by Amber Bardan
Implanted and took root, making me picture her growing with my child.
“It’s been a long day and I forgot to eat.”
“You forgot to eat?” I looked at her, then touched my thumb to her mouth. Her lips were almost colorless. The pale of her skin translucent. A blue vein streaked in a dash from the corner of her mouth down her jaw.
She should be better by now. It’d been two weeks since she’d been ill. She should be regaining color.
I took her other arm.
“What?” Her eyes widened.
I let her go. “Come on.”
I’d given her the opportunity to sort herself out and come back to me on her own. Tonight my patience expired. I took her to the takeaway chain open all night, on the bottom floor of the hospital, and shoved a bag of food into her arms.
“What’s up with you?”
I ignored the ridiculous question, steering her toward the entrance where Karim waited. Not eating properly. Getting arrested. Talking to that damn Waldolf. Stressing herself to fainting. No. I’d be taking the entire situation in hand.
From now on, her biggest problem, and the only thing she need worry about, would be me. I shoved through the doors right past Karim to the car.
“Any change—”
A shriek cut through the air. Karim stood over a person splayed on the ground.
Emma clutched her chest. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
“I thought—” Karim started.
“She was just asking for change.” Emma bent, and helped the person up. A disheveled woman in a filthy dress that barley covered her ass. “I’m so sorry.”
Karim turned to me. “I was protecting her,” he said in Arabic.
“I know,” I said, but my attention was on Emma.
She helped the woman to a bench seat and crouched in front of her.
“The stench is foul,” Karim said. “Tell me she knows better than to give money to a whore?”
My blood turned volcanic. I stared at Karim. Whore. If he were anyone other than Haithem’s assistant, he’d receive the violent response use of that word deserved. “Get in the car,” I said to him.
“...but at least it’s hot.” Emma handed over her bag of food.
Food she needed.
And I couldn’t move to stop her.
My lungs seized. A staggering flash of memory burst through me. The image plowed through decades of suppression—of a five-year-old boy.
The woman nodded, and hugged her.
My heart stuttered under my ribs. Emma embraced a woman most would recoil from. The memory grew vivid, thumping with life. Of a boy, dirty, putrid and broken.
A thieving boy.
And a woman with a smile just like the smile I saw now. My new mother, who crouched down like Emma did and did not recoil.
Did not spit on me as others had spat.
A women who hugged a boy who’d never been hugged.
She straightened, then came toward me. I could not breathe.
I could not move.
I could not see anything except for her.
Emma reached me, her forehead wrinkling as she took me in. Her mouth opened to say something—I did not let her.
I pulled her to me, and kissed her as though kissing her was the only thing keeping me alive.
In that moment it was.
Chapter Seventeen
Emma
“What did he say before?” I asked, glancing at Karim, who drove Haithem’s town car.
Avner reclined in his seat. He’d always been reserved and thoughtful. Right now he appeared lost in his head. As smart as he was, I had a feeling his head wasn’t the kindest place to dwell.
He turned his attention to me. About freaking time. He’d kissed the living daylights out of me at the hospital, then released me like a hot brick and not spoken another word.
Karim had said something to him in Arabic before. Is that what had him acting so strangely?
“He said you shouldn’t give money to drug addicts.”
“I didn’t offer money, and she’s not a drug addict.” I dropped my gaze to my hands. “She’s an alcoholic. Her liver’s failing, that’s why she was at the hospital.”
“She explained all of that?”
“She didn’t need to.” I shook my head. “So why is he driving us, anyway?”
“I’m leaving my car at the hospital for Haithem and Angelina.”
I looked at him again. “You really care about them, don’t you?”
“Of course. They are my friends.” He met my gaze. “I take care of my friends.”
A shiver rolled through me. “So you’ve said.”
“No.” He angled himself toward me. “Not so I’ve said—so I do.”
The ache in my chest flared back into being.
So he did.
He’d come for me when I was drugged at the bar. He’d come for me when I was ill. He’d come for me again today when I’d been arrested—he was there for me.
“Avner, I need to tell you something...”
His seatbelt was off and he was beside me before I could finish.
“You were right.” I took a shuddering breath. He’d been right all along. I hadn’t wanted to see it. “About that night in the bar. There’s something I never told you.”
“What didn’t you tell me?” He studied me, not harshly like I’d assumed he would. Studied me as though a secret could not exist between us—even though they did.
“That night when I first arrived at the bar, the bartender told me a guy had been asking about me.”
He took my hand. “A guy?”
“I don’t know who, only that he was a big guy—a macho guy.”
“What’s this bartender’s name?” His voice changed, became lighter and more casual, and something about that was chilling.
“Danny.” I said. “I mean Daniel.”
“Not the bartender who served you coffee? He wasn’t the one who told you this?”
“No, Daniel is my friend.” I sandwiched his hand between mine. “Has been my friend for a year.”
He held my gaze. “Okay.”
I breathed out. “But that’s not all.”
“Yes,” he said, his voice so even, I couldn’t buy his calm for one moment.
“Someone followed me at the shops today.” I pulled my hands from his. Although the realization hit me earlier, saying it out loud made my fingers numb. “I think it was the guy Danny told me about. That’s why I tried to leave the store wearing the necklace. I was running away from him.”
His jaw twitched. “Why are you telling me?”
“What do you mean?” I rubbed my hands on my thighs. “Don’t you want to know?”
“Yes, I want to know.” He leaned in and despite the words he said, the look he wore was far from pleased. “But why are you telling me?”
“I—” I wet my lips. He was too close. His scrutiny absurdly intense. “I thought we were friends. You said you were looking out for me?”
“But, Emma, you called our friendship a farce.” His voice lowered. My shoulder pressed against the car door. “You rescinded our relationship.”
My head spun. Did that still count?
We’d kissed twice tonight. And here we were together. What was this then?
“I try to help you, but all you do is resist me.”
Pain shot into my throat. I’d done it—pushed him all the way to gone.
The way I pushed everyone.
“So answer the question. Don’t tell me what I said, or what I do, tell me what you are asking for.”
My eyes pricked—my damned eyes. What was wrong with me?
Yet I knew what I wanted. I knew what I
had to ask for, because I needed to stop pretending and say it out loud, scary as it may be.
“I want your help,” I whispered. “I want you to be my friend.”
His breath released.
I closed my eyes. That plea rang between us, and it was so much more than stalkers and research and friendship.
His hand slid into my hair. “I will always help you.” He tilted my head back. “But what I need is for you to accept it.”
My eyes fluttered open. “Okay.”
“Promise.” His gaze pierced me as I knew it would. “Promise that you will accept my help if I give it to you.”
My pulse went wild.
He’d said there was no going back before, but this, if I agreed, would be inescapable. I couldn’t even pretend this time not to hear the subtext. That I didn’t know I was handing my whole self over to him.
“I promise.”
He smiled, and everything went bright. “Good girl.”
I blinked. No, it really was bright...
He released me.
I spun around, squinting out the car windows. “What on earth...”
Spotlights, headlights, something—shone on us.
Avner unclasped my seatbelt.
The click kick-started my heart. “Where are we?”
He leaned over me, and opened the car door. Chill air rushed over us. “We are wherever I want us to be.”
Our surroundings came into focus—an airplane hangar.
Holy shit.
With one promise, I’d sealed my fate.
Chapter Eighteen
Emma
He waited until we were at thirty thousand feet to reveal our destination. The sneaky bastard. I stared at the wall of the toilet cubical, pulse humming louder than the jets.
“You can hide in there all you like, this plane will still be landing in India.” His voice came through the door.
“I told you, not without my passport.” Another wave of sheer disbelief knocked into me. He was actually, really, going to smuggle me into a foreign country. A country which, from what I’d heard, was kinda serious about its border protection.
Fuck.
“I have taken care of everything. Now open this door.”
My arms tightened across my chest. “Not until you turn us around.”
“No.” His growl rumbled through the cubical. “Emma—” The sound of my name, whispered in a warning, sent a shiver up my spine. The kind of shiver that also had my thighs quivering. “You made me a promise not an hour ago.”
Dammit. I knew I’d come to regret that. I undid the lock and tugged the door open.
Avner clamped his hand over the cubical opening. “All I ask for is a little faith.”
“I was arrested today, Avner.” I held up my hands. “In my own country, and it was horrible. Do you really think I want to see what the inside of an Indian prison looks like?”
“That’s never going to happen.” He moved in on me. “This is me looking out for you.”
His gaze shot into me like a dart—piercing and on target.
Despite logic I believed him. Despite the way every rule-abiding part of me revolted at this. Despite this being the last thing I should be doing, he was the first person I wanted to count on.
“Why couldn’t you just take me to a private island like any normal rich dude?” I sighed.
He tugged me closer, laughing, and hugged me. My arms went around him too. His rumble rippled through to my belly. The adrenaline waned, my heartbeat returning to normal.
“Just because you have a private jet doesn’t mean you have to fly it as far as possible, you know.”
He leaned down to my ear. “This isn’t my jet.”
I glanced up. “It’s not?”
“No. Mine is much bigger.”
This time my laughter burst through the cubical. Of course his was bigger. He guided me out of the toilet and back into the cabin, then locked the door separating the passenger cabin from the staff and crew. “Mine has a bedroom.”
Heat rolled in my middle.
I glanced at the recliners. “So why aren’t we on yours then?”
“Because I want no records of where we are.” He tugged off his jacket, and threw it onto an empty seat. “No records. No documentation. We’re going to disappear for a while.”
My heat ebbed. “For how long?”
“A week maybe.” He took a recliner. “Until I get ahead of this. See what happens when you’re gone and find out who goes looking where.”
I took a seat next to him. This was serious. More serious than I thought. “It could still be personal.”
“I haven’t ruled anything out.” He tugged at his collar, opening the first button. “But I will fix this.” His last word hissed, and the sound was like scraping nails.
I rubbed the top of my arm. “You scare me, Avner.”
He turned to me, leaning his elbow on the armrest between us. “You have a stalker and I’m the one who scares you?”
My breath quivered. “I’m afraid of the means that achieve your ends. What you do to get what you want.”
He leaned closer, and his frown slipped. “You should be afraid.”
I should be?
I fucking was.
My pulse stuttered. Growing more afraid by the second. Not for my safety, but perhaps for my sanity.
“Because all I want now is to take care of you.” He took my arm, his gaze washing all over me.
I pressed my hand to his chest, keeping him back. “You can’t say things like that.”
“Why not?” He drew me closer.
My biceps flexed for an instant, then gave in. My thigh pressed against his as he dragged me inches across my seat.
“Because it’s not right. We’ve only had one real date.” Which ended badly. “It’s too soon. This isn’t how it’s supposed to be.”
“Have you ever dated?”
I frowned. “Of course.” Not the same person more than once in the past year, but in the past, yeah, I’d dated—a lot.
“Then tell me, in all the times you’ve ever dated, what in these rituals that make everything acceptable to you ever gave you what you needed?”
He let me go, but we were still too close. Still thigh to thigh.
I blinked. “I’m not sure what you mean.”
“When you go on dates, when you exchange pleasantries, when he puts his best foot forward, what do you get?” He studied me now, his body so still, I could almost feel his presence inside my skull. “How many dates does it take to make it right?”
I glanced away from him, at the jacket strewn on a spare seat. There was an answer to this—I knew there was. I couldn’t think of it.
“I don’t want you to sit there and smile and be nice. Polite is not what I want from you.”
My gaze snapped back to him.
“It’s too late, I’ve already seen you at your best. In Italy, I saw you relaxed. I saw you happy for your friends. I’ve seen you be loyal and selfless.” He spoke faster, his words dashing through me so quickly, harder to catch, yet I did. I hung off his every word. “But I’ve seen you angry too. Suspicious. Petty.”
Our time together burst through me in an explosion. Not only the things he’d done for me, but what I’d done to him. When I’d been mean to him at the party. When I’d pushed him away. He still sat here.
He still said these things.
“You can’t hide your worst from me, because I’ve seen it. Just like I’ve seen you sick, and hurting and crying.”
And he’s still in.
My palm pressed harder to his chest, but this time it wasn’t pushing, it was to keep me upright. Even with secrets thick between us, with all the questions I still had ab
out him, we were understood. The power of that acceptance stole my breath.
The power of it reached into the frozen chambers of my heart.
“So forget about how things are supposed to be and see what they are. I want to take care of you.”
I reached for his cheek. Splayed my fingers on his prickly stubble, and was scorched by the heat in his expression.
“And you’re going to let me, Emma. You’re going to let me take care of you however I want.” He grabbed my wrist, holding my touch to his face.
“On one condition,” I whispered.
His eyes flashed. “What’s that?”
“I get to take care of you too.”
His jaw jumped under my fingers, a moment of resistance—because how could I take care of him? When he was so strong. When he wanted to be invulnerable?
But I remembered when he hadn’t been.
He did too, because his lashes lowered, and he wasn’t invulnerable again.
I made my way into his lap, peeled my dress over my head and let him watch me take off my bra. Then I kissed him—the way he liked it.
Slowly.
I kissed him with all I was feeling. He kneaded the naked flesh of my back. I ate up his pleasure. The sweetness of his reactions sent tremors through me. I unbuttoned his shirt, and pressed myself to his bare chest. His crisp hairs prickled my nipples. Tingles shot to my core.
I reached for his belt, then his pants were gone and I straddled him. But there was so much joy in the anticipation of his cock sandwiched between us—feeling it there so close that I kissed him when I wanted to take him. That I reveled in the way he somehow grew harder against my belly. That I rubbed my pussy against him and it was wet and filthy.
He grabbed my ass and pulled me closer. Pleasure streaked through me, my blood sang with it. I took him in hand, arched my hips and stroked the big velvety head of his cock against my clit. My hips rocked, twitched, twisted with need. His crown slipped over my wet sex. I rubbed myself over his length. Fuck. I could come like this. Just from rubbing up on him.
But I wouldn’t.
Not yet.
I held him in my fist and brought him to me. Pressure flared at my entrance. I grabbed onto his shoulder, unsteady. His gaze shot to mine, his eyes flashing as I took him just as he was into me.
