“Delicious,” he pronounced, looking straight at the cook.
Caitlin wet her lips with her tongue. “You really like it?” she asked self-consciously.
“I always say what I mean. Don’t you?”
“When I know what I want,” Caitlin admitted, taking another swallow of her champagne. “Sometimes it just takes me a while to figure that out.”
Short of lighting a flare gun, Caitlin didn’t know how to give any clearer signals than those she was sending out. Once she had committed to the idea of seducing her husband, it seemed only natural that Grant would buy into the concept, too. Instead he sat across from her, devouring his dinner and looking ready to bolt at any second.
Her mother had always insisted that men liked being the aggressor in relationships. Caitlin had dismissed the idea as being old-fashioned, but in the face of Grant’s passivity she had to consider the possibility that Laura Leigh might not be so far off the mark after all. Perhaps she was being too pushy?
The candle on the table flickered against the dark paneling of the kitchen. Like their trust in each another, it struggled to illuminate the shadows in anxious hearts.
“That was fabulous. Let me help you with dishes,” Grant offered, pushing himself away from a third helping.
“They’ll wait,” Caitlin said, hoping he intrinsically understood that she couldn’t.
“All right then,” he said after a moment’s pause in which he searched bright green eyes smoldering with unspoken passion. “If you don’t mind, I think I’ll turn in early.”
Those were not the words that Caitlin longed to hear. If eyes burning with the blue flame of desire were any indication, they weren’t exactly what Grant really wanted to say either. But having been spurned earlier in the day, he wasn’t about to risk his heart again. As Caitlin had so brutally pointed out, they had an agreement, and he was not going to be the one to breach it.
Grant waited for her to detain him.
Caitlin waited for him to make a move.
Any move.
Frozen to the spot, they tried willing each other into movement. It felt as if they were sharing the same breath. They exhaled together.
“Good night then,” Caitlin squeaked. The candlelight cast a shadow, making her eyelashes seem as long as butterfly wings. “And sweet dreams.”
Illusions. That was the stuff love was made of, Grant thought bitterly to himself. What sweet agony it had been eating the sumptuous meal his beautiful wife had prepared for him. Pretending it could ever be more than an illusion.
Knowing that his dreams were certain to be tortured, he wondered if she meant to mock him with her sweet words.
Caitlin felt the ache in every part of her being as she watched Grant take his gentlemanly leave.
Don’t go! she longed to call out, but something painful stuck in her throat. Certain it was pride, she left the dishes in the sink and padded down the hall to her own room, feeling wounded. The negligee she had taken such care to pick out lay upon her bed, a whisper of silken promises. She picked up the beautiful gown and held it against her body. It felt cool and sensuous to the touch.
Pride, Caitlin decided, was a lonely bedfellow.
She stripped out of her jeans and sweater, and quickly slipped the negligee over her head. Reveling in the luxury of satin and silk against bare skin, she studied herself in the mirror. Her figure looked alluring in the clinging gown. Her eyes were wide with passion. Gone was the Queen of Ice. In her place stood a woman ready to embrace her femininity and relinquish her title as the oldest living married virgin in America.
Kicking his covers off in utter frustration, Grant cursed the day he had first laid eyes upon the boss’s daughter. That green-eyed temptress of a thousand temperaments had his heart more twisted than the covers tangled about his feet. A breeze whispered through his mind carrying a bewitching fragrance to him, making sleep impossible.
He groaned. Tangible in the air, that intoxicating blend of innocence and jasmine and seduction and musk teased him. Haunted him. Evoking an enchantress to appear in his room. Swathed in white gossamer, she appeared so real to his feverish mind that Grant found himself doubting his sanity.
A voice soft and beckoning wound itself around the very filaments of his being. “I want you,” it said quite simply.
Instantly he was alert.
This was no dream. The voice, the scent, the woman bathed in moonlight at the foot of his bed were as real as the beating of his heart.
“What about our agreement?”
Smooth in the darkness, Grant’s voice sounded the way whiskey tastes sliding down a parched, tight throat. Burning. Sensual.
“I want to break it. I want to be your wife in more than name alone.”
The sight of his muscular body stretched across the bed put a tremble in her knees. He wore only a pair of practical white briefs. Opening his arms wide at the invitation, Grant crucified himself upon the bed, a willing sacrifice to a destiny beyond his control.
Gentle was his tone as he commanded, “Come to me.”
Timid was her response as she lifted the hem of her gown and knelt at the foot of his bed.
Caitlin’s poor heart was beating so rapidly that she feared it would explode with the strain of her desire to please him in every way. Her fingers fumbled with a pearl button as she struggled to undress seductively.
“Let me help you,” Grant coaxed, rising from his prone position on the bed. The gleam in his eyes was primitive. Hungry.
A row of tiny buttons was no match for his impatience as each passing second intensified his building desire. Exposed at last, Caitlin’s neck was a lovely thing, as slender and white as a swan’s. In the hollow of her throat, a golden locket gleamed in the moonlight. Reverently, she rubbed her fingertips across it.
Seized by the feral desire to replace that cold metal with a mouth both warm and hungry, Grant could endure no more. He placed his hands upon the shoulders of the gown. With a deft movement, the silken garment slid down the length of Caitlin’s bare arms. As soft and dreamy as his most erotic fantasy, it pooled about her knees in shimmering white billows. Aphrodite could have looked no more beautiful as she stepped from the sea foam to undertake the conquest of all men’s hearts.
The diaphanous fabric of the negligee provided no protection from eyes that devoured her whole. In an instant, it too was gone, a victim of Grant’s skilled fingers. Caitlin quivered beneath his touch. A touch so hot she feared it would singe her skin.
Unable to bear another second of such exquisite torture, she beseeched him to take her. “Please.”
Grant needed no further urging. He peeled off his briefs. Naked, he stood before her a conquering warrior.
Caitlin felt no fear, no shame as she lovingly studied her husband’s body. The muscles of his broad shoulders and chest gleamed like polished bronze. Pulling her down upon the bed with him, he rolled onto his elbows to keep from crushing her. Caitlin stroked his skin, amazed at its warmth and responsiveness. Goose bumps trailed in the wake of her delicate touch.
Slipping her arms around his neck, she drew him close. His breath was hot and sweet upon her as she pressed her mouth to his. When his tongue parted her lips, she did not fight the intrusion but rather welcomed it by mimicking his actions. Twining her fingers into the hair curling at the nape of his neck, Caitlin arched her back.
Grant grabbed her hips, possessively molding her body to the hard contours of his own. When she tore her mouth from his, he groaned in fear that she was frightened by his strength. Instead Caitlin took his face into her hands and gazed at him with such unconcealed adoration that he could scarcely endure the tender torment of kisses deposited upon his eyelids, the tip of his nose, and the strong, sensitive cords of his neck.
“Caitlin!” he cried out in a voice hoarse with self-restraint.
“Umm?” she responded, not bothering to lift her mouth from the path it had taken along his collarbone and on to the smooth plane of a chest that filled her with awe. S
he ran her fingertips over its width with a reverence that sent shivers of delight racing through him.
Grant encircled her waist with one arm. His other hand roamed freely over her thighs, breasts, and stomach. His lips claimed her whole body for himself, and when they came to the hardened rosebuds of her nipples, Caitlin cried out in ecstasy as his erotic suckling brought her to the edge of orgasm. At the brink of his own self-control, Grant settled himself between her legs, repeating her name as if it were the most beautiful of prayers. The heat he encountered there pushed him over the edge of all manly discipline as she lifted her hips to his engorged manhood and opened herself to him completely.
“Caitlin!”
He couldn’t stop saying her name. Leaning on his elbows to keep from crushing her with his weight, he repeated it worshipfully as he penetrated the most sacred threshold of her being.
Caitlin gasped. The pain of parting with her virginity was brief. Her joy divine as body and soul melded into one. Surrendering herself with a soft moan, she heard her name on his lips grow louder and louder as it built to a crescendo of passion. Simultaneously, they exploded in a white-hot flash of blinding light.
Carried away to a spiritual plane where the visible and invisible came together, a halo of love surrounded them and was suffused in the very breath they shared. Tremors of their lovemaking caused the ground beneath them to undulate. Enveloped in the soft afterglow of intimacy, Caitlin assumed it must have something to do with the world spinning crazily off its axis and aligning itself with the heavenly bodies that preordained long and happy unions. Stars that crossed their paths disintegrated beneath the heat of their passion, leaving but sparkling remnants in her husband’s dark blue eyes.
Fourteen
Grant gazed upon the angel in his arms with disbelief. The gift that his beautiful bride had given him was more precious than she could have possibly known. Her innocence was as astonishing as her passion. There was no doubting the blood that proved her claims. Those emerald eyes had been as wide as the moon, her heart as open as the sky when he had entered her and unequivocally made her his. No other woman had ever moved him so deeply, so completely. The honor of being her first was overshadowed by his fierce desire to be her only.
If Caitlin had been scared, she had not shown it. If he had hurt her, she had hidden it well. Rather she had indulged all of his senses in the beauty of making love in a way that he could describe only as reverential. She was the kind of woman every man dreams of possessing—if only for a night.
As much as he wanted to believe in fairy tales, Grant would not allow himself to think this moment could be anything more than fleeting. Once Caitlin awoke to the reality of what she had done, he was certain she would realize it to be a mistake. It would not be long before she hightailed it back to high society with memories of illicit love with a manual laborer who one night had made her blue blood run red-hot and fast.
Well-acquainted with the harsh facts of life, Grant wouldn’t blame her for running. He had learned long ago that shaking his fist at the universe served no good purpose. Such as it was, their lovemaking was a memory he would cherish for the rest of his life. Even though it left him unfit for any other woman, he would be forever grateful to have been in heaven for a single night.
Softly so as not to wake her, Grant ran his hands over her mussed mane of hair. It was a silken veil beneath fingers rough and unworthy. Her whole body was so incredibly soft and curvy that he grew hard again just looking upon her naked slumber. Curling his body around hers, he pulled her even more snugly against him.
Caitlin’s eyes flickered open. Stretching like a cat ever so satisfied with her life, she awoke to the sweet pain of having been so well loved. Sighing, she held her hand before her eyes. The diamond on her finger sparkled in the morning sunlight, brightly reminding her that she need feel no guilt for the bruises she cherished deep inside her.
Last night she had been a child. Today she awoke a woman. One who knew exactly what she wanted to do with the rest of her life. Twisting in the magnificent arms that held her, she playfully kissed the tip of Grant’s nose.
“I love you,” she said simply.
Grant’s heart flipped inside his chest like a trout flopping on the banks of his favorite fishing hole. Instinctively distrustful of those sweet words, he reminded himself that such postsex talk was to be expected of one who has just so recently given up her innocence. Only a fool would make more of it than that.
“Hey there, sleepyhead,” he said, cautiously ignoring her unexpected proclamation of love. “How are you feeling this morning?”
Caitlin wrapped her arms around his neck and nuzzled against him. “Wonderful!”
That single word turned to poetry on her lips.
“And hungry,” she added. “Ravenous in fact.”
“Me too,” Grant assured her with a gleam in his eye. “But not for food.”
A familiar tingle of pleasure raced through Caitlin’s body. Sore though she was, she nonetheless nipped at his earlobe. “Lucky for me you taste as delicious as you smell,” she commented with the affected accent of a gourmet French cook.
Breakfast was postponed by another leisurely bout of fabulous, unhurried lovemaking. Satiated and spent, they moved at last from the bed that they shared to the dawn of another day. Caitlin slipped into her robe and slowly adjusted tender muscles to the task of clearing away the dishes left over from the night before. She whistled while she worked, taking enjoyment in the mundane chore. When Grant slipped up behind her and put his hand over hers in an unnecessary attempt to help her break an egg into a glass bowl, she melted against him like the butter bubbling in the skillet she had just set upon the stove.
“Do you have any idea how much pleasure it gives me to make breakfast for my husband?”
Caitlin relished the way the word husband rolled off her tongue and settled into her heart. It seemed to her the nature of love to elevate tedious duties so that in the scrambling of eggs and the washing of dirty dishes, one found joy in the providing of humble services. Suddenly nothing sounded lonelier to her than returning to a life of eating alone in posh restaurants, resisting the urge to hide her single status behind some dull literary volume that was supposed to be good for her. A thousand times over, Caitlin preferred sharing a simple meal and a steaming cup of freshly brewed coffee with this man whom she was lucky enough to call her husband.
Grant’s heart expanded to the size of a balloon as he watched his wife puttering about their tiny kitchen in a swirl of satin froth. He couldn’t help but think how out of place she was here. He wanted to capture every detail of her so that when she grew tired of playing the part of happy trailer-park housewife, she would be indelibly imprinted in his brain. Grant feared that loving aftermath glow in her countenance would all too soon be replaced by more worldly concerns—like how to pay the bills or gloss over her husband’s blue-collar roots to friends who were bound to be shocked by her poor conditions.
Caitlin spiced up the fluffy omelet she placed before him with a kiss that almost made him forget his growling stomach.
“Well, what do you think?” she asked, popping a heaping forkful into his mouth and waiting expectantly as he chewed.
“Perfect,” he replied with a slow, sexy smile. “And the food’s good too.”
Made inexplicably happy by the compliment, Caitlin tossed him a saucy look. “Smart man,” she commented, feeding him another bite.
They shared the rest of their meal in companionable silence. Already it seemed they were able to read each other’s minds in the way that couples who have been married many years do with such unconsidered ease. Caitlin passed Grant the salt and pepper without being asked. He stirred just the right amount of cream into her coffee cup. Neither felt the need to muddle the moment with unnecessary words.
The shrill ringing of the cellular phone on the counter broke their cloistered reverie from the outside world. A feeling of dread came over Caitlin as she imagined the worst possible news about he
r father. She turned her back to Grant so that he wouldn’t see how her hand trembled as she answered the phone.
Left alone to interpret the dainty heaving of her shoulders and her quiet monosyllabic responses, Grant considered whether he should wrap his arms about her now or wait until she got off the phone. Understanding the difficulty of losing both parents himself, he granted his wife the dignity of dealing with her grief in her own way. His own eyes burned red at the thought of losing Paddy. Both of them would need comforting if this phone call confirmed his worst suspicions.
“We’ll talk about the annulment later, Mother,” Grant heard Caitlin say. His heart grew cold and heavy at the sound of those foreboding words.
The phone was barely settled into its receiver when Caitlin launched herself into his arms. “It looks like Daddy’s going to make it after all. He’s surprised them all and is making an astonishing recovery!”
“Thank God!” Grant stammered in surprise.
Hopelessly inadequate at putting his own joy into words, he succumbed to the pleasure of having his wife squirm in his lap and tearfully cover his face with kisses. He was certain that life could get no better. Paddy was going to be all right. And Caitlin claimed to love him.
The only dark cloud left on the horizon was the one his dear mother-in-law had brought up. Because of the way she had so heartlessly treated Paddy in the past, Grant couldn’t bring himself to care much for the woman. Still, Laura Leigh obviously was no fool. Eager to get her baby out of the farce of a marriage Paddy had foisted upon them, she was certain to enlist all her considerable talent in breaking the union apart. As a woman whose own marriage had failed due to the strain the oil field had put upon it, perhaps his mother-in-law had more right to meddle than he liked to admit.
“I guess since Paddy’s out of danger now, your mother wants you to end this little charade,” he heard himself say. The words sounded so far away that it seemed the wind had carried them away with the tumbleweeds.
The Cowboy Takes A Bride (The Bridal Bid #2) Page 14