by Olivia Gates
But she’d played her part for Hiro’s sake, and had almost sagged in his stiff hold when he, too, hadn’t been able to bear Megumi’s nearness any longer and cut their confrontation short. She’d thought that had been it.
Not for a second had she considered Raiden might see any similarity between the new her and the casually dressing, flat shoe–wearing, slim blonde he’d once known. So even when she’d felt him following her, she’d thought he’d been pursuing Hiro’s new romantic interest. The Raiden she’d known wouldn’t have struck at an adversary that way, but then he could have changed since she’d betrayed him.
Then he’d confronted her, and every meticulously erected pillar maintaining her cohesion had crumbled in shock.
But she’d been trained too well, through too many brutal tests. She’d acted her way to perfection through her life’s worst situations. And she’d had plenty of nightmarish ones. None, however, had ever affected her as her time with Raiden had.
In the garden house, she’d still fallen back on her fail-safe maneuvers, trapping her agitation in her deepest recesses, plastering one of her automated reaction modes on the surface. But then he’d taken her in his arms, drowned her in a kiss that had dissolved the last vestiges of her facade. And she’d given up the pretense.
What had followed had been agonizing. But she hoped she’d maintained a semblance of indifference all through.
One thing held her together now as she walked away from Raiden. Knowing that he’d heed her warning and leave her alone. She’d never see or hear from him again. Or if she did, he’d pretend she was the total stranger he’d just met tonight.
Not that he didn’t hate it. She’d felt him seething to obey the urge to do her major damage, equivalent to what he considered she’d caused him. She could feel his gaze on her all the way to the mansion’s entrance, bombarding her with his pent-up rage and contempt.
By the time she reached one of Hiro’s limos, she’d expended the last of her balance. After forcing her rented apartment’s address in Shibuya out of unsteady lips to the unknown driver, she flopped back in her seat, her nerves in pieces, her muscles like trembling jelly.
Exhaling forcibly to expel her agitation, she tried to luxuriate in the sights of Tokyo at night. The city was one of the most exotic and exciting places she’d ever been, and her life had taken her almost everywhere.
She soon gave up, resigned she’d see nothing during the hour’s drive but Raiden’s magnificent, wrathful face. Would feel nothing but regurgitated turmoil and searing memories.
Had it really been five years? The insane whirlpool of events as she’d reinvented herself since made her feel as if it had been fifty years. But his memory was so intense, it could have been five days since she’d last seen him. She hadn’t forgotten a thing about him. His beauty was as indescribable as she remembered, and his effect on her was as overpowering.
When she’d been sent to spy on him, all she’d known was that he was an American billionaire venture capitalist of Japanese origins. His business past was impeccable and his personal one unremarkable, having been born to a single mother who’d died when he’d been ten, placing him in the foster system until he’d been eighteen. Then he’d traveled the world before coming back to the States at twenty-six, and he’d been soaring through the venture capitalism field since. He’d been twenty-nine when she’d met him and already a billionaire. Now at thirty-four, he was at the undisputable top, with a handful of others, one of whom was Hiro.
But her recruiter was convinced Raiden was a former assassin, and had sent her to get intimate with Raiden and get solid proof. And she had. Through the full access Raiden had given her to his domain, she’d used her special training to breach his secret records and gotten that proof.
But it had been years of research later that had put together his real life story. What he himself hadn’t known when he’d been with her. It had been just months ago that she’d worked out just how he’d become that ninja assassin called Lightning.
He’d been two when he’d lost his family in an earthquake and tsunami that hit the rural Akita Prefecture in Japan. Taken to a shelter in the aftermath, he’d remained there for two years until his extraordinary agility had brought him to the attention of a “recruiter” for The Organization, a shadow operation that took children and turned them into unstoppable mercenaries who executed top-risk operations for the highest bidders. Pretending she was a relative, the recruiter had taken him only to sell him to The Organization.
He’d been among hundreds of boys taken from all over the world, kept segregated in a remote area in the Balkans, viciously trained and molded until they graduated to fieldwork. They performed missions under strict surveillance from their personal handlers. Death was the only punishment for any attempts at subordination or escape. But he’d been one of a few who’d ever escaped. She suspected some or even all of his partners in Black Castle Enterprises were also escapees.
She’d often wondered if he’d called himself Raiden, the god of thunder and lightning in Japan, to reflect his code name when he’d been the ultimate ninja warrior, so certain no one would ever tie him to his former identity. His cover was ingenious, after all, and it was a common enough name. As for Kuroshiro, that literally meant Black Castle. She’d also wondered if he’d picked it after the name of his joint enterprise with his partners, or if they’d taken his....
Suddenly she almost spilled out of the limo. Her driver had opened her door. She hadn’t even noticed they’d stopped.
Pulling herself together and out of the past, she thanked him, stepped out and walked into her building.
Looking around the chic foyer on her way to the elevator and her thirtieth-floor unit, she felt thankful all over again to Hiro for making it possible for her to be here.
When she’d first come to Japan just over a year ago and tried to rent a place, she’d learned what the Japanese phrase hikoshi bimbo meant. It literally meant “moving poor.” The humongous sum of cash that renters had to dish out up front invariably left them impoverished.
Since she’d had no cash in any sums, it hadn’t been an option. After she’d met Hiro, and he’d discovered she’d been sleeping on the floor of the UNICEF regional office where she worked, he’d been appalled and insisted on accommodating her.
She’d refused to stay in his mansion, since being in someone’s debt and in their domain was anathema to her. Autonomy and seclusion were a vital necessity to her. She’d also declined the exorbitant apartment he’d gotten her near his home. He’d protested that he had billions, was still around to spend them only thanks to her. She’d argued that even if the place came for free, it was too far from her work downtown.
In the end, he’d still gotten her a “mansion,” as recently built large apartments were called in Tokyo. The place was expensive, but now that she did some part-time consulting work for him, she could accept the home in lieu of a salary.
She now entered the apartment, sighed in pleasure at feeling cocooned in its sound-insulated exquisite mixture of modern and traditional Japanese ambiance. Kicking off her towering sandals, she moaned in relief as her feet flattened against the tatami, the traditional Japanese flooring made of rice straw with a covering of soft, woven igusa straw. Walking on it was physiotherapy all unto itself.
Tossing her wrap onto the coat rack, she wanted only to fall facedown on her equally therapeutic traditional Japanese bed and descend into a deep coma. It was a small blessing she had no work tomorrow.
Hopefully, after a day in her pajamas, she’d regain a semblance of the normalcy she’d worked so hard to achieve. A normalcy that seeing Raiden had pulverized all over again.
Crossing the living room on her way to her bedroom, she suddenly stopped when an electrifying sensation skittered up her spine. All her senses went haywire, telling her she wasn’t alone. Before they could tell her more, a voice came from
behind her, sending her every cell screaming.
“Welcome home, darling.”
Three
Her heart lodged into her throat, fright mingling dizzyingly with incredulity, dismay...and exhilaration.
Raiden.
He was here.
Feet away... Inches away... A breath away now.
Every nerve in her body fired in remembrance, in jubilation at the approach of the essence that had once been as familiar to her as her own. For five blazing months of pure passion and pleasure, before she’d had to sever the bond. She’d been bleeding inwardly ever since.
She had no idea how he was here. But from what she’d learned about him, in her constant search for his news, in her obsessive research of his past, she knew one thing. Raiden could do anything.
As to why he was here, did it matter? It was one more chance to be close to him. A chance that she’d thought she’d never be given again. An unexpected, priceless gift.
That, she knew, was the last thing he wanted to give her. Judging from his tone, dripping in bitter sarcasm and suppressed aggression, he probably wanted to give her five to ten, minimum.
In fact, logically speaking, he should be here to...eliminate her danger. She was the only one who possessed detailed knowledge of the secrets he’d gone to unimaginable lengths to bury. Her existence posed a threat not only to the persona he’d built and the plans he’d worked for since he’d escaped The Organization, but to his very life.
But though he’d assassinated countless people, and she probably deserved to be, in his opinion, she didn’t fear for a second that was why he was here. This lethal man with the staggering body count in his past didn’t scare her at all.
Not that anything did. With the kind of existence she’d had, she’d never valued her life enough to be afraid for it. The only true fear she’d ever felt had been on his behalf.
“Feet aching, my love?”
Nostalgia skewered through her, made her squeeze her eyes, bite down on the moan that almost escaped her lips.
Welcoming her home, calling her “my darling” and “my love”... They were the same phrases he’d greeted her with that last time in his penthouse in New York five years ago. It had been the first time he’d said things like that...out of bed.
It had been then she’d realized he’d decided to take their relationship to the next level. And that she’d soon be forced to put an end to it.
Unable to face putting a time frame on “soon,” that night she’d thrown herself into being with him with all the passion he’d ignited inside her, gulping down every second as if each had been her last ever. But even in her worst nightmares she hadn’t expected they would be that for real, that the very next day it would come to such a jarring and dreadful end.
After it had, she’d had no doubt it would remain over.
Then came tonight. Then now. And the bridge into the past she’d thought had burned to ashes had somehow been rebuilt. Because she seemed to have branded him as he’d done her.
He’d already told her that it had been how he’d recognized her in someone else’s body. Which flabbergasted her. Even if he’d formed an emotional attachment to her in the past, it had been to the persona she’d played. She’d thought that if he remembered her at all since, it would be with rage and repugnance. She’d never thought he’d obsess over her in any other way.
But by reciting the exact words he’d said that last time they’d met as lovers, he was letting her know he had. From the way he’d drawled the memorized words, he was also letting her know such a hold over him made it more imperative to him to exact revenge for every wrong she’d dealt him, with five years’ worth of compound interest.
She would have let him, if it were only she who’d pay the price. But he was in a far more sensitive position than she was. Any impulsive actions would harm him far more than her. And she couldn’t let him do this to himself. Not after what she’d done to protect him. She would protect him again, at any cost, even from himself.
It was time to do so, to end this, and this time, make sure it was over for good.
Feeling the heat of his body radiating at her back, tasting the intoxication of his breath as it filled her lungs, she turned slowly, carefully. Her balance was already compromised, and she didn’t want to end facedown at his feet instead of on the bed as she’d previously planned.
She almost did so anyway when she laid eyes on him.
Earlier tonight, she’d realized he’d done the impossible, had become even more magnificent than he’d been, his assets having appreciated with maturity, and would no doubt continue to do so. He’d become a god for real, not just in name.
But now... It shouldn’t be possible, but he looked even more awe striking than he had an hour ago.
He’d taken off his tuxedo jacket, undid his bow tie and a few shirt buttons, exposing a tantalizing expanse of the burnished flesh beneath. His muscled shoulders and chest seemed wider with just a sheer layer of silk covering them, and in contrast with the now-apparent sparse hardness of his abdomen. And if he looked like this with clothes still on, she didn’t want to dwell on the details of his upgrades with them off.
But it was his face that as usual arrested her. His hair was no longer meticulously groomed, the raven-wing, rain-straight locks slightly mussed. It gave him a wild, raw look that made his heart-stopping cheekbones even more prominent, his slanting caramel eyes even more fiery, his sculpted lips more erotic and his chiseled jaw more rugged.
His whole package was enough to compromise her sanity. Not that she’d ever had much to speak of where he was concerned. And that was on the mental and emotional level. On the physical one, just being around him, just thinking of him, made her melt, throb...ache. Her body had been hammering at her, demanding his since she’d laid eyes on him across the ballroom tonight.
His answering appraisal made her core simmer. Then the velvet depths of his baritone drawl almost made it combust.
“Your surgeon didn’t only make you a totally different woman, but the most beautiful model possible, too.”
She met the eyes that flayed her with contempt with a look of long-perfected equanimity. Even as her insides raged, she injected her voice with the same inexpression.
“Surgeons, in the plural. This result is a collaborative effort, performed over many stages. But it was I who provided them with this ‘model.’ I needed to be beautiful.”
“You were always beautiful.”
Her heart forgot a few beats before it resumed sputtering. Outwardly, she knew he’d see no evidence of the effect his words had on her. “Nowhere like this.”
“So you thought you needed to intensify your beauty, to boost your effectiveness as a siren? I thought you’d know from intensive experience that outward beauty only lures men, but what traps them are the brains and wiles behind the looks.”
“Since I have those, too, I more than ever have the perfect package.” His gorgeous eyes narrowed, his edible lips filled, as if her brazenness aroused him even as it angered him. She pretended to sigh, but really expelled the air that clogged her lungs. “But beauty alone does open doors.”
“Doors that might open into untold trouble.”
She gave him her best self-assured glance. “True. To inexperienced innocents whose beauty is a bane that makes them a target for exploitation. I, on the other hand, am a seasoned professional who uses my assets as precisely as the situation necessitates. I downplay my looks or even negate them when I want to, and play them to maximum advantage when I need to.”
The heat in his eyes rose, even as his expression became arctic. “It must be so freeing, being able to brag about your strategies with someone you’ve already played. Someone who can’t share his insider knowledge with your future victims.”
“No bragging involved. Just facts.” Before he volle
yed a response, she preempted him, turning the focus on him before her heart burst. “Now it’s my turn to ask questions.”
His lips twisted. “Since you must know everything about me, the only question left in your mind must be how I’m here.”
“I do know everything about you,” she conceded. “But that. So how did you manage to beat me here? And how are you inside my apartment without any sign of breaking and entry? Did you ninja scale your way up here to the thirtieth floor?”
“Contrary to movies, we ninjas don’t perform death-defying feats just because we can. We do go for the path of least resistance whenever possible.”
“I don’t remember ever seeing a ninja bribe a concierge.”
“I didn’t do that, either.” Before she made another comment, he raised his hand, his eyes reflecting his mirthless smile. “I won’t tell you how I arrived before you, or how I came in, so save your breath. I’m through sharing secrets with you. And you’re finding out no more on your own, either.”
She held his gaze. Before she melted into a puddle at his feet, she said, “I bet you didn’t sample any of Hiro’s first-class sushi or sip his fine shochu. I didn’t.”
His eyes widened at her sharp detour. Before he could adjust, she turned and crossed to her kitchen.
Once there, she looked back over her shoulder. “Seems this is going to be a long night. Want to eat something?”
* * *
Raiden watched the one woman he’d been truly intimate with sashay away in that stranger’s body.
And his own body roared in unremitting rage...and hunger.
She’d walked away earlier saying, “Forget all about me again.” As if he’d ever forgotten about her at all.
But it had been the sane thing to do, to heed her advice. To go back to the ball and his fiancée, to his plans and life, and forget that she existed. Because she in fact never did. Her current identity was just another fictitious figment that would disappear without a trace soon enough, once she’d gotten whatever she was after here. She’d done it once before when he’d been of no further use to her.