She remembered the friends who’d held her together all these years, before and after Raiden. They were now safe in their new lives, which made her aching lips spread in a smile of relief and thankfulness. “I got them out, built them new identities, too. I told you I put your money to the best use.”
His gorgeous eyes poured what looked like pride over her, making her heart flutter like a hummingbird.
Then the frown of murderous wrath was back, even blacker. “Are the faint scars on your abdomen Medvedev’s stabs?”
The noose of agonizing memories choked her again as she nodded, averting her gaze so she could tell the half-truth. “They were aesthetically revised during my other surgeries.”
“Tell me he died in horrific pain.”
At his vicious growl, she attempted a shrug. “Probably. I was too busy with my own pain and peril to notice his.”
His fingers sank into her shoulders again. “Why didn’t you call me? For God’s sake, Scarlett, did you think I wouldn’t save you?”
His rage at the long-dead Medvedev was palpable. But it was his frustration with her, for not seeking his protection at first, then his help later that he seemed unable to handle. For a man like him, one who took charge and resolved problems, feeling helpless must be the worst thing that could happen to him. He must feel the same now, being unable to change the past.
“I told you what I thought,” she murmured. “Contacting you again under any circumstances wasn’t even an option.”
“Even if you thought you were dying?”
“Especially then. I left to protect you. I would never have considered dragging you to a crime scene, risking your reputation and putting you under the law’s scrutiny.”
Her rationalizations seemed about to cause him an apoplectic fit. He seemed to vibrate as he struggled with bringing the tirades storming inside him under control.
Then he attacked on a different front, bombarding her with questions. “What were your injuries exactly? How long did it take you to heal? Do you suffer from any lasting damage or ongoing pain?”
I suffer both, she wanted to whimper.
But this was the one thing she wouldn’t tell him. This was her loss and she couldn’t let him share it.
But he would ask and push until he left her no place to hide any secrets. And she had to keep this one.
To shut him up, divert him, and because she couldn’t bear wasting one more moment with him, she clung to him, her hands digging into his luxurious hair, tugging him closer. “No more questions, Raiden. I want you right this second.”
He bared his teeth on a silent growl, his body lurching, tensing as if at the shock of a lash.
Peeling her hands off him with his own trembling ones, he held out a warning finger. “Don’t, Scarlett. I’m not in control of myself. I was never in this condition.”
Disregarding his warning, she lunged at him, tore his shirt out of his pants, attacked his zipper. “I want you out of control. I want you savage and rough and unable to stop. Take me hard and fast and now, Raiden. I can’t wait. I can’t.”
His harsh intakes of breath confessed his pleasure at her frenzy, but he ended it, capturing her feverish hands. When she writhed against him, raining bites and kisses anywhere she could reach, the last of his restraint crumbled, and she finally made him do what she wanted him to. He hauled her up in his arms and hurtled with her to his bed.
Once there, he flung her down onto her stomach, then launched himself over her, covering her with his great body. It was as if he was shielding her, hiding her, and poignancy welled out of her depths on a keen. Rumbling incessantly, he sounded like a beast, one protecting his mate, maddened and heartbroken he hadn’t been able to prevent her injury before he got to her.
Aching at his protectiveness, intoxicated by his possessiveness, she raised her head and met his wild eyes in the mirrored headboard. The sight of their replicas in the coolness of glass—how he dominated her, how she looked taken whole by him—ignited her down to her last nerve ending. And that was before his words scorched her.
“Five years, Scarlett, five interminable years, struggling with losing you. Now it’s even worse, knowing you struggled, too, suffered more.” Crying out at the desolation in his voice, she arched back into him, needing to absorb it. “But I have you back now, and you just gave me back every memory I thought I couldn’t keep. It was all real. This is real. This.”
He pressed against her harder, as if he couldn’t bear the physical boundaries separating them, his hardness digging into her yielding body. She went limp under him, showing him she wanted him to assimilate her, wanted to dissolve in him.
His eyes kept hers captive, and his hot breath scorched her face, filled her lungs. “I went insane every night, needing you like this and knowing I’d never have you again. Hunger built inside me without even hope for relief.”
The first time he’d confessed this, her mind had swerved around his words, shying away from registering them. It was too huge to contemplate that he hadn’t had any intimacies since her. This time there was no escaping his meaning. And it was still almost incomprehensible.
Tentatively, she met his gaze in the mirror. “Do you really mean you didn’t...didn’t...all this time?”
“Yes, I damn well really mean it.” He ground harder into her, liquefying her even more. “Since I was a child I achieved absolute control over my urges, to hone my skills. It made me uninterested in sex, especially since I abhorred the form available to me. The Organization provided us with other captives to vent our libidos with.”
Their eyes clung, and she knew he must wonder if she’d been one of those captives, if someone he knew had used her for that purpose.