Bound to Be a Bride (7 page)

Javier reached his other hand around to the low curve of her belly, thrusting her even more forcefully into him. His face was inches from hers, his eyes inches from those lips as they savored and taunted and sucked on him. Her lashes fluttered, black against the pale, delicate skin just below her eyes. Then her eyes flew open when his other hand moved lower, skimming her warm mound through the layers of fabric.

Her groan and increased suction on his finger encouraged him to continue. He looked quickly to his right and left, relieved that they were still alone on the quiet street.

“You know what to do, Isabella…” He began rubbing her slowly, then with increasing pressure and speed. He watched her closely as the surprise and then joy of his movements fanned her desires.

When the orgasm overtook her, she bit down onto his knuckle and small tears sparkled at the corners of her eyes.

He kissed her everywhere, lightly, tasting her tears, lingering at the edge of her lips, her temple, behind her ear. “Oh, my Isabella, you are a wonder.”

She released his finger from her mouth and put her forehead on the back of her hand, which was still resting against the stucco wall to keep her standing. “I didn’t know it could happen when I was awake.” Her voice was quiet and mystified, as if she were waking from a complicated dream. She turned in the circle of his arms and faced him, letting her shivering muscles recuperate against the warm, rough stone behind her. She reached up and caressed his cheeks with both of her hands.

“What about your husband?” he asked with grave concern.

“What?” She was lost in the amber and golden sparks that radiated through the dark caramel brown of his luscious eyes. Eyes that incarcerated her. She might have wanted freedom, but she would be a slave to those eyes for the rest of her life.

“Your husband,” he said, shaking her shoulders to jar her, then smiling slightly.

She gave him a guilty smile in return.

“There is no husband, is there?”

She looked down at the cobblestones while she composed her answer. Should she tell him the truth? That she had been promised to another? Quite officially promised. Betrothed.

“You are quite the worst liar, Isabella. Just tell me the story, please.”

She looked at him and raised one eyebrow. “I am certainly not the
worst
liar. I lied quite competently to my lady’s maid—whose name is Sol, by the way—and to my father, and to everyone else in… in my past who tried to imprison me.”

“I admire your defiance, and the intelligence it must have taken to plan it, but I need to know who, if anyone, will be coming after me… us.”

“Oh, how I like the sound of
us
,” Isabella crooned, pushing her hips toward him in a provocative motion.

“You are a quick study, aren’t you?” He moved her hips away from his and smiled when her little pout replaced her first amateurish attempt at a look of seduction. “We’ll have plenty of time for that, my lady. In the meantime, you must tell me: Who will be looking for you? And how soon? Did you leave at dusk so they wouldn’t discover you until the next day?”

She leaned her face into the fabric of his shirt, warm across his chest. They were both filthy from the days of traveling, but she found herself inhaling the rich scent of his sweat and the leather of the horses and the earthy aroma that she had been dreaming of.

“Why does it matter? We will be on the ship before nightfall, won’t we?”

“What are you hiding, my lady?” He cupped her chin with his firm hand and she leaned her lips down to kiss his palm.

“It’s over. That life is over. Please.”

He stared at her, her eyes, the aristocratic turn of her nose, the plump red lips. “I suspect someone is very, very disappointed by your absence.”

“Javi—”

He pressed the pad of his thumb against her lips to silence her, and the minx bit him. He smiled and continued, “But, if you wish to put it behind you, for now I will allow it. I have my ways of making people tell me their secrets.”

She smiled wickedly at that. “That’s a torture I will very much look forward to, my lord. Though I’m not sure you’ll have to work too hard, if you are able to…” She blushed at her own audacity and looked down.

“Aaah, yes.” He lifted her face again so she was forced to look him in the eye. “I am quite able to make that happen for you, whenever it suits me.”

“Suits you?!” Isabella replied, affronted.

Now it was his turn to smile. “Yes, my dear. Me. You will be my wedded wife, and as such, you will do my bidding in all things—”

She punched him. Rather hard, she thought with a touch of pride. “That’s exactly what I shall not be! Damn you.” She liked the sound of those long-forbidden desecrating words far more than she thought she should. “How dare you? You think I went to all the effort of escaping that destiny to fall into the indentured servitude of marriage to the first man I happened upon? The arrogance!”

“If you would let me finish?”

She stewed for a few more seconds, then waved her hand in his face. “Fine then. Go on.”

“You will do my bidding in all things… here.” He reached between her legs and cupped her with a hard, possessive grab. “And here.” His other hand took one of her breasts. He began to knead the round flesh through the bone corset. She felt a relief and a budding desire unlike anything she had experienced in her shadowy dreams.

“And always, always, here.” He leaned in and kissed her.

He began slowly, but after a few gentle strokes of his tongue tracing her lips and the tender, silky skin just within, he began to ravage her mouth, to make it entirely his. She felt possessed. Owned, yes. But also enchanted. By a demon. The most desirable, satisfying, delectable demon lover she could have ever conjured. And she wanted to give him everything he asked for. She wanted him to do what he was doing forever. Did that not make it her decision?

She pulled away, her breathing short and gasping.

“I knew you were a devil the first moment I saw your face in the red glare of the campfire.”

He touched the fabric over her nipples, carelessly bringing them to pert attention beneath his experienced touch.

“Stop that!” she cried.

“Why? Do you dislike it?”

She blushed, hot and fast. “No. I like it too much,” Isabella confessed.

A look of pure male pride crossed his face. Isabella made a mental note that he loved when she voiced her reluctant confessions.

“But we have to get to that jeweler before we board the ship,” Isabella reminded him. “And I’m sure we have to do something to secure my passage, do we not?”

A few feet away, the front door of one of the handsome townhouses swung open and a young dandy sauntered out. Javier bowed cordially, moving Isabella slightly behind him, and the stranger tipped his fine, tall hat to them out of courteous habit. After a second glance, however, he furrowed his brow in confusion and let his hand drop when he took in their ragged attire. His chin lifted haughtily as he continued on his way.

Javier took her hand in his. “You are right. We should be off. Do you have your items with you now?”

“Of course I have them with me now!” Isabella was incensed. “What sort of softhead do you take me for?”

They were walking along as though they were any normal couple, any normal travel-weary, frayed couple, Isabella amended.

He smiled at her, then put his hand over hers where it rested lightly on his forearm. “Pardon my foolishness. It goes without saying that you exercise only the greatest discretion and tact.”

She looked up at him skeptically. “No need to embellish.”

He leaned down toward Isabella and kissed her lightly on the cheek. A passing matron in heavily brocaded black silks pulled her young daughter away from them, muttering something disparaging about people who parade about the city in all manner of intimacy.

“I told you I needed one well-made dress. As soon as I sell my… item, I must find a shop that stocks old clothes. I have heard there are such places. Do you know of any?”

Javier continued to direct their steps. His numerous previous visits to the city for reconnaissance with his British allies in the fight against Joseph Bonaparte had given him a familiarity with the winding streets. “This way. Pay attention!” He jerked her arm as she nearly tripped on an uneven paving stone.

“No need to be so rough.”

“Oh, darling, you have no idea.” Javier smiled down at her and Isabella felt a combination of fear and delight.
Really? Rough, hmm?
If she had contemplated any such innuendo in the abstract prior to meeting Javier, she would have summarily dismissed the prospect. But the way he said it made it sound like a dark promise.

He leaned in and whispered in her ear. She thought fleetingly how bold he was to be touching her so in public. She was about to point out that he had no respect for convention and then decided instead to add that to the list of attributes she adored about him. “I am going to use those ropes to get you exactly where I want you.”

She gasped, at first in shock, then when she realized the idea sent a thrill of anticipation through her veins, she closed her mouth and smiled to herself.

“Aha!” Javier slapped his thigh as he walked. “I knew it! I knew ever since that first night!”

She nearly tripped again. “Knew what? What about that first night?” She blushed as she remembered her dreams about his hands and the ropes and… his hands… and the ropes.

“There’s the shop, just up ahead.”

Isabella pulled her hand from his forearm and stopped abruptly on the busy sidewalk, putting her fists on her hips. They had been walking for about fifteen minutes and they were now in a bustling thoroughfare near the port. Shops selling everything from dried fish to fabrics to dry goods dotted the street on either side, interspersed with a stable, a blacksmith, and a fresh fruit and vegetable purveyor.

“What did you surmise that first night?” she said through ground teeth.

“I surmised that your mind might be pure, but your body is quite well acquainted with its… desires.”

He turned toward a beveled glass bay window that had a shingle swinging above the door. Sweets.

“Come with me,” he ordered.

Isabella was too mortified to resist. Had she… what? Cried out… or… dear God, touched herself, or… Holy Mary. She was barely able to walk for the shame. She was already well down the path of wantonness, rubbing up against a man on a fashionable side street, but he had more or less declared himself only moments before. There had to be exceptions for that sort of behavior with one’s intended. And he had not really touched her skin. He had—

“What is it, darling? You are murmuring terribly.” He looked at her with a mocking smile on his lips, but his eyes were genuinely concerned. “Tell me.” He had guided them to the relative privacy of a recessed, little-used side door in the alley alongside the sweet shop.

It appeared her seemingly farfetched wish for a husband who took a deep interest in her particular concerns had been very quickly granted.

“I… did I… am I going to hell?” she blurted.

He looked like he might have been about to laugh, then turned handsomely tender and protective. “Absolutely not. I won’t allow it.”

She caught the hint of sarcasm around his mouth. “This is not something to be treated with adolescent levity, Javier.”

“Is that something the nuns taught you to say?” His face had turned to stone.

“Whoever said I was taught by nuns?”

“Everything about you: your confidence, dare I say arrogance; your logic… sound one minute, then utterly specious the next; your combination of audacity in this life and terror of the next. Where else but a convent could such a creature be nurtured and trained?”

He may have been correct, but that did not change the fact that he was all wrong about her. “You don’t even know me. How dare you—”

Javier was not going to be gainsaid. He kissed her soundly to stop her denial. She fought him for about half a second, but how was a girl who’d only been kissed once supposed to resist the second opportunity? She hummed her pleasure and leaned into his strength.

“I know you, Isabella,” he said after he reluctantly pulled his lips from hers. “And you know it.”

She tried to look away.

“Look at me.” He sounded angry again, with that gravelly voice that promised all sorts of rough justice.

She obeyed.

“I saw you that night—those nights—as beautiful as you are at this moment, as beautiful as you are every moment the sun catches your eyes or the wind plays with your hair. You were an angel in the throes of your desires, your deepest dreams.” He kept staring at her—into her—as he spoke. “And I wanted to be the one who brought that brief, heavenly pleasure to your lips, to your heart.”

“You did,” she whispered.

He narrowed his eyes, encouraging her to continue.

“It was you in my dreams, your hands untying the ropes, your… you… some part of you… in my mouth.”

He pulled her into a fierce embrace, nearly crushing her.

She spoke into the fabric of his jacket as she rubbed the fine silk of his lapel nervously between her thumb and fingers. “My body loved you first.”

“Oh, Isabella. Trust that body of yours. Promise me.”

She looked up at him, confused. “What do you mean?”

“I mean…” He looked up to the sky, noting the angle of the sun and their rapidly narrowing window of time to do what needed to be done in Aveiro. He looked back into her eyes. “I mean, I want to do things to you, strange and wonderful things, that your body will adore, that you will find great pleasure in, but if you think too hard about what other people—what the nuns or your lady’s maid or your mother or anyone else—might say or think, you will lose. They will have won.”

“I believe you, Javi. I do. But please don’t mock me or belittle my fears or superstitions. A few weeks ago, I was led to believe those beliefs were the bedrock of human civilization. And now you appear in a small copse in the forest and I am supposed to let it all flow through my open fingers like water?”

Javier set her slightly away from him so he could hold both of her hands in his. “You want to be free, Isabella. This is the cost. You cannot take those judgments with you. This will be our life. Yours and mine, to be lived as we see fit. To honor one another and, if we are blessed, to celebrate an abundance of children and a life of productivity and generosity. Not a parsimonious withholding of joy.”