Scandalously Expecting His Child(23)

                Medvedev had been punished, brutally, when he’d “lost” Raiden. All the handlers had been, when each of his Black Castle brothers had escaped. His brother Rafael had been agonized to know that, as he’d considered his handler, Richard, his mentor. Raiden, however, had been viciously glad that Medvedev had been the most punished and demoted. He owed that man a debt of pain and humiliation nothing could ever satisfy.

                But Medvedev wasn’t only a sadist, he was an obsessive. It had been what had made Raiden’s escape the hardest. And while all their handlers had been sent in search of them, he bet it was Medvedev who’d kept looking after everyone had given up, needing to take his revenge. And most important, to reinstate himself. Though Medvedev had been another abductee of The Organization, he’d suffered from Stockholm syndrome and had integrated totally with his captors. The Organization, and his position within it, was everything to him.

                But Raiden had thought even Medvedev had given up the search eventually. He’d underestimated his obsession. And his knowledge of him. His former handler knew him so well he’d suspected his new persona.

                But suspicion wouldn’t have sufficed. Only solid proof would have been good enough to take to The Organization, that Raiden Kuroshiro, the heavily documented pillar of a global conglomerate like Black Castle Enterprises, was the operative who’d escaped them. Escaped him.

                So five years ago Medvedev had hired her, no doubt the absolute best he could find, to bring him that proof. And she’d found it.

                But since Medvedev hadn’t made a move since, it was proof she’d upheld her end of the bargain. But now that he knew Medvedev had been her recruiter, he couldn’t understand how she had.

                He looked at her in renewed confusion. “Medvedev was obsessed with me. He must have watched your every step during those five months, must have demanded regular reports of your progress, and evidence that you were on the right track.”

                Her eyes turned indigo. “I didn’t give him any.”

                “And he kept financing the fictional life you led? For five months with no signs he might get his money’s worth? And it would have been longer if I hadn’t discovered you and you were forced to end the charade. Then when you struck your bargain with me, you told him I wasn’t the one he thought, and he didn’t suspect you’d decided it was more lucrative to work for yourself? Doesn’t sound like him.”

                “I can be very convincing. As you very well know.”

                With that, it seemed she considered the conversation closed, and she walked past him on her way out of the kitchen. He caught her back to him, slammed her for the second time tonight against his length.

                As her breath left her in a gasp that flayed his chest and neck, his hands tightened on her flesh. “I’m not done here.”

                Though she was much smaller now without those precarious heels and felt vulnerable in his grip, the entity that held his gaze was the most powerful presence he’d ever encountered.

                Then she huskily said, “I am.”

                “Maybe you are, Scarlett, or Hannah, or whatever your real name is. But we’re not done.”

                In one explosive movement fueled by five years of betrayal and frustration, he lifted her up onto the island, yanked up the flowing skirt of her black dress, exposing honey tanned legs and thighs, wrenched them wide apart and slammed between them.

                He held her eyes for one last tempestuous moment. They all but screamed at him, Do it!