"I have a stepfather. He raised me, but weare estranged."
"b.u.mmer." Rick c.o.c.ked his head. "Or not?"
"I donat know. All my life heas been such an a.s.shole, but I havenat spoken to him for two years, and I sort of miss him." She blinked in surprise. She didnat know why shead said that. She hadnat even realized she thought such a thing. "I think he might be lonely."
"I know where youare coming from. My dad is an old-world disciplinarian, and I was always the wild child." Rick offered the information easily, like a man who had no secrets to hide. "When I was a teenager, I resented his always telling me to do the right thing, but now Iave done the wrong thing enough to realize that he wanted me to be a good man. When you do the wrong thing often enough, you turn evil."
"Evil?" That took her aback. "Thatas a harsh word."
"Thatas what my father would call it. For him there is no gray, only black and white."
She supposed immigrants had a different view of life.
"In fact, Iam going on from here to visit them."
"A family gathering?"
"They donat know Iam coming. Iam going to surprise them." He smiled, but it wasnat his usual open, easy smile. This one was a little twisted, a little pained.
She probably looked exactly the same when she talked about Jackson Sonnet.
"You should come with me," he said impulsively.
At least, she supposed it was an impulse. "What? Why?"
He sighed. "Because my fatheras going to nag at me. I can hear him now. aAdrik, youare almost thirty-three years old. What? You donat even have a girlfriend? You should be married. You should have babies.a "
Karen started to laugh.
He watched her glumly. "Oh, sure. You think itas funny."
"I think youare grabbing at straws."
"But what a lovely straw you are."
They smiled at each other in perfect accord.
"So, Adrik is your real name?"
"A name from the Old Country."
On impulse, she said, "Would you like to walk me to my cottage?"
"I would like nothing more." He took her hand and pulled her from the dance floor.
"Now?" She hadnat meant now.
He stopped by the doors. "My darling events coordinator, the guests are headed for the midnight buffet. Mrs. Burstrom is giving us the glad-eye. And if I stay here much longer, Iall be good for nothing but a bout of loud snoring."
"What do you think I want you to do in my cottage?"
"Have a drink while we whine about our parents."
"In that case . . ." She took his hand and led him outside.
He made it so easy for her. There was no pressure. She knew she was doing the right thing, using him to flush Warlord out of her mind.
As soon as they stepped off the patio he stopped her and kissed her cheek, then slid his lips along her jawline and down her throat.
People saw them. Women saw them. And the gusting sighs almost blew Karen off her feet.
Yet the kiss was so sweet, so gentle, Karen could do no more than chuckle and run her fingers through the pelt of his dark hair. "Do you know you just made me the envy of every woman here?"
He wrapped his arm around her waist and led her down the path toward her cottage. "No, I just made myself the envy of every man here."
In some distant portion of her mind, she realized he was saying exactly the right thing.
But so few men bothered. She had to give him points for that. And points for finding out where her cottage was . . . That made her steps falter.
"How do you know where to go?"
He looked indignant. "Do you think after that encounter with the security guard last night, and seeing those lights on the canyon rim, that I would let you walk to your cottage without watching to make sure you got home safely?"
He was a sweetie. Such a sweetie. Mr. Burstrom had given her the thumbs-up as they left the ballroom, and Mrs. Burstrom had looked positively mushy.
Karen stopped and lightly kissed his lips.
He kissed her forehead and leaned his cheek against the top of her head.
She snuggled close. They walked in tandem along the path.
Taking her key, he unlocked the door.
The whole situation was so normal, like an everyday date with everyday people who might or might not go to bed together, and she would not think of Warlord or slave bracelets or men who were condemned by an ancient deal with the devil. . . .
She opened the door. The lamp shead left on gleamed in a stream of light. A whisper of a breeze filled the air with the fragrance of mesquite, a gift from the window shead left slightly open. She gestured him inside. "Would you like a drink?"
"No. What I would like . . . is you."
Since the day shead walked out on Warlord without a backward glance, she hadnat wanted a man. But she wanted this man. She didnat understand what combination of body and spirit, sinew and soul made him attractive to her, but she wasnat afraid. There was nothing about this man that spoke of possessiveness, of the mad need to hold her captive. He seemed like the kind of guy who would dance a dance, take his pleasure, and be on his way.
And that was just what she wanted.
She pushed the door closed behind him.
This was not a man of earth and air, fire and magic, but a completely normal guy who danced with women in the hopes of getting in their pants. And while shead never been much for quick and easy couplings in collegea"the little experimentation in which shead indulged had convinced her that casual s.e.x was just, well, casual, and her time was better spent reading or working out or even studyinga" right now, casual s.e.x was just what the doctor ordered.
Rick leaned against the wall and pulled her close. He had a lovely erection beneath those trousers, and she lifted her mouth to his, thinking he would get right down to business.
Instead he kissed her eyelids and shut her eyes, then slipped his tongue around her ear until she shivered with delight. He repeated the caress to her cheek and jaw, and followed his finger with the warm touch of his lips.
With each touch her body stirred until she wanted to shout with triumph.
Warlord hadnat marked her as his own. She could feel pleasure without thinking of him. This was what she needed to wipe him from her minda"the pa.s.sionate embrace of a normal man.
And then Rick kissed her, deeply, warmly, while the world swirled around her and the earth moved beneath her feet.
When he lifted his lips she stared into his green-and-gold, deceitful eyes, raised her hand, and slapped him as hard as she could across the face. "Warlord. You complete and utter b.a.s.t.a.r.d."
Chapter Nineteen.
It was him. It was Warlord. She knew him as soon as she tasted him. "How dare you? How dare you play this game with me?"
Warlord watched her, his deceptively pale eyes never leaving her face.
"Get out." She yanked herself out of his arms. "Just get out, and never come back." She reached down to page her chief of security.
His reflexes had not slowed. He plucked the pager from her hands and tossed it at the chair, placing it right in the cushion, where it bounced and came to rest.
Blind with rage and disappointment, she wound up to hit him againa"and he picked her up and swung her around. He pressed her back to the wall and slid his hands beneath her legs, wrapping them around him as confidently as head moved her across the dance floor. As confidently as head lulled her suspicions and made her think he was a trustworthy, una.s.suming piece of fluff of a man, when in fact he was the most intense, savage creature who ever donned a business suit.
She shoved at him. "Put me down. This isnat the Himalayas, and Iam not some wimp of a woman whoas too afraid to get up and go."
"You do yourself too little justice." He no longer bothered to disguise his tone. The way he spoke, the purr in his voice, that was all Warlord. "You were never a wimp, Karen. You were a creature of fire and pa.s.sion, and you showed me the light when I was far gone into the dark."
"What a pile of c.r.a.p." She was so angry her heart pounded in her throat. Her cheeks burned. She squeezed the cords of his shoulders between her fingertips. "You came here to make a fool of me."
"I came here to save you."
"From what? Myself? From my foolish desire to be a normal woman who lives in the US, wears dresses and heels, and has a girl job?"
With acid in his tone, he said, "You seem to have mistaken me for your father. But you called him your stepfather, didnat you?"
"What do you know about my stepfather?" Her voice shook with fury.
"Only what I could glean from hours of Internet research." He sounded both sarcastic and knowledgeable. "Add to the discovery that after you got back from Nepal, you went home for an hour, left, and never returned, and that was enough."
She hated that head invaded her private life, nosed around, a.s.sembled enough information to make good guesses on her relationship with Jackson Sonnet. "Now I realize I should have done research on your family, seen if I could figure out what makes you tick."
"My family keeps a low profile." He slid his fingers along the edge of her neckline to the dip in her cleavage.
She took advantage of his distraction and slammed her forehead toward his nose.
He dodged to the side. "Why are you fighting me? This is what you want."
"How the h.e.l.l do you figure that?"
"Did you think you could wear my bracelets and not face the repercussions?"
"Your bracelets!" She lifted her wrists so they were before his eyes. "Have you looked at these babies? Have you seen what I did to them?"
"You made them into a decoration for your wrists, a decoration that ensured you could never forget the man who gave them to you."
His presumption made her jaw drop. She remembered how she had beaten on the gold, slamming it with the hammer over and over until her arm ached and the malleable metal was damaged, changed from the look of the hated slave bracelets to mere decorations. "Youare insane."
"No. I just know you better than you know yourself. I know you because you took me inside yourself, and I touched the deepest part of you. No matter how much you hate the idea, youave spent the last two years waiting for me to come back to you."
"Iave been waiting in fear."
"No, honey." He put his forehead to hers. "Youave been waiting in antic.i.p.ation."
She stared into his eyes, his light green eyes shot with gold. Her heart hammered in her chest, and she could barely breathe. From fury. Absolutely not from antic.i.p.ation. "If I had recognized you . . . How did you do it? Change your eye color? Before, did you wear black contacts?"
He gave a crack of laughter. "You donat believe that."
She didnat.
"My eyes were black because I had fallen so deeply into the heart of evil that my soul was black."
"Sure," she mocked him. "And the eyes are the windows to the soul." But a chill of goose b.u.mps crawled up her spine. The sacrificed child . . . the icon . . . the tale head once told about the family bound by the devilas pact . . . and he held her in his arms.
"Yes. They are. Look at your eyes. Pure and deep, like a glacial pool."
"Cut . . . it . . . out. Iam not buying a word."
"Good, because I donat want to talk about that now."
"Thatas all I want to talk about with you."
"That leaves us only one thing we both want to do."
She felt his body tighten, and she knew. "No, we donat!"
But she was too late.
He kissed her. She wanted to bite him, but first . . . she wanted to taste him. The flavor was piercingly sweet and poignant beyond belief. Whether she wished it or not, he tasted of memories, of pa.s.sion . . . of pleasure.
That pleasure sent her hurtling into s.p.a.ce, into him. . . .
The wind from the open window beside the bed lifted a strand of her hair and wrapped it around his chin like an embrace.
She heard the b.u.mp of his shoes as he kicked them away.