Ripped: A Blood Money Novel

by Edie Harris

  “And Chandler?” Pippa demanded as she drained half her too-green drink.

  Loving her twin all the more for her undeniable protectiveness, Chandler carefully extricated the beverage from Pippa’s white-knuckled grasp—because, really, neither of them should be drinking anything else for the rest of the evening, given their heightened emotions—as Faraday answered, “Chandler, as well.”

  “You know what she does for a living, don’t you.”

  “Pip.”

  But Pippa ignored her shock and forged ahead, her slim frame stiff and her voice surprisingly brittle as she faced off against a man she had just moments earlier described as scrumptious. “Answer me, please, Tobias.”

  Faraday’s expression never lost its strange, understanding warmth. “I’m not going to out her. Just as you won’t, either.” Neither confirmation nor denial. He watched Pippa as though he...knew something. Something about why Chandler’s twin was behaving as oddly as she ever had done. “She serves her country.”

  “She attones to her country. There’s a difference.” Pippa’s tone was harsh and unforgiving. “I know men like you, Tobias Faraday. You leave no stone unturned, no secret unearthed. I’m sure you have every last detail on our ugly family history at your fingertips. You have the power to ruin both our lives, so why don’t you tell me why you’re really here at my wedding?”

  “I’m here because Chandler asked me to come with her.”

  Manicured nails tapped a staccato beat on the bar top. “Because you’re her boyfriend, right?” Faraday said nothing, and Pippa laughed without humor. “I may be drunk, but I’m not stupid. You want something from her, and this is how you’re getting it. Where the bloody hell has my sister been for the past ten months, Tobias?”

  “That’s for her to tell you.”

  “But she hasn’t!”

  “Then she must have a reason for not doing so.”

  It was as though Chandler weren’t even there. Irritation simmered. “Stop talking, the pair of you.”

  Pippa’s furious gaze descended on Chandler. “I think you should go. We can discuss the benefits of sibling honesty tomorrow.”

  “Are you punishing me?” Incredulous, Chandler hopped off her stool, swaying slightly. When Faraday gripped her elbow to steady her, she shrugged him off, never taking her eyes from Pippa. “You’re really going to stay here, without me?”

  “I’ve been without you for most of the past year, Mary Chandler. You think I can’t handle another few hours?”

  Cut to the quick, Chandler stared at her sister, heartbeats painful within her chest. The trouble was, she deserved it. She deserved every angry word, every cutting glare. She hadn’t been there to support Pippa as she planned her wedding this year. Instead, she’d been traipsing across the world as a shadow of her real self, doing the dangerous bidding of a mafiya organization that expected her to act without conscience, because her survival depended upon her lack of scruples. “How...how will you get home?”

  Pippa slid off her own seat in an elegant flow of blue silk over slender limbs. “The driver is coming for our party at midnight. The others and I will be fine until then.” Hard eyes met Tobias’s before flicking away toward the bridal party on the other side of the bar. “You obviously trust him more than you do me. I’m sure he’ll see you back to the manor in safety.” Then she walked away on surprisingly steady legs, leaving Chandler to observe her retreat.

  She barely noticed it when Tobias led her outside and into the passenger seat of his ungodly sexy vehicle, her mind roiling with the anger of her emotions, bruised and shamed. The drive to the estate was marked by stilted silence. Chandler glared out the window, the scenery shapeless blurs in the darkness, and struggled to think of a comeback. Damn, what she would give for a comeback right now, for both her sister and her keeper, but nothing came to her intoxicated mind.

  As soon as they pulled to a stop on the limestone drive, Chandler was out of the car and stomping off into the night-strewn grounds trailing away from the back of the manor house. The garden at night was like something out of a gothic novel. Dark and shadowed, the shrubbery clipped to within an inch of its photosynthesizing life, she was shocked to not find herself in the middle of a Wonderland-style maze. The house stood far enough away that none of the glowing warmth from the doors and windows touched her.

  She made it as far as the circular stone fountain in the southern garden, long meters past the veranda, before he caught up with her.

  “Chandler, wait.”

  She whirled on him and nearly lost her balance as the day’s booze intake officially went to her head. “You couldn’t have lied a teensy bit better than that? Pip asks you point-blank if we’re together, and what does she get? Silence. You had one bloody job, Toby!” Both hands to his shoulders, she shoved him, hard.

  He let her. “I will admit, that was not well done of me.”

  “You talked over me like I was invisible. What sort of fake boyfriend are you? I’ll tell you what sort.” She jabbed a finger into his chest, not giving him a chance to respond. “The worst! You’re supposed to help me keep Pip safe, not help her push me away.”

  “It sounded as though she already had doubts. Lying to her any further on the subject of your truthfulness would’ve served little purpose in the grand scheme of things.”

  “I lied about Russia to protect her. Tell me you wouldn’t have done the same for your sister, for Beth, in my position.”

  He drew himself to his full height, stepping closer to more effectively tower over her, and she hated the little thrill that ran through her. His looming wasn’t threatening, merely a reminder that he stood a chance at overpowering her, especially in her intoxicated state. “My family knows exactly what I intend to do when we reach Moscow.”

  “They know the outcome,” she sneered, propping her hands on her hips as she attempted to rein in the thought that being overpowered by a man in a suit who did not intend her harm—because he’d promised her sister that truth only a short while ago—might not be all bad. “But do they know the method?”

  “The method,” he repeated without inflection.

  “I’ve seen you hold a gun, Toby, but have you ever used one on another person?” Why she poked at him, she didn’t know, but it felt essential, somehow. Vital to her continued well-being. “You kill someone, and you’re changed, forever.” And never in a good way.

  “I’ll change if it means the threat to my family is eradicated.”

  Goddamn it. She hated that she respected that, respected him. “I don’t like you, Toby...’cept when I do.” She swayed slightly, head tilting to the side as she stared up at him with narrowed eyes, and felt her lower body grow loose and warm. “Dangerous, that.”

  “I thought we already established that you were the dangerous one yesterday.”

  “That? Pffft.” She waved a hand and sauntered forward another step, and this time he retreated. Another step, and his heels came up against the fountain’s edge. “Foreplay.”

  “What do you mean by ‘foreplay,’ Ms. McCallister?”

  What the hell was she doing? The front of her body made contact with his, the sense-memories of his arm at her shoulders and her knife at his throat suddenly washed away in the flood of new, intimate sensation. Her head buzzed, and she felt herself grin. “Love it when you get all stern with me, keeper. Makes me want to bite you. Or maybe hit you. Can’t decide.” Definitely biting.

  “Please restrain yourself.” But his voice had dropped, and his hands fell to her hips as she rose on tiptoe, tugging him by his lapels to lean closer, closer. “Chandler?”

  “Ah, fuck it.” Jerking him down by his jacket, she kissed him.

  And knew immediately that kissing him was a mistake of epic proportions. Epic.

  Not just because she was drunk, either, though certainly a fuzzy head wasn’t
helping matters any. All the liquid hadn’t offered courage but idiocy, and tomorrow morning, Chandler knew she would probably regret mistaking the latter for the former.

  At this very moment, though, she was freaking out.

  Tearing away from his unmoving mouth and stiff body, she wrapped her arms around her torso and squeezed her eyes shut, willing the ground to stop tilting under her feet. “Sorry. Sorry, sorry, sorry,” she muttered as she risked a peek at the man in front of her.

  Two cheeky cherubs frolicked in the fountain several feet above the circular base, holding pitchers out of which poured the water that trickled and splashed into the shallow pool below. The fountain’s noise couldn’t drown out the sound of her racing heart as it echoed in her ears, and all she could hear was his dreaming voice from last night with its I’m sorry, I’m sorry.

  Funny, her saying the same now, apologizing for acting on the woozy impulse that made her think listening to her body’s instincts was a good idea. Her body was a masochist, surrendering to the flutters that turned her into an idiot.

  Rubbing her hands over her upper arms to warm them, warding off a chill that had nothing to do with the night air, she tried to focus on resenting him. He’d backed her into that corner by letting Pippa rail at them both, whether he meant to or not, and now she wished she had claws to rake across that handsome cheek of his.

  The fact that he was handsome even without his exquisite tailoring, when she hadn’t believed so before, was another reason to hate him. He was too...too...pointy. Yeah, pointy. With his whole damn face and its cheekbones, but then there were the shoulders that weren’t pointy at all but the perfect width to grab onto and never let go.

  She eyed him, top to bottom. Every inch of him appeared unruffled in the darkness...except for how his chest was rising. And falling. Rising and falling, more obviously with each passing second, as though he’d sprinted his way through an entire marathon. “Toby?”

  “Come here.”

  Her feet drove her forward a step before her brain caught up and she halted. “But—”

  “I said come here, Chandler.”

  Trapped by the fierceness in his gaze, mirrored in the gruff voice shaping the syllables of her name, she stepped once, twice, until she stood directly in front of him. Her arms still wrapped tight around her upper body, but she didn’t dare look away from that face of his. She physically could not, she found, his eyes too spellbinding to resist, and damn, but her reaction angered her. “Now what?” she bit out. It didn’t matter that the fault lay with her, for making overtures in the first place. He was the one who—

  “Now you tell me why you just apologized.”

  —who threw her off-balance just when she thought she had him pegged. Bloody hell, her head wasn’t close to clear enough to prevaricate, and it left her feeling vulnerable. Exposed. Too honest by far for a woman who lived to lie. “Because...I kissed you?”

  “And?”

  Confusion clouded her thoughts. “And...and you didn’t want me to?”

  His hands closed around her biceps, fingers warm through the thin silk of her blouse. “Chandler, I didn’t know I wanted you to kiss me until you did.” He drew her closer, until her chest met his and his breath fanned her flushed cheeks. “Don’t you dare apologize to me.”

  She ceased to breathe as his grip tightened, lifting her onto her toes and forcing her hands to flutter out and find purchase at his waist. His head began to lower and she couldn’t, absolutely couldn’t keep from asking, “Am I going to kiss you again, Toby?” She wanted to. From the soles of her feet to the ends of her loosened hair, she wanted to kiss him again—and have him respond to her this time. Every cell in her body screamed that he wouldn’t be stiff or unmoved if she kissed him now, not with how carefully he held her, how close.

  Oh, God. She was going to get to kiss him again. For real.

  “No, Ms. McCallister. I am going to kiss you.”

  A whimper escaped as he sealed his lips to hers, her entire body humming like a live wire. Her fingers clutched the fabric of his jacket, the shirt beneath, feeling for the firmness of his torso while his mouth brushed slowly over hers, closed and careful.

  But she was wild, and needed the taste of him on her tongue. She wanted to know if he stung cold, like frostbite, or if his ice turned to fire under the right stoking. Fuck, but stoking him sounded like a helluva lot of fun, and she twisted in his hold, fighting for more than he seemed willing to give her.

  Suddenly, the angle of the kiss changed, his lips slanting, parting, the tip of his tongue a stroking wet heat across the seam of her lips. She opened immediately, stunned by the taste of him as he sipped at her. Again, so slow, so cautious, and somewhere in her hazy mind a bell went off. Not in warning, but in exclamation.

  No girlfriends. The strange thought from yesterday’s car ride permeated her foggy brain. No girlfriends didn’t necessarily mean no kissing but it probably meant less kissing than the average girlfriend-having man. His mouth moved over hers as though he luxuriated in the sensation of lips and tongue—because oh, yes, she flicked her tongue against his, making the demands she wished to voice but sure as hell couldn’t with her mouth so delightfully occupied—and she wondered, with a delicious anticipation, if he was learning as he went along.

  If so, the man was a fucking prodigy.

  But still she wanted more. Moaning as his tongue swept deeper, she broke his hold with a snap of her arms and used her new mobility to grab his tie and wrench it loose. With the two free ends wrapped around her fists, she tugged, and his lips lost any gentleness.

  Good. Gentle didn’t work for her. Hungry did.

  An animalistic growl rumbled in his chest when her teeth nipped his bottom lip, his palms cupping her cheeks, splayed fingers like a vise. She reveled in the strength of his hold, sensing more than feeling that he would not be letting her go, no matter how she fought.

  It made her want to fight. Dropping the ends of his necktie, she shoved at his wrists, but this time, he didn’t budge, leaving her fingers to manacle him in a way that said, louder than words ever could, Don’t let go.

  Except she must have spoken, because he whispered, his mouth skating along her jaw, “I won’t let go. I’m not letting go.” One callused palm slid from her cheek to her throat as the other fisted in her hair, and then she felt the flicking of his tongue over the pulse behind her ear. “You’re not close enough.”

  More beautiful words Chandler had never heard. Shivering, pleasure zipping through her veins, she snuck her arms around his neck. “I can get closer, baby, promise.” She kicked off her shoes as the masculine hand at her throat fell to her waist. “Up,” she demanded, and jumped.

  He caught her with ease, athletic reflexes snapping to attention as her thighs clenched his narrow hips. Ah, but she liked him between her legs. No, more than liked, she decided as his mouth captured hers again in a searing kiss, as her hips writhed and made perfect aching contact with the hard length of his erection—she loved Tobias Faraday between her legs.

  His forearm curved beneath her bum, the hand in her hair urging her head to fall back and reveal her throat to him. She wriggled as his mouth traveled from jaw to pulse to the fragile skin at the base where neck turned to shoulder. When his teeth closed delicately over the tendon there, she groaned. “Baby. Oh, God, that’s good.”

  The air stirred around her, and her bare toes were suddenly cold. And wet. She tightened her hold on him as she realized he’d sat on the edge of the fountain, with her still securely in his arms, though her feet touched the rippling water. Which meant she had free rein over his lap now, a fact she took full advantage of as she notched the panty-covered apex of her thighs to his groin.

  When he groaned, low and gorgeously pained, she urged his lips to hers, to devour him with her kiss, her hands delving into his hair to muss and mess to her heart’s content. �
�Baby, oh, fuck yes, give me your mouth.”

  Her words caused his body to tense, but not readying to throw her off. No, he merely banded both arms around her in an unbreakable embrace and gave her precisely what she wanted. One kiss, one hundred kisses, his lips conquering, his tongue and teeth demanding in licks and bites that spoke not to experience but to starvation.

  Chandler’s head spun. Never before had she been kissed as Tobias kissed her. She felt him branded into the shadowed recesses of her soul, his mouth hot and permanent and utterly scarring and...and...her head was still spinning.

  Uh-oh.

  Though she hated to do it, she pushed against his shoulders—Shoulders to hold on to during a long, hard ride, she thought mournfully—and pressed her forehead to his, gasping in the night air. “Don’t feel so good,” she mumbled.

  Immediately, his hands lifted to her face, tilting her head to study her. She blinked blearily at him, upset to not be able to focus on his features. The expression in his gleaming eyes was foreign to her, and she saw his mouth move and decided to stare at that instead. Those lips had only just been all over hers, after all; memorizing their shape seemed prudent, because she never wanted to forget what it was like to kiss this confusing man.

  “...take you inside. Can you walk?” His cute American accent sounded muffled, as though it came from underwater, and she found herself shaking her head as she smiled at him. Like an idiot. Even drunk and most definitely woozy, she knew her grin crossed the border into stupid.

  Again, the air moved...and maybe gravity moved, too, if such a thing were possible—Chandler had never been one for physics. He carried her, she realized, her heavy head coming to rest against his shoulder, her equally heavy lashes fluttering shut. If she listened closely, she could hear the rhythmic thumping of his heart.

  Or maybe those were his footsteps as he carried her up the stairs and into their shared suite. The arm beneath her knees fell away, and he slowly lowered her feet to the floor. Her shoulders were suddenly braced against a wall, her hand placed on a piece of furniture—one of the dressers near the bathroom, she recognized.