Without another word, she did as ordered. Her eyes still glazed with the perfect picture of mountain serenity.
“Where’s your corset?” he asked, and let the hunger he felt for her shine in his eyes as he watched her perfect curves.
“I burnt it when I came back from the mountain.”
He growled his approval, and swooped her up into his arms to crush her in a kiss that heated his core. To hell with her bedroom. He began to walk through the hall, not knowing where he went, and then turned into the first room he found.
He set her down with her back to an overly stuffed chair of the drawing room. To his right, the curtains stood open to the mill yard, and in five steps, he closed them, and pivoted to stalk toward her once more.
“Turn around.”
Chapter 12
Victoria had no control over anything. Not her breathing, not her heart, and certainly not her body as it obeyed Wall’s commands without question. Typically, in a man, she hated assertiveness. Loved to be the one to command a situation, but with Wall it was different. She’d tried taking the reins in her relationship with him, and he’d allowed her to as she’d requested, but the dynamic felt wrong.
In this realm, he’d never let her lead. His expert hands shaped her body into something it had never been before with each caress. His undeniable ability to bring her joy in something she’d always heard talked about in whispers behind gloved fingers, and with condemning eyes behind a preacher’s pulpit. Something as sinful as this shouldn’t feel as though the world flattened for her every time Wall began to kiss her. His loving shouldn’t feel right.
Only it did.
More right than anything ever did in this world. More than when she’d finally become mistress of Great Mountain Lumber Company. More right than when she’d finally returned home to Montana from school in London. More right than when Garrett had broken off their engagement the year before.
She and Wall may not be made out of the same material at the draper’s, but they were certainly made to be together in matters of the romantic kind.
Wall urged her to lean over the chair with gentle pressure between her shoulder blades, and she obeyed. She didn’t know why, but her heart sped up at what might become of such a vulnerable position.
She could focus on nothing but the way his fingers felt against her skin as he slid them down her spine, stopping where her hips met her waist. They roamed her body without care to where they went. She couldn’t think of anything else. Could barely get more than half a breath in before she’d need another. The anticipation within her tightened. Grew. Thanks to the time in her office she knew what was to come, and she wanted it. Wanted more.
She was greedy.
Victoria started to stand upright to turn and tell him as much, but he pushed her down with gentle pressure on her back. “No, princess, stay as you are.”
“I don’t want to wait any longer.”
“I’m afraid you don’t have a choice in the matter.” With his words, he bent and began to forge kisses down her spine. She closed her eyes and gripped the tight fabric of the chair arms as the back of the chair pressed into her midsection.
She thought his kisses near her shoulders wicked, but when he began to trail them down to the sensitive skin just above her buttocks, stars flashed across her vision. She tensed as lightning seemed to shoot to every fiber of her core, focusing solely on her most secret of places.
And then he reached down and slid a finger into her heat where the lightning centered and the muscles in her stomach began to spasm. “You have to stop.”
“No.” He nudged the inside of her feet with his toes. “Open.”
Another command she obeyed without question.
She stepped wide, opening herself to him as she bent over the chair, her backside propped high for him to view if he so wished.
“God, you’re beautiful,” he said mere seconds before releasing her from his fingers, and pressing his manhood inside her.
She gasped at the sweet intrusion.
With each thrust, another noise arose from her core, and she couldn’t hold it back. Not if she wanted to. She felt him all the way into her stomach, pounding against her womb as he thrust in and out. As if she were one of his mechanisms and he the master, the creator, twining, twisting until she could either break or bend to his will.
She wanted to do both.
Her fingernails bit into the fabric on the chair until she thought they might break, but perhaps the pain might help ease the tension shooting out from every point of her body.
If he could read her thoughts she wouldn’t be surprised, for he reached up and wrapped her hair around one of his hands. Tugging, and playing with the long strands. The sensation, while normally would irritate and hurt, instead forced her to the breaking point. She wanted more.
He slammed into her harder, and she shattered around him, causing him to groan in pleasure. A wave of peace slid over her body from head to toe, but he didn’t stop as she’d thought but kept going.
She glanced back at him. Every line on his face was drawn up, and his jaw tense. His pupils so large they made the sky blue in his eyes into nothing but an outline. Something shimmered in their depths she didn’t see before. Lust, yes, happiness, of course, but there was something deeper. Adoration perhaps?
“You’re mine,” he told her, but she wasn’t certain if it was more of a statement, or a claim. Truth be told, she liked both. She turned her head and smiled to herself as he picked up the rhythm again.
And she once more grew desperate.
She wanted the peace back, but to her fear and delight, the sensual pulley began to work. Heaving and twining until even her arms screamed out for release from where they strained to ground her to the chair.
He kept going until he brought her to the highest peak again, and once more blessed peace erupted throughout her body. On her wave, he released himself deep inside her, and slumped over her, balancing on his arms as he hovered over her back. “Do you have staff coming tonight to help you?”
“No.” She inwardly laughed at how her voice muffled into the chair. Wall must have heard the ridiculousness, and pulled out and backed away, leaving her to right herself.
She stood and turned to face him. Only then aware of how naked she was before a man who wasn’t her husband.
“Is anyone working tomorrow?”
“No. I’ve given the workers an extended weekend because of the fire. The mill workers will return on Monday so we can hopefully make the contracts we already have.”
“Good. I’m staying.” He didn’t ask. Commanded. But she wanted him to. After everything that’s happened to her today, how could she not? She needed Wall and the comfort he provided her.
“Fine, but we draw the curtains throughout the entire house, and you’re gone before the sun. I can’t have Ms. Bates or one of my workers catching you in here, and ruining me forever.” She ambled toward the hall where she’d left her dress. “I’ve done a good enough job at that on my own.”
She bent to pick up her dress, but Wall plucked the garment from her fingers. She stood and spun around as he tucked it under her arms. The blasted man had already dressed in his trousers before she even had a chance to grab up her garments. He took a single step closer. “Where’s your bedroom?”
“Upstairs. Second door to the right.”
He motioned for her to show him the way, so she did. All the while she felt his eyes following the sway of her hips. The wicked sensation only lent to the sensual pull of the evening.
After today she didn’t know how her life would turn out. If she’d lose all she’d worked for, but she wouldn’t regret any of the times she’d spent with Wall. Not when they were the only times in her life when she felt at peace.
She began to walk up the steps and his hand brushed the hair aside at the small of her back, but he touched he
r in no other way. She shivered, and led the way into her overly large room.
She waved at the ornate furnishing. “You’re right about one thing when you call me princess. I like my comfort. When it comes to sleeping, anyway.”
He raised both eyebrows and cocked one side of his mouth back in a smile when he spotted her feather-stuffed bed. He slid her an approving grin, and she responded in kind.
“Out before the sun,” she reminded, but nudged his arm with her elbow in a good-natured motion.
“Maybe I’ll never leave.”
“You’ll give Ms. Bates heart problems. Shock her to death if she walks into my room to find a naked man. She still thinks I’m running around in bloomers.”
“Hhmm.” He tossed her dress on the floor near her chair. Only then did she notice he’d grabbed his shirt and boots as well as her clothes. He began to walk around the room as if assessing the furnishing. “This will do.”
“Do for what?” She bent and picked up the clothes, folding them to lay them gently on the arm of the chair.
He turned a seductive smile on her. “For the rest of the night.”
“Oh,” she said as he stalked toward her and wrapped her in his arms again.
Victoria leaned into his chest and let him take over. Forgetting the mill, the obligations in town, her missing father. With him, she simply existed. What she wouldn’t give to exist forever as she did that moment. With him. To simply live.
* * * *
The banging continued in Wall’s head until he woke with a jerk, searching the darkness for the source of the noise. In his arms, Victoria lay snuggled, deep in sleep.
Bang, Bang, Bang.
He picked out the deep reverberation of a fist on a door somewhere in the house, and shook Victoria. She moaned and rolled her head. “Someone’s here. I’d go down myself, but I don’t think you want us discovered.”
Although, at this point, what did it matter? He hadn’t been lying last night when he’d laid claim to her. She was his, and sometime in the past few weeks of strife, she’d laid claim to his heart as well.
Now all he had to do was get her past his family. His father. The opposition not only to his life, but he suspected Victoria’s business venture as well.
Victoria grumbled as she scrambled out of bed and into a frilly dressing gown from her wardrobe. She really was the most adorable sleeper, and most grumpy of morning people. Of course, judging by the lack of sun, it was quite early.
By the time Victoria tiptoed across the room and reached out to turn the knob, a knock sounded on the bedroom door itself. Wall smiled as she cracked it open only enough for whoever was on the other side to see her, and whatever they could of the wall beside her.
She mumbled something, took a candle from whoever was in the hallway, and then shut the door again. With the room now illuminated, she turned to him. “We’re wanted downstairs.”
At the words, his heartbeat kicked up.
“Both of us?” He’d done it. He’d rode the log of life too fast and fallen off into the churning waters, taking Victoria down with him. How did anyone even know he was here?
“Yes. My mother has come from Seattle. She would like to speak with us.”
“Who knows I’m here?” He stood and began to dress, as she picked something more suitable from her wardrobe.
“I don’t know.” Her voice shook, and only then did he realize she held back tears. Come to think of it, he didn’t think he’d ever truly seen her cry. He’d seen emotion, maybe watery eyes, but she’d never let them go like women were apt to do. Well, town women anyway. Most of his sisters never cried. Except for his sister Bethany. She’d cried when the boy she’d fallen for headed for the Klondike to find his fortune. The boy claimed he’d be back wealthy enough to buy even the Lazy Heart for her, but she knew she’d never see him again.
Wall finished dressing and wrapped her in his arms when he was certain she was ready as well. “We’ll get through this. We’ll even marry if we must. I’m not the sort of man to be discovered with a woman like you and then abandon her.”
She glared. “Don’t worry yourself over me, Wall Adair. I’m perfectly situated without a man.”
Wall set his teeth. What sort of woman refused an offer of marriage after being discovered in a compromising situation? What about marrying him was so repulsive to her? Probably being forced to stoop so low as to be a cowboy’s wife.
He wanted to say something, but in all honesty, he didn’t know how to respond to her. He let her go and stepped back, opening the door. She didn’t want him the same way he did her, that much was clear.
Victoria brushed past him, and led the way down the stairs and to her father’s study where a prim woman sat with a straight back and dark, high-necked dress. She turned her head their way when they entered, but didn’t stand.
“Beatrice Harrison. And who are you, young man?” she asked in a regal voice—the source of Victoria’s haughty disposition apparent to him now.
“Wallace Adair, ma’am.” He nodded and stood with his heels together and hands clasped at his back.
“Adair? Hhmm.” She turned to Victoria. “What have you to say for yourself, young lady?”
“Only that I am a woman of means, and can do as I choose. How’s Father? Have you found him?”
At the question, Beatrice’s shoulders dropped the slightest of bit. “He is not lost except in his own mind.”
“I don’t understand. I went through an entire trial for ownership over the mill on my own because I received word that he was lost at Hurricane Ridge.”
“He was discovering the trees over there, and may have gotten a little lost. He’ll be found soon. I’ve no doubt he can find his way back whole and well since he’s done this before up here in the Montana mountains.”
“The trees?” The disbelief in Victoria’s voice echoed through the room. “He abandoned me in my time of need for trees?”
“Giant trees as big as this room apparently.”
“I lost the land to Luther Sanchez.”
Curious as to her response, Wall studied Beatrice as she smoothed a fold in her skirt, concentrating on the fabric for longer than needed before raising her chin once more. “And what was the outcome?”
“I lost the land.”
“But the mill is safe?”
“Yes.”
Beatrice gave a single nod, but her face remained in a blank, unaffected stare. “Excellent. We will rebuild. What sort of tactics did his lawyer use?”
“Shouldn’t you be asking; is my son well? Is he handsome? Prosperous? Wait, you already know these things because he’s been working here for the past few years. No doubt at your urging. Did you persuade father to hire him on because of your guilty conscience, Mother?”
Victoria moved to stand next to the fireplace, and Wall adjusted his stance and stepped slightly behind her to lend what comfort he could with his heat. At least he hoped it would help her.
“You know.”
“The whole town does. Luther was given half of the operation during the proceeding.”
“As is his right. We’re lucky he only got the land. It’s easy to find more trees. Harder to rebuild a mill.”
“How is it his right to take away Father’s company?”
“There’s a lot more to the story than you know, and now isn’t the time to talk about it.” She flicked a glance at him.
Victoria must have understood because she lifted her chin. “He’s been the only one who’s supported me through this entire ordeal, and I’m more than likely to tell him later anyway. He already knows everything. You may as well tell us now.”
Partly hidden from Beatrice, Wall lifted his hand and caressed the small of Victoria’s back with his knuckles. She leaned into his touch a fraction of an inch as if taking strength from him. She was a scrapper. A verbal pugilist, and a
woman any man would be proud to have stand by his side in times of trouble.
Beatrice squared her shoulders. “All right then. Sanchez was your father’s friend and business partner when this whole Great Mountain venture was barely a dream. They’d planned to open it together. Even purchased a parcel of land at the time.”
“Business partner?” Victoria asked, stunned. “You had an affair with your husband’s partner?”
Wall wanted to step closer, tug her back into his embrace, but to do so would be unthinkable. He dropped his hand to his side, and remained still to listen. Quiet and invisible as this family aired their skeletons before him.
“He was devilish and handsome, and after you were born your father cared for nothing but making the mill thrive. When Sanchez began to notice me, I was alone. Lonely if you will. In need of someone to care, and one night after a party I made a mistake while your father stayed back and hobnobbed with whomever.” Beatrice waved as if to shoo away the memory. “Months later I realized I was pregnant with Luther, but by then it was too late. Your father hadn’t touched me in over a year so there was no hiding it.”
“So you allowed him to toss your child out on the street with your lover when he was born?”
“It wasn’t as violent as that. Your father is not a monster.”
“That’s what Luther believes. Has probably been raised to believe.”
“No. I loved him, and your father was fine with forgetting my indiscretions and making it right, but Sanchez wanted Luther. His mother wanted to raise him in their home.”
Victoria crossed her arms across her chest. “So you just let her have him?”
“No. We didn’t. Not until they began to blackmail us for him. They threatened to take our secrets to the newspaper. Ruin us forever, and by then the mill was a success. No one would sign on to buy wood from your father if my secret had come out. Not with our reputation. So we agreed as long as Sanchez allowed us to buy his half of the mill outright. Luther grew up in a very substantial household out in Florence.”
Fiery Passion Page 16
