Claiming His Secret Son

A hard thrust and squeeze of her buttocks accompanied his brusque order, melting her further. But it was the harshness on his face that jogged her heart out of its sluggish surrender.

The world spun with too many emotions, after years of stasis. Years when she’d felt him this way only in dreams that had always turned into nightmares. In those visions, he’d always aroused her to desperation before pushing her away and taking off his mask. The merciless face he’d exposed before walking over her sobbing body had always woken her in tears then plunged her into deeper despondence.

Dreading those nightmares had robbed her of the ability to rest. It was the memory of them now that made her struggle to stop her plummet into the abyss of addiction all over again.

“What if I don’t say it?” Her voice shook.

At her challenge, his gaze emptied of intensity. He released her trembling flesh and in one of those impossible moves, he separated their bodies and was on his feet.

To her shame, she’d thought his response to her challenge would be to take his onslaught to the next level. She still expected he’d pick her up and carry her off to bed.

He only sat on the coffee table, clearly deciding to end their encounter. The letdown deepened her paralysis.

His brooding gaze made her acutely aware of how pathetic she looked prostrated as she was, sending chagrin surging through her numb limbs. Feeling she’d turned to jelly, she pulled herself up and her dress down.

Once she’d tidied the dishevelment he’d caused, he drawled, “Now that there’s no hint of physical coercion...say it.”

Her heart skidded at his deceptively calm command. “You mean there’s no coercion because you’re not on top of me anymore? I’m here purely by coercion.”

“I submit, this is false. I only gave you an excuse to have your cake and eat it, too, a justification you can placate your dignity with. But it’s easy to invalidate your self-exonerating assertion. I’ll escort you to the door, activate it for you and you can walk right out.”

“And then you’ll call my friends.”

“There are things you could do that would make me do that. None of them include choosing to walk out now.” He rose to his feet. “Shall we?”

She scrambled to her feet only when she found him striding away for real and had to almost run in his wake.

“That’s it? You go to all this trouble to get me here, interrogate me for a bit, then abruptly shift to what seems to be your real objective, and when I refuse to ‘say it’ you show me the door?”

“I have to. It won’t open unless I tell it to.”

His derision, and the fact that he’d shrugged off what had happened when it had turned her inside out had her fury sizzling.

Catching up with his endless strides beside the pool, she snatched at his arm. Her fingers only slipped off his rock-hard muscles. It was he who stopped of his own accord, daring to look as if he had no idea what was eating her, but was resigned to putting up with an inexplicably hysterical female.

“Why do you want me to say it?” she seethed. “Is your ego that distorted? You want me to admit how much I want you when you never wanted me in the first place?”

His winged eyebrow arched more. “I didn’t?”

“If we’re both certain of one thing, it’s that.”

“And you’ve come to that conclusion, how?”

“Like I did all the rest. Seduction is no doubt your weapon of choice with women, and pretending to desire me was only to turn me into your willing thrall. The info I had was my only real use to you.”

He inclined his head as if examining a creature he’d never known existed. “You think I spent four months in bed with you and didn’t desire you?”

“You’re a man, and an overendowed one. I bet you could...perform with any reasonably attractive female, especially one in heat.”

“That you were.” His reminiscent look made her want to smack him across that smug mouth. “I never thought a woman could always be that hot and ready for me.” Before she lashed out, he sighed. “I would have seduced you even if you’d been a slime-oozing monstrosity. Stomaching a mark was never a prerequisite in my search-and-seduce missions. But even based on my indiscriminate libido, as you presume, I would have still suffered the minimum of physical contact to keep you on the hook. I wouldn’t have gone to lengths you can’t imagine to create a rendezvous almost daily, and then to have sex with you as many times as could be squeezed into each encounter. Even with my ‘endowments’ I couldn’t have performed that repeatedly or that...vigorously if I wasn’t even hotter and readier for you than you were for me. And I was. None of that was an act.”

Her heart stuttered as she met the gaze that suddenly felt as if it held no barriers. As if he was telling the truth, probably for the first time.

He’d really wanted her?

But... “If you wanted me as much as you claim, and still used and discarded me like any other woman you didn’t want, that makes you an even colder bastard.”

His gaze grew inscrutable again. “I didn’t discard you. You chose Burton.”

“Is that what you call what I did? I had no choice.”

“You always have a choice.”

“Spare me the human-development slogans.”

“A choice doesn’t have to be an easy one, but it remains one. Every choice has pros and cons. Once you make one, you put up with its consequences. You don’t blame others for those.”

“I categorically disagree. I certainly blame others, namely Burton and you, for making it impossible for me to have a choice. Leaving him was out of the question.”

“You did end up leaving him.”

“I didn’t leave, I ran for my life.”

“You could have done so with me.”

“Could I? And where would I have been if you failed to destroy him, then had enough of me, as I’m sure you would have sooner or later, and discarded me then, after I made a mortal enemy of him?”

His glance was haughtiness itself. “There was no possibility I wouldn’t destroy him.” His eyes narrowed with...reproof? “And I promised you protection.”

“You dare make it my fault I ended up in mortal danger when you executed your plan? When I couldn’t have known your promise would amount to anything, when you didn’t tell me anything of your real abilities, let alone purpose?”

“You dare ask why I didn’t when you were his accomplice?”

A bitter scoff escaped her. “You promoted me from passive accessory to active accomplice in under an hour? Wonder what you’d make me by the end of this conversation.”

“Whatever you call what you did, my desire for you didn’t blind me to the probability you’d run to him if I confided in you. It would have been an opportunity to entrench yourself further in his favor, adding indebtedness to his already pathological infatuation with you. And I was right.”

She closed the mouth that had dropped open at his preposterous interpretations. “Yeah? How so?”

“When a choice was to be made, not knowing my real ‘abilities,’ you chose the man you thought more powerful. This indicates what you would have done had you thought I was a threat to your billion-dollar meal ticket.” He shrugged his massive shoulders. “Not that I blame you. You thought you made the right choice based on available information. That you were grossly misinformed and therefore made a catastrophic mistake doesn’t make you a victim.”

Protests boiled in her blood. But there was no point in voicing any. She had no proof, as he’d said.

Even if she did, to whom would she submit it? To him? The mastermind of her misery?

Her shoulders slumped as the surge of aggression he’d provoked drained. “You have everything worked out, don’t you?”

“Very much so.”