His Vienna Christmas Bride

by Jan Colley

  “I’m sorry if I bored you.” She took her gloves from her pocket and began to put them on. “I guess museums aren’t your thing.”

  No, from what she knew and had heard of Adam, culture, history and tradition would not be his first choice of entertainment. But he’d borne their woefully quick trip to this great museum with good humor.

  “Not at all,” he said loftily. “Seeing it through your eyes has been a revelation. Your knowledge amazes me.”

  Jasmine preened a little. She really must do something to add to her degree, a postgrad art course or something.

  “Like I said over Christmas,” Adam said, turning his collar up against the crisp late-afternoon air. “You have all this passion for history and yet you work for a financial company, typing letters and picking up my brother’s dry cleaning.”

  She slipped her arm through his as they walked out onto Maria-Theresien-Platz, trying not to be miffed by his summation of her job. She did more than type letters and run errands. Nick and his father traveled a lot, there were always flights and hotels to book, conferences to register for, soirées and functions to organize…and she realized that it may have been challenging for the first year but she could manage all of that now standing on her head.

  “I enjoy my job,” she insisted. “I like being organized. Nick pays well and the staff are nice.”

  The staff kept to themselves and that was the most important thing. As personal assistant to the boss, she was treated with respect and held at arm’s length and that suited her fine. No embarrassing family secrets slipping out over social occasions.

  Adam squeezed her arm. “I’m not knocking the job, I’m just interested in your reasons.”

  Her reasons were completely justifiable and she didn’t feel the need to explain. She’d endured scandal and pity and finger-pointing all her life. She wanted privacy. It wasn’t hard to understand.

  “I think maybe you’re running away,” he continued after giving her plenty of time to answer him. “Burying yourself in an unsatisfactory career to escape a bit of bad publicity.”

  “What’s the alternative?” she demanded, trying not to sound testy. “Stay in England and be subjected to a media frenzy every time I step outdoors?”

  He squeezed her arm. “You’re exaggerating.”

  She booted at the snow crunching underfoot. Then she sighed noisily. “You’re right, of course.”

  What happened last time seemed a million miles away, and it was stupid to let the past intrude on their winter wonderland now. Jasmine put it out of her mind. She pulled him over to admire the statue of Maria Theresa, the Holy Roman Empress of the Habsburg dynasty, and mother of Marie Antoinette. “Did you know,” Jasmine said, her enthusiasm for history drowning out any residual pique, “she had sixteen children?”

  Adam grunted, craning his neck to look up the tall edifice.

  “Rumor has it,” she lowered her voice conspiratorially, “she asked her physician to stop her falling pregnant and he told her to take an apple. ‘Before or after?’ she asked, and he said, ‘instead of.’”

  Adam chuckled and patted the stone pillars that surrounded the statue. “She’s not running away from a bit of gossip, is she?”

  Jasmine laughed. Their eyes met, held and heated while insane thoughts of reproduction and birth control and Adam, naked and holding an apple, careened through her mind. Freud would have approved of the analogy: Adam, apple, sin…

  Something in her face must have offered an inkling of her thoughts because his eyes darkened to a luscious molten caramel and filled with awareness. Her smile faded as an all-consuming deluge of desire buffeted her, turning her bones to water. They stood in the middle of the plaza, staring at each other as people walked around them, uncomprehending of the desire that pulsed between them.

  She turned her head, looking in the direction of the hotel. They were only three or four blocks away. The back of her neck dampened with the need to get her hands on him.

  Adam tightened his grip on her arm. “Hotel,” he muttered. “Now.”

  They ran the relatively short journey without another word. The moment the elevator doors closed, Adam pulled her into his arms and kissed her hungrily. Even last night, she’d never known such burning need.

  “Hurry, hurry,” she whispered against his mouth as they watched the floors slowly pass. Finally they spilled out into the passageway and rushed to their room, only to find their way blocked by the service trolley. They hadn’t left the suite until after midday, so the housemaid was still in attendance.

  They looked at each other, panting as if they’d just run a marathon, while the woman, wide-eyed, waited for instruction. The polite thing to do would be to go downstairs, have a drink on the turn-of-the-century sofas in the secluded bar and let the woman finish her task. Jasmine couldn’t wait and by the look of impatient anguish in Adam’s eyes, neither could he. She flicked a glance through the suite to the bedroom—the bed had been made, at least.

  He produced a handful of euros and thrust them into the woman’s hand. She nodded and pushed her heavy trolley into the passage, turning to shove a bundle of towels into Adam’s hands as he shut the door.

  Alone at last, and Jasmine’s mirth erupted in a snort. “Poor woman. She was speechless.”

  “I gave her a good tip,” he muttered, backing her against the wall, seemingly more interested in getting her out of her abundant clothes. He yanked at her scarf until it slid off and was halfway through the buttons on her overcoat by the time she stopped laughing.

  They tore into each other, even while she wondered why this urgency, this overpowering need? After the hours spent making love every which way last night, her desperation now stunned her.

  She shivered as he roughly stripped her of each outer garment, leaving her in panties and her ankle boots. With every success, as he threw the offending article aside, he captured her mouth in a hungry, lustful kiss that shook her to her marrow. A whirlwind of activity, he tugged at her braided hair, using both hands to free it.

  “Bed,” he ordered, turning her with his hands on her shoulders and propelling her ahead of him, stripping off his own coat as he went. He didn’t stop when they got to the bed and tumbled her down in front of him. Jasmine scrambled onto her hands and knees and began to move up toward the head, but suddenly his fingers closed around her ankle. She twisted her head around and her heart went into overdrive when she saw the fierce need on his face, his lips parted, breathing heavily. A touch of apprehension fluttered through her. This was dark and edgy, not the polished seduction she’d come to expect. She fleetingly thought of how she must look from where he stood, her backside waving in the air, her silly ankle boots with the high heels probably in danger of ruining the antique bedspread.

  Adam’s fingers tightened around her ankle while with his other hand, he unzipped his trousers. And then he began to pull her slowly back toward him.

  The sight of her nearly naked on her hands and knees and still in those boots nearly undid him. Her hair spilled over her shoulders in a riot of waves, kinked up by the braid she’d worn. When she twisted her head around to look at him, her eyes were huge with desire and apprehension. He sucked in air and called on all his powers of control to calm his breathing, needing to slow this down, reassure her. But dear God, he was riding a savage hunger.

  Holding her gaze—and her foot—he drew his zipper down then used the same hand to extract his wallet and take out a condom. He let go of her foot for a moment to slip on protection but kept his eyes on her face. Then he pulled, dragging her inch by inch back to the edge of the bed to where he waited, still in his shirt with his trousers around his ankles.

  Her back arched, her hands flat on the bed. He let go of her foot, leaned right over her back and slid his cold hands under her body. She gasped and tensed, sucking her stomach in and thrusting her breasts right into his hands.

  Adam’s body settled on hers, his legs taking most of his weight. Calling on all his shredded control, he buried
his face in the fragrance of her hair and nuzzled and nipped her neck. She shuddered under him as he caressed her, her bottom pushing up against him, driving him to distraction. Somehow he slowed things down to a simmer, stroking and kneading her breasts until she was like a sea beneath him, a writhing, moaning sea. He moved one hand down her body and stroked her leg, from calf to buttock and back, paying particular attention to the back of her knee, an exceptionally sensitive area for her, he’d learned last night.

  She moaned his name, and his control shattered. Nothing else mattered, his goals, his business, only this, taking her, making her his, surrendering to mindless passion and taking her with him. He nudged her legs apart and stroked her intimately, swearing when he felt her scalding heat.

  She heard the muttered oath torn from his throat, felt his fingers on her, in her, and lost it. From the very deepest part of her, something broke, something that walled in her reason, her dignity, and she cried out and it was guttural and hoarse and long. Her body arched up like a bow, gripped in such an intense rush of sensation, she couldn’t contain it. Oh, and he knew just how to prolong it, how to nurture the ecstasy, wring out every drop for what might have been a minute or ten. When she finally floated back to something resembling consciousness, she trembled inside and out with sweet release.

  He slid his hands up her arms and linked his fingers with hers and made love to her from behind. She purred and pressed back into him, depleted but eager to please. The slide of him in the unfamiliar angle, the thud-thud of his heart beating on her back, the speed with which her own excitement ignited again and surged to equal his all collided in an apex of wonder when he suddenly withdrew and turned her.

  “I want to see,” he groaned, plunging his hands into her hair, holding her face still. Jasmine welcomed him in again, looking up into his eyes, and then felt her heart stutter, slide, leave her adrift for a few seconds. Something nagged at her, something was wrong inside, and yet he felt so right. She pushed the niggling feeling away, rising to meet every thrust, feeling her climax rushing upon her, wanting it so desperately. But his eyes stared down and it seemed to her she could see too far in, see his soul or hers or both, and they were melding together, becoming one. With dizzying certainty, Jasmine knew she had fallen in love.

  The jagged edges of her pre-orgasmic mind filled her with hope but also foreboding. But her body surrendered to a flood of aching pleasure, wiping her mind blissfully clear of anything else.

  Above her, Adam became one large, rigid muscle, burying himself one last time with something between a howl and a bellow. He collapsed, breaking eye contact at last, and after a minute, she gingerly removed her fingernails from his bicep.

  He wrapped her up and held her close and they waited for their breathing to return to normal. But try as she might, Jasmine could not stop the errant notion of love from invading her thoughts. To distract herself, she made a list: where they would go for dinner; whether they’d have time to visit the Liechtenstein Museum before the flight tomorrow…but it was no good.

  What was wrong with her that she couldn’t separate sex and emotion? The whole male population managed that standing on their heads. Anyway, it wasn’t love. It was lust. People thought and said things of no consequences in the throes of passion.

  She couldn’t be falling in love with Adam Thorne. She just couldn’t.

  He shifted a little, turning his face toward her. She concentrated on the row of half-moons indented into the smooth flesh of his bicep and ran her fingertip over them. “Sorry,” she whispered. “I scratched.”

  Adam grinned. “Always happy to sustain a wound in the pursuit of a good time.”

  She didn’t smile. She was thinking how relaxed he seemed, how she liked that. How she must not go there.

  Adam’s finger tipped her chin up. “What’s up?”

  “Nothing.” She pretended to concentrate on his arm, licking her fingertip and rubbing it over the tiny marks. “Everything’s perfect.”

  He exhaled noisily, a sound of satisfaction, contentment. He began playing with her hair, twisting a long strand around his finger. She sensed he was leading up to something.

  “Have you and Nick ever…?”

  Her head jerked up and she stared at him in astonishment. “Why would you ask that?”

  Adam kept his eyes on his fingers combing through her hair. “You have to admit, you two seem tailor-made for each other.”

  Jasmine’s indignation spilled over. “Perhaps his fiancée would disagree.”

  If he noticed her cool tone, he didn’t defer to it. “Jordan’s sensational, but on the surface, she doesn’t seem his type.”

  That hurt. “She’s more your type, you mean.” Which was a pretty clear indication that she, Jasmine, wasn’t Adam’s type. Jordan was beautiful, stylish, loved clubbing and didn’t seem to mind her every move being courted by the press.

  Adam’s smile only made her heart sink lower. “Perhaps, if one can have a ‘type.’ You didn’t answer my question.”

  Jasmine exhaled, knowing her indignation was justified, but a fragment of guilt rose to the surface. She thought hard before answering. What good would it do to tell him that indeed she had believed herself in love with Nick for about three years? She had prayed that one day, he would look up and see her as more than his personal assistant. But she’d never have acted on it unsolicited.

  That state of affairs changed the second Adam Thorne walked into the offices of Thorne Financial Enterprises about two months ago. The heartbeat gone mad, sweaty palms and neck and complete incapability of stringing a sentence together, convinced her that what she’d been feeling for Nick was friendship, affection, gratitude for being a great boss. She’d only felt that way about him because he was very much her “type”—conservative, solid, a constant presence in that she saw him every day. And there was no question she was lonely. There were few people she counted as friends in Wellington and none as lovers.

  No point divulging that former affection now, when he was happily engaged and she was sleeping with his brother.

  “I think a lot of Nick,” she said rather stiffly, “and I hope he counts me as a friend, but neither of us would take our professional relationship lightly.”

  “He needs his head read, having you there every day and not acting on it.”

  Her heart skipped a beat while she wondered if he’d seen right through her. He continued. “But I’m glad, because I wouldn’t like it.”

  “Can’t stand the comparison?” she asked a little snidely.

  “Oh, I think—” his voice warmed “—I know who’d win that one.” His finger unraveled the long strand of hair and then landed in the dip between her breasts. Despite the instant, piercing arousal as he ran his finger slowly down between her breasts, it rankled to be considered a pawn in the competition that was the largest component in the relationship between the two brothers. The anger was good because there was no way she could be in love with such arrogance.

  “He has set the bar quite high with Jordan, hasn’t he?” she asked sweetly, then immediately lost track when his fingertip circled her nipple. Her very hard nipple.

  Adam licked his lips, eyeing up her breast hungrily. “I don’t mind losing out to him in the marriage stakes,” he murmured. “At least for the next ten years or so.”

  His dark head bent lower. Jasmine closed her eyes, accepting it. He’d given her no reason to expect more than a temporary fling.

  His tongue swiped across one nipple and despite the leaden weight she felt on her heart, she shivered with delight.

  “I’ll tell you what’s perfect,” Adam said, matter-of-factly, cupping her breasts. “These are perfect. Feel free to scratch.”

  Later that night, Jasmine persuaded Adam to take a cab out to Grinzing, the wine suburb of Vienna. “I want to go to an Heuriger, a sort of wine tavern with a cellar. They sell their new harvest.”

  “So long as there is food.”

  They walked into a rustic tavern with a green branc
h tacked to the door, sniffing appreciatively as they entered. The room was rich with the aromas of roast pork, pasta and paprika-flavored goulashe-soup. The menu was buffet, the tables unadorned wooden benches—a far cry from the sumptuously furnished Hotel Imperial, but she liked the disparity—and an old man played The Blue Danube on an accordion in the darkest corner.

  They ate a leisurely meal, followed by the ubiquitous apfelstrudel. Jasmine was determined no rogue feelings would spoil their last night together. They were still on fairy-tale time.

  “The flight’s at midday tomorrow. Is that all right?”

  No. She nodded.

  “I need to go in to the new office, but why don’t you stay with me tomorrow night?”

  Her heart leaped. Don’t get excited. He just wants more of that crazy sex….

  Adam had spent the afternoon teasing her. Miss Prim and Proper Cooper, kneeling on a bed that belonged in a museum, wearing nothing but high-heeled boots. He told her it was the sexiest thing he’d ever seen.

  “Okay,” she replied, hoping he couldn’t see her blush in the dim room. “If my father is all right.”

  They talked of how long she was staying in England and when his next trip home might be.

  “Will you come home for Nick’s wedding?”

  He nodded. “Of course. April, isn’t it?”

  He sat back in his seat, his healthy tan showcased by his open shirt collar, the sort of man who turned heads wherever he went. Jasmine felt blessed that for a couple of short days, he’d only had eyes for her. “You’ll be best man, I suppose.”

  He grinned. “I always am.”

  Jasmine shook her head with a wry smile. “You’re very competitive, you and Nick, aren’t you?”

  “Dad always set us against each other. Everything was a competition. He’d actually pay us to win—the most tries at rugby, the best grades.” He grinned. “The most broken bones, girls…Not that we needed much encouragement. That’s what boys do when left to their own devices.”