The Aviator Read Online Free Page A

everything he invested in you, just so you can play at sandcastles of your own?”
    “Play at sandcastles,” he repeated, his voice a cold hiss in the dark. “Yes, that’s exactly right. Nothing escapes you, does it?”
    “You’re still angry about the shuttle.”
    “Another brilliant stroke of insight.”
    “It saved lives.”
    “If you had come five hours later, the sea would have been calm.”
    “Five hours later those men might have been dead.”
    “We’re at war, Gilda. Men die every hour of every day. If we throw away our prototypes, they’ll die even faster in the future.”
    “You do not have to explain war to me.”
    “It would be helpful if someone did. Oh, you’re a creature of destruction, I’ll grant you that, but it’s a far prettier version than what appears in those bloody trenches out there, in the burned-out buildings and fields of corpses. What would you know of that? You take your pleasure in petty games and public seductions, punishing any man that ever crossed your path. That’s certainly war of a sort, though one wonders who you think the enemy is, or perhaps you simply don’t care.”
    She narrowed her gaze, refusing to be cut down by this man, of all men . “If I am a harlot at war, sir, I think we might agree that at least I am not a profiteer. I would have had to take lessons from your mother for that.”
    For a moment, he was terrifyingly silent, his anger burning hot between them, a solid presence darker than any shade of night.
    “Get out,” he said finally.
    Gilda knew that she should. It would be a simple matter to rise quietly from the floor and leave without a word. It was the wisest course, the safest course, surely.
    But then, by God, it felt good to finally say what needed to be said between them. If he wanted to scream back at her, then so be it. Let him rise up and yell at the top of his lungs, prove his own flawed humanity for once, lose the shining veneer of Nathan the perfect son, the perfect engineer, a man with no petty games or public seductions to make his life anything other than the same colorless gray, day after day.
    Stop living in denial of what you are, Nate. A man who inherited a fortune because his mother chose to whore herself to a rich aristocrat, a man with no right to call himself Lord Sinclair’s heir, no right to act as my judge, or my keeper… Not after everything you’ve taken from me.
    She shook her head, her tone low and vindictive. “I must admit, I have often wondered how your real father, the one who died in those horrible bloody trenches, would have cared for his replacement in your mother’s bed, an old man with a wife and child of his own.”
    “That’s it.” He was on his feet, grabbing her by the arm and pulling her up from the floor, his restraint frayed to its last thread.
    He was furious, so deeply furious, his breath a vicious hiss through his teeth, his fingers biting into her skin as he half-carried her to the door. The warm distortion of the brandy offered no apologies, no regret, only satisfaction that a defensive wall had been breached and no quarter taken .
    She laughed at the ridiculousness of it and lost her footing, tipping his balance and running them both into the wall. Nathan cursed, but kept them upright, involuntarily trapping her against the metal.
    Her laughter faded. She was pressed to the gray paint, Nathan’s warm, naked skin at her back, his strong hands planted above her shoulders. She felt the solid weight of muscle against her, the sexual nudge of his groin rubbing over the top of her rump. His breath was in her hair, hot against her ear, the sound of it tortured and uneven.
    But he didn’t move. Not one millimeter.
    She half-closed her eyes, old resentments surrendering to old desires. The warm spin of brandy conjured images of being taken this way, against the wall, her hands grasped tight around the bone of his wrists, her body shuddering with each powerful thrust. She’d not forgotten how