Chapter 1
“So this is what you look like without your clothes on!”
Naked, Ethan froze silhouetted in the doorway of his Majorcan finca, every one of his inner alarm bells ringing at the sound of that female voice. Which was a damn sight more than the alarm system surrounding these ten acres of paradise had done when this woman made her way in here.
What was with that? He had installed the security himself. High-end tech. An alarmed fence around the whole area. Cameras. Motion sensors. The finca was also in a remote part of the Tramuntana range of mountains in Majorca. He should have been able to hear the sound of a car engine from miles away. All he’d heard was the usual nighttime clicking of the cicadas. But here she was, standing in the shadows inside his finca.
She was lucky she’d spoken before he realized she was there; otherwise, she might not be talking at all right now. Act first, ask questions later had been Ethan’s credo for some time now. It was the only thing that had kept him alive for the past six months.
“Your cock is impressive,” she added mockingly.
“You should see it when it’s fully aroused,” he taunted back, aware that cock was stirring in recognition and was semihard now that he was over his initial shock at the identity of the intruder.
“Another time, perhaps,” she drawled.
Ethan wanted to shock that mockery right out of her. “What are you doing here, Talia?” His vision had adjusted to the darkness inside the finca now, and he knew he’d scored a direct hit when saw Talia’s body tense.
She answered him several heartbeats later. “You know who I am…?”
Fuck, yeah, Ethan knew who she was. He might not have seen or heard a word from this woman for a little over three years—three years, one month, and six days, to be exact—but that sexily husky voice wasn’t something Ethan was likely to forget.
She was at least a foot shorter than his own six two, and looked as slender as he remembered. Her clothes were all dark. Her golden hair had been short when he knew her last, a pale halo about her beautiful face. It still looked fair but had grown long and now cascaded in loose curls down her back.
This woman had featured in a lot of his nighttime fantasies. Daytime ones too, if he was honest. And nowadays, Ethan made a point of being brutally honest with himself.
His eyes narrowed. “Natalya Krechenko. Twenty-four years old. Daughter of Ivan Krechenko and the late—”
“I’m Talia Morris, daughter of Ivor Morris,” she corrected.
“Aka, Teresa Kenton, daughter of Ian Kenton. Aka, Tonia Keys, daughter of Isaac Keys. Aka, Tilda Kent, daughter of Irving Kent. You should maybe have dyed your hair occasionally and mixed up the initials on the names a bit,” Ethan taunted, having named three of the aliases he knew she and her father had gone under for the last year of their disappearance. “All basically Natalya Krechenko,” he repeated remorselessly. “Twenty-four-year-old daughter of Ivan Krechenko and—”
“My father went missing ten days ago.”
“As in, he’s taken a trip without telling you where he’s gone?” he continued without missing a beat. “Or has someone from his past finally caught up with him, and he’s rotting at the bottom of a concrete pillar on some anonymous building site?”
“You bastard—”
Ethan moved so quickly, he doubted Talia even saw him coming. An expert in half a dozen martial arts, Ethan had her flat on her back on the cold tiled floor in three seconds. Both her hands were captured above her head by one of his, his naked thighs straddling hers as he easily pinned her down.
A move he instantly recognized as being a mistake when his cock immediately sprang from semihard to totally engorged the moment it came into contact with the silky skin at her bare midriff.
What the fuck was she wearing?
A glance down the length of her body revealed a dark, probably black leather waistcoat, then that eight inches of bare abdomen, and skintight black low-rider jeans.
Close to her like this, Ethan could see she was thinner than he remembered, her body now all sleek and defined lines. She also smelled fucking amazing. A heady mixture of coconut, flowers, and a female musk that caused his cock to throb.
Ethan’s gaze had completely adjusted to the darkness now, allowing him to see that long, curly golden hair. He was instantly beset with an image of entangling one of his hands in that hair, the other on her hip as he held her captive, on the bed, over the bed, on the floor, any-fucking-where, while he pounded his cock into her pussy.
He leaned forward until his face was only inches above the pale oval of hers. “Word of advice, sweetheart. Never allow the enemy to anger you enough to drop your defenses,” he said softly.
She ran her tongue nervously across her lips before answering. “You appear to be more vulnerable than me at the moment.” She glanced down at the thick length of his cock resting on her abdomen before looking up again. “Are you my enemy?”
“Depends on whether or not you’re mine.” Ethan looked at her through narrowed lids. Apart from his family and a few close friends, he had no idea who he could trust anymore. “Who sent you here, Talia?”
“No one sent me.”
“Then why are you here?”
“I told you, my father is missing.”
“Why should I believe you?”
“Why would I make something like that up?” she shot straight back.
“How did you know where to find me?” Ethan had bought the finca and surrounding land on the west coast of Majorca eighteen months ago, having discovered this wild and mountainous part of the island two years ago while searching for his kidnapped nephew. There was no phone, no neighbors; even his three brothers and sister didn’t know Ethan owned this place. It was where he came whenever he wanted to be alone.
He’d had no idea how much in need of that anonymity he was going to become six months ago.
And yet Talia had still found him here.
“On second thought, I’m not interested in your explanations.” He released Talia before standing up. “Just get the fuck away from me, and don’t ever come looking for me again.” He would dismantle all the security in the morning before using his own camouflaged helo to leave the island. His security was breached. It didn’t matter how or by whom when he was never coming back here.
It was no longer safe.
Not for him or anyone with him.
If Talia being here was as innocent as she claimed it was—and he had no real reason to suppose it wasn’t—then it wasn’t safe for her to be anywhere near him. If anything, he was currently as toxic, if not more so, than her father.
Ethan crossed the room to where he had left his clothes earlier before going down for his usual nighttime swim in his private cove. It was the height of summer, the temperatures at night almost as high as during the day. There was also less chance of his being seen if he went for a swim once it was dark.
When he turned back from pulling on and fastening his faded jeans, it was to find Talia still lying on the floor where he’d left her. “I said—”
“I heard you.” Talia rose slowly to her feet, still slightly winded from being thrown onto her back as much as by finding a naked Ethan on top of her. “Could we possibly have some lights on in here?” She needed to be able to see Ethan’s expressions when—if—they continued this conversation.
There was a click, followed by a small flame, and then a larger flame as Ethan lit a candle rather than turning on the overhead light Talia knew was run by the generator outside.
But the candlelight was enough for her to see Ethan in all his half-naked glory.
His damp dark hair was shorter than it had been three years ago, cut in more of a military style, and there was a day or so of dark stubble on the squareness of his jaw. Hazel eyes were narrowed and cold. The rest of Ethan’s features were just as imposing: high cheekbones, straight nose, with sculpted lips above a stern and uncompromising jaw.
That sternness was new, making him appear different from the too-good-looking-for-his-own-good and teasing man she remembered from three years ago. Remembered? The image of this man had haunted her days and her nights since the last time she’d seen him.
Ethan’s shoulders seemed wider, with droplets of water still beading his tanned skin. His chest and waist were all hard muscle and covered in a misting of dark hair across his nipples before veeing down those washboard abs and disappearing beneath the waistband of his jeans. He stood with his bare feet slightly apart, his hips and thighs lean and muscular. His body was tensed, as if ready to attack.
Talia felt a shiver of awareness down her spine as she recalled those same powerful thighs had been wrapped about her own only seconds ago. The length of his engorged and velvet-skinned cock had rested against her bare midriff, an arousal that was still visible in the bulge at the front of his jeans. The overwhelming smell of him had wrapped itself about her senses, salty and sharp from his swim in the sea, with an underlying seductive male musk that was all Ethan.
She closed her lids briefly as she firmly shut down those thoughts, willing her gaze to be as steady and unemotional as his, when she opened them again. “I need your help to find my father,” she maintained stubbornly.
Ethan’s brows rose. “You mean the Russian scumbag who raped his own country of its wealth for years before bailing to the west to be reunited with his billions of dollars?”
Talia winced, knowing her father deserved Ethan’s scorn. Ivan had done those things, and more. As a member of the Russian government, her father had known exactly how to remove the wealth, and exactly when to leave Russia several years after it had fractured into dozens of smaller, self-governing countries.
Ivan wasn’t the only one, of course, but her father’s crimes had gone undetected for many years before anyone realized, allowing him to continue to remove and accumulate that wealth in several banks around the world.
Talia had been only five when they finally left Russia, shortly after the death of her mother. She’d grown up as an American called Talia Morris, quickly forgetting her early years in Russia. Nor had she had any idea the lavish lifestyle she lived in the States with her father was being paid for with the wealth that rightly belonged to the Russian people.
“Yes, that’s exactly who I mean,” she confirmed huskily.
“No, thanks,” Ethan scorned. “Discovering we were working for Ivan Krechenko isn’t something Knight Security cares to advertise in the brochure.”
Talia could understand that too. Once she was old enough to go to college, but still in complete ignorance as to how her father had accumulated his wealth, Talia had informed her father she wanted to go to England to study economics. To her surprise, her father, who had never denied her anything she’d asked for up to that point, had said no. He claimed it wasn’t safe for her to live away from home, that she would be too vulnerable to his enemies. It was the first Talia had heard of her father having any enemies.
She’d grown up on an enclosed and guarded estate in New England, attending a local private school as a day student. Bodyguards had been such a part of her life for so long, she no longer even saw them, certainly hadn’t ever questioned why they were there.
At the age of eighteen, she still hadn’t appreciated how serious the situation was, wheedling and pouting for the next year until she got her way. But her father had only agreed to her going to England that September with the proviso Talia had her own detail of bodyguards with her at all times. He had hired an English company, Knight Security, owned by Ethan’s family, to provide that security.
Talia could still remember how hard and how fast her heart had begun to beat the first time she’d seen Ethan. Ten or twelve years her senior, he was a couple of inches over six feet tall, with a lean and yet muscular body beneath a formal black suit. Overlong dark hair rested on the collar of his gray shirt. His eyes were hazel but primarily green with a gold circle about the iris, and glittering with intent in a handsome face which could have graced the pages of any of the glossy fashion magazines she bought each month.
Her nineteen-year-old self had an instant crush on him.
Not that he’d ever returned her interest. No matter how hard she flirted with him, Ethan treated her with the same offhand affection as he would an annoying little sister, which he apparently had, rather than the grown woman Talia wanted him to see.
Her bodyguards from Knight Security worked on a rotation basis, so she only saw Ethan three times a week. But she had lived for the days Ethan would be on duty, always making sure to wear her sexiest outfits on those days. For all the notice Ethan took of her, she might as well have been wearing a sack and a paper bag over her head.
It had continued in that way for almost two years, and then there had been an attempt on her father’s life. A bomb had gone off beneath the SUV as he was driven home along the private road to their estate after attending a business meeting.
Her father had survived, but the two bodyguards in the front of the vehicle had been killed. The bombing had made news headlines all around the world as questions were asked as to why and what terrorist group was responsible for the attack. An anonymous phone call to one of those newspapers had revealed Ivor Morris as being Ivan Krechenko, a man wanted by the Russian government after defrauding them of billions of dollars.
Talia had still been in shock and denial of the sensational accusations when her father had her removed from England so quickly, she’d had no chance to even say good-bye to the friends she had made there. Or to Ethan.
It had been over three years now, she and her father spending all of that time under half a dozen different aliases—it had been the shock of learning Ethan knew the last three of those aliases that had unnerved her earlier and so allowed him to get the upper hand—never settling in one place long enough for his enemies, and she still had no idea who they were, to find them again.
Until ten days ago.
Talia, accompanied by two of the bodyguards Ivan had brought with him from Russia, had gone shopping in the small village near the villa they were renting in the interior of the island of Nassau in the Bahamas. When she returned, she hadn’t been able to find her father or the two men protecting him that day. Nor did any of the off-duty bodyguards or servants in the villa know where they were. Talia didn’t believe her father would ever willingly have left her on her own, which meant someone had to have taken him.
She had been frozen with fear for the next night and day, waiting to see if someone would contact her to ask her to hand over ransom money if she wanted her father back. No one had.
After twenty-four hours of doing nothing, Talia knew she had to take some sort of action. The problem was she had no idea who she could trust and who she couldn’t. Her father’s bodyguards had all been with him for years, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t be bribed into betraying him if they were as tired of the nomadic life they were forced to lead as Talia was.
When the ice inside her finally melted and she could think again, Talia had known she had to get away from the Bahamas and her father’s bodyguards. There was only one person she trusted to ask for help.
Ethan Knight.
He might never have acknowledged the teenage crush she’d had on him, but he had treated her with that casual affection of a little sister. Besides, there really was no one else for Talia to turn to for help.
Evading the bodyguards hadn’t been as difficult as she’d thought. Without her father’s compelling presence, and no idea when or if he would return and consequently pay them, they seemed less inclined to hang around.
Finding Ethan to ask for his help had been another matter entirely.
The receptionist at Knight Security would only tell Talia that Ethan Knight was on extended leave. That no, she had no idea when he would be returning. Talia had abruptly ended the call when the woman offered to put her through to one of the other Knight brothers. Talia had known all four of the brothers five years ago, of course, along with half a dozen of the other Knight Security employees. But it was Ethan she trusted, and no one else.
It had taken her five days to track him down to this remote finca on the island of Majorca, the amount of smoke and mirrors protecting his ownership enough to tell her he didn’t want to be found. With that in mind, Talia had spent another four days watching him from a neighboring mountainside before attempting to approach him.
He’d had no visitors during those four days, nor had he left the perimeter of the ten acres of land she knew he owned. So Talia had watched and waited, learning Ethan’s routine, gauging when was the best time to bypass his security so she could get inside undetected. She was sure, if she could speak to Ethan face-to-face, that he would at least listen to what she had to say. His late-night swims had provided the ideal opportunity for her to get inside the finca and wait for him to return.
“How the fuck did you find me?” Ethan scowled his displeasure.
She shrugged. “I couldn’t exactly go back to college or find a job, so there hasn’t been a lot else for me to do the last three years except go online every chance I could. It’s amazing the amount of information you can find out there on the internet, if you know how.”
“You taught yourself to hack?”
She gave an inclination of her head. “I’m good at it too.”
Ethan knew she had to be. No one but the best could have gotten through the firewall he had placed about his ownership of this place. Even Zander, Knight Security’s top tech guy, had no idea Ethan owned this property in Majorca. Had owned, because this place would be off Ethan’s hands in less than twenty-four hours. If Talia could find him here, then so could anyone else, if they dug deeply enough. “Still doesn’t explain how you got in here.”
“I arrived on Majorca four days ago,” Talia continued. “I found this finca and quickly worked out by a process of elimination that parking my rental car five miles away and walking the rest of the way meant you wouldn’t hear me coming.”
That explained why he hadn’t heard the noise of an engine tonight. “How did you get through my security?”
She bent down to take a thin black device from the backpack she had obviously brought with her. “I built this myself. It blocks the sensors and allows me through,” she explained as Ethan continued to look at her.
“The apple didn’t fall far from the tree, did it?” he scoffed to hide his appreciation of Talia’s abilities. Maybe Knight Security should think about employing her— What the fuck! Wasn’t his life fucked-up enough without adding Talia Krechenko to the mix?
She drew her breath in sharply. “You can insult me all you like, Ethan, as long as you agree to help me.”
“No.”
She blinked. “No?”
He nodded. “N. O.”
“I can pay you—”
“You can keep your father’s fucking blood money,” he snarled, hands clenched at his sides.
“I earned this money myself—”
“Hacking illegally,” he sneered.
“Maybe,” she allowed softly. “But it’s still my money.”
Ethan hardened his heart to the hurt he could see in Talia’s eyes. Beautiful dark blue eyes that had once looked at him with none of her emotions hidden. Invitation. Desire. Lust.
He had been thirty-one years old when he first met the girl he had known as Talia Morris. What the fuck was he supposed to have done with the lust of a nineteen-year-old?
Wait for her to grow up, he’d decided when his own desire for her refused to go away, no matter how many other women he fucked. If Talia still looked at him that way when she was twenty-one, then he would seriously think about accepting her invitation. That twelve-year age gap would still exist, but at least he could tell himself she was aged in her twenties, just.
Except Talia had disappeared only weeks before she reached her twenty-first birthday, after the attempt on her father’s life and the scandal that followed when his true identity was revealed. Ethan had looked for her and her father for the first couple of years, without any success. He had assumed Krechenko had used all those billions to ensure the forged identities he and Talia had were the very best.
Zander Buchanan, who occasionally still did some tech work for Knight Security, but now protected only his wife, the singer Kate Stewart, had been the one to find them six months ago. Ethan hadn’t even known the other man was still looking for them until Zander decided to discuss what he’d found with Ethan and his brothers. All Ethan had been able to think was, once the mission he was working on was over, now that he had a name and a location, he was going to see Talia again. He wanted to know if she had grown into that beautiful woman he’d suspected she might.
Only days later, that mission had blown up in his face, after which he had known to keep his distance from any and all people who could be hurt by his actions.
Talia was no longer the beautiful and slightly spoiled teenager Ethan remembered. Oh, she was as beautiful as he had thought she might be. Her bone structure was such that she always would be. But there was a new maturity in her face, as if she had seen too much to be able to keep the innocence that had made her so appealing three years ago. Her eyes were wary, skin stretched taut across those high cheekbones, her cheeks hollow, her chin stubbornly determined. Her mouth, he also noted, was still as full and sexy.
Merely looking at those plump and pouting lips, imagining them stretched about his cock as she took him to the back of her throat, was enough to maintain the monstrous hard-on that was pressing so painfully against the zip of his jeans.
“No,” he repeated flatly.
Those beautiful eyes flooded with tears, tears she quickly blinked away to stop them from falling. “I have no one else.”
Ethan’s chest tightened. “You don’t have me either,” he bit out cruelly.
Cruel to be kind.
There was still a possibility—remote, but still there—that Talia was somehow involved with the man hunting him.
And if not, then Ethan didn’t want Talia involved in his shit.
There was also a darkness inside him now, one that reared its head when he least expected it, and he was beset with the memory of the dying breaths of a man who had definitely deserved to die. It would just have been better if it hadn’t been by Ethan’s hand.
But even now, hunted as he was by a father’s need for vengeance, Ethan couldn’t regret what had happened. Even though it had meant he couldn’t go to Talia as he had planned.
A necessary sacrifice when he remembered the agony of Shelley’s parents as they waited for news of their daughter and Ethan had to tell them she was never coming home. That the Albanian monster that was Vaso Alizoti had killed her before Ethan could get to her and save her. Tortured and killed her, but Shelley’s parents hadn’t needed to know all the details. Ethan wished he didn’t know them either.
He had been the one to find Shelley’s cut and mutilated body. A beautiful young woman reduced to a pile of raw flesh and broken bones. It was something he would never ever forget.
The mere thought of Alizoti senior getting his hands on Talia and doing that to her in retaliation for Ethan having killed his murdering bastard of a son had been enough to stop Ethan from going anywhere near her.
Talia’s frown was pained. “You aren’t the Ethan I remember.”
His laugh was harsh and without humor. “Maybe that’s because you were too busy trying to come up with ways of getting into my pants to really see the man I am.”
Her cheeks suffused with embarrassed color. “You knew I wanted you?”
“Of course I fucking knew— Never mind.” He gave a dismissive shake of his head, not willing to get into that discussion. “Do you think the Russians finally caught up with your father?”
“That’s what I need to find out.”
He nodded. “The best I can offer you is to speak to my brother Gabriel on your behalf. He might be willing to look into it for you. But the final decision as to whether he trusts you and your story will be up to him,” he warned. “Our last association with your family didn’t end well.”
“How are they all?” She seemed relieved to change the subject. “Your brothers Gabriel, Asher, Caleb, and your cousin, Ian? I saw in the newspapers a couple of years ago that Zander had married the singer Kate Stewart, and they now have a couple of kids.”
There was no missing the eagerness in her voice to hear about the lives of a group of men she had known for a short time in her life. Telling Ethan that her life on the run with her father, no matter how luxurious, had to have also been extremely lonely.
“Two boys,” Ethan answered. “My brothers and Ian are all married too, and also have children. Ian has twins, a boy and a girl.” He was godfather to Simon Ethan.
“But they still all work at Knight Security?”
Ethan nodded. “Talk to Gabriel. He might be willing to assign a couple of them to help you.”
“But not you.”
“Not me.”
Talia drew in a ragged breath. “What did I ever do to you for you to distrust me this way?”
He scowled darkly. “Your father is a fucking criminal.”
“I didn’t know that until three years ago.”
“Ignorance is no excuse.”
“But it seems it’s enough to hate me?”
“I don’t hate you.”
Talia snorted. “You could have fooled me.”
“Not trusting you has nothing to do with hating you.”
“I trust you.”
“Then you shouldn’t.”
“Why not?”
The tightness in Ethan’s chest began to burn, his cock becoming an aching, demanding throb. “You need to leave now, Talia,” he warned between gritted teeth.
He knew his emotions were still too raw, too close to the surface, for him to maintain control for much longer. He had wanted this woman for too damn long, had been on the point of going to her to see if she still wanted him, and then he had fucked it all up when he eliminated Vaso Alizoti.
Accidentally eliminated.
But Vaso’s father didn’t care how it had happened, only that it had.
Ethan had been fighting for his life when he killed that bastard, filled with thoughts of how he would have felt if had been Talia instead of Shelley that Alizoti had carved up for his own amusement.
Talia tilted her head as she studied Ethan. His hazel eyes were icy cold, his lips a thin and uncompromising line, a nerve pulsing in his tightly clenched jaw. His muscular body was tensed, hands curled into fists. Ready to spring forward. To attack.
None of the photographs she had found of Ethan as she searched for and then found him had prepared her for the flesh-and-blood man now standing in front of her. A man who was filled with a rage that threatened to burn out of control, making ash of all and everything that stood in his way.
“Why?” Talia had no idea if she was asking why she had to leave, or why Ethan had never wanted her as she had wanted him. Still wanted him. After five years, she doubted that would ever change.
Ethan snarled, “Because if you don’t, I’m going to show you how much I’m not the Ethan you remember and throw you over the back of that sofa, rip down your jeans and panties, and fuck you until you scream for mercy.”