Fractured (Not Quite a Billionaire #2) (16 page)

I’d kept her quiet, but I hadn’t stopped to think about how hard it would be for me to stay that way. When she was coming so hard I could barely stay inside her, when my own climax punched into me like a wrecking ball, I bent my head, held her tight with my teeth at the back of her neck…and still couldn’t stop the groans that escaped me. I shook and spasmed as Hope’s sweet body took me in and squeezed me tight, as I felt her quivering beneath me, heard the muffled moans that made it out from behind the gag, and lost track of time and track of myself. I lost it entirely. I drowned in her.

When I came back to myself, I realized that I was sprawled over Hope, squashing her, and she was still tied fast. Still gagged, too. I hurried to unwind the length of silk scarf that had been holding her quiet for me with hands that weren’t entirely steady.

“All right?” I asked in her ear. I massaged the back of her neck where the red mark showed livid, then her cheek, where the gag had been. Had it hurt her? Had I? “Tell me.”

“Y-yes,” she said, barely a breath. “H–hold me. Please, Hemi.”

I knew I should untie her, but I didn’t. I lay over her and held her, my hands gripping her forearms, my chest pressing her down beneath me, and thought,
See if I let you go. See if I do.

I untied her at last and got myself washed up. I washed her, too, as slowly and tenderly as I’d been fierce before, and loved doing it. When I blew out the candles and pulled her into my arms from behind, she moved back into me and said, sounding sleepy and so satisfied, “I didn’t think you could get any more possessive. Look how bad you’ve been, though, since I agreed to marry you.”

“Mm.” I rubbed a hand over the silken skin of her arm and felt her legs twining with mine. “Reprehensible. Next time, I’ll be gentle, eh.”

She breathed out a long sigh, sounding so contented, I had to hold her a little tighter. “The problem is,” she said, “I like it both ways. I told myself that I wouldn’t ask you for anything tonight, in case you couldn’t. But I wanted it. What
was
that? That…cold thing?”

I had to smile, there in the dark. “Something I picked up. I heard it worked. Seemed like it did. And…in case I couldn’t? What?”

“Well…you’re thirty-seven.”

This time, I laughed. “I still can. No worries.”

“Noise, though.” She sounded sleepier than ever. “What are we going to do about noise? If Karen and I do move? That’s going to be awkward.”

“Ah.” I rubbed my nose and grimaced. “No. That’s sorted.”

“Hemi.” She’d rolled over to face me. “How?”

“Ah…” Geez. Could I go
one
night without getting myself into trouble?

Apparently not. “Suppose you tell me,” she said sweetly, “as I’m this woman you want to share your life with and all. We’ll start with the little things and work our way up.”

I cleared my throat. “I may have talked to Josh about that.” My assistant. “By the time we get home, it’ll be done.”

“What?”

“Soundproofing in the walls,” I muttered. “In my bedroom. Because Karen.”

“Oh,” she said. “Huh.”

“I can’t do that to you every night,” I pointed out. “I like hearing you make noise, and you like to do it.”

“I do.” She was snuggling closer, to my relief, getting comfortable on my shoulder, accepting my hand stroking over the sweet curves of her backside with another contented sigh. “But I don’t know how I’ll ever look Josh in the face again.”

I didn’t say anything, and she sat up and said, “Oh, no.”

“What?”

“He already did your office.”

I flung an arm over my face. “Hope,” I said. “Go to sleep. Please. Before I confess anything worse.”

Hemi

I hadn’t taken Hope to Queenstown yet when I got the call from Walter. I hadn’t got her and Karen farther than Rotorua, in fact, which turned out to be just as well.

The call came through in the car at one o’clock on Thursday afternoon, when I was driving around the lake in preparation for a few hours spent exploring the forest canopy, which involved a lot of zooming down flying foxes. A totally tourist activity, and totally all right by me, because I suspected the adventure would lead to Karen laughing and being excited, and I hoped it would lead to Hope screaming and needing a cuddle.

Clearly, I wasn’t as evolved as I could have been. I knew she was brave. I still needed to know that I could protect her, and to have her know it, too.

She hadn’t complained a bit about the wedding, or asked me about the divorce, either. There was one of us who seemed to be chafing at the delay, and it wasn’t her. Now, I saw Walter’s name come up on the display and didn’t even consider ringing off, which was something.

“Te Mana,” I said.

“We’ve located your wife,” he said. “She’d like to see you.”

The atmosphere in the car had been relaxed. It wasn’t anymore.

“Not a good idea,” I said.

“I don’t do family law,” he said, “as you know. But I’ve been consulting with an attorney over there, and he says she’s adamant. He says that…” He cleared his throat. “‘Kiwis are different,’ whatever that means. Less adversarial, apparently.”

He didn’t have to say the other bit.
Which I wouldn’t have known, judging by you.
Instead, he went on, “He believes that you’re more likely to get an amicable resolution if you work it out with her.”

“If I could’ve worked it out with her,” I said, “we wouldn’t be divorced.”

“You’re not divorced,” he said, and I thought,
Oh. Right.
“We’ll work with what you decide, of course,” he continued, “but he seems to think you’ve got a shot at making this go away faster.”

I glanced at Hope. She didn’t say anything, just sat still and listened, and I focused on taking the curve in the road, then said, “It’s not contestable, though. Not like there’s anything to decide. If one party wants the divorce, it’s done.” That much, I remembered from the first time around.

“There’s the matter of the property settlement,” Walter said dryly.

“You said three years.”

Hope said, “Hemi…” just as Walter said, “I’m getting indications—” then stopped. “Are you alone?”

“No,” I said. “Hope’s with me.”

“Hope? Is that the lady’s name?”

“Yeh, and you may as well meet her, as we still have that trust to take care of, and something for her sister as well. Hope Sinclair, this is my attorney, Walter Eagleton.”

“Hi,” Hope said. “Um…nice to meet you.” I could feel her eyes on me, questioning, but I focused on the road.

Walter said, “It might be better for you to call me back when we could speak freely.”

“You can speak freely now,” I said.

“Are you sure?” he asked. “The property settlement could impact your…” He gave a dry cough, a lawyer specialty. “Your future prospects.”

“Yes,” I said. “I’m sure.” Comfortable, no. Sure, yes.

For all that, there wasn’t much else to say. Anika wanted to see me, to “talk things over,” and she wasn’t far away. In Hamilton, an hour and a half’s drive from Rotorua. And tomorrow night would work for her. It would be over soon, at any rate. If I did it.

I tried not to think about fifteen years ago, or the man I’d been then. There was a reason it was in my past.

By the time I rang off, we were in the Whakarewarewa Forest, pulling off at the tour site. I said, “We’ll decide later, eh.”

Karen sighed and said, “Don’t mind me.”

Hope said, “I like how you said ‘we.’ And I liked how you introduced me. Thank you.” She put a hand on my face and smiled into my eyes, and I had to swallow before I answered.

I said, “I thought you’d like it,” and she said, “I did,” and smiled some more. And then we got out of the car and rode some flying foxes through some forest giants, and Karen
did
laugh, and Hope
did
scream and
did
need a cuddle, and that was all good.

She waited until we were lying in one of the Polynesian Spa’s hot baths to bring it up again. A group of Japanese tourists laughed and talked on the other side of the pool, but Hope held my hand under the water, looked out at the sun setting over Lake Rotorua, and asked me quietly, “What do you think you should do? About your wife?”

I sat silent a moment and watched the sun slip beneath the horizon in a sky streaked by clouds tinted impossible shades of rose and crimson, and thought about the new line I’d finished before we’d left, the one inspired by my homeland. The ideas had taken shape on sketch pads and then on sample garments even as the rest of my mind was consumed with the details of running a business. Going there, into the creative zone, my happiest place, was my escape and my pleasure.

There, and with Hope. They were tied up together.

I’d imagined greens and blues and golds and creams, but crimson and rose worked as well, I was thinking now. Pink could be a powerful color, and silk could make as strong a statement as linen. The strength in softness, in gentleness. The power of water that flowed over hard rock, gradually carving apparently unyielding surfaces into new and more beautiful shapes. It was an exciting concept.

“I think,” I finally answered Hope, “that if there’s a way to make this easier, I should take it.”

She squeezed my hand, said, “That’s good, then. I think you should,” hauled herself out of the pool, and went to shower under the cold tap, because Hope couldn’t take much heat. I saw a couple of the fellas across from me eyeing the curves of her trim little body in the prettiest white bikini you could imagine, too. Until they noticed me watching, that is, stopped staring, and resumed their chat.

There were advantages to being big, tattooed, and Maori in Rotorua. You tended to get credit for more savagery than you might possess. Although, to be fair, I possessed my share.

That decision, though, was why I was in Hamilton at seven-thirty the next evening, ringing the bell to a tidy brick townhouse in a middle-income neighborhood.

She came to the door, opened it, and said, “Hemi,” and it was as if the fabric of space and time had warped.

Anika Cavendish, because she’d changed her name back. At least there was that. Her deep-brown hair was still long, not tied into its Maori knot tonight, but falling in rich, lustrous waves to beneath her shoulders. She was still fine-boned, her cheekbones still aristocratic, her skin still golden, her eyes still dark and liquid. And her figure still held the lushness of a tropical flower, despite what I guessed must have been rigorous discipline to maintain her slimness.

Rigorous discipline. Yeh. That had been the drug that had bound us together. I’d told Hope the truth, but I hadn’t told her all of it.

Anika smiled now, the slightest, slowest curve of her beautiful mouth, stood back, and said, “Come in. Please.”

I reminded myself that I wasn’t twenty years old anymore, stepped inside, slipped off my shoes in the foyer, and entered a lounge decorated in modern style, not unlike my own apartment in New York. Black and white and splashes of color, a fabric piece of woven flax on one wall, all of it cool, spare, and meticulously tidy.

“Sit down,” she said. “Would you like a cup of tea? A beer?”

“A cup of tea,” I said. “Please.”

When she came back with them, she’d fixed mine the way I’d used to drink it. Milk and sugar. She handed me my mug, sat down in a chair at right angles to my couch, and said, “It reminds you, doesn’t it? How many cups of tea did we drink, afterwards? We couldn’t afford anything stronger. But the best things in life are free, eh.”

She was wearing a stretchy black-and-white striped dress, barely a mini, over black leggings. She looked as sensual and sleek as a black panther, and as lethal as one.

I said, “It was a long time ago.”

She blew on her tea, looked up at me from under her lashes, and said, “It was. But it was good.”

“Was it?”

Another secret smile at that. “You tell yourself, that, Hemi. Tell yourself you haven’t thought about me, haven’t remembered everything I let you do to me, how many firsts I gave you. How hard we fought, and how hard you took it out on me afterwards. Tell me you’ve forgotten your wife. Tell yourself, too. But you’ll be lying, and you know it.”

“I remembered you once,” I said. “I also remember that you said you wanted to end it, so we did. Pity it didn’t go through at the time, but you know that’s a niggle and nothing more. My lawyer said you’d been served with the notice, and that we’d have a court date within the next few months. So I have to ask myself—why am I here?”