She, God help him, finished licking the caramelised sugar from her dessert spoon before answering. “A frog.”
“Like Kermit?”
“An ugly frog. It may have been a toad,” she added defensively. “We were in the hot tub and I turned to get something and it was sitting on the edge of the tub. Right. There.”
“Don’t princesses kiss frogs?”
“Princesses kiss princes.”
He should have laughed. Or continued teasing her about the frog/toad. But somewhere in the midst of that exchange he got lost in the remembered taste of her kiss and the frustration he’d kept at bay bubbled to the surface. “Like Carlisle?” he asked.
The spoon went still in her fingers for a beat before she answered. “I’ve never kissed Alex.”
Van’s heartbeat seemed to slow and deepen with the magnitude of that admission. She’d never slept with Carlisle.
“Are you still going to marry him?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I may have no alternative.”
His eyes narrowed to silver-sharp slits. “Is that what you’re looking for, Susannah. An alternative? In what form—another proposal?”
“No!” Chin up, she stared him down with what looked like genuine outrage. “I know that you don’t want marriage. That you value your independence too much to be looking for permanent ties.”
“Then what do you want? Would you like me to take the choice out of your hands? To get out of my chair and come around the table, pick you up and carry you into my bed and do—”
“No!”
“No, you don’t want me?” His voice dropped, low and rough as his mood. “Liar.”
“You know I want you,” she fired back, an agony of that wanting in the vibrato edge to her voice. “And you know why I won’t let myself have you.”
“Your father, the cheat?”
“Yes. My father, the cheating bastard. I won’t be him. And I won’t go back on my word to Alex.”
Heart in mouth, Susannah watched him rise to his feet. Would he come around the table? Would he force this issue, now, after ceding to her appeal last night? But all he said was, “I’m going to check if there’s any damage outside.”
“Can I help?”
Something like grim amusement ghosted over his face. “You can help by taking yourself to bed. Use the spare bedroom downstairs, if that makes you feel safer.”
Her gaze flickered from the spare room to his, next door.
“Yeah.” There was a wealth of meaning in that soft sound and the speculation that flared in his eyes caused her nipples to tighten into hard buds. “You might consider locking the door.”
After he was gone she did consider the downstairs room, but then she recalled the adjoining showers and how vulnerable—and how tempted—she’d felt with only that one thin wall between them. All night, too near, too dangerous.
She could sleep upstairs. It was only wind. Yesterday she’d conquered a boat ride without humiliation. If she embraced this tumultuous night, who knew, tomorrow she might face down a frog.
She attacked the stairs and started undressing as soon as she closed the door. If she kept moving, without thinking, she could dive under the covers and stay there covered and secure. In the privacy of the bathroom she stripped out of her underwear and pulled on her makeshift nightdress.
Donovan’s shirt.
The fabric shimmered against her oversensitised skin, as fine and cool as silk. Fitting for Princess Susannah. A small smile teased her lips as she folded back the cuffs and started buttoning.
Two buttons down a huge wrenching crash of wood against glass halted her fingers, and in the space of a heartbeat her smile turned to a scream.
Nine
T he storm had passed, the night turned quiet but for the creaking of wet timber and the trickle of overflow from rooftop to ground. Van circled the house with a restless frustration. He should have rejoiced in the aftermath and the lack of damage to what could soon be his property, but the storm was still building to a thunderhead in his body.
He’d sent Susannah to bed, but a perverse part of him hoped she’d thumbed her nose at that edict. That he’d walk inside and find her curled up on the sofa, the firelight painting golden shadows over her all-natural body. If that happened, then damn the trust she’d placed in him.
He paused beneath the window of the spare bedroom, dark, silent. Perhaps she had stayed up. His heartbeat quickened as he moved on, his steps surer and growing with purpose.
From the east side of the house he heard the wrenching crack of a limb breaking from a tree. The shuddering impact as it struck. But it was her scream, loud enough to split the night and his inflamed body asunder, that sent him careening into the house…only to find the spare bedroom empty. All of downstairs rooms were empty.
Wild with dread, he tackled the stairs three at a time, the pull of fear more powerful than the pull of pain in his tight hamstrings. He tore the door open and came to a brickwall halt when he saw the branch protruding through the shattered wall of windows. Sharp-ended timber and glass fragments littered the floor and bed, which was blessedly empty.
“Susannah!”
Her name rasped raw in his throat. Maybe he’d missed her downstairs. Maybe she’d been in his room, in his—
The bathroom door opened, the light illuminating the scene of destruction. Van heard her gasp, saw the shock on her blanched face as he barked an order to, “Stay put. Don’t move.”
She was in the bathroom, out of harm’s way.
Van’s brain deciphered the information but the fierce tension in his gut did not relent. The brittle crunch of glass beneath his feet twisted it tighter still as he crossed the room.
Without hesitation, he slid one arm under her thighs and the other around her back and picked her up. Her shocked exhalation blew warm against his cheek, but he didn’t hang around enjoying the sensation. He strode back the way he’d come, and the arms wrapped around his neck tightened their purchase.
It was enough, that one gesture of trust, to ease the chokehold of fear. Enough that he could notice how she wore his shirt and snug white boxers. Enough to register the tickle of a stray curl against his throat, the silken texture of her bare legs against his arm, the soft press of her breasts against his chest.
“I can walk,” she said huskily, when he reached the bottom of the stairs. “You don’t have to carry me.”
“There was glass everywhere.”
“Not down here,” she pointed out, but her voice shook enough that he held her more tightly to his chest as he made a beeline for his bedroom.
“I’m all right,” she said with more force. Then she sucked in a breath. “Where are you taking me?”
About to shoulder open the door to his bathroom, he paused and looked down into her face. “I need to make sure you’re all right.”
“I am. Really.” Except her face was still too pale, her eyes pools of darkness, her voice tremulous. And a deep shudder rolled through her body when she added, “It’s just the shock of…of seeing my bed. And all that glass.”
Cursing silently, he carried her through the doorway and slid her onto the marble-topped vanity that spanned the width of the room. Briefly he caught his reflection in the mirror at her back. His face looked gaunt, tight, fearsome in its intensity.
Little wonder she’d wanted to be put down. Or that her pulse beat wildly in that vulnerable spot at the base of her throat. In addition to the shock of the branch falling on the bed she’d been about to get into, he’d managed to scare her half to death with his reaction.
“I’m sorry,” he murmured gruffly. “Just let me check your feet for splinters—”
“I was in the bathroom. The whole time.”
“Show me,” he rasped, unwilling and unable to take her word.
He didn’t wait for her permission. Setting her hand on his shoulder for balance, he swivelled her on her backside until her legs and bare feet were illuminated by the bright downlights. He heard t
he shuddery little breath she drew when he took her foot in his hands. Felt the reflexive clutch of her fingers on his shoulder.
And when he looked down at the slender arch of her foot, the delicate bones of her ankle, the pearly colour painted on her nails, he felt a surge of possessiveness so strong it threatened to bring him to his knees. It was partly aftershock of his fear and the panicked rush upstairs, partly the adrenaline surge of acknowledging that she was unharmed. But the other part was raw, primitive desire.
Finally she was here, her skin silky smooth beneath his hands, her legs bare and warm all the way up to his boxers.
Bare and warm and shivering, he realised belatedly, and when he put her foot down and swung her back around, he realised that she wore nothing beneath his shirt. Largely unbuttoned, the garment had rucked up and twisted to reveal the rose pink tip of her breast.
She was either very, very cold or very, very turned on.
Van was struck by a wave of yearning. To rip his shirt from her body, to take that breast into his mouth, to feast eyes and mouth and hands on the body he’d once known and could not remember. He forced his hands to pull the shirt back together and set it right, but beneath his fingers the sweet warmth of her body beckoned. He trembled, she trembled—through the roaring in his blood he could not tell which, and when he drew a breath to centre himself, he looked up and caught her eyes on him, intent, unguarded and lambent with the same desire that swamped his senses.
She was trembling. He could feel the delicate tremor in the fingertips still resting on his shoulder. Shock, he told himself.
He picked her up and carried her through to his bed.
He could hold her, just hold and warm and soothe her until she felt safe again. He figured that wouldn’t take long. She would realise that this was his bed, his arms around her, that she was burrowing close against him, her nose pressed into the hollow of his throat, his face buried in the fragrant spread of her hair.
She would soon realise that the tight heat of his body was not all about comfort, that he rode a delicate line between restraint and desire.
Then she would know she wasn’t safe at all.
But for now…
He lifted a hand and combed the tangle of hair back from her face and she sighed, a soft relenting sound that soothed the jagged edges of his arousal. He pressed his lips to the crown of her head and stroked her back and crooned the words that she needed to hear and the message that he needed to remember.
“It’s okay, Susannah. You’re safe now. Go to sleep.”
Safe, yes, but she was not okay.
When she closed her eyes, her heartbeat scurried like a frightened rabbit and her only solace was the strong, sure beat of Donovan’s heart. One of her hands still clutched at his shirt and she unfurled her fingers to smooth the fabric aside, so she could rest her palm closer to that reassuring pulse.
For a second or two it worked. The other fear faded under the sweet pressure of his lips against her crown, the heat radiating from his body, the stroke of his hands over her back and the thick heartbeat anchoring her in the moment. Then her fingers shifted infinitesimally and she felt the raised scar tissue and everything went completely still.
Him, her, the moment.
No wonder he’d looked so shell-shocked in the bathroom. No wonder he’d needed reassurance of her safety. It wasn’t only because he’d brought her here and felt responsible for her safety.
The big hands at her back had stilled and Susannah eased herself up onto her elbow. Enough light bled through the half-open bathroom door for her to see his profile and guarded expression. “Are you okay?” she asked.
His jaw tightened. “You’re in my bed. I’m very okay.”
“You know why I’m asking.”
Yes, he knew. That’s why he’d made that incendiary comment—to distract her. To stop her asking about something he would see as a vulnerability.
In the shadowy light she caught the glint of dangerous purpose in his eyes. Felt the shift of pressure in the hand at the base of her spine, felt it like an electric surge of awareness in every female cell.
“I have scars, Susannah,” he said, low and dark. “I had cuts, stitches, multiple surgeries. We can play show-and-tell, if that’s what you want, but if you put your hand on my body—anywhere—I’ll take that as a sign of different intent.”
Susannah looked into his eyes and became lost in an agony of wanting. She ached for those lost weeks, for thinking the worst of him, for not trusting how her heart had first judged him. She knew it was wrong, she knew she would regret it, but she couldn’t turn away. She looked at him lying there—white shirt, dark trousers, quicksilver eyes—and her whole being yearned.
She lifted a hand to touch his face and he intercepted its path, held her fingers tight and trembling in his.
“Be very sure, Susannah.”
Throat tight with emotion, she nodded. She wanted to say the words, to let him know she’d made this choice, but the affirmation got lost in the flash of his eyes as he took her hand to his mouth and kissed her palm.
Her eyelids drifted closed for that intensely erotic second and then came open again as his hands shifted to her shoulders and turned her onto her back. As he covered her with his body and his kiss.
The completeness of that contact—eyes, lips, bodies—engulfed her in a sweet gulp of heat. She became acutely aware of everywhere they touched. The slow seeking pressure of his lips, the penetrating heat of his hands through the thin fabric of her shirt, the texture of his trousers against her bare thighs.
The slow sweep of his tongue elicited a shudder of response deep in her flesh and she opened her mouth in silent invitation, welcoming him to fill the hollow of her mouth, to drive the last cold fragments of shock from her heart, to reaffirm that he was here and she was safe, that neither of them lay broken and bleeding amid a mountain of splintered glass.
Oh, yes, he was here.
Trailing his mouth along her jawline, nuzzling her neck, gently nipping her earlobe and sucking the pearl stud between his teeth. Her back arched from the mattress, and he whispered something in her ear, a teasing erotic promise that was lost in the elevated rasp of her breath and the swift race of her pulse.
It didn’t matter—the words did not matter. It was enough that this was Donovan. The skim of his breath on her sensitive skin, the rough edge to his whisper, the knowing that he—and only he—could bring her body to life and fill the lonely ache of her heart.
And then he was kissing her again, kissing her and sliding his hands down to her hips, melding their bodies as closely as possible without removing the barrier of clothing. For a long moment, she savoured the sensation. Then, with mouths still fused, he rolled to his back and pulled her on top.
This kiss was new again, a wild explosion that fed their greedy passion. His hands on her thighs, on her buttocks, pushing her hard against him—her hands at his shirt, frantic in their haste to bare his chest to the sweet heat of her touch. He relinquished her mouth to nuzzle the fragrant warmth of her throat, to bite the tender skin at the juncture between shoulder and neck.
To absorb the deep-seated quiver of response that wracked her body from fingertips to toes.
“My special spot,” she whispered, palming his face. “How did you know? Did you remember?”
Van had acted on raw instinct. He couldn’t have known this intensity, this driving need to please her, to spend the rest of his life inside her.
It was completely, terrifyingly new.
To rescue himself from the unknown, he applied himself to what he recognised. Hot swamping desire. He undid the one remaining button on her shirt, exposing her breasts to his eyes. With a long, slow sweep of his tongue he lathed each nipple and then tugged with gentle teeth until she cried out his name.
“Donovan.”
He loved his name on her lips, and when she repeated it, her down-under accent penetrated the wall in his mind and echoed through his memory, again and again and again, the bre
athless cry of a woman’s climax.
Driven by a desperate need to hear that same sound now, he flipped her to her back and slid down to stroke the silken skin of her inner thigh. His fingers slipped inside her pants and found her wet and indescribably hot. Beside her hips her fingers clutched at the sheet as if she needed to anchor herself and that sight was powerfully erotic.
Beneath his fingers her body vibrated with the same need that smouldered in her eyes. He didn’t need any further explanation or invitation. With quick efficiency he stripped the underwear from her body and then he sat back on his heels to drink in the sight.
Everything from the curve of her elbow to the dip of her waist was a picture of feminine beauty.
His earlier frustration returned with a vicious streak that made him want to howl at the moon. Because for all the glimpses, the flashes, the snaps of sound and image and scent, he couldn’t remember this most alluring, transfixing, knock-back-on-his-heels sight.
How could he not remember?
One last time his eyes moved over her, learning that sight, committing every detail to memory, before he rose to his feet and strode to the bathroom to turn out the light.
Susannah had forgotten just how dark it could be in this isolated part of the world, without the constant illumination of a million city lights, without the digital radiance from a score of household electronics.
It was very, very dark.
Last July, they had made love in the dark and in the full light of day. There’d been no cause for modesty at Stranger’s Bay and there was definitely no cause here on Charlotte Island. Lying in bed, listening to the sounds of him undressing, Susannah’s heart constricted.
Did he really think she would be turned off by his scars?
Did he think her that shallow?
Then she realised that the scars themselves were not the problem, but her reaction to them. With her emotions teetering grimly on the edge of this day’s overload, she couldn’t guarantee her response. She might go over the top imagining the initial injuries, his pain, his mortality.
Tycoon's One-Night Revenge Page 10