NINE

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That morning Raven’s ringing cellphone had woken them up. Before the first ring had completed its drone, he was up, seated on the edge of the bed answering the call. With a brisk, “Hang on a minute” into the handset, he’d put the device to his shoulder and turned his face in her direction, though he didn’t twist his body far enough to actually look at her.

When he’d told her that he had to take the call in private, Zara forced herself out of bed with a yawn and wrapped herself in her kimono. She got as far as the kitchen before she realized she had been dismissed from her own bed. Since there was no point in arguing with him while he was on the phone, she went to work making breakfast, which it turned out she had plenty of time to do because it was half an hour later that she saw him again.

She was filling a glass of orange juice when he came out of the bedroom. “Good morning,” Zara said, setting the full glass on the breakfast table next to the place she had set for him. Busying herself with presenting breakfast and setting the table took her mind away from the questions this development in their relationship raised.

Asking him to spend the night had felt like a good idea at the time. But daylight was harsh and brought out every neuroses. They’d met under unusual circumstances and Zara wasn’t even sure what a creature of the night ate for breakfast or how comfortable he was with being here. Had he stayed because he was interested in building a relationship with her or was it just for the mission?

She wasn’t even sure what she wanted from him. It was obvious she would have to rely on him to guide her through whatever Grant was doing, yet he’d made no declaration that he would do so. Hanging on to the fact that he’d come to her even after saying he wouldn’t, Zara figured this situation wasn’t clear-cut for him either.

“Morning,” he returned, but stayed close to her bedroom door, twenty feet from her current position next to the table in front of her open plan kitchen. He didn’t move much, she’d noticed that about him before. But his eyes scanned the space, left to right, up and down, but she had no idea what he was looking for.

Choosing to ignore his quirk, she tried to put him at ease with conversation. “Who was on the phone?” she asked.

“An associate,” he said. Observing how he was fully clothed, and keeping his distance, she thought he might try to rush off. But before he did, she had to confirm one fact that had occurred to her while making breakfast.

Exhaling through her nose, Zara propped a hand on the back of the chair beside her and flicked her hair from her face. “Look, I know this is a dumb question to ask now, given, you know...”

“But?”

Loosening in deference to the inevitability of her question, she asked, “Are you married?”

Divulging no hint as to the answer, he stayed still. “Didn’t you ask me that already?”

“No,” she said, raising a finger and cocking a hip to swoop around the table toward him. “No, I asked if you had a girlfriend and technically a wife wouldn’t be a girlfriend, would she?”

“Technically...” he said, tilting his head in a way that could concede her point.

She shrugged. “You seem like the kind of guy to whom technicalities would matter.”

“I am,” he said. “But I’m not married.”

Getting her chance to look at him in the light, she paused to squint and brought her hands to her hips. Tall and broad she’d already known, but she hadn’t realized how his dark brown hair had lighter tones through it that caught in the early morning sunshine flowing into her living room. The darkness remained in his eyes, but his complexion was warm, and the hard angles of his face fit with the image she had of him in her mind.

Rough around the edges, he had straight white teeth and keenness in his manner. Seeing him like this in the natural light, he became a completely different animal. Not a less dangerous one, but somehow more real, more human, like a man she could hold on to.

“That was a long call to be all business,” she said. “Are you going to give me an excuse now and run out of here?”

“I kept my end of the bargain,” he said. “I stayed until breakfast.”

She didn’t want him to run away, not when she felt like she was making progress. “You haven’t eaten anything,” she said, glancing back at the table. “I made blueberry pancakes. There’s fruit and toast and juice.” Zara silenced herself before she went into full-on rant mode.

“And coffee?” he asked, but he had to be able to smell it.

Smiling, she took that question as interest. Even if all he stayed for was the coffee, it was a start. “And coffee,” she said with a nod. Tiptoeing over to him, she curled her fingers around his wrist and began to walk backwards, guiding him the direction of the table. Being with him here, like this, without the intensity of night, was strange. Still, he seemed as assured as ever, leaving her nervous about voicing her uncertainty. “You told me your word was the most precious thing you could give.”

Implying he might be reneging on the deal was enough to provoke a frown. “Do I have your trust?” he asked, seizing the chance to talk business. Taking control of their movement, he grasped the back of her neck and turned her around to push her forward, though with his elbow bent, she was bumped along by the breadth of his rigid chest too. “You said if I stayed until breakfast that I would.”

Business was his comfort zone and that was something she could identify with. “Sit and eat,” she said, pleased, at least, for the chance that she might get some answers. “And tell me what the hell we’re mixed up in.”

Zara tried to move away, but his grip on her neck tightened to hold her against him. Burying his face in her hair, Raven dragged in a long loud breath that made her shudder and her thoughts of business diminished. “You smell like sex,” he mumbled.

He spoke so matter-of-fact, but her waist quivered and lightened in response to his statement because it reminded her that they’d been naked together all night.

“I haven’t been in the shower,” she said, twisting around to face him so she could extricate herself from his grasp. Sweeping her hair from her face, Zara prodded a finger into his chest to delay making eye contact. “And neither have you.” In the light, she hadn’t been this up close to him, and it was unsettling that his stature was no less formidable during the day. She was imprisoned between him and the table. He let her go and leaned over to rest his hands on the back of the dining chair pressed to her spine, eating up the last slither of space between their bodies. “Which of course you wouldn’t have because you don’t get naked anywhere that isn’t your home.” Her mumbled words were a return to her previous awkwardness.

“Disappointed by that, aren’t you?” he asked. Curling his fingers around her neck again, he tried to angle her face upward, but he had to use his other hand to tip up her chin and make it happen. “Come here.”

On her tiptoes, she still had to crane her neck to meet his mouth when he kissed her, but her stiff muscles ceased to object when she got a taste of him. Although not a plundering kind of kiss like those he bestowed on her in bed, his tongue still felt the same. His strength reassured her enough that her feeling of being intimidated waned.

She felt herself falling, like she’d just slipped from a cliff and was hurtling toward the rocks and waves below. One landing would kill her, the other would set her free, and she had no idea, which would be her destiny. His kiss erased her anxiety and reminded her of all he’d done to protect her. He might be a thug most of the time, but he kissed her like she was his sun, the source of energy he needed to be as strong as he was. It could be that her feelings were a symptom of his impressive physique, because every time he touched her, he reminded her of his vigor. When he kissed her, he singled her out to be the center of his world. With him shielding her from harm, she felt like the most precious jewel in the world.

“God, you’re tall,” she said when he slid his finger away from her chin. The corner of his mouth tipped up, and the affect that small change had on the intention of his gaze made her almost choke on her own breath.

Leaving her place in front of him, she moved around the circular table. He kept hold of her neck for as long as he could, but his fingers eventually drifted away. Retrieving the coffee pot from the kitchen, she filled two mugs that were on the table. Zara pushed one across the table to the position opposite hers, then seated herself and gulped her hot caffeine.

“Are you going to sit down?” she asked, lifting her eyes over her mug.

He was examining the table in such a way that provoked her to examine it too, except she saw nothing that would warrant such scrutiny. “I don’t... I don’t traditionally do breakfast around a...”

Glad that she wasn’t the only one unnerved, and that she had the chance to put him at ease, Zara laughed and reached over to put a piece of toast on a plate. “Then I hope you enjoy this.”

Straining his eyes toward the window, Raven blocked the daylight with an open hand and pulled out a chair. Sitting sideways in the chair, he put an elbow on the table and snagged the coffee mug to glug down the liquid, keeping his hand up and his attention on the window the whole time.

“I thought that spies liked to be able to see the door,” she said, putting jelly on her toast, then pointing her knife at the front door which was in the corner behind him.

He didn’t turn. “Someone comes through the door I’ve got plenty of time to turn around and shoot him in the heart. This here,” he said, waving an arm at the wall of windows. “This is a fucking death trap. Have you considered window treatments?”

“How do you know what a window treatment is?” she asked, putting aside her knife to bite into her toast.

His gaze flicked to her. “Window treatments save lives, trust me. They’re a pain in the fucking ass for a guy like me... and a life saver.”

“I never would’ve expected you to say anything like that, beau,” she said, picking up her coffee in the hand that wasn’t occupied by her toast.

His sneer stuck to the windows. “The light shines clear in this window too,” he said. “You’re at a serious disadvantage in this place.”

Having had similar thoughts about the sniper who took out Tim, she glanced at the windows then back to Raven before offering an explanation. “I love my windows and I love the light.”

“You can love it when I’m not here,” he said, pushing his mug onto the table and springing to his feet. “Do you have a hammer?”

“A hammer?” she asked, lowering her toast before she bit into it.

“Yeah, you know, bang, bang, nails, wall... I’ll use the butt of my gun if I have to, but if I shoot a hole in your ceiling in the process... Do you have upstairs neighbors?”

Shoving away from the table, she put aside her toast and mug. Retrieving her toolbox from under the sink, she brought it into the living room and his expression lit when he took it from her and dropped it onto the floor. Falling onto his knees to scrape around in the haphazard arrangement of tools, Raven muttered something to himself. Eventually he rose with a hammer in one hand and a couple of loose nails in the other. He snagged the throw from the back of the couch and went to the window.

Zara sat back down and continued with her breakfast, catching an occasional glance over her shoulder at him as he nailed her throw to the wall in order to cover two of her windows.

“Better?” she asked when he was finished and was discarding the tools.

“The material isn’t thick enough to provide complete cover,” he said, backing away to admire his work. “Not with full sun working against us... But it will have to do.”

Grabbing his coffee mug, he didn’t sit opposite her, he came around and sat at the place beside her, but he pulled his chair closer to hers and sat side on again, still facing the windows.

“You hate windows,” she said. This was the worst place in the world for him to be if he had a window or sunlight phobia.

“I just want to be closer to you, baby,” he said, but he wasn’t even looking at her, he was studying the uncovered windows further down the wall. He closed one eye and she touched his forehead, sweeping her hand in a crescent around his face to his chin.

Hoping to alleviate his concern, she made a suggestion. “Do you want to go back into the bedroom? There’s only one window and it has a curtain. The sunlight won’t bother you.”

“If we go in there, we’ll fuck, and we don’t have time for that,” he said. He removed her hand from his face and held it in both of his to kiss the back of her fingers. “Fuck it. Now is as good a time as any.”

Further perplexed, she frowned. “For what?” she asked, her toast now forgotten.

“Death,” he said and his eyes bounced to hers where he must have read her surprise. “I’m sorry. I’m not usually...”

She smiled, not worried about danger while Raven was around. “Awake in the daylight, I get it.”

He dropped her hand and shunted his chair back so that they could no longer touch. “Who threatened you?”

His words were as clear and determined as his eyes and it was as if his previous agitation had never existed. Apparently, once he decided he was ready to die, everything else became irrelevant.

That he remembered what she’d said about being threatened surprised her, but again it hinted at the prospect of him caring for her. “Grant,” she said, brushing crumbs from her hands. If this was it and they were going to be honest then they both had to answer some questions, so she wasn’t going to play around.

“Why did he do that?”

“Because I asked him about the product.”

“What do you know about it?” he asked.

“What do you know?” Zara wasn’t going to be the only one answering questions and she wanted to make sure he knew that.

“You’re sure you want to do this? You make this decision, you come inside, and there’s no getting back out. You belong to me... Are you ready to be mine?”

If this was his way of asking her to choose him over Grant then he wasn’t exactly being subtle about it, but she had to be impressed with how steadfast he was.

“Who was on the phone?”

“The chief. A man named Art,” he said. “He was pretty surprised I spent the night here. I told him it would be worth it.”

“Is that what this is? What the sex is for? Your way to buy the information you need?”

“I need an inside man,” he said, bounding to the edge of his chair and resting his forearm on the table. “I need to know who Grant is selling the device to and then I need to take that person down before they can use it.”

“They’re terrorists?” she whispered, bringing her attention from his hand—which hung loose over the edge of the table—up to his eyes.

“That’s right.”

“Kahlil’s boss, he’s a prospective buyer and a man named Sutcliffe is too.”

“Yes,” he said, nodding slowly as if trying to ease her into revealing more. “Albert Sutcliffe.”

“I spoke to him,” she said, moistening her drying lips.

“What did he say?” Raven asked.

She could give him the details, but she was still basking in astonishment that a conversation like this was a part of her life at all. Except they had to make progress, leaving her no time to deal with the bombshell that terrorists were now part of her breakfast conversation.

Eager to know what she was up against, she made eye contact. “Tell me what it is,” she asked, mimicking his composed demeanor.

Exhaling, he sat back, widening his stance with his feet flat on the floor and his hands linked on the top of his head. Conceding that this wasn’t a time for a face-off, he loosened and dropped his hands.

“It started in the seventies,” he said, touching a teaspoon next to the sugar bowl, which neither of them had used. “Research and Development at Cormack Industries filed a patent because that’s what R&D Departments do. Someone had an idea and patented it. But technology wasn’t up to speed with the minds of the engineers. It was put in a file and forgotten about. Periodically, it was brought back out and some work was done through the years. It wasn’t until the nineties when miniaturization became more efficient that the possibilities grew. Finding appropriate software was difficult and wireless technology wasn’t then what it is now.”

“I still don’t know what it is,” she said.

Disregarding the spoon, he slid his forearm onto the table. “The original idea was benign enough. Doctors were spread thinly then as they are now and couldn’t be in various places at once. It was theorized that a device could be built that could be preloaded with medications. Then, based upon measurements taken by qualified nurses and medics, doctors could administer the drugs from a remote location.”

“What’s wrong with that?” she asked.

“Nothing,” he said. Shifting to the edge of his chair, he opened his hands to gesture. “In theory, there is nothing wrong with that and that’s why they patented their ideas. It was in the eighties when remote access became a possibility that other uses were considered and then twenty years ago...”

“What?” All of this might be old news for him, but she was amazed at the breadth of what she didn’t know.

“The connection was made to incorporate forms of medicine that could be aerosolized, preventing the need for needles, and that was when Grant McCormack Senior put a stop to it. He shut down the project, fired anyone who disagreed with him and demanded that the files be shredded.”

She squinted, not understanding why he would make that decision. “Why would he...”

Still giving nothing away about his own sentiments, Raven explained the facts. “Because a machine that can expel specific quantities of a gas at whatever intervals its master dictates is a terrifying thing. Maybe not by itself, but we’re on the cutting edge of technology here. Advisors were talking about AI and how the idea could develop until doctors weren’t needed at all. They speculated that patients could be kept in isolation cells while a doctor worked from an office, treating patients who would be hundreds or thousands of miles away.” He paused, giving her time to absorb the possibilities. “McCormack Senior didn’t like that vision of the future. Talk became about integrating defibrillators and writing code that could help the machine decide to keep patients alive based upon pre-determined criteria.”

Amazed, she wanted to hear more. “Oh my God,” she exhaled.

“Protecting a system like that from hacking and other abuses would be a full-time job. So engineers offered suggestions of a kill switch hardwired to shut down the device... but that’s incorporating an inherent weakness, right? ‘Cause what’s to stop the hackers getting to the kill switch and taking out all of the patients in the institution with the click of a mouse?”

Ok, so she could understand how someone wouldn’t want to be a part of that. “So why wasn’t it over after that? If McCormack Senior was so against—“

His brows rose a fraction. “Because twenty years ago, before his orders could be carried out, something happened to Grant McCormack Senior.”

“What—” Her mouth opened as her eyes crept around to him. “The accident.”

“If you want to call it that,” he said, sitting back again. “Accident, murder, whatever, McCormack wasn’t breathing anymore. The company went through an appropriate mourning period and Frank Mitchell took over in lieu of Grant Junior coming of age.”

Processing the epic possibilities that could become realities if this device fell into the wrong hands, Zara tried to be pragmatic instead of emotional. Taking a breath, she brought them to the present. “So why is this an issue now?” she asked. “If everything was destroyed...”

“It wasn’t,” he said. “About five years ago, after the discovery of ultra-thin aluminum batteries, Grant Junior was digging around in the CI archives trying to figure out where the innovation could be applied to defunct ideas. That’s when he found this old dusty project and brought it to Frank.

“Grant thought it was the right time to develop it. Miniaturization was possible. We had the software for remote access and wireless is about as good as it could get. It wouldn’t work over thousands of miles, but it would do for a single hospital. Frank vetoed it and flew into a rage about this being why his best friend Grant Senior had died. Frank demanded that it never be mentioned again.”

“A year,” she murmured, making some mental connections. She pushed out her chair enough to turn toward him. The timeline coincided with the death of Grant’s guardian. Had he waited until Frank had died and then gone against his mentor’s express wishes? “Grant told me he’d been working on this product for almost a year. He said he was doing what his father and Frank failed to do.” All the pieces fit and she couldn’t doubt that Raven was telling the truth. “But, why terrorists?”

His shoulder rose in a slack shrug. “I don’t know. The right minds would have to be on the development of the technology to bring it into the twenty-first century. The last we know it was worked on was before Grant Senior died. Maybe Grant can’t get the tech up to standard without drawing attention to what he’s doing. But as for Grant’s motives for doing this... I haven’t figured that out yet.”

“The original patent was filed March third 1974,” she said.

“How do you know that?”

“I saw the paperwork.”

“He let you see it?” he asked, either impressed or incredulous.

“I...” Squirming in her seat, she righted the spoon he’d been toying with. “I might have snuck into Grant’s office when he was out and uh... maybe, uh... broken into his desk. Though it’s not breaking into something if you find the secret key and unlock it, is it?”

Any hope she had that he would reassure her vanished when she lifted her attention and discerned the hint of amusement in his expression. “You’re a good girl, Zara.”

Her mouth fell open and the air rushed out of her lungs as though she’d just been punched in the chest. Rising up, she wanted to put space between them. In the act of backing away, the chair she’d been sitting on clattered to the floor on its side, but Zara didn’t think to right it. Still retreating until her shoulders hit the wall beside the throw he’d pinned to the wall, she couldn’t breathe.

Raven was on his feet in a crouch, reaching for her as he approached. But, as one of her hands ascended to close over her gaping mouth, the other flew out in front of her and he stopped. It was obvious from his expression that he didn’t know what to do about this unexpected development. From the strength of her abrupt action, he had to think she’d just flipped her crazy switch.

Except she hadn’t. Zara wished it were that easy. She’d just figured out who he was and the jolt of that revelation made her forget how to breathe and about every danger in their lives. When her fingers did eventually descend from her mouth, she still couldn’t close it. The shock was just too much.

“Fuck,” she murmured.

“What? What is it, baby? Talk to me.”

Her hands were shaking. She’d never experienced such instant cold, but then she’d never had a surprise as profound as this one. “You’re... you’re Brodie,” she whispered and he staggered back wearing his own stunned expression. “That’s how you know so much about this device and the company. And why you know about Grant Senior and Frank. That’s how you know where Grant was on the night of his parents’ death... You were there. You’re... you’re Grant’s little brother.”

After a brief pause, his arm swung out and up to press the back of his fingers to his mouth. Rubbing them back and forth, Raven took his time to absorb what she’d discovered. Then, rising to full height, his shoulders went back.

“I guess I got the right girl,” he said. “You’re a helluva detective. How did you figure that out?”

Explaining it to him helped her to make sense of her clarity. “You said those words to me last night and I don’t know... there was something familiar in your voice. I didn’t think much about it. But now, looking at you when you said it... Grant said the same thing to me, he called me a good girl, and you used the same inflection. It just... You’re his brother, aren’t you?”

Good humor was gone and his harsh expression matched the steel reinforcing his stance. “That’s right... What are you gonna do about it?”

This new piece of information only caused more questions and confusion. “Why can’t you...? Why can’t you just go to him and ask what’s going on?”

Averting his eyes, he took his time, no doubt trying to figure out how to explain himself. “I haven’t spoken to my brother in”—his bottom lip came out at the same time one of his shoulders popped up and down in a shrug meant to dismiss what he was thinking—“ten years, maybe fifteen... Yeah, fifteen,” he said as though he had just figured that out. “I was eighteen.”

Feeling more connected to him now that she knew the truth, Zara tried to locate her composure. “He never talks about his family,” she said.

Holding himself at a distance from his emotions, he kept his gaze fixed on her. “That’s one thing we have in common then.”

“But after your parents died...”

Reconnecting with the emotions he usually tried to hide, anger bled into his words. “After my parents died, he refused to go back to the house and I refused to have anything to do with the company that killed my father. Frank took Grant and I went with Art, my mother’s brother... and that was it.”

Mystified, she couldn’t believe it was so simple. “That was it?” she asked, keeping her distance. “You’re brothers.”

The man who had been looking after her, the man she had kissed and had sex with... he was her boss’ brother, she still couldn’t believe this was true.

“By blood only,” he said. “Grant got the company and I got the estate. We have nothing to do with each other’s lives.”

Brodie McCormack hadn’t been heard of for years and Grant had never ever mentioned a brother. Replaying her experiences with Brodie, she realized he’d revealed more of himself to her than she’d given him credit for. Taking her to White Falls to show her his childhood home, the land he had to still own, that was about more than discrediting Grant. He was trusting her with his location. Grant wouldn’t have been the only one to see his parents die on that water beneath them. Brodie knew Grant had witnessed the atrocity because he’d seen it too.

Now she knew who he was, knew his family, and his upbringing, which helped her to understand the glimmers of polish beneath the tarnish he used as a mask. “You’re a myth. You vanished when you were a teenager. People think you’re dead. You took me to White Falls and showed me that light... The McCormack land is a myth, just like the youngest McCormack son. The light on the water, on the peninsula, is that where you live?”

“When I’m in the country, yeah,” he said, audibly displeased at the turn of this conversation. He wasn’t happy that she’d figured out his identity. “We’ve got some pretty nasty security though, so I wouldn’t think about coming trick or treating.”

“Don’t joke, Rave—” Except now she knew his full name and it wasn’t Raven. As many questions sprung up as she had answers. Now that she knew his lineage, it made sense why he cared so much about this specific case. But she didn’t understand how he’d become so hard, where he’d learned to fight and shoot. How had one brother become so coarse while the other was so refined?

“Are you gonna tell him?”

Zara hadn’t realized she’d been absorbed in examining her floor until he spoke. Lifting her chin to focus on him, she couldn’t answer his question, because she didn’t know why his anonymity was so important. But his mind had gone to Grant and to his own secret, proving how concealing his identity was his predominant concern.

She had to understand what they were facing. To give them both a chance to recalibrate in light of this new revelation, she chose to share information that was rightfully his given his connection to CI. “What do you know about Project Game Time?” she asked.

“Nothing,” he said. “We didn’t know the name of the mission. I have a guy, a friend, who can get into any computer system known to man, but we didn’t know what we were looking for.”

Clearing her throat, she explained. “There was a document at the front of the file, titled Project Game Time and there was a floor plan with some measurements but no names.”

“Unless we know what the floor plan relates to—”

“I have a feeling it’s the Grand Hotel,” she said, edging closer when she saw him move toward her. “I don’t know for sure. But Sutcliffe said on the phone that the demonstration was going to happen at midnight on Saturday at the Grand Hotel.”

“Fuck, you’re good, baby,” he said.

She didn’t flinch when he brought his arms around her and she took the squeeze of his embrace as a measure of his admiration for her covert work. “There’s more. A lot more. But I... I have to get to work.”

“What kind of more?” he asked, loosening his clinch, his gaze dimmed on its descent to her mouth.

“I followed the money and Grant’s right, this has been going on for a year... and I don’t think you’ll like what he’s been doing in that time.”

“Ok,” he said, nodding as if to reassure her, he used a finger to hook her hair from her face. “You don’t have to worry about a thing anymore, baby. You belong to me now. You’re always gonna be safe.”

She shook her head and although he looked ready to appease her further, Zara spoke first. “That’s a beautiful sentiment, but I have a feeling I’m going to be the guinea pig.”

His brows lowered in a glower. “The... what?”

She inhaled and her worries made her words crackle. “Grant asked me to go with him to the fundraiser at the Grand on Saturday night. He’s picking me up at ten PM,” she said. Given all she’d learned, her apprehension about the event had increased. She wasn’t so sure she could trust Grant to make sure she was okay while surrounded by evil.

The set of his jaw tightened and he ground his molars as he released her from his arms and turned away with such force that Zara had to grab the chair beside her to catch her balance. Remaining static and quiet when he walked away from her, she awaited his response.

Eventually, he stopped pacing and a split second later his hand rose to rub the back of his head. Then his hand flew out to punch the column beside him and the plaster burst in a shower of powder and paint, making her jump.

He whirled around and the fury on his face made her shrink. “I don’t know what to be madder about,” he shouted. “That you agreed to go on a date when you knew it was gonna be dangerous, or that you agreed to go on a date with your boss while you were fucking me!”

Surprised by his anger, she quickly recovered and knew she could respond in kind because she felt confident that he would never use his strength to hurt her. “First of all,” she said, countering his argument and his tone. “You’re not pissed that I’m going out with my boss, you’re pissed that I’m going out with your brother. Second, he asked me out before you and I ever had sex. And third, what the hell gives you the right to dictate who I date when you’re probably out screwing every night? I’m sorry, did I miss the part where we promised each other a happily ever after?”

With one bound, he got in front of her. “You’re under my control now.”

“Am I?” she asked, glaring at his scowl.

She wasn’t scared of him, not his size or his strength or his mood, because he’d stayed with her, watched over her. She understood more of the man beneath the façade. With all Brodie McCormack had been through—losing his parents, abandoning his birthright and his brother—it was amazing that he was standing here in front of her.

He and Grant had come from the same womb, but they were polar opposites. Grant needed a panderer to pick up after him whereas Brodie needed a challenge. From her experience with the younger McCormack, she’d come to understand that in order to gain his respect, she had to match his ferocity. Because he was a no-nonsense type of guy with laser-precision focus.

“Yeah,” he sneered.

With a parched throat and a hammering heart, she maintained eye contact. “What makes you think that?”

“This,” he said.

Grabbing the back of her neck, he pulled her up to the ends of her toes and planted his mouth over hers. With balled hands, Zara beat at his chest, but there was no force behind her punches and she didn’t try to back away when she could have.

His tongue delved deeper and she sucked it hard, closing her mouth enough to scrape her teeth over him and return his wrath. Pulling their bodies apart, he swept everything off the table to make space for what he planned to do to her.

Zara untied her kimono to signal her compliance and ready herself for his passion. But this man didn’t stop to ask for her blessing, he stole her waist, threw her down onto the surface, and came down on top of her to show her exactly what he could do at a breakfast table.