by Lora Leigh
Eyes closed, hands gripping his biceps, Amara began to feel the physical pleasure mixing with an inner pain she didn’t know how to process. How had she forgotten him? How had she forgotten this?
As he slid deeper inside her, she forced her eyes opened. She wanted to see him—his gaze snared hers instead, trapped her in their gem-bright depths as his hands framed her face, a grimace tightening his expression.
“I missed you baby,” he whispered. “God help me, I missed you.”
His hips flexed, pressing his cock deeper as pleasure tore through her. “So sweet, Amara. Touching you, feeling you wrapped around me, it’s like a damn drug I can’t escape.”
Her breath broke as his hips jerked against hers, driving his cock deeper, harder, filling her completely. Stretching the inner tissue, stroking over the violently sensitive nerve endings, he buried inside her fully as a ragged groan escaped his chest.
“I dreamed of you even when dreams shouldn’t have reached me,” he whispered, his gaze still holding hers, his expression fierce, hard with lust and something more.
“I dreamed”—her breathing hitched as he moved against her, his cock stroking slow and easy inside her—“I’d awaken and looked for you beside me…”
For him. She’d known he should be in the bed beside her, holding her, warming her—oh God, pleasuring her.
Lowering his hand, Riordan gripped her thigh and lifted it, until she was moving both legs, knees bending, her hips lifting as she gripped his, allowing him to sink deeper inside her. A whimpering moan left her lips as burning pleasure tore through her, despite the slow, rhythmic thrusts that he refused to speed up.
Lowering his head, his lips covered hers again, kissing her slow and deep as he worked his cock inside her, his breathing harsh, ragged. With each stroke, with each thrust, the sensations became stronger, whipping through her harder. And still, he took her cries with his kisses, held her to him, and destroyed her with pleasure.
Just when she was certain she couldn’t bear it another second, when her pussy was tightening, involuntary spasms rippling through it as the need to orgasm rose desperately, he began to move harder, faster.
Penetrating her with increasingly hard strokes as his lips moved from hers to press against the bend of her neck, he drove them both to the edge of such crazy pleasure, she lost her ability to even cry out at the sensations. Then, he pushed both of them over, hurtling them into such a storm of pure ecstasy, she was certain she’d become lost with it.
Riordan held her to him, their combined releases shaking their bodies, her soul. His arms held her tight, the warmth of his body sheltered her, covered her, possessed her.
Claimed her.
He claimed her.
* * *
Dawn was peeking over the horizon when Riordan slipped silently from the room and headed to his brother’s. The vibration of his phone on the table beside the bed had brought him from a deep sleep and had him dressing immediately. Making his way down the hall and rounding the corner, he gave a brief knock to the door before stepping inside. Noah stood on the other side of the room, his expression somber, worry showing in the crease of a frown at his forehead and in the look of bleak sorrow that shadowed his gaze.
“What’s happened? Sabella and the kids okay?” That look was one Riordan had rarely seen on his brother’s face.
“They’re fine.” Noah cleared his throat before his shoulders shifted in apparent discomfort and he stepped to the desk at the side of the room.
It was obvious that whatever his brother had to say wasn’t something he wanted to say.
“Then what’s going on?” He closed the door carefully and stepped farther into the room.
A primal warning tightened his gut as a chill raced up his spine. He’d trained with his brother, fought with him often enough to know what that feeling meant.
Noah looked away for a second, swallowing as a grimace tightened his face before he turned back to face him.
“What the hell’s going on, Noah—”
“I know why Ivan’s refusing to allow you to see Amara’s hospital records,” Noah spoke over him. “I sent Frankie in to question the surgeon who operated on her.”
Riordan knew this was going to be bad. He knew his brother, knew his expressions, his body language. And he knew that what was coming couldn’t be good. The fact that his brother had sent Frankie, a former Israeli Mossad agent, was even more telling.
“Riordan.” Noah’s jaw clenched as he seemed to consider his words. “Goddamn.” He pushed his fingers through his hair, anger resonating in his voice. “I’m sorry. What Ivan had no intention of telling you was that Amara was pregnant. About eight weeks. She lost the baby due to her injuries … the blow that fractured her pelvis”
Riordan stood still as ice seemed to wash through him.
Never had he felt the chill that was tearing through him in that moment. Beneath the ice, he could feel himself shattering. A ragged wound unlike anything he’d ever known was ripping through his soul, gouging its way through with jagged bites.
He was only distantly aware of Noah pouring him a drink then pouring another for himself. He took the glass, swallowed the fiery liquid, then stepped to the bar to snag the bottle before he stopped himself.
He stared at it as the heat of that first shot spilled through his chest, into his belly. He knew he could numb the pain for a minute, but doing so would be another injustice to the child he hadn’t even known existed. The child stolen from him and Amara.
His hand dropped to his side and he forced himself to turn away.
There was a time when he’d tried to hide in whatever bottle of liquor he could find. He’d learned then that it didn’t help. Nothing could help this agony tearing through him. This was all he could give the baby he hadn’t known Amara carried.
“No wonder she forced herself to forget.” His voice was so ragged he barely recognized it.
And Ivan had hid it from Amara. He’d hidden it from everyone.
“The surgeon told Frankie that Ivan threatened to kill him with his bare hands if he didn’t lose Amara’s records. He didn’t destroy them, but we haven’t managed to locate them yet either.”
Riordan couldn’t speak. He had to breathe. He had to make sense of this. God help him, if Ivan was on the estate, he wasn’t sure he could keep from trying to kill him. Amara’s father should have never kept this from him. He should have told him the second Riordan showed up, demanding to resume his place as head of Amara’s security.
Funny, he’d been confused over Ivan’s lack of argument over that demand. He had simply nodded and given Riordan instant control. He hadn’t argued over a single decision or demand that Riordan had made.
He should have known, he should have demanded those medical records then.
The day she’d had the gynecologist’s appointment, she’d been so quiet, almost confused afterward, and intensely somber. If the memories were close to returning, then it made sense.
She’d known she was pregnant when he left for England.
She’d known, but she hadn’t told him.
But then, he hadn’t exactly been given a chance to tell her he was leaving. Ivan had put him on a helicopter and flown him directly to the airport to meet up with his team within an hour of informing him of the job.
Riordan’s arguments concerning Amara’s safety had been waved aside. Her father had been so certain he could protect her, so certain that the men he would use in Riordan’s stead would be able to protect her.
And God help him, he couldn’t blame Ivan for believing in them. In the end, Riordan had ignored his misgivings because he knew those men as well. But even more, he’d thought Elizaveta and Grisha would also be with her. He’d had no idea they hadn’t returned from Russia on time that morning.
“I’m sorry, brathair,” Noah said softly, the pure Irish in the last word a hint of the man he had been, the brother he had been, so many years ago.
God, he felt as though he were dying i
nside. That rending pain tearing at his heart wouldn’t stop. It refused to stop.
She hadn’t told him she was pregnant.
Why? Why hadn’t she told him? Was it the same reason she had refused to allow her father to know she was sleeping with her bodyguard?
Whatever that fucking reason was.
“Riordan.” Worry, and grief, filled Noah’s voice.
Riordan shook his head as he turned away from his brother and forced himself to breathe in deep, to control the rage tearing through him. The bastards who abducted her, tortured and beat her, had stolen not just her memories, but their child.
When she did remember, would she grieve that lost life or would she consider it a lucky escape from the lover she’d been determined to hide from her father? She would grieve—he couldn’t imagine otherwise. The woman he knew would, of course, grieve her lost child. But would she grieve the loss of the man who had fathered her baby? Without that child, there would be no way that he could hold on to her, no reason to inform her father that she had lain with one of the men hired to protect her. The very type of man her father had ordered his young daughter to avoid.
“Chatter was picked up concerning that blowout the other day,” Noah said softly behind him. “It wasn’t an accident according to what we’ve picked up. But someone wanted it to look like an accident. I have two of my agents on it.”
Riordan cleared his throat. “Ops has other missions, I’m sure.”
“Ops command has covered Ivan’s back for years, Riordan,” Noah told him. “He’s one of their assets. They won’t turn their back on him with this.”
Yeah, he was one of their best assets, one of their greatest manipulators in that shadow world between legitimate business interests and criminal design.
“Is there any chatter concerning why she’s a target?” Focus. He had to fucking focus.
“Not yet, but we have a place to look now. We didn’t have that before,” Noah assured him. “She’s beginning to remember though, isn’t she?”
Yeah, she was beginning to remember and when she remembered what would it do to her? He turned back to his brother. “Small things. Mostly pieces of our relationship before the abduction. The day we met. She knows we were lovers. But she hasn’t remembered anything about the abduction yet.”
But she would. She was stubborn and she was stronger than even Ivan realized. She knew the memories would hurt, but she’d still face them.
“Let’s hope those memories return soon.” Noah breathed out heavily. “It could be what helps us save her life.”
Because whoever had targeted her was not going to stop.
“What are you going to do, Riordan?” Noah asked. “What are you going to tell Amara?”
What was he going to tell Amara? The Ops psychologist and the one Riordan had hired agreed that telling Amara what had happened in the months missing from her memory was not in her best interests. She needed to find her own memories, not hear someone else’s views of them.
“Nothing. I’m not going to tell her any more than I would’ve before I learned about the baby,” he said, hearing the harshness in his own voice. “I’m not going to tell her a damn thing.”
“Is that really how you want to handle it?” Noah asked immediately. “Think about it first, Riordan. Think about what you would want her to do if it were you.”
He faced his brother fully then, anger surging inside him. “If she thought I was dead, I sure as hell wouldn’t let her live with it for three years before I returned with no intention of telling her who I am as you did to Sabella,” he snapped furiously at the judgmental look he saw in his brother’s face.
Son of a bitch, he wasn’t a dumb kid or an untrained young man any longer. There were decisions he knew how to make without his brother’s help.
“No, but what you’re getting ready to do—I’ve been told—is no different. Sabella asked me to remind you that I wasn’t able to hide from her. Not who I was, or what I had been. Remember that, Riordan. Because hiding from Amara will have the same results, but without the bonds Sabella and I had in the first years of our marriage. Think about it first, that’s all I’m saying. Be certain the direction you’re going to take before you make the turn.”
Without replying, Riordan turned away from his brother, jerked the door open, and stalked from the room before returning to his own. Amara still slept in his bed, blankets still wrapped around her, her slight body relaxed as she seemed to sleep dreamlessly.
Watching her, his emotions were in turmoil, his fists clenched as he fought the need to hold her. If he had known about the baby, he would have never gone to England—hell, he should have never gone to England, period.
He should have never left her.
chapter eighteen
It wasn’t a dream that washed over her, because she wasn’t asleep. She’d awakened the moment Riordan left the bed. Silently, she’d listened to him dress and quietly leave the room. But minutes later, the fog that normally covered her memories parted and allowed a fragment to slip free.
She stood in the living area of the penthouse as she faced her father, feeling sick to her stomach and fighting to hold back a ragged cry of denial.
Because he was gone. Riordan was gone.
“What do you mean ‘he left’?” She stared back at her poppa as he faced her from the bank of windows that looked out over Central Park.
The spring blue of the sky was a brilliant backdrop as the warming sunlight spilled into the room. A warmth that couldn’t hope to touch the sudden cold chill that washed over her.
Her poppa stood, shoulders straight and head high, his dark blue eyes and hardened expression giving away little.
“I mean, he is gone.” He shrugged. “The new team will be here in about an hour—”
“Where did he go?” Her nails bit into the back of the chair she stood behind, unable to believe he’d left her.
He wouldn’t leave her. Surely, he wouldn’t leave her.
He hadn’t even said goodbye.
“Does it matter?” He tilted his head to the side and watched her thoughtfully. “You’ve never cared when I’ve changed your security before. Why now?”
He knew.
Staring back at him, Amara could see the knowledge lurking in the flat line of his mouth, in the faint gleam of anger in his eyes that he couldn’t hide. He knew she’d been sleeping with Riordan, and he’d fired him.
But it really didn’t matter what her poppa had done. What mattered was that Riordan had left.
“Did you hurt him, Poppa?” she asked faintly, praying she wasn’t wrong about the man who had raised her, the man she had loved more than any other until Riordan.
“No. No bruises, broken bones, or gunshot wounds. Is that what you’re asking?” The muscle at his jaw jerked as the question snapped out at her. “Did I have a reason to hurt him, Amara?”
She wanted desperately to lay her hand against her stomach …
Why? Why had she not placed her hand over her abdomen, even though the need to do it had been almost more than she could resist?
“No,” she answered softly, her gaze dropping to her hands as she forced herself to release the cushioned back of the chair. “There was no reason, Poppa.”
Except her shattered heart. No matter what her father ordered, if Riordan wasn’t hurt, then he would have come for her—if he loved her. Nothing her father could have done would have held him back. Riordan was too strong, too arrogant to ever walk away from a woman he considered his.
As she had considered him hers.
“I’ll leave you with Ilya and my own team until the new security agents arrive,” he stated. “They’re the best I have in the agency.”
No, they weren’t, she thought. Riordan was the best. Twice he’d protected her from seemingly random violence. Violence he’d been certain wasn’t random at all.
“I’m certain they are,” she answered. “Excuse me, Poppa, I’m still rather tired this morning. I believe I’ll return to be
d.”
She was breaking apart inside. Her heart was breaking in a way she had never imagined it could be broken.
She’d been so certain she’d kept her affair with Riordan secret from her father. They’d been so very careful. And yet, still, somehow, her father had learned her bodyguard was sleeping with her.
That was the only type of man her poppa had warned her he would never accept. Should one of his security personnel become her lover, he would ensure that man never worked for him again. Perhaps he’d never walk again, because that would be a blatant breach of trust. A man who was sleeping with her could not effectively protect her, he’d warned.
“Amara?” he stopped her as she reached the short hall that led to her room.
“Yes, Poppa?” She didn’t turn back to him—she couldn’t. There was no way she could hide the tears if she did.
“All he had to do was face me,” he said gently. “I would never take someone from you who you loved. But you’re no man’s secret. And I won’t allow one of your bodyguards to make you one.”
The tears fell then. She couldn’t hold them back.
“He did it for me.”
“No, Amara.” His voice hardened. “No matter a woman’s wishes, a man who truly loves her would not allow it. But even more, he’d never walk away.”
She couldn’t argue with him, because he was right. If Riordan had loved her, he wouldn’t have left her. He wouldn’t have walked away.
“I know,” she whispered. But it didn’t help, it didn’t stop the pain. “I know, Poppa.”
She moved slowly, every bone, every muscle in her body hurting, aching for a man who hadn’t really wanted her. Stepping into her bedroom, she closed the door, locked it, then moved into her bathroom.
Stopping in front of the sink, she stared at the small, plastic stick lying on the counter. The pink stripe mocked her, reminded her that Riordan had left far more behind than he realized.
He hadn’t just left the woman who loved him. He’d left their child …
Her eyes opened moments after Riordan had returned from the bathroom. Lying still and silent in the bed, she let her hand move to her abdomen.