Page 6 of Returning for His Unknown Son

If you want me, Pree,you’ll have to come and take me, that voice had challenged her when they’d been stranded at a remote cabin in the Alps and she’d wanted him in her bed for the first time and had no idea what to do about it.

Her legs shook under her, her breath became shallow again, and her stomach roiled.

She stopped fighting the beckoning darkness and indulged herself one more time as she gave in to it.

Priya came to consciousness to find herself flat on the ridiculously elaborate chaise longue in her study. To be precise, she was lying down on Christian’s chaise longue in what used to be Christian’s study. Which she’d appropriated because he was supposed to be dead and had stayed dead for eight long years.

Reclining like some useless heroine from a gothic novel who fainted at the sight of a vigorous, virile man walking in from the rain was precisely who she’d been once.

Priya Version One. Basic. Fragile. Easily breakable.

It was exactly how Mama and Jai and Christian had always seen her. No, it had been her. While she’d had no control over her health and her heart, she’d let them coddle her, protect her, treat her like a fragile thing. She’d always played in the margins, taken the easy options, let everyone else drive her life.

But she wasn’t that person now, not in mind, not in body. Not in her soul.

Now she was Priya Version Two—broken and rebuilt and patched over until she was near indestructible.

Christian sat sideways near her legs, a bunched-up towel in his hand, and was quite uselessly mopping her face and neck while he softly whispered her name. This, more than anything, told Priya that he really was Christian. The man was singularly useless at anything else other than writing code, making millions and chasing after women. And apparently staying dead for eight years and playing games with his family and friends.

He’s alive. He’s solid and real, a part of her brain kept shouting. The lizard brain, Priya was sure. The part that equated big, broad manly husband with security and safety and happiness.

Of all the ridiculous reactions her body could come up with... She’d never fainted in her life before.

This episode she knew was more about shock than physical health, but still. Pushing herself up into a sitting position, she swatted at his hand with all the force of her anger and hurt and something else she didn’t want to examine right then.

Blue eyes met hers and held, in a silent battle of wills. His skin was tanned and weather-beaten, but he was unmistakably pale underneath it. Broad shoulders filled her field of vision, separating her from the world, from reality itself. The heat from his body stroked against hers in a welcoming wave.

She should be shivering, her damp dress sticking to her skin. Instead all she felt was a blazing heat claiming her skin, as if a switch had been turned on inside her.

“Move aside,” she said, cutting her gaze away.

He stood up but continued to regard her with that tunnel focus that felt like a caress on her skin. The same focus that she’d always found incredibly unnerving when it shifted to her. She moved away from him and looked out into the storm that was still raging outside through the French doors, trying and discarding words.

What did you say to a man who’d abandoned you for eight years?

“You need to get out of those wet clothes.”

His voice had always been deep. Now it bordered on a raspy whisper. Priya flushed, memories hitting her hard and in places she didn’t want to think of. She’d heard it that husky only once. On that long-ago night when they’d been stranded at a ski cabin in the Alps and she’d finally given in to what she’d considered to be a forbidden desire for him. Technically, they’d been married for five months by then.

God, she’d been a naive, prudish fool. Chastising herself for days afterward about what it meant. Running away from her own desires as if they were somehow wrong.

The memory was a whiplash against her senses—vivid and evocative. He’d sounded like that when he’d been deep inside her, whispering filthy things in her ear, tipping her over into climax again and again.

“It’s clear that you have lost the little common sense you ever possessed,” he said, jerking her attention back to him in the now.

Priya looked at him over her shoulder, fisting her hands, trying to find her equilibrium. Whatever sexual miasma clouded her head fizzed away instantly. “That’s what you want to say to me right now?”

“I don’t care what you want to hear from me. You need to change, Pree. Now, before you almost die again from pneumonia.”

His harsh words tilted her world back on its axis. Hot, scalding anger filled her, washing away every fond, heated memory. Turning around, she poked him in the chest, which was still annoyingly hard.

“How dare you talk to me as though I’m a child. In case you’ve conveniently forgotten, you were gone foreight years. Doing God knows what while I held everything together—the company from all the vultures circling it, your grandfather and his grief and your...”

Christ, he didn’t know about Jayden. He didn’t know that they had a...son!

Tears gathered in her throat, and she took a deep breath to blink them away. No way in hell was she crying in front of Christian. No way in hell was she going to let him think she needed rescuing. That she was still that frail wisp of a girl.

Something almost like anguish crossed his face. And she realized she’d hurt him, somehow. “I didn’t simply leave you. You know me better than that, Pree.”

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