The Marriage Bargain

by Victoria Pade

  He let go of her hand so he could wrap both arms around her and Victoria did likewise, happy to have her own arms full of his big, masculine body, her hands riding the mountainous muscles of his back.

  Her nipples hardened against his chest in response to what that kiss ignited inside her. In response to him and to what this might be the beginning of. In anticipation of feeling his touch again.

  Maybe we’ll go back to the truck, she thought. Maybe he’ll make love to me right here….

  At that moment she didn’t care about the logistics. She didn’t care if they were out in the open on the side of the road.

  She only cared about what he was bringing to life within her with that deep, deep kiss and hands that caressed her shoulders, her back, the base of her spine.

  Hands that grasped her rear end and pulled her up against more of that proof that he wanted her….

  And then, as he’d done the previous evening, he stopped.

  Again.

  Again he seemed reluctant. He seemed to struggle mightily for control, for the strength and willpower to end what was on the verge of being something as wonderful as it had been the night before.

  But he still stopped.

  “I think I should take my B-plus and get us home,” he said, joking in a voice that was raw and ragged and sounded the way Victoria felt.

  Then he just let go of her, without giving her a chance to say anything that might keep him there.

  He did take hold of her hand, though, to lead her back to the truck where he opened the passenger door and helped her up once more.

  Victoria didn’t know what she would have said even if he’d given her the opportunity. She was too frustrated, too churned up inside to know what to say, except maybe to beg him not to do this, not to get her all worked up and then leave her aching for a completion that never came.

  She couldn’t do that. She wouldn’t beg him or even let him know just how much of an ache he’d left her with at least twice now.

  So instead, once more feeling stunned and stung and confused, she just sat hugging the passenger’s side door the way she had been before, watching Adam round the front of the truck—jamming his hands through his hair hard enough to hurt and looking as if he needed the pain for some reason.

  He climbed back in behind the wheel and started the engine, causing a brief blip in the radio that then went right on playing the slow, sexy country music they’d been dancing to.

  Only now it grated on Victoria and she reached out and turned it off.

  Adam cast a glance in the direction of the radio, but not at her. He didn’t say anything. He just drove the rest of the way to the ranch in silence.

  Silence that seemed to Victoria to be charged with things that needed to be said.

  Certainly it was charged with things she wanted to say.

  But as they unloaded the truck of the day’s purchases, there was a part of her that told her to just let it go, to not let him know what he was doing to her.

  Unfortunately there was another part of her that couldn’t do that and she finally exploded, throwing a bag of cotton balls at him as he turned from stocking the cabinets.

  “I said it at the camp-out and I meant it. Keep your hands—and your kisses—to yourself.”

  Okay, so the command was not only belated at that point, but it also rang a little false when she’d participated willingly both of the times he’d come near her since the camp-out.

  But she was so filled with pent-up anger and unsatisfied arousals that she wasn’t thinking clearly.

  Adam had caught the cotton balls before they’d hit him and now set them calmly on the counter before he leaned his hips against its edge and looked at her with a funereal expression.

  “This isn’t a game or part of the comeuppance the way you’re thinking it is,” he said in a voice to match his countenance.

  “You’re just toying with me,” she accused. “Getting even.”

  “No, I’m not. I wanted—” He jammed another punishing hand through his hair, the way he’d done out on the road. “Believe me, I’m not toying with you or getting even when it comes to…not keeping my hands to myself.”

  “Then what are you doing?” she shouted.

  “Suffering like hell at the moment,” he said under his breath with his head turned away from her, closing his eyes as if he really were being tortured.

  He took a deep breath, held it, then blew it out and looked at her again.

  “I couldn’t let things go where they were going, tonight or last night,” he said.

  “Why not?” she demanded, not aware of how it sounded until she said it. But everything inside her was in such a jumble, such turmoil, she was just one raw exposed nerve.

  “Making love to you would have been turning a corner I didn’t know if I should turn,” he said after a while of what appeared to be a debate over whether or not to let her in on what he was thinking. “I made you marry me to get back at you and your family. To teach you a lesson in what it’s like to be powerless. To be at someone else’s mercy. But making love? That’s different. That has to be different. It can’t be a power thing. It can’t be something that happens because you’re at someone else’s mercy. I don’t want you that way.”

  The man had as much of a knack for shocking her as he had for kissing her. Because of all the things she’d thought might be behind his abrupt endings the last two nights, that hadn’t been one of them.

  “Did you feel like you were forcing me?”

  “No. But I didn’t know what was going through your head, either. I didn’t know if you felt like you had some kind of duty or obligation.”

  Duty and obligation. Being powerless and at his mercy. No, none of those should have any part in making love.

  But they certainly hadn’t been what she’d been feeling when she was in his arms.

  Yet now, when the tidal wave of passion wasn’t carrying her away, it occurred to her that if she let him know she hadn’t been feeling any of that, that she’d just plain wanted him, she was taking a bigger step than she’d realized. A step she shouldn’t take lightly.

  After all, this was a man who had coerced her into marriage as a payback. A man who hadn’t exactly been a peach to her during the last week.

  It crossed her mind that maybe she shouldn’t let him know how she felt about him or that he could arouse so much in her that she forgot everything else.

  But there he was, only a few feet away from her, with that black hair and those incredible features and those pewter eyes and that body to die for.

  There he was, the man who had grown from the boy who had first captured her young girl’s heart from a distance.

  Somehow that was all she saw now. Not the arrogant, ruthless corporate raider who had set out to make her just another of his cold, calculated takeovers.

  What she saw was a man with an unexpectedly vulnerable side. A man who, despite his own old hurts and grudges, still had a side that was sensitive and caring and conscientious enough to not make love to her under the slightest hint that it might not be what she wholeheartedly wanted.

  But it was what she wanted. Wholeheartedly.

  He was what she wanted.

  The only way she would have him, though, was if she let him know it.

  “I have felt powerless and at your mercy,” she said then, no longer shouting, all the anger gone from her voice. “And I’ve felt a duty and an obligation, too. But last night and tonight, when you kissed me, none of those things were what I was feeling or even thinking about. They weren’t there at all. Not for me.”

  And that said, she turned and left him to think about it.

  She went to the stairs and climbed them to the attic, going into her room and wondering the whole way if Adam would follow.

  Wanting him to follow….

  And then she heard his footsteps on the stairs. Her heart started to pound and she could hardly breathe even as a little voice in her head said, What if he’s just coming to say h
e still doesn’t think you should turn that corner?

  She’d left her bedroom door open to the narrow hallway between it and the staircase, so she saw Adam the moment he reached the top.

  He was frowning, and fear welled up in Victoria. Fear that he might reject her, that payback really might be what was going on. Fear that he might not want her as much as she wanted him.

  He came all the way into the room, stopping only when he was standing directly in front of her with a scant hair breadth between them.

  But he didn’t touch her.

  “If I’d met you again and we’d spent some pleasant time together, getting to know each other, catching up, and none of what’s gone on this week had happened, and you were free as a bird, would we be standing in your bedroom right now?”

  So he needed to be absolutely sure.

  As sure as she was.

  Victoria felt relief wash through her and she smiled up at him. “Yes,” she said quietly, forcefully, because she meant it. Because if they’d met again and rediscovered that old flame and ended up in her bedroom the way they were now, it would have been a fantasy come true.

  He held her eyes with his, searching them as if for confirmation.

  Maybe he found it because he reached out, running his hands from her wrists along the sleeves of her dress. Then he clasped her shoulders and pulled her to him, capturing her mouth in a wide-open kiss that picked up where they’d left off on the roadside.

  That was all it took to make her blood run through her veins like a raging river, to tighten her nipples all over again, to make her put her arms around him.

  He held her close, cradling her head in one hand because the kiss was so intense her neck was craned backward beneath it.

  If there had been hunger in any kiss before, it was nothing like this one. Now their hunger, and every bit of the desire, the yearning, that had simmered below the surface in them both, was unleashed. Now every inhibition vanished and a primitive abandon took over.

  Neither of them seemed to be able to get enough of the other. Adam’s tongue didn’t tease. It came to greet hers in pure, sensual aggression, letting her know he meant business. He held her in such a viselike grip, it was as if he thought he might lose her. And again, when his hips met hers, there was a sharp, insistent ridge that told her just how much he wanted her.

  No more, no less, than she wanted him as all the unmet needs she’d tamped down sprang to life, as all the age-old pining awakened as if from a long sleep.

  She was holding on to him just as fiercely as he was holding her. Kissing him just as avidly. Just as deeply. Just as aggressively.

  When he unzipped the back of her dress, she let him know that being rid of clothing was a fine idea by kicking off her shoes and yanking his shirttails out of his waistband, then pulling at the snaps of his shirtfront until each of them opened.

  From there, clothes fell away beneath the onslaught of fingers and hands that made fast work of shedding them even as mouths still clung together and kissed and played and almost warred in the fervor that was passion too long held in check and now liberated. Passion that was urgent and powerful and demanding. Passion that swept everything out of its path until they were both naked. Until bodies could come together, bare flesh to bare flesh.

  Then his mouth abandoned hers and he scooped her up into his arms, carrying her to the double bed that had seemed so lonely all week, lying her on the downy comforter that covered it.

  For only a split second before he joined her, she got to look at him. At the glory of his naked body in all its masculine magnificence.

  And it was magnificent! So magnificent it took her breath away as her eyes traveled from broad, straight shoulders down impeccable pectorals to his flat stomach and lower still to narrow hips, to the essence of his manhood.

  But the visual feast lasted only a second before he was there on the bed beside her, with a heavy thigh across hers and his lips rekindling that kiss as if he’d been starved for it.

  Only now while one arm braced him to stay above her, his other hand was free.

  Free to smooth the side of her face.

  Free to sweep along her jaw.

  Free to caress her neck, her throat, the sensitive hollow of her collarbone.

  Free to reach her breast, engorged and straining for his touch.

  His dexterous, skillful, ardent touch.

  His hand was big and warm and only slightly calloused. Tender and teasing. Molding and massaging, until her nipple was a stone he rolled beneath his palm.

  Her spine arched all on its own in answer to the symphony of sensations he was erupting within her, escaping his kiss even though that hadn’t been her intent.

  But he didn’t desert her. Instead he rained kisses down the same path his hand had taken moments before, stopping when he reached her breast again, to kiss oh-so-softly just the striving peak.

  Such tender torment when she wanted so much more. Needed so much more.

  And then he gave it, taking her breast into his mouth, flicking, circling her nipple with the hot velvet of his tongue.

  But still it wasn’t enough. It wasn’t enough of him.

  She let her hands begin their own quest. They glided down his back, all sinew and tendons and strength. Glazed his derriere, taut and tensed. Slid from his hips to his thighs, massive and muscular.

  Then she let her hand trail upward just enough to take hold of that long, hard staff that left no doubt what was going on inside him, closing around his thick, unyielding potency, learning the heat and power there, learning just how wild she could drive him.

  But he could give as good as he got because the palm that rested on her stomach suddenly began a slow descent of its own.

  A descent that raised goose bumps of longing across her skin. That sparked glittering anticipation that opened her legs in invitation.

  He reached her. He cupped her. He caressed her with silken strokes and seeking fingers that found their way inside, that found that one special spot that took her need, her craving, her desire, to a point past sanity or rational thought. A point past bearing.

  And then he was above her, that incredible body was between her thighs as his mighty shaft searched for a home and found it inside her. He filled her with hard, hot flint-like strength and made her feel as if, only in that instant, she’d been made whole.

  She moved with him at first, keeping pace, tightening muscles around him, taking him completely into her and releasing her hold only reluctantly, only because she knew he would come back again.

  But as he went faster and faster, she couldn’t keep up. She could only cling to him, to the vast expanse of his back, and ride along as those earlier sparks of anticipation took flame, burning brighter and brighter, blazing to life with an intensity she’d never known before, until it was as if a thunder flash struck and she surged into the radiant white hot light of ecstasy. The feeling was so pure and clean and so powerful she couldn’t breathe, she couldn’t do anything but let it explode inside her.

  It exploded inside her just the way Adam had, as every muscle in his body seemed to tense to its limit and he went rigid above her, plunging so deeply into her they were melded together in that one, perfect moment of unfathomable bliss.

  And then it began to ebb, to slip down the other side of the slope.

  Victoria could feel Adam relaxing muscle by muscle. She could feel her own pulse slowing beat by beat. She could hear each of them breathing again as if they’d both stopped when time had seemed suspended and they’d drawn their life force from the other’s body rather than from air.

  Adam laid his forehead to hers and kissed her nose.

  Then he slipped his arms under her so that when he rolled to his side she went with him.

  He held her, close and tight, their bodies still one, their hearts beating in unison.

  Their marriage had been sealed.

  Although neither of them said anything, Victoria hoped that they really had turned a corner.

&nb
sp; Because somewhere in the process of making love, something had flooded out of the deepest recesses of her. Something warm and wonderful and long held secret.

  Something that gave her over to Adam body and soul.

  And left her really, truly, within his power and at his mercy now.

  Eight

  Victoria woke up early the next morning when bright sunshine flooded through the dormer window straight into her eyes. She hadn’t closed the curtains.

  But then, she’d had other things to occupy her thoughts. And every other part of her, too.

  She was lying on her side, facing the window, and the cause of her forgetfulness was lying right behind her.

  Adam.

  His knees were in the lee of her knees; his thighs were a seat for her thighs; his torso was her backrest; his right arm was around her, running the length of her right arm; his left arm stretched above them both; and his chin rode the top of her head on the pillow they shared.

  Spoons.

  It was nice. Incredibly nice.

  So nice that Victoria thought she could sleep every night and wake up every morning like that for the rest of her life.

  And she wondered if she’d have the chance.

  She wondered how making love—three times before they’d slept—would change things between them.

  She wondered if making love was enough to alter the whole course of their lives. Enough to wipe away the harm done in the past.

  She couldn’t help hoping that it was. Hoping that things might actually work out for them.

  She cared for Adam in a way that wouldn’t be denied any longer. She cared for him in a way that scared her too much to put a name to it. That scared her because now that making love had opened the door to it, she was all the more susceptible to him, all the more unprotected from him.

  He could hurt her now and she knew it. He could devastate her. He could devastate her as badly as she had devastated him and his family all those years ago.

  While the biggest part of her didn’t believe he would, didn’t believe that anything as wonderful, as soul-uniting as what they’d done the night before could have come from a need for retribution or could have left them anything but close, there was still a small part of her that worried what the daylight might bring. That tortured her with tiny flashes of images of him smirking at her all over again and telling her this whole thing—this whole seduction—had all been one grand act to get her to completely and totally let down her guard and open herself to him body, mind and spirit so that, just when she had, he could pull the rug out from under her and truly hurt her.