The Man to Be Reckoned With (10 page)

She laughed then, her hands tucked tight around her, her entire body trembling. “Home? I have no home, Nathan. That estate belongs to you. I have no one and nothing.”

“Riya, it doesn't have to be this way. I understand that you're angry. I understand how it feels when someone who should take care of you betrays you...when someone you—”

“Do you? She lied to me. About my father. She practically stole me from him.”

If she had cried, Nathan wouldn't have been so scared for her. But she didn't. It was as though her shock was much too deep for mere tears. “Everything I have believed about myself, everything is a lie. I thought he abandoned me. I thought he didn't love me. I will never forgive her for this. She stole my childhood and she made me into this frozen coward who hid from everything in life. No one has ever cared about my happiness.

“Not her and definitely not my dad. If he had, knowing how emotionally weak she is, would he have threatened her that he would take me from her?”

What the hell had he started?

He had never meant to hurt her. He had never meant to make her feel alone, had never meant to unravel her like this. He understood the weight of it, he knew better than anyone how painful, how awful it felt.

“Shh, Riya. Enough,” he said in a stern voice. “Look at me, butterfly.”

When she raised her gaze to him, the depth of feeling that filled him scared the life out of him. Her mouth trembled and he jerked his hand back, the urge to touch that soft cushion overwhelming him. “This will pass, Riya. Believe me, let me drive you back to the estate and—”

“Please don't send me away, Nathan. Tomorrow, I'll be back to myself again. Tomorrow, I'll be strong again. Tomorrow, I might even forgive her. Tonight, I want to be selfish. Tonight, I want it to be just about me.”

What could he say to that?

His chest was tight with guilt. All she had tried was to make his father smile. And he...he had unleashed nothing but hurt on her.

Because he had coveted something he could never have.

CHAPTER NINE

T
IGHTENING
HER
ARMS
around his neck, Riya nudged closer to Nathan, the warmth of his body a cocoon she didn't want to leave. As though sensing her reluctance, he didn't put her down. Not when he lingered outside the sitting area, not when he walked through it into the bedroom.

Finally he sank down in the armchair and settled her in his lap.

How had she never learned how good it felt to be held like this, to be cherished as if she was precious? How many more things had she missed tucked away in her own world?

She had erected a fence around her heart, around herself, and she had missed out on so many things. While other girls had been going on first dates and experiencing first kisses, she had been studying for a place at the university, giving Robert a hand when she could, managing her mother's moods.

She had bound herself so tight that a little truth from the past had splintered through her. Nothing had really changed. And yet everything had.

It felt as if someone had stuck a pin in her side to jolt her awake from a slumbering state. She sucked in a breath and opened her eyes. His gaze clashed with hers, his long fingers splayed out over her bare arm.

An infinitesimal tension spun into life around them. His other hand tipped her chin up. “Why this dress? Why drinking? Why this route to show your anger, your hurt?”

And just like that, he shot straight to the heart of the matter. “I don't remember when I had decided that no man would ever hurt me like my father's abandonment did, when I decided I would live my life in this frozen state. I wanted to prove to myself that she didn't ruin me forever with her lies.”

“And?”

She tucked her head into his shoulder and sighed. “It's not that simple, is it? A lifetime of sticking to the safe side, suppressing any small urge that could be deemed unsafe, that could risk pain, it's a hard habit to shake.” She gave a laugh, tinged with sadness. “I was dancing and I had a little to drink, but I realized it wasn't that simple to change myself inside. Like flipping on a switch. I can't suddenly do something I've trained myself not to do.”

“No, it's not simple.” There was a roughness to his voice, an edge, a desperate sense of being tightly leashed. As if he was forcing himself to laugh instead of...something else.

Her hand clasped in his. Long fingers with blunt nails and hers, slender and pink tipped, coiled around his.

“It takes years to defeat that kind of conditioning, years to conquer that fear. Doesn't take much to trigger it back either.” He sounded strained, almost resigned. He squeezed her arm and Riya caught the sigh that rose to her lips.

How did he understand her so well?

“How about you start with small steps, butterfly?”

She smiled and nodded, the scent of his cologne drifting over her. And the huge chasm that she couldn't cross toward living her life suddenly didn't feel so daunting.

In the shifting confusion of her own emotions and thoughts, he was constant, her awareness of him sharp and unwavering.

Nathan, who had brought so much upheaval into her life, felt like an anchor. All he lived for was the thrill, the fun, the moment. Who better to show her what she'd been missing? Who better to show her what it meant to be daring, to be wild, to grab life by the horns and shake it? Who better to start on her path to living than a man who would never affect her in any other way?

With Nathan, there would be no expectations, no disappointments. When it was time to leave, he would, and this fact had nothing to do with her. Therein lay her safety net.

A sharp hunger bursting inside her, Riya slid her fingers toward the nape of his neck. Pressed her mouth to the pulse flickering on his throat. “Is a kiss a small enough step, Nate?”

Instantly he stiffened beneath her. His fingers landed on her jaw, pushed her face away from his neck in a gentle but firm grip. Desire was a relentless peal in her, as if her pulse had moved just from some points to all over her body.

Fear and safety were taboo. Daring and living were her words of the moment.

She clasped his wrist with her hand and laid kisses against the inside of it. His palm was rough and warm, and as she pressed her lips again to the center of it, she felt the rightness of it.

“Tonight's going to be your lucky night,” she said, her throat working to get the words out. She had to brazen it out, didn't want him to know how huge this was for her.

A sharp grip at the nape of her neck caused her to look at him. “My lucky night?” he said.

He looked as if his face were carved from pure stone, his blue eyes molten with desire. There was no frost, no ice tonight.

Nathan was all fire and passion, and she wanted that fire; she wanted to lose herself in him. “Don't make promises you might not be able to keep, butterfly.”

Straightening in his lap, she pushed into his touch, determined to have this. “It's okay if you're not up to it, Nate. No one wants to be a pity f—”

His fingers tightened their grip in her hair. His breath landed on her mouth, until there was nothing to do but breathe the same air as him. “You're doing this for the wrong reasons, Riya.”

Feeling gloriously alive, she bent and kissed a spot just beside his mouth. The bristle on his jaw rubbed against her mouth. Heat spread everywhere, incinerating a need she had never known. So she did it again. And again. Like a cat rubbing herself against her favorite surface. Until her lips, her cheeks, her chin stung in the most delicious way, scraping against the roughness of his jaw. Until he made a feral sound that in turn scraped against her very senses.

And her desire went from a risk, a dare, to need for him. Only for Nathan.

Finally her mouth landed at the corner of his luscious mouth. And she spoke the words against his lips, felt a shudder vibrate in his lean frame. Reveled that she could do this to him.

He was like a fortress of leashed desire around her.

“I'm doing this for the only reason that it should be done for.”

“And that is?” he whispered back against her mouth, and Riya ached. Ached to feel that mouth everywhere, ached to lose herself.

“That it feels so good, Nate.” She moved, to get closer to him, and felt the hard evidence of his arousal against her thigh. “From the minute you stepped into my life, this...it's like a fever.” She pulled his hand and pressed it to her chest. “And in all the lies and confusion, this is the one thing that's unwavering. Make love to me, Nate. I want to do all the things that I told myself I didn't feel.”

She didn't wait for him to deny her. She just jumped off the ledge, hoping he would catch her. Kissed him with everything she had in her.

* * *

When her lush mouth touched his, it was all Nathan could do to pull in a breath. There was no hesitation, no doubt in the way she pressed little kisses over the edge of his lips, over his chin, over his lips, her breath coming in little pants all around him, her scent filling his nose, her fingers scraping against his scalp, holding him in place for her pleasure.

No one had ever quite so thoroughly seduced him. No one had even come close.

She was an explosion. She was a revelation. And under her honest, raw hunger he came undone. No amount of honor could compete with the liquid longing coursing through him, could puncture the desire to return her kiss, to give her what she wanted. And to allow himself what he had been craving.

When she stroked his lower lip with her tongue, tentative but still powerfully maddening, he was done being a passive participant.

Clasping her jaw, he sucked her lower lip with his teeth and she shuddered. Gasped into his mouth.

And they were sucking, nipping, their teeth scraping, their tongues licking with a searing hunger that brought the world down to only them. Pasts and futures were forgotten, only the present mattered.

Panting, he moved away from the temptation of her mouth. Sank his hands into her hair and tugged at the lustrous locks until she was looking at him.

Golden skin flushed, pink mouth swollen, beautiful brown eyes dazed with desire and daring, she looked at him without blinking, without hiding. Pushed into his touch. She was inexperienced; her kisses told him as much. But the sensuality of the woman, the way she responded, so hot and fiery. This was a battle he'd already lost.

But this was a defeat he welcomed.

When she thought of him, he wanted her to do so with a smile and a sigh of pleasure.

He leaned forward and dug his teeth into her lower lip. A gasp fell from her mouth and he blew softly over the trembling lip. “This means nothing to me except that I want you with a madness that knows no reason.” He could leave no doubt in her mind. And if she wanted to stop, he was going to head straight for a cold shower. But he couldn't take a chance on risking her emotions. “I'll leave when it's time,
butterfly
. And if you want to stop this, do it now. We'll forget about it. You can take the bed and I'll take the couch.”

Her gaze flickered to him, a shadow in it. And then she smiled. Her gorgeous, perfect, dazzling smile. “Falling in love, risking my emotions, it's never going to be easy for me. And with you...I could never fall for you. We're really the worst kind of person for each other, aren't we? But that's what makes this easy, that makes one night with you everything I want it to be.”

Her honesty stung him, but he slashed the feeling away.

One night to satisfy this craving, desperate need for each other. That was all they could afford of each other.

Pulling her arm to his mouth, he kissed her wrist, licked the vein flickering there. Kissed a path upward, all the glorious skin warm to his touch.

Her soft tremble, her gasp as he reached the crook of her neck swept him away hard. “Shall I shock you and tell you all the different ways I've imagined having you?”

He licked the pulse there, sucked on her skin. She shivered, sank her hands into his hair. Shuddered, writhed, but he didn't let go. He continued until she was panting, moving restlessly in his arms, rubbing her breasts against his chest. He was rock hard, her volatile response tightening his own need, fraying his control.

He fisted his hands, fighting the urge to push her dress up, to drag her on top of him and thrust up into her wet heat.

Sweat beaded on his brow. And that couldn't be borne. He would enjoy this; he would drown himself in the scent of her, but his control couldn't falter.

It was all about release, all about his body. As long as he kept it to that, as long as he didn't think about what this might have meant to her, to him in a different world, beyond tonight, it was good.

Laughing, she tugged her hair away from her shoulder and looked down at herself. A blush spread upward from her neck as she ran a pink-tipped finger over the blemish. A soft pant fell from her mouth, and it was the most erotic sound he'd ever heard.

There was innocence in it and there was a raw hunger in it. For more. He had been right. She had repressed so many things, and that flicker of undisguised hunger now, of playful curiosity, turned him inside out.

Her gaze moved to his mouth and stayed there. “It stings.”

Picking her up, he mumbled his apology into her mouth.

She kissed him with a searing hunger that rocked through him. Scraped her teeth against his mouth. Stroked it with her tongue when he groaned.

“Only in the best way,” she whispered when he let her breathe. “I want more.”

Laying her down on the huge bed, Nathan shucked his jacket and loosened his tie.

Raising an eyebrow, he let his gaze travel all over her. “Unzip, Riya.”

Coming to a kneeling position, she reached for the zipper on her dress. Her fingers trembled around it. But she slowly tugged it down.

His mouth dried as the dress came loose around her chest. He was dying to see those lush breasts, those long legs, every inch of her. Just as the fabric flapped down, she held it to herself, her cheeks flushing. “Can we turn off the light, Nathan?”

“Nope,” he said so loudly that she smiled. “Those prim dress shirts and trousers have been driving me mad.” When she still hesitated, he stilled his hand on his shirt. “You can't see me either, then.”

Something flickered in her gaze. Lifting her chin, she straightened to her knees and pulled her dress down. Over her chest, over her midriff. Leaned back onto her elbows and kicked it from around her feet.

Nathan felt his heart pump harder and harder, and for once, something else took precedence over the malfunctioning organ. His breath balled in his throat.

Her slender shoulders bare, her lush, rounded breasts thrust upward, the shadow of her brown nipples visible through her strapless bra, the concave dip and rise of her stomach, the flare of her hips, the V between her thighs hinting at dark curls...

If his heart stopped right then, Nathan would have had no fear, no regrets.

And the lack of fear, the lack of any other emotion except his feral hunger to possess the woman in front of him, was a sensation he reveled in.

Because it made him feel alive as nothing else could.

* * *

Riya had never understood what the fuss was about sex, how it drove people to the most unwise decisions.

Until now.

She'd never understood how completely it unraveled you, this desire, how completely it exposed every part of a person, how it connected one so deeply with another.

They hadn't even undressed completely, but the look in Nathan's eyes—so demanding and all-consuming, the possessive challenge that lingered there—would have sent her running to the hills.

He would demand complete surrender, of her body, her mind, even her very soul. And beneath the flicker of fear, there was also a freedom in giving herself over.

The soft fabric of her bra chafed against her nipples and her thong, which had been a necessary evil for this dress, suddenly felt intrusive, making her sharply aware of the ache between her legs, the incessant peal of need there every time his gaze traveled over her.