The Guardian's Virgin Ward

by Caitlin Crews

  Izar didn’t say another word. He didn’t have to say a thing.

  He waited.

  Liliana had the distinct feeling that he would wait forever, and she refused to look closely at the way that notion swelled inside of her, almost crowding out everything else. He didn’t look uncomfortable or nervous about her response. He was like the mountains all around him, unyielding and sure, capable of weathering anything. Everything.

  Even her.

  Maybe especially her.

  “Izar.”

  His name sounded like a prayer, and she hadn’t meant to say it.

  Izar only inclined his head, all of that gold in his eyes and so much light and hope gleaming in the box he held in his hands. Liliana steeled herself and opened her mouth to end this game, once and for all, right here in the center of the village with all these eyes on them.

  But what she said instead was “Yes.”

  * * *

  When they returned to the villa, Izar swept Liliana into his arms the moment she stepped from the Range Rover. The ring he’d put on her hand caught the light, and he didn’t have the words to describe what it was like to see it there on her hand, delicate and exquisite just as she was, and now marked as his for all the world to see.

  The crowd had applauded them. Liliana had said yes, though her blue eyes were dark, and Izar had slid the ring onto her finger. Such a simple act, exchanging a word and a ring, but he’d felt it shake through him. As if the whole world had changed in that instant.

  He’d told himself he was being foolish. That everything he was doing was reasonable and rational. Part of his plan. He’d opted to do something like this in so public an arena only because it would kill two birds with one stone—it would do the work of announcing their engagement, thanks to all the mobile phones and lurking paparazzi, even as it tied Liliana to him more fully.

  Because Izar didn’t trust her recent acquiescence. It wasn’t the woman he knew, so docile and obedient. He didn’t know what her game was, but he had no intention of playing it.

  He’d expected her to say no. He didn’t know why he’d phrased it as a question in the first place. He’d stood there with the ring box in his hand, waiting for her to reject him so he could kiss her boneless, at which point, he had no doubt, she’d do anything he asked.

  But, instead, she’d said yes.

  So he’d done what any rational, reasonable man would do after making a purely rational business proposal. He’d swept her into a deep, long kiss that could only be described as wildly romantic, something he was certain he would regret when he saw it in the papers.

  But he didn’t regret it now.

  Just as he didn’t regret the way she dropped her head to his shoulder as he moved through the villa, moving in and out of the pools of light from the lamps the staff had switched on as the afternoon drifted off into another inky December night.

  He didn’t ask her another question. He simply carried her up the stairs, down the hall and into his suite at last.

  Izar set her down at the side of his wide platform bed, aware that his pulse was a mad kick in his veins. Liliana stood before him, his ring on her finger and that drugging heat in her blue eyes, and it was all he could do not to throw her down and take her in the next instant, like the animal he’d worked so hard to never, ever become.

  He concentrated on her, instead.

  He didn’t trust her. He didn’t believe in the sort of marriage she’d outlined to him, filled with all those feelings. He didn’t want anything but her obedience and control of the company—he’d said so, hadn’t he?

  But no matter how he chanted those things to himself, all he could think to do was get his hands on her, as if she was his personal benediction. As if simply touching her would save him, when he’d long since given up on the notion that he needed saving.

  He stroked his hands through the fall of her hair, golden and thick. He traced her full, tempting lips with his thumb. He skimmed his palms over the sleeves of the fine wool tunic she wore, testing the feel of her limbs beneath. Then he reached down and tugged it up and over her head, so she was standing before him in nothing but leggings and boots.

  “Take them off,” he told her. He sounded like a stranger. More than that, he sounded desperate.

  But she didn’t seem to mind. Her lips curved as she toed off each boot, and then she raked the leggings off her long legs, kicking them out of her way.

  And then she stood before him wearing nothing at all but his ring.

  A meaningless item of jewelry that had no sentimental value whatsoever—or so Izar kept telling himself. But his body wasn’t listening. It didn’t care what he thought about that ring on her finger. It only knew what the ring meant.

  Mine. The word reverberated through him, like a shock wave. He felt it in his throat. His sex. His bones. She is all mine.

  Izar shrugged out of his clothes, not caring if he tore them in his haste to get them off. When he was finally free of them, he simply reached over and hauled her to him, picking her up and holding her until she wrapped her legs around his waist and settled herself against him.

  And then, at last, he lost himself.

  Completely.

  It was her taste. It was her mouth beneath his again, at last. It was the way she clung to him, pressing her breasts against him and looping her arms around his neck. He slid his hands around her taut, rounded bottom to hold her where he wanted her, and he took her mouth as if he’d never kissed a woman before in his life.

  If he had, he could no longer recall it.

  There was only this fire, this madness. There was only Liliana.

  Izar made no attempt whatsoever to control it.

  He angled his head, taking the kiss deeper, plundering her mouth until he felt drunk on it. Then he moved to the bed and levered them both down.

  And everything shifted from hot to volcanic.

  They rolled.

  She was beneath him, spread out for him, and he feasted on her. He took her hard little nipples in his mouth. He pressed himself against her softness. She licked her way down his neck and wrapped her hands around his sex, and they both groaned.

  Then they rolled again and she was on top, looking dazed and punch-drunk, just as he wanted her. He suspected he looked much then same—a notion that should have alarmed him but didn’t. She slid all over him and drove him wild. She bent down and licked at his flat, male nipples, tracing that dangerous tongue of hers all over his pectoral muscles and the hollow between them. Then she found her way back to his mouth.

  And he took her then, ferocious and ravenous. He ate at her mouth. He sank his hands into her hair and he held her where he wanted her, and he took and took and took.

  It wasn’t enough. It could never be enough.

  She is mine.

  He shifted then, hauling her up further against him and then rolling them one last time.

  Liliana stretched beneath him, a lovely arch of her perfect body, and he thought for a moment that he might lose what little control he had. But then she smiled at him, wide and bright and so unlike those practiced, pointed smiles he usually got from her that it made him ache.

  Izar felt something in his chest crack wide open.

  She put her hands to his face, as if she was learning the contours of his jaw, and he could feel the platinum band of the ring he’d put on her fingers. It was a gentle abrasion against his skin, and Izar thought it might kill him. She might kill him.

  He had never wanted this. He had never wanted her. He had never wanted to feel another thing as long as he lived.

  But Liliana had never seemed to give a damn what he wanted, and now the only thing he wanted in all the world was her.

  He held her to him as he rifled in the nearest drawer until he found protection. He handled it in record time and then he kissed her again, smoothing his hands down her body as he lined himself up with her entrance.

  He didn’t say the things that pressed against the roof of his mouth, demanding esca
pe. They would all sound like vows, like promises a different sort of man might make at a time like this. Izar refused to be that man, at least out loud.

  So he told her with his body, instead.

  He slid into her, slick and slow, and watched as she threw back her head and moaned, arching into him to take him fully.

  And then he was inside her to the hilt. And it was almost too much.

  He took it slow. He set a lazy pace, and he set out to drive her wild, so wild she couldn’t see anything but him. Ever. He teased her nipples with his mouth until she was writhing beneath him. Then he shifted, thrusting faster as he reached between them to toy with the slick center of her need.

  This time, she called out his name when she hurtled over that cliff, and it burst in him like light.

  But Izar didn’t stop. He kept going until she was meeting his thrusts again, digging in her heels and even sinking her teeth into his neck.

  He worshipped her and he taught her. He loved her and he marked her.

  She was his. She was his.

  And this time, when he threw her over the edge and she screamed out her pleasure, he went with her.

  * * *

  It was a very long night.

  Izar finally had her in his bed, where she belonged, and he didn’t care to examine that assertion. There were too many other things to examine, like every square inch of his ward’s beautiful body.

  At some point he had food brought to the room. Liliana wrapped herself in a bright red throw from one of his chairs and then they sat in front of the fire and ate a meal he was sure he’d never remember. What he would remember was how he’d pulled her astride him when they were done, urging her onto him and then teaching her how to ride him right there in the armchair.

  And he was only getting started.

  He lost track of the ways he took her, the ways he explored her, the ways he made up for all this time he’d had her so close and been unable to touch her. He learned her. Every inch, every groan, every sweet sigh. He tasted every part of her body, making sure there wasn’t a single part of her he didn’t make entirely his own.

  And they slept tangled together in his bed, then woke to do it all over again.

  When Izar woke after falling into a last dreamless sleep sometime near dawn, Liliana was still in a boneless heap, nestled against him. Another glorious Saint Moritz sunny day streamed in through his windows, igniting her golden hair and making it seem molten as it flowed around them both.

  He had never felt the thing that moved in him then. He ran a hand down her side as she snuggled against him and felt...good. Calm. Right.

  Content, he thought, something buoyant inside of him, making his chest feel tight. This is content.

  It was the maddest thing, but he was fairly certain he was smiling.

  Liliana stirred against him. She stretched by pointing her toes and burrowing her face into the crook of his shoulder, and everything was different. There was no separation between them. There was no stiffness of any kind in her lithe body. He would have sworn with everything he was that there was no pretense of any kind.

  She tipped up her head to blink drowsily at him, and something clutched at him. Hard.

  “Good morning,” she said, in a voice so husky from the night they’d shared that he felt himself stir all over again. Her blue eyes sparkled with that mischief that he found addicting. “Sir.”

  Izar discovered he couldn’t speak. Not yet. He could only reach over and very carefully, very gently, brush her hair back from her face.

  And that, too, felt like a prayer.

  Liliana sat up then, in a sudden rush, her lips parted as if she was about to laugh. Or speak. Or—

  But instead she went still. Her face drained of color.

  “Are you all right?” he asked, frowning.

  She didn’t answer him. She clapped a hand over her mouth and then she scrambled from the bed, throwing herself across the room and into the bathroom with such haste she didn’t close the door behind her.

  Seconds later, Izar heard her retching. He rolled from the bed, a kind of deep, hard chill working from the back of his head down the length of his spine. He followed her into the bathroom, taking in the scene with a glance.

  Liliana lifted her head from the toilet as he entered, then sat back, looking confused and weary as she slumped against the nearby wall.

  Izar didn’t speak. He filled a glass of water at the sink, then wet a hand towel.

  He squatted down beside her, ignoring the faint attempt she made to wave him away. He pressed the glass of water into her hands and then he took the washcloth and smoothed it over her forehead, the nape of her neck.

  “Try to take a sip,” he told her when he was finished with the cloth. “Just a little at a time.”

  Liliana sighed, a heavy sound. She took a sip, then another. Slowly, she stopped shaking.

  “I’m sorry...” She sounded as bewildered as she looked. “I don’t... I must have eaten something strange last night.”

  He looked at her for a long time, counting days in his head. Remembering his utter loss of control in her apartment. Doing the inevitable math as many different ways as he could and coming up with the same result every time. He watched the color come back to her face, the way it would not have done if she were truly ill, and he knew.

  “Liliana,” he said, and even her name felt different in his mouth now.

  Because this changed everything, whether she liked it or not—and he was certain she would not. But it turned out that he did. He more than liked it.

  If like was the right word to describe that thing that roared inside of him, triumphant enough to take over the whole world.

  This only underscored what he’d known for some time. Liliana was entirely, irrevocably, and forever his. It was impossible to consider that as anything but a great victory. He had to work hard not to show it.

  Not now. Not yet.

  “I do not think you ate something that disagreed with you, gatita.” Izar smiled as gently as he could. He reached over and tucked a strand of her golden hair behind her ear and willed that roaring thing to settle inside of him. “I think you are carrying my child.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  LILIANA REFUSED TO believe it. She refused to so much as entertain the possibility because of course she couldn’t be pregnant. Not at all, and certainly not with Izar’s child.

  Even after the physician came, summoned in a single terse phone call from Izar. Even after a urine test and a blood test, just to make absolutely sure.

  “I think that it is time to face reality,” Izar said quietly.

  He stood in the door to her bedroom, where she’d retreated with the doctor. He was dressed in what passed for his casual clothes, and Liliana had the passing thought that it was unfair that he could look so darkly alluring when he wasn’t even trying. She’d pulled on something—anything—to use as armor. Naked and ill on a bathroom floor was no way to have this or any other conversation with a man as overbearing as Izar. She’d been sure she needed all the help she could get.

  Because this couldn’t be happening. How could this be happening?

  Liliana ran her hands over her belly, but it felt the same as it always did. How was it possible that she and Izar had created a whole new person? A new life?

  A whole new family, a voice inside her whispered, as if this was a good thing.

  She couldn’t seem to think straight.

  “I don’t understand how this is possible,” she managed to say.

  It might have been the first words she’d spoken since the doctor had handed down the unequivocal news. She stayed where she was on the side of her bed, blinking furiously at the fireplace as if she could read her future in the flames, and she tried very hard not to look at Izar at all.

  But she’d never been very good at that, in pictures or in person.

  In the doorway, where Izar was so still, so watchful—so dangerous, something within her whispered, and not in fear—his lips cur
led in one corner.

  “Can you not?” he asked. “Once again, I must question the value of your exorbitantly expensive education.”

  The worst part was that he sounded so...at his ease. As if he’d transformed somehow into the Izar she’d fantasized he could be if only he were someone else. Unbidden, the previous night flooded back to her. He’d been relaxed then, too. Very nearly lazy, glutted on sensation and need just as she had been. Hour after hour after hour.

  The way she’d never dared imagine he could be. A lover, not a guardian.

  But the way he was watching her now made her skin prickle. It was far too indulgent. As if this had all worked out the way he’d wanted.

  “Is that a joke?” Liliana shoved her hair back from her face, irritated that her hands were still shaking. “This can’t happen. I can’t be...” She couldn’t say it. That would be admitting it and she couldn’t bring herself to do that, no matter what that doctor had said. “I’m too young.”

  Izar crossed his arms over his chest, and Liliana hated herself, because even now in this awful moment where the worst possible thing had gone and happened, she couldn’t help herself. She watched the play of his lean muscles beneath the dark black sweater he wore. Her mouth watered and her traitorous body flushed all over in wanton, treacherous readiness.

  That had been the problem from the start. And now she had a much, much bigger problem.

  Izar didn’t smile at that. Not quite. “I think you will find a great number of women have had many children long before the advanced age of twenty-three.”

  “I can’t be pregnant.” The word felt awkward on her tongue, like an indictment. And all she wanted to do was throw that blame at him, hard and heavy, and let him carry it. But more than that, she needed to get out of here. Before it was too late. She ignored the part of her that suggested it already was. “I have a whole life I need to live.”

  “Oh?” He stopped leaning against the door then, and prowled into the room. She didn’t want him here, she told herself darkly. Or, to be more accurate, she didn’t want him any closer to her because look what happened. She touched him and the world as she knew it screeched to a halt. She couldn’t be trusted anywhere near him. “And what life is this, exactly?”