Josiah's Bride

by Jory Strong

Muted laughter moved through the crowd. A heated shiver went through Ella.

  She lifted her eyes and they slammed into Josiah's.

  Gone were the ruthless pools of black. Back was the desire she'd glimpsed before, the times she'd been assisting her father.

  He offered his hand. She grasped it, felt his strength.

  A tug and she was standing, so close that she was enveloped by the scent of leather and man.

  He cupped her cheek and the rough texture of his palm against her skin brought the return of fantasies. A blush rushed up her neck and into her cheeks, accompanied by the throbbing beat of her pulse just beneath her jaw.

  A chant erupted again. "Kiss! Kiss! Kiss!"

  * * * * *

  Chapter 8

  "Kiss! Kiss! Kiss!"

  Josiah brushed his thumb across her lips. "Shall we give them what they want, mami?"

  The endearment created an explosion-blast of want in Ella's chest, became bright fireworks that fountained into her head and then streaked downward into her stomach and the place between her legs.

  She licked her lips and the heat in his eyes burned hotter. Her heart double-tapped and her soul thrilled. He might have expected Victoria, but that didn't change the fact that he wanted her, Ella.

  He leaned in. Full, sensuous lips grazed her cheek, her earlobe.

  His warm breath caressed her. "Si or no?" he asked, the sound of his voice one she could come to crave.

  "Yes."

  His laugh was confident, but he was warlord. And even before he'd become that, he was a man who could enslave any woman with a look.

  He speared strong fingers through her hair, closed them into a fist that she wanted to believe was possessive. She trembled, wanted to belong to him, had wanted it from the first moment she'd seen him.

  His mouth covered hers, lingering for a heartbeat and then a second beat, as if afraid she'd break beneath the force of his desire.

  Her lashes drifted downward. Her hands went to his chest, grasped the silky material of his light blue shirt.

  Thumbs touched and fingers spread, she wouldn't have been able to encompass the breadth of his chest. Beneath the shirt were firm muscles, a solidness that contrasted to the wispy, insubstantial feel of her body while his mouth was touched to hers.

  His tongue slipped between her parted lips, bringing scorching heat. She trembled, the softest of moans escaping.

  His kiss was nothing like the hurried kisses she'd exchanged with Griffin. There was no hesitancy, no questioning the wisdom or rightness of it.

  Josiah's kiss drove thought out and left only sensation. He tasted of whiskey and it would be far too easy to get drunk on him. But they were married now and there was no guilt in being kissed by her husband. There was no shame in surrendering.

  At least in this moment. At least when it came to this.

  He hadn't expected to marry her.

  But he had.

  I don't think his pride will allow him to admit the mistake publically.

  Her hands tightened on his shirt as if she could use her fists to beat back the words she'd heard her father say. But they'd already done damage, dousing some of the heat, though when Josiah's tongue retreated from hers, she lifted onto her toes, her lips attempting to cling as if to prevent further hurt and loss of hope.

  Satisfaction glittered in his eyes. His heart beat faster beneath her palm but hers outpaced it.

  He stepped away, glanced at Jacob. "Shall we give your new mama a tour of the stronghold?"

  Ella saw the flash of happiness in Jacob's expression, the joy that went through him at having his father's attention.

  He nodded, his voice soft, a barely heard whisper. "Si, Papa."

  Jacob reached for her hand and she took it, squeezed. Josiah's hand settled at the base of her spine, bringing renewed heat to the place between her legs as he angled her toward the front doors of his stronghold.

  His soldiers began dispersing, though three remained. He indicated the man who'd escorted her to the stronghold. "Ciro."

  Next to him was the man with the cold, cold eyes. "Saul."

  The third was the man who'd been standing next to Josiah when she arrived. "Blaine. They're part of my inner circle, along with DeAngelo and a few others."

  She offered a smile to all three men, had it returned by Blaine and Ciro but saw only the promise of death in Saul's eyes. If he believed she'd broken her vow, he would kill her without second thought, without remorse.

  The three men preceded them into the stronghold. Inside the floor was tiled. The air was scented by sulfa drugs and other antibiotics.

  There were columns along the right and left sides, as if once, before the Final War, this had been a lobby that contained private sitting areas. A heavy, ornately carved chair with dark blue upholstery sat several feet away from the back wall.

  There weren't any soldiers milling in the lobby, but it was easy to imagine armed men leaning against the columns while the warlord held court or watched the final preparations of the product he sold.

  Empty pans lay on several long tables. A winch-handled pill maker was anchored at the table closest to the chair.

  When Josiah would have guided her past the chair, she slowed and asked, "Do you hold court here?"

  "When it's necessary. The people in my warren know my laws. My men are empowered to enforce them."

  He urged her forward, through an archway to the left. His men didn't accompany them.

  Windows lined one side of the hallway, revealing a courtyard carved out in the rubble. A volleyball net was stretched across a sandpit at the front end. Horseshoe pits were at the far wall. And on what remained of the cracked concrete, a basketball court had been fashioned.

  Picnic tables were positioned beneath oak trees. Men and women who'd probably witnessed their marriage had returned to the recreation area. Most were laughing and joking, several were tossing coins onto one of the tables, wagering.

  "This building houses workshops and some of my men," Josiah said.

  The doors along the right side of the wide corridor were closed. She gestured toward them. "Bedrooms?"

  "Some of them." He didn't offer further explanation.

  They walked to the end of the hallway and turned right. There were more closed doors, but through a doorway ahead came the sound of fists making contact with something.

  They stopped at the doorway when they reached it. Heavy punching bags hung from the ceiling. Sweat glistened off a dark-skinned man's back as he pounded a bag with his fists while two men fought in a cage as several others watched.

  One of those men landed a punch to the other. Blood spurted from his nose.

  She flinched and Josiah urged them away from the doorway.

  The hallway ended with a locked door and a keypad.

  Shielding his hand, Josiah punched in the numbers. A mechanical click signaled that the door was unlocked.

  He opened it and stepped aside. She and Jacob entered. He followed, closing the door firmly behind him.

  The chemical smell of drugs being manufactured burned her nose in this part of the building. Sections of wall had been removed so that someone patrolling the hallway could see into each room.

  Surely no one would be foolish enough to try to steal from him. Josiah was not a man to cheat or betray.

  She shivered, the pulse that had calmed speeding.

  What equipment she could see was as fine as what her father had in his workshop. Only the New San Jose elite would have finer. Impressed, she said, "How did you furnish your labs?"

  "Much of it was already here when I took control."

  "Did you grow up in this warren?"

  "No. I chose it."

  "Because of what it produced?"

  "Yes."

  "Do you have competition?"

  He looked at her, dark eyes hooded and unreadable. "Why do ask?"

  "Shouldn't I get to know my new husband?"

  She blushed at the shakiness in her voice. Heat flared in hi
s eyes and his smile flashed, a lightning strike straight to her heart. "Is that what you want, to know me?"

  Her blush deepened. Fantasy slid in, of having him watch as she undressed, of daring to unbutton the light blue shirt and bare his chest.

  He laughed, a husky sound that stripped away any ability to protect her thoughts from him, leaving her feeling naked and vulnerable.

  Sparing her, he urged her forward, toward the front of the building.

  Across from the open workrooms were closed doors. To escape thoughts of what would happen when they were finally alone, she touched a door and asked, "Ingredients?"

  "They're kept elsewhere." He opened the unlocked door. "My office."

  The room was elegantly furnished with thick carpet and luxurious paneling on the walls. Facing the doorway was a massive desk that had somehow survived the Final War.

  In the middle of the desk was a set of scales, and behind it a chair like the one in the other room, with dark blue cushioning. But the room had an unused feel to it. "You don't spend much time here."

  "No."

  "He's got a club," Jacob said. "That's where Rosa says he is at bedtime."

  Ella couldn't prevent the tightening of her mouth, the censure in the look she directed at Josiah, the disappoint in learning that he was a man who wasn't home in the evening to say goodnight to his son.

  Jacob's chest puffed out. "I've been to the club. I sat in one of the booths and Blaine served me a drink. The men were gambling. Makayla says usually there are women there for the men but I didn't see any. You want to know what Makayla calls them? She says they're perritas. Do you know that word?"

  "No." But she could guess, whores.

  Jacob's small shoulders slumped. "I don't know either. Blaine wouldn't tell me and he said asking Rosa wouldn't be smart."

  "Makayla was the woman in the red dress?"

  "Yes. She's my aunt."

  Josiah closed the office door and they resumed walking. "And Rosa?" Ella asked Jacob.

  "Rosa is just Rosa."

  "She's the woman who was standing behind you?"

  "Yes."

  They reached the next closed door. "Another office?" she asked.

  "No. Storage. Some of what belonged to the previous warlord."

  "Did he surrender?"

  "His life."

  She shivered and Josiah cupped her chin, forcing her to meet his eyes. "Only the strong survive here. And those protected by the strong."

  He released her, leaving her heart protesting the loss of contact.

  He opened the door, revealing a room crammed full of books.

  "Books," she breathed, her quiet devotion met by Jacob's exuberant, "Books!"

  She was drawn into the room despite the dust and the musty smell. Within steps her wedding dress was streaked brown but she didn't care.

  She brushed her hand across spines and covers, sending a cloud of dust up and drifting to the floor. "These need to be catalogued. These need to be taken care of. It's a miracle that they haven't been destroyed by mold and insects."

  A tug at her waist drew her attention to Jacob. "You can read?"

  She smiled at the hope in his voice, the excitement in his eyes. "Yes, I can read. I've even brought books of my own."

  "Will you read to me?"

  She covered the hand locked on her dress. "I'll read to you as often as you want."

  She turned toward the warlord—

  My husband, she corrected, the thought sending her heart careening. "Are there more books?"

  "There are rooms full of them."

  "I can inventory them. I can repair those that need it. I can determine which could be sold to collectors in the city."

  The warmth leeched from his eyes, taking some of her joy with it. "You're here for the boy."

  "Jacob can help me." The books were too important to ignore.

  The man she'd started thinking of as her husband became the warlord again, his eyes the same impenetrable black as when he'd removed the scarf and seen her instead of Victoria. His gaze swept over her and she felt self-conscious about the dirty dress.

  "I'll consider it."

  He didn't offer to open any of the other doors, and she didn't ask. They entered the front room of the stronghold.

  A man waited there with Saul, Ciro and Blaine. His black hair was worn short, but even that didn't hide its curly nature. He wore a blue bandanna tied on his right upper arm, along with a black-and-red one.

  Godsend? Josiah thought at seeing Noah. Or an example that no good deed goes unpunished? Though perhaps his bride was a better example of that tenet.

  Dios! She'd starred in plenty of his fantasies when he'd believed she was a servant. And even now, knowing how treacherous women could be when it came to a man's heart, even knowing that she might still be the servant he'd believed her to be—and worse, one of Merati's spies—he wanted her.

  But could he take her without falling into the trap of soft eyes and softer body? Already the boy had fallen under her spell.

  Josiah couldn't be certain her response to the boy was as genuine as it appeared. Or that her offer to deal with the books was a desire to be useful, true concern, and not an excuse to spy for Merati.

  Easy enough to gather information on men and weapons if she spent time at the stronghold. Easy enough to provide that information to an invading force. Merati had installed warlord puppets in other warrens.

  But would Elliot risk death by substituting a servant for his daughter? Would he risk death by offering that servant to Merati as a spy in exchange for city papers?

  Mierda. Shit. He hadn't intended to allow the woman he married to enter the stronghold. But when he'd tugged away the veil—

  He hadn't trusted himself to take his new wife to the house and show her into the bedroom they would share. The blonde he'd expected—yes. But the woman he'd married…

  No.

  Noah's eyes swept over Ella, slow enough to be appreciative of another man's woman, but fast enough not to be disrespectful.

  "Guess I didn't warrant an invitation to the big event," the tracker said. "I'm crushed."

  Blaine offered Noah a smoke stick. "More like bummed that you can't be the first to spread the news and trade on the information."

  Noah took the smoke stick. "That too."

  Jacob pointed at the red-and-black bandanna on the tracker's arm. "That rag came from Rapp. Those are his colors."

  "Rapp?"

  "He's the warlord between this territory and Krish's. Have you heard of him?"

  "No."

  This territory, Josiah thought, bothered that the boy hadn't said our territory. He said, "Did you come here to satisfy your curiosity, Noah? Or to prove your value?"

  "It can't be both?" The tracker's gaze flicked to the boy, eyebrows lifting in question.

  "I'll take Jacob outside," Ella said.

  "No." It was better that his bride understand that he was a man who delivered justice to those who offered betrayal or disrespect. "Blaine."

  Blaine cupped the back of the boy's head. "Let's go."

  The boy clung to Ella's hand until distance pulled them apart. He went, his feet dragging on the tile.

  How long before the boy called her mama? By the time they reached the house? By bedtime? Or within the hour, as Ciro predicted?

  The door opened, revealing the fading daylight. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw his new wife's quick glance at him, the slight tremble and blush that had him also thinking about their approaching wedding night.

  Fuck, he was hard for her. Not a good thing for a man who'd wanted a wife he could safely keep out of his thoughts.

  The door closed behind Blaine and the boy.

  Josiah turned his attention to Noah. The tracker said, "I encountered Abram when I was in Krish's territory. He had a message for you. Said he'd found one of the men who belongs to the gang that killed the boy's mother. That man gave up a name before he died. It'll take a day, maybe three, before Abram tracks the gang
to their lair."

  Josiah looked at Saul. "Make arrangements to meet Rapp."

  "And vengeance shall be delivered," Noah intoned, pulling a matchbox from a back pocket.

  "When they killed the boy's mother, they had to know nothing would spare them, that there was nowhere they could hide that I wouldn't find them."

  Noah lit the smoke stick, inhaled and sent the smoke through his nostrils. "Speaking of scores to settle, I have a line on the woman."

  "Where is she?"

  Noah laughed. "And risk your men finding her first?"

  "Do you need coin or weapons?"

  "Thirty pounds of gunpowder should do the trick."

  "Ciro will get it for you. We're done?"

  Noah's smile flashed. "Hurrying me along so you can get your bride home?"

  Josiah's cock responded to the images that question created though he left it unanswered. To Ciro, he said, "For Hector's sake, don't let Noah blow himself up in the stronghold when you give him the gunpowder."

  "Will do. Hector hates clean-up duty."

  Josiah locked his hand around Ella's upper arm and felt the contact in his dick. Maybe the best course of action was to take her repeatedly, pound into her until he'd exorcised her from his thoughts and fantasies.

  Uneasiness eradicated images of peeling her out of her clothing and tumbling her onto their bed. Hadn't his obsession with Geneva begun something like this?

  Memories stung his pride. He'd been a fool where she was concerned. He'd seen what he wanted to see.

  Her slipping away to rejoin an old lover the night before they were supposed to say their vows had diminished him in the eyes of his men. His soldiers had looked at him and seen a man controlled and weakened by his dick.

  He'd demonstrated otherwise since Geneva. Since the day that would have been his wedding day, the women he'd taken had entered and exited his thoughts for the length of time it took to fuck. But here he was on another wedding day, being beguiled by a woman who was no longer a safe fantasy.

  "Who was Jacob's mother?" she asked, the question a renewed lash to his pride.

  His hand tightened on her arm. "I won't talk to you about her. She's dead but the boy still needs a mother."

  He felt the strike of his words in the small tremble that went through Ella, and it stirred unfamiliar guilt. He tamped down that guilt.