Xtraordinary (15 page)

Then again, the spot Ricardo had chosen, though considerably more difficult to reach, held the same advantage, plus one more. Namely, that Ricardo had gotten here first, and methodically determined all the possible scenarios before selecting his own place to wait.

The meet-up time was still an hour away, and Ricardo was in no hurry. Rushing things, in his experience, rarely improved the outcome, and patience was an underrated virtue. It had taken him years to develop his own as it ran contrary to his nature. But growing up at his father's knee had taught him the value of discipline.

Ricardo watched and waited, aided by a small, powerful scope that let him track his enemy's smallest movement and gauge his attention. When only ten minutes remained before the arranged meeting time, Vlad made the mistake he had been waiting for. He stood and stretched, working the kinks out of his knees and shoulders.

Ricardo fired three times in quick succession. The first shot destroyed Vlad's right hand. The second, as Vlad struggled to reach for his weapon with his left, knocked the gun to the edge of the overhang, where it teetered for a moment before falling to the ground. And the third struck the center of his kneecap, exactly where Ricardo had aimed.

Climbing down the side of the marquee sign, which had once announced news of homecoming dances and congratulated graduating seniors, was just as difficult as scaling it in the first place. Ricardo took his time, ignoring the screaming issuing from the gymnasium

Once back on the ground, he sprinted across the school grounds, treading over broken asphalt and splintered glass. He took the stairs two at a time, and soon he was standing over the fallen gangster.

He looked into the pale, watering eyes of the man who'd brutally murdered a helpless old man…who had dared to threaten Chelsea. Ricardo had prepared a few words for the occasion, but as he took note of the unrepentant sneer on the Russian's face, he decided that Vlad wasn't worth the effort.

He finished him with one last shot to the forehead.

He stalked down the steps, his feet ringing on the metal, scanning the campus for movement. But the stupid thug had come alone. There was no one to pursue him. Sergey would learn soon enough that he had entrusted the wrong man with the job, and he would not be pleased.

It remained to be seen whether the efforts to recruit him would now turn into a vendetta. But Ricardo's message would be delivered. Should harm come to someone Ricardo cared about, the consequences would be swift and final. Violence would be answered in kind. Stupidity would not be tolerated.

This was not the way that Ricardo had envisioned his life turning out, all those years ago when he took over his father's business. But life had made him who he was. Overnight, he went from favorite son to head of household. His mother had not been the only one who depended on him; the workers his father employed would have had nowhere to turn to if he let them go. When the
matons
came around, with their petty threats and demands for protection money, Ricardo learned to deal with them too.

Ricardo had learned at a tender age that some choices would never be his to make. And he did not turn away from the hardest ones.

But it made the things he chose in his life all that much more important.

And he had chosen Chelsea. He had tried to let her go when he couldn't guarantee her safety. But it was too late for that. Now, with blood on his hands, he would go and claim what was his.

#

He knocked before letting himself into the hotel room, an unnecessary courtesy: Smith had assured him that all was well. Ricardo knew that Smith had wired the suite, and kept tabs via the hidden cameras. He also knew that Smith would have given Chelsea as much privacy as possible, ensuring only that no harm befell her while Ricardo was away.

Now, the cameras were turned off and Mr. Smith had been dismissed.

Ricardo waited, giving Chelsea time to look through the peephole and see that he was alone. When she opened the door and let him in, he was unprepared for what awaited him.

It wasn't just that she had showered, that her long hair lay straight and silky around her shoulders, that she was wearing a loose, flowing dress and silver sandals that Smith must have picked up for her downstairs. Smith didn't have Ricardo's discerning taste, but he'd done well enough, choosing a shade of blue that brought out Chelsea's eyes, if not her wicked curves.

It wasn't just her scent, a spicy mix of soap and citrus and notes underneath that were her alone, although inhaling the air near her was enough to stir his arousal.

It wasn't any single element that made him want to pick her up and carry her to the bedroom, but the combination of everything about her. Her strength and her vulnerability. Her hard edges and her soft spaces. Her unspoken desires and the needs that only he could see.

“I killed a man tonight,” he said, drawing her close to him while he watched her carefully.

She blinked. But she didn't pull away.

“You have to know this about me,” he said, wondering if he was about to sever the connection that bound the two of them, to destroy the best thing that had ever happened to him. “He isn't the first man I've had to kill. I wish I could promise you that he would be the last.”

“He was the one who…killed Boris?”

“Yes.”

Her eyes sparked with fury. “Then he deserved to die.”

He reached for the sash knotted at her waist, rubbed the fabric between his fingers and thumb.

“Mr. Smith was kind enough to bring this,” Chelsea said, turning shyly to show him. “Does it meet your standards?”

Ricardo raised an eyebrow in wonderment that this woman—unlike any he had ever known, a fragile mix of determination and scars and softness—did not know what he saw in her. Did not know that she had ensnared him and that he was helpless in her spell.

But helpless did not mean weak. Ricardo was fully prepared to be strong for her. To give her what he needed.

But first he would finish what he started. He would tell her almost everything so that there would be no surprises, so that she would know exactly what he was capable of. When she came to him, he wanted her to come in the full knowledge of what he was.

“I would like to tell you a story,” he said softly. “It isn't a long one. I will get you a drink, and we will watch the sunset together.”

Her eyelids fluttered down as she nodded, her hand holding the folds of her dress together where the skirt split. Her modesty was arousing.

“Yes…” she said, and then her gaze traveled up, coming to rest on his face, the hint of something dangerous in her eyes.

“…Sir.”

Ricardo had to turn away from her so he didn't betray himself. She drove him crazy with a single word. A single syllable.

She was his for the taking if he was strong enough to give her what she needed.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Chelsea arranged herself on a long sectional sofa that faced out toward the floor-to-ceiling windows. Outside, the sky was streaked and purpled, twilight giving way to the last rays of the setting sun. Night would come fast on its heels, and soon the stars would sparkle high above Los Angeles.

Boris was dead. But so was his killer.

Was that justice? Chelsea wasn't sure she knew.

With Ricardo out of the room, the anxiety she had fought off earlier threatened to return. She wasn't from this world of violent retribution. Death, though it had taken her father when she was still very young, had not been a regular presence in her life.

She didn't know how Ricardo could stay so calm—and she feared that she would give herself away. She didn't want him to see her as weak, and she resolutely pulled her knees up and wrapped her arms around them. The dress—silk spun with cashmere—felt heavenly against her skin. She wasn't wearing panties, mostly because she didn't have clean ones. Mr. Smith had either forgotten or omitted them out of respect for her modesty. Either way, she felt exposed.

When Ricardo came back to the sofa holding a bottle of wine and two glasses, she forced a smile for him. She clasped her hands tightly so their shaking wouldn't betray her. Her spine felt stiff, her muscles tight.

He set the bottle and glasses on the smooth ebony coffee table, and reached for her hand, slipping his fingers into hers, a move so tender that her careful reserve fell away and she leaned into him.

He cared for her. He protected her. He would put his life on the line to keep her safe.

“
Querida
, what is it?”

“I'm…I'm just…”

He drew her into his arms, lifting her into his lap. Her head fit perfectly under his chin, and she gave in to the embrace, her cheek against the smooth, bare skin exposed at the V of his shirt. She could feel his breath ruffling her hair, his hands encircling her back.

This was what safe felt like.

She drew a breath. “I've never…needed anyone.”

He was silent for a moment, his hands moving over her skin, cherishing her. “That is where you are wrong,” he finally said. “You did need others, but they left you. They let you down. The people you were supposed to be able to trust took advantage of you. The ones who were supposed to protect you allowed harm to befall you.” He sighed, running his fingers through her hair, cradling her against him. “I have often thought, in my life, that I have been given difficult challenges. But I see now that I was also given great gifts. The love of my family. Parents and grandparents who did everything they could for me. A community of elders who looked out for the children as though we were all family.”

Then he told her the rest of the story. The racketeers who, sensing an opportunity after his father died, tried to extort money. The rivals who tried to put him out of business. The old feuds between long-dead ancestors, returning to threaten his mother's security in her declining years.

The choices he had to make, to ensure her safety. And later, to fund his education. His dreams of becoming a museum curator…ended by his mother's health crisis and the need to provide for her care. That he stole the money from the same Galician crime ring which had attempted to extort from him.

As he spoke, Chelsea found that the assumptions she had made about him faded from black and white into many shades of gray. He wasn't trying to hide who he was, but as she learned the reasons for his choices, they were all meant to help others.

“I am not proud of everything I did,” he admitted, “but my mother never knew a day of want or worry after my father's death. And the things I did then…changed the course of my life.”

She tried to imagine him as a teenager, a young man, shouldering burdens no one that age should have to bear. Learning a business without the benefit of a financial education. Holding his own in a competitive market, with a dozen employees relying on him for their livelihood.

Was it so different from some of the choices she had been forced to make in her own days on the streets? Shoplifting toothpaste…stealing from a grocery store…carrying a knife in her pocket and knowing she wouldn't hesitate to use it?

“You had difficult decisions to make,” she finally said. “I understand that.”

“Sometimes one must find justice by whatever means necessary,” Ricardo said. “There is no other way. There are times and places in this world where the law does not reach far enough, where the tools of a civilized society, with its police and its courts of law, are not enough. In this world, some men must make hard decisions. They must lead with whatever means they have. I was forced to become such a man.”

He gently pulled away from her, forcing her to look into his eyes. “I am not always proud of what I do,
querida
. I regret the lives I have taken. I wish there was some other way. But you must know that I will not change. And you must be able to live with that.”

“I don't suppose…” Chelsea said, feeling his erection pressing against her cleft as he shifted her on his lap, “that you'll tell me what you
really
do? Where you got my painting? Who you go to see when you are not with me?”

He was already shaking his head. “No. I cannot. To keep you safe I must also keep you apart, to some extent.”

“It isn't…fair.”

Ricardo's hand stilled in her hair. Then, slowly, he began to wind it around his fist. Once, twice…until it was tugging hard, beginning to hurt.

“When,” he said, his voice hard, “did you get the impression that our relationship is
fair
?”

“N-never,” Chelsea said, the prickling of desire quickening at every point they touched.

“I know you are strong, Chelsea. I know you are your own woman. I will never tell you what to do in your work, your gallery, your world. But in two things I demand your acquiescence. Do you know what they are?”

She tried to nod, but he held her immobilized by his grip on her hair.

“First, in matters of your safety, you will do whatever I ask of you. This is for your own good. Tell me you understand.”

“I understand,” she managed to get out.

“And second…when you are with me as a woman, when you are in my bed, when we are alone together. On these occasions, you are not my equal. You are my submissive, my little one, my slave. I own you. You serve me at my whim. Whatever I desire becomes your desire. However I decide to use you, it is your destiny to be used.”

He pushed her head down, slowly, giving her time to experience every exquisite millisecond. She thought he would open his zipper and force her mouth onto his cock, but he didn't; he kept pushing down, down until she was doubled over, her face level with her knees.

“On your knees on this sofa,” he said. “Put your cunt in my face.”

His rough words elicited a moan. She was wetter than she'd realized; when her dress gaped open she could feel the cool air on her pussy. She maneuvered into place as he asked, her forearms resting on the arm of the couch, her ass pressed up against his shoulder, her knees sinking into the soft couch cushion.