by Olivia Gates
“Is he always that vicious to women he thinks you’re done with? Or is he that brutal by default? Which wouldn’t surprise me. He doesn’t feel quite human to me.”
Graves turned his gaze to Rafael. “Very astute, this one. Foolishly outspoken, too. You may have to keep her.”
Rafael’s eyes ate her up. “Oh, I am keeping her.”
She mock scowled at him. “How kind of you both. But I’ve been known to keep myself, thank you. So why don’t you unstoppable forces of nature just run along and go exude charisma and testosterone all over someone else?”
Graves’s lips spread. “It really looks like you’ll have to keep her.”
Rafael gave an exaggerated sigh. “If only she keeps me.”
Graves tsked. “I trained you better than that, Numbers.”
“Seems all your efforts went down the drain, Cobra.”
She gaped at them. “Numbers? Cobra? You have code names in that brotherhood of yours?”
Graves raised one eyebrow at Rafael. Seemed he was surprised Rafael had told her about that. Not that Rafael had told her much. Rafael gave him a “deal with it” shrug.
“Numbers...” she mused. “I don’t really see why you got named that. But Cobra is definitely apt. Though a more accurate name would be the raw material of deadliness. Like Venom.”
This time Graves guffawed. “You’re definitely keeping her.”
Rafael’s smile widened before it faded gradually. “Now, apologize to Eliana or I’ll break my other hand and your jaw this time.”
Ignoring him, Graves fixed his gaze on her, his British accent deepening. “He talks big, even when he knows he’s in one piece because I have this inexplicable fondness for him. That said, and knowing that I’m doing this out of my deeply buried gentlemanly tendencies, I do apologize. If only for...”
She raised both hands. “Stop. Quit while you’re ahead.”
Rafael gathered her to him. “Is he forgiven?”
A harrumph. “On probation.”
He chuckled and devoured her lips. She smiled against his lips at Graves’s vocal disgust.
After Rafael released her reluctantly, she kissed his splint, then each finger. “No more breaking anything for me, okay?”
His head shake was adamant. “No promises.”
Sighing her frustration at his terminal machismo, she looked between him and Graves. “At least no more fights between you two because of me, hear?”
Richard bowed in mock deference. “I’ll do whatever it takes to keep your boy toy in optimum working condition.”
And she laughed. That daunting dude had a sense of humor after all. She might even end up liking him.
Jumping up, she looked between the two men. “If you’re good tycoons, I’ll invite you to eat my magical seafood medley. You even get to help prepare it.”
Rafael sprang to his feet. “I’m very, very good.”
“I’m very, very nauseous” was Graves’s contribution.
She and Rafael laughed, then headed to her kitchen. Muttering what sounded like paint-peeling expletives, Graves followed.
* * *
The evening turned out to be an unqualified success.
Eliana was the perfect hostess. She orchestrated all the details with ease and efficiency and handled them, men the world bowed to, with utmost confidence and grace. Richard miraculously kept his snark to a minimum, even followed her lead as she made them her sous-chefs while preparing the seafood medley, which did turn out to be magical.
Time flowed over and after dinner as they cleaned up then adjourned to her living room to drink hot yerba maté, eat cocadas—a traditional coconut confection—chat and verbally duel. Eliana held her own with Richard like no one he’d ever seen. Then, nestling into him on the couch, she started yawning.
Kissing her forehead, he gestured to Richard, who rose to his feet at once.
As he made to follow, she clung to him. “Stay.”
His blood hurtled through his veins with temptation. “You need to sleep.”
She rubbed her sleepy face into his neck, burning him wherever she touched. “I need to sleep with you.”
“Tomorrow. I’ll come alone.”
She looked across at Richard. “You can go home on your own, right, Graves?”
“It’s Rafael who can’t. I have to tuck him in.”
“Should have known you’d be no help.” She clung to Rafael’s neck. “At least carry me to bed.”
“You, my enchantress, are wily.”
“I just want you.”
“And I want nothing but you.” He kissed her pout as he rose and her arms fell off his shoulders like petals. “Lock up after us.”
He rushed Richard out before he succumbed. They strode to the elevator with him already suffering withdrawal.
“What are you going to do with her?”
At Richard’s quiet question, he exhaled. “None of your business, Cobra. Your role here is done.”
Richard pressed the elevator button. “One piece of advice. A warning, really. This woman will turn you inside out.”
“Don’t you believe she already has?”
“I thought so. But now that I’ve been exposed to her, to this...live thing between you, I know I’ve been optimistic in my evaluation. This?” He made a gesture at all of him. “What you’re feeling now? Is nothing to what you will feel a week from now. In a month’s time, you’ll be totally lost in her.”
He cocked an eyebrow as they entered the elevator. “So you like her now?”
“I don’t like anyone. But her? She’s lethal.”
He frowned. “You still think she’s her father’s accomplice? That her orphanage work has sinister motivations? You think I’d look the other way if I suspected such a thing?”
Richard shook his head. “I actually believe your verdict of her benevolence. And that’s what makes her deadly. She’s for real. You’ll have no defenses against her.”
“Who says I want any?”
Richard fell silent as the elevator crowded with more and more people in this city that didn’t sleep. Once out on the street, and before they went their separate ways, he said, “Are you giving up your revenge?”
His heart fisted. “I will never do that.”
“Then do you have any idea how to have it and have her, too?”
“I’ll figure out a way.”
Richard only gave him a “sure you will” scowl before turning and walking away.
He watched Richard recede, his mind in an uproar.
He would destroy her father. He had to. But if she ever suspected he was the one who had done it, he could lose her. He couldn’t even contemplate that.
This meant that his plan to let Ferreira know it was him who destroyed him was out of the question. He’d have to burn every bit of evidence leading back to him so she’d never know.
The one way this wouldn’t be necessary was if in a month’s time he cooled toward her. He could strike at her father and not fear the fallout to their relationship.
But he didn’t need time to know it would only intensify, this all-consuming passion he felt for her.
And that was his verdict as the man who was never wrong.
* * *
They stumbled all the way from the mansion’s doors to Rafael’s master suite, snatching at each other with wrenching lips, straining against each other as if they’d merge.
It took a while to get there, as Rafael’s suite spanned the whole fourth level. At least he’d made sure the mansion was empty before he got her here, after everyone who worked there had managed to walk in on them during the past three weeks.
He threw her down on his extra-large king-size bed and she slid over the satin sheets to its middle as he launched himself ove
r her. She bowed up to intensify his impact, loving his weight and ferocity as he bore down on her.
His lips mashed against hers, his tongue plunging inside her while his hips rammed between her splayed thighs through their clothes.
He rose to snatch her top over her head, bunching her skirt to her waist then tearing her panties off her hips. As her legs fell wide apart for him, his hands, big enough to span her waist, raised her against the headboard. Then he buried his face in her confined breasts.
The sight of the dark majesty of his head against her made her keen, pressing his head harder to her aching flesh.
He muttered something deep and driven, the sound spearing her heart as his hands went to her back, releasing breasts now peaked and swollen for his ownership.
Imprisoning her hands above her head in his good one, he drew back to gaze at her. His eyes crackled with lust at how she must look. Like she had that first night, almost naked, the image of pure wanton abandon.
Growling, he let go of her hands to greedily take her breasts in his hands. She arched off the bed in the shock of pleasure, making a fuller offering of her flesh. He kneaded her, pinched her nipples, had her writhing...begging.
He tore his shirt off, exposing the body she’d told him made Greek gods seem like weaklings. Her awed hands shook over his burnished, sculpted perfection. His growls roughened as he rubbed his chest against her breasts until she thrashed.
“Querida...” He bent and opened his mouth fully over her breasts as if he’d devour her. Pleasure jackknifed through her with each hard draw of his lips, each hot swirl of his tongue, until she was shuddering all over, her readiness flowing down her thighs.
She lay powerless under the avalanche of need as his hand glided over her, taking every liberty before settling between her thighs. His strong, sensitive fingers slid to her intimate flesh, now throbbing its demand for his touch. As his lips clamped hers, his fingers opened the lips of her femininity, slid between her folds, soaking in her arousal.
It took only a few strokes of those virtuoso fingers to spill her over the edge. She convulsed with pleasure, screeching it into his mouth.
His stroking fingers completed her pleasure, circling her nub soothingly. Desire seared through her again instead, that emptiness that gnawed her all the time now unbearable.
She drummed her feet against the bed in a fit of frustration. “Just take me.”
He cupped her core, gathered her still trembling body to his, shushing her. And she knew he still wouldn’t take her.
She turned her face into his chest, sobbed. “You once said you didn’t want my heart pounding or me agitated. My heart is hammering, and I’m far beyond agitated...all the time.”
“You’re just aroused.”
She glared up at him. “Gee...I didn’t realize that!”
His face was a mask of savage hunger even as he smiled at her. “I mean you’re too aroused to think straight. Three weeks ago you didn’t want to see me again.”
“Three weeks ago I asked you to take me. Just like I’ve been doing every day ever since.”
“You were trying to get rid of me then.”
“Maybe I just couldn’t wait to have you. Just like I can’t now. Didn’t you think of that?”
“I want us to have this first, querida, the courting, the anticipation, all the routes to pleasure but the ultimate one. When I join our bodies I want you certain that you want me inside you, not just the release I’ll bring you.”
Her fingers twisted in his hair, eyes pleading. “I am certain. I’ve been certain since the moment I saw you.”
“But when you were thinking straight, you knew what was best for you, for us, wanted me to slow down.”
“Not to this extent.”
“You sound as if I’ve been tormenting you for months.”
“It feels like years.”
His smile devoured her brimming with pure male satisfaction. “I love you on fire for me like that.”
She almost blurted out “I love you” but bit it back at the last moment.
She had no illusions about the nature of his involvement, didn’t want her far different and more intense feelings to alarm him or put him off. There was no way a man like him would be hers except transiently. And she felt as if the more time that passed, the shorter the time she’d have him in full intimacy.
And now he was going away. He was traveling with one of his “brothers” to Japan. Even though he promised it would be only for a few days, it felt as if it would curtail her time with him further.
All troubled thoughts came to an end as he spread her thighs wide and slid down her trembling body.
Then he spoke against her molten feminine lips. “Let me ease the burning in your blood, querida.”
He had been doing so in every way but the one she craved.
She tried to close her legs, needing him, not release. “What about the burn in your blood?”
“You can ease that if you wish.”
“Oh, I wish, I so wish.”
It was what ameliorated the gnawing, when he let her worship him. Getting intimate with the daunting beauty and massive proportions of him sent a frisson of danger through her as she wondered if it was possible he’d fit inside her. But she couldn’t wait until he did, yearned for the pain she knew he had to inflict. She wanted it to hurt at first, needed him to brand her with agony as his.
But though the intimacy gave him release, it only drove her madder with hunger, and left him harder and more on edge.
“Then you shall have your wish. Right after I have mine.”
And he took her core in a hot, tongue-thrusting kiss and the world vanished in a whiteout of sensation....
* * *
“Can you please turn the anxious vibes down? They’re drilling holes in the hull.”
Rafael’s head snapped up at the sarcastic tone. He watched its owner blankly as Raiden sat down in his private jet’s plush seat, facing him.
As Raiden buckled his seat belt with a bedeviling look in his slanting eyes, Rafael’s aggravation shot to maximum again.
“I would,” he snarled, “if your damn pilot picked a route where I got cellular coverage.”
Raiden aka Lightning had asked him to accompany him to Tokyo five days ago. He’d had the biggest lead yet in his quest to establish his bloodline and he needed him to examine records that couldn’t be moved out of their institutes and temples and to come up with a pattern. He had. And Raiden had finally uncovered his legacy.
Rafael had only uncovered the meaning of agony.
Richard’s prediction about time worsening his condition had come to pass. But then, hadn’t it always been that bad? It was now a full month since he’d met Eliana, and he was fully submerged.
Since he’d left her side, he’d called her a dozen times per day. Given the opportunity, he would have had her on speakerphone all day. Would have had her on webcam all night.
Then came the torture of the twenty-four hour flights from and back to Rio. For twelve of those, cellular transmission was cut. Being unable to call her for that long frayed his nerves. On the outbound flight, he’d managed to rein in his discomfort. Now, he was going ballistic.
Raiden had remained respectful of his agitation at first. But now he was outright making fun of his condition.
“My pilot says there should be transmission any time now.” Raiden smoothed back the hair he’d cut short for the first time in his life, in preparation for entering the conservative upper crust of Japanese society. “But you still can’t turn on your phone, since we’re starting our descent.”
Rafael hurled at him an infuriated glance. “Why are you talking when you don’t have something useful to say?”
“Whoa, Numbers.” Raiden grinned, stretching his long legs, the eyes he knew froze p
eople in their tracks twinkling with mischief. “You were the last one, after Richard and Numair, that I thought I’d ever see in this state over a woman.”
“And in this state, I’m liable to do things the Numbers you know wouldn’t. So shut up, Lightning.”
Raiden didn’t shut up. Not until Rafael hurled state-of-the-art headphones at his thick skull. He outright guffawed then.
Caring nothing about their descent, Rafael had his phone out and turned on. Hands shaking with inexplicable and all-encompassing anxiety, he accessed his voice mail. There was one from Eliana.
Then the message began.
“Rafael...I—I’ve been in an accident.... They’re taking me to Copa D’or Hospital. Oh, God...where are you?”
A loud clattering noise followed, as if she’d dropped the phone.
Then there was nothing more.
Eight
Rafael lost his mind.
With every heartbeat, he lost it again and again.
Eliana’s phone was out of service. She wasn’t in Copa D’Or, the hospital that was flooded with casualties in the aftermath of the accident.
A dump truck exceeding the allowed height had smashed into a pedestrian bridge, which had collapsed onto dozens of cars in the morning rush hour. Four people were killed. Dozens had injuries ranging from minor to critical. He turned the place upside down looking for her, questioned everyone. No one could report on Eliana’s condition. Or where she’d gone.
Richard believed this meant she was well enough to walk out on her own. But the only thing that mattered to Rafael was that he couldn’t reach her, couldn’t protect her. His men and Richard’s were combing the streets and had already looked in all the places she could be. She wasn’t at her apartment or at her father’s villa in Copacabana or his offices. Neither was her father, who Rafael belatedly remembered was back in San Francisco. And the damn man’s phone was out of service, too.
Long past his wits’ end, he charged over to the last place he could think of. His mansion.
Of her usual haunts, it was the farthest away from the hospital, more than a two-hour drive in this traffic. And there was no reason she should go there with him out of town and with her own apartment only twenty minutes away. But he had nowhere else to try.