, you’ll meet me here tonight instead.”
I scoffed, half smiling. “You regard spending time with you as a punishment?”
He took hold of the door to the car and chuckled, looking back at me. “It depends on how well you behave.”
I crossed my arms, everything about this man making me combative and setting me on edge. “And if I don’t show up?”
His lips twitched in a deliciously wicked smile that hinted at dark things, sexy things. “You will.”
Damn him. I wanted so badly to stand him up, if only to prove to him he couldn’t have everything he wanted. “But what if I don’t?” I tried to inject as much threat into my tone as I could.
He became too still for a moment, and I shivered. Danger pounded off him in waves, until he again broke the space between us in a single stride. He bent down so his gorgeous face was so close the heat of his breath made my lips tingle.
“When I want something, it’s mine, Anika. We were destined to meet. If you don’t show up tonight, I will find you, and when I do, I’ll show you why no one defies me more than once.”
Gulp. I wanted with everything in me to be outraged at his proclamation, especially at the ownership in his words. They laid bare just how dangerous he was, that he was every bit as hazardous to me as I’d thought. And yet, along with a healthy dose of anger, desire snaked its way through me, hot and fierce, and all the more intense for the possession in his tone. My lips burned with the need to feel that delicious mouth devouring mine, my body melting with want to feel those huge hands all over me. Exploring a body that had been neglected for far too long.
“I’m not meeting you tonight. I work late.” I jerked my chin away, refusing to let this man upset my well-ordered life. He had no idea how complicated he’d already made things, just by being near me for as long as he had.
“Then meet me here after your shift.”
“It won’t be until nine.”
“Nine it is, then.”
“If you show up here tonight, you’ll be disappointed.”
His eyes danced. He walked backwards toward his car. “Then be prepared for me to hunt you down and appropriately discipline you for your defiance.”
For God’s sake. How did his threat only make me hungrier for him? I wanted to hate him for his arrogance, but instead, I loved the predatory way he sounded, like he’d do anything he had to in order to possess me. No man had ever made me feel so desired.
“Good bye, sir.”
A mocking chuckle drifted from him as I heard him get into his limousine. “Goodbye, my Anika. I look forward to seeing you tonight.”
Gah. He really thought I wouldn’t be able to resist him. Boy, did he have another thing coming.
David shut the limousine door and the mystery man in the suit disappeared from view. David tipped his hat to me. “Good day, Miss Anika.” I wondered how he managed to sound polite and annoyed all at once. He got in the driver’s side and the limo started up.
It disturbed me how hard it was to make myself turn away from that limousine and walk down the street toward my bus stop, as though the man with the “D” on his ring had gained some invisible hold on me. My whole body tingled with awareness of him even now, indelibly imprinting this exact spot where I stood in my brain. Storing it for tonight, at nine.
No. No, no, no. I couldn’t meet with him. Under no circumstances could I allow a man with that much power, that much pull, that much magnetism, into my life. Everything about him threatened to shatter the walls I’d spent my entire life building, to destroy the order and stability upon which my life—my safety—depended. I’d already said too much, giving him my name, even if it was just my cover name. He couldn’t be allowed to have any more of me.
Even so, I turned and looked back, my eyes automatically taking in the landmarks where I’d been standing with him. A high end coffee shop that looked like a cup cost about ten dollars. I catalogued the intersection. Then I shook the information off and whipped around, marching for my bus. Best I forget that street corner and that coffee shop existed.
I ran for the stop, praying I wouldn’t miss the bus, but in the back of my mind, I had the feeling I was trying to escape something, too.
2
No sooner had the gorgeous woman walked away from my limousine did I turn in my seat and stare after her. I couldn’t help myself. Everything about her mesmerized me. The way that mass of dark auburn curls bounced and swayed when she walked, and especially since it fell right to the slope of her fantastic ass, a heart-shaped swell hugged in those skin-tight jeans. The throaty, soft huskiness of her voice that made me think of bedroom promises, and had me imagining her whispering her adoration in my ear while I pounded myself into her.
The memory of her defiance, her refusal to meet with me, made my dick throb. A desire to possess her roared through me with an intensity I’d never felt before. At that moment, I knew I had to have her, whatever the cost.
And yet, I’d be lying if I’d said her appearance was all that drew me. What intrigued me most was the way she tried to down play herself. The way she stooped in attempt to hide her height, the way she wore no makeup or jewelry, nothing that stood out, in a bid to avoid attention so obvious, it screamed anonymity. Few others would have noticed it, but I knew the signs. My father was a master of the clandestine, spending so much time hiding in the shadows, I recognized any attempt to disguise oneself on sight. With those endless legs, those luscious lips, that hair and that ass, she’d have stood out no matter what she did.
The bus roared away just as David pulled the car to the curb a little way down the street, out of sight. Anika put her head back, and I could practically hear her cursing from here. I resisted the urge to tell David to go back and offer her a ride to wherever she was going. As my father would not have hesitated to point out, offering such help would have been a sign of weakness, an indication of her hold on me, however small.
My fists tightened at the idea of such vulnerability. True, a ride would have allowed me to lay claim to her now instead of waiting for tonight, but there were things I wanted to know about her, questions I wanted answered before I saw her again.
“David.” I leaned forward in my seat. “Stay here until she gets on the next bus, then follow the bus until she gets off.”
“You have an appointment with your father in twenty minutes, Mr. Davros. You’ll be late.”
“My father can wait. Follow her.”
In the rearview, David’s eyes crinkled with amusement, and I was pretty sure it wasn’t only because I was defying my father, a man most people were too terrified to cross. “As you wish, Mr. Davros.”
He shut off the limo and relaxed in the seat, as casual as if he were waiting for me to come out of a meeting, not stalking a girl on my command. I smiled. David Cutter would sit here for hours without flinching if that’s what it took, as patient as I imagined he’d been all those years in the milit
ary on stakeouts. And he’d remain deadpan as ever in the face of my father’s wrath.
I didn’t like what that amused look implied though, that I’d finally met a woman who’d gotten under my skin, someone I needed for more than sexual release. To hell with that. I’d have her tonight, claim her, get her out of my system, then forget her.
Anika was my prey, and if I’d learned anything from watching my father work, it was that the hunter had to understand everything he could about his prey before the kill.
While we waited for the bus to pick her up, I tried to bring up any social media I could on the girl with the wild hair and those heavenly blue eyes, so dark it was like staring into the depths of the sea. Her name brought up nothing, not even with every variation in spelling I could think of. No Facebook, no Twitter, no Pinterest, not so much as a like on YouTube.
Suspicion electrified my veins and I glanced back at her, watching her shift impatiently on the bench. She had to be in her early twenties, but the shirt she wore, a simple pale pink one with no logo on it, told me nothing, whether she worked or was in college. What kind of girl her age didn’t have a Facebook account? What kind of girl painted her nails rosy pink, but didn’t plaster board after board with girly stuff on Pinterest? The kind of girl who wanted to remain hidden, who wanted to keep everyone at a distance.
Behind us, voices rose in the distance and I turned in my seat. Reporters clamored outside a modeling studio a few doors down, not far from the coffee shop where I’d been talking to Anika. I caught a glimpse of the focus of their attention, a tall, leggy woman with garish, bottle-blond curls and silvery, sparkly clothes as flashy as Lady Gaga.
“Shit.” I couldn’t afford to run into Gala Rossi right now, any more than I could afford to end up under the eyes of those reporters.
David looked behind us. “Shall I move before they see us, Mr. Davros?”
“No.” I held up a hand. “Don’t leave before that bus picks her up.” No way was I giving up what might be my only chance to solve the mystery that was Anika.
Considering the guardedness with which Anika shrouded herself, it was amusing she’d thought I was hiding from her out of secrecy. The reality was, if the paparazzi who’d shown up for Gala’s photo shoot had seen me, not only would they have had a heyday, but if they’d seen me talking to Anika, it would have caused too many problems for everyone concerned.
I’d never been one for the public eye like a lot of the upper echelon, but with Victor Davros for a father, it was impossible to avoid. He’d spent his whole life stealing people’s businesses out from under their noses. There wasn’t a place in the western world he could go where everyone didn’t know his face or his name. Strong ties to the Mafia only made things worse. I hated the attention, which was one of the reasons I detested having to pretend Gala and I were the world’s number one couple. Unfortunately, until my father was dealt with, a fake relationship with the daughter of a mob boss was necessary. And that meant anything that happened between Anika and I had to be handled just right.
The crowd of media around Gala grew and she preened and tossed her head, posing for shot after shot. One of the reporters turned, but before he saw me, Gala spun and her skirt flew up almost to her ass. The media pressed in, and I caught a fleeting nod from her.
Go.
Gratitude welled in me. Gala had been my distraction for the media, my getaway, my cover story, on too many occasions to count. And I’d been hers just as often. “David, go.”
“But the bus, sir.”
“Damn it.” He was right, the bus still hadn’t showed. Anika still waited at the stop. Then, just in sight, the bus appeared, growing larger by the second. I grinned. “There it is.”
“Already on it, sir.” The limousine roared to life and David swerved into the traffic as soon as Anika boarded and the bus went past. None of the reporters noticed, thanks to Gala’s little display.
As soon as we were on the road, I turned my attention back to looking up Anika. I found nothing, and the longer I came up empty, the more I needed to know. It wasn’t a coincidence she’d only told me her first name. She wasn’t just being street smart, she’d deliberately made it harder to find her.
“Clever girl,” I muttered.
“Sir?”
“Nothing.” I shut the laptop. The idea of that beauty so easily eluding me caused my muscles to tighten. No one escaped a Davros that easily.
Without being able to find any information on her, if she didn’t show up tonight, I wouldn’t have any way of locating her. That couldn’t happen. Failure was not an option where that perfection was concerned. She was mine, and that’s all there was to it. Besides, a man in my business couldn’t afford to associate with anyone without knowing everything about them. The smallest piece of missing information caused businesses like mine to crumble.
“David, I want you to find everything you can on Anika as soon as you can. Including her real name.”
“It will be done, sir.”
“I just looked her up and it’s like she’s a ghost. No one is that guarded without a reason. I want to know why.”
“Yes, sir.”
I closed my eyes, relaxing a little. It pissed me off that I even felt a moment of doubt she’d show up, or that I’d find out everything about the girl who’d gotten inside my head and made my dick harder than any other woman ever had. I always got what I wanted. More than that, simply knowing I wanted someone that elusive was unsettling because of the danger it posed. It didn’t matter, though. Before long, I’d know everything there was to know about the gorgeous girl who called herself Anika. And tonight, I’d have that perfection all to myself.
I don’t know what possessed me to do something so stupid.
Common sense dictated that as soon as I left the mystery man, I find anything I could that would tell me who he was. With the anonymity my father and I needed in order to remain safe, I couldn’t afford to be spending any time around a man I didn’t know. Not only could he be dangerous, he might be connected to the men we were hiding from.
In retrospect, I told myself I’d been too busy during my shift to take time to look into him, to be going online and digging up clues about some sexy guy in a limo. I had work to do, patients to attend to, and the hospital administrators had strict rules about not going online during work hours unless it was for work. I’d been working at the hospital for just shy of six months. Still on probation, I couldn’t afford to risk my job by breaking rules. But the reality was, there were at least two times during my shift where I could have looked into him. Lunch and breaks didn’t count for going online, and yet, five hours into my shift, I still hadn’t looked.
There were clues as to his identity. His driver’s name was David. The insignia on his ring was a clue. Small hints, perhaps, ones that wouldn’t make things easy, but they were there. And yet, I couldn’t make myself utilize them.
I suppose on some level, the idea of a spontaneous meeting with a tall dark stranger excited me, and part of me didn’t want to ruin that. But with the danger to myself and my family, a chance at a little mystery wasn’t worth the risk. No, there was something far more elemental at play here.
All my life, everything I’d done, I’d done to protect us. The Gavini crime family had been after us since before I was born, so all my life I’d been taught that maintaining our secret was paramount. The Gavinis had connections everywhere, so that meant always keeping others at a distance, never letting anyone get close enough to find out who we were. That meant no close friendships, no strong ties, and absolutely no relationships.
It was depressing, really. I was twenty-two, and I’d never been on a date. Guys at school showed interest and I avoided them like a toxin. I only had one close friend, Fran, but she’d been my roommate in university, and my father didn’t even like my spending time with her. Heck, even getting him to loosen the leash enough to let me live in the dorms, and then later, on my own in an apartment in New York, had been a Herculean task. He behaved as
if anyone who looked at me could have some secret tie to the Gavini family. He’d done an exhaustive amount of research on the university, on Fran, then after university, on my landlord before he let me move in. A lot of the time I resented his obsessive control, but I knew the reason for it. He was trying to keep me alive the only way he knew how. The trouble was, it left me yearning for something spontaneous, something mysterious, something risky and wild.
It disturbed me how much that man affected me. Several times during my shift, I found my mind wandering back to the man in the limo. The stranger who promised to discipline me, who loved my name, who thought I was gorgeous, and who looked at me like I was the only woman in the world. It was likely all well-trained lip service, things he said and did to every woman he desired, but I couldn’t make myself care. My body ached to discover what sort of punishment he might exact on me.
As I inserted IV after IV, checked pulses and monitored heart rates, every part of me tingled with the idea of losing my virginity to him, giving him the one thing my desperate need for anonymity forced me to keep. That I didn’t know his name only made that thought all the more enticing. Besides, if I didn’t know who he was, there was no chance knowing his identity could cause me to talk myself out of seeing him again.
“So, drinks tonight?”
I turned from the computer screen at the front counter in the hospital lobby and smiled at Fran. “Can’t. I have plans tonight.” Jesus, was my face heating up? I turned back to the computer before Fran could notice.
Too late.
She leaned in. “Ohh. Any plans that make you blush like that I have to hear. Who’s the guy? Spill.”
The heat in my cheeks intensified and I rolled my eyes at her nosiness. Part of me longed to tell her everything. The mystery of who my admirer was burned in the back of my brain. What’s more, the excitement of my first real date bubbled inside me, begging me to do what all girls did and tell my best friend, the one person I was obligated by cosmic rule to tell. God, Fran, I don’t even know his name. I don’t know him, but he makes me crazy. He wants to punish me, and I want to let him. And fuck, he’s hot.
