by Olivia Gates
Every word she said felt like a stab, their collective pain pouring out of him on a butchered groan. “Why didn’t you tell me everything? I would have taken care of Medvedev and saved you from The Organization.”
Her eyes shot up to his, the tears filling them rippling like a pool in an earthquake. It was clear she’d never thought this even an option.
“Did you fear I’d punish you if I knew the truth?”
Her expression made it clear that wasn’t something she’d considered, either. “I was only afraid you’d go after Medvedev, and I couldn’t risk you. He was an unpredictable monster.”
He grimaced at her misplaced fear. “Didn’t you know enough about me to know I could have handled Medvedev in my sleep? Or did you think I would, but still wouldn’t help you?”
Her eyes implored his belief, when he’d sooner doubt himself rather than her now. “I only cared about your safety and the new life you’d built. And I wanted to end Medvedev’s danger to you without you finding out the truth about me and how I came to be with you. I wanted to remain the one you trusted implicitly, wanted totally. I couldn’t bear seeing the trust and passion in your eyes turn to contempt and disgust if you knew. I wanted to hold on to the memories. Those months with you, the way you looked at me, the way you treated me, meant more to me than anything.”
“More than your life?”
“Yes.”
He stared at her, the implications of her cried out affirmation boggling his mind.
She’d truly thought holding on to her memories and to his good opinion of her more important than escaping her enslavement, or even preserving her life.
Being unable to reach into the past to make her realize that he would have forgiven her anything, that there’d been nothing to forgive, corroded his sanity. Her false belief had deprived him of the chance to protect her, save her.
He couldn’t even avenge her. Medvedev was already dead.
But, no. He’d been working to bring down The Organization—for himself, his brothers and all the unknown children who had been abused. But now, more than ever, he would destroy it on her behalf. His vengeance would now know no bounds. He would wreak unimaginable pain on everyone who’d had a hand in a single moment of her suffering. And when she hadn’t told him the worst parts yet... Though he no longer knew if he could withstand hearing them.
But he would, no matter what it did to him. He had to relieve her of all of her burdens, in every way he could.
A distant look came into her eyes. “But all my precautions were in vain. When you called me that last time, the moment I heard your voice I knew you’d found me out. I knew it was the end and I wasn’t ready. I would have never been ready. Everything I feared came to pass. You sounded as I always dreaded—angry and disillusioned and disgusted. I was only grateful I didn’t see all that on your face. And there was only one thing I could do. Make it all worse.”
She looked into his eyes with everything she was on display for the first time. And it was beyond his imagining.
“I wanted to disappear,” she said. “Make it impossible for Medvedev to find me. I also wanted to help others in my same situation, but I knew our collective freedoms would cost a huge amount of money. So I blackmailed you for it. That also served to end everything between us on the worst note possible.
“But before I could leave the country, Medvedev walked into the hotel room where I was under a false name. He was shrewd enough to sense I’d make a run for it. I told him I just wanted to escape The Organization, that I thought he wouldn’t come through for me since I only had proof you weren’t his agent. But he was convinced I had proof you were, even deducted I’d blackmailed you myself, though he assigned me purely mercenary motives for that. He said once I gave him the info, he wouldn’t only extort you himself, but your partners, too, whom he was certain were the other operatives who escaped, making this more lucrative than he’d ever thought.”
She paused to draw in a shuddering breath. “I failed to divert him, and he just knew everything. I knew he’d turn your hard-won freedom into a new prison, would end up turning you over to The Organization to redeem himself. The one card I had left was that he needed solid info, and I wouldn’t give it to him. At first, he still promised he’d keep his end of the bargain if I did mine. But I refused, told him he couldn’t do a thing without proof. And he started torturing me.”
Something fundamental charred inside him. Red-hot wrath against a dead man he couldn’t kill again almost ate through his arteries.
“I knew I wouldn’t walk out of that room alive, but I could still save you if I took him down with me. With the last strength left in me, I stabbed him with a stiletto I used as a hair clip. I know how to kill a man with one strike, but he was no ordinary man. Instead of going into instant shock, he was all over me. He almost killed me...before he succumbed.”
His whole body started shaking, on the verge of exploding. Scarlett had fought a monster like Medvedev and sustained near-fatal injuries...for him.
“I managed to stem my bleeding, to leave the hotel without being seen, to barely reach a secret medical center before I collapsed. It took them days to stabilize me.”
She stopped, and her silence stretched. His blood burned and congealed in his arteries each single second.
Then she talked again, as if in a fugue. “As soon as I was well enough, I started acquiring this new face and a new identity. I came back here believing I’d have the painful pleasure of seeing you from afar without any danger of you recognizing me. But you did recognize me, and now you’ve even found out everything I thought would forever remain hidden.”
Long minutes after she fell silent again, agonized beyond endurance, he choked out, “Why didn’t you tell me all this when you met me again? When there was no more danger to me? Why did you let me think the worst of you?”
Suddenly her eyes looked exactly as they had in the photo Numair had showed him. Lifeless, hopeless. “Because there was no point. I came here thinking you’d long forgotten me. Then you recognized me and offered me this arrangement, and I knew I was just passing through your life. I only wanted to have this time with you before I moved on. I knew you’d go on to have the life you worked so hard to establish and you’d never think of me again. And I didn’t want you to. I wanted to give you the closure I deprived you of the first time.”
“I didn’t want closure, Scarlett.” He gripped her face, his hands shaking, needing her to know every single thing he’d felt all these years. “I lived all these years going insane for an explanation, this explanation. I was unable to come to terms with the discrepancy between what I felt with you, from you, and what it had seemed to be. I’ve been unable to have any kind of intimacy again.”
“You mean you didn’t...?” A tiny flame leaped in her eyes before it was immediately extinguished.
He crushed her in his arms, his heart convulsing at the despondence in her eyes. She’d never even considered it was possible for him to feel the same for her as she felt for him.
Needing to make her believe he’d always been hers, to erase every terrible moment she’d ever lived, he raised her face to his and held her eyes. “I didn’t. I couldn’t. I was yearning for the only woman I ever wanted, and it was excruciating because I thought you were a lie. But not only have you always been real and everything I ever craved and more, you protected me and my brothers from exposure. You saved our lives. And it almost cost you your own.”
* * *
It cost me something more precious to me than my life.
Scarlett barely caught back the cry.
She couldn’t let him know that. Not that. But she couldn’t let him make it sound as if what she’d done had been a sacrifice. Giving him up had been that. Protecting him with her life had been a privilege.
She tried to wave his gratitude away, but he persisted.
&n
bsp; “You must accept your dues. And you will have the gratitude and lifelong allegiance of my brothers, too. Yes, my partners in Black Castle Enterprises are all The Organization’s escapees. We formed a brotherhood within our prison, swore a blood oath to escape, become unstoppable and bring down The Organization and anyone associated with it. We’re going through the list from the outside in, and from bottom to top in such convoluted ways, they wouldn’t know what hit them before they’re destroyed.” Suddenly he frowned, as if remembering something. “What happened to the people you wanted to help?”
She remembered the friends who’d held her together all these years, before and after Raiden. They were now safe in their new lives, which made her aching lips spread in a smile of relief and thankfulness. “I got them out, built them new identities, too. I told you I put your money to the best use.”
His gorgeous eyes poured what looked like pride over her, making her heart flutter like a hummingbird.
Then the frown of murderous wrath was back, even blacker. “Are the faint scars on your abdomen Medvedev’s stabs?”
The noose of agonizing memories choked her again as she nodded, averting her gaze so she could tell the half-truth. “They were aesthetically revised during my other surgeries.”
“Tell me he died in horrific pain.”
At his vicious growl, she attempted a shrug. “Probably. I was too busy with my own pain and peril to notice his.”
His fingers sank into her shoulders again. “Why didn’t you call me? For God’s sake, Scarlett, did you think I wouldn’t save you?”
His rage at the long-dead Medvedev was palpable. But it was his frustration with her, for not seeking his protection at first, then his help later that he seemed unable to handle. For a man like him, one who took charge and resolved problems, feeling helpless must be the worst thing that could happen to him. He must feel the same now, being unable to change the past.
“I told you what I thought,” she murmured. “Contacting you again under any circumstances wasn’t even an option.”
“Even if you thought you were dying?”
“Especially then. I left to protect you. I would never have considered dragging you to a crime scene, risking your reputation and putting you under the law’s scrutiny.”
Her rationalizations seemed about to cause him an apoplectic fit. He seemed to vibrate as he struggled with bringing the tirades storming inside him under control.
Then he attacked on a different front, bombarding her with questions. “What were your injuries exactly? How long did it take you to heal? Do you suffer from any lasting damage or ongoing pain?”
I suffer both, she wanted to whimper.
But this was the one thing she wouldn’t tell him. This was her loss and she couldn’t let him share it.
But he would ask and push until he left her no place to hide any secrets. And she had to keep this one.
To shut him up, divert him, and because she couldn’t bear wasting one more moment with him, she clung to him, her hands digging into his luxurious hair, tugging him closer. “No more questions, Raiden. I want you right this second.”
He bared his teeth on a silent growl, his body lurching, tensing as if at the shock of a lash.
Peeling her hands off him with his own trembling ones, he held out a warning finger. “Don’t, Scarlett. I’m not in control of myself. I was never in this condition.”
Disregarding his warning, she lunged at him, tore his shirt out of his pants, attacked his zipper. “I want you out of control. I want you savage and rough and unable to stop. Take me hard and fast and now, Raiden. I can’t wait. I can’t.”
His harsh intakes of breath confessed his pleasure at her frenzy, but he ended it, capturing her feverish hands. When she writhed against him, raining bites and kisses anywhere she could reach, the last of his restraint crumbled, and she finally made him do what she wanted him to. He hauled her up in his arms and hurtled with her to his bed.
Once there, he flung her down onto her stomach, then launched himself over her, covering her with his great body. It was as if he was shielding her, hiding her, and poignancy welled out of her depths on a keen. Rumbling incessantly, he sounded like a beast, one protecting his mate, maddened and heartbroken he hadn’t been able to prevent her injury before he got to her.
Aching at his protectiveness, intoxicated by his possessiveness, she raised her head and met his wild eyes in the mirrored headboard. The sight of their replicas in the coolness of glass—how he dominated her, how she looked taken whole by him—ignited her down to her last nerve ending. And that was before his words scorched her.
“Five years, Scarlett, five interminable years, struggling with losing you. Now it’s even worse, knowing you struggled, too, suffered more.” Crying out at the desolation in his voice, she arched back into him, needing to absorb it. “But I have you back now, and you just gave me back every memory I thought I couldn’t keep. It was all real. This is real. This.”
He pressed against her harder, as if he couldn’t bear the physical boundaries separating them, his hardness digging into her yielding body. She went limp under him, showing him she wanted him to assimilate her, wanted to dissolve in him.
His eyes kept hers captive, and his hot breath scorched her face, filled her lungs. “I went insane every night, needing you like this and knowing I’d never have you again. Hunger built inside me without even hope for relief.”
The first time he’d confessed this, her mind had swerved around his words, shying away from registering them. It was too huge to contemplate that he hadn’t had any intimacies since her. This time there was no escaping his meaning. And it was still almost incomprehensible.
Tentatively, she met his gaze in the mirror. “Do you really mean you didn’t...didn’t...all this time?”
“Yes, I damn well really mean it.” He ground harder into her, liquefying her even more. “Since I was a child I achieved absolute control over my urges, to hone my skills. It made me uninterested in sex, especially since I abhorred the form available to me. The Organization provided us with other captives to vent our libidos with.”
Their eyes clung, and she knew he must wonder if she’d been one of those captives, if someone he knew had used her for that purpose.
Unable to bear it, she lowered her head to the bed, burying her face in the silk covers, tears starting to pour down her cheeks.
A trembling hand pulled her up to meet his vehement conviction. “I don’t care and neither should you. We both did so many things against our will, and we’re not responsible for any of it. It doesn’t make us less or worse. It actually makes us more and better. We’re survivors, conquerors, winners. But you... You’re perfect.”
Feeling as if her heart had expanded to fill her whole body, she twisted beneath him so hard, she made him roll off her. Then she was all over him, clinging with arms and legs and lips, tears now flowing with gratitude, with relief.
He let her deluge him for a while before taking over, groaning into her lips. “My brothers used to call me The Monk. I thought I was, until you. Then I became insatiable. After you, after I experienced true passion and ecstasy, I couldn’t settle for the sexual relief I never wanted in the first place. I wanted you. Only you. Even when I thought I’d never have you again. But now I do, and all I can think of is having you, doing everything to you, with you.”
“Everything?” She moaned, undulating against him, needing him to combust. “Like what? Show me.”
“Like this...” He flipped her onto her back, gloriously rough, dragging her top over her head and spilling her swollen breasts into the large palms they’d been made to fill. He kneaded them with a careful savagery that had her bucking beneath him, had her frantically trying to tear his clothes off his back. She needed the crush of his hunger, the oblivion of his possession.
Grasping both her hands
in one, he did what she’d failed to. He shredded his shirt, flinging off its tatters. Her salivary glands stung, needing her lips and tongue all over his flesh, her teeth in it.
“And this.” He slid down her body, the velvet of his skin sparking her every inch into a conflagration. “And this.” He nipped each nipple in turn, had her crying out, before settling into suckling that escalated into ruthlessness, had her core pouring, until she was pummeling him for the release only his invasion would grant her.
He escaped her clawing hands, went down farther, taking her skirt and panties off with him. “And this.”
Holding her feet apart, alternating kisses between them, he suckled her toes, forcing her to withstand the sight and sensations of his ownership, his worship. “And this.” He bit into her calves, kneading them with his teeth as he trailed up to her inner thigh, before opening the lips of her core. Tantalizing her, he lapped up the flow of her arousal in long, leisurely licks before growling, “And this.” He pinpointed the bud where all her nerves converged, took it in a sharp nip.
The discharge of all the pent-up stimulation was so explosive, she heaved in detonation after detonation until she felt as if her spine might snap.
He had no mercy. He pushed two fingers inside her, sharpening her pleasure until her voice broke. He didn’t stop even then. No, he sucked every spasm and aftershock out of her, blasting her sensitized flesh with more growls. “And this.” His thumb circled the swollen nub, had her writhing under the renewed surge, the need for release a rising crest of incoherence.
“Come for me again, my darling.”
It was that “my darling” that hurled her into another orgasm.
After he’d finished her, he came up to loom over her, watching her tremble with what he’d done to her, his hand tracing soothing patterns on her back and buttocks. Mute, saturated with pleasure, hungrier for him than ever, she watched him, the emotions on his face coming too fast and thick for her to decipher. To withstand.
