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Suddenly the whole world turned upside down. He’d grabbed her and flipped her in the air, bringing her dow
n across his body.
Breathless with shock and with awe at his sheer strength and prowess, she gaped up at him. It had been effortless for him to catapult her like this. His hands hadn’t dug hard in her flesh to secure her, then he’d applied what felt like antigravity to her descent in midflip so that she landed with the softest of impacts on his lap.
Sealing her open mouth with a kiss that breached her essence, he finally withdrew to look down at her as she lay cradled in his arms, nerveless still with surprise and sheer delight. She would have stayed like this forever if she could.
He lifted a thick lock of her long hair to his lips before winding it around his hand, giving a tug that sent a million delicious arrows shooting everywhere through her body.
One of her various addictions to him was to how he gave her pleasure with every touch, every action. But when he plundered her, he had her screaming with it, tethering her by her hair, harnessing her to make her submit to his every demand. It bordered on savagery, and was pure perfection.
She wished she could ask him to grow his magnificent hair longer, so she could grab it as she held on to him, as he pounded into her, drove her beyond her limits and herself and the world.
But she had no right to ask anything of him, even if his indulgence of her knew no bounds. And even if she did ask, and he didn’t have to keep it cropped for his image and grew it out, she wouldn’t be around long enough to enjoy the results.
Megumi would. She knew he believed his fiancée would endure intimacy with him only for the purpose of making their required heirs, but Scarlett believed any woman he touched would crave him forever afterward. As she did.
“It’s too obvious,” he suddenly said. “To pick Scarlett because you chose to be a redhead in this incarnation.”
It was as if he was continuing a conversation he’d been having with himself. Was that why he’d been lost in thought? Searching for explanations as to why she’d chosen that name?
He’d had questions sometimes, what would have led to discussing her past and dissecting it. She’d diverted him every time. But he kept going back to her name, the one she’d chosen for her latest, and she hoped, last identity. It was as if he was trying to grab the end of a thread that would help him unravel her mystery. A person’s given name might not say much about them, but a chosen one said a lot, could be a clue that would lead to their truth. What she never wanted him, of all people, to find out.
But instead of evading the question again, she decided to give him a measure of truth. “I did choose the name because it would make people think my parents picked the obvious name for a redhead. But it’s just a coincidence, since it has personal significance to me, what no one else would ever figure out.”
His focus became absolute. “What is that?”
She gave him another piece. “It reminds me of my mother.”
His eyes smoldered. “Did you lose her long ago?”
“Over twenty years ago.”
He frowned. “You must have been too young to remember her.”
“I was old enough to remember everything.”
His gaze grew more probing. “I wouldn’t give you more than twenty-five or -six.”
“I’m older than I look.”
She was actually almost twenty-nine, had been seven when she’d lost her mother. Or rather, when she had been lost to her mother.
But she wouldn’t pinpoint her age. She drew the line at giving him specifics. But she’d appease his curiosity with one more truth.
“The first fairy tale my mother ever told me at night was Little Red Riding Hood. It remained my favorite bedtime story. But since I couldn’t have named myself Red, I went for Scarlett.”
As soon as her lips stilled, he bent and took them in a long, drugging kiss. As if rewarding her for satisfying one of his curiosities about her.
Pulling back, she noticed a touch of something she hadn’t seen since they’d met again, but had seen a lot five years ago when he’d thought she’d been the fictitious Hannah McPherson, the normal woman who’d lost her parents as he had. Empathy. Even tenderness.
Could she be imagining it? She shouldn’t.
“I was two when I lost my parents. But you know that already.”
She nodded, her throat tightening as she imagined the lost boy he’d been. She realized it was the first time he’d talked about it. She’d never thought he would share any of his scars with her.
He started sweeping her from head to hip in caresses as he talked, his gaze fixed on her eyes but seemingly looking into his own memories. “In the two years I spent in the shelter, no one ever told me that my parents were dead. They probably thought I was too young to understand what that meant, or they weren’t really sure they were. There were thousands still missing and unaccounted for.”
