Winter Bride (9780345546197)

by Johansen, Iris

  Shocked, but not repulsed. Strange how she had not been repulsed as she had felt whenever Arnold had touched her. Sexual chemistry? The thought was as shocking as her response had been. She had never experienced anything approaching the intense physical reaction Jed had stirred in her a few moments ago. She had thought she was one of those women incapable of sexual desire.

  She wouldn’t feel lust for Jed Corbin. Dear heaven, she had seen enough of that emotion on San Miguel to realize what a trap it was for women. She had a purpose to accomplish and nothing must distract her, not when she was so close to her goal. She instinctively knew there was nothing to fear physically in Jed. He was not a man who would use force on a woman, and by the time she saw him tomorrow he would probably have changed his mind about wanting her anyway.

  She carefully didn’t address the problem of what she would do if he didn’t change his mind.

  She started up the path away from the cottage, her hurried pace closely resembling flight.

  “Come in.”

  Jed didn’t look up from his computer when Ysabel walked into the cottage the following afternoon. “Sit down,” he said absently. “I’ll be with you in a minute.” He went back to whatever he was working on.

  So much for her apprehensions and the sleepless night she had spent, Ysabel thought with rueful relief. She had been right in her surmise that his attitude would be different that day.

  She closed the door, moved quietly to the window seat, and curled up on the hard wood, gazing out at the sea. She had always loved the sea in all its moods. She concentrated, closing out both the sound of Jed’s typing and her own nervousness.

  She was still sitting in the same position two hours later when she became conscious the typing had stopped.

  “What are you thinking about?”

  She shifted her gaze to his face. “I beg your pardon?”

  “I’ve been rude enough to make you sit there for hours and you still look as contented as a hand fed Siamese cat.” He leaned back in his chair. “Day-dreaming?”

  “I … suppose.”

  “Don’t you know? Or don’t you want to share it with me?”

  “I don’t … I’ve always … Why are you interested?”

  “I’m interested because you weren’t on the same planet with me.” His voice had a definite edge. “It … bothers me.”

  “Why? Arnold never …” She stopped as she saw the flicker of anger in his expression.

  “I’m not my father. In many ways I’m a hell of a lot more demanding. I’m not content with a costumed figurine.”

  “You’re not being reasonable.” She laughed tremulously. “You said you only wanted to look at me. What difference does it make what I’m thinking?”

  “It makes a difference. I want to know …” He trailed off in frustration. “First, I kept you waiting, then I start to pry and bully you, and you just sit there cool and controlled and let me do it. Why don’t you tell me to go to hell?”

  “I don’t want to make you angry,” she said simply.

  He muttered something beneath his breath, and his chair screeched back as he rose to his feet.

  She flinched, stiffening warily as he came toward her.

  He stopped in his tracks as he saw her expression. “For Lord’s sake, I’m not going to hit you.” A sudden thought occurred to him. “Did he ever strike you?”

  She didn’t answer.

  “Did he?”

  She could see he wasn’t going to give up. “Not often.”

  “Not often,” he repeated, stunned.

  “Only at the beginning,” she went on quickly. “Before I learned how to please him.”

  “He actually struck you?” he asked thickly. “My God, the last time I saw him he weighed over two hundred pounds and you weren’t much more than a child. He was a tyrant with women, but he never physically abused them.”

  “Our relationship was different.”

  “Because he knew you wouldn’t fight back.” His eyes were suddenly blazing. “Why didn’t you fight him, dammit?”

  “It wasn’t in our agreement. I promised …”

  “What did you promise?”

  “To do anything, be anything he wanted me to be,” she whispered.

  “Even his punching bag?”

  “It didn’t happen often.”

  “It shouldn’t have happened at all.” His hands grasped her shoulders and tightened with unconscious cruelty. “I want to shake you. How could you let him—” He drew a deep breath, his expression filled with self-disgust when her face contorted with pain. “And now I’m doing it.” He released her shoulders. “Like father, like son. And would you let me beat you too?”

  “You’re not like him.”

  “That’s not the question. Would you let me abuse you, if I liked?”

  “Yes,” she said clearly.

  He looked as if she had struck him. “Lord.”

  “Did you think I’d say no?” Her voice was suddenly fierce, her eyes blazing at him. “Pain is nothing. I can endure anything, do anything I have to do.”

  “For money?”

  “Money is only a means to an end.”

  “For San Miguel?”

  She drew a steadying breath. “I told you I had to go back. Nothing is more important than that.”

  He gazed at her for a moment, then turned on his heel, strode across the room and dropped into his chair. “Then you’ll have to find someone else to take you.”

  “I didn’t choose you randomly. After I ran across that magazine article about how you got the San Miguel story, I dug out everything about you that I could. I researched and I thought a long time before I decided you were the best man to help me.”

  He shook his head. “You’re wrong. I’m the worst choice you could make.” He reached out and grasped the edge of the table. “You have a very weird effect on me. I can’t be in the same room with you for three minutes without being thrown into turmoil.”

  “Yet you worked for two hours today and entirely forgot my presence.”

  “Not entirely. I could feel you there. I just didn’t acknowledge you.”

  “Then all you have to do is continue to close me out.”

  “It’s not that easy. Whenever I’m around you, I find myself reverting to that undisciplined hellion I was fourteen years ago.” He smiled bitterly. “I give you fair warning. I don’t react either sensibly or logically to you.”

  “All right, I can accept that.”

  “You can accept anything, right? You can take that bastard’s lust and abuse. You can let him—” He broke off. “You see? I’m out of control where you’re concerned. Better get away from me while you still can.”

  She shook her head.

  He suddenly smiled recklessly. “Then on your head be it. Why should I worry about you? You know what you want and what you’re willing to do to get it. From now on I’ll just sit back and enjoy the benefits of being the chosen one of our meek little Winter Bride.”

  “I’m not meek.”

  “No, you’re something a good deal more interesting and challenging.” He placed his knee on the table and leaned back, causing his chair to teeter on its back legs. His demeanor had changed and had become coolly, almost insolently, confident. “I think we’ll test that philosophy of acceptance in the next few days. I want to see just how much you want me to go to San Miguel.”

  “I’ve told you—”

  “But I’ve always believed actions speak louder than words.”

  “What do you want from me?”

  “That you come here tomorrow and the day after tomorrow and the day after that. I want you to obey me as you did my father and ‘accept’ anything I ask of you.”

  “And will you take me to San Miguel, if I do?”

  “No promises.” His tone was hard. “I have no intention of making it easy for you. At the end of that time I’ll make a decision and it may very well be no.” He paused. “And the only thing you may have accomplished is pleasing me. You�
��d be a fool to agree.”

  She searched his face and saw something there that caused her eyes to widen with wonder. “You want me to refuse.”

  “Do I? That would be foolish of me.”

  She frowned. “You’re a very perplexing man. I don’t understand you.”

  “Yes or no?”

  She hesitated but there was only one possible answer. “I’ll do as you wish, of course.”

  The front legs of the chair came down on the floor. “Great.” His savage tone did not reflect the sentiment. “Be here at eleven o’clock tomorrow morning.”

  “How long will I have to stay?”

  “Until I tell you to go.”

  “A few hours are no problem but if I’m gone too long, Betty may prove difficult.”

  “Good Lord, does she order you about too? She’s your housekeeper, not your warden.” He added roughly, “Tell the shrew to mind her own business.”

  It was easier said than done, she thought. He had no conception how hard it had been for her to escape Betty’s eagle eye for the last two days. “I’ll be here at eleven.” She started across the room.

  He caught her arm as she passed his chair. “Wait.”

  She stood still, bracing herself.

  “Easy.” His voice was hoarse, his tone halting. “I just wanted to …” His head lowered and his lips gently pressed against the flesh of her inner wrist. “I’m sorry I hurt you.” Then her hand was free. “Eleven o’clock,” he said gruffly, not looking at her.

  Tenderness. She could not equate the emotion with Jed, but there was no denying the exquisite tenderness of that kiss. She stared down at his thick silver hair and felt a sudden urge to reach out and touch it, smooth it, comb her fingers through the wiry, curly mop. The impulse was as bewildering as his action had been and frightened her more than anything that had happened that day.

  “Good-bye,” she muttered and fled.

  Four

  “It’s almost dark. I’d like to go back to the castle now.”

  “What? No please?” he asked mockingly as he looked up from his computer. “Where are those elegant geisha girl manners? Careful or they’ll expel you from the union.”

  She tried to smother the sudden flash of pain that shot through her at his words. She had never known anyone who could so effortlessly destroy her self-control. She had sat calmly while Arnold had verbally torn her to pieces, but Jed’s sarcasm touched a strange, hurtful chord. “Please,” she said. “I thought my politeness annoyed you.”

  “Everything about you annoys me. The way you look at me, the way you don’t look at me, that soft, husky voice.” He turned off the computer. “This garbage I’ve been writing all afternoon.”

  “You can’t blame me for your lack of creativity. I haven’t made you … You haven’t said two words to me since I arrived here.”

  “That doesn’t mean I’ve not been aware of you.” He scowled moodily. “You’ve played hell with my concentration.”

  She had known he had been as aware of her as she had been of him. For the past six hours she had sat there in the window seat, every muscle locked with the tension that vibrated like a live electric wire between them. She looked down at her hands folded on her lap. “That’s hardly my fault either. It’s not my choice to be here. If you wanted to work, it would have been more sensible to let me stay at the castle.”

  “I didn’t want to work. I wanted to see if I could—look at me, dammit.” When her gaze lifted to meet his, he said, “I don’t like not being in control. I thought I could shut you out, but it’s not working anymore.”

  “I haven’t done anything to disturb you.”

  “Which disturbs me more than anything you could do. You sit there with your hands folded and your expression as serene as a Madonna’s and I want to break something. I want to break you.” He got up and moved slowly toward her. “I want to hear you yell at me and pound me. I want to see you without that blasted armor.”

  He was now so close, she could see the pupils of his glittering eyes and feel the heat of his body reaching out and enfolding her. She couldn’t breathe. “I don’t know what you mean. I have no armor.”

  “The hell you haven’t.” He reached out and trailed his index finger down her throat, leaving a path of fire in its wake. “But any armor can be pierced with the right weapon.” His thumb settled in the hollow of her throat, testing the tempo of her heart. “You like my touching you?”

  Like was not the word, she thought in bewilderment. His touch was arousing a pleasure so excruciatingly intense, it was close to pain.

  “Let’s see what else you like.” His head slowly lowered as his hand moved down to cup her breast. “Open your mouth.”

  Her breast was swelling, the nipple hardening, and she felt a clenching of the muscles of her stomach.

  “Open,” he repeated softly.

  She closed her eyes and obeyed him.

  His tongue …

  She heard him groan low in his throat as his fingers opened and closed on her breast. “More.” His tongue ravaged, teased, played, sank deep. Then his other hand was behind her, unzipping the long zipper at the back of her dress. “Give me more.”

  The dress was down at her waist, and her undergarments had somehow come off too.…

  He lifted her so that she was kneeling on the window seat. His mouth hovered and then enveloped her breast.

  She gasped as she felt the strong sucking pressure. She swayed forward, her hands grasping blindly for his shoulders. His mouth switched to the other breast, while his hand wandered over her stomach, curved around and cupped her buttocks. She heard herself making tiny sounds that were somewhere between a whimper and a groan as his palms opened and closed on her bottom.

  He lifted his head. His cheeks were flushed, his eyes brilliant, his lips heavy with sensuality. With shaking hands he pushed the dress down and lifted her out of it. “Beautiful …” He threw the dress aside. He ran his fingers through her hair until it was a wild, tousled mop. “I think we’ll leave the boots on. I’ve always liked the feel of suede against my skin.” His tongue licked delicately at her nipple as his hand moved slowly, sensuously back and forth over the instep of the boot. “Tough and yet velvet soft.” His hand left the boot and moved up to pet the curls surrounding her womanhood. “Like this. But this is going to feel even better against me. Soft, springy …”

  His words were almost as erotic as his touch, and the sight of his long tanned fingers on her body sent a hot shudder through her. What was happening to her? She was melting, mindless, her hips lifting to his hand as if begging for more.

  “You like it?” he muttered, tugging at the curls. “It’s going to be hard to wait, isn’t it? Lie down, love.” He pushed her back on the window seat, parting her thighs and then standing back to look at her. “Lord, I want you.”

  She could see his bold arousal changing the shape of his jeans, his nostrils flaring as he looked down at her. It was strange lying there totally exposed before him, the sun streaming through the window, warm on her naked skin, the pine window seat hard beneath her buttocks.

  His hand cupped her womanhood, his fingers teasing, searching. “Tell me you want me.”

  “I … do.”

  His finger entered her, probed, played. “Say the words.”

  She arched upward with a cry of sheer need.

  He laughed hoarsely. “That was very satisfactory but I want more. Tell me you like it.”

  “Yes.” She was dizzy, whirling, writhing with heat and need. “Jed …”

  “I like the sound of that too.” His lips enveloped her breast again, his finger stroking her. “Say my name again.”

  She looked down at his silver head nestled against her breast, his teeth tugging at her nipple. The ache between her thighs was growing until she could think of nothing else. “Jed?”

  “You want an end to it? I do too.” He delicately licked her. “Just tell me you want me too. I need to know.”

  He must be able to see h
ow he was making her feel, she thought wildly. She couldn’t stand much more of this. “I … want you to do anything you want to do.” Surely that would be enough.

  He stiffened against her. “Those words sound vaguely familiar.” He lifted his head to look at her grimly. “Are you by any chance ‘accepting’ me, Ysabel?”

  She was too bewildered by the change in him to answer and his anger flared. “Damn you,” he said softly. He straightened away from her. “Get the hell out of here.”

  She looked up at him dazedly. “You want me to leave?”

  “No, I want you over on that bed, moving underneath me,” he said harshly. “And if you don’t get out of here in the next minute that’s just where you’ll be. Get moving.”

  She sat up and reached for her dress. It was difficult to move when her body felt so heavy and yet erotically sensitive.

  “Too slow.” He snatched up her dress, slipped it over her head, and pulled it down over her body. Then he jerked her to her feet and pushed her toward the door. “Go on. Run back and hide out in that turreted cocoon.”

  She was still too shaken to fully understand him. “You don’t want me to come back tomorrow?”

  “You’re damned right I want you back here,” he said grimly. “By then I’ll have had time to get over these inconvenient twinges of consciousness and be able to take what I want.” He turned his back on her, every muscle rigid. “Get out of here.”

  She ran out of the cottage and kept on running until she reached the castle. She felt on fire, her skin flushed and feverish. What had happened to her? she wondered desperately as she went into the foyer and started up the stone steps. She would not go back tomorrow. What he made her feel was too dangerous and she couldn’t let herself be swept away. Perhaps she could find some other way to—

  “What are you up to, Ysabel? I saw you flying up the path like the devil was after you.”

  Ysabel froze and looked at Betty standing at the foot of the stairs. She suddenly became conscious of her windblown hair, and scorching heat climbed to her cheeks as she realized she was not wearing anything beneath her dress. Her unbound breasts, outlined against the silky material, seemed terribly betraying. She felt almost as if Betty must be able to see what had happened at the cottage. She quickly turned her back to the housekeeper. “N-nothing’s wrong,” she stammered. “I just felt like running.”