There were obviously quite a few things she didn't know about her new husband. Things that he didn't intend for her to know.
But then, she had her secrets, as well. Things that she could never let Lucas know.
"Julianna!"
She jumped at the sound of Lucas calling for her, then watched from the crack in the door as Nick tossed a blanket at Lucas and shushed him. "Let the woman sleep, Lucas. God knows, married to you, she'll need all the rest she can get."
Lucas had managed to get one shoe off, and he threw it at Nick. He missed by three feet. "And I suppose she'd be better off with you, huh? Don't even think about it, Santos. Julianna is my wife. She belongs to me."
Julianna's face flamed with embarrassment. She knew that was how he thought of her. As a possession, a means for revenge. Shoulders squared, she tugged at the belt of her robe and stepped into the living room.
Both men turned as she moved into their view. Nick had the decency to look slightly ashamed, while Lucas merely grinned broadly and made an unsuccessful attempt to stand. "Here's the little woman now. See, Nick, she's not sleeping."
"I see that." Nick was already backing for the door. "Well, nice to see you again, Julianna. Ah, see you around."
"I'm sure you will." She followed him to the door. "Oh, and Nick?" She stepped into the hallway with him. "Exactly what was he singing?"
"Excuse me?"
"To the couple in the elevator."
Mischief danced in Nick's dark eyes. "Sort of a mixture of 'Feelings' and T Just Called to Say I Love You.'"
Not in a million years could she picture it. "Thanks. And one more thing." "Yeah?"
She leaned close and kissed his cheek. "Thanks for tonight. For making me feel comfortable during dinner. I know how all this must look to you, what you must think of me."
He shook his head slowly. "No, Julianna, you don't know, and you'd be very surprised what I think of you."
Whistling softly, he turned and with a wave, disappeared inside the elevator.
Drawing a slow, deep breath, she moved back into the suite and closed the door. Rumpled suit and tousled hair, Lucas slapped at the seat beside him on the couch. "Come on over here, darlin'."
Hesitant, she moved closer. He couldn't possibly be in an amorous mood now, could he? It stung—no, it hurt like hell—to think that he had to get drunk to make love to her. All night she'd worried where he was, if he'd gone to another woman, if they'd had a good laugh over his marriage to Wolf River's Ice Princess. She'd prayed that if he had gone to another woman, that at least it wouldn't be Stephanie or Mary Ann. She didn't think she could bear that.
"Julianna."
His voice had gentled, grown huskier. She looked at him, realized that he was watching her with those hungry, black eyes of his. He reached for her, held her fingers in his.
For the longest moment he stared at her hand, then slowly ran his thumb over the ring.
"I haven't thanked you for the ring," she said weakly. His thumb moved over her knuckles, a light caress that sent tingles up her arm. "It's beautiful."
"Come here."
Knees shaking, she sank down beside him. "Lucas, there's something we should talk about."
He ran a finger over her shoulder. It was impossible to stop the shudder that ran through her.
"Silk," he murmured, then dipped his head and pressed his lips to the base of her neck. "So soft."
She knew there was something she wanted to say, but it was all she could do to remember to breathe. "Wait...I...I need—"
"Tell me what you need." His mouth moved up her neck while his arms pulled her closer.
How could he do this to her? Turn her brain to syrup and her bones to taffy? Make her forget who she was, who he was. Where they'd both come from.
Heat from his body seeped through the silk of her gown, caressed her skin like a lover's whisper. She felt the race of her pulse, heard the pounding of her own heart. His lips brushed the corner of her mouth, teased until she thought she might whimper from the exquisite anticipation. When he traced her bottom lip with his tongue, she did whimper.
Gently, completely, he covered her mouth with his.
This was nothing like the kiss earlier at the table. And though that one had effectively curled her toes, this one curled every fiber of her being. Pleasure melted her insides, poured through her limbs like warm honey. With a mind of their own, her hands slid up the front of his shirt, delighted in the broad expanse of hard muscle under her fingers.
Lucas Blackhawk. Her husband. It was still all a dream, one that she was certain she would wake up from. But not now, she thought through the haze of passion. Just another minute...or two...
Her robe fell from her shoulders, or had he slipped it off? Her gown, white embossed silk, dipped low, and the soft fabric rubbed against her intensely sensitive nipples. Her breasts felt tight, achy, and the need to have him touch her there shocked and overwhelmed her.
And then he did touch her.
Gasping, she arched into him, moaned softly at the brush of his roughened thumb over her nipple. Silk was the only thing separating his skin from touching her skin, and she squirmed at the frustration that built inside her. Pleasure consumed her, intensified her senses and dulled her mind. But she knew there was something she had to say, something important.
Reluctantly she dragged her mouth from his. "Lucas," she whispered breathlessly. "Give me just a minute."
He stilled, sighed, then let his head fall back.
She eased away, folded her shaky hands in her lap. It was a long moment before she could speak, before her heart slowed a beat and she could draw enough air into her lungs to find her voice.
"Lucas." She stared at her hands, cleared her throat and started again. "Lucas, I know that I agreed to, well that I would, that we would, uh, sleep together. And I'm not trying to, in any way, revoke that commitment. I just thought I should tell you, I mean, that you should know..."
Her face burned with embarrassment; her voice shook.
"I've never, well, the truth is, I've never—" She squeezed her eyes shut. "I'm a virgin."
There. She said it. Better he laugh at her now, or even taunt her with it, than later at a more... intimate moment.
But he did neither of those things. Laugh or criticize. What he did was so much worse. He snored.
Her eyes flew open at the deep, quiet rumble. Lucas's head rested sideways on the back of the couch, his arms were limp at his sides. She'd just revealed the most embarrassing private detail of her life, and he'd fallen asleep!
And even worse, her body still ached for him to kiss her again, to touch her. Twice in one night he'd left her like this!
She snatched her robe back up over her shoulders, then stood and stared down at him. He was gone, she noted miserably. Most definitely out of commission.
With a heavy sigh she eased him gently onto his side, then slipped a throw pillow under his head as she knelt on the floor beside him. Sleeping, his expression was not nearly so fierce. His dark brow relaxed, his jaw softened. If anything, he almost appeared childlike. A childhood was something Lucas Blackhawk had been robbed of, she thought bitterly, thanks to her father.
Thanks to her.
She thought of that night twenty years ago. The guilt never eased. It shadowed her, nagged her relentlessly. She thought she'd never see Lucas again, never have an opportunity to make restitution for Hadley crimes.
Now Lucas was not only back and had ruined her father, he'd married her.
And still it wasn't enough, she knew. It could never be enough.
Tears burned at her eyes, and she did something she would never dare do if he were awake. Something he'd never let her do. She reached out to him, gently brushed away a shock of dark hair on his forehead.
"I'm sorry," she whispered, and desperately wished that his life, that her life, had been different.
Chapter Five
Lucas woke to the gnawing buzz of a chain saw inside his skull. A skull that felt s
trangely disconnected from his body. Was he dead? Slowly he opened one eye, groaned at the explosion of bright light, then slammed the eye shut again. Damn. He was alive.
He sucked in a deep breath, struggled to fight his way through the pounding fog in his brain. The pain was similar to the time he'd caught his boot in a stirrup and been dragged forty feet by an angry bronc. Then there was the time those three guys had jumped him for looking at one pf their girlfriends. Two of those guys had carried their front teeth away that night. The third guy had hobbled off yelling his nose was broken.
Cautiously Lucas reached up and touched his own nose. Had he been in a fight? Everything was hazy,
but he did vaguely remember throwing a punch at someone.... Nick?
Grimacing, he tried to sit, but his leg slipped off the bed. No, not a bed, he realized, opening his eyes to mere slits. A couch.
A couch? He groaned, closed his eyes again.
And remembered.
Well, not everything. Just that he'd married Julianna Hadley, had a confrontation with her father, had come back up to the suite after dinner, bullied his wife into taking her clothes off, then left her.
Just another typical day.
He'd gone down to the lounge. He remembered that much. But after that everything got a little fuzzy. Nick showed up, made him mad about something. That's when he tried to hit him.
And then there was this other image. Of Julianna, here on the couch...her arms around his neck...her body warm and willing against his...her mouth hot and wet.
A dream?
Lucas struggled to sit, winced at the pain that jack-hammered his temples. As soon as he had the strength, he was going to pound Nick Santos for letting this happen.
When the room stopped spinning, Lucas opened his eyes and glanced at his watch. Eleven o'clock. Good Lord, the morning was nearly gone.
And the suite was empty.
He saw no traces of Julianna in the living room. No purse, not one article of white silk or lace, though he vividly remembered, in detail, every single piece of clothing she'd removed and tossed on the floor last night. That thought only made him swear again, so he forced the image of her tempting, nearly naked body from his mind and concentrated on the issue at hand.
She was gone.
Swearing, he kicked off the blanket that had wrapped itself around his ankles and stumbled into the bedroom. Her suitcases were gone, the dresser top devoid of any knickknacks or female paraphernalia. She'd even made the bed.
The thought of her running back to Mason tore through him like barbed wire. If Julianna hadn't asked him to let her father go yesterday, Lucas knew he would have hurt the man. God knew, he certainly had wanted to.
He listened to the quiet, felt the heat of his anger burn his insides. He knew she had no money, no checking account. Not even a credit card in her name. There was no other family, and as far as he knew, no close friends.
She must have gone back to Mason. Where else would she have gone?
He dragged a hand roughly through his hair. So fine. Let her go, then. Maybe she didn't mind getting knocked around. He'd seen women like that, though he'd never pegged Julianna Hadley as one of them. If that's what she wanted, he wasn't about to stand in her way.
The hell he wasn't.
He tore at the buttons on his wrinkled shirt, yanked it out of his pants as he headed for the shower. They had an agreement. Maybe that didn't mean much to a Hadley, but she'd find out it meant plenty to him.
And besides, he thought with a grim smile, she was a Blackhawk now. Julianna Blackhawk. His wife.
The hot water beat at his skin, easing some of the aches. Even the pounding in his head lessened. He'd nearly dried off when he realized that his clothes were in the other bedroom of the suite.
He'd find her, he told himself, knotting a towel around his hips as he stomped into the living room. If she thought she could take his name and then hide, she'd better think again. He would start with the Double H, then try the other hotel two blocks down, if she wasn't there, then—
He might try the dining room of the suite.
She stood at the table, arranging plates from a tray she'd obviously brought in with her. Her hand froze midair when she spotted him. Her gaze dropped to the towel hanging precariously around his hips.
"Good morning." She snapped her attention back to the table, straightened a fork she'd set by a plate of bacon and eggs, then the knife.
So she hadn't run, after all. She stood right here, her pale blond hair loose around the shoulders of a sleeveless, blue polka dot dress that deepened the color of her eyes. And she'd brought him breakfast. He told himself the relief he felt was merely the fact that he no longer needed to spend time tracking her down.
"Coffee?" She reached for a glass carafe. "Sure." He moved beside her, took a piece of bacon.
"By the cup, or IV?"
He took a bite of bacon and chewed thoughtfully. Julianna Hadley making a joke? Well, well. Wonders never ceased. "Strong and black and lots of it, darlin'. Where have you been?"
Keeping her eyes carefully leveled on his, she handed him a cup of steaming coffee. "Worried I'd run out on you?"
Damned if the woman didn't smell as pretty as she looked. He finished off the bacon, took a sip of coffee. "Not worried. Annoyed that I might have to go looking for you."
"We have an agreement. I intend to honor it."
How far would she go to honor it? he wondered. And how far would he push? "Your suitcases are gone."
"They're in the closet. I happen to be neat."
"Too neat." He leaned in closer, resisted pressing his mouth to hers. "I'd like to see you a little mussed up, Jule."
"You're all wet, Lucas." The sarcasm in her voice held a breathless quality to it. "Is a towel customary attire for you at the dining room table?"
He reached for the knot of terry cloth at his waist. "Would you prefer I get rid of it?"
Her eyes widened, and he could have sworn she stopped breathing. "Why, Mrs. Blackhawk," he said with a chuckle, feeling the response of his body to her closeness, to the thoughts of having her naked, underneath him, "I do believe you're blushing."
Even though she knew it was true, Julianna couldn't bring herself to ajlmit to Lucas that his nearly naked body was playing havoc with her senses. A magnificent body, she noted, forcing herself to appear nonchalant as her gaze swept the length of hard mus-cie from the floor up. She might not survive this marriage with her heart, but she was determined to survive it with her pride. And if she could rattle his chains while she was at it, so much the better.
"I can't imagine why I would blush, Lucas." She brought her gaze back to his. "Especially after last night."
He slowly lowered his cup. "What about last night?"
Dangerous, she told herself, and extremely foolish to walk this path, but something—perhaps payback for what he'd done to her last night—kept her moving forward. With what she hoped was a sexy undertone, she lowered her voice and smiled suggestively. "Why, Lucas, you're telling me you don't remember?"
He hesitated, and she saw the uncertainty in his dark eyes. With extreme satisfaction she mentally scored two points for herself. He continued to watch her for a long moment, assessing, and when the expression in his eyes turned first to confidence, then sheer arrogance, she realized those points were premature and on the wrong score sheet.
"You know, Julianna," he said calmly, "you haven't asked me how I managed to build a business in ten years that was capable of destroying your father."
He set his coffee cup down on the table behind her, moved close enough to effectively pin her against the dining room table. Her heart leaped into her throat as she realized the only thing separating him from her was a plush terry cloth ^towel and what looked like a flimsy knot low on Lucas's waist.
She understood that his statement was leading somewhere, but her thoughts were too scattered right now, too filled with the masculine scent of his skin and heat of his body to try to make sense of it. She
said nothing, just gripped the edge of the table, nearly sitting on it as she prayed that her knees wouldn't give out.
"You see, I can always tell when a person is lying," he said. "It might be a gesture, an eye movement, maybe a subtle change in tone of voice." He dipped his head to her neck, breathed in slowly, then ever so slightly brushed his cheek against hers while he whispered in her ear. "You can't imagine what an advantage that gives a man, be it in cards, business or women."
Since she obviously qualified under the last category, she most certainly could imagine. And even while she was calling herself ten times the fool for starting this, it required every last ounce of willpower she possessed not to lean into him right now. His warm breath against her ear, the rasp of his morning beard over her soft cheek, sent currents of pleasure rushing through her. She knew nothing about cards, little about business, but when it came to women, Lucas Blackhawk most definitely had the advantage.
How could she have ever thought she could rattle this man's chains? She might have learned how to deal with, and even ignore, difficult men, but Lucas was not a man easily dealt with, and definitely not a man that could be ignored. Retreat, a hasty one, was essential. She decided distraction was the best course of action.
"Why didn't you teU me you own the Four Winds?" she asked as nonchalantly as she could manage.
He hesitated a moment, then simply shrugged. "There's a lot of things I haven't told you. We both have a lot to learn about each other, I'm sure."
He continued his up-close exploration of her ear-lobe with his lips, and she bit the inside of her mouth to keep from whimpering.
So much for distraction.
She placed a hand flat on his muscled chest. His skin was hot under her touch, his heartbeat strong. She wanted to melt into him, but instead she pushed against him. He didn't budge, but he lifted his gaze to hers. The dark, hungry look in his eyes had nothing to do with the food on the table. "Your breakfast is getting cold."
Secrets 01- Blackhawk’s Sweet Revenge Page 5
