Lily ignored him and twisted her hair into a tight chignon. Her gaze jumped to his when he made a sound in his throat. "Was that you growling? Do you have a kind of affliction you need to tell me about?"
"I wasn't growling. It was an involuntary protest."
"It was a growl, and what could you be protesting now? You're a high-maintenance person, aren't you?" Lily asked with a straight face and an aristocratic lift of her perfectly arched brow.
"High maintenance?" he echoed. "Lily, you're out of your mind. I don't think you have a clue what I do. Men obey orders because they trust me to know what I'm doing in high-risk situations." Nobody disobeyed or questioned his orders. Until Lily.
"Really?" She looked down her nose at him, princess to peasant. "Men obey your orders because of your rank. Women think things out and decide all by their little lonesome what to do." She patted his head, her fingers lingering for just a moment on a spiral curl. "Don't worry, now that I know about your little ego problem, I'll do my best to look all gushy when you pound your chest."
"Little ego problem? There's nothing wrong with my ego! How the hell did you manage to turn this around? Woman, you keep it up and you're going to find out just how kinky I really am."
Lily looked amused. "Of course. Sex. When losing an argument, man resorts to sexual implications. I have to assume you're referring to kinky sex for some kind of male caveman gratification. I did read about it, but, never having experienced kink, it didn't sound all that stimulating to me."
"Would you like me to remedy the situation for you?" Ryland offered in exasperation. "I'd be more than happy to give you an example. I want to see this book you keep referring to, and damn it, Lily, if you're laughing at me, I will turn you over my knee. Are you always this annoying?"
She leaned over to kiss his shadowed jaw. "I get worse if anyone tries to tell me what to do. Ask Arly. Even my father gave up after a while. He said I had problems with authority figures." Her hand stroked the slight stubble on his jaw and at once a delicious tingle began immediately at the junction of her thighs. She could feel the rasp against her skin all over again, heightening her pleasure.
His hand captured hers and he pulled her fingers into his mouth. One by one. Slowly. He suckled each finger. His tongue curled around her skin, laved and teased and danced. A slow burn started deep in her core, spread liquid heat like a fire through her veins. Lily jumped away from him. Eyes dancing. Skin flushed.
"You should be outlawed."
Ryland grinned at her, pleased with her response. "I am outlawed. And I don't mind you stroking my ego when it's genuine."
Her eyes widened. Her mouth opened but nothing came out. Lily shook her head. "Go away, I have work to do. I have to find all the tapes my father made on the first experiment and get every single exercise. What worked, what didn't."
His grin widened so that his silver-gray eyes lit up. "Lily falls back on science and work when she's losing."
"I didn't lose," she snapped instantly. "I never lose. I just don't choose to continue with this silly discussion when there's work to be done. Go away and bug your men. They're probably all ready for a chest-pounding session."
"It's not quite as fun when there's only a few of them. When do you think we'll hear from the doctor about Jeff's condition?"
"I'm certain he'll get back to me today." She pushed him away and walked toward the outer rooms.
Ryland kept pace easily. "I'm going with you, Lily. Two pairs of eyes are better than one."
She stopped in her tracks, not looking at him. "The day staff is here and it isn't safe, you might be seen."
"I can get by your day staff with no problem, Lily, that's not the reason you're so reluctant to let me go with you. You don't want me to see those tapes of your childhood."
His voice was so exquisitely gentle, so tender, Lily's heart turned over and she had to blink back tears. "I feel betrayed when I'm watching them, and if you're watching, I feel as if I'm betraying him. What he did was wrong, Ryland. It was bad enough that he did it to me, but there are other girls, women now, who didn't have the luxury of this house and the people in it. They had to have struggled, maybe even were institutionalized. That's not right. It will never be right and nothing I do will ever change it."
Ryland took her hand, pressed a small kiss to her open palm. "He learned to love through you, Lily. He learned right from wrong and morals through knowing and loving you. Don't feel guilty because you loved him. He tried to do right by you. He knew he was inadequate by himself so he surrounded you with others who would fill in the gaps. And he gave them a home, a sense of purpose, a family. Few people are all bad or all good, Lily. There are shades of both in most people."
She nodded. "I know that, Ryland, but this hurts. Going into that horrible room and having memories return… Watching those tapes and hearing his voice. I didn't mean anything at all to him back then. You can hear the impatience when I don't perform to his satisfaction. Rosa-who was the nurse then-is a much younger woman, and looks very different, she tries to comfort me and he yells at her all the time." She pressed a hand to her head, still refusing to look at him.
"Lily, why should you put yourself through that?"
"I need the information for all of us. For your men, for those girls. When this is over, if it takes a lifetime, I'm going to find every one of those women, and I'm going to make certain each of them is all right."
"You don't need to be alone when you're watching the tapes." He tightened his fingers around hers. "We're partners in every sense of the word. I know you loved your father, and you don't need forgiveness for loving him, Lily. The man loved you and did his best to provide you with a home, a family, and the best education he could. There's no shame in that."
"The shame is in you seeing," Lily insisted. "He looks at me as if I'm a specimen. I don't want you to see that. I can't let you see me that way." She couldn't find the words to tell him it diminished her. It reduced her to that frightened, unloved child in a house of strangers. Ryland would see her like that. She couldn't bear that.
"I love you, Lily." He caught her chin, tipped her face up to his. "I'm going to love that little girl because she's in you."
Lily pulled her head away. "Ryland, don't. You don't know that. You don't know how you're going to feel about me when you view those tapes."
He started to protest, stopped abruptly when he noticed her hand trembling. He ached for her, felt her inner turmoil, pain swamping him, swamping her. "If I'm so shallow, Lily, that I'm not going to feel the same about you because you were mistreated as a child, then you should find out now. Do you really think that of me?"
She closed her eyes for a moment. "No, Ryland. It's just hard for me to sit there and watch it. To know it's really the truth. He never prepared me, I had no idea of any of it."
"Just keep in mind your father grew to love you. You gave him something all the money in the world couldn't buy."
"Isn't that the point, Ryland?" For the first time, her voice was bitter. "He did buy us and when everything went wrong he used his money to get himself out of trouble."
"At that time, Lily, he knew no other way." He slipped his arm around her, drew her beneath the protection of his shoulder. "Let's face it together. It won't be so difficult if we're together."
She remained stiff, holding herself away from him.
"I'm part of you. Whether you like it or not, I'm part of you. I feel what you feel. It's there, Lily, and it's always going to be there, whether we're separated or not. Take me with you."