Scandalously Expecting His Child

by Olivia Gates

  After his last bellowed words, total silence ensued on the other side.

  Then he heard snickering. Snickering?

  “I think the gods of Olympus heard you, Lightning.”

  “I didn’t know you had it in you, Phantom.”

  Raiden frowned. That was Richard’s voice, followed by Jakob’s. What was going on here?

  “We made a bet whether Phantom would have the heart to pull your strings, Lightning.” That was Ivan.

  “I bet against him, said he couldn’t torture you a second more than you’ve already been tortured.” Jakob groaned. “Now I have to submit to his torture for a whole day. He’ll probably make me endure his company.”

  Rafael’s apologetic voice came on. “I tried to stop them. But you know not even bullets can stop that herd.”

  “It’s a send-off gift from all of us,” Ivan teased. “For the way you’ve abused us all during the past two weeks.”

  “You tortured me most of all.” Antonio yawned loudly before continuing, “Calling me one minute for updates on my role in the plan, and the very next minute with obsessions about Scarlett’s pregnancy. Do you know I slept on my feet during surgery today? And dreamed?”

  Raiden shook his head, not really taking it all in. “You mean there’s no finishing touch?”

  A beat passed, then he heard more groans.

  “He didn’t even register that this was a prank,” Jakob lamented.

  “Good for you, Raiden.” Rafael laughed. “You turned the tables on them without even meaning to.”

  “Should have known there was no pranking a love zombie,” Ivan sniggered.

  “God, that love malady is horrific.” He could hear the disgusted shudder in Jakob’s voice. “Bones, have you invented a vaccine for it yet? I’m willing to be your test subject.”

  “There is a finishing touch,” Numair spoke up, ending his brothers’ to and fro. “And it was put in place before we gave you the go-ahead earlier today. The Yakuza would now kill themselves and their families before they came near your wife and child.”

  After that, he could no longer hear anything. He didn’t even know when the conversation came to an end.

  All he knew was that he could finally be reunited with Scarlett. And that Numair had said your wife and child.

  His wife and child.

  Scarlett and their miracle.

  His, at last. As he’d always be theirs.

  * * *

  Fifteen hours later, he stood on Scarlett’s doorstep.

  He’d spent hours of that time with her on the phone, telling her everything, now that it had all worked out. When he’d sent her away initially, he’d told her only that he was involved in a very delicate situation that he had to resolve with her out of the way. Finding out the details and magnitude of the averted danger had made her break down again.

  She’d had frequent crises during the past two weeks. Though she no longer had any doubt that he was hers, she’d had so much terrible misfortune in her life, she believed something, anything, would happen, and prevent them from being together. No matter how he swore nothing would, the fear, their separation and pregnancy hormones played havoc with her moods and nerves.

  Then she opened the door.

  It felt as if his very heart, what had been ripped from his chest, stood across that threshold. The desolation of the time without him, the dread that fate would deal her another blow—this time a final one that wouldn’t be survivable—lined her face, streaked her cheeks, hunched her body. She looked as terrible as he did. And like the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. She was the one thing he wanted to see, to savor and wonder at for the rest of his life.

  Then they were fused, straining to get closer, kissing, moaning, smiling, shedding tears, tearing clothes, pleading for more, for now, for everything, always everything.

  Then she was in his arms, taken, contained; then he found himself on top of her on a bed and they were almost fighting each other for a faster descent into oblivion. Then finally they were merged, cresting then crashing into ecstasy.

  Their union was brief, ferocious and earth-shattering, releasing all their pent-up dreads and longings.

  A long time afterward, from the deepest well of satiation, he heard her voice, raw with her episodes of weeping, and just now with her abandon.

  “I never wanted this.”

  He rose on his elbow, frowning down at her.

  She elaborated. “I never wanted you to leave all your plans and dreams behind for me. With everything in me I hoped that you would reclaim your heritage and have a family, your family, again.”

  He smiled his adoration and indulgence down at her. “You are my family. And you’re even giving me two family members at once. As for my heritage, I will have one. The one we’ll make together and pass on to our child.”

  Her turbid eyes filled with the tears that now came so easily to her. “But there must have been a way to have both—your heritage and me. I would have been yours no matter what. I don’t need legalities to make me yours.”

  “But I need to make you mine with legalities and with every other way there is or is still to be invented.” When she grimaced and buried her face in his chest, he pulled her back. “I want you as my wife, and I want to be your husband. I always wanted that, from the first moment I saw you. And I continued to want you against all odds, all through the years.” He suddenly huffed as a memory hit him. “Do you know that before I met you again and I thought I’d have to have heirs, I was resigned that I’d have to close my eyes and think of you so I could...perform?”

  “God, Raiden, don’t—”

  “If you can’t even stomach thinking of me in a hypothetical bed with a hypothetical woman—”

  “Megumi wasn’t so hypothetical.”

  He threw his head back on a delighted laugh at her growl. “See? You may think you could have shared me for the sake of my mission to reacquire my family name, but you’re almost sick to your stomach just imagining it in retrospect, even when you know it will never happen.”

  “I would have stomached anything to be with you. At least, I would have lived with permanent nausea. I was a beggar who didn’t dream she could be a chooser.”

  He crushed her to him, his eyes reproving. “You were never a beggar. You were always my mistress, in all meanings of the word. Mistress of my heart, queen of my life. I was born to love you, too.”

  He received her surge as she flung herself at him, squeezed her tighter into himself. “I dreamed of reclaiming my heritage and my family because I thought I’d be able to fill the emptiness inside me with duty and tradition, that they’d be anchors to give my life purpose. Then I found you, and I no longer needed anything but you. I only searched for them again when I lost you, to fill the void your loss left behind. But you’re back with me, and you’re mine, have always been mine like I’ve always been yours. You fill my every emptiness—you are my anchor. You and the family we’ll create together. You are my counterpart, the other half of my soul, the only one who’s ever understood me, the darkness and pain and scars I have inside me, and also the power, resilience and indomitable will. We’re the same, and we’re the only ones to soothe and heal each other, and to give each other the endless love we need.”

  After dragging him down for a fierce, thankful kiss, she sank back, playing lovingly with his hair, her brilliant eyes glittering with tears and adoration. “When I wanted to do something that mattered, all I could think
of was you, when you were a child, helpless and alone, and I wanted to help all the children who found themselves in your same situation.”

  His heart convulsed at yet another proof of her total love for him. “You suffered worse. Why didn’t you direct your efforts toward girls who suffer the same as you did?”

  “Because I love you more than I love myself. Way more.” And he believed her. For he loved her way beyond how he loved himself or anything else. “Imagining your pain hurt me more than remembering experiencing my own. But once this shelter project is up and running, I’ll do what you suggest, too, in my original region. But there, I won’t be up against natural disasters, but organized crime.” She sank kneading fingers in his arm. “I’ll need your muscle there.”

  Body going rigid with arousal all over again, he groaned. “My every muscle is at your disposal. And my brothers’, too.”

  She giggled. “Are you sure they’d be open to that? Antonio called me when you were on your way and begged me to get you off his back. The poor man is entering chronic sleep deprivation because you’re obsessing about my pregnancy.”

  “So what? That man can operate in his sleep. He actually did yesterday.” She chuckled again, and he melted a caress down the delightful curve of her cheek. “So how do you feel about adoption?”

  After a moment’s surprise at his abrupt change of subject, she smiled widely. “I feel that now that I’m going to have a billionaire ninja husband, I’d like to adopt four children.”

  His eyebrows shot up. “Why four?”

  “Because I have my eye on two girls and two boys in the shelter. And they have their eye on me. Ages two to six. I was thinking how I would be able to adopt them alone, but now...”

  “We’ll adopt them together. And our baby will be born to find she or he already has a huge family waiting to love her or him.”

  “Uh...why don’t you think about it some more? Adoption is a huge decision, even bigger than deciding to have a biological child.”

  “I know that. And I’ve already thought. Why do you think I asked you what you feel about it?” A consideration suddenly hit him. “Or did you only consider adoption when you thought you wouldn’t have a child of your own?”

  “Knowing I’ll have a child of my own doesn’t change a thing. I want to help as many children as I can, give them security, and if possible, a loving home.”

  “You’re saving the child I was in them, aren’t you?” When she nodded and buried her face in his chest, he lifted her chin, held her swimming eyes that glittered azure in the soft lights. “And we’ll also save the child you were. An older girl who’s been passed over for adoption from your part of the world.”

  She dived into his arms again with a smothered cry of poignancy...and the doorbell rang.

  Frowning, he sat up. “Expecting someone?”

  “I didn’t even tell anyone I was back.”

  On alert in a split second, he sprang from the bed, making her whoop in delight at his elastic rebound.

  “Wow,” she breathed as she rushed to put on her dressing gown. “One day you must show me all the ninja stuff you can do.”

  “I showed you many so far.” Then he showed her another trick, literally jumping into his pants.

  As she jumped and clapped, he placed his fingers on his lips as he rushed soundlessly out of the bedroom.

  She rushed after him. “Didn’t you resolve everything with the Yakuza? Why are you alarmed now?”

  He again gestured for her to lower her voice. “Because no one should be calling on you, now or at all.”

  “Aren’t your bodyguards still around?”

  “That’s what’s worrying me. That they didn’t give us a heads-up and let someone come all the way to your door.”

  “Then they must have thought that someone would certainly be welcome.”

  “I’m not taking any chances.”

  She suddenly slapped her forehead. “You made me forget I have a video intercom.”

  He blinked at her. It seemed his circuits had been irrevocably fried, wiping out all his ingrained training. He’d have to train all over again. He’d have to reinstall simple logic.

  Feeling sheepish, he followed her as she checked the video feed. With a gun pointed at the door.

  Then he saw who it was and his arms fell to his sides, the gun dangling loosely in one hand.

  It was his uncle, Megumi and Hiro.

  With a cry of surprise, Scarlett rushed to open the door.

  Raiden stood frozen, unable to even come up with a reason that the unlikely trio was here. He’d thought he’d never see them again, let alone together.

  He watched Scarlett welcome them inside, hugging Hiro, her face alight with pleasure at seeing her friend, and he could swear she was really pleased to see the other two, too.

  The trio looked over at Raiden, their gazes drawn to the gun in his hand.

  He waved it in self-deprecation. “I assume I don’t need this and that you come in peace?”

  Megumi giggled. Giggled! And such a merry sound, too.

  Seemed it had been the prospect of marrying him that had been the reason for her stilted attitude.

  As he put the gun away, Scarlett invited them all into her living room.

  As soon as they sat down, Hiro blurted out, “I wouldn’t have blamed you if you shot me on sight, Kuroshiro-san.”

  “When I thought you were interested in Scarlett, you were definitely in danger. Now, as her best friend, you’ve been drafted to the role of mine, too.”

  “It would be my honor to have you as a friend and ally, Kuroshiro-san.” Hiro extended a hand to him, his eyes warm for the first time.

  Raiden shook his hand. “If we’re going to be friends, you’d better get used to calling me Raiden. And I’ll call you like my lady calls you...Hiro.” He slapped Hiro on the back and winked at his absolute surprise. “Next time you want to force me to do the right thing, just pick up the phone and threaten me. I’d rather be given the chance to avoid being smeared all over the tabloids and the World Wide Web.” Hiro looked so mortified he took pity on him. “And if we’re going to be friends and allies, we need to start working on your sense of humor. I was only teasing.”

  “You shouldn’t be,” Hiro objected. “I thoughtlessly caused you and Scarlett, and at the time Hashimoto-sama and Megumi-san, a terrible scandal.”

  He grinned as he gathered Scarlett to his side. “From where I’m sitting, what you did was part of a sequence of events that led to me being here, the happiest man in existence.”

  Scarlett raised her hand. “Happiest woman in history here.”

  Though they’d just said the truth, she was clearly unable to bear seeing her friend beating himself up over this and she needed to make him exonerate himself. He felt the same way. Even if Hiro’s actions could have caused untold damage, they hadn’t. And what he and Scarlett had now was so unbelievable, he could forgive anyone anything.

  “And then you were only defending your beloved,” Raiden added. “Saving her from a fate worse than death—marrying a man who loves another while she loves you.” He grinned widely at Megumi, then at the still-chagrined man. “So that makes you a hero in my eyes.”

  “You might both forgive me in your magnanimity, because somehow my actions caused you only temporary distress. But that things were resolved so spectacularly was no thanks to me. So I reserve the right not to forgive myself, and to be forever at your disposal, should you require satisfacti
on.”

  “Just take that get-out-of-jail-free card, Hiro. I will no doubt need one from you at a future date.” At Hiro’s reluctant nod, with one last smile, Raiden turned his gaze to his uncle. “Not that I’m not thrilled for this unexpected opportunity to see you again, but I really thought I never would. So what brings you here? Whatever you needed, you know I’m forever at your disposal and I would come to you wherever you are.”

  “I had to be the one to come to you to make the offer,” Hashimoto said.

  “What offer?”

  “When you terminated the marriage adoption, I felt disgraced and wanted to forever cut any ties with you. But then I remembered how I worried about you when you were under threat, and realized I already consider you family. The real disgrace would be to cling to pride and put gossip and public censorship ahead of true relationships.”

  Hashimoto suddenly leaned forward, took Raiden’s hand and Scarlett’s, gathered them together and held them in both of his. “After all the dust settled, I remembered when you said how you’d wished we would have been family. I still feel the same way. I am here offering you the name of our family, and the place at its head—the same things you would have gotten through the marriage adoption. But now I’m offering them through adoption alone.”

  Though that was yet another development in a string of unexpected ones, the strange part was what Raiden had been so passionate about ten weeks ago didn’t turn a hair in him now. He truly had everything he wanted or needed as long as he had Scarlett.

  He shook his head. “This is no longer something I want or need. My family is right here.” He tightened his arm around Scarlett’s shoulder. She only looked up at him with eyes that were at once stricken and admonishing.

  “But this time we don’t only want you, we want to adopt you as a married couple,” Hashimoto rushed to add. “And this is what our family hopes you would both consider—both of you taking our family name, making our family yours.”