It had taken her five days to track him down to this remote finca on the island of Majorca, the amount of smoke and mirrors protecting his ownership enough to tell her he didn’t want to be found. With that in mind, Talia had spent another four days watching him from a neighboring mountainside before attempting to approach him.
He’d had no visitors during those four days, nor had he left the perimeter of the ten acres of land she knew he owned. So Talia had watched and waited, learning Ethan’s routine, gauging when was the best time to bypass his security so she could get inside undetected. She was sure, if she could speak to Ethan face-to-face, that he would at least listen to what she had to say. His late-night swims had provided the ideal opportunity for her to get inside the finca and wait for him to return.
“How the fuck did you find me?” Ethan scowled his displeasure.
She shrugged. “I couldn’t exactly go back to college or find a job, so there hasn’t been a lot else for me to do the last three years except go online every chance I could. It’s amazing the amount of information you can find out there on the internet, if you know how.”
“You taught yourself to hack?”
She gave an inclination of her head. “I’m good at it too.”
Ethan knew she had to be. No one but the best could have gotten through the firewall he had placed about his ownership of this place. Even Zander, Knight Security’s top tech guy, had no idea Ethan owned this property in Majorca. Had owned, because this place would be off Ethan’s hands in less than twenty-four hours. If Talia could find him here, then so could anyone else, if they dug deeply enough. “Still doesn’t explain how you got in here.”
“I arrived on Majorca four days ago,” Talia continued. “I found this finca and quickly worked out by a process of elimination that parking my rental car five miles away and walking the rest of the way meant you wouldn’t hear me coming.”
That explained why he hadn’t heard the noise of an engine tonight. “How did you get through my security?”
She bent down to take a thin black device from the backpack she had obviously brought with her. “I built this myself. It blocks the sensors and allows me through,” she explained as Ethan continued to look at her.
“The apple didn’t fall far from the tree, did it?” he scoffed to hide his appreciation of Talia’s abilities. Maybe Knight Security should think about employing her— What the fuck! Wasn’t his life fucked-up enough without adding Talia Krechenko to the mix?
She drew her breath in sharply. “You can insult me all you like, Ethan, as long as you agree to help me.”
“No.”
She blinked. “No?”
He nodded. “N. O.”
“I can pay you—”
“You can keep your father’s fucking blood money,” he snarled, hands clenched at his sides.
“I earned this money myself—”
“Hacking illegally,” he sneered.
“Maybe,” she allowed softly. “But it’s still my money.”
Ethan hardened his heart to the hurt he could see in Talia’s eyes. Beautiful dark blue eyes that had once looked at him with none of her emotions hidden. Invitation. Desire. Lust.
He had been thirty-one years old when he first met the girl he had known as Talia Morris. What the fuck was he supposed to have done with the lust of a nineteen-year-old?
Wait for her to grow up, he’d decided when his own desire for her refused to go away, no matter how many other women he fucked. If Talia still looked at him that way when she was twenty-one, then he would seriously think about accepting her invitation. That twelve-year age gap would still exist, but at least he could tell himself she was aged in her twenties, just.
Except Talia had disappeared only weeks before she reached her twenty-first birthday, after the attempt on her father’s life and the scandal that followed when his true identity was revealed. Ethan had looked for her and her father for the first couple of years, without any success. He had assumed Krechenko had used all those billions to ensure the forged identities he and Talia had were the very best.
Zander Buchanan, who occasionally still did some tech work for Knight Security, but now protected only his wife, the singer Kate Stewart, had been the one to find them six months ago. Ethan hadn’t even known the other man was still looking for them until Zander decided to discuss what he’d found with Ethan and his brothers. All Ethan had been able to think was, once the mission he was working on was over, now that he had a name and a location, he was going to see Talia again. He wanted to know if she had grown into that beautiful woman he’d suspected she might.
Only days later, that mission had blown up in his face, after which he had known to keep his distance from any and all people who could be hurt by his actions.
Talia was no longer the beautiful and slightly spoiled teenager Ethan remembered. Oh, she was as beautiful as he had thought she might be. Her bone structure was such that she always would be. But there was a new maturity in her face, as if she had seen too much to be able to keep the innocence that had made her so appealing three years ago. Her eyes were wary, skin stretched taut across those high cheekbones, her cheeks hollow, her chin stubbornly determined. Her mouth, he also noted, was still as full and sexy.
Merely looking at those plump and pouting lips, imagining them stretched about his cock as she took him to the back of her throat, was enough to maintain the monstrous hard-on that was pressing so painfully against the zip of his jeans.
“No,” he repeated flatly.
Those beautiful eyes flooded with tears, tears she quickly blinked away to stop them from falling. “I have no one else.”
Ethan’s chest tightened. “You don’t have me either,” he bit out cruelly.
Cruel to be kind.
There was still a possibility—remote, but still there—that Talia was somehow involved with the man hunting him.
And if not, then Ethan didn’t want Talia involved in his shit.
There was also a darkness inside him now, one that reared its head when he least expected it, and he was beset with the memory of the dying breaths of a man who had definitely deserved to die. It would just have been better if it hadn’t been by Ethan’s hand.
But even now, hunted as he was by a father’s need for vengeance, Ethan couldn’t regret what had happened. Even though it had meant he couldn’t go to Talia as he had planned.
A necessary sacrifice when he remembered the agony of Shelley’s parents as they waited for news of their daughter and Ethan had to tell them she was never coming home. That the Albanian monster that was Vaso Alizoti had killed her before Ethan could get to her and save her. Tortured and killed her, but Shelley’s parents hadn’t needed to know all the details. Ethan wished he didn’t know them either.
He had been the one to find Shelley’s cut and mutilated body. A beautiful young woman reduced to a pile of raw flesh and broken bones. It was something he would never ever forget.
The mere thought of Alizoti senior getting his hands on Talia and doing that to her in retaliation for Ethan having killed his murdering bastard of a son had been enough to stop Ethan from going anywhere near her.
Talia’s frown was pained. “You aren’t the Ethan I remember.”
His laugh was harsh and without humor. “Maybe that’s because you were too busy trying to come up with ways of getting into my pants to really see the man I am.”
Her cheeks suffused with embarrassed color. “You knew I wanted you?”
“Of course I fucking knew— Never mind.” He gave a dismissive shake of his head, not willing to get into that discussion. “Do you think the Russians finally caught up with your father?”
“That’s what I need to find out.”
He nodded. “The best I can offer you is to speak to my brother Gabriel on your behalf. He might be willing to look into it for you. But the final decision as to whether he trusts you and your story will be up to him,” he warned. “Our last association with your family didn’t end well.�
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“How are they all?” She seemed relieved to change the subject. “Your brothers Gabriel, Asher, Caleb, and your cousin, Ian? I saw in the newspapers a couple of years ago that Zander had married the singer Kate Stewart, and they now have a couple of kids.”
There was no missing the eagerness in her voice to hear about the lives of a group of men she had known for a short time in her life. Telling Ethan that her life on the run with her father, no matter how luxurious, had to have also been extremely lonely.
“Two boys,” Ethan answered. “My brothers and Ian are all married too, and also have children. Ian has twins, a boy and a girl.” He was godfather to Simon Ethan.
“But they still all work at Knight Security?”
Ethan nodded. “Talk to Gabriel. He might be willing to assign a couple of them to help you.”
“But not you.”
“Not me.”
Talia drew in a ragged breath. “What did I ever do to you for you to distrust me this way?”
He scowled darkly. “Your father is a fucking criminal.”
“I didn’t know that until three years ago.”
“Ignorance is no excuse.”
“But it seems it’s enough to hate me?”
“I don’t hate you.”
Talia snorted. “You could have fooled me.”
“Not trusting you has nothing to do with hating you.”
“I trust you.”
“Then you shouldn’t.”
“Why not?”
The tightness in Ethan’s chest began to burn, his cock becoming an aching, demanding throb. “You need to leave now, Talia,” he warned between gritted teeth.
He knew his emotions were still too raw, too close to the surface, for him to maintain control for much longer. He had wanted this woman for too damn long, had been on the point of going to her to see if she still wanted him, and then he had fucked it all up when he eliminated Vaso Alizoti.
Accidentally eliminated.
But Vaso’s father didn’t care how it had happened, only that it had.
Ethan had been fighting for his life when he killed that bastard, filled with thoughts of how he would have felt if had been Talia instead of Shelley that Alizoti had carved up for his own amusement.
Talia tilted her head as she studied Ethan. His hazel eyes were icy cold, his lips a thin and uncompromising line, a nerve pulsing in his tightly clenched jaw. His muscular body was tensed, hands curled into fists. Ready to spring forward. To attack.
None of the photographs she had found of Ethan as she searched for and then found him had prepared her for the flesh-and-blood man now standing in front of her. A man who was filled with a rage that threatened to burn out of control, making ash of all and everything that stood in his way.
“Why?” Talia had no idea if she was asking why she had to leave, or why Ethan had never wanted her as she had wanted him. Still wanted him. After five years, she doubted that would ever change.
Ethan snarled, “Because if you don’t, I’m going to show you how much I’m not the Ethan you remember and throw you over the back of that sofa, rip down your jeans and panties, and fuck you until you scream for mercy.”
Chapter 2
Talia gasped at the raw intensity she could hear in Ethan’s voice and the fire she could now see burning in the depths of those gold-rimmed hazel eyes. The tension in his body had turned predatory, ready to pounce.
“I’m wearing a thong, not panties,” she murmured.
“What?” He snapped his impatience.
“If taking me is what you need to do, then do it,” Talia said softly.
“Why?”
“Because it’s the only way you’ll trust me.” And because Talia wanted him. Had, as it seemed he had known, always wanted him. Seeing and being with Ethan again told her she would always want this man. She didn’t care why he now wanted her, only that he did.
“Fucking you won’t make me trust you, Talia,” he scorned. “You could still be working for Alizoti senior.”
“I don’t know anyone by that name.”
“He’s the Albanian who wants me dead.”
“Why?”
“You already know that if you’re working for him, and if you don’t, then it’s better if I don’t tell you.”
“I told you, I don’t know him.”
His eyes narrowed to steely slits. “But maybe he knows you and offered you a deal? Bring me in and you can have your father back?”
Ethan had tried, several times, to end this thing with Alizoti, first by talking to the other man on the telephone, an occasion when Agon Alizoti had laughed in his face and basically told him to prepare to die. After that failed, Ethan had tracked the other man down to where he had his closely guarded estate in Atlanta, Georgia. The security was tight, making it impossible to get close enough to the other man to do any more than watch the toing and froing of people going into and out of the estate.
But it hadn’t been a completely wasted trip. Ethan had learned there was a pretender to Alizoti’s throne as head of the Albanian mafia in Georgia. If Talia had been even a couple of days later, she wouldn’t have found Ethan here, because he had called that pretender to the throne once he was safely back in Majorca. The other man had been much more receptive than Agon, and the two of them now had a deal. Ethan would make sure Alizoti disappeared, and the man taking over would forget the blood debt owed for the lives of Vaso and Agon.
Which would leave Ethan finally free to get on with his life.
“This man, Alizoti, didn’t offer me any sort of deal. And I have no idea where my father is, which is why I need your help.”
“So what does that make me, Talia?” he mocked. “The last in a long line of men you’ve offered your body to in exchange for their assistance to track down Ivan?”
“I told you I don’t have anyone else to ask for help.” Talia felt her own anger rising. “And you have no basis upon which to make that accusation.” There were no other men. Not in the way Ethan meant. There never had been.
Oh, she’d been out on the occasional date while at the university in England, but those dates had all seemed like boys when she compared them to Ethan. A part of her also knew she’d only accepted those dates in the hope of making Ethan jealous. Something at which she had failed when Ethan teased her about the boys she dated rather than showed any sign of jealousy.
The past three years, she’d been too afraid to get close to anyone or allow anyone to get close to her, let alone become intimate with them.
She was a twenty-four-year-old woman who had never even come close to losing her virginity. Something Ethan would know if he accepted her offer. “Do it,” she said again.
Ethan knew he was balanced on a fine edge between kicking this woman out and accepting her invitation. “Allowing me to fuck you won’t change my mind about helping you.”
Those dark blue eyes continued to meet his unflinchingly, despite his deliberate crudeness. “I don’t expect it to.”
His gaze roamed over her slowly. Noted the wild glitter in her eyes. The tightness of her jaw. The tension that was causing her body to hum with suppressed emotion. With desire?
He drew in a long and controlling breath. “I think I’ll pass.” He turned away, knowing it was too soon for him to accept what Talia was offering. He needed to deal with the Alizoti situation first. Then, and only then, would he be able to tell her what he’d done and ask if she still wanted him. “Give my brother a call at Knight Security in a couple of days, once I’ve had chance to talk to him. I’m not promising anything, but if your story checks out Gabriel might agree to help you look for him.”
Talia reached out and placed her hand on the warmth of his bare shoulder. “Ethan, I—” She broke off with a gasp as Ethan turned quickly, his expression savage.
“Don’t fucking touch me!”
Talia could see he was shaking. With rage? Or something else? “What happened to you, Ethan?” she said slowly, her hand dropping back to her sid
e.
“Nothing happened to me,” he growled. “This is who I am.”
She shook her head. “The Ethan I knew was nice—”
“Nice!” he echoed harshly. “I’ve never been nice, Talia.”
She didn’t believe him. The man she had met five years ago had been self-confident, maybe even a little cocky, but he had also been laidback and teasing. The man in front of her didn’t look as if he knew the meaning of either of those words. As for his reaction to being touched…
“What’s the matter, Talia?” he mocked. “A little less confident now you’ve seen the real me? Not sure whether I might pounce and take that hot little body of yours after all?”
Strange he should use the same word to describe his behavior as she had inside her head only minutes ago. Although the fact he’d said her body was hot was… Was what? Encouraging? Or scary as hell? “You wouldn’t hurt me,” she said confidently.
“I assure you I’m perfectly capable of hurting. Of killing,” he added grimly.
“You were in the army—”
“Since then.”
“Then I’m sure they deserved it.”
He gave a choked laugh. “Does that make it right?”
“Sometimes, yes.”
“Are you speaking from personal experience?”
“I’ve never killed anyone!”
“But I’m betting your father has. Or, at least, he’s had his bodyguards do so on his instruction.”
“I…think so, yes,” she confirmed quietly, her face pale, eyes haunted. “People who got too close to realizing who we were.”
Ethan gave a shake of his head. “People you knew?”
Her gaze lowered. “Yes.”
“And you still want me to help you find him?”
“I keep telling you, I don’t have anyone else to ask.”
He tried to fight hearing her say she needed him, and the dangerous combination of knowing he couldn’t go anywhere near Talia, not yet, and the desire for her that had consumed him for years.
Seducing Ethan (Knight Security 6) Page 2