Heir to a Dark Inheritance (10 page)

A
LIK CURSED
J
ADA AT LEAST
a hundred times on his way back to his town house in his ill-gotten limousine. He’d greased the palm of a waiting driver and snagged another opera at-tendee’s ride. He couldn’t be bothered to feel bad about it.

Actually, if Jada hadn’t run out on him there would be very little in the world he could be bothered to feel bad about. Not when his body was still burning with the aftereffects of his release.

Not when Jada had gone up like flame in his arms, flames that had consumed him. Damn the woman. He should have gone to a club and gotten drunk instead of following her. But for some reason he needed to be home. Needed to follow her.

Dimly, through the haze of his anger, he wondered if her kiss, her body,
had
transferred her passion to him. It was why he never should have touched her.

But it was too late for that. Much too late. The floodgates were open and they were both going to have to deal with the consequences.

The limo pulled up to his house and he got out, slamming the door behind him and stalking into the house. He could not recall the last time he was so angry. Anger required emotion, loss of control, and both of those things were rare for him.

But now, he was in the thick of both.

He prowled up the stairs, tugging his tie off and throwing it onto the floor, then continued down the hall, his heart
pounding, his body aching for more. For another taste of the woman who had brought him to heaven and then looked at him like he was the devil.

He could have caught up to her at the theater, but he’d paused at the middle of the stairs and watched her instead, watched her run out of the theater, deep crimson against the pale marble surroundings. Like a rose in the middle of stone. Triumphant, alive.

Only Jada was also angry. The emotion coming from her in waves, undeniable and somewhat awe inspiring. And then it had been as if some of it had attached itself to him, coated his skin. And then he’d felt it, too. Only he wasn’t angry at himself. He was angry at her. How could she experience what they just had, the same damn thing, and then run off?

It wasn’t simply that she’d left, it was that she’d looked like she wanted to cry. As if he’d hurt her in some way when they both knew all he’d done was give her pleasure. Mind-blowing pleasure at that.

He wasn’t being conceited—it was the truth.

He wrenched open the door to her room without knocking and she shrieked tugging her dress up against her breasts, attempting to cover herself.

“What the hell was the meaning of that?” he asked, aware that he was showing his loss of control and temper, not sure that he cared.

“I might ask you the same question,” she fired back, her eyes stormy. “You just…you did that to me in a public place. A public place! We could have been seen. We could have been—”

And his control snapped. “I
did that
to you?” he repeated, his voice low. “I did it.
To
you.”

“Yes,” she said, lifting her chin.

“Aren’t you a pretty little liar. Making up stories that suit your reality. I did nothing to you. You grabbed me. You kissed me. You were the one who wrapped your hand around me and
put the condom on, so don’t you dare act the part of wounded maiden.” He advanced on her and she shrank back. Good. Finally she saw what he was. Finally she was afraid. Just like everyone else. And he would not hold himself back, not for her, not now. Not when it was her fault that his armor was cracked, that all of this was leaking out. “If there is a part for you to play in this little opera you’re conducting in your head it would be the whore, and make no mistake.”

“And if I’m the whore,” she spat, “what does that make you?”

“No less and no more. But I know my part, and I don’t pretend to be something I’m not. I don’t pretend to be above the lusts of the flesh even while I’m burning up for it.”

“Have you no sense of responsibility? Of right? You act like self-control is some sort of sin, but people aren’t animals and we don’t just have to go around doing everything we like!”

“So proper, Jada, have you ever stepped out of line other than tonight?”

“I’ve never wanted to.”

“You never wanted to? Or other people in your life didn’t want you to?”

“What’s the difference? We live for other people. At least, normal people do.”

“There is a big difference, Jada. Clearly you needed to let loose. Or tonight wouldn’t have happened.”

“Tonight,” she bit out, “never should have happened at all. I must have been crazy to let you touch me.”

“Is that right?” he asked. A new kind of heat was flowing through him now, reckless and dark. So often in his life, he felt like an observer, standing above things, watching them, manipulating, but not engaging.

He was engaged now. And the closer he got to Jada, the more tightly he embraced the anger that was pouring through him, the looser his grip on his control became.

He took a step toward her and she didn’t back down, didn’t shrink. Whatever moment of sanity she’d had before was gone now. Now she was ready to challenge him.

“Yes,” she said, her voice thinner now, less confident, betraying the fact that, no matter how straight she stood, she wasn’t as fearless as she appeared.

“Is that so, princess? You despise my touch so much?” She looked at him, stared him down, golden eyes burning. “I am so abhorrent to you?” He reached out and skimmed her cheekbone with his thumb, drawing it down to her lower lip, tracing the outer edge of her tender flesh. And he saw her react. Saw her eyes darken, her pulse flutter at the base of her throat. “Yes, clearly you could not stand to have me touch you again,” he said, his tone mocking.

She jerked back from him. “I shouldn’t be able to stand it,” she said. “I don’t know you. I don’t like you, I sure as hell don’t love you.”

“What does love have to do with sex?” he asked.

Her mouth dropped open. “What does love have to…Sex is incredibly intimate—that I just shared it with a virtual stranger makes my skin crawl.”

“There is nothing intimate about sex.”

Jada thought she’d reached her limit on things Alik could say that she would find shocking. She’d been wrong. “Nothing intimate about…How can you think that?”

“Sex is just chasing release, using someone else’s body to find it.”

That assessment of it, of what they’d just done, was worse than anything she could have imagined. She felt used, but worse than that, she felt like a user. Like she’d pushed her pent-up sexual energy and frustration onto him, used his body to satisfy hers. Like she was no better than he was.

She shook her head, her throat closing up, her heart pounding so hard she felt dizzy. “That’s not right, Alik. It is intimate. It’s important.”

“How?”

“You were inside me!” she shouted, not caring if the au pair, who was installed in a room next to Leena’s, could hear. Not caring if people on the street below heard. Not caring about anything but venting her anger, her frustration. Her confusion. The rage that was only directed at herself. “How is that not intimate?”

He looked frozen then, like a block of stone, his features hard, uncompromising. He was silent for a while, and when he spoke, it was like all of the color had drained from his voice. All of the anger, the frustration that had been boiling over a moment before was gone. Leaving in its place an icy calm that chilled her to her bones.

“I am not accustomed to hysterics from a woman I’ve just treated to so much pleasure. I would have expected a thank-you.” He was using that calm, smooth voice that she was sure had seduced countless women, but beneath the words, she could hear the total detachment. Could hear them ring false.

“Why do you have to do that?” she asked.

“What?” He took a step back and leaned against the door frame.

“Why do you have to stop being angry. Stop being…anything. Why can’t you just scream at me if you’re mad?”

“Why can’t you just admit that you want me?”

Her heart rate picked up. Why couldn’t she admit it? Because it felt like a betrayal. No, not of Sunil. He was gone. She knew that, she understood it and accepted it. It felt like a betrayal of who she was. Of what she’d always believed in.

Of who she’d always thought she was. And in that, was a betrayal of her memories.

She didn’t know the woman who had grabbed onto Alik’s jacket, the woman who had devoured his lips like she was starving. The woman who had taken him in her hand and squeezed tight, who had urged him to take her, hard, fast and without regard to the people in the auditorium.

No, she didn’t know that woman at all, and she didn’t have time, or the inclination to get to know her. She had a child to raise, a dysfunctional man to try and fix so he could be a father to his daughter, and introducing her own issues into it would just mess everything up.

More than it already was.

“Because it doesn’t matter,” she said. “This doesn’t matter. Leena matters.”

“When we touch, we burn, princess. This…this isn’t normal…you have to know that.” His voice was low, husky. Genuine.

“I know it’s not normal,” she whispered. “This is as far from my normal as possible. Look at what happened tonight. I don’t…I don’t do this.”

“You know all about sex, Jada, I can see that you do. So why does this scare you so much?”

“Because I know about sex in a committed relationship. I know about sex in bed. The wildest I’ve gotten is leaving the lights on. I…I never even wanted more than that. How can I want this?” The admission was torn from her and it left her feeling raw. Exposed. This whole evening had. As if a veil had been ripped away and shown the world pieces of herself she hadn’t even known were there. The deepest, most secret parts of her brought to the surface for everyone to see.

“If there’s one thing I know about, it’s satisfying desires. If you want it, take it, Jada. There’s nothing wrong with chasing a little fulfillment.”

He was offering her forbidden fruit. And she wanted to take it. “Alik, it’s not fulfillment. That’s what you don’t understand. And we can’t…we can’t bring this into our arrangement. I’m not like you…I can’t stay detached. I can’t see it as just sex, because there is no such thing as just sex to me. It means more to me than that and…I’m not going to get it from you.”

He shook his head. “I won’t lie to you.”

“I know. I appreciate it.”

He backed out the door, his hand on the knob. “I will see you tomorrow.” He closed the door, leaving her to herself.

She sat on the edge of the bed and let the dress fall to the floor. She just felt numb. No, not entirely numb. She wished she could feel numb. Her body was still on an adrenaline rush from being in Alik’s arms, from sparring with him. And her heart hurt from the exchange that had just happened between them.

He’d been angry. So angry. She’d never seen that depth of emotion in him before. It was encouraging in some ways that he could express it, that it existed in him. And she wondered what she’d done to bring it out.

Had she hurt him? It didn’t seem possible. But if it was only sex, which was something she knew he could get anytime he wanted, why would he care if she regretted it?

She groaned and lay facedown on the bed. She was an ass. She had told him she’d regretted being with him.

You despise my touch so much?

She’d imagined him above things like that. Above emotion. The fact that he wasn’t was a comfort in some ways. In others…well, she felt like a terrible person.

A terrible, unsatisfied person who knew what she wanted, knew she shouldn’t have it, and who didn’t feel half as guilty about her actions tonight as she knew she ought to.

She rolled onto her back and looked at the unfamiliar ceiling. She’d uprooted her whole life for Leena. She wasn’t compromising that now. Wasn’t going to create an unstable environment. She had to be the rock here. Had to somehow bridge the gap between father and daughter and, at the same time, be the mother Leena deserved.

There was no time for angst about the situation with Alik. No time to sit around and self-flagellate over what she’d done tonight.

So she would push it all down deep inside of her and put a cap on it. Ignore it. And tomorrow, she would be back to normal.

There was no other option.

A
LIK’S MEETING HADN’T
gone well.

He’d gone to meet Michael LaMont with the full intention of taking on the other man’s project. But he hadn’t done it.

He hadn’t done it because he’d uncovered some very unethical practices happening in the other man’s corporation. He’d never cared about that kind of thing, not one bit. His loyalty was for sale and always had been.

But there were reports, multiple reports, of sexual harassment by executives in HR files, which he normally would never have looked at. But it had seemed important.

And as he’d been sitting there looking over the files, reading a report from an eighteen-year-old temp who had been groped repeatedly by an upper-level exec, then fired when she’d complained, he’d had one thought only: If anything like that happened to Leena when she went into the workforce, the offending hand would be removed from the man who dared touch her.

By the time LaMont had come into the office to ask Alik what he thought, Alik had very nearly shown the man, physically, what sort of mood he was in.

Instead of resorting to violence, he’d turned the job offer down flat, and had walked out. Then he’d urged the HR director to talk to the women in question about pressing charges, and promised that if the man lost his job as a result, Alik would find him work elsewhere.

He was turning into a damned altruist.

He slammed the front door of his town house, just as Jada was walking down the stairs with Leena on her hip. His heart, which seemed to be doing a lot more than pumping blood through his body lately, jumped into his throat.

It was very different than when she’d come down the stairs the night before. Her hair was tied back in a ponytail, a simple T-shirt covering her curves, a pair of gray track pants riding low on her hips, disguising the shape of her legs.

He regretted he hadn’t seen her naked. If he had, he probably wouldn’t feel the need to stare at her like this. He probably wouldn’t still burn for her. And his heart probably wouldn’t be in his throat.

He couldn’t remember feeling curious about a woman after sex. Couldn’t remember feeling drawn to her in a particular way. His sexual relationships were brief and mutually beneficial. One woman wasn’t more important than the one that came before, or the one that would come after.

So the fact that he’d had sex with Jada, but hadn’t seen her body, must be responsible for the lingering feeling of the unfinished.

That and the fact that she’d been the first woman to end things with him. There hadn’t even been things to end. A brief screw against the wall and she’d run like Cinderella at midnight. Then when he’d found her, she’d made it abundantly clear that she never wanted him to touch her again.

Rejection on that scale was unheard of for him, and he found he didn’t like it. He didn’t even find it tolerable. And the memory of the rejection, combined with his current mood, was starting to feel a bit deadly.

“Good afternoon,” she said, her tone a touch too bright. “Lunch is just about to be served on the patio. I didn’t know if you would be home, but just in case, I had a setting put out for you.” She whisked past him and toward the back of the house.

He followed, unsure of what to think. Now she’d succeeded
in putting him on his back foot twice in less than twenty-four hours. He didn’t like that, either.

The little fenced-in patio that sat behind the house was, in fact, prepared for lunch. Ham and mushroom feuillités, macaroons and café au laits were spread out on the bistro table. There was also a plate of fruit and a high chair for Leena.

“You have taken over as mistress of the house, I see,” he said, taking a seat and a bite of feuillité.

“I am your wife for all intents and purposes, Alik, and we are attempting to be a family. That means I should be at home in your homes, right?”

“I suppose,” he said. He hadn’t thought much about it before. Not initially. Because he had thought of them as guests in his home, a home that he wouldn’t be in. Now things were becoming complicated. More tangled together.

He found that, for some reason he no longer saw it as sufficient to simply leave Leena in a luxury home to be provided for monetarily. Perhaps that was because of what Jada had said to him about fathers. About her father.

He’d never had one, not that he’d known, so had no idea the function a father could serve. But he did know that he didn’t want his daughter growing up to be like him.

“Yes,” he said, this time firmer, more sure, “it is right that you should take over that position. And also, I wanted to talk to you about living arrangements.”

“What about them?”

“We must live together. I do travel a lot, and when I’m on short-term trips staying in hotels, I imagine Leena would find it more stable to stay at home. But when I am on a long-term business trip, for more than a month, or when I change residence for part of the year I would like you both to come with me.”

Jada’s eyes widened as she finished buckling Leena in her high chair and took a seat across from him. “Really? And what about your…social life?”

She meant women. He could tell by the frost in her tone. He didn’t know why, but he found her jealousy gratifying. “I will find a way to manage it discreetly. It will not be a problem for either of you.”

“I see.” She looked down into her coffee. “What made you change your mind?”

“What you said the other day about your father. About all the difference he made to you. About how his presence taught you what sort of treatment to expect.” He looked at Leena, so small and innocent, her cheeks round. And she looked at him, a smile spreading over her face. He’d never really paused to look at her before. Not once in the past few weeks. Not closely.

Now that he did, he felt like his chest was too full. Like his heart would be crushed with the pressure building there.

“I would not want Leena to choose a man like me,” he said. He thought back to the reports he’d seen today. No, he’d never been the sort of man to press unwanted advances on a woman, but he still felt disturbed by it all. By the thought of Leena as a woman who would have to go out in the world and deal with men who wanted to hurt her. Or even men who didn’t want to hurt her, but might, as they used her for their own selfish ends.

“I wouldn’t want to teach her to expect that the man in her life should be absent, that he should be concerned with his own well-being, rather than hers. I would not want her to believe that she should accept money and physical comfort over love.”

“Alik…you can give her more than you think. I know you can.”

“I don’t know it,” he said, the pressure in his chest growing stronger, more unbearable. “I know what she should have. I know what’s important. I see it, I understand it, but I don’t know how to feel it.”

“That’s not true, Alik. I think you feel more than you let yourself.”

“Such confidence in a man you don’t want touching you,” he bit out.

She looked down. “How was your meeting?”

“Neatly done, Jada. And my meeting was unsuccessful. I turned him down.”

“Why?”

“I can’t work for a man like him. I don’t know why. Only that I can’t.”

She looked up at him, golden eyes shimmering. “I know why.”

“Enlighten me.”

“Because you do feel.”

“Is that what you call this?”

“You’re already changing, Alik. Two weeks ago you wanted to drop us off in Paris and never see her. Two weeks ago you thought she needed a nanny, not a mother. And now you see the difference. Now you see what she needs.”

“I still have no idea what I’m doing.”

“I don’t, either. Still, caring, even if it’s confusing, has to be better than spending two weeks with Leena and not changing the way you feel about her.”

“All I know is that I want her to have everything, and I fear I don’t have the ability to give it to her.”

“All parents feel that way,” she said, reaching across the table and putting her hand over his. A comforting touch. Not sexual, which was the only way he was used to being touched by women. Not violent, which was the only way he’d ever been touched by men.

He couldn’t recall ever receiving comfort from another person before. Two weeks ago he would have said he didn’t need it. In this moment, he felt like he did.

Perhaps he was changing. And he had no idea what that might mean. For the future, for the way he handled his life.

“Then I suppose I’m partway to the point I need to be.”

“Worrying?”

He nodded. “I’ve never worried much,” he said. “Because in my experience, worry fixes nothing. When I was starving, worrying about where food would come from wouldn’t deliver it to me—it required action. Worry wouldn’t serve me on the battlefield—it would distract me. And yet I find with her…I worry.”

Emotion was coming easier these days. Odd, after a life spent chasing feeling, it would come so suddenly now. Anger with Jada. Rage at LaMont. Worry for Leena.

“You worry because you care, don’t you?” he asked, looking at Leena again, watching her attempting to pick up a slippery piece of melon.

“Yes, Alik,” Jada said, her voice choked. He looked at her then, at the moisture glistening in her eyes. “That’s why you worry.”

Jade closed the door to Leena’s room and let out a long breath. Leena hadn’t been that nasty about going to bed in a long time. But tonight, she’d been more interested in gripping the crib rails and bouncing on the mattress than she’d been in sleeping.

And the mostly adorable hyperactivity had turned into wailing when Jada had shut off the light and insisted it was time to settle down. All attempts at rocking and singing had been resisted bitterly.

But her wailing had eventually turned to whimpering, which had turned into reluctant sleep. And Jada was now way past ready for bed and on her way to whimpering too.

She started down the hall and stopped when she saw a dark shadow separate from the wall and start moving toward her.

“Alik?”

“She was upset?”

“Just having a princess fit because she didn’t want to go to sleep, that’s all.”

She could see the tension leave his silhouette. He drew
closer, a shaft of moonlight coming in from outside illuminating him. Shirtless, a pair of athletic pants low on his hips. He was a beautiful man.

Beautiful, rough, broken. And he called to her. Made her heart beat fast, made her body ache. She’d been intimate with him—no matter what he might want to call it—and she knew him now. Her body knew his.

Though, she didn’t feel like she’d explored him enough. Not to the degree she wanted to.

And you won’t
.

Stern, sensible Jada chimed in, the voice of reason. Which was a nice thing to have on hand because her body wasn’t in a reasonable place. Her body was just remembering how it had felt to be near him, to have him kiss her, to have him take her to the peak and push them both over the edge.

She blinked. “You couldn’t sleep?”

“I was concerned.”

“Why didn’t you come into the room?”

He lifted one shoulder, a casual gesture, but she knew him well enough by now to know it was anything but casual. Alik feeling concern for another person wasn’t usual, or casual. “I didn’t feel it was my place.”

“Of course it’s your place, Alik. You’re her father.”

He nodded slowly then lifted his arm, drew his hand over his hair and let out a sigh. “I feel like you have something with her. That you understand things I do not.”

“You aren’t the only one to feel that way.”

“You make me feel almost normal,” he said, his tone dry.

“Nobody feels like they know what they’re doing with their own kids, Alik. We just sort of hope for the best.”

“Even you?”

“Yes. Even me. Especially me. Deciding to adopt while I was single was something I struggled with. Because I always believed that a child should have a mother and father.”

“Why didn’t you and your husband have any children?”

Jada still felt protective of Sunil when it came to that subject. His family had started asking when they would start having children from the moment they’d gotten married and hadn’t let up until his death.

She’d never told them, never told anyone why in their six years of marriage they hadn’t managed to conceive. It had hit at his pride. That he could provide for her financially, but couldn’t give her something she wanted so badly had been the source of so much pain for him.

No matter what she’d said, he could never really believe that she didn’t resent it. And eventually, he hadn’t wanted to talk about it at all.

“We couldn’t,” she said. “We couldn’t have children. I mean…he couldn’t. But we were married and that made it
us
who couldn’t.”

“And you decided not to pursue artificial means of conception?”

Jada almost laughed. Leave it to Alik to ask the most personal, inappropriate questions and not have a clue he was being personal or inappropriate. “My husband wasn’t comfortable with the idea of me carrying another man’s baby. And frankly, he wasn’t all that interested in the adoption idea, either.”

“Even though you wanted children?”

“He did, too. But…but he hadn’t worked through the disappointment of the fact that it wouldn’t happen for us the way he’d imagined. He took it personally.”

“See what emotion gets you? Logically, he should have just made sure you could have the children you wanted regardless of how.”

“You say that, Alik, but even you were all about the blood connection.”

“I know. But I see…I see now that it’s not the blood connection that builds the strongest bond. You…you effortlessly connect with her and I struggle.”

“But you do connect. You have.”

He nodded slowly. “I turned down working with LaMont because he was covering up the fact that one of his top execs is sexually harassing female employees. And all I could think of was that if some man did that to Leena I would…I fear I would kill them, Jada, and I don’t mean that figuratively. I would. I could.”

“Alik…”

“Emotion…it is not logical. It is inconvenient. It makes it almost impossible to…live with myself.”

He let out a sound somewhere between a groan and a growl and leaned against the wall, his head tilted back. He needed something. Emotional comfort, emotional connection, and she knew he would never allow it. Would never recognize it.