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While inside, Balthazar was nothing but cold.
So cold that it took him much, much longer than it should have to realize that for the first time in his life, he had not only failed to use protection with a woman—and not just any woman, the daughter of the man who Balthazar had long ago vowed to destroy if it took him his whole life—it had not so much as crossed his mind.
CHAPTER FIVE
THREEMONTHSLATER, Kendra had succeeded in convincing herself that what had happened at Skalas Tower was some kind of bad dream.
Well. She called it a bad dream in the light of day. What a nightmare! What a horror!
But the more unpalatable truth was that sometimes she woke in the night, convinced that she could feel all that thick, hot masculinity moving inside her again. Sure that if she blinked away the sleep from her eyes she would see his face, so stern and sensual at once, right there above her as he blocked out the world...
The way she felt in the dark had nothing to do with horror. She was wise enough to keep that to herself.
Because she had better things to think about than one evening of pure insanity three months ago. Such as finding herself a new life because, like it or not, she’d left the old one in tatters on the floor of Balthazar’s office that night, and there was no pretending otherwise.
Her father and brother had not been impressed when Kendra had returned that night without any good news to report. She had been similarly unimpressed to find them both waiting up for her, since the drive back out from New York City had in no way allowed her to settle down after...him.
“Well?” Tommy had demanded.
Angrily, as if waiting for his baby sister to return from this vile errand was beneath him.
When it wasforhim.
He had been swilling his gin and looking at her in disgust, neither of which was new. But after her intense, provoking experience earlier, something inside of her had... Notsnapped, exactly. But she’d stripped naked in front of Balthazar Skalas. She’d argued for leniency and she’d bartered herself, all for the brother who was making no secret of how little he cared for her.
Why are you trying to help this person?an unfamiliar voice asked from deep down inside her.When he would quite clearly never, ever so much as consider doing the same for you?
Kendra had never thought about it quite like that before. Once she had, she couldn’t think of anything else. Why was she trying to prove herself to him? Or her father?
Why do you feel you have anything to prove?
She couldn’t answer that question, either.
It was as if letting Balthazar inside her body had changed her, profoundly.
Not simply the act itself, which she couldn’t quite let herself think about at that point—too overwhelming and raw, painful and then transcendent, all mixed in together—but thefactof it.
She didn’t feel like the same naive creature who had set off in her sensible shoes, so determined to fight off a dragon and save her family. She wasn’t the same. The dragon had eaten her alive and there was no pretending otherwise.
That had been the first evidence of how different she was after her encounter with Balthazar. The fact that she could see her selfish, petulant brother for who he was and feel no matching surge of need to prove herself any further.
“What exactly did you think would happen?” she’d asked as she stood in the door of her father’s study. And after matching wits with Balthazar Skalas, she’d rather thought her brother unequal to the task. “Did you really think that a man like that could be tempted into forgetting what you did to him?”
“I hope you’re not saying that you struck out, girl,” her father had grumbled from his favorite armchair. “That’s not what you’re saying, is it?”
Even then, Kendra had wanted badly to tell herself that he’d wanted her to succeed because he believed in her. And not because he’d wanted her to sort out Tommy’s mess.
But she’d lost her ability to fool herself that night.
“I tried my best,” she had said, because what else was there to say? Even if she’d told them what she’d done, they wouldn’t understand. They hadn’t been there. They wouldn’t get the weight of her surrender. That exquisite tension that had flared between her and Balthazar that she’d still been able to feel tight around her, like his hands around her throat. Or his palm between her legs. She’d shrugged instead. “I tried and I failed. I don’t know what he’s going to do now.”
“You frigid bitch,” Tommy had snarled at her. And even though their father had made a tutting sort of noise, Tommy hadn’t retracted it. He hadn’t backed down. Instead, he’d taken the tumbler he was holding and threw it so that it exploded against the stone of the fireplace. “I told you not to go dressed like that. Of course you failed. Justlookat you! You look like a dowdy, frumpy, boring secretary. Who would want that?”
She’d stared back at her brother, seeing his sulky expression and remembering Balthazar’s beautiful, brutal masculinity. His grace and ferocity. Tommy had not done well by comparison.
“I can only wonder why you were pinning all your hopes on me if I’m so deficient,” she’d said calmly. Almost coldly. “There’s nothing more that I can do. And if I’m honest, I think I’ve already done too much—particularly if this is the thanks I get.”
Kendra had turned and marched from the room, paying no attention when she heard her brother’s voice raised in fury behind her. She had not glanced at her father again. She’d had the revolutionary thought, after everything, that what happened next to the pair of them had nothing to do with her.
