Scandalously Expecting His Child(49)

                Nothing but every last detail would satisfy him, would it? As it shouldn’t. She owed him at least that.

                Nodding, she let out a ragged exhalation. “Before I did, I investigated you, as I always did, to tailor my approach to every...case. But you were an enigma, with no information indicating your character. So I watched you, and from my observations, I knew you wouldn’t respond favorably to a direct approach, wouldn’t respond to overt seduction, like almost all men in my experience.”

                His teeth gritted, his frown deepening. No doubt he hated hearing how he’d been a mission, how there’d been so many before him.

                But she already knew he’d feel that way, and she was only telling him the details of what he already knew. So she continued.

                “I set up that car accident, created that steeped-in-normalcy persona, because I’d judged only a woman like the fictional Hannah McPherson would have the best chance to make you feel safe enough to let her come close. And I was right.”

                His hand grabbed the back of her head, his eyes so fierce, as if trying to compel her to believe him. “You were wrong. It was you, the woman beneath the act that I responded to. I proved that when I responded to you again, when you projected a totally different persona.” His hand gentled at her nape, making her melt in his grip. “But you said you never acted with me. Was that because once you met me, you judged I would respond best to the real you?”

                And she made the first irrevocable confession. “Until I met you, I didn’t know there was a real me.”

                His eyes flared like supernovas, and his grip twisted in her hair with the same ferocity, making her gasp with pleasure and ratcheting heartache.

                Suddenly, confessions felt like poison she had to spit out. “From the moment I met you, all my scenarios evaporated, and I was unable to be anything with you but the person you knew, the person I didn’t realize existed. It was with you that I became aware of my true personality.” At his groan, she turned her face into his shoulder, escaping the intensity in his eyes. “I realized almost at once that I was actually feeling something for you. And among all the dangers I ever faced, those unknown feelings were the most dangerous thing that ever happened to me. It was as though you were my first intimacy. And you were. Any other man I’ve been with was a mission, an evil I’ve been forced to endure with a seductive smile while my soul retched or, at best, was numb.”

                “Scarlett...”

                She burrowed into his chest, unable to let him interrupt. The floodgates had opened and everything came gushing out. “It was with you that my senses were awakened for the first time and I realized what intimacy was, what transfiguring passion felt like. You were my first pleasure...then you become my first and, I’m certain, my last love.”

                * * *

                Never. Never in his wildest dreams had Raiden expected this. His best hope had been that she’d tell him the truth, and that it would include an admission to validate his feelings. That he hadn’t been just a mission to her, that she’d felt something real for him. Then, and now. Never had he dared wish she’d say anything near the things she’d just said.

                But she’d said them. She felt them. Had always felt them.

                And it felt as if the last barrier he’d erected inside him to protect himself from the heartache she’d caused came crashing down. Admissions rushed in, swamping him in the truth of his emotions for her.

                Just as she’d come to life with him, so had he with her. Just as he was her first and last intimacy, her one and only love, so was she his.