The Unwilling Bride (10 page)

He was lying right next to her. Only inches away. As if a slow motion camera, his dark gaze took in her naked body from toes to tummy to throat, making her feel unbearably exposed and vulnerable. Yet he didn’t touch her, made no move to continue that minddizzying erotic seduction. When his eyes shot back to hers, they held the black flame of desire, the raw honesty of need. Desire for
her,
need for
her.
Long, silent seconds ticked by, and yet still he did nothing, just waited, waited, waited.

With a groan of frustration she lunged for him. It wasn’t livable, feeling exposed to him this way, feeling
dared
by those smoky dark eyes. She pushed at the buttons on his buffalo plaid shirt. Pushed at the snap on his jeans, pushed at the zipper, pushed at the denim fabric.

Maybe it was only for this moment, this night, this lonely stretch in his life that he needed her. And she wanted to be that woman he needed, but she knew her movements were more awkward than seductive. It wasn’t something she could help. He was stuck with an unskilled, shook-up lover. She was no good at this. She’d been afraid too long of letting go to ever be good at this.

Stefan didn’t seem to get it. He responded as if every awkward, frantic movement she made was worth gold, as if she was worth priceless, treasured gold. He rewarded every damn thing she did with more wooing kisses, more ruthlessly intimate caresses, his pace matching her own wildness and encouraging, coaxing more.

Shadows spun. Somehow the spread slithered to the floor. Somehow blankets bunched beneath them. Somehow she forgot about being awkward and tense and turned hot, fever hot, for him, only for him. It was entirely his fault. Stefan was an earthy, lusty, hopeless hedonist who seemed utterly incapable of even noticing her inhibitions. He savored every plane and hollow of her body, with no mercy and more of that ruthless tenderness, and damn him, seemed to expect her to do the same.

His chest hair was the same dark coal as his beard, woolly, thick, as exotic to explore as his long rangy limbs. His textures, his scent, the hoarse sounds he made of praise and approval, that wicked tongue of his…she couldn’t get enough, could never have anticipated that learning him this way would be exciting and terrifying and so completely consuming.

Swearing in Russian, he suddenly reared back and pawed through the pile of clothes in the darkness for
a condom. He was back and sweeping her beneath him before her mind even registered what he was doing. He seemed to have forgotten all his English. He kept whispering to her in Russian, a slew of rough-soft, gruff-tender murmurs that he seemed to expect her to understand. She did. She could hardly miss the message in those wet-ebony black eyes. He was daring her again. Making fierce, intimate, unreasonable dares. In his eyes was the demand that she trust him. In his eyes was the desire to unravel every last ounce of sanity she had.

And the whole time he was talking to her, she felt the hot, smooth, shaft-hardness of his arousal, pressing, nudging, daring the entrance to the most vulnerable part of her. She expected to regain some sanity then, because she anticipated pain. How could it not hurt this first time?

And it did hurt, but she never anticipated a hurt this wondrous, this so beyond anything she knew. He moved so slowly, filling that emptiness, and it was as if her body knew him, intimately stretching to accommodate him, to take him in, to make him part of her. She felt as if she belonged, not to him, but with him, and his face was taut and strong and clear even in the shadows.

“Ya tebya lyublu,”
he whispered. “I love you. Love you, Paige.” Then a sudden smile after those grave words, a spare smile, dark with frustration and control and sheer wicked pleasure. “And you’d better hold on, lambchop. Because we’re about to take that trip straight to chaos.”

She couldn’t answer, couldn’t respond. Not when need suddenly clawed her by the throat. He started moving, thrusting inside her, catching the pulse and
pace of rhythm almost like music, a slow dance spinning into a symphony crescendo. His skin dampened, slickened, glowed. So did hers. Desire burned, hotter than friction, spurring emotions that she swore she couldn’t feel, didn’t know she could feel, spurring a rage of need for release.

This chaos was everything she’d been afraid of.

And more precious than anything she’d ever dreamed of.

It was him, she thought in those last few seconds before release finally exploded within, without, all through her. This could never have been right with anyone else. Could never have happened with anyone else. Only Stefan.

That thought, that emotion, comet-tailed her spin into ecstasy.

It was only later that she remembered there were huge and unignorable prices to pay for losing control. And the piper was waiting with the bill.

S
ometime in the wee hours, Stefan wakened to the sounds of a snowstorm. The wind lashed and wailed, thwacking branches against the windows and hurling hard-driving bullets of snow. It was an ideal night to burrow down, hibernating deep under the covers, preferably cuddled with a lover.

Stefan even had the lover he wanted to hibernate with, but sometime during the night Paige had escaped his cuddle. She wasn’t far. Only a pillow away. It appeared that she’d been studiously chewing on a fingernail and staring blindly at the ceiling for sometime. Nothing to see on the ceiling. Not even dust motes. The room was darker than a cave, with only flashes of white, blinding snow occasionally reflecting from a slit in the curtains.

He’d never had a woman respond to his lovemaking
before with a case of insomnia and a fretful chewing on a thumbnail.

He wasn’t sure whether to interpret her behavior as a killing blow to his masculine ego. Or a hopeful sign.

“You still awake?” he murmured.

Her slim white hand immediately shot under the blankets and laid still. “No, no, I was sleeping. I didn’t wake you, did I?”

“The wind screaming in the eaves woke me.” He found her hand under the cave of covers. Her fingers were ice-cold. Cold with anxiety, he mused, and guilt rumbled in his conscience in response.

He’d pushed her into making love, knowing she had some unspoken fears about passion and sex. Fears, maybe, about any situation where she could lose control, stemming from that teenage boy that she somehow still felt responsible for.

It raked against his ethical grain to ever push a lady, but he was fast running out of time and chances to be with her, much less woo her. Before tonight, he knew she had captured his heart. Before, he knew he was tumbling deep into love with her. And before, he had come to believe they belonged together, really belonged, not for some damn fool single night but for the long, lonely life haul. She was his match. His missing half.

And he’d hoped making love would help her reach the same conclusion. Surely she had seen the truth? The night had been unforgettable. She’d given, not like a yielding, but like an outpouring of emotions that had been trapped inside her forever. She’d come apart for him, like a flower opening for a life-giving drench of rain. She’d made him reel, the way no woman had
made him reel. If she didn’t realize that she had given him her complete trust, he did.

If it were his choice, she’d never leave his bed.

If it were his choice, for damn sure, she’d never leave his life.

“Stefan…?”

He heard the anxiety in her voice, and understood she wanted to talk. In principle, he believed whatever specific worry had her gnawing on that thumbnail needed to come out. But not quite yet. His fingertip traced the line of her jaw. “Did I tell you how beautiful you are, lambchop?”

“Yes.”

The flush of heat skating up her long white throat delighted him. “Did I tell you how much I value the gift you gave me, that no one ever moved me as you do, that I love your nose, your toes, your knees and that exquisite tiny mole on your fann—”

“Yes.”

More heat, more curling nerves—all in her eyes now. “And did I tell you that I love you,
lyubeesh?”

“Stefan…you don’t love me.”

Her denial was immediate, her voice a whispered rush. So there, he mused, was the source of all that anxious fingernail chewing. “No?”

With his arms pinning her close, she couldn’t skitter away from him, but her eyes shifted, bolting away like a nervous colt. “I don’t know what happened tonight. I can’t explain it. I’ve never just…” A white hand showed up over the covers, making some gesture that apparently was supposed to talk for her. “For heaven’s sake, I never ripped off a man’s clothes in my entire life.”

“Perhaps,” he said gravely, “this is a difference in perspective. Speaking from my shoes, I could not be more thrilled you chose to vent this particular impulse on me.”

“Don’t tease.”

“Okeydoke, my toots, no more teasing. We are…urn…suffering guilt, I take it? Not to worry. I can get into this. Russians are born with angst. Working up a good brooding guilt is an inbred specialty. Russians love suffering.” Deliberately he hesitated. “But I am not exactly sure what we are suffering for?”

“You wretch. You’re trying to make me laugh.” Her fingers curled in his beard, tugged. For a moment there was humor in her eyes—exactly what he’d intended—but it didn’t last. “Be serious with me, Stefan,” she said quietly.

“Okay. No kidding now, tiger. I am listening.” Beneath the covers, his hand slowly skimmed down her side, the caress both protective and possessive. He
was
listening. But Paige was always more rattled when he touched her. And she was predictably more honest when she was rattled.

“I don’t know what you want. What you expect now.”

“Hmm. We invited chaos, and now you’re afraid there is a price to pay.”

“Yes. Exactly. One of these weeks, you’re going to move on. You only temporarily set up here, to get your bearings until you made up your mind about a job.”

“There is no university here,” he agreed, “and I must make up my mind about a job fairly soon.”

“I understand. But my home is here. A home that matters to me. When my parents retired to Arizona,
they wanted to sell the house and really raised hell with me about staying in the rattling old place alone. But there’ve been Stanfords there since the 1700s. It’s our roots, our family home base, the source of all the family history. I just can’t give it up.”

He wondered if she expected him to buy this red herring. Paige valued truth as fiercely as he did, and God knew there was honesty in her eyes. But he already knew that she had strong emotional and loyalty ties to her family and that house. And her bringing this up at all revealed that a future together had been on her mind, including the problem of where they might live. “Did you think I would ask you to give up your home?” he asked her.

She touched his cheek. “I don’t know. But it’s not just that. I can’t see you happy with a fling, Stefan, something short-term, something with no ties. From everything you’ve told me about your life, you just never take that road. No matter how tough the odds have been, you’ve never settled for anything less than what really mattered to you.”

“Loyalty and commitment are values I can’t shake,” he admitted. “A fling is for boys. A waste of time, a waste of heart. You could not be more right, toots. I want it all or nothing—a woman who is willing to take all the risks with me, as I am with her.”

He’d expressed his heart before; none of this was headline news. Yet her eyes responded as if she’d been punched. He saw her swallow. Felt her whole body go still. “That’s what I’m trying to be honest about, Stefan. I can’t be that risk taker you want. In the longterm, I just don’t think we’d work. I’m too cautious and careful and too much a boring plodder by nature.”

Stefan considered pulling out the hairs in his beard. In painful tufts. Her voice was so earnest, her gaze so sincerely troubled. Yet her self-perceptions were so opposite to what he knew of her that they were crazy. His so-careful lover had taken every naked risk with him there was. His so-cautious lady had been compellingly wild and free when she was in his arms. His so-boring plodder had so much rich sensuality and passion inherent in her nature that it poured from her like a river. And in her life, she had chosen a career path and life-style that showed guts and strength, marching to no one else’s drummer. “You think of yourself as cautious.” He echoed her blankly.

“I
have
to be, Stefan.” She took a breath. “When I was a kid, no one expected me to amount to anything. I was on a fast track downhill, a rebel with any excuse for a cause, a black sheep in the making. My parents, my family and background were wonderful—there was no
reason
for my being so awful.”

“Awful,” he repeated.

“It stemmed from hormones then. I acted on impulse. Leaped into every situation blindly, selfishly. Stefan, I hurt people.”

“Cookie,” he said quietly, “that was many years ago. And if there is a soul who can escape living without hurting someone, I have yet to meet them.”

“I don’t want to hurt you!”

“And you are so sure you will?”

“I’m sure that my behavior tonight wasn’t me. I’m sure that you’re in a strange, new place and right in the middle of changing your whole life. I think that loneliness could easily be affecting your feelings for me. And if we become too attached, you’ll be hurt.”

There was nothing in this he could argue. His life
was
in the process of upheaval; he could not claim to be settled. If this was the nature of chaos she feared, though, it had never shown up in her behavior, her touch, her eyes.

She had yet to tell him that she didn’t love him, didn’t care—or that she was afraid of being hurt herself. A fear of hurting him seemed to trouble her far more, adding a deeper spin on the problem he hadn’t considered before. Somehow the incident with that teenage boy seemed to have convinced her that she was responsible for protecting others from her wicked, wicked ways. She could not hurt anyone else if she were cold, if she were a good girl, if she never let loose a hormone or a desire, never laughed too loud or cried too hard. That she was trying to shut herself off from all the riches of life and experience did not seem to occur to her.

Stefan certainly recognized there was a level where her fear was real. She could hurt him. Badly. Maybe irrevocably. But he could lose the chance for a lifelong soul mate if he didn’t take the risk.

And somehow, someway, he needed to show her that certain risks were the only ones in heaven or hell worth taking.

“So,” he said slowly, “you think we should fight this attachment?”

“I think we should be reasonable. And careful. Especially careful to be truthful with each other.”

“Truthful with each other.” His tongue wrapped around that word. “Yes. I promise you, fiercely promise you, my lambchop, that I will never be less than honest with you.”

There. That was all he had to say to see the rage of relief in her eyes. Her whole body relaxed. Her soft mouth curved, almost turned into a smile…

Until he swept her beneath him.

When Paige pushed open the front door, she felt like a stranger walking into her own house. The answering machine was blinking. Three days of newspapers and mail had accumulated, three days of fresh dust. Whole intimate parts of her body were tender and self-aware, and she hadn’t even come home for fresh clothes in the past seventy-two hours.

She hadn’t needed clothes. Fresh or otherwise. Maybe an alcoholic after a binge had memory blackouts like this, only she hadn’t had a drink. Even a sip of wine. And though she was confoundly confused how the past three days had happened, certain memories were crystal, indelibly clear. She’d made love with Stefan by the fire in his living room, in his bed, on the kitchen counter. They’d christened almost every room in his house and certainly his navy blue couch. They’d nearly killed themselves in the bathtub, but that hadn’t stopped them, either. Nothing had stopped Stefan.

Or her.

She pushed off her jacket, hung it on a hook on the wall tree, tossed her hat and gloves on the closet shelf, struggling to convince herself that she hadn’t gone stark, raving insane. Maybe at some level her behavior was understandable. Maybe if you’d been buttoned up for a dozen years, the kiss of a prince was always going to bring on a spell of enchantment.

It was just damn terrifying that she couldn’t seem to make herself wake up from it. Not for three long days.
And not now, even though she was home, and everything around her was mundane and normal and comfortingly real-life.

She’d left Stefan napping on the couch. Years ago, she’d shaken smoking, beat her chocoholic craving, and licked her lead-foot-on-the-accelerator habit. If she just removed herself from the damn Russian’s presence, she could surely shake his hold on her, too.

The telephone jangled just as she was crossing the hall. She snatched the receiver before it could scream in her ear a second time. She recognized her sister’s voice. Gwen, no different than Abby, rarely wasted time on a greeting before starting in.

“He’d better have offered you a ring before sleeping with you, or I’m flying there and punching him right in the nose. And you can take that promise right to the bank.”

Paige sank onto the third stair. Perhaps she’d been precipitate in her previous opinion. She was hungry for her work, for her cameos and that whole side of real life. But lingering in fantasyland would be a lot easier than dealing with her sisters. Either of her sisters. “I beg your pardon? Did I miss a hello and how are you in this conversation?”

“You slept with him, didn’t you?”

“Is there a reason on earth you would suddenly leap to this extraordinary imaginative conclusion?”

“Of course there is. You haven’t answered your phone in days—”

“You
know
I don’t always answer the phone when I get busy with work.”

“But you always quit working by nine, which is why we’ve always called each other at night. So if you didn’t answer, you weren’t there. And if you didn’t tell
either Abby or me where you were going, that means you didn’t want us to know. So you were with that guy. That neighbor.” Gwen stopped to yell something to the boys. Regretfully it didn’t break her concentration. “Abby’s thrilled spitless you finally found a man to push your buttons, but Abby would never let a man interfere with her career or her life. She isn’t you. So don’t listen to her advice, listen to mine. Don’t you mess with anyone just because he has a bucket of charm.”

“Yes, Gwen.”

“Don’t you fool around unless he’s serious. A guy who’s looking for a little excitement on the side can really mess with your mind. Believe me, I know.”

“Yes, Gwen.”

“I’m not giving you mom’s lecture on morality. I don’t care about morality. I’m talking about you. You never could take anything light. Every cause with you was always heart and soul. And this guy’d better value that or I’m gonna kill him.”

“Yes, Gwen.”