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  She tilted her head in thought. “I think I would enjoy seeing you down on your knees, Dair. But not to beg,” she added huskily.

  Dair’s cock gave an approving lurch at the thought of what he would be doing down on his knees. “Oh you are in so much trouble, Kat,” he warned as he picked her up in his arms by placing his hands on her curvaceous bottom and having her legs encircle his waist. “So, so much trouble,” he growled as he stepped out onto the balcony.

  “Condom?”

  He faltered slightly. But only slightly—a pack of scavenging hyenas could be at his back right now and it wouldn’t stop him from wanting to plunge his cock into Kat’s heat. “I left them on the island.”

  She frowned. “That was very remiss of you.”

  “I had other things on my mind at the time,” Dair dismissed distractedly as he sat her on the nine-inch-wide balustrade. He unfastened her robe and pushed the two sides apart to reveal her uptilting breasts and the dark, inviting curls between her legs, nudging those legs apart before dropping down onto his knees in front of her. “Like keeping you alive,” he sounded even more distracted as he parted her curls and bared her swollen clit. “But I’m clean, so no worries there.”

  Kat had been given every test available after losing the baby, and she certainly hadn’t had sex with Sergei again since then.

  Considering it had taken her five years to conceive the last time, she didn’t think there was too much likelihood of her becoming pregnant from just one occasion of unprotected sex either. Dair would have to go out tomorrow and—

  “Ooh…!” Kat groaned low in her throat, back arching, breasts thrusted forward as she felt the rasp of Dair’s tongue along the length of her slit.

  “You are always so fucking wet and ready for me,” he murmured in satisfaction, his wicked tongue lathing her swollen clit now.

  Anger, irritation, fear, arousal, it didn’t matter which emotion it was—everything Dair did made Kat wet.

  “Hold on to the balustrade behind you, Kat,” Dair cautioned her huskily as she arched her back again in pleasure. “I don’t think Gregori would be too happy if I told him you had pitched over the top of the balcony because I had my tongue buried in your pussy at the time.”

  “You don’t have— Oh!” Kat gave a low and throaty groan, hands moving to grasp the front of the balustrade as Dair thrust the thickness of his tongue deep inside her sheath.

  Those groans became louder, breathier, as his tongue found and lathed the thick knot of muscle inside her.

  “Hold on tight, Kat,” he breathed on her swollen clit, a mere second before he tongued that throbbing bud and moved his hands up to pinch and squeeze her engorged nipples.

  Kat was so aroused by their conversation, by Dair’s marauding mouth that she came instantly in long fiery pulses of pleasure that left her boneless and gasping.

  “Again,” Dair growled harshly.

  His commanding voice, his mouth and hands totally possessing her, was enough to send Kat crashing into that maelstrom again.

  She lost all interest after that, in who was or wasn’t ‘in charge’, Dair giving her that same instruction again and again and again. Until her screams of release grew hoarse, her breathing one long gasp bordering on pain, her nipples feeling on fire from Dair’s manipulating fingers, and her juices flowed copiously to be licked up by Dair’s greedy tongue.

  “Dair.” Her fingers moved to grip his hair. “Dair—! Oh God I need—”

  “Tell me what you need, Kat.” Dair rose to his feet to stand between her widely parted thighs. “This?” He took himself in hand and rubbed his glans along the entrance to her wet pussy.

  He had never seen any woman looking more beautiful or wanton than Kat did at this moment in the moonlight; her face was flushed, eyes dark, lips slightly swollen from the biting of her own teeth, her nipples a deep, dark rose, pussy lips swollen between the dampness of her dark curls.

  “Don’t tease, Dair,” she groaned as she moved forward to try and impale herself on his cock.

  Dair was way beyond teasing.

  It seemed like every time he made love with Kat he turned into a fucking barbarian. Taking. Claiming. Pushing her and himself to the limits of their pleasure.

  “Put me inside you, Kat,” he encouraged softly. “Slowly. Inch by inch,” he ordered his own torture as he watched his cock slowly part those slick and swollen nether lips, stretching them to their full capacity as he seemed to grow thicker and longer the deeper he went into that moist heat.

  “God, please, Dair—!”

  “You,” he finally couldn’t wait any longer and thrust fully inside her, pleasure shooting up his spine as he felt her pussy walls contract and squeeze about him. “Aren’t,” he slowly withdrew, until only his glans remained inside her. “Going,” he thrust in to the hilt a second time. “Anywhere,” he slowly withdrew again. “Without,” he thrust harder, deeper. “Me,” he drew slowly back again, feeling those pussy walls trying to suck him back inside. “Understand?” he thrust deeply back inside her.

  So deep that he could feel the caress of the entrance to Kat’s womb against his sensitive tip, trying to draw him deeper still.

  “Answer me, Kat,” he pulled out again. “Do you understand?” This time he didn’t thrust back but held himself just short of complete withdrawal.

  “Yes.” Her eyes were huge in the moonlight, pupils completely dilated. “Yes, yes, yes!” she screamed as each affirmation was accompanied by a fierce thrust of Dair’s cock deep inside her. “I understand, Dair. I understand. Now stop teasing and just give it to me, damn you!” Her tiny fists pounded on his back in frustration.

  Her acquiescence and complete loss of composure stripped Dair of the last of his own control and he began to pound into her, hard and fast, growling hoarsely as his own pleasure rapidly spiraled out of control as her nails now scratching along the length of his back. Dair lost even that tenuous hold as he felt Kat’s walls contracting, squeezing his cock as her climax crashed over her and took him with her.

  “Her name was Karin McLeer.”

  Kat lay naked, boneless, and completely satiated in the bed beside Dair, his arms wrapped loosely about her as her head rested against the dampness of his shoulder.

  And she had absolutely no idea what he was talking about.

  “The ‘she’ you asked me about earlier,” Dair continued as she made no reply.

  Ah.

  Kat was too satiated to have the energy to tense, but some of the happy sexual haze did disipate, allowing her to think again. “What did she do to you?” Her voice was husky and her throat dry, no doubt as a result of all the screaming from pleasure she had done earlier.

  His chest rose and then fell as he breathed in deeply. “I was eighteen, she was twenty-one. She seemed like an experienced older woman to me at the time,” he added self-derisively.

  Kat could understand that; to an eighteen-year-old man a woman three years older would seem much more mature and experienced.

  She didn’t voice any of that out loud, not wanting to interrupt Dair’s flow of thought, knowing, and accepting this conversation was a big concession from a man who rarely talked about himself. Dair preferred to keep his secrets pretty close to that magnificent chest.

  If this was his idea of an apology, after his unbearable behavior today, then Kat would take it.

  Besides which, she desperately wanted to know about this woman from Dair’s past.

  She also guessed that it was significant that Dair had been eighteen at the time, the same age he had been when he disappeared from London, and her life, and joined the army.

  Kat hated the very idea of Dair possibly loving a woman enough that she’d had such an effect on him.

  “She was also, although I didn’t realize it until it was too late,” Dair continued dryly, “Brian Doherty’s niece.”

  Oh dear God…!

  Kat had been very young at the time, and her whole world centered on her infatuation—love—for Dair Grayson
, but even she had heard about Brian Doherty, the precocious Irishman who had thought he could just smile and charm his way into London’s criminal underworld and take over.

  Kat’s father and Jack Montgomery, the two men who already ruled that particular kingdom, had other ideas on the subject.

  “I was so fucking stupid,” Dair continued disgustedly. “Karin set me up,” he explained at Kat’s questioning look. “I’d been seeing her two, maybe three evenings a week, for a month or so, and this particular evening I told her that I couldn’t meet her because I was doing something with Lucien—yes, it was something illegal,” he confirmed as Kat frowned. “Karin threw a hissy fit, said I couldn’t genuinely care about her if I preferred to spend the evening with my cousin rather than with her.” He gave an impatient shake of his head. “I was stupid, Kat, so fucking stupid!”

  Kat had a feeling, in view of the fact that Karin McLeer was Brian Dogherty’s niece, that she knew where this conversation was going. She remained silent, however, knowing Dair needed to tell this in his own time and in his own way. She could comment afterwards, if she felt the need. And she already felt that need.

  “Maybe I was trying to impress her,” Dair continued hardly. “Or just trying to make her see reason over one canceled date, who knows? But I foolishly told her what I was doing and where I was going that evening.” He breathed heavily. “A couple of Doherty’s men ambushed Lucien and me along the way. Shots were fired.”

  Kat couldn’t restrain her breathy gasp.

  Dair nodded grimly. “When I saw Lucien go down I threw myself over him to protect him. To add insult to injury, I learned later that Lucien was the primary target, I was just the idiot who had been seduced into revealing where he would be on that particular evening,” he added disgustedly. “With Lucien dead, and the witness—me—also dead, the Markovic family would naturally take the blame.”

  Yes, Kat could see how taking out Jack Montgomery’s only son and heir would have thrown London’s criminal underworld into complete turmoil, with the Montgomerys blaming the Markovics, her father vehemently denying the accusation, the uneasy peace that existed between the two families totally destroyed when they went to war, and Brian Doherty emerging as the uncontested king.

  “There was a pool of blood beneath Lucien, and he wasn’t moving,” Dair spoke evenly. “The shooters must have assumed he was dead. Or maybe they were just too lazy to bother moving me to make sure. They put a single bullet in my back, before this one,” he moved his hand to touch the scar at his temple, “knocked me unconscious.”

  Kat was too shocked now to remain silent or still any longer as she moved up onto her elbow to look down at Dair; this was the very last explanation she had been expecting for those scars on his back and temple. “I had assumed you were shot while you were in the army…!”

  Dair wasn’t in the least surprised that Kat had recognized his scars as bullet wounds; she lived in the same world he did, and knew exactly what a bullet wound looked like.

  “So now you know.” He shrugged.

  “It wasn’t your fault, Dair.”

  He gave a humorless smile. “If Lucien hadn’t lived I doubt Jack would have seen it that way!”

  “You said he went down…?”

  “The bullet grazed his arm, it bled a lot, and he had been taken down by the force of the hit rather than anything else, thank God.” Forget Jack’s reaction, Dair would never have been able to live with himself if, because of his stupidity in trying to impress a woman, he had been responsible for the death of the cousin who had always been more like a brother to him.

  “What about you?” Kat’s eyes were huge in the paleness of her face.

  He grimaced. “My pride was shot to hell, because of the Class A fool I’d been, but physically I recovered after a few weeks.”

  “How many weeks?” She eyed him fiercely.

  “Eight weeks,” he dismissed. “By which time your father and Jack had gotten together, disposed of Doherty and the two shooters, and sent the rest of his men back to Ireland with a warning never to come back. They never have.”

  Kat remembered reading in the newspapers about the three Irishman who had been found shot dead in a London back alley one night. Murders that, to Kat’s knowledge, had never been solved. “And Karin?” she prompted softly.

  “Jack and Dimitri did have a few scruples when it came to women. I’m not sure I would have been as lenient at the time.” Dair’s mouth twisted derisively. “Karin was given a choice, the first being a one-way ticket back to Ireland, and never showing her face in England again.”

  “Or?”

  “Or,” he echoed hardly.

  “Oh.” Kat blinked.

  “Yes—oh,” Dair drawled. “I like to think of her—when I think of her, which is rarely—as now living in a small thatched cottage somewhere in the wilds of Ireland, surrounded by a dozen screaming children, and a husband who comes home drunk from the pub on a Saturday night ready to start the next one; she hated the very idea of having kids.”

  “And they say women are the vindictive ones!” Kat gave a derisive shake of her head. “Did you ever see her again…?” she prompted curiously.

  “What would have been the point? She played me, used me to get to Lucien.” He shrugged. “Besides, she had already gone back to Ireland by the time I came out of the coma—”

  “You didn’t mention you were in a coma!” Kat was horrified at the thought.

  “Possibly because I don’t remember it.” He gave a hard grin.

  Kat’s eyes narrowed. “Stop making light of this, Dair.” She had never met the other woman, never wanted to meet her either, but she already hated her. For using Dair. For betraying him. For knowing and not caring that he was going to be shot and killed that night. For the fact that it was her legacy, her treatment of him, that had forged him into being the hard and cynical man he now was. “How long were you in a coma?”

  “Couple of weeks,” he dismissed. “It wasn’t so bad, Kat,” he chuckled softly as her frown deepened. “Being out of it meant I didn’t know anything about the collapsed lung from the bullet in the back, or the painful recovery after surgery. But the weeks I spent in the hospital, after I regained consciousness, were damned boring, I can tell you.”

  Kat had never believed herself to be a violent person—until she went for Sergei with a knife, that is—but at that moment she could cheerfully have done Karin McLeer physical harm.

  Much like the murderous feelings Dair now harbored towards Sergei?

  No, unfortunately, it wasn’t the same thing at all.

  She was in love with Dair, and hated the idea of anyone hurting him. Whereas Dair was a superhero and defender of any and all who were too weak to protect themselves.

  She gave a shiver as she thought of all those weeks Dair had been lying in a hospital bed, first in a coma, and then in deep pain and discomfort as he recovered from the two gunshot wounds. Weeks when she hadn’t even known he had been shot, because no one had told her.

  Probably because no one else had known of her infatuation with him.

  Dair gave a rueful smile. “It was inconvenient, and damned painful at the time, but ultimately getting shot was also the best thing that ever happened to me.”

  Her brows shot up. “Then I hate to think what the worst thing was!”

  He chuckled. “Another story for another time.”

  Kat wasn’t sure there would be another time for the two of them once she was back in England with Gregori.

  “Why the best thing?” she prompted curiously.

  Dair gave a shrug. “Lying alone in a hospital bed at night, with nothing to occupy you except your own thoughts, can put a whole lot of things in perspective. Lucien spent every day with me, and the two of us talked, endlessly, and both of us came to the same conclusion; we’d both had enough of that life, wanted something else. Once I was well enough we both walked.”

  “And joining the army was so much safer!”

  “I made some g
ood friends there,” he defended. “Lifelong friends who I know will always have my back, as I’ll always have theirs.”

  “Friends like Lijah?”

  “Yes.”

  “What’s his story?” she prompted curiously. “The way he dresses—well, that Stetson is a bit unusual when he also speaks as if he attended Eton?”

  “Maybe he did.” Dair’s expression had become closed off. “We don’t ask questions in the army.”

  “So I shouldn’t ask any either,” Kat guessed ruefully.

  “Best not,” he advised dryly.

  She snuggled back down into his arms, her head once again resting on his shoulder. “I think you need to get some sleep now.”

  “Have plans for when I’ve regained my strength, do you?” he teased lightly.

  “And the fact that you haven’t slept for days.” She chuckled huskily at his look of disappointment. “But I’m sure I’ll be able to come up with something…inventive, by morning.”

  “As long as it doesn’t involve me going outside on the balcony bare-assed again!” Dair warned ruefully. “Bathed in moonlight is one thing, even romantic, but being stark naked in broad daylight is something else!”

  He was something else, as far as Kat was concerned.

  Dair had turned his life around after being shot, remade himself, as had Lucien.

  It gave Kat hope that she would be able to do the same. Without anyone having to die so that she could be free of Sergei and his father once and for all.

  Especially not Dair.

  Kat didn’t care if she was never able to see him again, as long as he stayed safe from the Orlovs’ reprisals. She would do anything—

  “You’re thinking too loud again, Kat,” Dair murmured sleepily. “It’s keeping me awake.”

  “Sorry.” She gave him a quick kiss on the lips before snuggling down comfortably beside him.

  Her last thoughts were that she would do a Scarlett, and think of all this again tomorrow…