by Olivia Gates
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 f
eet. “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 te
rms 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.
