The Proviso

by Moriah Jovan

  Bryce looked at her sharply. “Your grandmother?”

  She nodded. “My grandfather was a pirate. Lord Elliott Dunham. He was an earl of something-or-another before he was stripped of the title for treason and piracy. I guess he was lucky to get out of England without hanging.”

  “Why doesn’t that surprise me?” He was still laughing once they’d pulled into the driveway behind his house and gone into the back door. He threw his keys on the kitchen counter and pulled her into the living room. He dropped onto a leather sofa, one leg outstretched and one foot on the floor. He indicated that she should snuggle up between his legs and she was only too glad to do so.

  “So I’m a savage,” he whispered in her ear, melting Giselle completely. “Scot, Apache, whatever, and I’m proud of it. I never thought anything in my life could top how I feel when I go to war, how I felt after I’d had my revenge, accepted that this is who I am. But then I fucked you.”

  Giselle’s body tightened with heat and need. She felt like her chest had collapsed and she couldn’t take another breath. His hand swept up her body and cupped her breast through the fabric of the large Oxford shirt she’d snatched out of his closet that morning and hadn’t bothered to change. He worked at the shirttails that she’d tied in a knot just under her breasts, all the while kissing, nipping, licking her neck, her collarbone, her shoulder.

  “I’ve fantasized about a woman like you for years—” he rasped as he pulled the knot open and began to work the buttons loose, “—one I could talk to, who could function on my level, autonomous. A woman who didn’t manipulate, who was educated and interesting. I wanted a woman who wasn’t afraid of me, of what I wanted to take from her—a woman I could fuck, a woman who was nasty. A woman who’d understand my dark side that I fought most of my life until I couldn’t anymore.”

  He had finished opening the shirt and dragged his hand lightly up from the waistband of the jeans shorts she wore—also his—across her belly, to her bra clasp and undid it.

  Giselle caught her breath as he cupped her breasts in his hands and flicked her nipples with his thumbs. She dropped her head back on his shoulder and closed her eyes, listening to—feeling—his words, his hands on her breasts and his arms wrapped around her and his chest at her back. She sucked in a breath—of desire? of fear that she could fail this man? She didn’t know, but he continued,

  “One in each hand. Gunshot wounds. Threatening Fen at gunpoint. You have no idea how hard that makes me. I wanted that warrior. I wanted her on her knees in front of me. Sucking. My. Cock.”

  Bryce continued to lick and suck at her ear, her throat, her chin, her shoulder, her collarbone. Giselle panted and she felt suddenly empty. She gasped over and over again with the adrenaline that coursed through her, hot, loose, and clean.

  His breath came short and fast, too. His mouth trailed up her neck and again nestled in her ear.

  She couldn’t stand the emptiness anymore. She had to feel him inside her, moving, filling her, emptying her, emptying himself inside her. She turned then, rising above him to her knees. She stared down at him, he whose green eyes gleamed as he stared right back at her.

  She leaned down and in to kiss him, which he took away from her again to direct and command her. She sucked in a long, sharp breath and broke the kiss, standing to take off the shorts she wore. His large shirt still hung from her shoulders, over the bra that also hung.

  “Take off your clothes,” she murmured, hard, her own voice commanding. “I want to fuck you, Kenard.”

  “No,” he returned as he swung around until both feet were on the floor. He lifted his hips and ripped open the button fly of his jeans, letting his cock free. She stared at it, at him, wondering what he meant, what he wanted from her.

  “You. Get naked,” he demanded, fast and harsh. “Me? Not so much.”

  “No,” she snapped. “You get me like this or you don’t get me at all.”

  His eyebrow rose and his mouth twitched, then began to stretch in a smile. Suddenly, he reached out and grabbed her shirttails, jerking her so she fell on top of him, between his legs. He wrapped his hand around the back of her neck, his fingers cradling her head and forcing her to kiss him.

  “Climb up here and spread your legs,” he muttered against her mouth. “Sit. Down.”

  She could feel his cock against her belly. She didn’t know how much longer she could play this game before she gave in. In this game, winning was losing; losing was winning. She could play it for the rest of her life and not get tired of the uncertainty of winning or losing. This erotic tug-o-war was something she’d never really thought she’d get and she would enjoy every second of it.

  “I’ll do it when I’m damn good and ready to,” she whispered against his mouth and he broke the kiss to laugh.

  “You’re baiting me.”

  She raised her eyebrow. “And you like that.”

  “I’m stronger than you.”

  “Prove it.”

  He did. He ran his hands over her shoulders, down her back, until he cradled her buttocks in his big hands. His shoulders bunched under his shirt as he jerked her up and spread her legs. She gasped and bit her lip, closing her eyes when he positioned her, then dropped her on his cock, filling her. Hard. Giselle’s head back, she cupped her breasts and panted.

  “Now,” he said, lazing back into the couch and lacing his hands behind his head, his face smug. “You may fuck me.”

  The feel of his jeans on the tender skin of the inside of her thighs, the visual of his body fully clothed and hers nearly naked—it was almost enough to make her come, but she wasn’t interested in moving. She just wanted to feel him filling her, stretching her. She rocked a little bit, ground a little bit, but apparently it wasn’t enough to satisfy him.

  “Giselle,” he said warningly, “move.”

  “I decided,” she said between breaths, between her rocking and grinding, “to fuck myself on you.”

  That was when he grasped her hips, sat up and stood all in a flash, forcing her to wrap her legs around his hips and her arms around his neck, or fall. In three strides he had her against a smooth wall, her head thumping back against the plaster, one hand cupping her buttocks, the other wrapped around her wrists, pinning them to the wall far above her head.

  She came with his first thrust and matched him in every one thereafter until he came, hard, inside her and filled her the way she wanted to be filled.

  “I guess,” he said as he kissed her jaw and neck between breaths, letting go of her wrists, “that’ll teach you to sass back at me.”

  Giselle chuckled. “Yes, I intend to do more of that.”

  He laughed then, a great, rolling laugh that made him move inside her. She came again unexpectedly and she clung to him, crying out, as he laughed and laughed.

  “Keep fighting me, Giselle. Keep fighting me.”

  * * * * *

  39: THE STRENGTH IN YOUR HANDS

  Bryce had arisen before she awoke. She smiled as she grabbed his pillow and sniffed deeply. Once she had showered and dressed, she went downstairs to find him.

  She couldn’t and the house was quiet. Then she heard water running, possibly from a garden hose, and the sounds of squishing and metal on metal. She followed it out the back door to the long veranda and saw Bryce, clad in short denim shorts and steel-toed boots, most of his body exposed. His back to her, he mixed mortar in a wheelbarrow with a hoe. Nearby were two pallets of flat stones.

  The muscles of his back and arms bunched and unbunched under all those beautiful battle wounds. So. He was a stonemason in his free time. She leaned against the column of the porch, her arms crossed, and just watched him work.

  He never turned around, never saw her watching him while he worked the cement and sand and water, and she wondered if he used this to exorcise some demons or frustrations. Troubled then, as if she had peeped at something private, she went back into the house to see what she could see and make herself useful.

  She knew he had lemons be
cause she’d made the hollandaise sauce with juice she’d squeezed. She found some strawberries to puree and use as sweetener. They’d sweeten it enough for her, but probably not enough for Bryce, so she poured a quart of the lemonade for herself, then dumped a cupful of sugar into his jar and hoped she’d estimated well enough.

  When she finally went outside with the glasses, she saw him scoop mortar with a trowel, having begun his project while she’d made the lemonade. He barely glanced up at her before finishing his first course. She sat down on the top step of the porch and sipped her lemonade, watching him heft stone with one hand, slap mortar on it with the other, set precisely, and then tap gently, patiently, until satisfied it lay perfectly.

  No wonder his hands were so rough, so calloused. No wonder he could lift her so easily and put her wherever he wanted her.

  Her arousal crept up on her as she watched him twist and lift, set and level stone. She studied his hips and his ass and the outline of his cock where it nestled in his groin, all covered by a mere scrap of very tight, very revealing denim. She took a long look at his musclebound legs that disappeared into white socks, then the brown high-top boots. She sighed when she thought of what that body could do to her and had done to her and what more she’d like for it to do to her. What she wanted to do to it. She couldn’t stop staring.

  He was beautiful. And he was hers.

  Now, for the first time, she actually studied how much of his body was burnt, scarred, and grafted over. She couldn’t imagine what kind of physical pain he’d suffered, much less heartache over the loss of his family and the legal battles that had loomed in front of him at the time.

  She remembered the transcripts she’d read, the criminal trial of the electrical contractor whose work could most generously be described as shoddy and the city codes officer who’d passed the wiring—for a price. He had recounted every excruciating, horrifying detail for two juries.

  How he had pulled three of his four children out of his burning house, one dying in his arms from smoke inhalation and the other two just days from death. How his oldest child, Emme, had preceded him out and had fallen through the floor just in front of him. How it had taken him every ounce of strength to keep himself and his beloved cargo from falling into the same hole and to find another way out. How his wife had died somewhere else in the house. How he had been discharged from the hospital a year later, about as perfect as they could make him, then arrested and charged with arson and five counts of first-degree murder.

  “What are you thinking about?” he asked quietly, shaking her out of her reverie. He stood at the foot of the stairs, one hand holding a trowel and the other wiping the sweat off his mouth.

  “You. Your body. Your fire.”

  He grimaced as he climbed up the stairs and swung himself around and down to sit beside her. He picked up the glass meant for him and chugged most of it. “Thank you.”

  “Too sweet?”

  “Mmmm, coulda used a little more sugar.”

  “I have a hard time gauging that. I haven’t consciously had refined sugar in five years.”

  “What about all that chocolate you licked off my cock?”

  “Food consumed during sex doesn’t count. Everybody knows this.”

  “Oh really?”

  “Yes, besides, all that protein I swallowed canceled it out, like pizza and diet Coke.” He burst out laughing then and she smirked, happy that he was happy. “You didn’t tell me you worked stone,” she said once he’d calmed a bit.

  He shrugged. “Physical therapy. Plus, it’s the only thing my dad and I did together that we both enjoyed. It’s something of him I can hold onto.”

  “You really loved him.”

  “Yes. He was kind and gentle with everyone. He was very proper. I don’t think I ever heard him raise his voice or curse. My dad was the perfect example of what a Mormon man is supposed to strive to be. Everyone loved him. Somewhere in my gut, I always knew I was never going to be anything like him, but I tried.”

  “Knox said you were a very good father.”

  “It’s different with your kids. They’re small, helpless. The only thing I knew I’d do different from my dad was not to expect them to be someone they weren’t.”

  Giselle said nothing for a long while and neither did he. “You know, good LDS men come in a lot of different personalities. Take my bishop, for instance. He owns a construction company and he’s kind of rough and gruff. He and I have very, ah, interesting conversations at times.”

  Bryce slid her a look. “About what?”

  “Um, well, I have a tendency to say what I think, which occasionally doesn’t go over well with a few people in the ward and they complain. He tells me I need to stop ruffling people’s feathers, but then he asks me what I actually said to ruffle those feathers and that’s when the theological games begin.”

  “Uh oh.”

  “Exactly. He can be a real hard ass. At least, he is with me sometimes. Now, maybe it’s just because it’s me that he doesn’t see a need to go the kind’n’gentle route. But he doesn’t do kid gloves very well even when he should. He hurts a few feelings himself occasionally.”

  Bryce pursed his lips and then said, slowly, “I’ve never met a bishop who could be classified as a hard ass.”

  “Takes all kinds. That’s my point.”

  “I just can’t visualize that. My dad, he— He wouldn’t have approved of a bishop like that.”

  “Bryce,” she said hesitantly, “are you really okay with this? With us not being married first?”

  “I wanted it this way, Giselle. Are you having regrets?”

  “No, but you seemed so wistful about your dad that I wanted to check and make sure.”

  “What would your bishop say about us?”

  She sat for a moment, quiet, her mouth pursed. “Well, he knows me and he knows how much I’ve struggled being single and attempting to be chaste—and for how long. He knows how many other women in the church have the same problem. And before you and I had sex, I never thought about how much worse it must be for the divorced women and the widows.” She paused. “So, yeah. For all he jumps down my throat for spewing unpopular opinions, he’d understand. He wouldn’t like it, naturally, and the hard ass in him would feel obliged to mete out some punishment, but he’d understand.”

  Bryce glanced at her then. “He would? Really?”

  She nodded. “Yes.”

  “But would he understand your porn collection?”

  Giselle gasped and shoved at him when he laughed at her. “Cut that out. It’s not porn. It’s literature that happens to be a little erotic.”

  “Uh huh. He doesn’t know, does he?”

  She flushed and buried her face in her drawn knees when he laughed so hard he started to cough. Once he’d calmed a bit, he tugged at her until she looked at him. He smirked at the smile she worked to contain, but couldn’t. “I love teasing you. Would you and your literature move in with me some time today or tomorrow?” His amusement seeped away until only intensity remained. “I need you here with me, not just in my bed, but here, all around. Your clothes, your jewelry, your perfume, your stuff. Your presence. I need to know you want to be with me, that you want this to be your home. I feel like if you go home, you won’t come back, that this was all a dream. Please,” he added, as if it pained him to say it, as if he hated begging but would do so if only she would stay. The pleading and pain and need had grown evident in his face.

  Giselle saw the man inside the warrior, who needed her, who still ached and bled, no matter his protestations to the contrary. She laid her palm atop the scars of his face and caressed him. “You hurt.”

  He hesitated. “Sometimes.”

  She needed to know. “Were you hoping I could heal you?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  “I can’t heal your pain, Bryce,” she whispered. “I can only promise that I’ll do my best to make you happy in the here and now, in the future. I can’t take away what’s done, but I will li
sten when you need to talk and I’ll snuggle with you when you hurt. That’s all I can promise you.”

  “That’s enough.” He paused. “Giselle? What can I give you?”

  “Talk to me,” she murmured. “Tell me what happened to you. Trust me. Please.”

  He took a deep breath, held it, then nodded as he released it in a long whoosh. “Give me a few days, okay?”

  She nodded and they met in the middle, but it wasn’t a kiss of desire or arousal. It was a kiss of understanding, of shared burdens and ended as quietly as it had begun. Bryce wrapped his arm around her shoulders to pull her close in. They stayed that way for what seemed hours, but the sun only marked about an hour, if that.

  “Your mortar’s drying,” she murmured.

  “I can mix more.”

  “Tell me about the piano.”

  “Physical therapy, like the stone work. If I miss even a day, my left hand gets stiff and numb.”

  “You missed a couple of days when you were with me.”

  He laughed. “I was doing other things with my hands, in case you weren’t paying attention. That was just as effective.”

  Giselle blushed—again—which made him laugh even harder, and he kissed the tip of her nose. “I love that you blush so easily.”

  “Shut up,” she muttered and he chuckled. “When did you start playing?”

  He hesitated a moment, thinking. “Maybe, I don’t know, five or six? It was my mother’s dream that she’d have one child who played. That was the only area where I outshone my siblings. I played a lot of jazz improv in high school, got away from it in college. When my therapist found out I could play, she thought it would be the best thing for me, so I bought a piano. She was right.”

  “What’s your favorite?”

  “Anything that requires a very long hand span.”

  “Will you play for me?”

  “Tonight, when I usually do. Question,” Bryce said slowly. “You said you didn’t have enough money to reopen your bookstore. Is that something you still might want?”