LITMIR.BIZ

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suppressed under layers of self-delusion so they wouldn’t destroy whatever remained of her stability, what everything—and everyone—in her life depended on.

      Now that she’d admitted that, it was easier to admit why she’d succumb to his coercion.

      The first reason was that she would have, even without his threat. If he’d turned a consummate fiend like Burton into mincemeat so effortlessly when he’d been a younger and less powerful man, she didn’t want to know what he was capable of now. She was nowhere in his league. No one was.

      The second was harder to face. But what she’d belatedly learned about his truth and that of what they’d shared and what he’d done to her had left a gaping hole inside her.

      She wanted that hole filled. She wanted closure.

      Holding his hypnotic gaze, she finally nodded.

      He just turned and walked away. Before he lowered himself into the gleaming black beast that looked as sleek, powerful and ruthless as he did, he tossed her an imperious glance over his acres-wide shoulders.

      “Chivvy along.”

      At his command to hurry up in his native British English, she expelled the breath she’d been holding.

       Chivvy along, indeed.

      Might as well get this over with as quickly as possible.

      In minutes she was following him as ordered as he headed to Manhattan, emotions seething inside her. Fury, frustration, fear—and something else.

      That “something else” felt like...excitement.

      How sick would that be? To be excited by the man who’d decimated her heart and almost her world, who’d just threatened to complete the job and had her following him like a puppy?

      But...maybe not so sick. Excitement could encompass trepidation, anxiety, uncertainty. And everything with Richard had always contained maximum doses of all that. It was why he’d been the only one who’d made her feel...alive. She’d been in suspended animation before she’d met him and since he’d walked away.

      For better, or in his case, for worse, it seemed he’d remain the only one who could reanimate her.

      * * *

      “Get it over with. Catch up.”

      Isabella threw her purse on the black-and-bronze Roberto Cavalli leather couch and looked at Richard across his gigantic, forty-foot-ceilinged, marble-floored reception area.

      He only continued preparing their drinks at the bar, his lupine expression deepening.

      So. He’d talk when he wished. And he hadn’t wished. Yet.

      Got it.

      Good thing she’d called home during the forty-minute drive to say she’d be very late.

      Pretending to shrug away his disregard, she looked around. And was stunned all over again.

      The Fifth Avenue penthouse overlooking the now shrouded in darkness Central Park and Manhattan’s glittering Upper East Side drove home to her how staggeringly wealthy he was now. The opulent, technologically futuristic duplex on the sixty-seventh and sixty-eighth floors had to have cost tens of millions.

      Among the jaw-dropping features of the fully automatic smart-home was its own elevator, its remote-, voice-and retinal-recognition doors and just about everything else.

      It even housed a thirty-by-fifty-foot pool.

      As they’d passed the sparkling expanse, he’d told her something she hadn’t known about him. That he hated the sun and preferred indoor sports. She’d already worked out that he hated people, too. A pool in his living room at the top of the world away from the nuisance of mere mortals was a no-brainer to someone with his kind of money.

      He’d been saying he’d expand the pool to get a decent exercise without having to flip over and over when she’d stopped listening. The image of him shooting through the liquid turquoise like a human torpedo, then rising from the water like an aquatic deity with rivulets weeping down his masterpiece body had tampered with her mental faculties.

      Snatching her thoughts away before they slid back into that abyss, she examined the L-shaped terrace of at least five-thousand square feet. The city views must be breathtaking from there. They were from every corner in this marvel of a home.

      Though home sounded so wrong. Anywhere he was could never be a home. This place felt like an ultramodern demon’s den.

      Avoiding looking at him, she noted the designer furniture and architectural touches that punctuated each zone, couldn’t guess at many of the functional features. But it was spectacular how the mezzanine level took advantage of the massive ceiling heights and ingeniously provided extensive library shelves. He’d probably read every book. And archived its contents in that labyrinthine mind of his.

      But what made the mezzanine truly unique was its glass floors and balustrade, with the staircase continuing the transparent theme. Looking down wouldn’t be for the fainthearted.

      But Richard didn’t have to worry about that, since he was heartless. A fact this astounding but soulless place clearly underlined.

      That he had other residences on the West Coast and in England, as he’d offhandedly informed her as they’d entered this place, no doubt on the same level of luxury and technology, was even more mind-boggling. Burton had been a billionaire and it had been hard to grasp the power such wealth brought. But those had been a fraction of Richard’s, who was currently counted among the top one hundred richest men on the planet. The security business was booming, and his empire reigned over that domain.

      But money, in his case, was the result of the immense influence of his personality and expertise, not the other way around. And then there were his connections. Black Castle Enterprises, which he’d built from the ground up with six other partners, had a major hand in everything that made the world go round and was one of the most influential businesses in history.

      “I just learned of your presence in the country today.”

      His comment dragged her out of her musings, his deepened voice making the cultured precision of his British accent even more shiver worthy. She’d always thought that killer brogue of his the most evocative music. She used to ask him to speak just so she could revel in listening to him enunciate. It had always aroused the hell out of her, too.

      But everything about him always had. During the four months of their affair she’d been in a perpetual fugue of arousal.

      She watched him approach like a leisurely tiger stalking his kill, every muscle and sinew flexing and pulling at his fitted black shirt and pants, his stormy sky-hued eyes striking her with a million volts of charisma. The familiar ache she hadn’t felt since she’d last seen him, that had been trembling under the suppression of shock, hostility and anxiety since he’d appeared before her, stirred in her deepest recesses.

      Time had been criminally indulgent with him, enhancing his every asset—widening his shoulders, hardening his waist and hips, bulking up his torso and thighs. Age had taken a sharper chisel to his face, hewing it to dizzying planes and angles, turning his skin a darker copper, intensifying the luminescence of his eyes. His luxurious raven hair had been brushed with silver at the temples, adding the last touch of allure. He was now the full potential of premium manhood realized.

      As he reached for the cocktail glass, his fingertips grazed hers, zapping her with a bolt of exquisite electricity.

      Great. His deceit and her ignorance of his true nature and intentions had had nothing to do with his effect on her as she’d long told herself. He’d almost cost her her life, and she knew what he truly was and how she’d been a chess piece he’d played and disposed of...yet it made no difference to her body. It didn’t deal in logic, cared nothing about dignity and hadn’t learned a thing from the harsh lessons of experience. It only saw and sensed the man who’d once possessed and pleasured it almost beyond endurance.

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