The Letter
Page 25
“Come to me.” His accented voice dropped to a husky whisper and he slowly stretched his hand out to beckon her.
Without ever breaking her gaze with him, Sarah slowly shook her head and said, “no.”
Disappointment beyond the obvious flickered in his eyes. Letting his arm drop, he continued to look deeply into her eyes.
“You would not even speak to me?” he asked quietly.
“No, I want nothing to do with you. I have no idea what you want, or why you are here, but I want you to stay away from me.”
“I cannot do that, and you know I cannot.”
“What are you talking about?” Sarah shuddered from the power of his words, trying to grab on to one of her racing thoughts. “Start with who are you and what you want?”
“I will one day be King Vassar Abdual Aziz ibn Saud. Today, I am only the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia,” He stepped forward smiling. “As to what I want, I have come for you.”
IRON HORSE KING
By: Rebecca Bernadette Mance
She had been recuperating in his car for a better part of two weeks and in her usual resilient form, she had healed quicker than anyone thought she would. “I am better now and it is unseemly that I sleep in here with you.”
Meanwhile they had penetrated the Summit without her. Perhaps that was the most vexing thing of all to Mary Rose. And Jacob didn’t even allow her outside to see it or be part of the small celebration. When she had asked him how he had gotten through the rock, he said it was because of Nobel’s visit and suggestion to use the new dynamite he had invented. Mary Rose would have liked to see the instrument of her pain and witness its awesome power from a distance.
Jacob grinned but maintained his stubborn expression. “Well, you slept in here with me on the trip here, sneaking little peaks and making me feel mighty queer thinking you were a young boy with odd designs.”
Prickly heat crossed her cheeks. She had not been able to resist the temptation to watch Jacob undress to his underpants and admire his broad shoulders and brawny chest.
How humiliating he noticed! Was that why he had sent her to the tents with the Chinamen?
“I most certainly did not look at you! It is your utterly arrogant and active imagination.”
He smiled slow sporting his perfect teeth in a leering grin. “I said you peeked. You peeked a whole lot. Don’t be lying to me girl. Now you can do all the peeking you want to and I might have a mind to do some peeking myself I think.”
“How dare you!”
Jacob smiled a lethal smile. “How dare you stow away on my train sweetheart, cause me a whole pack of trouble and then believe you are going to tell me what you will and will not do.” He moved forward, his hulking body filling the space between them and emanating heat that gently licked her skin. “Furthermore, you are in a lot more danger out there now that everyone knows you are a woman than you will ever be in here. What you don’t understand you little ninny-girl is that in the eyes of most of those men you have already been compromised by sleeping in here with me first on the ride over and now while recuperating…so you are now fair game. Not that the notion of you being a virgin would have protected you much out there anyway.”
Mary Rose stood on her tiptoes to attempt to glare him down. “You are disgusting.” She dropped back on the balls of her feet. “Besides, I was hurt, surly even those louts wouldn’t think we were doing anything with my injuries.
He laughed deep and husky. “Darl’in, you have no idea just how disgusting I can get or what men think at all. If you had, you would never have come on this foolish adventure.”
Mary Rose squared her shoulders so that she could add at least another couple of inches to match his towering body. “You have no idea just how stubborn I can get. I am not some weak woman to be ruled by a man, not even one as big in his pants as you.”
Jacob laughed softly. “I think you are as stubborn as an unbroken filly. But I have always had my way with wild things.” His voice dropped to a silky spider web instantly tangling her with invisible threads. He reached out his bulky hand to caress her cheek. The calluses sent chills between her shoulder blades and left an airy gasp on her lips. “You like that don’t you? How about a bit more little filly?”
His thick lazy fingers moved from her cheek to silhouette her neck and reach under her shirt and continue to her shoulder.
“Don’t.” She said with a crushed whisper.
He laughed softly holding her witless with his fire and ice eyes. “You are saying don’t while you quiver like a leaf under my hand.”
Mary Rose wanted to move away from him, she really did, but she was lost in his icy blue eyes and near purring under his gentle hulking hand.
He took both of her shoulders and pulled her into him. Mary Rose leaned forward into his massive chest toward the heavy heartbeat within. Cupping her face with both hands he pulled her face up and leaned down to press his warm lips to hers with the gentleness of a butterfly wing. Then his lips danced over hers softly nipping her mouth.
Mary Rose inhaled his scent of starched shirt, cigar smoke and musky man and opened her mouth to his pressing tongue. Lost in the largeness that was him, she floated along in sharp longing.
She heard his groan, long and deep in his wide chest before he stole his lips from hers and stepped back pinning her with his darkened gaze.
Mary Rose felt the heat suffuse her face like a prairie wildfire. She closed her eyes against what she had just allowed him to do. “I think this is a perfect example of exactly why I should not stay in here with you!”
“That is a perfect example of why you have to stay in here with me.”
“Really? How is that?”
“Because I have the power to stop. Those rough and ready men out there are not going to rain a few kisses on you and pull back. Somewhere in a dark corner of this camp somebody is going to force himself on you and then I am going to have to deal with a raping scoundrel and a violated woman.”
Mary Rose stomped her foot. “Ooooh.”
Jacob laughed and picked up his hat for his last round in the camp before nightfall. “Little filly, I am going to leave. You are going to change your clothing and get under the blanket in your bed and cover yourself so I can only see your closed eyelids. I’ll not hear another argument from you or I might just finish what almost happened here and it would be really a very wrong thing to take a filly before she is a mare.”
Her eyes flew open to clash with his sparkling silver-blue glow. “And I ain’t a man who wants to get leg shackled with a spoiled young filly, so you need to do what I say and sashay quickly along in the process.”
Outside of his bulky embrace she felt suddenly alone and humiliated. “Damn you for putting your hands on me.”
He turned on his laughter and left the train car with a resounding thud and heavy footfall down the wooden steps outside.