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Warbucks’s affection for Bailey confused Myron, as it did Raymond. Warbucks didn’t seem to be the type to feel affection for anyone, let alone a woman.
“I would suggest accomplishing this before Bailey’s ready to travel,” Raymond said with a sigh. “Vincent’s not in a pleasant mood and time will only enrage him further, I believe.”
Myron rose to his feet. “I’ll call him again tonight.” He set his empty drink glass on the table between them before moving to the door. “Wish me luck. He’s not easy to deal with these days.”
“Good luck, my friend,” Raymond stated softly.
After Myron left, he stared into the flames of the fire, but it was the past he was seeing. He saw bright green eyes, long red hair, and a smile that had lifted his heart.
He saw the sister he had loved with all his heart. Bright, shining, innocent. He saw her laughing one minute, he saw her in a casket days later, that beauty and laughter wiped away because of one man. Lucy had been a courier for the CIA. Posing as a college student in Milan, she had been transporting classified information between two sources when she had been waylaid.
Rather than taking the information and leaving Lucy laughing, they had killed her instead. The information he had uncovered was that the men had taken her to Warbucks. The bastard had raped her before giving her to his men. He had fired the bullet into her brain himself, stealing her life.
That had been fifteen years ago. Lucy had died and he’d been unable to attend her funeral, unable to grieve for the connection he had shared with the young woman, because no one had known of their family relationship.
Raymond had been the bastard. His father had never acknowledged him, and Raymond had never asked for the acknowledgment. But Lucy had found him. And she had loved him. She had taught him what innocence was, what loyalty was.
This is for you, Lucy. He lifted his drink to the fire in a toast to the flames that so resembled her hair. This is for you.
CHAPTER 20
IT WAS THE NEXT AFTERNOON before Bailey felt more like herself. She was stiff and bruised, but bouncing back despite the stitches in her arm and the bandage wrapped around it.
She felt good enough that her hormones did a major back-flip when John moved from the bathroom with nothing but a towel wrapped around his hips and approached the bed.
She’d showered earlier. Insisting on it despite the wound. She felt refreshed, her aches easing, and definitely ready for something that would affirm she had lived rather than died.
Something that would give her one more memory to hold in reserve against the loneliness she knew was coming. The shot the doctor had given her the night before for pain had knocked her out. Painkillers tended to do that for her. It had given her a full night’s rest, and a morning’s appreciation of waking up.
“Feeling better?” he asked as he sat on the bed beside her.
“Better,” she agreed, staring up at him before she reached out and slowly pulled the edges of the towel apart to reveal the arousal he hadn’t even been trying to hide.
The darkened crest was thick and throbbing, a pearly drop of liquid glistening at the tip.
Bailey felt her nipples harden painfully as her clit became unbearably swollen. Heated liquid warmth spilled from her sex, dampening the folds of her pussy and leaving her feeling tender, weak with hunger.
She had faced death. She had faced the fear of never touching him again, never knowing his kiss, or his laughter. Never knowing his warmth. She had faced oblivion, escaped it, and now she just wanted to revel in his touch.
“Fuck, you look like a goddess lying there,” he growled as he stepped nearer, staring down at her with naked demand. “Wearing nothing but panties and a T-shirt. Do you know how hard it’s been not touch you the last day? Not to kiss you or taste that luscious little body?”
Her lips parted as she drew in a hard, sharp breath. Dark and erotic, the words sent visions of lust dancing through her brain. She needed that touch, that warmth. She needed him.
“Look at you, love,” he whispered, that dark, earthy hint of Australia sliding into his tone. “So flushed and heated. Does it turn you on to know that you make me half insane with lust for you? That no other woman has ever done to me what you do?”
Bailey smiled back at him as he reached out to her, his hand lifting, the backs of his fingers caressing over the slope of her breast, causing her nipple to tighten almost painfully.
Moving farther onto the bed, he pulled her into his arms, letting her feel the hard length of his cock against the bared flesh of her tummy where the T-shirt rode up. The heated crest flexed and throbbed against her flesh as it sent a pulse of blistering sensation to attack her womb at the memory of him pushing inside her.
“You make me crazy for you.” He nipped at her lips before taking a deep, drugging kiss from them. His tongue licked and stroked against hers. Her senses were rioting, spinning out of control with the need racing through her.
“Damn you, I can’t think of anything but this some days. You’re my weakness, Bailey. And my strength.”
There was a dominance that brewed inside him again, despite his tenderness. A dark, brewing lust that had her breath catching.
It was pure lust. Power. It was a desperate hunger she had never felt before, never known before.
“I could have lost you,” he whispered as he brushed his lips over hers and pushed her panties down her legs to her knees, where she lifted her legs and managed to kick free of them.
