The Other Guy's Bride (32 page)

For a second she feared he was going to be honorable again, but he only took hold of the edges of her own robe and peeled it from her shoulders, letting it fall and pool around her feet.

His gaze traveled over her, as hot as the sun. “Save me,” he muttered thickly, “those are worse than those damn cadet’s trousers.”

She felt her whole body warm beneath his ardent gaze. She’d forgotten the
shintiyan
she’d donned beneath the robes. Wide, loose trousers of filmy cotton, hitched up with silk threads at the calves and held up by a thicker silk cord low around the hips, they were far more comfortable—and cooler—than either her skirts or the heavy young men’s trousers she’d worn on their trip. They were also so sheer as to be transparent.

But she’d never expected anyone to actually see her in them. They were just to be worn underneath the loose robe.

“They’re comfortable,” she said in a small voice.

He shook his head. “Not for me.”

She squirmed self-consciously and he smiled, again sweetly, earnestly, without a trace of bravado, and as she watched, he sank gracefully to his knees in the sand before her. His head came just above her waist, his face inches from her stomach.

“What are you doing?” she asked breathlessly.

“Pressing my suit,” he replied a little hoarsely. A tingle ran through her as he spoke; she could feel his breath through the thin fabric, warming and exciting her at the juncture of her legs. She started to step back, unnerved by the heady sensation, but he wouldn’t allow it. He clasped her hips, drawing her forward and opening his mouth over that most sensitive area, boldly pressing his tongue against her mons, dampening it through the sheer fabric.

Electricity shot through her body, curling in her belly, tingling in her nipples and lips, her fingertips and the backs of her knees, pulled tight to the center where his mouth covered her. She trembled, her legs growing weak, but he wouldn’t let her fall. He pulled the harem trousers down off her hips, wrapping one big arm around her thighs and holding her tight to him.

“Put your hands on my shoulders,” he murmured against her, each warm word tapping at the uncomfortable kernel of need blooming beneath his mouth.

She could hardly do otherwise. She steadied herself on his shoulders as she felt his mouth opening against her naked skin and his tongue delving deeply along her body’s seam.

She jerked at the shock of it, the intimacy, the pleasure. He found the nub between and with exquisite delicacy, sipped against it. She cried out, sensitized to the point of pain, her body reacting forcibly, melting into liquid gold.

She fell, clutching at his shoulders, and he caught her behind her knees, sweeping her from her feet and laying her gently down on the warm, talc-like sand as the storm raged outside. “Too much, too soon,” he whispered. “I’m greedy. Forgive me.”

“No,” she said, shakily. “It’s just…I had no idea.”

He laughed softly, sweeping the hair from her face, and his expression sobered. “You are so unearthly beautiful,” he whispered.

She started, frowned. She knew he meant to please her, but she was not beautiful and to hear him say so here, now, made her uncomfortable. At once, he discerned some error, some withdrawal. He rolled over, holding himself above her with arms rippling with muscle.

“What’s wrong?” he asked quietly. “Did I insult you? Do something that offended you?”

“No.”

“Then what?”

He was watching her intently. No one had ever had regarded her so closely, she thought. She had never been so…
seen
. There was nothing she could hide from him. Ever.

“It’s silly. It’s just that…you called me beautiful, and I know you meant to please me, but I’m not and it made me realize that this is what one says, what you say, when you’re…doing this. And it reminded me that…others have heard the same words from you.”

For a long moment he simply stared at her, emotions flickering across his face. How had she ever thought him enigmatic? She could read his confusion, his shock, then disappointment, a touch of anger and exasperation, and finally amazement and, yes, love.

“I’m not sure if your assumptions about my sexual experience are insulting or flattering. There have been no others. Not like this. Not remotely like this. A few encounters that provided…release. But I’ve never ‘said things when doing this.’ There was very little saying going on, just,” he looked away and she could see his discomfiture, his chagrin, “mutual physical satisfaction. Certainly not love.” His gaze returned to her face, searching. “Do you understand?”

She nodded.

“And as for your not being beautiful…No,” he said as she started to turn her head. “Look at me. You are the most exquisite woman I have ever seen. You are certainly the most beautiful. Hasn’t any man ever told you that?” he asked, and for the life her she could hear nothing but stunned amazement in his voice. “Then it could only be because you intimidated them, and you are, God preserve me, intimidating.

“It was your beauty that almost sent me to my knees the first time I saw you, and I hadn’t even seen your gorgeous eyes yet, the wit and warmth in them. Your lips haunt my dreams with the memory of their taste, your neck inspires a wicked desire to trace its length with my tongue. And your magnificent nose, imperiously belying all the lush, wanton beauty of your eyes and mouth. Ginesse, your beauty dazzles me.”

And she looked into his eyes and realized he was telling her the simple unadorned truth, nothing less and nothing more. He thought she was beautiful. And so, she was.

With a little cry of delight, she pulled him down to her, relishing his weight covering her. Hungrily, she set about exploring him. Her lips skated along the hard column of his neck, across the smooth skin capping his broad shoulders and back to the tender flesh beneath his ear. Her hands flowed down his back, the muscles tensing in his hard buttocks, and back up the velvety ladder of his ribs, to the silky slide of his hair and the beard-rasped angle of his jaw.

Her mouth found his, and a shudder ran through him. He angled an arm beneath her, lifting her, the other hand peeling back her top, exposing her breasts. He cupped one in his hand, lifting and molding it, his thumb rubbing back and forth, teasing it into a taut nub. He broke off the kiss, shifted her beneath him, lowered his head, and took her nipple into his mouth.

She gasped. With exquisite intention he stroked it with his tongue and sucked it into his mouth. She arched back, her fingers flexing deeply into his shoulder muscles. Her hips lifted in an involuntary plea, rocking against the hard thigh pressed between her legs. He murmured against her breast, dropping his head lower and sliding his hand between their bodies. He looked up into her face as he pushed the
shintiyan
’s belt down past her hips, his hand following the silk’s retreat, caressing the newly uncovered skin beneath.

She moved restlessly against the too tender touch, wanting more, and when he did not acquiesce, she reached between them, jerking open his trousers and shoving her hand down inside them, closing over his erection. He froze, his eyelids slipping closed, his breath ragged. For a long moment he waited, looking more like a man enduring torment than one enjoying his lover’s ministrations, and finally, with a rough sound, he grabbed her wrist and pulled her hand away.

He rose up on his knees, stripping off his shirt and jerking his belt free of the loops as she followed his example, working frantically to rid herself of her clothing. Abruptly, finally, they were naked, or mostly so, their bodies coming together, skin sliding against skin, heat stoked by desire, her hands learning his powerful form, the sensation of hard muscle flexing and releasing.

He cupped her buttocks, lifting her, and then he was in her, penetrating slowly and purposefully, an exquisite torment, a fullness that edged toward pain. She spread her knees wider, clasping him between her thighs, lifting up to seat him more deeply. With a groan, he thrust deep inside her. She cried out with the pleasure of it, the torment of it, for each of his thrusts built a sense of carnal anticipation.

Pleasure spiraled inward, molten and powerful, burning ever brighter, ever more focused. He moved more swiftly, his body pushing hers into the deep, silky sand, his breath hoarse in her ear. “Take it,” he urged, his voice deep and rough. “Your climax. Move on me.”

She did. She shifted, tipping her pelvis. She felt his arm tighten around her waist as he clasped her hips and thrust deeply, his body rock-hard, his face strained with effort…

Passion crescendoed around her, swelling to an unbearable promise. She cried out, impaled at the pinnacle of sensation, her throat arching, her shoulders drawn back. Wave after wave of intense pleasure erupted in her. She sobbed with the beauty of it, the unexpectedness, crying out when it peaked, and she heard him make a harsh, strangled sound deep in his throat, as he thrust and held, pulsing deep inside her.

Seconds or an eternity later, he looked up and brushed the damp hair from her face, feathering kisses on her forehead and along her nose. She stroked his lean cheek, kissed his collarbone, and marveled at how perfectly formed he was until it occurred to her that she’d been sadly negligent in one respect.

“I love you,” she whispered, gazing up into his pale gray eyes.

He smiled crookedly, for a moment looking at her with a dazzled air. He had, she realized sadly, no experience hearing those words. He didn’t know how to react. “I figured as much.”

This time, she didn’t hit him.

Sometime later, Jim pulled Ginesse into the curve of his body and gently shifted her onto his chest. The sand still roared like the surf outside the cavern, and the sun was still blotted from the heavens. He didn’t care. For a long time after she fell asleep, he cradled her tenderly and watched her.

His
. And she loved him. His wonder was only outstripped by his sense of homecoming, of finally arriving on that distant, longed-for shore.
His
. There was nothing else he needed. Nothing else he wanted. But there was a good deal more she needed and wanted, and he intended to see that she had it. She’d placed her heart in his care, and he would go to the ends of the earth to see that she never regretted it…

“Ginesse! Ginesse! Where are you?” The sound of a man’s voice woke him.

He was not too far away.

Jim frowned. The voice was unfamiliar. It wasn’t Haji, and it wasn’t Jock. He stood up, pulling on his trousers and waking Ginesse in the process. She blinked blearily up at him from her nest of discarded clothing.

“Someone’s coming,” he said, moving to the front of the cavern so she had time to quickly don some clothing.

His frown turned into a fiercely protective scowl. He glanced at Ginesse. She’d pulled the
habarah
over her head providing more than adequate covering, but her hair hung about her shoulders like a toffee-colored shawl. She looked ripe and flushed and deliciously tumbled.

“Another suitor you failed to mention?” he asked, only half in jest.

Her eyes widened innocently, she started to shake her head—

“Ginesse!”

—and froze.

“Oh, dear,” she said, grabbing a handful of her hair and twisting it into a knot. She scrambled to her feet just as a tall, well-built man in a dusty shirt and trousers, a white
khafiya
on his head, appeared in front of the cave, backlit against a now bright sky.

Jim couldn’t make out his features, but the direction of his gaze was clear enough. It flew to Ginesse and then came pointedly back to Jim and Jim’s bare chest.

“Look, mister,” Jim said tiredly. “I don’t know who you are, and I don’t care. You’re too damn old for her—”

“Hi, Daddy.”

Jim watched Harry Braxton move back into the light. Yup. Same eyes. Same nose. He nodded curtly toward his daughter, but his eyes, as cold and hard as steel, remained on Jim. “Looks like I made it in time for the wedding,” he said. “Doesn’t it, son?”

Jim, caught off guard and a little irritated, opened his mouth to reply, “Barely in time, sir,” when he caught sight of Ginesse out of the corner of his eye.

She was standing in the shadow near the blanket partition, the hastily donned robe twisted around her slight form, her bare feet peeping from beneath the dragging hem, her hair falling in a tawny river around her shoulder. She caught his eye and smiled. It was a confident smile, full of love. But there was just the smallest hint of wistfulness there. Just a soupcon. She had wanted to hear him say he loved her and then worried that he would find it pathetically romantic. He wasn’t going to satisfy anyone’s expectations but hers. Even if it hurt, which, he glanced at the lean muscular man in front of him, he imagined it would.

“No, sir,” he said.

“What?” thundered Harry Braxton.

Ginesse’s eyes widened in surprise. But there was no fear there, no hurt, just curiosity. She trusted him. And that meant more to him than he would ever be able to express.

“No, sir. There is nothing romantic about a shotgun wedding, so that’s not the marriage Ginesse is going to have, and when I ask her to marry me, her daddy isn’t going to be standing there watching while I try to button my fly in between choking out the words.”