LITMIR.BIZ

      Luke lay, one arm behind his head, the other around Talia’s slender waist. Her long hair swathed his chest and her breath was warm on his shoulder as she slept in his embrace. Sweet God, had there ever been a night in his life like this?

      It was a pointless question. No woman had ever been like this one!

       From the very first I knew it.

      From that first moment of seeing her there, at the bar, with her glorious hair tumbling down her bare back, her spectacular figure sheathed in that clinging dark red dress… And her face… Oh, her breathtaking beauty was so dramatic, so stunning, it had stopped him in his tracks.

      Desire, instant and immediate, had fired in him—the unmistakable primitive response of a man to a woman who seared his consciousness. Whatever it was about her, it was like a homing signal, drawing him right to her.

       Talia.

      A woman he had known only a few short hours, but who had turned his life upside down.

      He felt his arm tighten possessively around her. He had known right from the first instant that he wanted her—that she, of all the women in the world, was the one who would mark for him the start of his new life.

       My old life is done. I have accomplished what I had to do: the task that was set for me the day my father died from sorrow for what had been taken from him and the day my mother died of a broken heart.

      His thoughts darkened, slicing back down the long punishing years to the moment when he’d vowed to avenge his parents, who had been stripped—cheated—of everything they’d held so precious.

      The stress of it had killed his father, and the man who had done that had laughed in Luke’s face when, at barely twenty years old, he’d stormed into his office, raging at him, only for the cursed man to light a fat cigar with his fat fingers and summon his goons to beat up Luke, his victim’s son, and throw him out on the street.

       And now he is destroyed. I’ve taken everything from him just as he took everything from my parents. They can finally rest in peace.

      And he, too, could rest now—rest from the infinite pursuit of more and yet more money, so that he could forge the weapon that would finally bring down his enemy.

      Now his whole life stretched ahead of him.

      He had been wondering what he should do with it, but suddenly his expression changed, softened.

      In the long years of amassing his fortune, closing the net on his enemy, he had had only fleeting affairs with women who had only wanted that. Affairs that had been merely a brief respite from the dark, driven purpose of his life. Affairs that had not lasted.

       I wasn’t free to do anything else.

      But now his long, gruelling task was accomplished, and there was nothing to keep him from finding for himself a woman who could transform his life, who could join him as he journeyed towards the bright, sunlit future that beckoned to him.

      And he had found her! Instinct told him she was the one.

      He drew her close, grazing her cheek with his mouth, feeling her stir in his arms. He felt a stirring in himself, too, of the desire that had burned between them—the desire that they had slaked with mutual urgency when they had left the party and he’d brought her back here to his hotel suite.

      They had dined on food from room service and drunk yet more champagne. They had talked of he knew not what—except he knew that it had not been about themselves. It had been with ease and familiarity, and with a ready laughter that had seemed to spring naturally and spontaneously, as if they had known each for so much longer than a bare few hours.

      And he had found her on the very night that he had finally avenged his parents by accomplishing his enemy’s total destruction. He had wanted this night to be special, so that it would mark the start of his new life—the life he’d never been able to claim for himself until now—and now he knew exactly how he wanted this wonderful new life to be.

      It

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