In Bed With the Billionaire

by Jackie Ashenden

  He couldn’t say why her words hit him the way they did, when he’d had so many other people hurl those same accusations at him before. With as much hate and as much despair. But something in the way Temple said it hooked into that last, remaining shred of his conscience and wrenched it apart.

  She had a sister like he had a sister. A sister she’d clearly loved. Who’d disappeared.

  What if someone had taken Violet?

  Ice congealed in his gut, and he shoved himself abruptly off her, getting to his feet and turning away, moving restlessly over to the windows.

  No one would take Violet. No one would fucking touch her.

  Perhaps he’d been wrong to let her slip away from him the way she had a month ago. Perhaps he should have gone after her, made sure to keep her safe. Now she was with Hunt and things were going to go down with him that would put her at risk.

  “What? You don’t like me telling you the truth?” Temple’s voice was sharp behind him.

  He stared out the window, at the people passing by on the sidewalk outside. “I have no problem with the truth. And yes, buying and selling people is what I do.” He’d trained himself to hear the words without flinching, to say them too because he wasn’t going to dress it up, pretend what he did was anything but what it was.

  Yet still, he didn’t like the words in Temple’s mouth.

  “So you did take her then.” It wasn’t a question.

  It could have happened. So many girls had been taken. “When did she disappear?” He kept his gaze on the street.

  “Seven years ago.”

  Seven years … He’d been the previous Jericho’s right-hand man then, the cruel old bastard’s most trusted lieutenant. And then Theo had killed him and assumed the Jericho mantle himself, just as he’d planned. But … his father had controlled the American trafficking networks, which meant that he was the one who’d taken Temple’s sister.

  That doesn’t abrogate you of responsibility.

  Hell no. If his fucking old man had taken her, he’d likely have passed her on through his own channels, such as the Lucky Seven or Conrad’s casino in Monte Carlo. But that name … it was still familiar to him and he didn’t know why.

  “I’ll look into it,” he said flatly.

  “Oh yes, you’ll look into it.” She was right behind him now, and there was nothing but intent in the words. “Because I’m the only one who knows who you really are. And if you think I won’t use that, you’re mistaken.”

  He turned.

  Temple stood there, her expression fierce. Her hands were in fists at her sides as if she was only just holding herself back from launching herself at him. Rage glowed in those beautiful eyes of hers, and it connected with something similar inside of him too. A rage that had been there a long, long time.

  “I’ll kill you before you do that,” he said before he could stop himself, the rage leaking out whether he wanted it to or not.

  “Oh, like you killed me just now?” Sarcasm laced her tone. “Yeah, of course you will. Because nothing’s more important than your own fucking hide.”

  “I don’t give a shit about my own hide.” He stared at her, held her gaze. “But you’re not the only one with people to protect.”

  “What? You mean you?” There was nothing but disbelief in the words. “Like you’d protect anyone.”

  She had no idea what his eventual goal was, and he couldn’t tell her, couldn’t take that risk. But it had been years since he’d met anyone who knew his real name, who knew where he’d come from. Not even Dmitri, with whom he’d shared his actual mission, knew he was Theodore Fitzgerald, and part of him just wanted to be able to say Violet’s name aloud, to acknowledge her existence.

  So the words came out of him before he had a chance to stop them. “I have a sister too.” His voice was thick, much thicker than it should be. “Her name is Violet.”

  She blinked, shock crossing her features. “You … what?”

  “She’s younger than I am.” He couldn’t seem to stop talking. “She’s vulnerable. And if people know my name, they will use her to get to me.”

  “So? My sister was vulnerable too.” The anger in Temple’s gaze glowed hot, and she took a few more steps toward him. “She was supposed to go to college, get a degree. But my father decided he needed more fucking heroin and didn’t have any money. So he paid for it with the only currency he had.” She took another step, virtually spitting the words at him, and they landed like blows. “He sold her to his goddamn dealer, and I didn’t even know until it was too late.”

  That’s when Jericho heard it, the pain in her voice, an edge of vulnerability to her that she probably hadn’t meant to reveal and yet was so obvious now.

  It made his chest feel tight in a way it hadn’t in at least a decade.

  “I didn’t even notice she was gone until that night.” Temple took another step, until she was right in front of him, fury radiating from her like heat from the sun. “Until I tried to ask Dad where she was, but he was so fucking out of it he couldn’t even speak. It wasn’t till the next day he told me what he’d done. And I couldn’t do a thing. I couldn’t do a fucking thing about it. Not when I was only fifteen.”

  Fifteen. Christ. So goddamn young. Seven years her sister had been gone, which must mean she was only twenty-two. So what the hell had she been doing for seven years that had turned her into this … weapon?

  You know what she’s been doing. It’s obvious. She’s on a mission, just like you.

  The realization hit him like one of her kicks, powerful and hard, driving all the air from his lungs.

  “But you’re doing something now, aren’t you?” He couldn’t stop his hand from lifting, from cupping her proud jaw, wanting to touch her since he always seemed to be wanting to touch her. “That’s why you found me. That’s why you’re here. You want revenge.”

  And maybe you should let her take it.

  Maybe he should. Not now, not before he finished what he’d started, but afterward, when it was all over. Death at her hands would be something he might even enjoy.

  She didn’t try to pull away from his touch, not even given the fact he’d been trying to choke the life out of her not five minutes earlier. She only stared up at him, tough and angry and burning like a flame. “I want to find my goddamn sister, that’s all that matters to me. And yeah, getting the chance to kill you is an unexpected bonus.”

  “I’ll find out what happened to your sister.” He let his thumb trace the line of her cheekbone, her skin soft and warm. “But only if you keep my identity to yourself. If you put Violet at risk, you get nothing. And if Violet dies … so do you.”

  Temple had paled, but she didn’t look away. “Does she know what you are?”

  The question caught him by surprise, the answer unexpectedly painful. “Yes. She knows.”

  “Then why doesn’t she get the hell away from you?”

  “She has. She did. But…” He stopped. These were Violet’s secrets, not his. He shouldn’t be giving them out like this.

  “But what?”

  He stared down into Temple’s amber eyes. “I don’t owe you answers, kitten. Stop demanding them.”

  “Then stop touching me.”

  Yet he couldn’t. Her warmth felt like it was burning his skin, and he welcomed the pain. Craved it. The very sweetest kind of punishment.

  He swept his thumb down across her cheek to the curve of her mouth, tracing the line of her upper lip, watching her face. “No.”

  “Then give me an answer.”

  She was learning. Back there on the ground, she’d moved her hips, giving him a little taste of the torture he’d put her through back in Paris, grinding against him. And he was semi-hard even now.

  He shouldn’t keep talking to her. He shouldn’t keep touching her. He should prove his strength by pulling away and leaving her here. And he most definitely shouldn’t give her any answers about himself or about Violet.

  “I wanted to get Violet out of New York,�
�� he found himself saying. “I wanted to get her away, but she refused to go. Because she wanted to stay with someone. A man she shouldn’t be with.”

  Temple’s mouth was so unimaginably soft beneath this thumb, her lower lip as sensual as a courtesan’s. He stroked his thumb back and forth over it, the heat of her skin sinking deep inside, a third-degree burn that was going to leave a scar. “No wonder she didn’t want to go with you,” Temple said, her voice hoarse, her gaze drifting down to his mouth as if she was imagining doing to him what he was doing to her. “She must hate you.”

  That hurt. And it shouldn’t. Because plenty of people hated him, and he’d come to terms with that fact. But not Violet. Never Violet.

  “She thought I was dead.” He pressed his thumb gently against that soft, pillowy lip, wanting the pain, wanting the scar. “And I let her believe it for years because I thought that was safer for her. But … things changed, and she wasn’t safe anymore, so I had to do something about it.”

  “So what did you do?” Temple was standing very still, her breathing a little faster, a little harder.

  “I kidnapped her. And unfortunately, that involved revealing who I was to her.” He stopped, because anything he admitted now could reveal himself and he couldn’t. Because ultimately how he felt about Violet, how he felt about anything at all, didn’t matter. Nothing mattered but taking down what he’d built.

  Yet Temple wasn’t looking at his mouth now, she was looking straight into his eyes. Looking straight at the demon inside him. “She didn’t know then, did she? She didn’t know that not only was her brother alive, he was also a human slave trader.”

  A memory came back to him, of a run-down lounge in Alphabet City. Of Violet standing in front of him, protecting him from the scarred man who’d pointed a gun at him, hate in his tar-black eyes. And the words that man had said to him … “Two years she was in that fucking Russian brothel … That’s what your cocksucker of a father told me. He also told me that you were the one who sold her there. You made the deal. And you were the one who let her die after a client slit her throat.”

  Violet had heard, and he hadn’t denied it. Because he couldn’t. Hunt’s wife was another woman his predecessor had bought and sold just before he himself had taken over. Yet he was still complicit. He hadn’t gone to find her, hadn’t gotten her out.

  Individual women didn’t matter, couldn’t be allowed to matter.

  Only the end could justify the means. It had to.

  “No,” he said, a bleak edge creeping into his voice that he couldn’t quite seem to tune out. “She didn’t know. But she does now.”

  An odd expression flickered over Temple’s face. Puzzlement. “You didn’t want her to know, did you?”

  He pushed on her lower lip harder, because it felt like part of him was changing, a part that should never be altered and yet was changing all the same. “No,” he repeated. “If I’d had my way, I would have stayed dead.”

  “Why?” she demanded, suddenly fierce again for some reason. “Why the hell should you care?”

  He allowed himself a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “You think human traffickers don’t have feelings too?”

  She lifted a hand, moving so fast he didn’t see the hit coming until her fist slammed into his cheekbone, snapping his head back. Pain radiated out like cracks in a windowpane, shattering something hard and cold inside him, and he had to heave in a breath, fighting for air.

  Temple hadn’t moved, not even to raise her hands to defend herself against retaliation. She was only looking at him, absolute fury in her gaze. “Don’t you dare make fun of this. Don’t you fucking make this into a joke. You destroy people. You hurt people. So yeah, I’m asking why you care so deeply about your fucking sister, when it’s clear you don’t give a shit about anyone else.” She was breathing fast and hard too, her T-shirt pulling tight across her high, round breasts.

  And it filled him suddenly. The pain and the desire, feelings he hadn’t let himself have for a long, long time. Feelings he shouldn’t be letting himself have now, and yet they were there all the same, sharp and raw, cutting through the heart of him.

  Because of her. Because of the way she burned, bright and terrible as a star.

  He reached for her, jerking her hard against him, bringing all that heat and fire right up close, and he thought she might hit him again, and God knew, he fucking deserved it. But she didn’t.

  Instead she just looked at him, as if she could see everything he was, everything he’d once been. His judge, jury, and executioner all rolled up into one sexy package.

  “Oh God, you do care,” she said, the words so hard they were almost an accusation. “Jesus Christ, you do and that’s the problem, isn’t it? You care, and you don’t want to.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Temple was nearly vibrating with rage. He’d looked so bleak when he’d told her about his sister, his beautiful voice hoarse as he’d spoken her name. And then he’d smiled that horrible, cold smile and made a joke about it, and really, it was good she hadn’t been holding a knife because she would have put it through his black heart right then and there. Which wouldn’t have helped Thalia in the slightest.

  Luckily all she’d had was her fist, but punching him didn’t make her feel any better. Especially not when a fleeting weariness had crossed his face. A weariness she knew had nothing to do with physical exhaustion and everything to do with bearing a heavy emotional burden. She should know, after all, she’d been carrying her own for years.

  Infuriating when she didn’t want to feel the same things he did. Didn’t want to understand him. But almost against her will, she was starting to see the man beneath the crime lord, a man who was far more complicated than she’d ever thought possible.

  He obviously cared about his sister, and that weariness … A man who bought and sold people the way he did shouldn’t feel emotionally weary. A man like that shouldn’t have had any emotions at all. Yet … Jericho did, and it was there in that bleakness in his eyes, in the hoarseness of his voice, in the weariness, the terrible, terrible weariness that had crossed his face after she’d hit him.

  And there was only one reason for all of those things, and it wasn’t because he didn’t care. It was because he cared too much and didn’t want anyone to know.

  She could see it now as the doors behind his eyes slammed shut, his expression closing up, hardening. The gold in his eyes faded until there was nothing but those cold, hard, emerald edges that cut like knives.

  “That’s enough.” His voice was like ice, all the velvet heat stripped right out of it.

  But she ignored him, ignored the pressure of his fingers on her hips, staring right up into his face, trying to see beyond all those walls and closed doors. “Bullshit it’s enough. What are you doing, Theo? And who the hell are you really?”

  She hadn’t said his name deliberately, it had just slipped out, yet she saw the effect it had on him, the flare of some expression she didn’t understand deep in his eyes.

  He pushed at her suddenly, trying to put her from him, but instead she shoved at him, hard enough that he went back into the windowsill. He tensed, anger leaping in his gaze, and for a moment she thrilled to it, because that was better than that horrible cold look.

  What do you mean “better”? Why the hell should you care?

  She didn’t know, didn’t really understand what the fuck was wrong with her since he’d as good as admitted he’d been the one who’d bought Thalia. And that should have meant his death. Instead she was standing there looking at him, desperate to know what was going on.

  Knowing his motivations won’t make any difference to what he’s done.

  Shit, she knew that intellectually. And yet … A part of her wanted to know more anyway. Such as why he was doing this. Why he was the head of an empire that bought and sold people. How could he justify it? How could he live with it?

  You’re a fine one to talk. How do you justify murder?

  As if he’d
had a direct line into her brain, he said, “No, you don’t get to ask me about why I’m doing this. About caring or otherwise. Not when you kill people for money.”

  She could feel it then, the hot wash of shame, welling up from a deep place inside, and every part of her wanted to fight it, to deny it. “My targets are all assholes,” she shot back. “They’re all criminals who deserve what’s coming to them. I don’t take contracts that hurt innocent people.”

  He laughed at that, but there was no amusement in it, only anger. “Innocent? Who the fuck determines that? No one is innocent, Temple. We all have our sins, we’re all guilty of something.”

  “So what are you saying?” She tried to hold onto her anger, ignore the shame that was curling around her heart. A shame that went deeper than what she’d had to do as an assassin. A shame that led all the way back to her parents’ run-down apartment and a sister who’d done more for her than any sister should. “That all those girls deserved what was coming to them?”

  “No. What I’m saying is that you’re not in any position to throw stones.”

  “And what I’m saying is that nothing can justify what you’re doing to all those women!”

  He stared down at her, his body tense and hot. And she realized she had her hands on his lean hips, holding him like he’d been holding her. Keeping him in place as if this was vitally important. As if she wanted him to understand and that was weird too because she didn’t want to have this conversation with him.

  “I’m not trying to justify it,” he said fiercely, his hands coming down over hers. “Nothing can excuse what I’ve done. Nothing can absolve me of blame. And I don’t want anything to either. I take full responsibility for all my actions. All I’m trying to point out is that things are more complicated than they seem and nothing is black and white.”

  His palms were warm, the gold glitter of his temper heating the cold emerald of his eyes. Yeah, complicated all right. She should have killed him when she had the chance, because she had a feeling that no matter how many chances he gave her, actually doing the deed was only going to get harder. Especially when the more she saw of the man behind the crime lord, the more fascinated she became.