Duty At What Cost?

by Michelle Conder

  He led her down a long hallway that had various other hallways leading off it and she wondered absently if they shared the same idea of size. ‘Is it just us?’

  He stopped outside a closed door and threw it open. ‘Yes. The island is completely private. The couple who caretake for me live on a larger island about an hour away. Wait here.’

  He stepped into the room, flicked on the light and checked the double glass doors leading to an outdoor area. When his gaze returned to her she became intensely aware that she was standing in the middle of a bedroom wearing nothing more than one of his shirts and a teensy pair of knickers. Every cell in her body seemed to vibrate on high alert and she wondered if he was at all affected by her. On some level she knew he had to be, but he was so good at controlling himself. It made her want to rip her shirt open and push all that stony self-control to the limit.

  ‘I don’t have any women’s clothing and I can’t send out for any. That shirt should do you tonight. In the morning I’ll lend you some T-shirts and shorts of mine.’

  ‘Merci.’

  ‘I’d also prefer you didn’t go outside. The whole house is alarmed and I don’t want you tripping it.’

  Without waiting for her acquiescence he strode to the door. ‘You should have everything you need in the en suite bathroom, but I will be next door if you should need anything else.’

  Like him?

  The impulsive thought jumped into her mind and she smiled brightly. ‘I’m sure I’ll be fine.’

  Or at least she wouldn’t tell him if she wasn’t.

  Wolfe nodded. ‘Goodnight then.’

  Feeling wired after her rest on the plane, Ava turned her interested gaze to the room. It was large and airy and continued the strong Spanish feel of the other rooms, with terracotta floors inlaid with handcrafted mosaics, brightly coloured rugs and light timber furniture.

  She’d dearly love to take a shower, but that seemed impossible with her bandaged hands. Nor could she go outside. Glancing around the stylishly furnished room she found nothing to distract herself, not even a TV.

  With nothing to do she freshened up in the bathroom as best she could with her cumbersome bandages and lay down on the comfortable bed, willing herself to sleep again. Her mother had always said she could do anything if she put her mind to it, but it seemed that sleep on command wasn’t one of those achievements.

  Thinking of her mother made her feel sad again. Sad and alone. She had been the only person who understood her need to shine in her own right. Her need to stand on her own two feet.

  Wolfe understands you.

  The sneaky little thought crept sideways into her brain and transported her back to the bed on his plane. Rolling sideways, she shifted restlessly and felt bereft in the empty bed. Snuggling into his big body had been... It had been... Ava felt her pelvis clench in response. Yes, it had been heavenly. He was so warm. So solid. And this bed in comparison was cold. Empty. Exactly how she felt right now.

  What would he do if she went to him...naked? Would it matter that he would never love her the way she desperately wanted to be loved?

  Irritated with herself, she rolled onto her back and stared at the dark ceiling. Why, oh, why couldn’t she get that man out of her head?

  And why couldn’t Lorenzo affect her half as much? Marrying him would solve every one of her problems. He was the spare to the heir in his own country, so he understood the pressures she would face as Queen. And he was kind. Considerate. The perfect gentleman.

  But she didn’t love him and he didn’t love her. Although it was possible that love would grow; it often did in arranged marriages.

  And it often didn’t either.

  ‘Oh, shut up!’ Ava told the insistent voice in her head.

  She would have to sleep with him. Take him into her body. And that just felt...

  Wrong.

  ‘Yes, yes. I get it.’

  And talking to an empty room wasn’t going to change anything. Feeling horribly alone, and miserably vulnerable after the night’s events, Ava felt a desperate urge to leave a message for her father. To reconnect with him in some small way. Something her mother would no doubt be immensely happy with.

  About to reach for her phone, she realised she had no idea where it was. She knew she’d had it in the limousine on the way to her gallery because she’d ignored an incoming message. Or had that been during the dinner earlier? She couldn’t remember, but no doubt if she had left it in either place one of Wolfe’s efficient men would have picked it up for her.

  If they had where would they have left it? The living room? The kitchen? No way would they come to her room and disturb her.

  Mulling over her options, Ava decided to take a look; she knew she wouldn’t sleep anyway, and maybe she would fix herself a glass of warm milk in the process.

  Feeling marginally better now that she was taking action, she stepped out of her room, feeling a bit like a thief as her bare feet padded silently on the tiled floor.

  Hoping she was headed in the right direction, she stopped when she noticed a triangle of light spilling into the hallway ahead of her.

  Wolfe obviously wasn’t in bed yet. Or maybe it was the driver of the Jeep. Maybe he could help her.

  Cautiously moving forward, she felt a sense of trepidation tightening her throat as every horror movie she had ever seen vied for supremacy in her head. She leaned around the open doorway and her hand flew to her mouth to stifle her shocked gasp.

  Wolfe was standing in a small utility room, naked to the waist, his back covered in a crisscross pattern of fresh welts and bruises. A large medical kit stood open on the marble benchtop, bandages, scissors and blood-covered swabs strewn around it. A white gauze bandage he had clearly applied himself ran the length of his left triceps.

  As if in a daze she connected her eyes with his in the wide mirror. ‘Oh, my God. That looks terrible.’

  When it had felt as if a wall had fallen on her it had, she realised, but Wolfe had taken the brunt of the impact. Broken pieces of brick, wood and plaster had turned his bronzed flesh into a checkerboard of pain. The shock of the night returned full force and, feeling sick to her stomach, Ava moved into the room.

  Wolfe spun around, presenting her for the first time in weeks with the sight of his magnificent hair-roughened chest.

  Ava barely noticed.

  Her eyes slid past his impressive pectoral muscles to where his bruised back could be seen as clear as day under the fluorescent light.

  ‘It looks worse than it is.’

  Her eyes met his. ‘I very much doubt that.’ Her hand covered her mouth again. ‘Wolfe, I am so sorry.’

  Swearing softly under his breath, he reached for the shirt he’d dropped onto the floor.

  ‘I told you it wasn’t your fault.’ The words were more like a grunt, but he didn’t move to cover himself with the T-shirt as she stepped into his personal space.

  ‘Much.’ She gave him a stilted smile. ‘What is this cream for?’ She picked up the opened jar on the vanity behind him and smelt it.

  ‘It’s arnica. It’s a natural remedy that takes a lot of the pain out of bruises.’

  ‘So you do feel pain?’ She tried to make light of it to curb how truly awful she felt about his injuries.

  ‘Not if I can help it,’ he said flatly.

  She cocked her eyebrow at him and noticed him stiffen when she dabbed her finger into the jar. ‘Turn around,’ she instructed on impulse.

  He shook his head, swallowed heavily. ‘I can take care of myself.’

  Ava understood his need for self-sufficiency. On a much smaller scale she too had decided it was safer to rely only on herself, but for some reason she wanted Wolfe to know that she was there for him just as much as he had been there for her.

  Finding it hard to maintain eye contact with him as he towered over her, Ava nevertheless held her ground. ‘Everyone needs someone, Wolfe.’

  ‘I don’t.’ His words sounded gritty. Empty.

  ‘Yes,
you do. You’re just too afraid to admit it.’ Ava twirled her finger. ‘Now, turn around. Please,’ she added when it looked as if he wouldn’t comply.

  He shook his head in mock resignation. ‘Anyone ever tell you you’re a bossy little thing?’

  ‘Hmm, there was a man once who might have uttered something similar.’

  ‘What happened to him?’

  ‘I threw him in my dungeon.’

  ‘Then I better not cross you,’ he said gravely.

  ‘A smart man.’ She laughed. ‘Who knew?’

  He scowled at her but there was a twinkling of humour in his toffee eyes. Her breath caught as she took in his male beauty, but then he turned and she could barely stop herself from wincing when she saw his back again. ‘Tell me if I hurt you.’

  ‘You won’t.’

  Their eyes met briefly in the mirror and she knew he was right. If anyone was going to get hurt here it would be her.

  Ignoring the maudlin thought, she concentrated on being gentle as she touched him.

  She felt him tense up at her first touch. His hands braced against the vanity unit, but other than that he didn’t move as she worked the cool cream into his discoloured skin. ‘Weren’t you wearing one of those special vests?’ she asked to distract herself while she worked.

  ‘Kevlar is better against bullets than bombs. Although it hurts like a son of a bitch to get shot.’

  And she knew he knew what that felt like.

  He was so strong, this warrior of a man who had shielded her so well all she’d ended up with was a bruised hip and sore hands.

  Fortunately her plasters didn’t hinder her fingers from spreading cream onto him, and by the time she’d worked her way down to the base of his spine she felt his muscles start to relax.

  And then other sensations started to creep into her consciousness. Sensations like the fact that his warm, toned flesh was beneath her fingertips. Like his size. The fact that she was standing so closely behind him she would only have to move a centimetre to be plastered against all that heat.

  Just like that lust unfurled like a flower low in her pelvis and turned her insides to liquid. She glanced at his face in the mirror and found his eyes were shut tight, his knuckles as white as the basin he gripped. It was as if he was holding on to his control by a thread. As if her touching him was affecting him the same way it was affecting her.

  Without allowing herself any time to think about it, she leant forward and placed her lips along the indent of his spine, feeling rather than hearing his sharp inhalation. He smelt of soap and the cream now absorbed into his skin. And all man. Ava breathed deep, careful not to press against his bruises but unable to stop kissing him on every undamaged section of his back.

  He was tall, so much taller than her, and she had to stretch to reach the base of his neck. As soon as her lips found their mark a deep sound rumbled through his body and he spun towards her, his hands gripping her waist to hold her back.

  A tap dripped in the quiet room but neither of them paid it any attention.

  Ava knew her eyes showed how aroused she was but she didn’t try to hide it from him. She knew he would never want a future with her, but at this point she didn’t care.

  Last week she had pledged that she would dedicate her life to her country. But that seemed irrelevant tonight. Tonight they had both nearly lost their lives. Tonight she just wanted to be a normal woman with a man who made her feel so much.

  ‘What are you doing, Ava?’

  His deep growl sent a frisson of awareness straight to her core.

  She spread her hands wide over his magnificent chest. ‘What does it look like?’

  ‘It looks like trouble.’

  She smiled. ‘I want to make love with you, Wolfe.’

  His nostrils flared and his fingers bit into her waist. Like a sinuous cat Ava arched towards him, powered by the knowledge that he seemed to be as aroused as she already was.

  When he continued to stare at her, unmoving, she wondered if perhaps she’d misjudged him. Misjudged the depth of the chemistry between them. Misjudged his infinite self-control. The old feeling of not being good enough swamped her, but just as she might have withdrawn he hauled her up onto her toes and claimed her mouth with his.

  Ava sighed blissfully against his lips. Her body knew his, trusted his. When he groaned and slanted his mouth to widen hers she didn’t even think of holding back. She had wanted him to touch her—had wanted to touch him—for weeks, and it felt as if her whole body just melted into his like a boneless mass.

  Possibly she was just being driven by the need to be physically close to someone right now. The ghosts of those she had loved and lost lay heavy in her heart after her horrifying ordeal. But she didn’t care. She had never wanted a man the way she wanted James Wolfe.

  ‘I want you, Ava.’ His voice was as rough as a cat’s tongue against her ear. ‘God knows I’ve tried to resist you. Tried and failed. If you don’t stop me now I won’t be able to.’

  Ava gazed into eyes as black as the night sky outside. He was giving her a message, she knew it. He wasn’t the one for her no matter how good it felt to be with him.

  Maybe it would have been smarter to heed that warning. Maybe it would have been smarter to push him away. But her body refused to cooperate. Something inside her sensed that he needed her equally as much as she needed him, and that feeling was stronger than any maybe.

  ‘I don’t want you to stop.’

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  IT WAS AS if those passion-drugged words had unleashed a beast inside him. Wolfe forgot all about the gut-wrenching pain in his back and instead could only feel the gut-wrenching ache in his body. For her. Only for her.

  Before, when she’d looked at him so guilelessly and told him that everyone needed someone, he had vehemently denied that he did. But right now his body made a mockery of those words. Her concern over his injuries had completely undone him. No woman had ever treated him so tenderly before and it was appalling how badly he wanted to soak that up.

  As if in a dream state Wolfe smoothed his hands down over her thighs, encouraging them up around his hips. ‘Put your legs around my waist.’ His voice was so rough it was barely recognisable as he hoisted her higher.

  ‘I hate it when you get macho,’ she teased, locking her ankles together and squeezing his hips.

  Wolfe’s eyelids grew heavy as he felt her heat against his abdomen. Her breathlessness inflamed him even further. ‘You want me to put mine around yours?’

  Her husky laugh turned into a low, keening cry as he adjusted her so that she rocked against his erection exactly where he knew she needed it the most. A deep sense of satisfaction hit him hard at the thought that he could please this spirited woman so easily.

  He kissed her all the way back to his room, only breaking contact to switch on the side lamp and lie her back on his bed.

  This was what he wanted—what he had dreamt of since Gilles’s wedding. Ava, hot for him. Spread out on his bed, aroused and waiting for him to take her. To possess her.

  The warning in his head that he wanted her just a little too much was driven out by the sheer, unequivocal desire to take and brand her as his own.

  Forgetting all about technique and—heaven help him—finesse, he pulled the front her shirt open, uncaring as some of the buttons tore free.

  Her breath caught, pushing her breasts higher. Her nipples were already standing up and begging for his mouth. ‘I need a shower.’

  ‘No.’ He shook his head slowly, his eyes drinking in her naked perfection. ‘You need me.’

  And he needed her. So badly it was a physical pain. He needed to be inside her and he gave up trying to work out why.

  When she was naked, spread out before him like this, it would take a whole army to pull him off her, and he had the insane urge to beat his chest and chain her to the bed so that she could never leave.

  More than a little disturbed by that gut-wrenching notion, Wolfe shoved it aside along with his
jeans. Nothing, not even the whispered warnings of self-preservation in his head, was going to stop him from taking her now. He climbed over the top of her, his mouth nipping her skin wherever it landed.

  Her hands stroked up his arms, trying to pull him down over her, but he resisted. He had no intention of rushing this. Instead he straddled her hips, imprisoning her legs with his and brought his hands up to cup and pleasure her breasts.

  She tried to arch into his caress, but she was effectively trapped and he smiled. ‘I know you hate this type of macho stuff.’ He lightly brushed over her nipples as if by accident, enjoying that little catch in her breath. ‘So feel free to tell me to stop at any time.’

  Her eyes flew open. ‘I should...I should...’

  She stopped breathing again as he circled ever closer to her rigid peaks. She squirmed, making his erection throb, but he deliberately held off giving her what she wanted—what he wanted—building the anticipation between them, making them both burn.

  Her hands stroked down over his chest towards his throbbing erection, a look of power and delight tilting her smile.

  ‘Uh-uh.’ He secured both her wandering hands in one of his above her head and dropped a kiss on her open mouth, lingering long enough to tease her with his tongue.

  ‘You said “I”,’ he reminded her.

  ‘I will never speak to you again if you don’t put yourself inside me right now,’ she vowed.

  ‘What about this?’ he asked, watching her face as he rolled a nipple between his thumb and forefinger.

  She sighed in rapture, her body tightening as if she was a weapon he was fine-tuning.

  He let go of her wrists and brought both his hands into play to pleasure her gorgeous breasts. The sight of her like that was highly erotic. He let his eyes roam over her flushed face and chest, enjoying her pleasure as he slowly increased the pressure to a torturous level.

  ‘Oh, that. Oh, yes. Don’t stop. Wolfe!’

  Her arms fluttered and moved down, her hands sculpting his chest and abdomen until finally one was cupping him while the other palmed his aroused length. The bandages on her palms were cool where her fingers were hot. He bit back a pleasurable oath, his eyes closing as he continued to tug on her sweet nipples and absorbed her sensual touch at the same time.