Vows

by Rochelle Alers

  Burying her face against his warm neck, she pressed a kiss under his ear. He growled deep in his chest and caught the tender flesh at the base of her throat between his teeth, leaving a visible imprint of his claim.

  She moaned sensuously under his tender assault and he raised his head and stared up at her. The soft, golden light slanted across her face, highlighting the expression of satisfaction curving her temptingly lush mouth.

  He methodically removed the pins holding her hair in place, permitting the thick strands to fall around her neck in sensual disarray. A gentle smile softened his features, allowing him to appear noticeably younger than his thirty-eight years. “I like you with your hair loose.”

  Vanessa lowered her head, resting her forehead on his shoulder. She didn’t want to talk, because she wanted to remember and savor the moment when they had become one. Inhaling deeply, she committed the smell of his flesh to memory, because something unknown told her that once she left Mexico she would also leave Joshua Kirkland—forever. Waiting until his hold on her waist eased, she slipped smoothly out of his embrace and lay on her side.

  Turning over to his left, Joshua cradled Vanessa until her hips were molded to his groin. He pressed his lips to her hair, breathing in the delicate fragrance clinging to the strands.

  “Are you all right?” His voice was filled with concern.

  Closing her eyes, she smiled. “Yes.”

  “I didn’t hurt you, did I?”

  Turning in his embrace, she stared at him staring back at her. She placed a finger over his lips, then her mouth replaced it. “No, you didn’t hurt me.”

  He caught her hand and kissed each finger as she examined the thick, coarse, pale hair covering his scalp. “You’re a lot smaller than I expected you would be. I—”

  Her mouth covered his, stopping his words. “Don’t, please. Let’s enjoy what we have until it’s over.”

  He went completely still. “Is that what you want, Vanessa? You want it to be over?”

  “It’ll be over for me when I leave Mexico.”

  “What about me?”

  “What about you, Joshua?” She pulled away from him, drawing a sheet over her naked breasts. “You’ll probably leave Mexico and fly to some other country, where you’ll meet another woman to seduce.”

  She really did not want to think about him sleeping with another woman, but one thing she knew she was, and that was realistic. She probably wasn’t the first woman he had slept with while on a business trip, and she wouldn’t be the last.

  His eyes paled as he stared at her as Vanessa registered something menacing about him.

  “Is that how you see me? Do you actually think that I make it a habit of picking up women to sleep with when I travel on business?”

  Flinging off the sheet, she swung her legs over the side of the bed and strode naked across the room. “I don’t know what to think. I don’t even know you,” she flung over her shoulder.

  Moving quickly, Joshua left the bed and caught up with Vanessa before she reached the door connecting their bedrooms. Standing with his back to the door, he braced his arms over it, preventing her from escaping him.

  Leaning down from his impressive height, he thrust his face close to hers. “You’re right about that. You don’t know me. In fact, you know nothing about me. If you did, then you’d know that I don’t want to lose you.”

  There was no emotion in his voice, and that unnerved Vanessa more than his unexpected admission. She felt as if a hand had closed around her throat, not permitting her to come back at him.

  Silence descended upon them like a weighted fog, cloaking and smothering in its intensity. The sound of labored breathing shattered the stillness as Vanessa and Joshua engaged in a virulent debate without words.

  Her gaze shifted from his impassive expression to his smooth, bared chest, then returned to his face. She studied him, feature by feature, trying vainly to see another side of the stranger she’d just slept with.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” she questioned, recovering her voice.

  His eyes widened. “Exactly what I said. I don’t want you to move out, and when I return to the States I want you to come back with me.”

  Vanessa couldn’t help herself. She burst out laughing. “I go back with you and do what? Give up all I’ve worked for to sit around and wait while you jet around the world?”

  Joshua struggled to control his temper. She wasn’t going to make it easy for him. There would be no way he could protect her from prosecution unless she cooperated with him.

  “I’d never expect you to sit around and wait for me.”

  “So I’d lie in bed and wait for you, instead of sitting.”

  “That’s enough,” he warned, his voice rising slightly.

  Her temper rose to match his. “How do you see me, Joshua? Did you think I was so desperate for male company that I slept with you because you were the only one offering?”

  “Why did you let me make love to you?” he shouted at her.

  There was a long, rigid silence, her chest rising and falling heavily with every breath she took. Joshua Kirkland had stripped her bare—figuratively and literally. He wanted the truth and she would give him the truth.

  “I slept with you because I’m attracted to you. You have to know that you’re a very sensual as well as a very intriguing man.”

  He took a step, closing the distance between until they were less than a foot apart. “What about emotions, Vanessa? Do you at least feel something for me?”

  Tilting her chin in a gesture of defiance, she gave him a steady stare. “I like you. Is that what you want to hear?”

  His lips twisted into a cynical smile. “It’s better than if you despised me.”

  “Don’t put words in my mouth. I never said that I despised you.”

  His hands slipped up her arms, bringing her closer, and she was conscious of where his naked flesh touched hers. His splayed fingers moved to her hips as he lowered his head and drank deeply from her sweet mouth. He wasn’t disappointed when Vanessa returned his kiss with all of the passion she was capable of offering him. Both were breathing heavily when the kiss ended.

  Shimmering green eyes burned her face as she glanced up. “When are you going to stop seducing me?” she whispered.

  “Never,” he crooned moments before he claimed her mouth again.

  Chapter 10

  Vanessa lay sprawled between Joshua’s outstretched legs in the oversized Jacuzzi, her head resting against his chest. The warm, swirling waters in the tub helped ease the slight tenderness between her thighs, while she luxuriated in the feel of his strong fingertips as he shampooed her hair.

  “Angel?” he whispered close to her ear.

  “Hmm.”

  “Don’t fall asleep on me. I still have to rinse your hair.”

  Smiling, she didn’t open her eyes. “If I fall asleep, it’s your fault. I ask for lunch and you fill me up with wine and pâté.”

  He chuckled. “It was too late for lunch, so think of them as pre-dinner appetizers.”

  She and Joshua had made love a second time, then fallen asleep in each other’s arms, waking hours later to lengthening afternoon shadows and a softly falling rain.

  Joshua had suggested she relax in the Jacuzzi while he prepared something to eat. His something had turned out to be an excellently prepared pâté de foie gras on delicate, stone ground wheat crackers and a chilled bottle of white wine. When she’d raised a questioning eyebrow he’d explained that he needed to replenish the contents of the wet bar.

  He had placed a tray with the wine, crackers, and pâté on a table near the Jacuzzi. He then surprised her when he positioned several lighted candles on shelves in the bathroom, turned off the lights, stripped off his clothes, and joined her in the Jacuzzi, where they spent the better part of an hour eating, drinking and lounging in the warm, swirling water.

  “What’s for dinner?”

  His fingers stilled their massaging, rhythmic motions on
her scalp. “It’s a surprise.”

  “You’re just full of surprises, aren’t you?” she teased.

  If only you knew how many, he mused, wondering how she would react to his marriage proposal and his eventual disclosure of who he was working for.

  “Is there something you don’t like, or are allergic to?”

  “I’m allergic to anchovies, and I don’t like rhubarb and brussels sprouts.”

  “I don’t think any of them are on tonight’s menu.”

  Opening her eyes and raising her chin, she smiled up at Joshua. A sheen of moisture dotted his face and spiked his lashes. “Aren’t you going to give me a hint?”

  He shook his head slowly while studying her face with his enigmatic gaze. Retrieving a loofah sponge from the water, he squeezed it over her head, gently rinsing the shampoo from her hair. The water trickled over her head and shoulders and down the curves of her small, firm breasts. His gaze drank in her beauty, stunned by the perfection of her face and body.

  She is as beautiful as she is devious, the silent voice whispered to him, and his expression hardened. Despite what he felt and was beginning to feel for Vanessa, he had to remember what she was: traitor, spy, witch. A beautiful witch who’d cast her spell over him so that he couldn’t escape her if he tried.

  He placed the sponge on the tray with the half-empty bottle of wine. “I’m finished.”

  She squeezed the excess water from her hair. “Thank you.” She would finish rinsing it in the shower.

  Her eyes widened in awe as she watched Joshua rise from the water, step out of the sunken bathtub, and walk over to the rack cradling thick, thirsty towels. His wet body gleamed in the glow of the flickering candles, the muted light turning him into a towering statue of polished bronze.

  Vanessa noted for the first time that there wasn’t an ounce of fat on his tall, spare frame, and she couldn’t pull her gaze away as he went through the motions of drying his body. Every move was fluid and measured, as if in a choreographed dance. He was so quintessentially male that she found it hard to draw a normal breath without heat suffusing her face and body.

  Who are you, Joshua Kirkland? She hadn’t realized that the silent question had nagged at her from the first time she saw him on the plane. He appeared perfect, so perfect that she had taken off her clothes and lain with him only four days after their meeting.

  What, she wondered, was there about him that had made her so shameless? He’d been forthright with her when he told her he wanted to seduce her, and yet she had begged him to make love to her.

  Why, at thirty-three, had she become so bold, so brazen, when she never had been before? Why had it taken Kenneth Richmond four months to get her into his bed, while it had taken Joshua Kirkland only four days?

  All of the whys tumbled over each other in her head until Joshua walked over to the Jacuzzi, hunkered down, and kissed her mouth.

  “Take your time getting dressed. I’m going to order dinner.”

  Her dark eyes searched his face. “I thought you were going to do the cooking.”

  “I am.” He smoothed back her eyebrows with a forefinger. “I have to call the kitchen and see what they have.”

  She nodded, watching him as he straightened and walked out of the bathroom and into his dressing room. She lounged in the healing waters for another ten minutes, then stepped out and made her way over to the shower stall to rinse her hair and body.

  When Vanessa walked out of her bedroom and into the living room she was met with several tantalizing cooking aromas. A blending of exotic spices wafted through the suite, reminding her of how much she needed to put something in her stomach.

  The table in the dining alcove was set with china, fragile stemware and gleaming silver. She noted wineglasses, water goblets and tiny cordials, and each setting also claimed several forks. It was apparent that Joshua intended to prepare a dinner with several courses.

  When he’d asked whether she cooked, she had replied that she was learning, and that she was. Her older sister Connie had been the one who loved tinkering in the kitchen and experimenting with exotic dishes, while she had preferred solitary pursuits like reading, listening to music and writing lengthy letters to her many pen pals.

  After securing a teaching position, she set up her own apartment and bought all of the top of the line cooking gadgets, but continued to eat at local restaurants. It was only after relocating to Santa Fe that she realized she didn’t want to spend the remainder of her life eating out, and enrolled in a mail order cooking course.

  Some of the meals she prepared were too elaborate for one person, but it gave her a sense of accomplishment when the presentations mirrored the photographs in the large, loose-leaf binders. The ultimate taste test was usually satisfying, although some of the dishes requiring piquant spices were a little too stimulating for her delicate taste buds.

  She moved away from the dining area and into the kitchen, where Joshua stood at a counter stirring something in a small mixing bowl. A slow smile crinkled the skin around her eyes as she watched him. There was something attractive about a man in a kitchen—whether he was cooking or washing dishes.

  Her gaze moved appreciatively over his celery green, short-sleeved silk shirt and black tailored slacks. The color of the shirt was an exact match for his luminous eyes.

  “You look and smell wonderful,” he remarked, not glancing her way.

  Vanessa folded her hands on her hips. “How would you know? You haven’t looked at me.”

  “Peripheral vision, Angel. And I don’t have to look at you to smell you.”

  She walked over to him and pressed a kiss to his smooth cheek. “Thank you.” The warmth and the seductive fragrance of his aftershave enveloped her in a sensual cocoon of longing.

  Before she could pull away she found her body molded against the length of his, and her mouth ravished in a tender assault that robbed her of her breath.

  Joshua pulled back, staring at the shocked expression on her face. “You’re quite welcome,” he whispered.

  His gaze feathered over her bared shoulders under a lemon-yellow silk dress that skimmed her body and ended mid-calf, before reversing direction and lingering on her hair. She’d blown it out and, utilizing a curling iron, had curled it in a mass of tiny curls that caressed her face and danced along the nape of her long neck.

  “I don’t think I’ll ever get used to your beauty.”

  His voice was filled with awe and passion as he cradled her face between his hands. His thumbs toyed with the tiny gold hoops in her pierced lobes. He tried seeing into the depths of her dark eyes, hoping beyond hope that she was innocent of spying against her country. At that moment he wanted to pretend that she wasn’t who she was, and he wasn’t who he was.

  When, he thought, had the seduction changed so that his actions were no longer calculated, but real? Too real for him to ignore that his feelings for the woman in his arms ran deep, deep and passionate.

  I want her for myself! He wanted her in bed and out of bed. The realization of why he’d lured Vanessa to his hotel suite ripped through him like a knife. The woman he’d been directed to follow and investigate was the woman he knew he wanted to spend the rest of his life with.

  Lowering his head, he buried his face in the curls framing her face, struggling to keep from blurting out that he was falling in love with her. He was thirty-eight, and all of his life he had practiced hiding his emotions, and he’d become an expert—except now.

  What was there about her that stripped him of his self-control, leaving him vulnerable to pain and anguish? He had grown up seeing enough pain to last him two lifetimes, but he was helpless against Vanessa and the spell she wove over him.

  “What’s for dinner?” she breathed against his throat.

  “You,” he growled, swinging up her in his arms and striding purposefully toward his bedroom.

  Vanessa, holding tightly to his neck, closed her eyes. There was something so primitive, so savage, in the single word that it left
her trembling with a need that went beyond logic or reason.

  He placed her on the bed, his body following, while his hands searched for the opening of her dress. He moaned in frustration when he couldn’t find the hidden zipper under her left arm. Her fingers were busy trying to undo the buttons on his shirt, and in her haste several were ripped from the silken garment.

  Thwarted by trying to remove her dress, Joshua raised his body and unbuckled the belt around his waist and pushed his slacks down around his hips.

  Heavy, labored breathing punctuated the silent space, followed by the whisper of fabric being pushed aside and the satisfying moans of flesh meeting flesh.

  Surely I’m going to die from the pleasure, he thought as he pushed into the hot, tight, wet flesh sheathing his own hard, blood-engorged sex.

  Everything was magnified in the blackness of the bedroom: the scent of their lovemaking mingling with their perfumed bodies, the soft sounds of sexual pleasure, and the silken feel of her legs clasped tightly around his waist.

  Heat, chills, and waves of ecstasy swept over Vanessa as she tried, and failed, to keep the moans from escaping her. She forgot about everything as she gave herself up to the burning desire shaking her from head to toe.

  She gasped, her body arching as the first ripple of release gripped her, subsided, then gripped her again—this time longer and stronger than the first. Waves of ecstasy throbbed through her until she threw back her head and cried an awesome moan of erotic pleasure as Joshua’s own groans overlapped hers, his breath coming in long, surrendering gasps.

  Joshua lay heavily on Vanessa, the remnants of passion ebbing. The enormity of what they’d shared washed over him as if he’d plunged head first into an ice-covered stream.

  “Joshua?” Her voice was soft and quivering in the silence.

  He nodded rather than speaking, because he knew what she was going to say before she spoke.

  “What did we do?”

  Cradling her tightly, he reversed their positions. “We just made love, darling.”