Gift of Gold (13 page)

She felt as though she had opened the door to a whole new world tonight; a realm in which her relationship with Jonas governed everything. It was as if her life were being realigned along a new axis.

During the short time she had known him he had dominated her thoughts, intrigued her, compelled her to learn more about him. Tonight he had taken her into the uncharted waters of physical sensation, and she had navigated by hanging on to him. In that moment Verity knew she never wanted to let go of Jonas Quarrel. The intuitive knowledge that he had wanted her and needed her filled her with unlimited delight.

She wondered if this was what it meant to be falling in love. Somehow the notion didn’t seem nearly as anxiety-provoking as it once had.

Verity leaned over the edge of the bed and eyed the heap of clothes Jonas had left there. He had been impatient for her, she reflected happily, so impatient that he had left his pants and his shirt in a tangled pile.

Enjoying a novel feeling of domesticity, Verity sat up and reached down to pick up Jonas’s clothes. She would fold them neatly and stack them on the chair.

As she picked up the jeans, the earring she had lost two months ago in a Mexican alley fell out of the pocket with a tiny, tinkling clatter. She recognized it instantly when it rolled into the shaft of light that crept out from under the bathroom door.

Verity stared down at the golden circlet and her new, bright, sensually warm world began fading around her. Her fingers clenched around the jeans in her hand as she tried to understand what was happening.

There was no sound from the bathroom doorway, but the pattern of light shifted on the floor and Verity looked up to see Jonas watching her. He had a damp washcloth in one hand. His eyes followed hers to the golden earring on the floor. The relaxed, satisfied expression he had worn on the way into the bathroom was gone.

Verity stared up at him, asking silent questions with her eyes.

Jonas exhaled a deep sigh and walked slowly to the bed. “It’s a long story,” he said.

Chapter
S
ix

He
had been careless. Stupid and careless. Too late Jonas realized he’d been so hungry for Verity when he’d emerged from the psychic corridor that he hadn’t even stopped to think about the earring in his pocket or the risks it presented if she discovered it. It had been all he could do just to maintain some semblance of superficial calm when he walked her back to her cabin. When he finally had gotten her into bed, the urgency of his desire had blinded him to everything, including her obvious lack of experience, until it was too late.

Not that it would have made any difference in the final outcome if he had known she was a virgin. He’d been consumed with his need to possess her and she had welcomed him. That was more than enough. He was damned if he would feel guilty on top of everything else.

But he hadn’t expected the violent sexual arousal that had accompanied this latest trip into the dangerous corridor in his mind. He’d never had that particular problem before after making the connection with an ancient object of violence. True, he’d nearly killed a man the last time he’d gone into the corridor, but he hadn’t come back out wanting to throw himself on the nearest woman.

The physical arousal he’d experienced this time must have had some direct link with discovering that Verity too could enter the corridor. The sense of possessiveness he felt toward her now was almost overpowering. He wanted to shout his triumph and exultation to the stars. The indescribable relief at having found her was enough make him lightheaded.

But there was no way to explain it to her yet. She wouldn’t believe him; wouldn’t understand the truth. He had only the vaguest comprehension of it himself. How could he tell her that she was the key to controlling his talent?

“I don’t understand.” Verity looked down at the earring again. “I just don’t understand how you could have that earring.

Jonas sat down slowly beside her on the bed, afraid that if he made any fast moves he might panic her.

“I was the other man in the alley the night good old Pedro tried to rape you. I was the one whose face you didn’t see. You never even stopped to look at me. You just turned and ran.”

Verity looked dumbfounded. “You found my earring and followed me here to Sequence Springs?”

“It wasn’t easy. Took me two months.”

“But why? It doesn’t make any sense.”

He tried a smile. It came out crooked. “Do you believe in love at first sight?”

“No,” she retorted flatly. “And I don’t believe in Prince Charming, either. Men don’t follow a woman a couple of thousand miles because they happened to find her shoe or her earring. Besides, you couldn’t possibly have gotten a good look at me that night.”

Jonas thought back to that evening in Mexico. He could still hear the raucous calls of the cantina’s patrons as they caught sight of the redheaded gringa in their midst. “I saw your red hair in the light of the cantina as you stood in the doorway looking for your father. I saw your face and the color of your eyes. I’d never seen eyes that shade of green before.”

“Where were you?”

“I was on the street outside, watching you.” No point in explaining that he had followed her from the cantina down the street where she had stopped previously. She would only ask other questions that would be even harder to answer.

“Jonas, this doesn’t make any sense. Are you trying to tell me that because of a brief glimpse and a broken earring, you tracked me down here in Sequence Springs? You expect me to believe that?”

The washcloth grew cold in Jonas’s hand. He looked down at it. He had
intended to use the cloth to bathe away the pungent, sticky residue of their lovemaking. He had thought Verity might appreciate the warm bath. He had also wanted to soothe the tender female flesh he had taken with a lot of heat but not much finesse. Something told him Verity would not welcome such intimacy now. He put the cold, damp cloth on the table beside the bed.

“I followed you, Verity, because I had to,” he said simply. “I wanted to see you again. After all, I’d saved you from Pedro. Is it so strange I would want to find out more about you? You ran from that alley as if all the demons in hell were at your heels.”

“I thought you were just another would-be rapist.”

He watched her profile. “Well, now you know I’m not, don’t you?”

She pulled the sheet around herself, withdrawing from him. “I’m not so sure. Maybe you’re just more subtle than Pedro.”

Anger flared in him. He caught her shoulders and forced her to face him. “That’s a hell of a thing to say. You know damned good and well that what just happened between us wasn’t rape. Don’t you dare accuse me of that. When I left the bed a few minutes ago, you were practically begging me to rush back and make love to you again.”

She flinched, her eyes faltering beneath his momentary fury. “You’re right,” she said grudgingly. “It wasn’t rape. But it wasn’t love, either. So why are you here, Jonas? Why did you follow me and go to work for me and then take me to bed?”

She would never believe the real story in its entirety. All he could do was stick by the bare bones of the tale. “I told you the truth. I wanted to see you again. If you’d stuck around that alley until I’d finished with Pedro, I would have introduced myself then. But you ran. So I followed.”

She edged away from him. “Jonas, don’t hand me that kind of line. Men don’t do things like that.”

He shrugged. “I did.”

He watched her chew on that undeniable fact. Then something flickered in her eyes and she astonished him with her next leap of logic. “Does this have anything to do with my father, by any chance? Are you here because of him? Do you work for that sleazeball who’s after him to repay the gambling debt? So help me God, Jonas, if you followed me and used me to get at him, I swear I’ll slit your throat.”

Jonas was startled at her deduction. “No, I don’t work for anyone but you. I knew nothing about your father’s problems until he told us both about them tonight. That’s the truth, Verity. The only reason I came to Sequence Springs was to get to know you better. Can you blame me? I saved you down in Mexico and you didn’t even stick around long enough to thank me. A man can weave a lot of fantasies about a woman he rescues. Human nature. Male nature. And there was nothing to keep me in Mexico. I was free to follow you and learn more about you, so I did just that.”

She eyed him warily. “A true drifter. You just go where your fancy takes you, is that it?”

He gritted his back teeth but kept his voice casual. “That’s it.”

“I’m not sure I believe you, Jonas. You’re making me very nervous.”

Jonas kept a tight rein on his self-control. “I’m sorry, Verity. I guess my following you out of Mexico doesn’t strike you as a romantic gesture, does it? Four hundred years ago someone would have written a ballad about it.”

“Times change,” she informed him. “Maybe women today are a little more savvy than they were back then.”

“Times change,” he agreed. “Human nature doesn’t. If you’d been born four hundred years ago you would have been the same arrogant, stubborn, infuriating little shrew you are today.”

She paled and Jonas instantly flayed himself mentally for his loss of temper. She had been through a lot tonight and she had every right to her suspicions.

“If you feel that way about me, I’m surprised you were so eager to go to bed with me,” Verity whispered.

He swore softly and reached out, capturing her before she could slide away. Deliberately he overcame her brief struggles and pinned her close against him, his face in her hair.

“I’m sorry, honey. I didn’t mean that. I should have kept my damn mouth shut.”

He could smell himself on her, Jonas realized as he pulled her close. The acrid scent combined with the lingering fragrance of her feminine arousal made him pulsatingly conscious of the claim he had staked tonight. He could not yet explain to Verity the mental bond that linked them or why he needed her to preserve his sanity. She wouldn’t believe him, let alone understand what he was trying to say. All he could do was reinforce the physical and emotional bonds he had forged tonight. And there were definitely such bonds between them whether she wanted to admit it or not. She would never have gone to bed with him if she hadn’t wanted him very badly.

Hell, he told himself encouragingly, the woman had waited twenty-eight years to go to bed with a man. Surely she must have felt something very powerful for him.

“Jonas, I feel like I’ve been through a wringer. I don’t know what to think.” Her voice was muffled against his chest.

He clenched his hands in the wonderful fire of her hair. “I know, honey. I didn’t handle this very well. I should have told you who I was right from the start. But you wouldn’t have believed me then, either. In fact, you probably would have been even more suspicious of me if I’d shown up on your doorstep and announced I’d followed you from Mexico. I didn’t know how to play it, so I tried to keep things low-key. I wanted us to get to know each other. Was that so wrong?”

“No, I suppose not, but I still don’t know what to believe. It’s all very strange.”

“It will look a lot less strange in the morning,” he assured her. “I promise. You’re just shook up now because you’ve been through a brand-new experience tonight and you’re still coming to terms with it.” The new sexual experience was only part of the package, he thought. Wait until she realized that she hadn’t been hallucinating earlier when she’d entered that psychic corridor. But he’d leave that for another time.

“Does it take a lot to come to terms with the experience of going to bed with someone?” she demanded tartly, sounding more like her old self.

Jonas winced. “I didn’t exactly make your first time a fantasy come true, did I? I was in a rush and I was clumsy.

It’s been a long, long time since I’ve been to bed with a woman, and maybe I…Never mind. Let’s just say I’m aware I made a hash of things.”

Her head came up so quickly Jonas almost got his chin cracked. Her eyes appeared very wide and deep and feminine in the darkness.

“Jonas, you mustn’t think that. I thought your lovemaking was very,” she paused, obviously searching for the right word, “interesting,” she finished quite earnestly.

“
Interesting?
”
Jonas stared at her, chagrined, and then his sense of humor kicked in. He hugged her fiercely for a few seconds. “That’s my Verity. Honest to the core. Interesting, huh? Thanks, boss. You really know how to bolster the old male ego.”

“But, Jonas,” she went on hesitantly.

“What is it, sweetheart?”

“I really don’t understand the rest of this. It’s very hard for me to believe you actually followed me all this way just because you caught a glimpse of me that night outside the cantina. Men just don’t do things like that in this day and age, regardless of what they might have done four hundred years ago in the Renaissance. And this business of having my father show up unexpectedly is unsettling, too. I want some time to think about everything.”

Jonas stilled. He didn’t like the idea of giving Verity a lot of time to think. On the other hand, he didn’t see what else he could do under the circumstances. “We’ll talk more in the morning,” he temporized. He found her breast beneath the sheet she insisted upon clutching. When he touched her nipple he felt it harden instantly. “Plenty of time in the morning,” he muttered, his voice growing thicker as his body flamed into awareness. She was so soft and sweet, he thought. And she belonged to him now. So damn sexy. He’d really lucked out. For the first time in five years, he had finally lucked out.

“Jonas...”

“I’ll do it right this time,” he vowed. “We’ll take it easy. Lots of time. No rush. I swear I won’t hurt you. You’ll see. This time it’s going to be so good between us.”

“Jonas, I think you should leave now.”

He blinked, dazed. “Leave?”

She pushed herself away from him and stood up with the sheet twisted modestly around her. “I can’t figure out what’s going on here. I need time to think. I told you that.”