Masked Intentions [Unmasking Prometheus] (BookStrand Publishing Romance)

by Diana Bold

  “Probably not.” Clinton gave a gruff laugh. “It’s just that your lovely little wife has been looking for you all day, and I’m running out of excuses. She’ll find this place eventually, you know.”

  “Yes, I know,” Adrian admitted, shoving his work aside. He hadn’t been able to concentrate worth a damn all day anyway. “She’s nothing if not persistent.”

  Clinton took a seat and propped his boots up on the table. “So is this how you plan to go on? Hiding up here from the lass?”

  Adrian glared at his old friend, wondering if there was anyone Vanessa couldn’t charm. Clinton wasn’t known for caving to a beautiful face. “I’m not hiding.”

  “No?” Clinton withdrew a cigar from inside his vest pocket and took his time lighting it. “All I know is, if I had a woman looked like that waiting for me in bed, I sure as hell wouldn’t be sitting up here brooding.”

  “It’s complicated,” Adrian snapped, but he was beginning to wonder if it really was.

  Vanessa, soft and sleep-warmed, all that sweet passion and beauty, mine for the taking.

  All he had to do was go down there and have her. She wouldn’t deny him, and he no longer knew exactly why he was denying himself. She’d struck this bargain knowing full well what her role in it would be, and what’s more, she didn’t even seem to mind.

  Clinton inhaled deeply, then blew the smoke out in rings, a trick Adrian had never been able to master. “Lad, I been with you a long time. You took me in when no one else would, so I know a little about what it means to be alone. I’ve watched you shut yourself off from the world for so long, and I always hoped you’d find someone who cared enough to break down those walls you been building. So now that you’ve found that someone, I just don’t want to see you ruin it.”

  Adrian stared at Clinton, surprised by both the familiar way he’d addressed him and his words. Though they had indeed been together a long time, Clinton had never before offered advice. Of course, Clinton had no idea how Vanessa had blackmailed him, but maybe he should listen to the old man and quit overthinking it so much.

  “Perhaps you’re right,” Adrian murmured, getting to his feet. “She is my wife, after all.”

  “Indeed.” Clinton puffed contentedly as Adrian left the room and made his way through the silent house to the set of rooms he shared with his bride. He went to his first, to freshen up, hurriedly shaving and brushing his teeth, trying not to look too closely at his scarred face in the mirror. Then he knocked softly on the connecting door before he could change his mind.

  “Come in,” Vanessa called, a note of nervousness in her voice. He took a deep breath and opened the door.

  His wife sat in bed, reading, her lovely dark hair spread luxuriantly across the white comforter tucked beneath her chin. She smiled at him hesitantly, placing the book carefully upon the nightstand as he entered. It was the same book she’d read to him that night in her flat. Not that he’d really heard a word of the story then. He’d been lost in a haze of sexual bliss he longed to repeat.

  “I’m so glad to see you,” she told him warmly. “I’ve been worried about you.”

  “Have you?” he asked pensively, making his way to the wine decanter and pouring them both a drink. “I told you not to worry,” he reminded her as she took the long-stemmed glass from his hand.

  “Did you do…what you said you were going to do?” She drank deeply, unable to meet his gaze, obviously trying to fortify herself for his answer.

  “I didn’t kill him, if that’s what you mean.” He sat down in one of the chairs in front of the fireplace, staring at her moodily, wondering why she cared. Did she still have feelings for the bastard? “I did find Bridget though. He was keeping her where he’d kept you. She’s with Fiona now.”

  With a relieved sigh, she shoved the covers aside and slid out of bed. She wore nothing but a filmy red peignoir, but she didn’t bother with the robe draped across the foot of the bed. Instead she knelt in front of him, grasping his hands and staring into his face, her heart in her eyes.

  She’s an actress. I can’t trust her.

  “I couldn’t have borne it if something had happened to you because of me,” she whispered softly. “I didn’t sleep at all last night, worrying about you, regretting the way all of this came about. Please, Adrian. Can you please give me a chance to make things right between us?”

  He wanted to believe she was telling the truth, but the thought of putting his trust in her again terrified him. He forced himself to harden his heart. “We had a deal, Vanessa. I’m here to collect what you owe me. Nothing more.”

  She flinched as though he’d slapped her, letting go of his hands. Her lovely eyes welled with tears, but she nodded. “All right, if that’s what you want, you know I won’t deny you. I just want you to remember that there could be so much more.”

  Leaning forward, he cupped her breasts through the silky fabric, rubbing his thumbs across her nipples, which immediately swelled and hardened. “This is enough,” he lied, as a part of his own anatomy did the same. “This is all I want from you, wife.”

  Holding her tearful gaze, he continued to play with her nipples, thrilling to the way she responded to him. Her body couldn’t lie, even when her lovely little mouth did. For some reason, she really did desire him, and perhaps that could be enough. It had to be enough.

  “Stand up and take off your gown,” he instructed her roughly, desperate to see what this devil’s bargain had bought him.

  She pushed gracefully to her feet, staring at a point behind his head, tears still streaming down her cheeks as she unfastened her silky gown and let it pool at her feet. Then she stood trembling before him, all soft pale skin, gentle curves, and wild dark hair.

  “You’re so beautiful,” he breathed, stunned. He’d known she’d be gorgeous, but all his fantasies had fallen short of the reality.

  Her trembling intensified as he continued to stare, and finally she released a choking sob and folded her arms across her chest, crying in earnest. He watched in horror as she completely broke down before him, sobbing as if her heart was broken.

  “I’m sorry,” she told him brokenly. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t do this to hurt you. I just thought you were never coming back to me, and I couldn’t bear that. I wanted you in my life so badly, but not like this…never like this.”

  He couldn’t handle this. He wasn’t made of stone. With a frustrated sigh, he shoved to his feet and swung her up into his arms, carrying her over to the bed and tucking her under the covers. He lay down beside her and held her tightly, running his hands up and down her smooth back, whispering words of comfort and internally cursing himself for being the biggest ass who’d ever lived.

  She had offered herself to him so sweetly, and instead he’d chosen to make it ugly. What the hell was wrong with him? This beautiful woman wanted him. She’d gone to desperate lengths to get him, and still he kept pushing her away.

  After a long, long time, the storm inside her seemed to abate, and she calmed in his arms, tucking her head beneath his chin, her face pressed against his chest. “I’m so sorry,” she said at last. “I don’t know what came over me.”

  “These last few weeks have been difficult for both of us,” he murmured, running his hand through her hair. “It’s all right.”

  “I want to make love to you,” she assured him. “I really do. Just not like that. Not like I’m some…whore you bought off the street.”

  “That’s not how I think of you,” he assured her guiltily.

  “I care about you so much, Adrian.” She moved her head so she could see him, blinking up at him through her tears. “Don’t you remember how it was between us, when you’d come to my flat? I know what I did was horrible, but you stopped coming to see me. You wouldn’t tell me who you were, and I just couldn’t think of any other way to get you back. I knew you wouldn’t believe me if I told you the truth.”

  He gazed down at her, wanting so badly to believe what she said, but so afraid this was some new pl
oy. “You should have tried,” he told her, not wanting to hurt her any more tonight, but unable to take her at her word. “How can I trust you now, Vanessa? I want to. I just don’t know how.”

  She lifted her hand, brushing a few strands of hair from his eyes, then letting her fingertips trail lightly across his scars. He flinched, but she didn’t pull her hand away. She was the only one who’d ever even attempted to touch the ugliness that was so much a part of him.

  “I don’t know what you see when you look in the mirror,” she told him softly. “But I’m certain it can’t be the same thing I see when I look at you. This is such a small part of who you are, yet you were willing to walk away from me forever, just to keep me from seeing it.”

  He drew in a long, shuddering breath, unmanned by the sweetness of her words. “It’s not just my face,” he told her, determined to get it all out in the open now. “There’s more. My chest…my back…I’m scarred…ruined…everywhere.”

  “Oh, Adrian.” She leaned forward and brushed her lips against his temple, letting her lips trace the path of her fingertips, kissing every inch of his tender, puckered skin. “You’re beautiful to me. Why can’t you see that?”

  He caught her face in his hands, bringing his mouth to hers, kissing her with raw intensity. God help him. He wanted so desperately to believe her. As he kissed her, she began to unbutton his shirt, but he didn’t stop her. It had been years since anyone had seen what lay beneath his clothes, but he found himself wanting her to see this ugliest part of him. Her reaction would tell him everything he needed to know.

  Without breaking the kiss, she urged him to his knees. Once they were kneeling on the bed, facing each other, she broke away and brushed the halves of his shirt over his shoulders and down his arms, her gaze locked upon what she uncovered.

  He closed his eyes, unable in the end to look at her face and see her reaction. Nausea bloomed within him as he felt her circle him, obviously determined to see every inch of what he’d kept hidden for so long. Now he was the one trembling beneath her gaze.

  The first brush of her fingertips across the scarred skin of his back made him jump, but the tenderness in her touch soothed something deep inside him. He had never expected such a moment, to have a woman touch him voluntarily, without any apparent disgust or revulsion.

  “Let me tell you what I see.” As she spoke, she wrapped her arms around him from behind, pressing her soft, bare breasts against his own naked back. “Your body takes my breath away.” She ran her hands up his sides, over his pectoral muscles, and then grazed his belly with her fingertips, making his cock strain toward her touch through his trousers. “So hard, so powerful, so beautiful. I could spend hours exploring every inch of your skin, Adrian, and never grow tired of looking at you.”

  He took a deep breath, then let it out in shuddering sigh. Christ, he wanted so badly to believe her.

  Then she ran her hands over his scars, just as tenderly as she’d touched the rest of him. “These scars… I won’t lie, they’re terrible to look at. But just because they remind me of the pain you must have suffered. You were just a little boy, you’d lost your father, and you were in so much pain. Having met your mother, I don’t think she was there for you the way she should have been, and so you grew up thinking that these marks made you somehow less.”

  She circled him again, and he finally opened his eyes. “Your scars are beautiful to me, Adrian. You survived something horrible, something that could have easily killed you, but you’re still here. I’m so glad you’re still here.”

  “For the first time in a long time, I’m glad I’m here, too,” he admitted, cupping her precious face and kissing her with all the tenderness her words had created within him. Was it that simple? Could she truly look at him and see more than the scars? For this moment, for tonight, he chose to believe her.

  Vanessa kissed Adrian back with all the passion in her soul. She sensed that she’d somehow gotten through to him, and her heart swelled with love. She wanted to tell him how she felt, but was afraid that would be too much, too soon.

  As the kiss grew hotter and hotter, she let her fingertips trail up and down his broad chest, then slip lower, to dance across the muscular ridges of his belly. His body truly was amazingly beautiful, despite the scars upon his upper left chest and back. All lean muscle and golden skin. She wanted to touch every inch of him.

  When she unfastened his trousers, he groaned into her mouth, and the satiny head of his erection leapt against her hand. She pushed the fabric down his hips, freeing him, and then broke away from the kiss, eager to see what she had revealed. He pushed the trousers and undergarments free of his legs and lay supine before her, so breathtakingly handsome. His hips were trim, his legs muscular, his cock thick and proud, lying upon his flat belly.

  She brushed her hand across the length of him, then brought it slowly back to curl around his rigid length, gasping at the heat, the unexpected soft texture of the delicate skin encasing such hardness.

  “Vanessa,” he moaned, covering her hand with his and thrusting between their entwined fingers. “Oh, God, sweetheart, I have dreamed of this for so long…to feel your hands on me.” He broke off on another moan, obviously enjoying what she was doing.

  Heartened, aroused, hopeful for the first time in weeks, she kept on, learning his big, beautiful, scarred body, thrilling at the knowledge that she could make him gasp and groan. After only a few moments of this however, he suddenly rolled her beneath him, turning the tables abruptly, his hands and lips coasting across her skin as he murmured sweet words.

  He learned her body as though there would be a test on it later, entirely focused on her pleasure. The tension and heartache of the last few weeks fell completely away as she lay back and let him do with her as he wanted. She’d never experienced such a thing before, to be the complete focus of a man who cared about her, who obviously wanted to make this good for her.

  When his hands and then—oh, God!—his mouth, delved between her thighs, she grasped his dark head, unsure whether to push him away or hold him in place. Pleasure overwhelmed her, and she cried out as she convulsed around him, utterly swept away.

  When she finally came back to herself, Adrian knelt above her, cupping her face in his trembling hands as he spread tender kisses across her brow. “So beautiful,” he murmured. “I’ve never seen anything so incredible in my life as you coming undone for me, my love.”

  She wrapped her arms around him, hugging him tight. “I never knew it could be like that.”

  He laughed softly and rocked against her, reminding her that he had yet to find release. “Let me come inside you,” he whispered. “Please, Vanessa. I feel like I’ve waited my whole life for this moment.”

  “Yes, Adrian,” she breathed. “I want you so much.”

  He shifted and reached between them, rubbing his hard length against her until he gained entrance, so thick and hot she gasped at the delicious tightness. It had been so long, but her body gradually relaxed to let him in, and he was so incredibly patient. What an amazing lover her beautiful husband was.

  Before she could let her thoughts drift any further, he rocked against her, burying his face in the crook of her neck, groaning in obvious pleasure as his powerful body moved over hers, sweeping her to whole new heights as his movements gained speed and ferocity.

  The sensation she’d felt before swept over her once more as he lifted his head and cried out, stiffening above her as he gained his own release. Moments later, he collapsed heavily atop her, boneless and heavy, but she couldn’t find it within her to tell him to move. Instead she ran her hands soothingly up and down his back, ignoring the rough patches, certain that no one had ever done this for him before.

  * * * *

  “Am I crushing you?” Adrian asked at last, too weary to move even if he’d wanted to.

  “No, you’re fine,” she lied.

  He kissed her throat and rolled to his side, taking her with him so that his front was pressed along her back. �
�How’s that?” he murmured, hugging her tightly.

  “Thank you,” she whispered. “That was amazing.”

  Adrian laughed huskily, and he squeezed her tighter. “I’m the one who should be thanking you.” Not only had the sex been the best of his life, but also she’d made him feel as though she actually wanted to be in his arms, as if he were as attractive to her as she claimed. Once they’d begun, he’d forgotten about his scars for perhaps the first time in his life. And afterward, she’d rubbed his back so tenderly…

  He blinked away what could only be tears, stunned by the raw emotion that swamped him. Christ, how he loved her. All his vain attempts to keep his distance had failed miserably, but for this moment at least, he wasn’t sorry. This had been the best night of his life. He never wanted it to end.

  “Will you stay with me?” she asked hesitantly. “I’d really like to wake up in your arms.”

  “Yes,” he agreed, having lost all his will to argue. “Of course.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Vanessa woke up slowly, basking in the glorious warmth of Adrian’s body pressed against hers. She breathed deeply, not wanting to wake him, determined to soak up these moments of peace and contentment for as long as she possibly could. Knowing Adrian, she feared that once he woke, the beautiful tenderness he’d shown her last night would fade and he’d once again start questioning everything and doubting her love for him.

  Love.

  The word gave her pause, but once she’d given thought to it, the truth resonated within her. She’d given herself to him last night, heart and soul. If he couldn’t find it in his heart to forgive her, she didn’t know how she’d bear it. Especially now that she knew just how good it could be between them

  He shifted against her, his sudden tension alerting her that he’d awoken. Hoping to delay him from thinking too much, she stretched sensuously, kissing his throat. “Good morning, husband.”