Rebel's Bargain

by Annie West

  ‘You look fit enough, Orsino. Maybe it’s time for you to move out.’

  ‘Unfortunately my vision will be a handicap for a while yet.’ He shrugged casually, setting her teeth on edge. ‘Plus it’s going to take a while for me to regain my strength.’

  ‘You seem to be managing those stairs just fine. And you don’t look in the least weak.’

  Orsino crossed his arms over his chest and she saw the bulge of plaster over his forearm beneath his pullover. ‘I’m glad you think so.’

  He tilted his head to one side as if surveying her better. His hair was just long enough for it to flop over his brow, accentuating the hard perfection of his features.

  She hated that she even noticed.

  ‘Why are you so eager for me to leave, Poppy? Don’t tell me you’re afraid?’ His tone was pure provocation.

  Poppy had had enough. She moved aside to ascend the stairs. Orsino’s good arm shot out, palm flat against the wall, barring her way.

  His arm across her breasts felt like a rod of tempered steel but she refused to retreat.

  He shifted, crowding her against the wall so she couldn’t help but feel defenceless beside his bulk.

  Red misted her vision as childhood memories swirled around her.

  ‘Don’t throw your weight around with me, Orsino Chatsfield. Just because you’re bigger and stronger, you can’t bully me.’

  She grabbed his arm and tugged but he didn’t budge. Hard muscle and raw strength encompassed her and for a frantic instant fear rose. Her breath sawed in her throat as she tried and failed to repress the sense of dark menace bubbling to the surface.

  Before she could conquer it, Orsino dropped his arm.

  ‘Poppy?’ His wide brow wrinkled.

  She swallowed the metallic tang of remembered panic and blinked to clear her vision.

  ‘What is it? What’s wrong?’

  ‘Nothing.’ She swallowed again. ‘Except having you here.’

  ‘I think you’re scared.’

  His words plunged deep to the heart of her, to the place she’d kept hidden for years. The place no one but her mother had known about.

  Her chin jutted as she looked up at him. Why did he have to goad and prod and interfere?

  Why did he have to come back into her life, disrupting her hard-won peace after all this time?

  Her nerves were shattered after a week with him under the same roof, evoking memories of a time when she’d naively thought herself the luckiest woman in the world.

  Worse, she’d found herself jealous today, seeing him with other women. Jealous of the man who’d almost destroyed her! She couldn’t stand him and yet he made her feel things she shouldn’t. Her skin felt too tight, as if there was something inside, bursting to get out.

  ‘Scared? Of you?’ Poppy all but spat the words. She drilled her index finger into his chest, pushing that wall of solid muscle. ‘Think again, Orsino. There’s nothing you can do to me now.’

  Nothing worse than abandoning her when she’d needed him most.

  ‘If you’re not scared of me then of what?’ His voice deepened and she felt it like a caress on her skin, making her quiver. He reached for his glasses and suddenly she was looking into ebony eyes that seemed to see right into her. The glasses clattered to the floor. ‘Of this?’

  His head dipped, slowly, as if he expected her to pull back. But her legs seemed to have planted themselves and her heartbeat, instead of racing with anger, slowed to a sluggish, heavy throb of anticipation.

  Poppy told herself to move, now, but nothing happened. Until Orsino’s mouth met hers and that expectant quiver became a shudder of pleasure.

  Hunger slammed into her with a force that knocked all memory of the past from her mind. His lips were warm, firm and insistent, parting her mouth before she realised she should have stopped him. His tongue danced against hers, inviting her to join him, tempting her to pleasure. The taste of him was like all her ‘if onlys’ rolled into one.

  Her hands inched up his broad chest to his shoulders, fingers sinking into fine cashmere and male heat. His hand anchored her head, demanding more as he bowed her back towards the wall.

  Orsino’s mouth on hers was devastatingly familiar yet the urgency was new, heady and acute. It spiralled inside her from a place that had been dormant so long she’d thought it dead.

  Need exploded with an intensity that couldn’t be denied. It swamped her, driving her against Orsino, begging him for more with her hands and mouth and her body.

  He groaned deep in his throat, the sound kindling a spark that caught and flared in her blood. Orsino shifted his head for better access as she moved, too. Urgency made them clumsy, teeth catching flesh in their hunger for more.

  Hands plucked at soft cashmere. Thighs shifted, slipping apart. Soft breast to hard torso, they strained together, driven by a storm that ripped apart caution and self-preservation.

  Orsino’s hand was at her breast, his thumb swiping her beaded nipple, sending ripples of ecstasy through her body in tiny electric jolts.

  Poppy’s hands slid down, around his back, clutching the taut bunching of his buttocks through soft denim. Fingers splayed, she pressed closer, right into that deliciously heavy ridge of arousal. Her chest thumped hard and seemed to melt at the rightness of it.

  ‘Yes,’ he hissed in her mouth. And ‘Yes’ again as he ground his pelvis in a tight circle against her. Scorching heat engulfed her as she gasped.

  It had been so long.

  She’d forgotten, had thought her memories had enhanced the excruciating delight of Orsino’s body melding with hers.

  A tiny voice in the back of her head squawked about weakness and danger. But this wasn’t weakness. She felt suddenly, gloriously powerful. Strength and pleasure coursed in her veins, pure and unadulterated. Her grasp on his backside tightened, pulling him close.

  ‘Help me.’ Orsino’s voice was a ragged gasp barely audible over the thrum of her pulse. His hand fumbled at her waist, fingers grazing her skin as he wrestled with the catch on her trousers. Ripples of sensation rayed out across her abdomen and up to her breasts.

  ‘Help me!’ His voice was hoarse with frustration, echoing her own rising desperation.

  Her fingers found his belt, sliding it free, ripping at the button on his jeans.

  His ragged breathing was hot in Poppy’s ears as her trousers slid to the floor. A flurry of urgent movement and she was naked from the waist down, clothes discarded. In their place was Orsino, his hand doing things that made her eyes flutter shut and her breath clog.

  ‘Yes!’ Her voice was high and breathless as she peeled away denim and took him in her hand. So hot, so silky and strong.

  Orsino yanked her thigh high over his hip and she felt the wall hard at her back. Hands to his shoulders she rose, her eyes snapping open to meet the blaze of his as he surged beneath her, filling her with heat and power till he reached the core of her.

  For a suspended millisecond she froze, shocked at the acute pleasure.

  Then Orsino roared something in Italian. Their bodies arched frantically and when he thrust again she felt his urgent pulse of completion. Hot seed exploded within and still he powered into her, forcing her to the brink of ecstasy till the world caught fire and she shattered into a thousand glittering shards.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  POPPY’S HEAD FLOPPED against Orsino’s shoulder, her heart thundering, pleasure still coursing through her in tiny waves that rippled right to the tips of her fingers and toes.

  His broad hand held her bare leg. His thighs wedged solid beneath her, supporting her, and his laboured gasps were hot in her hair.

  He shifted a fraction and one last spasm racked her. She bit her lip against the cry of delight that rose to her lips. But he knew. His hand tightened possessively.

  She squeezed her eyes shut. What nonsense! As if Orsino cared.

  ‘Poppy?’ His voice was a low burr of sound that abraded her like a rough caress. It made her skin tingle in places
that had just come alive for the first time in five years.

  Five years. She hadn’t been with a man before or since Orsino and now, like a piece of ripe fruit, she fell into his hands. How could she have done it?

  Horror and shame washed through her.

  How self-destructive could she be, giving herself to a man who despised her? The man who’d almost destroyed her?

  Hands shoving at his chest she wriggled till he stepped back and she half slid down to the floor, ignoring the sharp pang of loss and protest from her wayward body. Her knees were so weak she’d have collapsed if it wasn’t for Orsino, holding her steady.

  Heat scorched her cheeks as she looked down. One foot bare, the other still shod, and with her trousers tangled around that ankle.

  ‘I can’t believe I did that.’

  ‘Believe it, Poppy.’ Something in his voice jerked her head up. Eyes she knew to be dark brown glittered almost black. She expected smug satisfaction, even triumph in his expression, but found something else. Something she couldn’t name.

  A pulse of connection passed between them, like in the old days when she’d felt a oneness with him that she’d believed utterly precious.

  Old guilt swirled in a clogging tide. No matter how much Orsino was to blame for the destruction of their marriage, it was she who’d taken that first irrevocable step, in her grief and loneliness turning to Mischa for comfort. Even if she had pulled back before she broke her wedding vows.

  ‘Poppy?’ Orsino’s voice broke her thoughts. ‘It’s not the end of the world.’

  She hiccupped on welling laughter. Orsino comforting her? Impossible.

  ‘Of course it’s not.’ She forced herself to meet his eyes again. ‘But it’s still unbelievable.’ She scrabbled at her feet, wriggling her bare foot into her clothes and dragging them up rather than stand half naked before him.

  By the time she’d finished his jeans were zipped up, too.

  Another wash of heat flamed at the realisation he hadn’t even had to shuck his jeans off to take her. And she’d let him. More than let him, she’d egged him on, climbing his tall frame in her hunger for him. Her internal muscles clenched at the memory and she shivered.

  Poppy tilted her chin, projecting haughty confidence to cover the way she trembled.

  ‘Pleasant as it’s been, Orsino, I need to—’

  ‘Running, Poppy?’ He arched one eyebrow, lifting the still-raw-looking scar that curled around his eye.

  ‘We’re done here.’ How she got the words out she didn’t know. But she had to get away before what was left of her composure crumbled entirely.

  ‘If I didn’t know better I’d call that statement naive.’

  Her eyes widened. Orsino calling her naive? Last she’d heard she was the scarlet woman incarnate.

  ‘Look, Orsino. You’ve had your—’ she waved an arm as she searched for words ‘—gratification.’ How he must be silently crowing at the fact she’d succumbed to him so easily. ‘But it’s over and it won’t happen again. Now I’d like to go and have a shower.’

  ‘Of course it’s going to happen again.’ Slowly he shook his head, the look in his eyes doing silly things to her insides. ‘But next time had better be somewhere more comfortable. I told you I hadn’t got my strength back.’ He rolled his shoulder and shifted his arm, reminding her of the plaster cast he still wore.

  Poppy stared, torn between asking if he’d injured himself and the memory of his strength as he’d held her high, pounding into her till ecstasy claimed them both.

  The touch of his fingertips on her cheek stopped her as she made to brush past him. So gentle, yet that caress made her breath hitch and that squirming, hungry ache begin again in her stomach.

  ‘You can’t run from this, Poppy. It’s not going away.’ His fingers feathered down to stroke her swollen lips. ‘If you prefer, I could provoke you into another fight so you have an excuse to release all that tension and let yourself go. But it would be so much more fun if you accepted it.’

  ‘Fun?’ Her voice rose to a screech. ‘I’m not interested in having fun with you, Orsino.’ She’d just betrayed herself.

  His eyes narrowed. ‘You’re not trying to say that hot, hungry sex we just shared was about love, are you?’ He said love as if it was a sour taste on his tongue.

  ‘Of course not. This was just …’ She gestured vaguely.

  ‘Pure animal desire.’ His voice dropped to a rough caress. ‘White-hot sex that blows the back off your head and leaves you a quivering wreck.’

  He didn’t look a quivering wreck. He looked raffishly handsome and sure of himself.

  ‘The sort of sex that—’

  ‘Enough, enough!’ She raised her hand. ‘The way you’re going on about it anyone would think you hadn’t been with a woman in years.’

  His face stiffened into rigid lines and he drew himself up, looming above her.

  ‘I’m facing facts, Poppy.’ He took her wrist, fingers against the frantic throb of her pulse. ‘This isn’t going away. Don’t you understand?’

  ‘It has to.’ Did she sound as desperate as she felt?

  She wrenched her hand away and crossed her arms, counteracting the chill that gripped her. ‘We have nothing in common except a train wreck of a relationship.’ She wouldn’t go there again.

  ‘You still don’t see. I’m not talking about a relationship.’ Again that bitter emphasis. ‘This is lust, pure and simple.’

  ‘But we don’t like each other.’ She groped for the words that would end this farce. ‘You detest me.’ She swallowed hard, telling herself it no longer mattered.

  Orsino tilted his head and that lock of hair tumbled forward. Poppy’s fingers twitched. She wanted to brush it back, feel its softness.

  ‘I’ll cut you a deal, Poppy. I won’t mention the past if you don’t. It has no bearing on this.’ His gesture encompassed the pair of them and the wall where he’d just given her the most exciting climax of her life. ‘The past is behind us. But the physical attraction isn’t. Why not enjoy it? Why not let it run its course so when we part this time it will be completely over? Then there won’t be any lingering shreds of … connection.’

  She stared, not believing what she heard.

  ‘You can’t be serious!’

  ‘Never more so.’ He raised his brows, managing to look impossibly superior. ‘That’s the difference between men and women. Men are pragmatic. We can distinguish lust from affection. What you and I share is steaming-hot physical desire.’

  As he spoke a pulse started up high between her legs.

  ‘You feel it, don’t you?’ His eyes gleamed, the lids lowering as he gave her a look that turned her knees to jelly.

  She shook her head. ‘Once was more than enough.’

  ‘Liar,’ he taunted. ‘That barely touched the surface and you know it. All it did was bring this out into the open. Now it will be even harder to ignore.’ He paused as if waiting for her to reply but her tongue was stuck to the roof of her mouth.

  ‘At least think about it.’

  He waited till she finally, reluctantly, nodded—anything to end this conversation. Then to her relief he moved back, giving her access to the staircase.

  Her foot was on the first step when he spoke again.

  ‘One last thing.’ He paused. ‘I didn’t use protection. Do I have anything to worry about?’

  It took far too long for Poppy to fathom his meaning. When she did, it was with a sick churning in her stomach.

  He hadn’t used protection.

  She hadn’t even thought about it. How could she have been so caught up in desire that she hadn’t noticed? It was as if an irresponsible stranger had taken over her body.

  It was on the tip of Poppy’s tongue to announce she hadn’t been with anyone since him but she thought better of it. He wouldn’t believe it, or if by some miracle she could convince him, he’d see it as a sign she carried a torch for him.

  ‘No.’ Her voice was low. ‘You’ve got nothing to w
orry about on that score. But what about me? Are you safe?’ She remembered his multitude of partners in all those press reports and her insides tightened.

  ‘Don’t worry. I’m clean as a whistle.’ Yet the tension around his mouth told her there was something on his mind.

  She waited but he said nothing about the risk of pregnancy.

  Of course. He assumed she’d have that covered. No doubt he imagined her hopping from bed to bed. Frantically she calculated dates in her head, reassuring herself the chances of pregnancy were slim.

  That was another reason to veto his proposition. Getting pregnant to her ex would be a mistake even more momentous than her error in marrying him.

  Slowly she hauled herself up the stairs, conscious of Orsino’s eyes on her. Shame filled Poppy at the needy ache between her legs, sign of the weakness he’d reawakened within her.

  Yet even in the privacy of her room she couldn’t get his outrageous suggestion out of her head. It had a terrible, seductive logic, which just showed how off balance she was.

  She’d once made a catastrophic mistake, believing love could conquer all, despite what she knew about love turning women into victims. She’d loved Orsino with a passion that overrode sense, marrying him in a whirlwind of excitement. She’d ignored the voice of warning, telling herself their love would make it right.

  But it hadn’t been their love, had it? It had been hers alone. She’d fallen head over heels for him. But Orsino? He’d always held part of himself back, maintaining a depth of reserve masked by charm and potent sexuality.

  History had repeated itself. First her parents then her and Orsino.

  Loving and losing had almost destroyed her. She couldn’t countenance the idea of giving herself in love again.

  So if not love, what about lust? Was there sense in Orsino’s words? She couldn’t shake the insidious idea he might be right.

  Maybe she could practise what he preached, take lovers to assuage this hunger he’d reawakened. In five years she hadn’t managed to eradicate him. Could a no-holds-barred sexual relationship do what abstinence hadn’t and free her once and for all?

  Poppy showered so long the flesh on her fingers started to pucker, but no answer presented itself. Common sense and the voice of temptation raced round her head, like mice on a never-ending wheel.