Lover in the Rough

by Lowell, Elizabeth

  By the time Reba reached the lobby she was running, holding her elegant dress high, taking stairs in graceful leaps because the elevator would be too slow. Ignoring the startled looks from other people, Reba flew down the long winding hallway to her second-floor suite. Once there, she pulled her dress above her knees, retrieving her room key from its place in a flat satin garter. Her hand was shaking enough that fitting the key into the lock was impossible.

  “Damn!”

  She took a steadying breath, jammed in the key, and swept into the suite. Slamming the door behind her, she ran through the outer room, threw open the bedroom door—

  —and found herself in the heart of beauty.

  The black matte silk that was Reba’s trademark had been put over every chair, every table, the bed, even the floor. Resting on the silk, illuminated with miner’s lights, were clusters and mounds and sunbursts of Pala tourmaline. Only the bed was bare, its black silk shimmering with reflected light.

  For an instant Reba felt as though she were inside a gem, a place of shattering beauty and brilliance, a faceted world as complex as the man who had turned the room into a fantasy of the China Queen. The key fell unnoticed from her hand as she turned slowly, looking for him, but she saw only the beauty of the tourmaline surrounding her, magnified by her own tears. Nowhere did she see the power and male grace of the man she loved.

  “Chance,” she whispered, holding out her hands blindly, “please be here.”

  She sensed his presence the instant before she heard the bedroom door close behind her. A man’s hands touched her shoulders, hands both hard and gentle, warm as sunlight. With a small sound she turned, seeking his warmth even as his arms pulled her close. She held him tightly, unable to speak, afraid that she would wake up and he would be gone. His lips moved over her, smoothing words and caresses over her fragrant skin.

  “All my life treasure has been an obsession with me,” Chance said, his voice deep, vibrant with emotion. “It was as though if I just looked hard enough I’d find something overwhelmingly wonderful, something surpassingly rare, something as powerful and beautiful and enduring as the earth itself. But nothing I found lived up to my expectations. No matter how beautiful, how precious, how rare …”

  His lips gently found hers. His tongue traced the curves of her smile, tasting her tears, sharing her breath, filling the sweet softness of her mouth as she clung to him in a kiss that said more of hunger and searching than any words.

  “… and then I kissed you in Death Valley and my world turned inside out,” said Chance, his fingers delicately tracing the line of her neck and arm. “I could take the China Queen from another Sylvie but not from the woman who trusted me enough to cry in my arms and then kiss me as though there had never been another man and never would be.”

  Chance’s fingertip followed a single teardrop down Reba’s cheek. “I never believed that you were another Sylvie. But I tried to. I wanted the China Queen more than I’d ever wanted anything in my life. I knew, I just knew, that I’d find what I was looking for in that mine. Then I walked into your office and saw that drunken bastard reaching for you.” Chance’s hands tightened as he remembered, all gentleness gone. “It’s a good thing Todd hadn’t touched you, chaton. I would have killed him.”

  Reba trembled, unable to breathe or speak for the emotions filling her. She watched Chance’s silvergreen eyes, listening to him with a stillness and intensity she had learned from him.

  “I tried to tell you about the mine the second day,” Chance continued, his fingers lingering over the three diamond teardrops on her left shoulder, “but Tim interrupted. Then you took me to your beach. You stood in the parking lot and you told me that no man had ever wanted you just for yourself. You were so beautiful and so proud. I knew if I told you about the Queen then you would hate me. So I told myself that if we had some time together I could make you understand that no matter why I had come to Death Valley, I came to Los Angeles for a different reason.”

  His hands caged her face. With an almost inaudible groan, Chance bent to take her lips once more. The restraint and heat and need in him were as shattering to her as the moment she had walked into her hotel bedroom and found herself surrounded by fantastic beauty. As he lifted her in his arms and carried her toward the silk-covered bed, she tried to tell him that she loved him but all she could do was respond to caresses which coaxed rather than demanded her passion. He set her gently on her feet, kissed her lips and her eyes as he continued speaking, his deep voice and words as seductive as his strength holding her close.

  “Each minute I was with you I wanted you more,” Chance murmured, his hand moving down her left shoulder, peeling away silk that shared the warmth and fragrance of her skin.

  A tremor of need ran through Chance’s body, telling Reba that the wanting was still there, stronger than ever. She ran her fingers over the smooth pleats of his white dress shirt, wanting only to feel the heat of his skin next to hers. His shirt opened beneath her fingers. She buried her lips in the male textures of his hair as her dress slid to the floor, leaving her wearing only a satin garter and gold lace panties.

  His lips moved just below her glittering earring. “Gold dust and diamonds,” he said hoarsely, then invaded her mouth with his kiss before she could speak.

  He possessed her mouth completely, his tongue moving slowly, deeply, while his hands caressed the beauty that had been concealed under the silk of her dress. When he felt her change beneath his touch, he made a deep sound and lifted her suddenly, bringing her breasts up to his hungry lips. She cried out as his mouth claimed her with savage restraint, tongue and teeth shaping her into hard peaks of desire.

  A firestorm of passion swept over Reba, melting her. She no longer cared whether or not Chance loved her. He wanted her, and she loved him. He lowered her to the bed and shrugged out of his shirt with a muscular twist that made her hungry to touch him, hold him, love him. He took off everything but her earrings, then removed his clothes and stood looking down at her with hot silver eyes.

  “After we dug our way out of that cave-in and you laughed and turned to me, sharing your joy in the sunlight and being alive, I knew that I couldn’t risk telling you about the mine. I couldn’t risk losing you. I thought if we were married, whatever had come before wouldn’t matter. We’d start new from the moment we bathed each other in that spring.

  “Then Glory came and blew my dream to hell.”

  Reba looked up and saw the pain beneath the harsh planes of Chance’s face. She tried to speak, unable to bear seeing him hurt, but he was talking again, his voice urgent.

  “I didn’t believe you could walk away from what we had together. I knew you were furious. I knew I’d hurt you. But I thought if you’d just let me touch you, love you, I could make you understand that I never meant to deceive you.”

  Chance lay down beside her, not touching her despite the male hunger and need that gripped him, outlining each hard line of his body with urgency and restraint. His eyes closed for a moment, then opened again, silvergreen, remote.

  “And then you ran from me, leaving me nothing. So I went back into that she-bitch mine and dug as though if I dug deep enough, fast enough, long enough, I’d get it all back somehow, the woman and the love. All I got was crystal, cold and hard, a fool’s ransom. But who wants to buy back a fool?”

  The bitterness in Chance’s voice made Reba ache.

  “Chance—” she said, her voice breaking.

  “You wouldn’t talk to me, wouldn’t see me,” he continued, his voice husky and relentless. “But I knew you’d be here tonight. Jeremy’s night. So I came.”

  Chance’s hand moved but instead of touching Reba, his fingers closed over the piece of paper that lay between their bodies, a pale blur against black silk.

  “I didn’t understand why you asked me to give up the China Queen,” he said quietly. “I do now. Once, I might have been satisfied with the Queen’s cold treasure. But now I need your living warmth, your laugh, your hands t
ouching me. You’re the only thing I’ve found that is more beautiful the longer I look, more magic in sunlight than in darkness, precious beyond words or comparison or reason. All my life I’ve been digging through darkness, searching the earth for you, and I didn’t even know it.”

  Reba breathed his name as her hands came up to his face. Gently he removed them, putting the piece of paper in her fingers.

  “Read it,” said Chance.

  She tried, but there were too many tears. “I can’t.”

  “It’s a quit-claim to the China Queen. She’s yours, Reba, one hundred percent yours. She has been since the day you left me.”

  “I don’t want the Queen,” Reba said despairingly, crumpling the paper and throwing it into the darkness beyond. “Don’t you understand?” she cried.

  Then Reba cried out again, but for a different reason. Chance’s hands were moving over her, setting fire to her, bringing her a pleasure so great it was almost pain. She closed her eyes and made an incoherent sound, twisting beneath his touch, her hands seeking him. He moved swiftly, powerfully, covering her with his hard body.

  “If you want, I’ll give the China Queen to the first person who walks down the hall,” Chance said, watching her, his voice savage. “I’ll give it all away right now, every last bloody crystal. I’ll give up anything you ask. Except you. Don’t ask me to give you up. I won’t. I can’t. I finally know what love is. I’ll never give that up. I love you, Reba.”

  Her eyes opened wide and wondering, incandescent with emotion. A shudder went through him, testing his strength as he watched the woman he loved.

  “Say something, chaton. Don’t make me guess whether I’ve lost your love.”

  “Keep the China Queen,” she whispered.

  His face changed, pain and vulnerability and despair.

  “For our children,” she added quickly, smiling and crying at the same time, realizing he had misunderstood. She buried her face in his hard shoulder, holding him until she ached. “You can’t lose my love, Chance. I’ll always love you.”

  His hands went to her hair, fingers seeking out the hidden gold combs. Honey strands tumbled smoothly from his fingers, whispering as sweetly as the words he kept saying over and over, as though having once spoken of love he could not stop, telling her with each breath, each caress, how infinitely precious she was to him. Her words mingled with his, her hands caressing him, telling him in return what he had told her.

  Then he became a part of her, his body hot and gleaming, Tiger God in her arms to stay.

  Avon Books proudly publishes Elizabeth Lowell’s final installment in her New York Times best-selling medieval trilogy.

  ENCHANTED tells the story of Simon the loyal and his arranged marriage to Ariane, the beautiful but cold daughter of a powerful Norman baron. It is a love story that surpasses even the expectations of Elizabeth Lowell’s many fans.

  The following is a glimpse into the story of Ariane and Simon—and into Elizabeth Lowell’s most stunning romance yet.

  “Which will it be,” Ariane whispered to herself, “a wedding or a wake?”

  She looked at the dagger in her hands, but no answer came to her save that of candlelight running like silver blood over the blade. Again and again the question rang within the silence of her mind.

  A wedding or a wake?

  The answer that finally came was no comfort to her.

  It matters not. They are but different words for the same thing.

  Beyond Stone Ring Keep’s high walls, the wind wailed of coming winter.

  Ariane didn’t hear the mournful cry. She heard nothing but the echoes of the past, when her mother had pressed the jeweled dagger into her daughter’s small hands. In her mind, Ariane could still see the dark flash of amethysts and feel the cold weight of silver. Yet her mother’s words had been even more chilling.

  Hell has no punishment greater than a cruel marriage bed. Use this rather than lie beneath a man you do not love.

  Unfortunately, Ariane’s mother had not lived long enough to tell her daughter how to use the weapon, or upon whom.

  Whose wake should it be, the groom’s or bride’s?

  Should I kill myself or should I kill Simon, whose only crime was agreeing to marry me out of loyalty to his brother Dominic, the Glendruid Wolf?

  Loyalty.

  A yearning tremor went through Ariane, making the rich cream and russet of her tunic shiver as though alive.

  Dear God, to be so blessed as to know that kind of fidelity in my family!

  Dark nightmare turned, threatening to break through the wall Ariane had built against it. Quickly she shifted her thoughts from the night she had been betrayed first by Geoffrey the Fair and then by her own father.

  The blade of the dagger bit delicately into Ariane’s hand, telling her that she was holding the weapon too tightly. Distantly she wondered what it would feel like when the dagger bit far more deeply into her flesh.

  Certainly it could be no worse than her nightmares.

  “Ariane, have you seen my—oh, what a lovely dagger,” Amber said. “ ’Tis as finely made as any brooch.”

  The voice startled Ariane out of her grim reverie. Taking a slow, hidden breath, she loosened her grip on the jeweled dagger and looked toward the girl whose golden outer tunic highlighted the color of her eyes and hair.

  “It was my mother’s,” Ariane said to Amber.

  “Such extraordinary amethysts. They are the exact color of your eyes. Were hers violet, too?”

  “Yes.”

  Ariane said no more.

  “And your thoughts,” Amber continued matter-of-factly, “are the exact color of your hair. The darkest part of night.”

  Ariane’s breath caught. Warily she eyed the young Learned woman who could discern truth simply by touching someone.

  Yet Amber wasn’t touching Ariane now.

  “I don’t have to touch you,” Amber said, guessing the other girl’s thoughts. “The darkness is in your eyes. And in your heart.”

  “I feel nothing.”

  “Ah, but you do. Your emotions are a wound that you have concealed rather than healed.”

  “Have I?”

  “Aye,” Amber said gently. “I felt that when I touched you. Surely you must feel it too.”

  “Only when I sleep.”

  Ariane slid the dagger back into its sheath at her waist and reached for the lap harp that once had been her joy. Now it was her consolation. The dark, graceful curves of the wood were inlaid with silver, mother-of-pearl and carnelian in the form of a flowering vine.

  But it wasn’t the harp’s elegance that lured Ariane. It was the instrument’s voice. Her long fingers moved, calling from the strings a chord that was in eerie harmony with the storm wind, a wildness that was barely contained.

  Concealed, not healed.

  Hearing the harp speak for the harpist, Amber wanted to protest the combination of fear and rage and grief that burned just beneath the Norman girl’s calm surface.

  “You have nothing to dread from becoming Simon’s wife,” Amber said urgently. “He is a man of intense passion, but it is always disciplined.”

  For an instant Ariane’s fingers paused. Then she nodded slowly. Gradually the sounds she drew from the harp became less wild.

  “Aye,” Ariane said in a low voice. “He has been gentle enough with me.”

  Much gentler than he will be when he discovers that his wife is no maiden.

  Wars have begun over lesser insults. Men have killed. Women have died.

  The last thought had a dark allure for Ariane. It whispered of an escape from the brutal trap of pain and betrayal that life had become.

  “Simon is strong of body and fair of face,” Amber added, “with a quickness to put the keep’s cats to shame.”

  Ariane’s fingers hesitated.

  “His eyes,” she murmured, “are very … dark.”

  “ ’Tis only that sun-colored hair that makes his eyes seem so black,” Amber said.

&nb
sp; Ariane shook her head. “It is more than that.”

  Hesitating, sighing, Amber agreed.

  “ ’Tis the same with many of the men who came back from the Saracen battles,” Amber admitted. “They returned less light of heart.”

  A minor chord quivered in the silence.

  “Simon mistrusts me,” Ariane said.

  “You?” Amber laughed without humor. “He trusts you enough to show you his back. I am the one he mistrusts. In the silence of his heart, Simon calls me hell-witch.”

  Surprise lightened the bleak violet of Ariane’s eyes for a moment.

  “If it helps,” Amber said dryly, “your own eyes, for all their fey beauty, are as remote as a Druid moon.”

  “Should that comfort me?”

  “Can anything comfort you?”

  Ariane’s fingers paused in their delicate stroking of the harp as she considered the question. Then her fingers struck like snow falcons, ripping a harsh sound from the strings.

  “Why does he call you hell-witch?” Ariane asked, changing the subject.

  Before Amber could answer, a deep male voice spoke for her.

  “Because,” Simon said, “I thought she had stolen Duncan’s mind.”

  Both women turned and saw Simon standing at the entrance to the small corner chamber that had been turned over to Ariane. There was little room left in the doorway, for Simon was unusually tall. Because most people first saw him standing next to Dominic, or to Amber’s husband Duncan, Simon’s height often passed without particular comment, as did the width of his shoulders.

  Yet Ariane noticed him. Simon could have been standing in a forest of giants, and he would have towered over them in her sight. There was something about the feline quickness and male elegance of Simon’s strength that overshadowed men more brawny.

  Or perhaps it was simply that he had been kind to her in his own laconic way.