UndeniablyHisE (12 page)

"I won't be back at lunch." His lips tracked to my navel, where he tongued the small hole before starting a new path leading toward my mound. "Come with me."

It took me half a minute to speak. Aside from the day of our arrival and the two days of sightseeing, I had not left the suite. "What will I do?"

"Keep me company." He lifted his head and offered a grin before his lips brushed over the hair covering my mound. "It's a facility tour, so no heels."

"Okay." My hands covered his hair as he took his first tentative lick. I let the play of his tongue over my clit and inside my pussy lure me from wondering why he had decided to let me out of the suite and whether this development meant he would take me to more of his meetings. I wanted him to because it would mean he trusted me.

Lock that thought down!

I stiffened and Collin raised his head.

"What's wrong, love?" He brushed his cheek against my thigh then kissed the spot.

"You're not in me," I teased, hoping the lie wasn't evident in my voice. Not that I didn't want him in me before we had to leave the bed to shower and dress. Damn straight I wanted him in me. I needed his cock hard and thrusting to drive out the fear and the ridiculous notion that first I would capture Collin's trust then his love.

"Mmm..." Grabbing both of my hands with his, he rose from the bed. "I want to fill that sweet pussy in the shower, baby."

Fill it he did, the detachable shower head centered and pulsating on my clit as he slowly fucked in and out. My moans and delirious cries echoed off the tiled walls and marble floor. When he had me all climaxed out and every bone turned gelatinous, Collin pulled me into the dressing room and slowly dried my body.

"Is this why you set the alarm an hour early?" I asked as his mouth latched onto the tip of one nipple and he slowly sucked it into his mouth. Looking up at me, he nodded, my breast moving with him. I smiled at him, a gentle heat warming my chest.

Out in the bedroom, his phone went off, robbing me of those last few minutes of pleasure before we both had to dress.

**********

Damn but it was hot in the desert beyond Dubai! After an hour's drive, we left the limo on a four-hour inspection of an air control facility under construction. We moved from blazing heat to air conditioned interiors to exposed structures then to cool, subterranean bunkers.

When we at last returned to the limo after viewing an antennae tower, I felt nauseous and dizzy. Collin wrapped an arm around my shoulder and reached for a bottled water. He broke the seal on the cap then handed it to me.

"Slowly, love."

He didn't need to warn me twice. My stomach lurched at the first swallow and I closed my eyes. The last week had been hard on my body, the early morning bouts of sobbing tying my guts in knots until I had to puke. Now the four hours of moving from hot to cold and back again had me ready to heave in Collin's lap.

I capped the bottle and placed it on the seat next to me. Caressing the side of my face, he guided my head onto his shoulder. I inhaled, hoping the deep spices of his cologne would calm the nausea.

No such luck.

"Baby, you're very pale." He kissed the crown of my head. "Are you sure you're okay?"

I looked up, shocked. Was that a note of worry I heard?

"It's nothing," I said, dismissing his concern. "Just the heat."

"Right. One of our team fainted yesterday and he did a full tour in Afghanistan." He rubbed my arm before giving it an apologetic squeeze. "I'm sorry, love. It was selfish to bring you along."

I risked another look at Collin's face, relieved to find him staring out the window, the sides of his mouth pulled down. An all but overwhelming urge to ask what he was thinking bubbled up inside me. I squashed it, remembering my pledge and not wanting to sound like some needy, cliched lover.

Burying my face against his shoulder once more, I blanked my thoughts until my stomach settled and I finally drifted to sleep in his arms.

I slept more than an hour, the time known only by the brief flash of the marquee across from the hotel as I woke, the limo buckling then flipping once to land on its top. I heard Collin's voice issuing orders, his hands on me, pulling me from the wreckage as I blacked out.

When I woke, we were deep in the basement of the hotel -- a fact I would only learn later. Collin and Kane were with me in a white room, as were a man and woman in blue medical scrubs. A bandage covered the right side of Collin's forehead. Seeing me awake, he reached out, his fingers bloodied. He pulled back before he could touch me and turned to the man in the scrubs.

"Are you certain she's okay?"

The man raised a calming hand. "We'll run a scan to make sure, but I need the blood test back first."

"Blood test?" I tried to push up, but Collin grabbed me by the shoulders and gently forced me to stay on the examination chair. Pain shot through my lower stomach and I curled my arms around my belly. "What happened?"

Kane answered sharply. "Someone tried to kill Mr. Stark."

My head jerked up, pain exploding in my skull until I thought I would pass out. I tried again to stand.

"Mia, sit down..."

Hearing the breathless quality in Collin's voice, I looked to find him staring just below my stomach. I sensed the wetness at the same time my gaze dropped. Blood, red and heavy, soaked through the fabric of my blue skirt. Vision graying, I felt hands seize me.

When I next opened my eyes, more medical staff filled the room. I could see Collin through the open door, his hands shaking from the force with which they gripped the collar of Kane's jacket. His jaw tight, veins popped along Collin's left temple.

"What happened?" I squeaked.

A nurse put her hand on my stomach and shook her head. "The baby--"

The doctor silenced her with a hiss.

Baby?

I looked through the door to find that Collin had relaxed his hold on Kane. Collin looked at me without an ounce of tenderness in his eyes. Anger, maybe even hate, glowed instead.

He thought I knew? How could he think I knew?

He had taken me only once without covering -- that first night in Dubai when he had been furious with me about Glen. Even that morning in the shower, a thin layer of latex had separated us. I had no symptoms...

My thoughts slowed as I looked back on a week of crying in the morning until I puked.

I shook my head, trying to communicate that I had not suspected. I hadn't lied about this, I hadn't omitted anything. I wanted to tell him that, but couldn't -- not with the way he glared at me. He loathed me. I could see the sentiment burning in his gaze. He looked away, his attention landing sharply on Kane again.

"I want her out. As soon as she can fly." He shook his second in command. "You'll accompany her and a physician from AH or Welcare and a full security team."

"I'm not leaving with someone trying to kill--"

Stark jerked on Kane's jacket until their faces were a hair's width from touching.

"You will," Stark replied, his voice low and dangerous.

I strangled on a plea, the words clogging my throat and robbing me of oxygen until I collapsed into unconsciousness.

Eight hours later, I was on a plane bound for an unknown location. Four months later, I sat in a cube in northern Florida, still a Stark employee, my salary more than doubled, driving a car the company paid for between work and an apartment I lived in rent free. No real job responsibilities and zero contact from the man who had placed me there.

For the first few weeks, I told myself over and over that I had misread that look in Stark's eyes as he stood outside the room and grappled with Kane. I lied my way to sleep each night thinking that what I had interpreted as hate and loathing were worry and guilt. I told myself that the only reason he didn't contact me was because he had dropped out of sight the day of the attempted assassination. There could have been another attempt. He could be hurt or dead.

But I could only ignore for so long the fact that there is no fat Cinderella or Sleeping Beauty or Briar Rose. There are women whom men can love, whom men want to protect and shelter and please. And then there are women like me.

The truth was slow to sink in. It started with a search through the news archives, building with each photo that showed the women in Stark's life before me, each one slim even if she was just as temporary as I had been. The truth sank deeper, hooking itself in place in my lower intestines when Collin resurfaced in the news six weeks after the attempt on his life. He was not only still alive, but free and able to reach me if only he had the desire to do so.

Knowledge unfurled inside my chest that day like a white flag of surrender and I knew -- whatever the relationship between us had been, it was over.

Collin

I rolled. A body. A blast. Pleasure. Pain. Somewhere in there a woman I had to reach. Fingers grasping, thrusting, straining to hold on. Whimpers, moans, screams.

"Boss!"

Kane's voice somehow penetrated the chaos of screams and secondary blasts, his hands prying at my fingers before he yelled again. "Someone grab her from him."

The woman, the one I had reached through flames and twisted metal to pull out. They wanted me to let go after all I had done to secure her.

"She's safe!" Kane bellowed. "Let go so we can get her and you inside, damn it!"

Ringing then a jangly buzz came and went, pain accompanying the sounds to be replaced by a dull ache when they faded. My hands squeezed at flesh, a pair of shocked brown eyes watering as Kane's voice cut through the chaos of a makeshift emergency room.

"He's trying to help you, Collin." Kane's hands on my wrists, fresh pain as he found the pressure points and forced me to release the doctor.

A needle slid into my vein, forcing pitch black relief until I woke again, gray dancing at the edge of my vision, the cacophony of ringing and buzzing muted but still present. Not waiting for my vision to clear, I pushed up from the mattress, hands tearing at the IV tubing and vein catheter. Kane moved as if he would subdue me once again.

"Take me to her," I growled, my hand poised for a judo chop if he was arrogant enough to grab at me.

"She's fine," he barked back. "Sleeping in the next room."

I grabbed his shirt collar and jerked him to me. "One of these days, you'll learn how to lie."

"She's unconscious. You both were concussed, but that's the only mark on her." His eyes closed in an exercise of patience. "You, you obstinate bastard, left a pint of blood on the damn asphalt and need that fucking IV back in your arm."

He wrenched my hand from his collar, turning it over to reveal the bandage running up my forearm. "Forty-two stitches. Even for you, that's got to be a personal record."

Fresh pain shot through the limb. The room started to spin. My ass hit the bed with a whump and I stayed down. Reaching up, I touched another bandage, this one on my forehead.

"I need to see her. Help me."

The request for assistance would be as close as I came to an apology. He didn't expect or want more, just discreetly offered his shoulder for me to latch onto and haul my body up. We walked like that to the next room where Mia waited unconscious in an examination chair.

"Why isn't she in a bed?"

The man leaning over Mia answered. "We only have the one, which you should still be in, Mr. Stark."

I knew from the hotel security briefing that we were in the guts of the hotel and the speaker was Dr. Emad Ashamalla. He was also the man I had tried to choke.

Ignoring his presence and that of the nurse, I studied Mia's unconscious form. She was pale, far paler than she had been in the back of the limo when we started the return drive to the hotel. A concussion alone did not account for the bloodless look.

"Have you checked for internal bleeding?"

"There's no bruising or swelling." Dr. Ashamalla turned his gaze on Kane, no doubt wanting me out of the room before my hands were around his throat again.

Mia began to move on the exam chair. Her hands pulled up to her stomach. Her eyes fluttered open as she rotated her head a few degrees. I reached for her, the tension in my chest lessening for only a second before the last trace of color vanished from her face.

I pulled back and turned to the doctor. "Are you certain she's okay?"

Ashamalla stepped closer to Kane. "We'll run a scan to make sure, but I need the blood test back first."

Mia tried to push up. "Blood test?"

Her eyes started to roll upward then her arms went lax. I grabbed her shoulders to keep her from sliding off the chair. Her hands curled around her gut. Her lips parted in a wordless cry, but that didn't stop her from struggling against my hold.

"What happened?" she asked.

"Someone tried to kill Mr. Stark." Kane's tone dripped anger and sarcasm. He'd pay for it later -- after I was certain Mia would be okay.

She tried to stand again. The effort to keep her down spiked through my head, the area beneath the bandage hiding a jackhammer beneath it.

Something was wrong. She needed to stay still, stop fighting me and let them run the damn scan.

"Mia, sit down..."

The words died in my throat as blood blossomed against her blue skirt in some macabre, dark red Rorschach test.

No. Not again -- not with her. Not with Mia.

"Do something!" I shouted as she passed out.

The medical staff was already moving. The nurse pried my paralyzed fingers from Mia's shoulders as Kane wrapped an arm around my torso and pulled me from the room. More staff brushed against us. Still wrestling with me, Kane made a messy pirouette to keep us out of the path of the emergency cart and then one of the nurses closed the door on us.

Half an hour passed before the door opened again, another two hours before the lab confirmed Ashamalla's suspicions.

Mia had miscarried.

"Do not tell her about the baby."

Kane and the doctor stiffened simultaneously.

Ashamalla crossed his arms over his thin chest, his response made through tightly puckered lips that quivered with each word. "Mr. Stark, I cannot withhold--"

I placed my hand on the doctor's shoulder, my thumb playing against his Adam's apple as I tried to keep my touch an otherwise light reminder that he needed to obey me. "You understand how a man in my position might not reveal his marriage to the public?"

I let the implication sink in. Ashamalla might be practicing Western medicine in a very modern city, but there were other rules he had to abide by -- older rules. If the good doctor believed Mia was my wife, he would leave it to me to break the news to her.

If he believed...

He looked to Kane for confirmation. Trent offered a slow nod and earned a full measure of my forgiveness for the crappy tone he'd taken with Mia a few hours before.

"Very well." Turning from me, Ashamalla re-entered the exam room where Mia remained unconscious, an IV supplying her with fresh blood.

"What the fuck was that about?" Kane hissed. "You haven't actually married--"

I shook my head. I hadn't and I wouldn't. For her own safety, I had to send her away from me -- far away. Knowing about the miscarriage would make her exile that much harder on her. I'd seen her in the office during a baby shower for one of the senior analysts. That had been month three for Mia at Stark International. Everyone else in the room, me most of all, had forced a smile on their faces as the father-to-be passed around ultrasound pictures.

Not Mia. Her face had lit up like a damn Christmas tree -- or the Aurora Borealis. It had been the first time I stopped noticing her lush body only and started paying attention to the woman inside.

Checking the surveillance footage on her later, I had witnessed similar behavior as she made her rounds, delivering missives on my behalf. She noticed before anyone else if someone had a new picture of their children or grandchildren in their cube or office -- especially if the picture showed an infant.

Giving Mia a baby would have been worth more than anything and everything I could have bought her. Now that baby...

My gaze landed on the hamper of bloody sheets parked just outside the door to her room.

I grabbed Kane by the shirt and jerked him to me. "I need her stateside--"

"I said that weeks ago," he snorted.

I shook him. He still didn't understand. I wanted her. I wouldn't stop wanting her even if I had to send her away. "Full security team, kid gloves, anything she needs..."

The murmur of voices in the next room altered and I realized Mia was awake.

"What happened?"

Her voice came out as a squeak. I turned just as the nurse shattered my plan to lessen Mia's pain. Her hand on Mia's stomach, the woman shook her head.

"The baby--"

Too late, Ashamalla tried to shut the woman up.

Mia looked at me, her green eyes swimming behind an instant veil of tears as the news sank in. Next to her, the nurse with the big mouth stood like a deer caught in the headlights as Ashamalla pinched her arm.

I couldn't look at Mia, couldn't stop looking at the woman next to her. I wanted to wrap my hands around her neck and shake until those two words found their way back down her throat.

When I did look at Mia, she shook her head. I understood the meaning behind the shake -- she hadn't known. I expected as much. She had no access to any kind of test and I'd kept her on an emotional roller coaster all these weeks. She had misdiagnosed the morning sickness as stress and the result of all those tears she cried after I left.

So had I.

Seeing the tears and pain in her eyes, I turned to Kane. I couldn't look at her, couldn't begin to eliminate the threat to her future safety while she was anywhere near me. I couldn't fight the need to soothe her much longer. Once I had her in my arms again, I wouldn't be able to send her away.

"I want her out. As soon as she can fly." I shook him, wanted to throw him against the wall because he was the only one in the room tough enough to unleash on and have him survive. "You'll accompany her and a physician from AH or Welcare and a full security team."

"I'm not leaving with someone trying to kill--"

I jerked on Kane's jacket until our faces were a hair's width from touching.

"You will." I would fire him if he didn't. His job wasn't to protect me. It was to do whatever the hell I told him to. I needed her out, needed her safe.

An urgent shout from Mia's room drew my attention. I looked to find her unconscious again. Someone strapped a breathing mask around her face. I looked at the monitor and noticed that her pulse rate was elevated but in a the safe zone.

"Let me know if she worsens, until then, work on getting her out." I released Kane then walked to the elevators to return to the suite.

I couldn't be at the hotel when she woke again. I had to find the person or group that had tried to kill me. To protect Mia, I would return the favor, succeeding where they had failed. It didn't matter whether it was some political sect or if some sheikh's son or billionaire's company had gone rogue. Everyone would quickly learn -- don't touch me, don't touch mine.

More than anyone, Mia was mine. Even after she moved on to another lover, she would still be mine. She just wouldn't know it. Wouldn't know how closely I watched or how badly I wanted to be selfish and return her to my side.

It was for the best I hadn't told Mia that I loved her. The words had danced at the edge of my lips often enough the last week. A ring even waited in the suite's safe. I had planned to give it to her before we left Dubai, ensuring she knew nothing would change between us when we returned stateside. The bomb erased that intent, leaving me glad I had waited. Ignorant of my feelings, she would heal. Her sorrow would give way to anger, anger would lead her to another lover. In time, she would have the baby she wanted -- just not mine.

An hour later, with the ring in my pocket and a duffel full of tactical gear slung over my shoulder, I took the elevator down to the garage where my special operations team had assembled. Trent texted me an estimated departure time for Mia that was seven hours out.

I would wait until her plane reached international airspace before acting, then God have mercy on the sorry-assed bastards that had planted the street bomb.

I was fresh out.