by Joan Hohl
The nervous sensation changing to an altogether different feeling, Val took a deep breath and a hopeful guess. “Too long?”
Jonas sighed. “Much too long.”
Val assumed guilt without question—like most wives? she wondered. “I’m sorry, Jonas.”
“Yeah, so am I.” He smiled derisively. “You’re angry that I didn’t tell you about the monthly payments to Lynn.” It wasn’t a question; he knew the answer.
“Yes,” Val answered anyway. “Angry and hurt.”
Jonas exhaled deeply. “I’ve thought it over, and finally realized that you have every right to be angry,” he admitted, surprising Val. But before she could respond, he surprised her even more. “I’m sorry, too, Val,” he continued. “I have no excuse. I honestly never even considered how it might concern you. It’s meaningless.” He offered her a wry smile. “I want you to believe that. I support Lynn for one reason and one reason only, and that is to keep her out of my hair.”
Val was silent for a moment, during which she could see that Jonas looked strained and decidedly uncomfortable. Then, delighted to discover that she had the singular power to make the otherwise impervious Jonas Thorne squirm, she drew out the silence a little longer.
It was a battle of nerves; Jonas surrendered first, turning Val’s surprise to utter amazement. “I wish you’d say something, anything,” he muttered. “Even if it’s only to give me hell.”
“I believe I’ve tried that in the past,” Val replied in a dry drawl. “It never did me much good.”
Jonas actually winced. “I know I haven’t been the easiest man to live with, but—”
Val’s spontaneous burst of laughter cut him off. “The easiest?” she taunted. “Try the most difficult.”
“Yeah.” Jonas suddenly looked tired, and a little afraid. “You’re bored, aren’t you, Val?”
“Not with you!” Val cried at once, frightened by the defeated look on his strong face. “Never with you, Jonas.”
“But with our life together?” he persisted. “With our life-style?”
Val broke the end off a golden-brown fry, then looked at it as though she’d never before seen its like. “Jonas, our life-style is…” Her voice trailed away, and she idly played with the bit of potato as she raked her mind for a way to express her feelings of inadequacy and frustration.
“Confining,” Jonas finished for her.
Val lifted her head. She had entered the suite expecting an argument. When Jonas appeared intent on avoiding one, she had begun to hope they could discuss their problems without rancor or raised voices. But Val could not, would not back down from her position simply to fulfill that hope. “Yes, Jonas,” she answered clearly. “I find our life-style confining.”
Jonas had said he was starving, yet he had barely touched his food. As if suddenly becoming aware of the large burger he was holding, he raised it to his mouth. “Okay.” After murmuring the single word, he nodded once and bit into the sandwich.
Okay? Val frowned. What did that mean? she asked herself. Okay…what? Okay, they’d change their life-style or…? Val felt a flash of sheer panic. Surely he hadn’t meant to imply that he’d be willing to end the marriage. Her thoughts darting here and there, Val absently picked up her burger and followed his example. He couldn’t have meant that, she assured herself, chewing, swallowing, but not tasting anything except fear. Jonas was too possessive, too—
His terse voice sliced across her fractured thoughts. “Did you hear me, Val?”
“Y-yes.” Val couldn’t have controlled the tremor in her voice if her life had depended on it. “I heard. I—I’m just not sure I understand what you meant.”
“I meant… Okay, I’ll free you from the exclusive, confining role of being my housewife.”
Panic ballooned inside Val, and she rushed to explain. “I don’t mind the housework, Jonas, really I don’t. It’s just that it’s not enough. I mean, I want to do more. I need to—”
Once again Jonas cut her off. “But if you’re coming back to work, even if only on a part-time basis, I insist you hire someone to help with the housework.”
“Coming back to work?” Val repeated, unable to believe she’d heard him correctly. “Jonas, I—”
Jonas interrupted her for the third time. “You don’t think I’d allow you to work for a competitor, do you?” Picking up his glass, he tilted it at her. “I could use another assistant.” Bringing the glass to his lips, he drank to her. “Do you want the job or not?”
“Want it?” Val stared at him in stunned amazement. “Jonas, you know I’d adore working with you again.”
Jonas raised his eyebrows mockingly. “Really? I have it on good authority that I’m a bas—”
“Jonas,” Val’s warning voice overrode his.
He grinned. “A devil to work for,” he finished, biting with relish into his sandwich.
This time Val deliberately followed his lead, and this time she tasted the burger. It was rather good. “What authority?” she asked after swallowing the morsel.
“The best,” Jonas replied blandly, popping a fry into his mouth. “You.”
“Did I say that?” Val asked in feigned innocence, beginning to enjoy herself. In fact, she realized, she was beginning to feel wonderful.
“Mmm.” Jonas nodded, his eyes teasing her over the burger he’d just bitten into.
“Fancy that.”
“I fancy you.”
Val melted. “Oh, Jonas, I fancy you, too. You’ll never know how unhappy and depressed I’ve been from all the discord and bitterness between us.”
His smile was wry. “I have a pretty good idea.” He reached a hand across the table, palm up. An audible sigh of relief whispered through his lips when she slid her hand into his. “Oh, God, I’ve missed you, Val.”
“I missed you, too.” Val could barely speak around the emotion gripping her throat.
“The house was empty.” Jonas shuddered. “I was empty.”
“I know.” Val blinked.
“Can you forgive me for being such an arrogant, unsympathetic ass the past three years?”
“Yes.” Val smiled mistily. “If you can forgive me for driving you crazy with all my courses and projects.”
Jonas grimaced. “You did have me going around in circles.”
“I’m sorry.”
Jonas gave a quick bark of laughter. “No, you’re not.”
Val’s grin was shaky, but there. “I did manage to get your attention.”
“You did at that.” His hand tightened convulsively around hers. “I love you, Val.”
“I love you, Jonas.”
“Finish your dinner, Val.” Jonas’s voice grew low, sensuous, enticing. “You’re going to need your strength for the dessert I have in mind.”
“Yes, sir, Mr. Thorne,” Val whispered. “Anything you say, anything you want, sir.”
His smile was beautiful.
Chapter 7
Inspired by Jonas’s smile, Val managed to finish most of her food, and all of the wine in the glass he kept refilling until the bottle was empty.
But it wasn’t the wine that went to Val’s senses, it was the man seated opposite her, devouring her with his eyes every bit as thoroughly as he devoured every bite of his burger, French fries and slaw.
Jonas had opened his bow tie and the two top buttons of his shirt midway through the meal. Although Val had lived with him for three years, had seen him naked nearly every night of those years, for some inexplicable reason she found the sight of those two strips of black silk lying against the pristine white of his dress shirt as sexy as the devil he had earlier said he was reputed to be.
If Jonas was a devil in the office, Val mused, watching him polish off her fries as well as his own, he was an even more effective devil in bed. A thrill glided from her nape to the base of her spine. And it had all begun for them here in San Francisco, three years ago. Then she had shivered for a different reason, Val reflected.
Though she had worked in
the office with him as his secretary, Val hadn’t known Jonas very well. And what she did know of him—his arrogance, his impatience—hadn’t endeared him to her. Jonas had bargained with her over their marriage, but when it came to the crunch on their wedding night, Val had been more than nervous. She’d been scared witless.
A smile lurked at the corners of Val’s mouth as she remembered the delaying tactics she had tried to employ to escape the inevitable…all to no avail. Jonas had humored her for a time, then he had reached his limit. He had taken a wife, and had every intention of taking her as his wife.
What had she expected? Val’s smile was shaded with self-mockery. She knew full well, had known that night, what she’d expected. She had both feared and expected that he would take her arrogantly, impatiently.
Foolish woman, Val silently chided her younger self. In an elegant hotel suite, less than a mile away from where she now sat sipping her wine and drinking in the exciting sight of her husband, that younger Val had stood shivering in fear of the man she now loved more than her own life.
Oh, Jonas had taken her as his wife, Val reminisced. But he had taken her gently, sensuously, caressing her with exquisite torture until she had grown wild with the hungry need to be one with him.
Even after three years and all the problems they’d encountered in simply living together, the memory of that night retained the power to turn Valerie’s insides to the consistency of melting cream.
Observing him over the rim of her glass with betraying, smoldering eyes, Val acknowledged that she still was wild with a hungry need to be one with him.
“What’s going on inside that beautiful head of yours, I wonder?” Jonas murmured, scattering her thoughts, intensifying the thrill in her body. “You’re wearing the most intriguing, sexy little smile on your inviting mouth.”
“Is my mouth inviting, Jonas?”
His lips curved in appreciative amusement. “Don’t change the subject. What were you thinking about?”
Val swept her eyelashes downward, demurely, enticingly. “I was remembering our wedding night.” The thrill spread up to the back of her head, making her scalp tingle, and she heard him catch his breath.
“It was a fantastic night.”
“You said we’d come back to San Francisco someday for a repeat performance,” she reminded him.
Jonas’s voice was low, sensuous. “We’re here now.”
“Yes.”
A teasing note enhanced his tone. “Is it time for dessert, Val?”
Val raised her eyes to his. “Yes.”
“Since we’re in the state of make-believe, should I sweep you up into my arms in true Hollywood fashion and carry you into our bedroom?”
“Good Lord, no!” Val exclaimed with a laugh. “I think you should help me clear the table and roll the room service cart into the corridor. Then we’ll walk into the bedroom together, in true husband and wife fashion.”
Jonas shoved back his chair. “Then let’s get to it.” He grinned suggestively. “So we can get to it.”
With the reward of pleasure as incentive, Val and Jonas made quick work of clearing away the dishes. Then, while he rolled the cart into the hallway, Val drifted into the bedroom, drawn once more by the expanse of windows overlooking the sleeping city. It was late, very late, and considering how tired she’d been earlier, Val should have felt exhausted. She didn’t. Quite the contrary, she felt wide-awake and elated.
Spread out before her, the gold-toned city lights appeared muted and dimmed by the billowing shroud of fog rolling in from the bay. Rather than feeling chilled by the sight of the creeping mist, Val felt removed from the damp and the cold, warm and protected, not by the heated suite, but by Jonas’s indomitable presence.
“I thought the plan was for us to walk into the bedroom together.” The direct cause of Val’s feeling of comfort spoke from the bedroom doorway.
Her expression dreamy, her smile alluring, Val slowly turned to look at him. “I stood before a window overlooking San Francisco on a night three years ago,” she murmured. “Remember, Jonas?”
“Yes.” Though Jonas didn’t move, his soft voice crept across the room to envelop Val in warm sensuality, clouding her mind as completely as the fog clouded the city. “You were wearing a chiffon gown then, too. You stole my breath and my heart, and infuriated me by trying to superimpose another man’s form over mine.” His voice grew softer with compassion. “Do you remember, Valerie?”
“Yes.” Val’s smile was tinged with remembered sadness and gratitude. “I told you I had loved him… and I begged you to understand. You did.”
“I tried. It wasn’t easy.” Jonas shrugged and moved into the room. “I wanted you so much,” he whispered as he came to her. “And I wanted you to want me, too.”
“It didn’t take you long to achieve that goal,” Val confessed with a shiver of remembrance.
Jonas trailed his fingers over her cheek. “And then having you want me wasn’t enough. I wanted you to love me.”
“I do.” With a sense of awe, Val felt the tremor that rippled through his body to his fingertips.
“And then,” Jonas went on in a voice rough with self-condemnation, “like a fool, I ran the risk of losing what I value most—you and your love for me.”
“No, Jonas,” Val denied with soft vehemence. “Never, never that.”
“Oh, God, Val,” Jonas groaned, pulling her into his arms. “Hold me. Don’t ever let me go.”
Sliding her arms around his neck, Val clung to him fiercely as he bent over her. “I won’t, darling,” she promised, lifting her face to his.
Jonas shuddered at the sound of the endearment, then crushed her mouth with his. His lips were hard. His kiss tasted of desperation. Clinging to him, Val answered to his need.
Without haste, between lingering kisses and inflaming caresses, they undressed each other, pausing to kiss, stroke, adore each newly exposed area of heated flesh.
And then, when his elegant tuxedo lay where Jonas had tossed it, on the floor atop the delicate violet chiffon of Val’s gown, and they were both trembling with desire, Jonas did sweep Val into his arms, Thorne fashion, and carried her to the bed. He stared down at her for several seconds after settling her on the mattress, then whispering of his love for her, his need of her, Jonas covered his wife’s shivering form with the blanketing warmth of his body.
Murmuring his name, Val welcomed Jonas into the haven of her silken embrace and cradling thighs. His possession was swift and hard and complete. Val wouldn’t have had it any other way. Enticing him with biting kisses, raking fingernails and mewing moans deep in her throat, she arched into his thrusting body, not merely accepting but demanding the shattering joy of release and completion.
* * *
“Was I too rough, my love?” Jonas asked, stroking one broad palm over the satiny skin of her hip.
Val smiled and moved her body luxuriously against the length of his. “You were more than rough. You were magnificent,” she responded, almost purring, undulating her hips in time with the motions of his caressing hand.
His low laughter had the exciting dark sound of satisfaction and pleasure. “And you were the perfect match for me,” he murmured, sparking a delicious new shiver inside her. “I’m positive I’ll carry your branding claw marks to my grave.”
The shiver turned to ice and Val jolted back to stare at him with concern-widened eyes. “Did I hurt you?”
“Hurt?” His laughter whispered into a sigh. “Oh, sweetheart, the only way you could ever hurt me is by holding back, denying me the passion commanding your response.”
Her fear eased, Val shimmied her body along the angular length of his, her parted lips reaching for his mouth. “Was I good for you, Jonas?” she whispered, dropping tiny kisses over his collarbone.
“No,” he growled, skimming his hands from her hips to her hair. “You were deliciously bad.”
Her soft laughter ended on a gasp as he tangled his fingers in her hair and tugged back her he
ad, exposing her throat to his searching mouth.
“You like that?” Jonas asked, probing the hollow at the base of her throat with the tip of his tongue.
“Yesss.” The response hissed through her lips on a sigh.
Arching her back, he trailed his tongue to the valley between her breasts. “And that?”
“Yes.” This time her response was short, a mere puff of breath.
Continuing his exploration, Jonas slid his tongue to the crest of one arching breast. “I guess I don’t have to ask if you like that,” he said with a chuckle, feeling the shudder that quaked through her.
“Jonas…Jonas…” Val chanted, gripping his shoulders convulsively. “Please…”
“No, not yet,” he murmured. Releasing her hair, he eased her onto her back. “Lie still, darling. Don’t move. Let me show you how much I love you.” Holding her delicate wrists in one large hand, he drew out her arms straight over her head.
“Jonas?” Val flexed her fingers, revealing her need, her desire to touch him.
“Relax, love.” His crooning voice slowed the urgency racing through her body. “This is for you.”
Jonas began by touching his lips to the pulse that was hammering in her wrist. Then, murmuring new endearments, he strung soft kisses down her arm. Within seconds, Val drifted into a state of liquid warmth. Her thundering heartbeat slowly decreased its rate, her breathing grew regular, her eyes closed, the fire inside her body burned low. Her mind floated, dancing to the rhythms of his downy kisses and the feather-light caresses of his hands.
It was incredible. Val ached, but the ache was sweet. She hungered, but the hunger was teasing. She yearned, but the yearning held promise. Val had never before experienced anything quite like this sedating seduction. Jonas didn’t make love to her, he worshiped her. He didn’t caress her, he adored her. With his mouth, his hands and his low, intense murmurs, Jonas cherished Val’s body, mind and soul.
When he came to her, into her, Val enfolded Jonas within the living beauty of her love for him.