“I’m sorry?”
She let her smile widen. “Just because this isn’t a traditional marriage, it doesn’t mean we’re obligated to overlook all the benefits of one. We can pick and choose, surely.”
“Let me make certain I understand you.” She couldn’t describe that look in his eyes then. More than wild. Deeper than primitive. So hot she lost herself for a moment. So bold she wasn’t sure she’d ever breathe again. “You’re not talking about sharing my surname, I assume. Or the dispensation of property.”
There was a time she might have hesitated. Gone for the indirect approach to suss out his interest before committing herself. Before revealing herself. And it wasn’t as if Chase was remotely safe, which had been the only reason she’d ever risked such things in the past.
She had no idea what came over her, but she decided she liked it. Her last recklessly spontaneous act had been to show him her naked body. How could propositioning him be any worse?
“I’m talking about consummation, that most traditional of marital acts,” Zara said very deliberately, and watched him go still.
Very, very still.
She leaned forward so that her elbows were on the table and she could keep her gaze steady on his. Even if the blue of it burned and the deep fire there made her whole body feel shivery and alive again. Alive at last, no matter how reckless this was. No matter if she’d live to regret it.
At least she’d live.
“I’m talking about sex, Chase,” she clarified. “With you.”
Zara didn’t regret it the moment she said it—but she certainly felt it drop through her like a stone. Hard and swift. Impossible to take back.
She told herself she didn’t want to.
“Say that again,” Chase ordered her, his voice low and rough.
He still didn’t move. But then, he didn’t laugh, either. If anything, he looked…electric. She could see he hadn’t even twitched, so it made no sense that he seemed bigger somehow. As if all of those things she’d sensed in him—that brooding power, that sheer, masculine force—were unleashed now, and crowded out the air in the room.
He was immense. Wild. And she’d never wanted anyone more.
Zara considered him for a moment while her heart executed some kind of frantic ballet inside her chest, and she was certain the heat she could feel sizzling between them and making it difficult to breathe was splashed across her face. Like a beacon.
She was as subtle as a searchlight and she wasn’t sure she cared.
“Which part?” she asked, because she enjoyed the tussle. The clash and roll of wits.
And because she was stalling. Still.
“Come here,” he growled at her.
She felt it everywhere, like a touch. Like that low, commanding voice of his was wired directly to all of her secret places, to all of that desperate hunger she’d felt since the moment they’d locked eyes in that church. And everywhere she felt the caress of it, so rough and so raw, she felt a heavy kind of ache.
Need.
“I don’t take orders,” she said instead of obeying him, spurred on by some demon thing inside of her she didn’t understand.
His mouth curved, and it was a hard, compelling thing. A stamp of sheer maleness, sex and desire, and she had to let out a hard breath to absorb it without dissolving where she sat.
“You will.” He sounded certain.
“Are you sure you’re interested?” she asked, instead of doing what that melting thing inside her wanted her to do, which was hurl herself at him in total abandon. And then do whatever he asked her to do, again and again and— “I ask because I did stand in front of you completely naked and your response was to tell me I’d best be on time for dinner.”
The curve of his mouth became a smile, the first real one she’d seen on him, and it was devastating. It should have been impossible, but he became even more beautiful. Even more powerfully him. The smile made a celebration of that perfect face of his, those wicked brows, that mouth. It made his eyes gleam a brighter shade of blue, the blue of whole, perfect summers, all there in that single smile.
It made him irresistible, and Zara was certain he knew it.
“I haven’t forgotten,” he assured her, and he shifted in his seat then, lounging there as if he was relaxed when she could see that he wasn’t. That he was in the grip of the same tension that held her.
But now that she’d brought up that night in the bath, and all the demons and specters she’d summoned along with it, she couldn’t let it go.
“I’m not my sister,” she said, her voice tighter than it should have been.
His gaze slammed into her. “A fact, Zara, of which I am well aware.”
“And I don’t want anything like pity sex, thanks,” she continued, and though the words left claw marks on their way out, she managed to say it in a brash sort of way. As if it didn’t hurt.
“Pity sex?” He looked thunderstruck.
“No substitutions,” she said expansively, smiling as if she was calm, though she could feel the heat on her cheeks that proved she was a liar. “No closing your eyes in the dark and pretending it’s the other Elliott sister beneath you.” She couldn’t believe she’d said that, and from the way his eyes widened, neither could he. “Or on top,” she continued, as if more talking would make it any better. “I mean, no need to consign anyone to any traditional gender—”
“Zara.”
Thank God he’d interrupted. She felt so out of control it was like a kind of dizziness, except she wasn’t at all worried she’d get sick. She was more worried she’d keep talking herself into complications and then what?
“Shut up,” he said in that sexy growl of his, and she did.
He studied her, the way he always did, except this time it left a trail of fire and hunger everywhere his blue gaze lit.
“Come here,” he said again, and it was a dark, starkly sexual command. It shivered over her like a touch. Like that press of his lips against hers on that altar. Like he wanted her this hungry. This lit up and on fire. His mouth crooked up again, and that was the only reason she didn’t simply burst, she thought. “Quietly.”
Then he settled back in his chair and waited.
And Zara understood that this was not the first time Chase Whitaker had made these demands of a woman. She had no doubt that he knew exactly what he was doing, that he’d tested out this sort of thing a hundred times before. On some level, she supposed she should have been horrified by that. Unnerved, certainly, by someone whose experience so vastly outstripped hers. Alarmed by the sheer certainty in the way he waited, with all of that brash male confidence, for her to do as he bid her.
She was sure she should have felt something other than that dark, glimmering thread that wound inside of her, tighter by the second, miraculous and real.
“What will I do when I get there?” she asked. Mostly to disobey his order that she be quiet.
He smiled again, and it was a dark, thrilling thing. It connected to that knot deep inside of her and pulsed. Long and low and hard.
“I’m certain you’ll think of something, clever girl that you are,” he murmured.
And she knew that most girls, clever or not, would stand and walk around the table. They’d take the opportunity to roll their hips, pout a little bit, give the man a show. Or anyway, girls like her sister would do that, because they always did. Zara had seen Ariella do it to this or that boyfriend over the years. And she considered it. She had a brilliant flash of herself standing before him, then sinking down to her knees between those long legs of his…
But Zara didn’t want to be most girls. She didn’t want to compete. She didn’t want to be anything like Ariella.
Ever.
Once again, Zara didn’t think. She leaned forward and pushed all their plates to the side. Then, without giving herself time to second-guess it, she pulled herself up and onto the strong oak table that she’d admired for its lovely polish as well as its sturdiness over the past two weeks and lau
nched herself across it.
Her reward was the way he almost came out of his chair, then caught himself. The way his blue eyes went supernova and every one of those long, athletic lines of his body went taut.
“What the bloody hell are you doing?”
But he said it like he couldn’t believe it was really happening, not like it horrified him.
And Zara laughed. Like launching herself to her feet in the bath that night, she hadn’t thought this through. Unlike then, this felt good. It was good to move. To slide her hands out over the smooth wood in front of her, reveling in the tactile pleasure of it, like it was that ridged wonder he called his abdomen. To let her hair fall all around her like she was as wild as he was, yet sensual and distinctly feminine. To push forward, her knees on the table, all of her in motion, answering that howling thing inside of her. To do something with all that crackling electricity inside of her that she thought might incinerate her otherwise.
“I have no idea,” she replied, and she hardly recognized her own voice. Thick and needy and powerful, somehow, all the same.
And then she was right there, her face before his. And he wasn’t lounging in his chair anymore, like some dissolute playboy king. His face had gone hard and almost feral, his eyes glittering with need and that mouth of his a hard, gloriously male line.
She trembled deep inside.
And Chase didn’t ask her any more questions.
He reached over and speared his fingers directly into the mess of her hair, his palms at her cheekbones.
She made a sound of need. Of sheer, unadulterated greed.
He laughed then, and it was a triumphant sound. Dark and profoundly masculine, and it rolled through her, hot and dry, and only fanned the flames higher. And then he dragged her mouth to his.
This was no press of lips like that silly ritual he’d adhered to in the church. This had nothing to do with her damned father. This was a reckoning. This was long overdue.
This was more necessary than breath.
It was a taking.
He ravaged her mouth. He took and he tasted, and Zara met him. Every stroke. Every angle of his jaw. Every thrust of his tongue. She lost herself in the exquisite perfection of his taste. Rough. Male. And the hint of whiskey.
She wanted to drown in him.
That wild electricity danced between them, slick and mad. She couldn’t find the right angle. He couldn’t seem to get close enough.
Zara wanted him with an intensity that might have alarmed her, had she cared about anything but the sheer exultation of his mouth moving against hers. That heart-stopping taste, like something she’d once known well and had lost.
Like recognition, she thought.
Like home.
And she understood that she was never going to survive this man. But his hands tightened in her hair, he held her jaw where he wanted it and he plundered her mouth with as much consummate skill as greed, and Zara couldn’t bring herself to do anything but kiss him back.
Again and again and again.
CHAPTER FIVE
MINE.
The word pounded through him with every deep, drugging taste of her. Like a drumbeat. Louder than his own heart.
Like this would never be enough. Like it had nothing to do with revenge.
Chase tore his mouth from hers, shoved his chair back from the damned table and then hauled her the rest of the way across it until she tumbled over his lap and he could arrange her there the way he wanted her.
Or one of the ways he wanted her.
“Better,” he muttered when he’d settled her with her legs over his and her arms around his neck. Not astride him, not yet, or he thought he might explode like a teenager.
And then he claimed her mouth once more.
It was more than better. That lush bottom he’d lusted after in the bath was nestled up against the hardest part of him, urging him on. Making him feel more animal than man. Every time she shivered, he felt it like a stroke of her hand.
And the deeper he kissed her, the more she met him, the wilder it got. And the more she shivered.
Mine, he thought again, a primitive hunger that should have alarmed him surging through him. My wife.
He kept one hand tangled in that gorgeous fall of her hair, that riot of reds, and let the other one explore the body that had haunted him night and day throughout this cursed week. All of those breathtaking curves, right there beneath his palm. All of that stunning lushness right here in his arms. At last.
He traced his way down the sensual line of her back, that he could see as if she still stood naked before him. She was wearing a clingy shirt made of a soft, sleek fabric that moved with her and made her curves that much more enticing.
He thought she might kill him. He wasn’t sure he’d mind.
Chase wrenched his mouth from hers and followed the line of her neck down toward that soft shoulder visible in the wide neckline of her shirt, licking his way across the lightly scented expanse of her skin.
Zara sighed. It was a broken, needy sound, and he felt it in his sex. Like she’d leaned over and taken him deep in her mouth.
He thought he’d never been this drunk in his life. Completely and utterly intoxicated by this woman, so rocked he couldn’t tell if he’d ever feel sober again. And he didn’t think he cared.
“Chase,” she said, and it took him longer than it should have to realize that was his name. That it was not only his name, but that she wanted him to stop what he was doing and listen. Or worse, talk.
“Quiet,” he told her, and he thought he sounded fierce, but she laughed. “I’m busy.”
“I can see that,” she said, her voice shaking with laughter and lust, and something bright shot through him. Like a bolt of sunlight, and he didn’t want to know what that meant. He didn’t want to dig into it. He used his teeth against the gentle rounding that was her collarbone instead, and felt that quiver all the way through her.
“I don’t know what you’re used to here in these wild, uncivilized colonies,” he continued, moving back up her neck, tasting her as he went, collecting those shivers of hers like pieces of gold he could hoard, “but I take my traditional duties rather seriously. I can assure you that I attend to them with diligence—” and he found the curve of her earlobe then, taking it between his teeth in a little scrape that made her breath catch “—and focus.”
On that he shifted, dropping one hand to hold her hip and the other moving to cradle her face in his palm. Too-bright gold in her eyes and that carnal mouth of hers. His undoing.
“But—”
He didn’t want to hear whatever she was about to say. He licked his way into her mouth instead, like she was his dessert. And she melted against him, like she thought so, too.
And then he simply kissed her.
Until he forgot why he’d ever thought he shouldn’t. Until there was nothing in the whole world but the taste of her mouth, her hair all around them like a sweet curtain and the way she moved against him as she sat there draped over his lap.
Until he didn’t know which of them was which.
She pulled her mouth from his, and Chase didn’t know if minutes had passed, or years. Lifetimes. When he failed to care about that, too, an alarm went off in some dim, dark recess inside him, but he ignored it.
“Stop,” she whispered when he moved as if to claim her mouth again. “Listen.”
He stopped. It took a moment for that greedy hunger to loosen its hold on him. For that roar inside him—lust and need and that pounding thing that was his heart—to ease back enough that he was less primitive, more man again.
So close to that monster in him, he thought darkly. Capable of anything, even here.
That was so unpalatable that it took him another moment to realize he could hear someone outside in the hallway. Mrs. Calloway, no doubt, right on time to clear their plates and serve their actual dessert.
“I heard the door close,” Zara told him, her golden eyes huge and her voice still a whisper. “I
think she walked in first.”
Reality was like a roundhouse kick to the face.
Chase gathered Zara up and set her on her feet, then stood, furious. Blackly, consumingly furious. At himself.
What the hell was he doing? How had he forgotten himself entirely—again? What had happened to his self-control—necessary for the plotting required here? But of course, he knew. It was Zara. That teasing lilt in her voice. That challenging glint in her eyes. That damned body of hers he thought might be the end of him in all those lush, gorgeous curves.
He stalked to the door and wrenched it open, nodding stiffly at Mrs. Calloway by way of bidding her enter. Then he had to stand there and suffer through the storm battering at him, in all its rage and blackness and the bleak things beneath, as she swept in the way she always did, chattering and smiling.
“Should have known better than to burst in unannounced on a pair of newlyweds,” she practically sang. “Can’t apologize enough!”
Chase’s gaze slid to the brand-new wife he would not have referred to as a newlywed, given all those implications, and he simply froze.
Because she was smiling back at Mrs. Calloway, standing right where he’d put her as if she’d forgotten how to move. Her face was bright red with embarrassment and leftover passion. Her hair was a tousled mess that showed him—and, no doubt, Mrs. Calloway—exactly what his hands had been doing moments before. She’d crossed her arms beneath her breasts, and he doubted she realized how that emphasized them, how that drew his attention directly to those pretty nipples so obviously tight and hard beneath her shirt. Her mouth was faintly swollen from his, and she was smiling as if all of this was precisely what it looked like.
As if they were simple, run-of-the-mill, everyday newlyweds who couldn’t keep their hands off each other. Nothing more, nothing less.
And it pierced him as surely as if she’d hurled a spear at him, as if it had bored a hole straight through him, how much he wanted it to be true in that moment. He could see it. What it would be like if they were those people. If, when the door closed, they would laugh and start all over again, basking in their shared closeness. Their happiness.
His for Revenge Page 7
