Dark Carousel (Dark #30)(29)

He was waiting for something. Alert. Watchful. She knew if she made the wrong move he would attack, but how or why she wasn’t certain. She only knew that the threat was there, lingering in the air. The shiver turned into something else, fear welling up to become panic. She found she couldn’t breathe, couldn’t drag enough air into her lungs. She also knew the attack would be in some form she would never be able to resist.
“Stop it.” The command was a whiplash. “I would never hurt you. It would be impossible for me to do such a thing. Unthinkable. I won’t let you go, but you aren’t a prisoner. I would choose to use persuasion, and I can be very persuasive when something is important to me. You, Charlotte, are the most important person in my world.”
She moistened her lower lip with the tip of her tongue, stalling for time. She wanted him, wanted everything he was offering. What she didn’t trust was the terrible need inside of her, the hunger for him. It was overwhelming. He was overwhelming. He made her feel things she’d never imagined in her wildest dreams.
“I’m not someone who works well with dominant males.” It was her way of telling him she wasn’t in the least submissive. He commanded. He ordered. When he wanted something he got it; there was no doubt in her mind. No matter what Tariq said, he was pure alpha male.
“I am not going to tell you I don’t have a dominant personality, because I do. That said, I don’t want a submissive woman. I want an intelligent woman thinking for herself. I want a strong woman to help me figure out what to do with the enormous problems I have facing me. Do I make decisions fast? Yes. Absolutely. I want my woman to be able to do the same. You’re that woman. Will it always be easy? We have five children to look out for. Five. Two are already teens. All of them are traumatized. We have Fridrick and his bosses with their army coming after Emeline, Genevieve and you. We also have the threat of the three men following you from Paris. I don’t need a submissive woman, Charlotte; I need a warrior. A woman walking beside me. Fighting beside me. Standing in front of those children with me. A woman unafraid to listen to whatever Emeline or Liv needs to say, to hear them and not curl into a protective ball when the monstrous truth of what happened to them comes out. I know that woman is you.”
She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, knowing she was going to jump off the cliff. “I hope you’re real, Tariq, because once I give you everything you’re asking for, I won’t ever be able to get it back.” Her heart. Her soul. She was already in so far over her head so fast she feared she was already lost. That last little part of her, the one he knew she held back, but was demanding, that would cost her everything if she lost.
“I’ve already given it to you, sielamet. Everything I am or will ever be. I meant every word I said to you. I gave you—me. I want the same from you. Come all the way into my world. Be my woman.”He whispered the words, yet she heard each one clearly. His voice wrapped her in strong arms. She felt protected and cherished with just his voice. He wasn’t touching her and yet she felt his arms surrounding her. She would always have him. That man. The one standing in front of her, looking at her with those incredible gemlike eyes. Seeing only her.
She took a breath, knowing the truth. She was already lost. It didn’t matter if she gave him that last little piece of her; she already was tied to him in a way she couldn’t explain, and she knew leaving him would be nearly impossible. “I already am your woman,” she whispered.
“Are you scared?”
She nodded, not looking away from that deep blue gaze. She couldn’t. He still hadn’t blinked. Still looked predatory. Dangerous. She was willingly giving herself to a man who would always have that edge to him.
“Don’t be. You’re safe with me.”
She believed him. But . . . “Am I safe from you?”
He stared at her for an eternity, holding her captive with just his eyes and his charisma. A slow smile curved his mouth and crept into his eyes, lighting them more, turning the blue a vibrant sapphire. “No, sielamet. I want to eat you alive. The taste of you is forever on my tongue. The feel of you surrounding my cock, tight and hot, your skin, softer than anything I’ve ever felt, that wild hair, your mouth, all of you is branded into my mind, my bones, wrapped around my heart. You are not safe from me and you never will be, but you’ll like the way you aren’t safe. I can promise you that much.”
He sounded wicked. Tempting. Sexy. Her sex clenched. Went damp. Heat rushed through her veins. She couldn’t stop the slow, answering smile curving her own mouth. “Okay then. Show me what I’ll be working on and tell me what you plan on paying me. I just want you to know that sleeping with the boss is never a good idea. I’ll have to think long and hard about which I want most. I truly love carousel horses, so you might lose out if they’re what I think they are.”
“If that’s going to be a problem, Charlotte, I can write it into our contract that the job comes with certain other duties.”
She burst out laughing. “Don’t you dare. Just open the packaging for me. I’m really drawn to that one.” She pointed to a wooden horse encased in Bubble Wrap and a crate. She longed to touch it, to feel the wood beneath her fingers so she could learn about everyone who had ever touched the horse. Once she got that pull, that intense draw, she knew the object was very old and had a lot to tell her. Wood was her favorite medium. It seemed to absorb so much more than man-made substances. 
Tariq smiled again, taking her breath. With his easy, fluid steps he seemed to glide through the various wrapped bundles lying on the floor until he got to the one she was compelled to touch. She stood close. Holding her breath. Anticipating. Not daring to hope but hoping anyway.
Tariq was careful with the packaging, removing it one strip of wood at a time to reveal more of the Bubble Wrap. She watched him closely. His hands barely seemed to touch the wood, and he loosened the nails just by pulling. She knew he was strong, but he made dismantling the crates look easy. She was fairly certain she could open the others without help.
“Tariq.”
Both turned at the sound of his name being spoken, but Charlotte realized she wasn’t in the least startled. She’d heard and smelled the man leaning his upper body and head into the room with one foot still on the basement stair. She recognized him from the previous night. He was tall, like Tariq, with long dark hair and cold-as-ice, black-as-night eyes. He was handsome, but in a rough, bad boy way, although, like Tariq, he wore a suit. Where Tariq looked as if he stepped off the cover of GQ magazine, his partner, Maksim Volkov, looked as if he’d grace the cover of a biker magazine.
“Need you for a moment. Won’t take long.”
Tariq frowned at him, but straightened, leaving the very corner of the horse peeking out at Charlotte. She tried not to stare at the faded wood, but it was seductive, beckoning to her, a thousand voices whispering just because she was in such close proximity.
“I’ll be right back,” Tariq assured. “Wait for me. If there’s a curse on that thing, I’d rather it fall on me than on you.”
“So sweet of you,” she murmured, and stepped even closer to the carousel horse. Tariq was sweet, but if there truly was a curse, she would know the moment she touched the wood.
“I mean it, sielamet, you are not to touch that thing until I have had time to examine it.” He used his voice that brooked no argument, the one that said he was in charge and everyone jumped to obey him.
She nodded, a little distracted, and when Tariq went up the stairs with Maksim, she stepped closer to the antique horse. The whispers grew louder when she extended her palm and placed it carefully just above the wood peeking out of the wrap. Immediately she heard the sound of children laughing. Voices murmuring softly. Drawing her into that tunnel of time she lived to enter. To see worlds lost. People already gone. Glimpses into the past. Various languages. French. Hungarian. Italian. Romanian. A language she didn’t understand but had heard recently, the one Tariq spoke.
Excitement was a dark drug in her veins. This could really be it, the find of a lifetime. A genuine horse carved hundreds of years ago for the express purpose of training young men to thrust spears, swords or arrows through rings with precision. She would be able to establish an exact timeline. She’d know when the horse had changed hands, where it had been, which families had owned it and the country they were in when they had it.
Ricard Beaudet had spent his entire career, even most of his life, searching for this very item. She stepped close enough to bump the Bubble Wrap with her knee, her hand trembling as she slowly lowered it until the wood whispered against her hand. Beckoning. Calling to her. Accepting her. Ready to give up every secret. There was no resisting that call. She laid her palm gently on the exposed wood, her fingers unerringly finding the grooves of the carving.
Around her the walls of the basement shimmered and then disappeared. Everything went dark, but she wasn’t alone—the voices were there, calling out to one another in various languages. Happy. Laughing. Sobbing. Anguish. Children. Adults. They were there with her in that dark place. She shivered in the cold, feeling as she always did when she first made contact with an ancient object. It was icy cold until she managed to connect with a time and a place. She was looking far back, trying to ignore the mesmerizing, seductive lure of the voices.She hunted through time for the wood-carver. The closer she got to him, the more she could feel it. The more the cold receded and she felt warmth. Heat. The voices grew. Men laughing. Talking together. One man with his back to her worked with the block of wood, his knife moving in soft, gentle strokes, his hands caressing the wood with care and love.