by Croft, Nina
He closed his eyes and pictured her perched on the counter, her long dark hair tousled, her lips swollen from his kisses, and his mind filled with the feel of her. The taste of her. The scent of her arousal. As if on cue, his cock jerked in his pants.
If Julia hadn’t arrived, they would have made love. The first time would have been hard and fast. He’d have taken her right there on the kitchen counter, and she would have let him. Afterward, he would have picked her up, carried her to her bed, and made long, slow love to her. He’d be there now, stripping off her clothes—not that she’d been wearing many—and making love to her. Probably he’d kiss her. Everywhere. Starting at her breasts, down her belly, between her thighs. He remembered the taste of her from that long-ago night.
He groaned and his hand moved to his cock. Jesus he needed some relief; it had been so long.
A perfunctory knock came at the door, and it opened without waiting for his answer, revealing Sophia standing there. He moved his hand and his cock wilted.
Bitch.
God, how he hated her.
“You’ve been out,” she said. “Where were you?”
None of your goddamn business. The words hovered on his tongue. But while Lissa might have the power to break through his control, this woman never would.
“I went to see Julia.”
She’d probably had him followed, so it was best to stick as close as possible to the truth.
“Why?”
He sat back in his chair and relaxed his muscles. It wouldn’t do to appear tense. She could smell fear, or a lie, and probably a whole load of other things, including his arousal. Sophia was old, not as old as Ethan, but he was betting she was over a century.
“I thought it might be a good idea to talk to her about you. Ask her to welcome you to the family.”
“You really think that’s likely to happen?”
“I told her I loved you. She wants me to be happy.”
Sophia came to stand beside him and stroked one finger down his cheek. He fought the urge to flinch. “How sweet. And did you see your other little friend?”
Shit. How had she known Melissa was staying with Julia? He hadn’t. But then he hadn’t taken the time to check out where she was staying.
Sophia always checked everything.
Maybe it was a lesson he should learn, though he hated to learn anything from Sophia. His biggest fear was he would turn into something like her.
But he didn’t like the way she was asking about Lissa. He needed to get someone to guard Lissa, keep her safe until she left London. He should never have led her on this morning. By kissing her, he’d no doubt given her the impression that her “plan” had a chance of working. Somehow, he had to find a way to take that back, push her away, convince her that his relationship with Sophia was real.
“I saw her briefly,” he said, keeping his tone bland. “I asked to speak to Julia alone. Melissa isn’t family.”
Sophia pursed her lips but nodded and moved away. “Inform me if you leave again.”
A red-hot wall of rage rose up in his mind. Inside his beast paced, wild and elemental, howling to be free.
Each month, the struggle to hide how powerful his wolf had become grew more difficult, as though the pressure inside him built until it must explode. And he couldn’t allow that, because if they saw him as a threat, then his whole family could die.
Sophia stepped back and something flickered in her dark eyes. Fear? She rubbed her arms as though she felt something strange in the air.
“What was that?” she asked.
“What was what?”
He kept his voice expressionless, his body relaxed, and she shook her head.
“Nothing. My imagination.”
One day she would discover it wasn’t her imagination. That he was far more powerful than anything she could ever conceive.
Soon.
…
Lissa slipped off her shoes, wriggled down in her seat, and took a restorative sip of chilled white wine as she allowed the subdued elegance of the terrace restaurant in Harrods to soothe her battered body and soul. Five solid hours of haircuts, beauty treatments, and shopping would do that. But much to her own surprise, she’d enjoyed the outing.
She glanced across at Julia, but was distracted by the image of herself in the huge mirror behind her.
Holy crap. Who was that woman?
She’d always worn her hair long, mainly because she couldn’t be bothered with hairdressers and a ponytail had kept it neat and out of the way.
Now, it was cropped short. Really short. Styled close to her head, her hair couldn’t have been longer than an inch anywhere, except maybe the tendrils curling on her cheeks. The cut made her eyes appear huge, an effect enhanced by the black liner smudged under her lower lashes.
“Stop admiring yourself,” Julia said, but there was a smug, self-satisfied expression on her face as though she was responsible for the transformation. Which she was. “So, how do you feel?”
“I feel plucked, shaved, waxed, and filed. My rough edges have been smoothed away.”
“Well, the rough edges you can see, anyway.” Julia cast her a comprehensive glance. “We’ll work on the ones you can’t see next.”
A trickle of unease ran through Lissa. “You leave my rough edges alone,” she said. “I need them.” Her rough edges were what kept her safe, her defense against the world.
“No, we reckon you’ve run for long enough.”
“We?” A light sweat broke out on her forehead.
“Me, Debora, and Marcy.” Julia confirmed her worst fears. “You know, a lot of people have dysfunctional childhoods and don’t end up screwed up.”
“Screwed up? Is that how you see me?”
“A little. But you’re not a hopeless case, and we’re not giving up on you.”
“Crap.” Was the come-and-help-Daniel scenario merely a ruse to get her back here, so they could save her from herself? She didn’t want saving. Did she? She ran a hand through her short hair, pressing her scalp. “This whole thing, this whole plot, the makeover… It’s about me, not Daniel, isn’t it?”
“Of course, it’s about Daniel. You’ve seen him. He needs help.”
Some of her tension eased away. “That’s true.”
“But so do you.”
Lissa forced down her panic. Taking a huge gulp of her wine, she sat back and, one by one, relaxed her tense muscles.
“So does your brother Jason have as many hang-ups as you?” Julia asked.
Thank God—a change of subject. “More,” she said. “Why are you asking?”
“Because I fancy him, of course.” Julia studied her for a minute. “On you that coloring—the black hair and the golden eyes—is sort of cool. But on Jason, it’s totally hot.”
She shrugged. “I didn’t notice.”
“Well, he is your brother and your mind is on other things.”
True. And not only her mind. All through the long day, she’d had flashbacks to those minutes with Daniel before Julia’s timely interruption. She shivered as she remembered the sensation of his strong arms around her, his lips on hers.
Pushing the image aside, she considered what she could tell Julia about Jason. She was embarrassed she knew so little. “I don’t really know him,” she said at last.
“How can you not know him? He’s your brother.”
“We never had much to do with each other when we were kids—he was two years older and that’s a big difference.”
“No it’s not.”
Julia was obviously not going to make this easy. “We weren’t a close family to begin with, and once I got the scholarship we drifted even farther apart.” That wasn’t really a true representation of what had happened. She remembered coming home for one holiday and Jason calling her a stuck-up little bitch, and maybe he’d been right. And that wasn’t a nice thing to have to face about yourself, so she’d avoided him when she could, which was most of the time.
“I was always scar
ed he would turn up at the school and embarrass me.”
“How could he do that?”
She shook her head. “You have no idea. He was wild, always in trouble.”
“He would have given you street cred.”
“The last thing I needed was street cred—believe me I had street cred in spades, I just learned to hide it.”
Julia studied her for a minute. “You were ashamed of your family.”
“Yes.”
She glanced around her at the subdued elegance of her surroundings. It seemed so incongruous to think of her childhood in these surroundings.
“My mother was a drug dealer. My father was a male stripper.”
Julia stared. Hey, she’d made mouthy Julia speechless. That had to be a first.
“You are kidding me?”
“I wish I was. My mother went to prison when I was fifteen.”
“Shit, I remember. You told us there was a bit of trouble at home and your mum had left your dad.”
“Well, it wasn’t voluntarily. She got four years for dealing.” She smiled. “Would that have given me street cred?”
“Okay, maybe I see your point. So what happened?”
Her father had loved her mother almost desperately. The feeling hadn’t been mutual. From an early age, the one overriding emotion Lissa remembered from her mother had been scorn for her father and her brother.
“I’m sorry,” Julia said.
“What for?”
“Your face—you look so tragic. I shouldn’t have brought it up.”
“No, it’s a good thing, really. I’ve always done my best not to think about them. But my mother hated men.”
“Where is she now? Do you see her?”
“No, I don’t.” She grinned. “She got out in two years on good behavior, but she never went back to my father. She moved in with a biker chick she met in prison.”
“What?”
“My mother is a lesbian.” Saying it was like coming out.
“Right…” Julia murmured. “A lesbian. So back to Jason…”
Julia was incorrigible. “I don’t know,” Lissa said. “But I mean to find out on Sunday. You can help me cook lunch.”
“You can cook? That’s new.”
“No I can’t. That’s why you’re helping me. You can stun him with your culinary prowess.”
“What culinary prowess?”
“Oh dear, poor Jason.”
Chapter Six
A handful of steps led down to the pool at the Spanish villa and Lissa hesitated at the top. Below her, Daniel lay stretched out on his stomach on a sunbed, his head resting on his folded hands. Sophia perched beside him, rubbing suntan lotion into the golden skin of his back. Her scarlet bikini showed off her perfect figure. Curvaceous in all the right places, she made Lissa feel like a stick by comparison.
“Bitch,” Julia muttered from beside her. “Look at her smug expression. She thinks she’s caught him.”
“She has.”
Sophia glanced up and met Lissa’s gaze. Her hands slowed, her movements becoming sensual, gliding lower to slip beneath the waistband of Daniel’s dark blue swim shorts.
“Excuse me while I go lose my lunch,” Julia muttered.
“I might join you,” Lissa replied. The sight of Sophia touching Daniel, as though she had every right to, made her nauseous. She wanted to stride across, drag the other woman away from him, and toss her overheated ass into the pool. Sophia obviously needed cooling down.
Daniel must have sensed something because he shrugged off the hand, rolled over, and sat up.
Whoa. Where had those muscles come from? He was totally ripped. “Has your brother been working out?” she asked.
“I guess he must have been.”
His skin stretched taut over the smooth swell of muscles. His shoulders were broad, his hips narrow, his stomach flat, almost concave and ridged with muscle.
Something nudged her in the side, and she jumped.
“You’re gawping,” Julia murmured. “Not that I blame you. When did my brother get so hot?”
“I don’t know.”
He’d always been good-looking, but this was way beyond handsome. He was…mesmerizing. She’d felt that hard body against hers the other day but seeing it in the bright sunshine was a completely different matter.
“You’re still gawping and I think The Evil One has noticed.”
Lissa shook her head and kick-started her brain. She dragged her gaze from the truly drool worthy sight of Daniel in nothing but a pair of swimming shorts and looked at the woman at his side. And wished she hadn’t. Sophia’s body matched his flawless physique—and Lissa hated her.
The perfect couple.
She turned her attention back to Daniel and found him watching her. Holding her gaze, he lifted his hand and rested it on Sophia’s shoulder, curled his fingers around her neck, and pulled her close against his body.
Sophia snuggled in, turned her head, and kissed him full on the mouth. Daniel’s other hand came out and he cupped her chin and deepened the kiss.
For a second, Lissa’s hands clenched at her side, and then she relaxed her fingers one by one.
“Yuk,” Julia muttered.
“Isn’t it sweet?” Pamela, Julia’s mother, came up behind them with a tray of cocktails, and Lissa thankfully turned from the show in front of her. “I’d despaired of Daniel ever settling down and finding someone to love and now it’s happened.”
Lissa couldn’t convince herself that love came into this little scenario anywhere. She glanced back at the couple. They were still kissing, but as she watched, Daniel opened his eyes and stared straight at her. His expression was totally detached. As though he felt nothing.
Finally, he drew back and put Sophia from him. She pouted but rose from the bed, and went to stretch out on the one next to him, bending one knee and posing like a model.
Ignoring his girlfriend, Daniel still watched Lissa, and she stared back as she untied the belt of her robe and shrugged out of it. Beneath it, she wore a one piece she’d bought on her shopping trip with Julia. The saleswoman had called it a mono-kini—a very skimpy bikini with a diagonal strip of material that crossed her belly.
It suited her. While she was still a little too thin, she’d lost a lot of weight with that last bout of malaria; at least the slimness emphasized her breasts.
She strolled toward him, dangling the robe from one finger. When she came up level, she dropped it onto his lap.
“Hello, Daniel.”
“Lissa.” Had he really kissed her? His tone gave nothing away. “I like the haircut,” he said.
His gaze flickered down over her body and something shifted behind it. She caught a brief flash of expression—hunger, need—then it was gone. But the look was enough to send a wave of heat washing through her body. Her nipples tightened, not good considering her clothes or rather lack of them. She peeked down and saw them pressed up against the material of her swimsuit. Glancing back at Daniel, she found his gaze had followed hers and he was staring at her breasts. It was hard not to remember the feel of his hands touching her only days earlier. Heat curled inside her, and any moment steam would pop out of her ears.
She turned around and dived into the water.
After swimming the length of the pool underwater, she came up gasping for air. Unfortunately, the water was tepid like a warm bath and did nothing to cool her down.
…
Daniel paced his room. He wanted to be away from here so badly. He’d had all he could take of Sophia for one day. For one lifetime actually. But they needed to at least make the pretense they were a happy couple.
Sophia lay on the bed, head propped on one hand. Her lips pursed in a scarlet pout.
All evening he’d had to spout insincere drivel to his parents while she drove him insane. He’d never hit a woman before, but Sophia tempted him sorely.
As he stared out the window, lights glinted off a small boat on the Mediterranean far below. He wished he were
on it, sailing somewhere far away. Preferably with Lissa beside him.
Daniel clenched his fist. He had to stop thinking that way. Sophia was already suspicious. That’s what the touchy-feely stuff was about—she was making sure that everyone knew he belonged to her. But her touch made his wolf claw at his insides. Every minute in her company, he had to make a conscious effort not to give in to the violence his beast craved. He couldn’t help but wonder if one day he would lose that restraint, along with his humanity, give in to the urges that drove his wolf. But not this weekend, he hoped.
“Lay off pawing me,” he said.
“I’m only trying to convince them that we’re in love.”
“Well, it won’t convince them if I throw up all over you, will it?”
She pouted again and stretched out, arching her back and thrusting her full breasts into the air while gazing at him through half-closed lashes. “Really, Daniel, do you find me so unattractive.”
He let his gaze stray down the length of her body. “I find you totally repugnant. The thought of touching you makes my skin crawl. Is that clear enough for you?”
Rage flashed across her face, and her eyes glittered with malice, followed by what he guessed was satisfaction. This wasn’t about desire for Sophia; it was about power. Proving that she had the power to make him stand in line. And she did.
Jesus, he was supposed to be trying to convince her there was nothing between Lissa and him, that’s what this whole charade was about. And he was hardly going about it the right way. He didn’t understand what was the matter with him.
“I’m betting you don’t find your Lissa repugnant. On the other hand, I’m sure I could arrange some little accident that might make her that way.”
This time, the fury flashed through him. In two paces, he was across the floor and standing over her. He leaned down, put his hands on either side her body, and shoved his face close to hers.
