Hey sorry it took song long to update! I had to change my name and re-do some errors on the story! The characters are different, this is an AU, it says so in the sum. Also Raimundo is being a jerk because he thinks Kimiko stole from him. Thank you all for waiting so long! Here is the 4th chapter! R&R!!!!!!!!! Warning: Sexual Suggestions and other things!

It was definitely time to tell him the truth. "I can explain where the money went..." She braced herself for the ultimate confession but he gave a dismissive shrug that indicated nothing short of total indifference.

"If there is one occupation more boring than watching a woman shop, it's hearing about it after the event." Raimundo's tone was bored. "I have absolutely no interest in the finer details of feminine indulgence."

"Is that what you think it was?" Kimiko stared at him, aghast. "You think I spent your money in some sort of childish female tantrum?"

"So you cheered yourself up with some new shoes and handbags." He gave a sardonic smile. It is typically female behaviour. I can assure you I'm no stranger to the perceived benifits of retail therapy."

Kimiko gasped. "You are unbelievably insensitive!" Her voice rang with passion, anger and pain and her carefully planned speech flew out of her brain. He thought she'd been shopping? "Shopping was the last thing on my mind! This was not retail therapy." Her whole body trembled with indignation. "This was survival. I needed the money to survive because I gave up everything to be with you. Everything. I gave up my job, my flat...I moved in with you. It was what you demanded."

His gaze was cool. "I don't recall a significant degree of protest on your part."

She tilted her head back and struggled with her emotions.

"I was in love with you Rai." Her voice cracked and she paused for just long enough to regain control. "I was so in love with you that being together was the only thing in my life that made sense. I couldn't see further than what we shared. I certainly couldn't imagine a time when we wouldn't be together."

"Women do have a tendency to hear wedding bells when they're around me." he observed dryly. "In fact I would say, the larger the wallet, the louder the bells."

"I'm not talking about marriage. I didn't care about marriage. I just cared about you."

A muscle flickered in his lean jaw and his eyes hardened.

"Obviously you were planning for the long term."

It took her a moment to understand the implacation of his words. "You're suggesting it was an act?" She gave a tiny laugh of disbelief and lifted her hand to her throat. Beneath the tips of her fingers she felt her pulse beating rapidly. "You think I was pretending?"

"You were very convincing," Raimundo conceded after a moment's reflection, "but then the stakes were high, were they not? The prospect of landing a billonaire is often sufficient to produce the most commendable acting skills in a woman."

Kimiko stared at him.

How could she have ever been foolish enough to give her love to this man? Was her judgement really that bad?

Tears clogged her throat. "I don't consider you to be the biggest mistake of my life."

"Of course you do." He spread lean bronzed hands and gave a sympathetic smile, but his eyes were hard as flint. "I can understand that you'd be kicking yourself for letting me slip through your fingers. All I can say is, better luck with the next guy."

"To be alone in life, Rai," she said flatly, battling not to let the emotion show on her face, "and every woman with a grain of sense is going to let you slip right through her fingers. Given the chance, I'd drop you head first on to a tiled floor from great height."

He smiled an arrogant, all male smile that reflected his unshakeable self-confidence. "We both know you couldn't get enough of me."

She gasped, utterly humiliated by the picture he painted.

"That was before I knew what an unfeeling, cold-hearted bastard you were!" She broke off in horror, appalled by her rudeness and uncharacteristic loss of control. What had come over her? "I-I'm sorry, that was unforgivable....."

"Don't apologise for showing your true colors." Far from being offended, he looked mildly amused. "Believe it or not, I prefer honesty in a woman. It saves all sorts of misunderstandings."

She lifted a hand to her forehead in an attept to relieve the ache between her temples.

It had been so hard for her to come here. So hard to brace herself to tell him the things that he needed to know. And so far none of it had gone as planned.

She had things that had to be said and she just didn't know how to say them. Insted of talking about the present, they were back in the past and that was the one place she didn't want to be. Unless she could use the past to remind him of what they'd once shared....

"You cared, Rai," she said softly, her hands dropping to her sides in a helpless gesture. "I know you cared. I felt it."

She appealed to the man that she'd once believed him to be.

"I was very turned on by the fact I was your first lover," he agreed in a smooth tone. "In fact I was totally knocked out by the novelty of the experience. Naturally I was keen for you to enjoy it too. You were very shy and it was in both our interests for you to be relaxed. I did what needed to be done and said what needed to be said."

Her cheeks flamed with embarrassment. In other words he was so experienced with women that he knew exactly which buttons to press. In her case he'd sensed that she needed closeness and affaction. It hadn't meant anything to him.

"So your saying it was all an act?" The pain inside her blossomed. "Being loving and gentale was just another of your many seduction methods?"

He shrugged as if he could see no problem with tthat. "I didn't hear you complaining."

She closed her eyes. How could she have been so gullible?

Yes, she'd been a virgin but that was no excuse for bald stupidty. Sixteen years of living with a man like her father should have taught her everything she needed to know about men. He'd moved from one woman to another, never making a commitment, never giving anything anything. Just using. using and discarding. Her mother had walked out just after Kimiko's fourth birthday and from that moment on she had a series of 'Aunties', women who came into her father's life and then left with a volley of hsouts and jealous accusations. Kimiko had promised herself that she was never, ever going to let a man treat her the way her father treated women. She was going to find one man and she was going to love him.

And then she'd met Raimundo and for a short, crazy period of time she'd thought he was that man. She'd ignored his reputation with women, ignored any similarities to her father, ignored her promise to herself.

She'd broken all her own rules.

And she'd paid the price.

"What did I ever do to make you treat me so cruelly?"

Suddenly she needed to understand. Wanted to know what hade gone wrong...how she could have made such a enormous mistake. "Why did you need other women?"

"I've never been a one women kind of guy," he admitted without a trace of apology or regret, "and you're all pretty much the same, as you went on to prove with your truly awesome spending spree."

She flinched. This would be a perfect time to confess. To tell him exactly why she'd needed the money so badly. She took a deep breath and braced herself for the truth. "I spent your money because I needed it for somthing very important," she said hesitantly, "and before I tell you exactly what, I want you to know that I did try to talk to you at the time but you wouldn't see me, and..."

"Is this conversation going anywhere?" He glanced at his watch in a gesture of supreme boredom. "I've already told you that your spending habits don't intrest me. And if you'd needed funds then maybe you should have tapped your other lover for cash."

She gasped. "I didn't have other lovers. you know I didn't."

There'd only ever been him. Just him.

"I don't know anything of the kind." his eyes hardened.

"on two occasions I returned home to be told you were "out"."

"Because I was tired of lying in our bed waiting for you to come home from some other women's arms!" She exploded with exasperation, determined to defend herself. "Yes, I went out! And you just couldn't stand that, could you? And why not? Because you always have to be the one in control."

"It wasn't about control." His gaze simmered, dark with all the volatility of his exotic heritage. "You didn't need to leave. You were mine."

And he thought it wasn't about control?

"You make me sound like a possession!" Her voice rang with pain and frustration. She was trying to say what needed to be said but each time she tried to talk about the present they seemed to end up back in the past. "You treat every woman like a possession! To be used and discarded when you've had enough! That's why our relationship never would have worked. You're ruthless, self-seeking and totally without morals or thought for other people. You expected me to lie there and wait for you to finish partying and come home!"

"Insted of which, you decided to expaned your sexual horizons," he said coldly and she resisted the temptation to leap and claw at his hansome face.

How could such an intelligent, successful man be so dense about women? He couldn't see past the end of his nose.

"You went out, so I went out." Wisps of hair floated across her face and she brushed them away with an impatient hand.

"What was I supposed to do when you weren't there?"

"You were supposed to get some rest." he delivered in silky tones, "and wait for me to come home."

Neanderthal man. She was expected to wait in the cave for the hunter to return.

Exasperated beyond belief, she resisted the urge to walk out and slam the door. "This is the twenty-first century, Rai! Women vote. They run companies. They decide their own social lives."

"And they cheat on their partners." He gave a sadonic lift of his brows. "progress, Indeed."

"I did not cheat!" She stared at him in outrage, wondering how such an intelligent man could be so dense when it came to relationships. She'd loved him so much. "You were the one photographed in a restaurant with another woman. Clearly I wasn't enough for you." She gave a casual shrug and tried to keep the pain out of her voice. "Naturally I assumed that if you were seeing other people then I could do the same. But I did not cheat!"

"I don't want the details."

They were closing in on each other. A step here, a slight movment there.

"Well, prehaps you should, insted of jumping to conclusions," she suggested shakily, "and if a sin was commited then it was yours, Rai. I was eighteen years old and yet you seduced me without even a flicker of conscience. And then you moved on without a flicker of conscience. Tell me...did you give it any thought? before you took my virginity and wrecked my life, did you give it any thought?"

His dark gaze sweot over her with naked incredulity. "You have been back in my life for five minutes and already you are snapping and snarling and hurling accusations. You were only to willing to be seduced, my raven-haired angel, but if you've forgotton that fact then I'm happy to jog your memory." Without warning he closed his lean brown fingers around her wrist and jerked her hard against him. The connection was immediate and powerful.

"That first night, in the back of my car when you wrapped that amazing body of yours around mine..." his voice was a low, dangerous purr and the warmth of his breath teased her mouth. ".....was that not an invatation?"

The air around them crackeled and sparked with tension.

She tugged at her wrist but he held her easily and she remembered just how much she'd loved that about him. His strength. His vibrant, undiluted masculinity. In fact she'd positively relished the differences between them. His dark male power to her feminine softness. Her good to his very, very bad.

He was so strong and she'd always felt increibly safe when she was with him. At the beginning that had been part of the attraction. Particulary that first night, as he'd just re-minded her. "I'd been attacked. I was frightened..."

And he'd rescued her. Using street fighting skills that didn't go with the sleek dinner jacket he'd been wearing, he'd taken on six men and had extracted her with apparently very little damage to himself. As a tactic deisgned to impress a woman, it had proved a winner.

"So you wanted comfort." His grip on her wrist tightened.

"So when you slid on to my lap and begged me to kiss you, was that not an invatation Kimi? Or was that comfort too?"

Hot colour of morification flooded her smooth cheeks. "I don't know what happened to me that night..."

she'd taken one look at him and suddenly believed in fairy tales. Knights. Dragons. Maidens in distress. He was the one.

Or so she'd thought....

"You discovered your true self," he said roughly. "That's what happened. So don't accuse me of seducing you when we both know that I only took what you freely offered. You were hot for me and you stayed hot..."

"I was innocent..."

His breath warmed her mouth and he gave a slow, sexy smile that made her heart thud against her chest. "You were desperate."

He was going to kiss her.

She reconised the signs, saw the darkening of his eyes and the lowering of those thick lashes as his heated gaze swept her flushed face.

The tension throbbed and pulsed between them and then suddenly he released her with a soft curse and took a step backwards.

"So why are you here?" His tone was suddenly icy cold, and there was anger in the glint of his dark eyes. "You wish to reminisce? you are hoping for a repeat performance, perhaps? If so, you should probably know that women only get one chance in my bed and you lew it."

A repeat perfomance?

Erotic memories flashed through her brain and she took a step backwards, as if to escape from them. "Let's get this straight." Despite all her best efforts, her voice shook slightly. "Nothing would induce me to climb back into your bed, Rai. Nothing. That was one life experience I have no intention of repeating. Ever. I'm not that stupid."

He stilled and a look of masculine speculation flickered across his handsome face. "Is that a fact?"

Too late she relised that a man like Raimundo would probably consider that a challenge. And he was a man who loved a challenge.

She looked at him helplessly, wondering how on earth the conversation had developed into this. For some reason they were right back where they left off seven years before and it wasn't what she planned.

She'd intended to be cool and businesslike and to avoid anything remotely personal. Insted of which, their verbal exchange had so far been entirely personal.

And still she hadn't told him what she needed to tell him.

Still she hadn't said what needed to be said.

He prowled around her slowly and a slighty mocking smile touched his firm mouth. "Still so much passion, Kimiko, and still trying to hold it in cheak and pretend it doesn't exist. That it isn't even a part of you and yet how could your nature be anything else?" He brushed a hand over her hair with a mocking smile.

Kimiko lifted her chin and her blue eyes flashed. "Never get involved with a man who has the ego the size a Brazil!"

He laughed. "Ours was never the most tranquil of relationships, was it meu amorzinho?"

Meu amorzinho. He'd always called her that and she'd loved hearing him speak in his native language. It had semed so much more exotic than the English translation, 'My Little Love.'

PREVIEW OF CHAPTER 5

Before she could guess his intention, he lifted a lean bronze hand and in a deft, skillful movement removed the clip from her hair.

To her horror she felt her body start to melt and her breathing grow shallow and she shrank away from him, desperate to stop the reaction.

How?

How, after these years and all the thinking time she'd had, could she still react to this man?

Did she ever learn?

It was now. It had to be now. "I'm here because-" her voice craked and she licked her dry lips and tried again. "I'm trying to tell you...w...we had a son together, Rai, and he's now six years old." Her heart pounded and her body trembled. "He's six years old and his life is in danger. I'm here becuase I need your help..........I've no one slse to turn to."

I am so tired I stayed up for hours! Thanks and please R&R!!!!!!!!!! Lot of stuff coming up in the next chapter!