Authors: Sarah McCarty
“Desi?”
The male voice broke into her dream. Light flooded the mask, making her blink. She shook her head, confusion wrestling with memory.
“You feeling okay?”
Caine, not
him.
Desi took a shuddering breath, her hand going to her wrist. It was just a nightmare. She pushed the sheet off her face and sat up, still rubbing her wrist. Caine stood in the doorway. Light from the hall spilled into the room. “I’m fine.”
“Uh-huh.” Light flowed into the room as Caine lit an oil lamp. He put the glass chimney back down on the base and straightened. His gaze flicked down and then back to her face. “Nightmare come calling?”
“I have them sometimes.”
He rested his shoulder against the doorjamb. His shirt fell open, exposing his chest. “I’m thinking this one might be my fault.”
“It’s not.”
“After today’s events and the way I’ve been confusing you, it’s a wonder you’re not screaming when awake.”
He rubbed his palm over his chest. She flicked her gaze down over the muscle slabbing his abdomen, before looking back up. She tightened her grip on the covers.
“I’ll get the hang of things.”
“Not if you keep looking to me for direction, and I keep changing the game.”
Game? He saw this as a game? That explained a lot. “I’m fine.”
“No, you’re not, but you will be. I’ve decided we need to get this marriage back on the right footing.”
There was only one thing he could mean by that. She glanced at the window. The moon was low in the sky. It was late. And he was at the bedroom door half-dressed. That could mean only one thing. “You’ve decided to bed me again.”
His eyebrow went up. “Among other things. Does that scare you.”
Not as much as the unlimited potential of “other things.” She had a feeling that her experiences, which she had thought so vast, were woefully inadequate to what Caine wanted from her. She licked her dry lips and rubbed her wrist. “No.”
“Good. That’ll make things easier.”
She couldn’t believe how nervous she was. How scandalously excited. The lamp sputtered. Caine leaned down and adjusted the wick.
Muted lamplight, she decided as he straightened, was kinder than the sun to the violence etched into his large frame, the soft light mellowing the random network of scars slashed into the tanned skin of his torso. Some of those scars small, others long and deep, cutting into the powerful swell of his pectorals or across the rippled strength of his abdomen. There wasn’t a spare ounce on the man. Not an inch of softness she could pin her hopes to. Just well-developed muscle flowing over solid bone in a silent testament to the fact that this was a man in his prime. Confident, strong. Intimidating.
She took a slow breath through her nose, stilling the welling panic as the lamp on the table cast his shadow high up the wall behind him when he stepped into the room. Very intimidating. So much like her nightmare except she could look at him, which only seemed to make things worse. Nausea welled. She swallowed once, twice and, on the third try, managed to get her stomach down where it belonged.
She buried her fingers into the fold of the thick quilt that covered her legs, leaning back into the headboard, needing its support, uncaring of how the carvings cut into her skin through the thin linen nightgown. He was just a man, she told the panicked part of her soul. Just a man like any other. What was going to happen tonight wasn’t going to be any different than what she’d endured over the last three hundred seventy-eight nights. He’d make his demands, she’d meet them and then he’d be happy. Simple. Easy. Straightforward. It didn’t have to effect her any more than that.
Except it would. She knew it would because Caine wasn’t a stranger claiming what she didn’t willingly give. She’d made promises to him. Promises given under duress, but there was still enough of her old life in her that she felt compelled to try to honor them. As he neared the bed, those green eyes of his burned into her skin as if he saw every hesitation, every vulnerability. She searched his face for some sign of what he was thinking.
The lamplight that eased the violence of his past did nothing to mellow the harshness of his features, highlighting the sharp planes and deepening the hollows, enhancing the aggressive masculinity he wore so easily. The flickering light also played hide and seek with the signs she’d come to look for. Those subtle indentations around his eyes or mouth that told her whether he was amused, angry or biding his time. She sat up straighter in the bed.
The shadow from the canopy fell over the upper half of his face as he reached her side, cutting off even that venue from her search, leaving only the set of his mouth to give her a hint as to what he was thinking. And the slight quirk-up on the right side did nothing to throw the brake on her imagination of what a man like him would want in the bedroom from a woman like her.
“Nervous?”
She watched his lips part, saw them shape around the word; a heartbeat later processed the sound, and still she jumped as if he’d sneaked up behind her and shouted “boo.” In the wake of that, her automatic “Not really” sounded as foolish as she felt.
The previous quirk spread to a smile.
“Glad to hear it.”
The muscles in his chest flexed as his hands dropped to the waistband of his pants. She followed the gather and swell of muscle as it rippled under his skin, over his shoulders, down his arms, the biceps bunching before flattening into the sinewy strength of his forearms. His hands were large, the flesh on the back tanned darker than his chest. The first button on the pants gave, and then the next, exposing the thin line of hair that narrowed down toward the thick bulge below. As he worked on the third, she couldn’t shake the feeling that she’d jumped from the frying pan into the fire. With James and his cronies, she’d at least known they wanted her alive as a continued source for their pleasure. Even with
him,
she’d understood her role.
With Caine, she knew what he wanted, she just wasn’t sure she could deliver. It was a very strange position to be in. She licked her dry lips and concentrated on the ugly scar rising from beneath the waistband of his denims to arc over the jut of his hipbone, relying on the contrast of light-to-dark too stark to distract her from what he was. A man paid to hunt the worst of the worst. A man who lived and breathed the violence of this territory. A man she didn’t have a prayer of escaping. Her husband.
The man she trusted.
The knowledge spread through her. She trusted Caine, and in light of that, sitting here like a scared virgin was the most ludicrous thing she’d ever done. She smoothed the quilt, squared her shoulders and shook the fear from her posture with a toss of her head. Caine wanted her. He knew how to make her feel good, and if she just followed that to its natural conclusion, she could be what he wanted, because it was what she wanted, too.
The mattress dipped as he sat beside her, rolling her hip into his. She caught herself on her elbow, maintaining distance between them, focusing harder as her mouth went bone-dry and the power of speech deserted her. Weakness seeped in behind the cold, a warning that she only had a few minutes to regain control. She narrowed her attention to the rhythm of his pulse, focusing on the count as if her sanity depended on it. Which it did. This was the scariest thing she’d ever done.
One. Two. Three. Four. The silence dragged on as he sat there watching her swallow and choke because she didn’t have enough saliva left to complete the process. His expression told her nothing. Said nothing, leaving plenty of room for her to take herself to task for hoping. This land chewed up and spit out those who hoped. It had taken her father, her mother, her brother and her sister, but it wasn’t going to take her. Or so she had decided back when she’d given up hope, but now in this room, she found it was back. Because of her husband. The man who spun practical, everyday things into fairy tales. And now it was her turn, to either go for the hope or turn her back on it.
Caine’s shoulder slid between her and the light, taking her into darkness in one smooth move. The bed dipped the other way as he braced his palm beside her hip, jostling her concentration. She blinked, straining to see. Was that beat number six or seven? His fingers pressed hers through the quilt. The scent of pine soap and man surrounded her, reminding her that Caine had expectations that she had just disappointed with her blunt declaration. Where was her common sense? But she knew where it was—buried beneath the fear that had become her constant companion. Fear of being disappointed. Fear of disappointing. The loss of control. Fear could make people do the craziest things. Herself included.
She needed to regain ground. Her mouth worked twice before she found her voice. When it came out, it was a rasp of what she wanted, but at least each word was clearly spoken and evenly spaced. “I can pretend for you.”
Above her, Caine stilled. “What?”
The tendons in his neck constricted, telling her he was looking at her, but she wasn’t looking back. She could do a lot of things, but looking at a man while she proposed sex games was way down on the bottom of her list. “I can pretend to not know anything about this.”
“That’s darned obliging of you.”
Nothing in his voice let on what he was thinking. She shook her hair back over her shoulder and tracked the thrust of his collarbone, mentally estimating its length, breaking that down into halves and then quarters. Anything to keep herself from thinking about what she was doing. She shrugged. “I’ve done it before.” It was a favorite game of James’s. One she hated. “You just have to tell me how you want me to be.”
Another of those pauses that bothered her and then he asked, “Do you want me to guess or do you have options you can trot out?”
Two. She had exactly two. Neither of which she liked, but one was physically preferable to the other. “I’m real good at pretending I like it.”
That was a lie. Up until him, she hadn’t had a clue how a pleasured woman reacted and always failed to achieve it in the past. But this time, if necessary, she could probably fake it no matter what he wanted.
His “What else you got?” sent her heart to her toes. She took a breath and gathered her courage. If he was one of those who liked to prove his power by conquering a virgin, she was in for a long night.
“I can scream like it hurts while you’re taking me.”
“Shit.”
Just that, one low curse that told her absolutely nothing, and then he shut up.
But he didn’t go still. His hand came around her head, his thumb resting under her chin—dry, warm and rough. He had defeated her efforts to hide with frightening ease. The words came out of nowhere as her gaze reluctantly climbed the column of his throat under the force of his will, babbling like a brook over the well of her reserve, terror of disappointing him the driving force. If only he would tell her what he liked, she could make him happy. Her fingers instinctively rubbed her wrist, feeling the slight ridge where the bone had mended.
“I can scream like a banshee for as long as you need.” The set of his mouth wasn’t encouraging. “You won’t even have to hurt me to make it seem more real.”
She had plenty of memories to draw on and she’d long ago learned this was one place where pride gained her nothing. She caught his wrist in her hand, holding tight, as if, through the force of her grip, she could sway the outcome. She wanted to please him. “Honestly.”
Another nudge of his thumb and there was no more hiding. She had to look into his eyes. It was hard to see in the dim light, but she was reasonably sure the glitter there was anger. James had never liked it, either, when she’d tried to “manipulate” him. Her voice faded to a whisper. “I promise you won’t be disappointed.”
The words hung between them, suspended on the intangible thread of hope that refused to die. The thumb under her chin rubbed lightly back and forth.
“What if I don’t want you pretending?”
No anger colored his voce. No desire, no emotion at all. Just the same weighing of facts she felt in his touch. “I don’t understand.”
“What if I want the real thing?”
He couldn’t mean what she thought. “You want me to actually
be
a virgin again?”
The faint lines beside his eyes fanned out with his amusement. “Now, Gypsy, I think that’s beyond both our reaches.”
It took her a moment, but she finally understood. “You’re playing with me.”
“Nah, just tweaking your funny bone.”
“I don’t find it funny.”
“I can see that.”
His fingers opened around the back of her skull. At the same time, he leaned in, crowding her into the waiting cushion of his palm. His breath hit her forehead in even puffs that smelled of baking soda and something pleasant. Mint?
He’d brushed his teeth before coming to her. The small consideration wormed under her resolve, lodging in the growing bubble of hope. She gripped the quilt harder, the pain in her knuckles joining the pain in her neck. “Why don’t you just tell me what you want?”
“Because maybe I don’t want anything except what happens.”
He couldn’t be more difficult. “You don’t make sense.”
“I’ve been told that a time or two.”
He had to care about something. “Doesn’t it bother you?”
“Nope. Contrary suits my nature.”