The Billionaire's Game(17)

Kade’s jaw muscles were twitching, his body tensed as he said hoarsely, “Please tell me he didn’t hurt you. Tell me he never laid a finger on you or blamed you.”

Asha lowered her head. “I can’t. It would be a lie, and you’ve done too much for me to lie to you. You were right. I was running away. I’ve been running since I left him.”

“Is he threatening you? Has he contacted you?” Kade asked anxiously, his tone furious.

“I don’t think he knows where I am and I doubt he cares. He contacted a few of my former clients where we lived in California looking for me, so I hid until the divorce was final and then I ran. I’ve been traveling ever since then,” she admitted quietly. “It got bad when I started taking on jobs. He didn’t want me to work outside the home.”

“What about your website?”

“He didn’t know,” Asha admitted. “He would have put a stop to it.”

Kade pulled his head back and tilted her chin to look at her face. “Tell me where he is,” he demanded, his voice low and deadly. “I’ll kill the bastard.”

“No!” Asha exclaimed loudly. “All I want is peace. I want to forget. Please.” The fact that this man would defend her made her chest tighten in gratitude, but she didn’t want Kade involved in her past. “It’s over. I’m free. That’s all I ever wanted.”

“Did you get any help?”

“I spent the time waiting for my divorce in a woman’s shelter. They helped me as much as they could. I went to their counseling, but I’m still struggling to get free of my past, I guess. I took jobs out of state to get away, start again.”

“Was he fucking crazy? Didn’t he realize what he had?” Kade replied fiercely. “It’s goddamn lonely to be with someone who doesn’t give a shit, but I can’t stand the fact that he actually intentionally hurt you.”

Looking into his liquid blue eyes, she said hesitantly, “You sound like you know what it feels like to be with someone who doesn’t care?”

“I do. My girlfriend of ten years dumped me when I was in the ICU after my accident because I wasn’t what she had bargained for, because I wasn’t able to fulfill her ideal. I do fucking know what it feels like, and it sucks. But I wasn’t powerless. I had money and I had family and friends.”

Asha’s heartbeat accelerated and she could sense Kade’s anger and the same sense of betrayal she had felt when Ravi had basically written her off and made her his target of rage because she couldn’t produce a child. “Then she wasn’t worthy of you. If something so superficial turned her away, then you’re better off without her,” Asha answered adamantly. Kade was a man worth keeping, whatever the circumstances. Didn’t his ex-girlfriend understand that he was the type of man most women longed to have, a man who was constant and would care, no matter the circumstances? “You deserved so much better than that,” she said sincerely, placing her palm against his whiskered jaw.

Kade’s eyes turned molten and hot, his nostrils flaring as he asked hoarsely, “How do you sleep with someone whose only objective is to get you pregnant and beats you up?”

Asha shrugged uncomfortably. “I was his wife,” she said matter-of-factly. “It was my duty, and if I’d refused, it would have been worse. It was usually over with pretty quickly.” She didn’t want to mention that she wasn’t left with much of a choice. If Ravi wanted sex, he took it. The few times she’d tried to fight it, he’d almost knocked her unconscious.

“That isn’t the way it’s supposed to happen, sweetheart.” Kade’s hand left her face, his fingers sliding sensuously through her hair. “You’re a woman who’s meant to be savored, a woman a man wants to pleasure. There’s nothing that would give me more satisfaction than to watch you come. Hard.”

His words shot straight from her fluttering belly to her core, moisture flooding between her thighs as she saw the desire in his eyes. Her cheeks were red with embarrassment, but there was raw passion raging through her body, making her unable to look away from his carnal expression. “How do you watch that when it’s dark?” she asked, unable to tamp down her curiosity. “He was the only man I’ve ever been with and it always happened quickly, with the lights off.”

“Shit! Didn’t he ever make you climax?” Kade brought his hand to her ass and pulled her unresisting lower body against his hardness.

Asha’s mouth dropped open with need as much as surprise. He was hard and wanting, the rest of his body as hot for her as his eyes. “No,” she admitted, mesmerized and unable to stay away from the unknown force that drew her to Kade. “It was dark, and it was over in a minute or two.”