BargainWiththeBeast (4 page)

Xavier stiffened. Something…hurt?…flickered in his eyes
before a glinting fury followed fast on its heels. He scowled so darkly, his
scar whitened and she fought not to shrink into the pillows.
Hurt?
She
scoffed. Must have been the residual effects of the fever. The mountain of
stone looming over her could never experience a human emotion like pain.

“That’s it exactly,” he growled. “You have no idea how close
you came to being fucked while you were delirious.” He skewered her with one
last disgusted glare before sharply spinning and stalking across the room. He
gripped the doorknob and yanked the door open, pausing only long enough to
bark, “Call whoever it is you need to notify about your stay being extended
since I won’t be able to collect for at least another two days. I believe in
getting my money’s worth.” He slammed the door behind him.

Gwendolyn gaped, the echo of wood cracking against wood
ringing in her ears.
Whoa
.
She replayed their conversation in her
head. What did he have to be angry—

Ah damn.
She wanted to smack herself in the forehead,
but her head ached already. How could she have been so stupid? So obtuse?
If
you had passed out behind the wheel instead of in my arms, you could have been
seriously hurt. Or worse.

Of course. He’d lost both his brother and father in car
accidents. Even if he didn’t care for her, the fact she could have been hurt
driving to his home because of their deal would have affected him. He probably
feared car crashes like most people feared snakes or heights. She sighed. And
she’d accused the man of being a horny asshole.

The only asshole in the room had been her.

* * * * *

Xavier lifted his hand to the gold doorknob of Gwendolyn’s
room. And paused. A low hum of anger simmered deep in his gut, but at least it
had cooled from the inferno that had raged when he’d left her room earlier.
Hours had passed before his fury had settled to a slow heat. During that time,
the doctor had come and gone, he’d had a lunch tray sent up to her while she
napped and he’d managed a few hours of work. Yet not until an hour ago had he
dug past the bullshit and his offended pride to the heart of the reason
cowering behind his anger. Gwendolyn had every right to be suspicious of his
motives. Hell, since the moment they’d reunited, he’d rebuffed her, blackmailed
her, and then shoved his hand between her thighs.

Yeah, he’d done a bang-up job of bolstering her confidence
in his character.

Yet acknowledging she had reason to suspect his concern
didn’t lessen the sting. Once upon a time she had been free with her smiles and
affection. Before Josh’s death six years ago and his father’s just this past
year. Before the disfiguring scar. Before his life had gone to shit.

Prior to the car accident, he would have never considered
himself vain or self-absorbed. His appearance and lifestyle had been things
he’d taken for granted. It wasn’t until after the bandages had been removed and
people stared as if he belonged in a cage like a sideshow freak—and those he’d
believed friends avoided him like the clap—he’d realized how much his life had
revolved around those superficial aspects. His eyes had been opened to how
shallow his life had been…as well as the people in it.

The truth didn’t prevent him from being bitter as hell,
though.

With a muttered curse, he twisted the knob and opened the
bedroom door. Gwendolyn reclined on a mound of pillows, her unruly curls a
bright halo around her head.

God, he loved her hair. Even when Josh was alive, her soft,
springy curls had been a source of erotic dreams. He’d envisioned snagging the
spirals in his fist as he dragged her head back for his mouth. Or imagined the
soft slide of them over his chest and stomach as she tongued a path to his
cock. Or dreamed of wrapping the curls around his flesh.

He’d never fantasized about fucking his ex-fiancée’s hair,
for Christ’s sake.

He stepped into the room and closed the door behind him.
Gwendolyn’s lashes lifted at the muted click. Her dark gaze locked with his.
Though still dulled by her bout with illness, the sharpness in her blatant
scrutiny threatened to peer too deep, see too much. He turned away.

“Dinner is almost ready,” he murmured, crossing the room and
pausing at the foot of the bed. “I thought you might like a bath before you
eat.”

Her delighted sigh made him swivel his head to face her.
Breath trapped in his throat, he thrust his hands in the front pockets of his
pants to keep from reaching out to her. Here was a woman who did not take life
for granted. Not when something as simple as a bath caused her lashes to lower
and the corners of her soft mouth to tilt in a grin of hedonistic bliss. His
heart hammered and he released his pent-up breath. It eased the drumming in his
chest, but did jack shit for the pounding in his cock. He longed to see her
cat-who-just-ate-the-cream smile as he rose from between her spread thighs,
after she’d just come on his tongue.

“I would give you my firstborn child, Rumpelstiltskin.”

His spurt of amusement caught him off guard. Laughter had
been in short supply for a long while and the tickle of humor was strange.
How…sad. Had his existence become so solitary, his bitterness so entrenched,
joy was an alien experience?

He cleared his throat and tugged on the bedcovers. “Not
necessary, since any child of yours would probably inherit your ‘hell on
wheels’ gene.”

“I was precocious.” Gwendolyn scowled at his snort, eased to
sitting and gingerly swung her legs over the side of the bed. The large T-shirt
he’d clothed her in bared smooth brown thighs and calves to his starved gaze.
With herculean effort, he tore his stare away from her lovely skin, but the
image stayed emblazoned in his mind.

With more care and gentleness than he would have believed
himself capable of, he grasped her upper arm and helped her stand. After two
bedridden days, her legs trembled and a slight tremor traveled up her body to
the slender, fine-boned hand clutching his forearm. Muttering a curse, he bent
his knees and hooked an arm beneath her knees while the other supported her
back. He straightened with Gwendolyn in his arms, pressed to his chest.

Her squawk of surprise echoed in his ear as she flung her
arms around his neck as if she dangled from a great precipice instead of
several feet in the air. He rolled his eyes even as he surrendered to a small
grin.

“Calm down, Gwen,” he said.

“What are you doing?” she ranted. “You can’t carry me. I’m
too heavy.”

“Don’t I know it. I think I may’ve slipped a disk.” He
grunted and grinned wider at her outraged gasp. Truthfully, in spite of her
height, she was a negligible weight in his arms. If she realized how much he
savored the crush of her breasts against his chest and the press of her soft
thighs over his arm, she would have demanded he lower her to floor. Good thing
his parents had raised a man intelligent enough not to mention the obvious.

Her protests continued into the spacious bathroom and didn’t
end until he lowered her to the top of the closed toilet lid.

“I can’t believe you did that,” she grumbled as he turned to
the large, Jacuzzi-style bathtub and twisted the faucets. Water gushed out and
filled the bottom of the tub in seconds. He wiggled his fingers under the
steady stream, testing the warmth. Satisfied, he whirled on his heel and
exited. It required only moments to gather a fresh pair of pajama bottoms and
one of the tank tops she’d packed, along with the vanilla-scented shampoo and
conditioner. When he returned to the bathroom, her scowl transformed into a
delighted smile as her eyes lit on the articles in his hands.

“Are you ready?” He placed the clothes and bottles on the
counter and stepped forward.

“Yes.” Her wide brown eyes dipped to the floor before
lifting to meet his once again. “Xavier, I can’t, um, get undressed with…” She
fluttered her fingers in his direction.

He grasped what she had a hard time voicing and suppressed
the automatic objection tickling his throat. Hell, who did she think had bathed
her and changed her sweat-drenched clothes for the past two days? The need to
protect her from further injury warred with her determination to preserve her
pride. He sighed. She was weak, uncertain and vulnerable. He understood her
need to have a tight rein over even the smallest detail when everything else
was spinning out of control.

“I will be right outside the door. Call me if you feel the
slightest bit faint or sick and I’ll come right in. Promise me?” Her relieved
nod was immediate and, though he would’ve rather been beside her in the room,
her grateful smile turned him into enough of a sucker to leave and shut the
door behind him.

He wedged his shoulder against the doorjamb and waited,
listening for any sign of distress on the other side of the door. When a soft
splash followed by a tired sigh reached him, he released his own gust of
breath. And relaxed.

The muffled sounds of her bathing became a form of exquisite
torture. Thanks to her illness, he knew exactly what beauty awaited in the
other room. Their forced intimacy had stripped away any barrier of modesty.
Animal lust had clawed at his gut even as fever had raged through her lovely
body. Of course he hadn’t sunk so low on the moral barometer he’d molested her,
but it would have taken an act of God to keep him from imagining those luscious
curves writhing under him in a heat not associated with illness.

Snorting with disgust, he grasped the knob and entered the
bathroom again.

“Dammit, Xavier!” Gwendolyn gasped. Water splashed and he
glimpsed smooth brown shoulders before she disappeared beneath the rippling
surface of the water. As if her hands and the small square cloth he’d left her
to bathe with would hide her body from him if he stepped to the tub’s edge.

Shit. He stifled a moan and wheeled toward the counter. His
heart and cock throbbed from the brief flash of flesh alone. She had been in
his home, sick for three days.
Sick, you perverted piece of shit.
Yes,
she was on the mend, but she remained as weak as a newborn foal. Gwendolyn
needed care, not out-of-control lust. He inhaled and willed the arousal away.
Splashes of water and her sputtered curses filled the room as she came up for
air.
Good.
He exhaled, the breath slow and even.
It’s all goo—
Fuck,
he wanted her. He closed his eyes, grabbed the shampoo bottle and held on as if
it were the last paddle on shit’s creek.

“Calm down, Gwen,” he said soothingly.
Hello, kettle. I’m
pot.
“I’m just going to wash your hair.” When he opened his eyes, the gaze
that met his in the mirror gleamed bright green with desire and anticipation.
The shadows of fear and longing for something other than her body that lurked
behind his arousal—he ignored those. He turned with the shampoo in hand and
faced her glare.

“I can wash my own hair,” she said, drawing her knees to her
chest and encircling them tight with her arms.

“You could,” he agreed and settled his hip on the wide lip of
the tub. “But I’m going to.”

“Fascist,” she snapped as he flicked the cap up.

Xavier snorted and shifted more of his weight onto the tub’s
ledge.

“That’s not what you called me two nights ago.” He leaned
forward, removed the cloth band she’d use to constrain her hair in a high
ponytail and drizzled a large dollop of clear vanilla-scented shampoo in his
palm. “Then I was Jesus.”

“I did not—” He tunneled his fingers into the thick strands,
scrubbing his palms over her scalp, and her protest morphed into a long,
satisfied moan. He smiled and continued the firm massage. “Oh my God, that
feels good,” she sighed.

The smile vanished from his lips as he conjured images of
her uttering the same words, arching over him as she took his cock in her sex.
Or of him savoring that same sweet flesh with his mouth.

“Xavier?”

The soft voice dragged him back to the present. His fingers
had stilled mid-stroke and Gwendolyn stared at him over her shoulder.

“Sorry,” he murmured, the word husky as thoughts of having
her wet, tight sheath surrounding him and the sugary spice of her on his tongue
flooded his mind. “Lean your head back so I can rinse the shampoo out.”

As he stood and removed the detachable showerhead from its
anchor, she snickered. “I didn’t really call you Jesus, did I?”

He couldn’t prevent the grin from stretching his lips any
more than he could have tamped down his lust. Water poured from the spigot in a
thunderous rush before he twisted another knob and the downpour switched to a
steady stream from the showerhead. He waved his fingers under the water to test
its warmth. Satisfied with the temperature, he lifted the nozzle to Gwendolyn’s
hair. The loose honey-colored curls darkened to caramel under the spray and
tightened into the corkscrews that had always fascinated him. Still did.

“Yes, ’fraid so.” He would have added she’d also poked his
chest and called him a lumpy but warm blanket as she’d burrowed closer to him,
but revealing that bit of information would involve explaining he’d slept in
the bed with her. Yeah, not the best time to expose how intimate they’d
actually become over the past two days.

“I don’t see why my supposed divinity surprises you,” he
said, setting the showerhead on the side of the tub. “I delivered your sweet
ass out of so many scrapes when we were younger, I might as well be your
savior.”

Her laughter bounced off the tiled walls. “You’re
exaggerating, Xavier. I may have been curious and…
active
, but I wasn’t a
terror.”

He snorted his disbelief and poured more shampoo into his
hand before rubbing it in her hair. Again Gwendolyn emitted a small moan and
the low, dark sigh rippled down his cock. His fingers tensed momentarily before
resuming the massage.