meticulously groomed, the raven-wing, rain-straight locks slightly mussed. It gave him a wild, raw look that made his heart-stopping cheekbones even more prominent, his slanting caramel eyes even more fiery, his sculpted lips more erotic and his chiseled jaw more rugged.
His whole package was enough to compromise her sanity. Not that she’d ever had much to speak of where he was concerned. And that was on the mental and emotional level. On the physical one, just being around him, just thinking of him, made her melt, throb...ache. Her body had been hammering at her, demanding his since she’d laid eyes on him across the ballroom tonight.
His answering appraisal made her core simmer. Then the velvet depths of his baritone drawl almost made it combust.
“Your surgeon didn’t only make you a totally different woman, but the most beautiful model possible, too.”
She met the eyes that flayed her with contempt with a look of long-perfected equanimity. Even as her insides raged, she injected her voice with the same inexpression.
“Surgeons, in the plural. This result is a collaborative effort, performed over many stages. But it was I who provided them with this ‘model.’ I needed to be beautiful.”
“You were always beautiful.”
Her heart forgot a few beats before it resumed sputtering. Outwardly, she knew he’d see no evidence of the effect his words had on her. “Nowhere like this.”
“So you thought you needed to intensify your beauty, to boost your effectiveness as a siren? I thought you’d know from intensive experience that outward beauty only lures men, but what traps them are the brains and wiles behind the looks.”
“Since I have those, too, I more than ever have the perfect package.” His gorgeous eyes narrowed, his edible lips filled, as if her brazenness aroused him even as it angered him. She pretended to sigh, but really expelled the air that clogged her lungs. “But beauty alone does open doors.”
“Doors that might open into untold trouble.”
She gave him her best self-assured glance. “True. To inexperienced innocents whose beauty is a bane that makes them a target for exploitation. I, on the other hand, am a seasoned professional who uses my assets as precisely as the situation necessitates. I downplay my looks or even negate them when I want to, and play them to maximum advantage when I need to.”
The heat in his eyes rose, even as his expression became arctic. “It must be so freeing, being able to brag about your strategies with someone you’ve already played. Someone who can’t share his insider knowledge with your future victims.”
“No bragging involved. Just facts.” Before he volleyed a response, she preempted him, turning the focus on him before her heart burst. “Now it’s my turn to ask questions.”
His lips twisted. “Since you must know everything about me, the only question left in your mind must be how I’m here.”
“I do know everything about you,” she conceded. “But that. So how did you manage to beat me here? And how are you inside my apartment without any sign of breaking and entry? Did you ninja scale your way up here to the thirtieth floor?”
“Contrary to movies, we ninjas don’t perform death-defying feats just because we can. We do go for the path of least resistance whenever possible.”
“I don’t remember ever seeing a ninja bribe a concierge.”
“I didn’t do that, either.” Before she made another comment, he raised his hand, his eyes reflecting his mirthless smile. “I won’t tell you how I arrived before you, or how I came in, so save your breath. I’m through sharing secrets with you. And you’re finding out no more on your own, either.”
She held his gaze. Before she melted into a puddle at his feet, she said, “I bet you didn’t sample any of Hiro’s first-class sushi or sip his fine shochu. I didn’t.”
His eyes widened at her sharp detour. Before he could adjust, she turned and crossed to her kitchen.
Once there, she looked back over her shoulder. “Seems this is going to be a long night. Want to eat something?”
* * *
Raiden watched the one woman he’d been truly intimate with sashay away in that stranger’s body.
And his own body roared in unremitting rage...and hunger.
She’d walked away earlier saying, “Forget all about me again.” As if he’d ever forgotten about her at all.
But it had been the sane thing to do, to heed her advice. To go back to the ball and his fiancée, to his plans and life, and forget that she existed. Because she in fact never did. Her current identity was just another fictitious figment that would disappear without a trace soon enough, once she’d gotten whatever she was after here. She’d done it once before when he’d been of no further use to her.
But there was nothing sane about what she made him feel. Never had been, and, it was clear by now, never would be. Renewed exposure to her had caused the fever in his blood to relapse as if it had never subsided at all. As it never had.
The need to have it all out with her ate through his restraint. He’d only ever had speculations about her, didn’t have a single fact to quench the maddening thirst to know the truth.
But if he and his brothers had wiped their pasts and created new, perfectly verifiable identities, she’d far surpassed their combined undercover prowess. What they’d done only once, she’d done so many times she seemed to have never had an original identity.
As for their time together, which had scarred him in a way not even his nightmarish existence before it had managed to, he had only theories, no real answers to satisfy the gnawing uncertainty that never stopped asking how. Why?
Now he needed to know the truth.
Though he was certain she’d kept her end of the bargain, since there’d been no hint of suspicion in his identity, he needed to know everything to guard against any breach like hers ever happening again.
Or that was what he’d told himself as he’d torn his way over here. That it was a necessity, a prophylactic measure.
Slow steps finally took him to the semi–open plan kitchen. He found her flitting around, her hair up in a wonderfully messy mass.
As soon as he entered, she looked over her shoulder again, nodding toward the island. “Pull up a chair. I won’t be long.”
He walked up to her instead, struggled not to pull her back against his aching body.
She continued to work with fast, precise movements, pausing only when he tucked a lock of hair that had fallen over her shoulder back into her impromptu hairdo.
He bent, murmured in her ear, “Don’t you think it weird, with our history, for you to be inviting me to a meal?”
She straightened, continued to work with renewed zeal. “Why? I invited you to meals before.”
And he’d thought everything she’d served him had been ambrosia. “You were someone else then. Actually you weren’t someone at all, just a role. One that necessitated
