Exhaling forcibly to expel her agitation, she tried to luxuriate in the sights of Tokyo at night. The city was one of the most exotic and exciting places she’d ever been, and her life had taken her almost everywhere.
She soon gave up, resigned she’d see nothing during the hour’s drive but Raiden’s magnificent, wrathful face. Would feel nothing but regurgitated turmoil and searing memories.
Had it really been five years? The insane whirlpool of events as she’d reinvented herself since made her feel as if it had been fifty years. But his memory was so intense, it could have been five days since she’d last seen him. She hadn’t forgotten a thing about him. His beauty was as indescribable as she remembered, and his effect on her was as overpowering.
When she’d been sent to spy on him, all she’d known was that he was an American billionaire venture capitalist of Japanese origins. His business past was impeccable and his personal one unremarkable, having been born to a single mother who’d died when he’d been ten, placing him in the foster system until he’d been eighteen. Then he’d traveled the world before coming back to the States at twenty-six, and he’d been soaring through the venture capitalism field since. He’d been twenty-nine when she’d met him and already a billionaire. Now at thirty-four, he was at the undisputable top, with a handful of others, one of whom was Hiro.
But her recruiter was convinced Raiden was a former assassin, and had sent her to get intimate with Raiden and get solid proof. And she had. Through the full access Raiden had given her to his domain, she’d used her special training to breach his secret records and gotten that proof.
But it had been years of research later that had put together his real life story. What he himself hadn’t known when he’d been with her. It had been just months ago that she’d worked out just how he’d become that ninja assassin called Lightning.
He’d been two when he’d lost his family in an earthquake and tsunami that hit the rural Akita Prefecture in Japan. Taken to a shelter in the aftermath, he’d remained there for two years until his extraordinary agility had brought him to the attention of a “recruiter” for The Organization, a shadow operation that took children and turned them into unstoppable mercenaries who executed top-risk operations for the highest bidders. Pretending she was a relative, the recruiter had taken him only to sell him to The Organization.
He’d been among hundreds of boys taken from all over the world, kept segregated in a remote area in the Balkans, viciously trained and molded until they graduated to fieldwork. They performed missions under strict surveillance from their personal handlers. Death was the only punishment for any attempts at subordination or escape. But he’d been one of a few who’d ever escaped. She suspected some or even all of his partners in Black Castle Enterprises were also escapees.
She’d often wondered if he’d called himself Raiden, the god of thunder and lightning in Japan, to reflect his code name when he’d been the ultimate ninja warrior, so certain no one would ever tie him to his former identity. His cover was ingenious, after all, and it was a common enough name. As for Kuroshiro, that literally meant Black Castle. She’d also wondered if he’d picked it after the name of his joint enterprise with his partners, or if they’d taken his....
Suddenly she almost spilled out of the limo. Her driver had opened her door. She hadn’t even noticed they’d stopped.
Pulling herself together and out of the past, she thanked him, stepped out and walked into her building.
Looking around the chic foyer on her way to the elevator and her thirtieth-floor unit, she felt thankful all over again to Hiro for making it possible for her to be here.
When she’d first come to Japan just over a year ago and tried to rent a place, she’d learned what the Japanese phrase hikoshi bimbo meant. It literally meant “moving poor.” The humongous sum of cash that renters had to dish out up front invariably left them impoverished.
Since she’d had no cash in any sums, it hadn’t been an option. After she’d met Hiro, and he’d discovered she’d been sleeping on the floor of the UNICEF regional office where she worked, he’d been appalled and insisted on accommodating her.
She’d refused to stay in his mansion, since being in someone’s debt and in their domain was anathema to her. Autonomy and seclusion were a vital necessity to her. She’d also declined the exorbitant apartment he’d gotten her near his home. He’d protested that he had billions, was still around to spend them only thanks to her. She’d argued that even if the place came for free, it was too far from her work downtown.
In the end, he’d still gotten her a “mansion,” as recently built large apartments were called in Tokyo. The place was expensive, but now that she did some part-time consulting work for him, she could accept the home in lieu of a salary.
She now entered the apartment, sighed in pleasure at feeling cocooned in its sound-insulated exquisite mixture of modern and traditional Japanese ambiance. Kicking off her towering sandals, she moaned in relief as her feet flattened against the tatami, the traditional Japanese flooring made of rice straw with a covering of soft, woven igusa straw. Walking on it was physiotherapy all unto itself.
Tossing her wrap onto the coat rack, she wanted only to fall facedown on her equally therapeutic traditional Japanese bed and descend into a deep coma. It was a small blessing she had no work tomorrow.
Hopefully, after a day in her pajamas, she’d regain a semblance of the normalcy she’d worked so hard to achieve. A normalcy that seeing Raiden had pulverized all over again.
Crossing the living room on her way to her bedroom, she suddenly stopped when an electrifying sensation skittered up her spine. All her senses went haywire, telling her she wasn’t alone. Before they could tell her more, a voice came from
behind her, sending her every cell screaming.
“Welcome home, darling.”
Three
Her heart lodged into her throat, fright mingling dizzyingly with incredulity, dismay...and exhilaration.
Raiden.
He was here.
Feet away... Inches away... A breath away now.
Every nerve in her body fired in remembrance, in jubilation at the approach of the essence that had once been as familiar to her as her own. For five blazing months of pure passion and pleasure, before she’d had to sever the bond. She’d been bleeding inwardly ever since.
She had no idea how he was here. But from what she’d learned about him, in her constant search for his news, in her obsessive research of his past, she knew one thing. Raiden could do anything.
As to why he was here, did it matter? It was one more chance to be close to him. A chance that she’d thought she’d never be given again. An unexpected, priceless gift.