Sweetened With a Kiss (4 page)

She couldn’t actually seem to stop her arms from going around him and her body from melting into his. She’d forgotten how big he was. He was easily over six three and years of training had carved him down to lean, hard muscle. It had never intimidated her before, but now, like this, she felt small, delicate, almost fragile.

Jen hated to feel fragile. Jen refused to feel fragile. She tried to pull back but his arm tightened and he tilted her head, taking the kiss deeper, teasing the hunger that always simmered below her surface until she was lost. She kissed him back, meeting the hot glide of his tongue, letting herself taste him, opening up even more to him, letting him in, dropping her guard, exposing her heart.

And the second she did, he eased back and broke the contact of their mouths. Her eyes flickered open to find his expression far from glacial anymore. The lust raging just below his surface singed her skin. Her lips parted and ached for him, but before she could kiss him again he set her away from him so quickly she nearly fell across the seat of the limo. It took her a second to register that all the delicious heat was no longer there. For one wild, hysterical second, she almost flung herself back at him.

He had shut them down the moment she had let go.

Lust boiled and transformed into an unfamiliar anger for Jen.  Probably for the first time in her life, Jen actually got mad at Stefan.  It was impossible to tell which one of them was more shocked when she said, “It must be nice having an on/off switch like that.  But don't bother flipping mine on again if you can’t handle the results.” She dragged air into her lungs, feeling like she’d just woken from a disorienting dream. She almost laughed at the way he was watching her as if seeing her for the first time. The smile that curved his perfectly sculpted mouth made her fingers curl and her nails itch to scratch his eyes out.

“Well, Paris was good for something.” His eyes glittered with amusement, but his breathing still wasn’t steady. “Our kitten grew claws.”

“Go to hell.” She crossed her arms against her chest so she wouldn’t lash out at him again. She sat up in her seat and threw her one leg across the other. Kitten? Kitten! She flexed her fingers wishing for a second that she did have claws. She was not fragile and she was certainly not a kitten.

“I’ll let you in on a secret, Jen.”

He was leaning close to her again but she refused to meet his eyes. The anger felt so good, and she positively clung to it. Her blood was finally moving through her veins again. She felt...alive. It felt great.

“I like claws,” he whispered, the husky voice sending wildfire rushing under her skin again.

She turned her head and found he was much closer than she expected. She had no way to describe the expression on his face, but it quickly melted into shock when she closed the distance between them and ran her tongue across his bottom lip.

“Meow,” she purred, and swallowed down bubbles of laughter as she watched at least fifteen different emotions clobber him at once. “I don’t need claws,” she informed him.

Thankfully his cell phone rang because her heart really was about to blow right out of her chest. She smiled to herself as she heard how rough his voice was when he answered the call. She bit the inside of her mouth to keep from laughing. She had no idea what had just happened to her. Never in a million years would she ever have thought she’d do something like that. She felt his eyes on her and slowly licked her lips. He made a slightly strangled noise and he was having trouble sitting still. Maybe he wasn’t quite as immune to her as she’d thought.

She’d gotten to him. She’d actually scored a few points.  Maybe she had grown claws. She watched her fingers as she flexed them. Her fragile kitten days were well behind her. And they were still going the wrong way.

“Where are we going?” she asked again, when the limo turned onto St. Charles.

Still on his phone, he just shook his head at her before turning away. She didn’t have to understand Russian to know he was aggravated. Whoever he was talking to obviously didn’t know him very well.  Stefan Sellers didn’t respond well to anything that wasn’t exactly the way he wanted it. She almost felt sorry for whoever was on the other line. Stefan was wearing them down, that was obvious even to her.

Trent stopped at a red light and a street car packed with tourists passed by. St. Charles was still full of activity at night. Jen loved the Garden District. She had lived here when she was a child with her parents before they were killed, so it felt like home even if her memories from before the accident were fuzzy.

She and Lizzie had gone to school on St. Charles until Katrina had forced them to evacuate. They had explored the neighborhood more than they should have as teenagers. When the limo stopped in front of the huge Victorian house on the corner of Nashville and St. Charles, she had to smile. She always loved that old house with its wrap-around porch, formal landscaping and elaborate wrought iron fence. It was not one of the fussier houses on the street. Unlike most Victorians it was very understated. Someone had painted it recently, but Jen was glad they had stayed with the original ivory color and not tarted it up. She noticed a carriage house had been added when the limo turned onto Nashville and pulled into the driveway.

The driveway? She turned on Stefan. His expression was completely blank.

“What is this?”

“Our house,” he said, his words crystallizing into ice as they hit the air. He didn’t wait for her response, just got out of the car and slammed the door.

When her heart started beating again, she took a deep breath. He really had just said “our house”. She knew her memory wasn’t the best in the world but she had not imagined that. “We don’t have a house,” she said, getting out on her side when Trent opened her door.

“I bought it last year. Rogan finished the renovations about three months ago. It was meant to be a surprise but you surprised me instead by running away to Paris.”

“I didn’t run away.” 

“No?” he asked, heading around to the front door after getting her suitcase from the trunk.

“I didn’t!”

“What do you call it then?”

“I applied to pastry school a year before you decided we should get married. I’m sorry if my life interfered with your plans,” she yelled after him, not knowing who the hell she was for a moment, but not really having a problem with this sudden change in her attitude.

Trent cleared his throat politely and Jen flushed bright red.

“Sorry. Thanks for coming to get me, Trent.”

“Go easy on him, Jen.  He’s been under a lot of pressure today,” Trent lowered his voice, glancing up at Stefan, who was still glaring at her from the wrap-around porch.

“I’m not making any promises,” Jen said, but she smiled and Trent seemed satisfied and got back into the limo.

She stepped up on the porch, easing around the old swing creaking on its chains. Stefan was still watching her with that pissed off glare and she started to tell him what he could do with it when something blue caught the corner of her eye.

Jen looked up, and her heart just stopped. The porch ceiling had been painted haint blue.

She closed her eyes against flashes of hot Georgia summer, lemonade, and Granny’s gnarled fingers spinning yarn into gorgeous afghans without patterns or sense. “The slaves claimed ghosts thought the blue paint was water. They won’t cross it so they won’t haunt your house.” Granny had explained when Jen asked why the neighbor boy was painting her porch blue.

That had been the summer before her parents were killed. Granny had been her only living relative and far too old to take her on after the accident. Granny had died six months later, leaving Jen completely alone in the world. Having no living family was a strange kind of emptiness. A hole that never quite closed. Jen had stopped expecting it to a long time ago.

Now, staring at the blue ceiling of the porch of her favorite house in the city of New Orleans, she discovered an entirely new level of pain and loss. Like the ring, this house was perfect. More of her dreams coming true for all the wrong reasons. And the worst part was he’d thought she would love it. He had no idea he was breaking her heart into smaller and smaller pieces.

He was still watching her, his expression completely unreadable except for the tightness around his jaw. He opened the front door and stood back waiting for her to go inside. She wanted to run the other way as fast as she could. Every single instinct screamed at her to flee. But running from Stefan would be about as effective as running from a lion. In fact, she’d have better luck escaping from a lion. Stefan could run a hundred meters in under twelve seconds if he tried. She wouldn’t get a step.

Stefan watched as Jen started to take a step back. Icy disappointment overwhelmed him and he realized he’d been holding his breath, waiting. Waiting for what? Not this step back. She was supposed to at least smile. She was supposed to burst into tears of absolute shock and joy. Launching herself into his arms would not have been out of place either. She wasn’t supposed to run away from him.

“Jen.” Her name escaped him before he could stop it. His voice sounded like gravel but it froze her in place. Then he heard himself say, “Don’t run.” The warning in his tone made his own blood run cold. He watched her go pale and her whole body flinch away from him. For at least the five millionth time today, Stefan wanted to break something.

This was not supposed to be happening like this. She loved this house. He’d listened to her and Lizzie dream out loud about the house on the corner of St. Charles and Nashville for years. They had made up the most ridiculous stories about the magical people who lived there and the huge parties and the dresses and everything little girls loved. Now she was staring at it as if it were a cell at Angola.

Irritated, he suddenly didn’t really care anymore. He’d bought her this house and spent a fortune remodeling it. She was damned well at least going to look at it. He held out a hand for her, giving her a chance to take it before he gave in to that lingering instinct to sling her over his shoulder.

She surprised him by taking it. She was trembling and that had him swallowing back the anger he never let himself feel. He pulled her inside a little harder than he’d meant to and flipped on the lights. Her sharp intake of breath gave him a little satisfaction as she pulled away from him to step further into the huge foyer. She turned in a circle to look at the monstrous chandelier and at the wooden staircase that wrapped around the two-story entrance so large a helicopter could have easily set down in it. Then she looked down, her lips parting in surprise and her eyes widening at the intricate black and white marble floors. Rogan had insisted they try to save the floors and Stefan had warned him not to even tell him what it cost.

In fact, Rogan had never actually given him a final figure on the renovations because Stefan really didn’t want to know. It hadn’t mattered. Jen had been through so much in her life. He’d wanted her to have the home of her dreams and he wanted it to be perfect. Better than perfect.

“Rogan saved a lot of the original fixtures,” Stefan told her now. “And the doors. We only had to replace about half the windows but they matched them pretty closely. And the mantles weren’t in bad shape. There are fireplaces everywhere. Some still work.”

Jen didn’t know where to look first. “Rogan’s a genius,” she breathed.

“Dining room’s this way,” he said. “Lizzie has furniture on hold at some of the antique shops in the city.”

Jen nodded, but she still wouldn’t look at him. So he watched her move through the huge dining room to the butler’s pantry that he’d been so sure she would love. Instead, she stopped dead, turned quickly on her heels and headed for the front door. It might honestly have been kinder of her just to gouge his eyes out. Stefan had only experienced the angry pain that blinded him as she swept past him once before in his life. He certainly hadn’t expected to feel it again and not under these circumstances.

Run. Run faster
, was all she could think. Her heart was beating like crazy. If she went in that kitchen she’d never want to leave. She would be well and truly trapped. And he knew it. He’d done it on purpose.