Priceless (14 page)

“YOU liked this last night so I hope another blueberry mojito is okay.”  I held out the glass to her as I came up to where she was waiting for me opposite the dance floor.  The fact she was waiting for me at all and not trying to ditch me was a nice place to start, I thought wryly.

She accepted the drink and took a sip.  “Oh, that’s strong, but it’s good.
  Thank you.”

“My
pleasure, of course.”  I tilted my head, wanting to show her I did possess some manners even if she’d never really witnessed them from me thus far.  I could tell she was a complicated woman, but it was the fact she was a total mystery, that captivated me more.  I needed to peel away her layers and discover her secrets one by one until there weren’t any more to know.  She drove me to wanting to know everything about her.

H
er eyes flicked down and away from me.

My eyes on her stayed put.

I finally had her semi-alone, and since she wasn’t running for the moment, I needed to get my fill of looking.  The warm summer breeze fluttered her gauzy lavender dress and pressed it against the definition of her legs and breasts.  Intoxicatingly female.  She was also a woman very finely made.

Her hair moved
, too.  I wished she would look at me so I could see what was in her eyes.   Eyes were sometimes all you needed to see to know how a person felt about you.

I was still trying
very much to understand her motives.  Why she had been so connected at the gala, and why she kept running from me now.  I sensed there was far more than my error in mistaking her for an escort. 

I hadn’t been very successful
so far but there was one thing I was dead certain about.  Gabrielle Hargreave was really struggling with our attraction.  It was real, and right now I could feel the heat coming off her as strong as the first time we’d met in that back gallery hallway two months ago.

“This who
le thing is priceless you know, you being Brynne’s friend I was supposed to meet and ask to have a look at my paintings.”

She
finally let me see her eyes, but the smile she gave didn’t reach them.

“Yeah, pretty muc
h in agreement with you there,” she said softly.

“Why does it make you sad, Gabrielle, because I’m not.  I wanted to see you again
after the gala.  I tried to find you.”

“I’m not sad,” she said softly.

“You are.  I see can see it in your eyes.  But you don’t have to be.”  I brushed a strand of hair back and tucked it behind her ear.

S
he froze when I touched her, a current of energy snapping between us.

She held my eyes this time
.  “It’s mostly that I’m so ashamed of my behavior with you at the gala.  That’s the honest truth, Ivan.  If that night had never happened then I imagine our first meeting would have gone down much differently.”

S
he felt shame for her reaction to me in that storage closet?  I didn’t like that idea because shame had nothing to do with it.  She’d done nothing shameful by being with me.  Which left me with one conclusion as to why she was ashamed.  Somebody had hurt her badly in the past and taught her to feel that way.  She was far more fragile than I’d ever imagined.

I didn’t like that
idea, either.

“Let’
s walk.”  I held out my arm.  “The lake is pretty at night with the moon and stars shining.”

She e
yed me and thought about it, standing there mouthwateringly gorgeous with her dress moving softly in the night breeze, holding her drink with both hands.

“It’s
okay; I’m completely calm and mellow right now.  At your suggestion, I’ve been reading up on my notes from Being a Human 101.”

She laughed, transferring her glass to one hand and taking
my arm with the other. “I hope it helps.”

“It probably won’t, but I’m sure you’ll tell me
when I need to brush up on the main points.”

“It
is
pretty out here.  You were so right,” she said, looking up at the full moon making the night quite bright for the lateness of the hour.

“In all things of nature ther
e is something of the marvelous,” I quoted.

“Aristotle, right?” she asked
, still looking up at the sky.

“Correct.”  I
brought my hand up to the back of her neck to steady her as we walked the footpath toward the lake.

“I had to study the classics at university much to my dismay.”

“And you hated it?”

“It just didn’t inte
rest me at the time, but there was value in it I suppose.  Like this lake at night with the moon and stars shining overhead.”

She looked out at the view and studied it
for a moment.  Her beautiful face and body framed like a portrait against the night.  My hand stayed put on the back of her neck, my thumb rubbing tiny circles just behind her ear.

“It
is
something of the marvelous, Ivan,” she whispered up at the sky.

“I know.”

She didn’t even realize I was referring to her…and not the view of the lake, or the celestial night sky.

Another moment later s
he leaned back against my hand, and tilted her head toward me.  She looked right at my lips.

I’d never look a gift-horse in the mouth, not in a situation like this one, and with Gabrielle’s beautiful face turned toward mine, with an expression of desire reflected in her eyes, i
t was enough of a signal for me and I took it.  I took her mouth.

My hand at
her neck tugged and pulled her to my lips.

I heard the crash of her drink glass
hitting the deck, and felt her fingers weave their way into my hair.  I didn’t stop.  And I don’t think anything could have made me stop.

I was never going to stop
kissing her.

I wanted her too badly
, and my head was reeling at the possibilities.

Was she the woman
I believed didn’t exist?  She was here in front of me, in my arms, my tongue in her mouth.  She felt real even if my head was totally fucked up with the thoughts and ideas spinning around inside it.

She
tasted like berries and rum and mint, and lush, soft female.  Gabrielle Hargreave had transformed from the stiff beauty who’d just told me a few minutes ago she was ashamed of what she’d done before, into the gentle creature who now let me lead her, soft and submissive, exactly where I wanted to take her.

My bed. 
Her underneath me.

But there was no privacy here with so many guests everywhere poking thei
r noses into what everyone else was doing.  No, this place wouldn’t work for what I wanted to do with her.

The taste of her tongue tangling with mine
hit me hard in the balls and made the decision for me.  The idea came all in a perfect epiphany as I heard the soft laps of Lake Leticia slapping against Nelly’s floats.

I knew exactly
where we were going.

“IVAN
, are you sure about this?” I asked as he buckled my life vest and then did the same with the seat straps.

“
Oh I’m very sure about taking you for a ride in my plane.”  He leaned close and kissed me expertly, leaving me breathless again.  He pulled on the straps to check them and said, “Safety first, Miss Hargreave, but you’re going to love this, trust me.”

I still wasn’t completely sure what had just happened with him.  One minute he was reminding me how well he could use his lips on me, and the next he was pulling me toward his plane and asking if he could take me up
for a ride.

He said,
“Trust me.”

Could I trust Ivan Everley?
  Should I trust him?

He
’d looked so serious when he asked the question, holding my face in his hands and waiting for my answer. I think I would have devastated him if I’d told him no.  I thought about it.  I should have told him no.  I think the four, or was it five, berry mojitos might have had something to do with my acquiescence, but he looked so happy when I agreed to go.

One of my many flaw
s is that I am a risk-taker at heart.

I’ll try anything once.

So, when Ivan suggested we take a night flight in his Cessna floatplane, takeoff from the water, and look at the city lights of England under a summer full moon, I said, “why not” and let him put me in his plane.  Again, the mojitos helped me come to my decision to go with him.

“You were
totally right, the city lights are so incredibly pretty from up here.”  I peered out the window thoroughly enjoying the view from the air.

“You
r lack of fear impresses the hell out of me, Miss Hargreave.”

“Why do you call me that all the time?  It’s so formal.” 
The alcohol had loosened my inhibitions and all kinds of questions started pouring out of me, but he didn’t seem to mind answering.  So, I kept asking.

“I like formalities…
sometimes…as you’ll learn,” he said deliberately.

“Because you’re a lord?”

He gave me a snort.  “No, that’s not why.”

“Who taught you to fly a plane?”

“My uncle arranged for me to go to flight school when I was at university.  He thought it was appropriate for his heir to know such things.  It was something I really took to heart.  I loved flying from my first lesson.”

“Why did you love it?”

He shrugged.  “The freedom I suppose.  Troubles seem less important from up here.  At least it’s always felt that way to me.”

“Are we flying over the ocean right now?”  I couldn’t see any more city lights and it made sense.

“That is the Irish Sea below us.”

“Do
you ever land this in the ocean?”

“No.  That’s the thing with
floats; they only work in very calm waters.  The ocean is far too rough and landing in it would not be safe, trust me.”

“You keep telling
me to trust you.”

“I know I do.”  He reached his hand over to mine
and brought it forward to rest on his lap.  “Is it working?” he asked hopefully, pulling it up the rest of the way to his lips.  Ahhh, so he could do romantic, too.  Deadly combination Mr. Everley had going on.

“Well, I’m trying really hard to trust you.  I let you take me for a ride in your plane when I
could be putting my life at risk.  I mean, how should I know if you’re a licensed pilot and have the proper skills to land on a lake?”

He flashed me another of those teeth
-baring smiles.  They were very white and even, but he had the gap between the front two.  Sometimes imperfections were more beautiful than the absence of them.

“You’re about to find out.  Here we go.”

He had to release my hand to work the controls and do his checks.  His hands moved in precise motions, focused and confident.

I was m
esmerized as I watched him work to prepare the plane for landing.

He banked toward the
left before leveling it out to descend rapidly and drop us just a few feet over the dark water of the lake.  We skimmed along for a bit until the swoosh of water grabbed the bottom of the floats and immediately slowed our momentum.  In a matter of seconds we were no longer propelled through the air, but floating in water and gliding along smoothly like a sailboat.

Amazing.

“Wow, that was so—so awesome.”  And I really meant it.

“So, you enjoyed that
, did you?”

“Yes.  It was beautiful.”

He looked at me and said, “You’re beautiful.”

That he thought so made me feel good inside, but still I had to look away.  Whatever we were doing was still too new for me to process completely
, and made me feel shy.  Plus all of those drinks…

I focused on what was
outside my window instead.  The landscape looked different to me from when we’d taken off from Hallborough.  The lake looked bigger and there were far fewer lights than I remembered.  Only the moon lit up the night sky.

“Did you land us on the other side of the lake from where we took off, or something?” I asked.

“You could say that.”

“Oh…”

I was confused but he seemed to know what he was doing as he steered the plane along through the water.  After a few minutes he slowed and carefully navigated toward what looked like a concrete ramp.  The sound of wheels turning as tires met a hard surface surprised me.  He drove the plane right out of the water and onto a dry dock that seemed to be specially built for the purpose.  It had a roof and everything.  Like a parking spot for a plane.

This wasn’t Hallborough at all.

“We’re not at Hallborough anymore.”  My words sounded as if I was trying to convince myself.

T
rying to convince myself that I hadn’t just been kidnapped.

“
No, not Hallborough,” he said clearly.

“Where have you brought me, Ivan?”  I could hear the panic in my own voice.

“Remember what I told you at dinner last night?  That you would come back after the wedding?  Well, the wedding is over.”

“Iv
an, where have you brought me?”  I repeated the question even though I had a pretty good idea.  And my voice had moved past panic and off into HystericalLand.

“Donadea,” he whispered.

“You fucking bastard!”

He grabbed me by the shoulders and forced me to look at him.

“I want you to listen to me before you have another freak out, okay?”

“You have to take me back
to Hallborough, Ivan.”

“I will. 
I promise you I will take you back, but just not tonight.  Gabrielle, please—please give me this night.  With you…here.”

I tried to understand what he was asking. 

“You said you were ashamed of what we did before and I gather you have your reasons.  I’m not ashamed of anything we did together that night.  I want to do more.  Much more, Gabrielle.”

I struggl
ed to get out of his grip on me but my senses were dulled from the alcohol.

“
Just listen for a moment.”

“No, you tricked me—”

He slammed his lips against mine to shut me up.  It worked.  And once he started in with the nibbling and sucking on my bottom lip I no longer wanted to get away.  His kisses drugged me into compliance and took me to a place where I didn’t have to think about anything, or make difficult decisions.  I could just feel good.

But
Ivan knew all of this about me already.

“
Here we can be totally private and nobody will ever have to know.  If that’s what you want, we can do this in secret and not tell anyone.  This is Northern Ireland—a virtual wilderness.”

“Ivan…”

“Just me and you doing what we’ve wanted to do from that first night. I’m right, aren’t I?”

I took a deep breath and drew up a finger to move his hair behind his ear.  It felt so good to touch him
, and he
was
right.

“
Give me the rest of the weekend alone with you,” he told me as he pulled the palm of my hand to his cheek and held it there.

“
I don’t have any clothes.”

He
smirked and tilted his head.  “You won’t need them.”

“
You just want to fuck me, Ivan.”  I waited for his response to my statement, watching his eyes for the truth.

He shook his head sharply.  “
No, that’s not completely true.  I want to get to know you and…explore…what I think we have going on already.”  He held one side of my face with his other hand and said the rest. “In addition to the fucking.  I want to do that, too.  Over and over again, I’ll admit.”

His eyes seared me while my brain conjured all sorts of pornographic images of him and me doing that very thing.  W
hat would it be like with him?

And
I truly did want to know how it would be.

I shivered at his blunt speech.  At least he was being honest with me about
his desires.  Did I dare give him back the same honesty?

“
If there’s anything you don’t want to do just tell me.  I’ll respect it.  I follow the rules,” he said carefully, his hand still holding my face, his thumb rubbing my jaw.

Rules.  I’
d pledged to rules before and it involved not going into another entanglement like Ivan was offering.  And this was what he was suggesting to me.  I understood him crystal clear.  He was a dominant in the bedroom, and he was very aware of what I was, too.  Could I do sex just for the pleasure of it with no emotional attachments? I didn’t even know if I could.

“
Trust me, Gabrielle.  That’s all you have to do right now.  We have to begin somewhere and I’m asking you to start by trusting me for just this one night.”

“I’
m afraid of trusting a man again,” I whispered.

“I can tell
, and it bothers me.  Very much,” he said softly as he pulled me under his lips with a hand at the back of my neck.  His kiss was sweet at first, but then he opened his mouth wide and covered mine completely, plunging his tongue inside in an act of dominance that stole away my hesitation in the same moment as he took control.

When he was finished with the kiss he
held my face firmly with both of his hands.  “I know you want this.  I know you’re curious.  I know I can’t stop thinking about you.  I don’t want to stop,” he said harshly, “I want to go all the way with you until we both know what that feels like.”  He whispered, “I know it will feel so good.”

His deep green eyes searched mine, his thumbs brushed along my cheekbones, his body throbbed along with my heart—and I knew I was going to agree.

“So, can we do this, my lovely Miss Hargreave?”

I closed my eyes in a pathetic attempt to find some strength but there was none to be
had.  I wanted to be with him, too.  Was he really handing this decision over to me though?  He was such an attraction to me and had been from the first moment I ever laid eyes on him.  I wanted to know what it felt like to have him over me at least once.  I wanted to find that place in my head my body craved, and I tried to deny.  I wanted to go there with this beautiful man who kept telling me I was beautiful to him.  I wanted to be with Ivan Everley more than I’d ever wanted to be with any man.  And nobody would have to know.  We were all alone here at Donadea, and that did take away a lot of my hesitation.