From Enemy's Daughter to Expectant Bride (The Billionaires of Blackcastle 1)

All troubled thoughts came to an end as he spread her thighs wide and slid down her trembling body.

Then he spoke against her molten feminine lips. “Let me ease the burning in your blood, querida.”

He had been doing so in every way but the one she craved.

She tried to close her legs, needing him, not release. “What about the burn in your blood?”

“You can ease that if you wish.”

“Oh, I wish, I so wish.”

It was what ameliorated the gnawing, when he let her worship him. Getting intimate with the daunting beauty and massive proportions of him sent a frisson of danger through her as she wondered if it was possible he’d fit inside her. But she couldn’t wait until he did, yearned for the pain she knew he had to inflict. She wanted it to hurt at first, needed him to brand her with agony as his.

But though the intimacy gave him release, it only drove her madder with hunger, and left him harder and more on edge.

“Then you shall have your wish. Right after I have mine.”

And he took her core in a hot, tongue-thrusting kiss and the world vanished in a whiteout of sensation....

* * *

“Can you please turn the anxious vibes down? They’re drilling holes in the hull.”

Rafael’s head snapped up at the sarcastic tone. He watched its owner blankly as Raiden sat down in his private jet’s plush seat, facing him.

As Raiden buckled his seat belt with a bedeviling look in his slanting eyes, Rafael’s aggravation shot to maximum again.

“I would,” he snarled, “if your damn pilot picked a route where I got cellular coverage.”

Raiden aka Lightning had asked him to accompany him to Tokyo five days ago. He’d had the biggest lead yet in his quest to establish his bloodline and he needed him to examine records that couldn’t be moved out of their institutes and temples and to come up with a pattern. He had. And Raiden had finally uncovered his legacy.

Rafael had only uncovered the meaning of agony.

Richard’s prediction about time worsening his condition had come to pass. But then, hadn’t it always been that bad? It was now a full month since he’d met Eliana, and he was fully submerged.

Since he’d left her side, he’d called her a dozen times per day. Given the opportunity, he would have had her on speakerphone all day. Would have had her on webcam all night.

Then came the torture of the twenty-four hour flights from and back to Rio. For twelve of those, cellular transmission was cut. Being unable to call her for that long frayed his nerves. On the outbound flight, he’d managed to rein in his discomfort. Now, he was going ballistic.

Raiden had remained respectful of his agitation at first. But now he was outright making fun of his condition.

“My pilot says there should be transmission any time now.” Raiden smoothed back the hair he’d cut short for the first time in his life, in preparation for entering the conservative upper crust of Japanese society. “But you still can’t turn on your phone, since we’re starting our descent.”

Rafael hurled at him an infuriated glance. “Why are you talking when you don’t have something useful to say?”

“Whoa, Numbers.” Raiden grinned, stretching his long legs, the eyes he knew froze p

eople in their tracks twinkling with mischief. “You were the last one, after Richard and Numair, that I thought I’d ever see in this state over a woman.”

“And in this state, I’m liable to do things the Numbers you know wouldn’t. So shut up, Lightning.”

Raiden didn’t shut up. Not until Rafael hurled state-of-the-art headphones at his thick skull. He outright guffawed then.

Caring nothing about their descent, Rafael had his phone out and turned on. Hands shaking with inexplicable and all-encompassing anxiety, he accessed his voice mail. There was one from Eliana.

Then the message began.

“Rafael...I—I’ve been in an accident.... They’re taking me to Copa D’or Hospital. Oh, God...where are you?”