by Cait London
Joel’s body tensed, and another fierce hot wave shot over Fiona as he shuddered, pouring himself into her.
His head lowered gently to her breast, his skin hot and flushed, his mouth brushing against her skin. Fiona lay quietly beneath his weight, his racing heart slowing upon her softness, his body lax and warm and draped pleasantly over hers. She nuzzled his hair, kissing it, stroking his shoulders and his back, pleased that he’d exposed his softer emotions to her, his vulnerability. He wasn’t the meticulously clad executive now shielded by ice and power; rather he was rumpled and comfortable and sexy, yet arrogant enough to challenge her.
Joel’s large hand prowled over her breasts, caressing them slowly, gently, as if treasuring her. Slowly his fingers smoothed her side, curled around the indentation of her waist, traced her hip and smoothed her thigh.
Fiona smiled softly into his hair. Whatever demons drove Joel Palladin, he was hers to protect now. She nestled beneath him, the wild need to possess him temporarily sated.
She inhaled slowly, drifting into sleep. She had claimed Joel Palladin, taken him as a lover, and now the game was on.
She dozed and awoke to the heat of his mouth on her breasts, tugging, nibbling, causing the cords to ignite within her, stirring her womb, her intimate warmth flowing—then he was sliding into her, filling her, taking her breath into his mouth and demanding that she meet him there in the fiery circle where all began and all ended. This time she gave him everything, the wildness within her, the savage need to claim him, the heat and the storms that sprang from deep inside her.
Aye and blast, she thought as the storm slammed into her, tightening her body, causing her to cry out then bite his shoulder to quiet the storms within her. She reached to hold his arm, the dragon upon it, claiming him once more. She unfurled gloriously, melting beneath him. She had chosen a wild lover, one with a warm cherishing mouth and tender hands; it would be a good match—if not love.
She opened her eyes to see Joel over her, his expression tender, knowing. “That wasn’t fair,” she said. “You didn’t give me a warning.”
He eased to one side, drawing her up close to him as he covered her bare shoulder with the quilt “No, and I don’t intend to in the future. All rules are off, Tallchief. You’re too enticing. All those little purrs at the back of your throat, your sharp teeth nibbling on me and your fingers locked to my backside as if you crave me more than—ouch!”
He rubbed his injured chest and the hair she had just lightly tugged. Fiona shivered, startled by her embarrassment, her shyness of him. He chuckled when she burrowed close, holding him tightly, for he wasn’t getting away from her just yet.
Fiona knew her smile was smug.
She’d entered the circle to claim her dragon.
Seven
Five o’clock the next morning came too soon for Fiona, the telephone ringing shrilly beside her bed. Because Joel’s sizable body lay between her and the telephone, she decided to let the answering machine respond. She wallowed in the scents of crushed rose petals, the quick shower she had taken and the freshly bathed male, sleeping deeply at her side. Hours earlier, her shower had been brief, a private reckoning that her body had changed. Joel must have taken his recently, his hair was still damp. The flower coronet had been replaced, as though Joel treasured his trophy.
She arched and stretched luxuriously, her muscles aching pleasantly and her body floating in a warm, fuzzy and sated cloud. She snuggled closer to the sleeping man in her bed, wrapping her arm around Joel’s lean waist. Since her leg was already between his, she stroked his calf with her sole, enjoying the textures of hard muscles covered by hair-roughened skin. She stroked his flat stomach and circled the indentation of his naval, causing him to moan lightly and suck in his breath. With his hair rumpled, the flower coronet askew, the dark stubble of a new beard showing on his jaw and his bare shoulder beneath her cheek, he did not resemble Palladin’s immaculate, cool and controlled Iron Man. Fiona scooped up a handful of petals and let them fall onto his face. She’d done a good job of removing that image, Fiona decided smugly, placing a rose petal on the smile on his lips.
Before the second ring, he blew away the rose petal she had just placed upon his nose. He leaped from sleep into reality with jarring speed, ripping away the quilt impatiently and sitting up as he grabbed the phone. “Palladin here. What’s up?”
Fascinated by her lover, who was now all business, Fiona tugged the quilt higher over her bare, sensitive breasts and studied Joel’s rippling back, the dim, predawn light causing it to gleam. The red marks caused by her nails shocked her; she hadn’t known she’d held him so fiercely. Then she remembered her high, wild cry, her body clasped desperately to the hard flex of his as they plunged—Because she needed to keep their reckoning warm and flowing, as dawn and reality approached, she kissed the marks, smoothing them with her fingertips; Joel tensed as he listened.
“Yes, I’m glad Rafe thought of this number. No, it’s fine.” He glanced over his shoulder at her and frowned as he spoke, “Uh-huh. Get Smythe on it. Have him working on deflecting the negative publicity and holding off the reporters. If the company was deficient in cleanliness before we purchased it, I didn’t find it in the reports, and Rafe personally inspected the property—uh!” Joel reached behind him and captured Fiona’s fingers, which had been walking slowly over his back.
He took her wrist as she curled closer to adjust the coronet of flowers. “The lab should be able to trace—”
Joel glanced down at Fiona’s inner wrist. He frowned and smoothed the bruises with his thumb. “Palladin has always had a good team. When Mamie wakes up, make certain she knows. Let her have her morning coffee first. You can handle it, Doug. I trust you.”
He clicked on the bedside lamp and lifted Fiona’s arm to the light, studying it as he listened. His hand ran lightly across a pattern of bruises, matching them to his fingers. “Mamie caught Cody, did she? She’s had plenty of experience with boys who want to run away from home. Tell my son that I’m looking forward to seeing him, will you? I know...he’s not exactly happy with me for jerking him away from his friends in Denver. I’ve been getting threatening faxes from someone who thinks I don’t belong on an isolated ranch...too bad Mamie’s personal fax number is at the top of the paper and Cody’s misspelling is pretty distinctive.”
Before he shielded his expression, turning his head from her, Fiona caught Joel’s pain and the shadows leaping upon him, devouring him. She had to protect him, keep him tethered close to her. She eased her arms around him from the back and placed her chin in the hollow of his throat. She toyed with the damp curls at his nape and blew in his ear.
Joel eased away from her, dismissing her as he continued his conversation, a methodical checklist of what Doug must do to stave off unwanted publicity. “Until Palladin, Inc. can get a grasp of the damage. If you need to, put Mamie out in front of the cameras. She can charm the newspapers and buy time, without giving them the time of day.”
Fiona smiled against Joel’s back and kissed it. He liked his life private, his emotions firmly locked around him. Too bad, she was in the same bed.
Joel glanced back at Fiona, just when she was studying his firm backside cushioned in rose petals. She was just on the verge of patting his backside and placing her aching breasts against the smooth expanse of his back. Fiona jerked up the covers, feeling far too fragile and uncertain. He ran the back of his hand across her hot cheek as he dealt with business. Fiona squirmed away as his fingertip slid under the beaded thong to trace the tender patches on her throat where his rougher skin had abraded her own.
After her shower—a private time to recover from the shattering pleasure she hadn’t expected—she’d replaced the leather beaded necklace; she’d noted the scrape marks and the slight bruises on her throat. She’d accepted them, the honest aftermath of Joel’s passion. He had been more than gentle, yet she’d been too eager, too fierce in her needs, the novelty of his heat and desire igniting her own.
Joel gently tugged down the blanket, and she watched his expression harden, his eyes darkening, chilling, as he found other scrapes on her breasts. A muscle contracted beneath the dark skin on his upper cheek, a vein throbbed heavily in his temple. He jerked the flower coronet from his head, tossing it aside as though it disgusted him.
With it went the tenderness she had been feeling for him; Fiona jerked the covers up to her breasts and locked them in place with her arms.
Fiona set her jaw, glaring at him. He didn’t deserve tenderness or the flowers. This was the morning after her claiming of him. The least he could do was to serve her one of those marvelous, delicious, tempting, heated kisses. She’d expected another... pleasure from Joel. It was the least he could do after giving her so much delight earlier. Her greed for Joel had surprised her. She didn’t feel like shooing him from her bed, but rather she’d prefer to have—
“I’ll run your bath,” he said as smoothly as ordering a perfectly cooked steak or planning a conference room. Or maybe the cool tone came from experience with other women. Fiona tensed, scrambling for reason. Of course Joel had had other liaisons; she expected that. But they weren’t Fiona Tallchief.
“I’ve had a shower.” She saw no reason to spare him; she’d expected a beautiful morning after, and now Joel was glaring at her, his defenses up. Fiona shivered; she felt like crying and she wouldn’t give him one tear. Weren’t lovers supposed to say thankyou, that was lovely, et cetera, et cetera? “Shouldn’t you be going?” she asked curtly, furious with herself for expecting—What? Romance? Commitment? Tenderness?
“You’re in a nasty mood,” Joel noted, giving her nothing of rose petals and kisses and—
She inhaled, preparing to tell him just where to leap and what to stuff. The telephone rang again, and when she jerked it to her ear, Birk snapped, “Baby sister, just wait until Duncan hears about this—Palladin’s car has been parked in the back alley of your shop since last night. Calum just called. He was out on the porch retrieving a present he’d hidden for Talia and wearing nothing but his goose bumps when the sheriffs loudspeaker caught him. The sheriff was impressed by the tenor tapes lying on Palladin’s car seat. The sheriff broadcast that to Calum, and now the whole town knows.”
“I’ll handle this, Birk. Tell the Black Knights to back off. Now, you know I love you all, but you’re not rescuing Palladin from me. I intend to teach him a lesson.”
While she listened to Birk, a former ladies’ man, mutter and worry over his baby sister, Fiona studied Joel, who was scowling fiercely at her, a deep wave crossing his forehead. He looked perfectly exciting—wary, stubborn, rumpled and ready for her platter.
“Life is good,” she stated with a grin, excitement surging through her as she firmly replaced the receiver. “Things were getting pretty boring. Are you frightened, Palladin? Can you keep up?”
Joel took a deep breath, the vein in his temple pulsing as he stared at her lips, which she had just tested with her tongue. “I’ve got to get out of here,” he muttered, looking for his shorts.
“Why?” she asked, suddenly afraid, all her courage and excitement pooling at her feet. “Wasn’t L..wasn’t this...?”
“You just don’t get it, do you?” he shot at her. “I haven’t had that much experience, but I’ve always been in control, and this time I wasn’t. I could have hurt you. Those bruises on your wrist—” He looked pale, ill and disgusted as he took her wrists in both hands to study the two slight marks. “I did hurt you.”
He hadn’t had that much experience. Fiona gloried in the admission
He glanced down at the bloodstain on her sheets and turned paler. He pushed her wrists away and looked down at his hands. spreading them, as though bad memories had glued themselves to his fingers and would not be shaken away. “He hurt my mother. I was only three or four, but I remember. He hurt Rafe and Nick, and there was nothing I could do to stop him. I never thought I would—I am his son—”
Frightened by this insight into Joel’s horrible past, and desperate to pry him from it, Fiona raised her hands to frame his face. “Joel, please do not be disappointed, but I’m not delicate. What happened last night between us was honest, passionate and real. It was exactly what I wanted. I took you, and you responded. I take responsibility for my needs. End of story.”
He kissed her wrists, one by one lingering over the bruises in an apology so earnest and humble that it frightened her. She tried to give him an easy way to leave her, she would not have him obligated to her. “This has nothing to do with your father or any legacy you may think you’ve inherited from him—which you haven’t. I have excellent judgment in the company I keep, Joel. My instincts have never failed me. I told you that I am a physical woman, wanting a suitable partner. You fitted the bill. We had a passionate night, Joel Palladin, nothing more. Don’t make too much of it. Those hours are behind us, and now we can go on with our lives—”
Joel’s head lifted abruptly, his green eyes flashing, raking her. His smile came slowly, coldly, distant. “Now that we’ve faced our demons, so to speak? Satisfied our sexual attraction? We can call it quits? Playtime is finished. Is that how you see it?” he shot rapid-fire at her, reminding her of his attorney background.
She shivered. In her lifetime only a handful of men, including her brothers, had had as much impact as Joel, and none of them had caused the hair on her nape to be raised. He looked like a medieval knight, wrapped in his cape and ready to draw his sword.
“It was a reckoning. I knew it would happen, so did you—” She wouldn’t ask him to stay. How could he look so cold and furious when she wanted his arms around her, holding her close?
Joel stared at her for a long, breathless moment. Then he placed his open hand on her forehead and gently pushed her back onto the bed. She scrambled under the quilt and pulled it higher, as she watched him dress. “Why are you so angry?” she asked as he grabbed the flower coronet on his way out
With his hand on her bedroom door, Joel turned slowly to her. While Minnie purred and twined around his legs, he looked at Fiona so long that she found herself blushing furiously, the covers up to her chin. She hated blushing and feeling fragile; she’d given him a portion of herself, an insight into her needs, and he knew her at a primitive level that frightened her. They both knew that Fiona’s acceptance of his body was significant, because she had been meticulous about her life, waiting to choose a lover who was unique. Joel knew he was that lover; he knew that she wouldn’t leap from him into another man’s arms. He knew their first lovemaking had delighted her and that there was a bond brewing between them.
He knew too much. A rose petal came tumbling from the top of her hair, down to her nose, and she blew it away, glaring at him. She would have to be very careful with Joel, an analytical, methodical man, who understood her on a level she hadn’t explored. He could be dangerous to her. Fiona did not want to be dissected, formulized and nudged into the traditional woman that would be Joel’s ideal.
They both knew he wasn’t what she wanted, a man who liked rules and structure. Fiona foraged for defense and words to toss at him. “I do not like how you line up your tools next to the motor you are repairing,” she said very properly. “I notice that all the handles are parallel and rest on an imaginary straight line. You could never make exciting flower arrangements. You are not impulsive.”
Joel’s gaze narrowed, claiming her, cruising her bare shoulders over the blanket. She tugged it higher.
“But I am very thorough and I like to see my projects through,” he drawled, reminding her of their earth-shattering lovemaking. “That’s more like it. I like it when you blush, Princess,” he said with another tight, grim smile as if he’d accomplished what he wanted. Then he quietly closed the door behind him.
The quiet click of the latch echoed loudly, as though Joel Palladin had had what he wanted from her and was not returning.
Fiona swallowed, her throat tight with emotion; she had taken what she wanted, an equal affair.
Joel cruised his sports car up Duncan Tallchief’s driveway and parked in front of the house. He cut the motor, stepped free of the car and scanned the house where Fiona had lived as a child. On the last October Sunday, Tallchief Mountain jutted from the Rockies, looking like a cold fortress. Fiona’s Morning Star was in the corral and a herd of Tallchief cattle grazed in the field.
Joel walked around the Corvette. On the afternoon after claiming Fiona, his first virgin, he was still rocked by that first tight penetration and Fiona’s dismissal of commitment this morning. Her clinical dissection of their lovemaking had upset him. A man accustomed to dealing with Palladin’s intricate corporate structure and his clinically tailored life, Joel hadn’t expected his unsteady emotions.
His experience in delicate, bruised emotions with a woman who had selected him, left him uneasy. He felt as if Fiona, the physical woman, had rummaged through the males on the shopping shelf and had chosen him. While it was a compliment—in one way—Joel wasn’t certain it suited him.
For hours Palladin’s top corporate attorney had been sighing over Fiona’s braided, wilted, flower headpiece, twirling it around his fingers and thinking of how Fiona had looked, simmering beneath him, spilling rose petals over his head. Later her comment about his inability to make artistic flower arrangements had wounded him. He liked his tools in a line and ready for his hand; all the handles should rest equally spaced and in a straight line.
For a concession, he mentally angled his smallest prized screwdriver, the one with the magnetic tip, tilting it a little to the right.
Thirty-seven was a fine time to discover that he was a traditional man and that he was a romantic, that he needed hugs and kisses the morning after she had her way with him, despite his control. Fiona’s “fine, we’ve had sex, we’re done” attitude grated. He’d dreamed of cooking breakfast, serving it to her with a rose and himself and trying words that he’d never said before, dreams he’d never realized.
