His Virgin Wife: The Wedding in White / Caught in the Crossfire / The Virgin's Secret Marriage
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“No,” she said shakily.
“Why not, if you loved him?” he persisted.
She frowned worriedly. It was becoming increasingly hard to think at all. “I didn’t feel like this with him,” she confessed in a whisper.
Mack’s face changed. His hand in her hair arched her face to his and tugged it into the crook of his arm. He shifted, so that the bodice came completely away from one pert little breast, and his arm tightened, moving her skin sensuously against him.
She gasped. Her nails bit into his chest, and her lips parted in shock and delight. Involuntarily, she arched closer, so that her breast dragged roughly against his skin.
The hand in her hair began to hurt. His body tensed, and a faint shudder rippled through him.
His jaw clenched, and he fought his hunger. She realized that he wanted to feel her against him without the fabric between them, and it was what she wanted, as well. She forgot about wrong and right, about decency, about everything except the pleasure they were giving each other here, in the quiet room with the silence only broken by the sound of the rain outside the window and their breathing.
“I should be shot for doing this, and you should be shot for letting me,” he said through his teeth. But even as he spoke, his free hand was stripping the robe and gown to her waist. His gaze fell to her naked breasts, and he shuddered again, violently, as his arm suddenly tightened and dragged her breasts against his hair-roughened chest in a feverish caress.
She moaned harshly. Her nails bit into the hard muscles of his upper arms as he crushed her against him and buried his face in the thick hair at her ear. He held her, rocked her, in an aching excess of desire.
Both arms were around her now. She slid her arms around his neck and clung for dear life. She couldn’t catch her breath at all. It was the most intense pleasure she’d ever known. She trembled with desire.
The embrace was fierce. They held each other in a tense silence that seemed to throb with need. Her fingers tangled in the hair at the nape of his strong neck, and her eyes closed as she lay against him, unafraid and unashamed of the growing intimacy of the embrace.
He could feel his body growing harder by the second. If he moved her any closer, she’d be able to feel it. He didn’t want that. It was years too soon for the sort of intimacy they were leading up to. He could barely think at all, but the part of his brain that still worked was flashing with red warning lights. She was seventeen, just barely, and he was twenty-three. She wasn’t old enough or experienced enough to know what was about to happen. He was. He couldn’t take advantage of her like this. He had to pull away and stop while he still could.
Abruptly, he shot to his feet, taking her with him. He held her, swaying on her feet, just in front of him. For one long, tense moment, his gaze went to her taut, bare breasts and his face seemed to clench. Then he pulled the straps up and replaced them on her shoulders, easing the robe into place. He tied it with swift, sharp movements of his big hands.
She stared at him, too overwhelmed by the intimacy and its abrupt end to think clearly. “Why did you stop?” she asked softly. “Did I do something wrong?”
Her pale green eyes made him ache as they searched his face. He caught her by the waist and took a slow, deliberate breath before he spoke. “Didn’t they teach sex education at the orphanage?” he asked bluntly.
Her face flamed scarlet. Her eyes, like saucers, seemed to widen endlessly.
He shook his head. She was so deliciously naïve. He felt a generation apart from her instead of only six years. “A man can’t take much of that without doing something about it, Nat,” he said gently. “Looking isn’t enough.”
She was embarrassed, but she didn’t drop her eyes. “I never could have done that with Carl,” she said, feeling vaguely guilty about it. “I enjoyed kissing him, but I never wanted him to do anything else. I didn’t like it when he tried to.”
He ached to his boots. His hands contracted on her shoulders. “You’re only seventeen,” he reminded her. “I know Carl was special to you, but you aren’t really old enough for a physical relationship with anyone.”
“My mother was just eighteen when she had me,” she pointed out.
“This is a different world than hers,” he countered. “And even for an innocent woman, you’re remarkably backward.”
“Weren’t you, at my age?” she asked in a driven tone.
He pursed his lips and studied her face. “At your age, I’d already had my first woman. She was two years my senior and pretty experienced for a place like Medicine Ridge. She taught me.”
She felt her heartbeat racing madly in her chest. She hadn’t expected him to be innocent, but it was shocking to have him speak about it so bluntly.
His lean fingers brushed over her cheek. “And when you’re old enough,” he said in a strange, caressing tone, “I’ll teach you.”
Those shocking words from the past resonated in her mind as she looked at him in the dimly lit study. I’ll teach you. I’ll teach you.
While she was reliving the past, he’d gotten out of his chair and moved around the desk. He was propped against it, his jacket and tie off, his arms folded, watching her.
“Oh,” she said, blinking. “Sorry. I was lost in thought. Literally.” She laughed softly.
He didn’t smile. “Come here, Nat.”
She measured the distance to the door and then laughed inwardly at her cowardice. She’d adored this man for so many years that she couldn’t imagine letting anyone else touch her, ever. Besides, she assured herself, he had Glenna to satisfy those infrequent urges he’d once spoken of so bluntly. He wanted to talk without being overheard by Whit in case he came back unexpectedly, that was why he wanted her closer.
With a self-mocking smile she came to a stop less than arm’s length away and looked at him.
He let his gaze encompass her, from her flat moccasins to the thrust of her breasts against the thin sweater. The top two buttons were undone, hinting at the cleavage below.
“I shouldn’t leave Viv alone too long,” she began.
He ignored the hint. His fingers spread along her cheek and his gaze dropped to her soft mouth. “Viv can wait,” he replied quietly. His thumb abruptly moved roughly across her lips, sensitizing them in a shock of desire.
His good eye narrowed. “Go and lock the door,” he said in a tone he hadn’t used with her since the night Carl had died.
She wasn’t going to be dictated to, she told herself. Even Mack wasn’t going to be allowed to tell her what to do!
So it came as a surprise that she closed the door and locked it, her back to him. She was almost shaking with desire. She leaned her hot forehead against the cold wood of the door, hearing the jerk of her breath in her throat.
She didn’t hear him approach, because the thick carpet muffled the sound of his footsteps. But she felt him at her back, felt the heat of his powerful body as both arms went past her to the door. He moved deliberately close, so that his body made contact with hers from her shoulders to her thighs. The contours of his body changed instantly, and she knew, even in her innocence, that what they shared was something rare.
“And now you know why I put you away so quickly that night, don’t you?” he asked quietly.
She swallowed, her body involuntarily responding to his need by arching toward him. “Yes. I do now.”
His hands slid to her flat belly and pulled her closer to him.
“You felt this way all those years ago?” she said, realizing.
“Yes.” His hands smoothed to her rib cage and hesitated. “I accumulated a fair share of experience when I was younger,” he continued. “But in recent years, sex has become a more serious matter to me. I’ve gone hungry. You were innocent and curious, and I almost lost control with you. I didn’t feel comfortable letting you see how tempted I was—especially under the circumstances.”
“I’m still innocent,” she reminded him without turning.
“And just as curious,” he concluded for her. His hands flattened over her rib cage and became possessive. “But tonight, I’m going to satisfy your curiosity. Completely.” And he turned her around.
Chapter 7
Natalie caught her breath at the look on Mack’s face. The naked hunger in that one beautiful dark eye was almost frightening.
His big, lean hands framed her face as he searched her eyes. “Don’t be afraid of me,” he said softly. “I’d cut off my arm before I’d ever hurt you.”
“I know that.” She studied him worriedly. “But I can’t—”
His lips caught the words and stopped them. She felt his hands drop to her throat and then to her shoulders, smoothing up and down the skin left bare by her shortsleeve sweater. He was slow and tender and sensual. It was like a dance in slow motion, a poem, a symphony.
The door was hard at her back as he moved closer, trapping her between his body and the wood. One long leg inserted itself confidently between both of hers with a lazy movement that was as arousing as the kiss they were sharing.
She gasped, and his mouth lifted away. He looked at her, breathing a little jerkily. “This is perfectly natural,” he said quietly. “Don’t fight it.”
Her eyes were wild and a little frightened by the overwhelming desire she felt. “You went away…with Glenna,” she whispered.
“She went on the plane,” he corrected. “She didn’t go with me.” His mouth traced her eyelids and closed them. His hands were under her arms, lifting her closer. They moved slowly, gently, onto her breasts and caressed them with lazy delight.
She felt her legs go weak underneath her. It was unlike any other time she’d been in his arms. He handled her as if she belonged to him, as if she were precious to him, cherished by him.
Her eyes opened when he lifted his head, and they were full of wonder, wide with breathless hunger and delight. Her heart was in them.
He searched them quietly, and a faint smile touched his hard mouth. “I’ve waited years for that expression,” he said under his breath. “Years.”
He bent again, and this time her arms lifted slowly around his neck, cradling his head as his mouth covered her parted lips. They clung to each other, letting the kiss build, feeling its power. She moaned when it became fierce and hungry, but she didn’t try to get away. Involuntarily, her body pressed hard against his.
She felt him shiver. He pushed down, his hands lifting her suddenly into the hard thrust of him and holding her there with a slow, sensual rhythm that made her tremble and gasp into his mouth.
“Sweetheart!” he whispered roughly.
The kiss grew harder. She felt him move and lift her clear off the floor in his arms. He walked to the sofa and spread her lengthwise on the leather, easing his body down to cover hers in a silence that was heated and tense.
He was fiercely aroused, and she wanted him at that moment more than she’d ever wanted anything in her life. She followed where he led, even when she felt him shifting her so that his lean hips were pressed squarely against hers, between her legs, in an intimacy that was suddenly urgent and feverish with dark pleasure. She couldn’t have pushed him away if her survival had depended on it. Presumably he felt the same, because his arms held her relentlessly as he began to move against her.
She shuddered with the riptide of pleasure the movement produced, and her eyes flew open, locking with his dark, passionate gaze as he lifted his head to look at her.
With his hands at her head, taking most of his weight, he moved deliberately, watching her as she lifted to meet him and gasped at the sensations the contact produced. Her nails bit into his hard arms, but she wasn’t fighting. She was melting into the leather, flying up into the sky, burning, burning!
The intimacy became so torturous, so fierce, that it was almost too late to draw back when he realized what was happening to them. His hands caught her hips in a bruising clasp and he pulled her over him, holding her still, with her cheek on his pounding chest as he fought to breathe and stop all at the same time.
“No!” She choked, trying to return to the intimacy of their former embrace.
His hands forced her to be still. His breath at her forehead was hot and shaky, audible in the stillness of the study. “Don’t,” he bit off. “Don’t move. For God’s sake, don’t!”
Her mouth pressed into the cotton of his shirt, hot and hungry. “I want to,” she choked.
“God, don’t you think I want to?” he demanded huskily. His hands hurt in their fight to keep her still. “I want you to the point of madness. But not like this, Natalie!”
Belatedly, she realized that he was trying to save her from her own hunger for him. It wasn’t a thought she cherished at the moment, when her whole body was burning with a passion she’d never felt before. But slowly, the trembling eased and she began to breathe normally, if a little fast.
His hands smoothed over her hair, bunching it at her nape as he held her cheek to his chest.
“Why?” she whispered miserably when she was able to speak.
“Because I can’t marry you,” he explained. “And because you can’t live with sleeping with me if I don’t.”
All her dreams vanished in a haze. As the room came into focus across his broad chest, she realized just how far gone they were and how intimate their position on the sofa had become. If he hadn’t stopped, they’d be lovers already. She hadn’t even protested. But he’d had the presence of mind to stop.
So much for her willpower and her principles, she thought sadly. It seemed that her body had a will of its own, and it was much stronger than her mind.
Tears poured from her eyes, and she didn’t even notice until she felt his shirt become damp under her cheek.
His hand laced into her hair and soothed her scalp. “If I thought it would help matters, I’d cry, too,” he murmured dryly.
She hit his shoulder with her fist. “How could you do that to me?” she demanded.
“How could you do it to me?” he shot back. “You know how I feel about commitment. I’ve said so often enough.”
“You started it,” she raged.
He sighed. “Yes, I did,” he admitted after a minute. “This is all I’ve been able to think about since we went nightclubbing,” he confessed. “That was probably the most misguided thing I’ve done in recent years. It’s hard to put out a brushfire once it’s started. Or didn’t you notice?”
She moved experimentally and felt him help her move away to a healthy distance, lying beside him on the long leather couch with her cheek on his shoulder. She looked at him quietly, curiously. His face was a little flushed, and his mouth was swollen from the hard, hungry kisses they’d shared. His shirt was open at the throat. His hair was disheveled. He looked as though he’d been making love, and probably so did she. She didn’t really mind. He looked sensual like that.
“You’d better leave town,” he suggested with a wry smile. “You just went on the endangered list.”
Her fingers spread on his shirt, but he caught and stilled them. “Stop that. I’m barely a step away from ravishment.”
“How exciting,” she murmured.
“You wouldn’t think so for the first few minutes,” he murmured skeptically. “And you wouldn’t be able to live with your conscience even if you did enjoy it eventually.”
She grimaced. “I guess not. I’m not really cut out for passionate affairs.”
“And I’m not cut out for happily ever after,” he said without looking at her.
“Because of your family?” she asked.
He drew in a long breath. She felt his chest rise and fall under her hand. “We could make a list. It wouldn’t change anything.” He looked at her rapt, soft face, and his hardened. “Despite everything,” he whispered huskily, “I would give everything I own to have you, just once.”
She managed a faint smile. “Maybe you’d be disappointed.”
He traced her mouth with a lazy finger. “Maybe you would, too.”
“So it’s just as well, isn’t it?”
“That’s what my mind says,” he agreed.
She nuzzled against his shoulder and closed her eyes. “Isn’t there a poem about hopeless attraction?”
“Hundreds,” he said.
She felt his hand smoothing her hair, almost in a comforting gesture. She smiled. “That feels nice.”
“You feel nice, lying against me like this,” he whispered. He bent and kissed her closed eyelids with breathless tenderness. “It was like this, the night of the wreck,” he added in a hushed tone. “I held you and comforted you, and wanted you until I ached.”
“But I was seventeen.”
“But you were seventeen.” He pressed a kiss on her forehead and put her aside so that he could get to his feet. “You haven’t changed much,” he added as he helped her up.
“I’m older,” she pointed out.
He laughed, and it had a hollow sound. “If you were a modern woman, we’d have fewer problems.”
“But I’m not modern,” she replied sadly. “And that says it all.”
A door opened and shut, and he glanced toward the closed door of the study. “That’ll be Romeo, I reckon,” he drawled with a glittery look at Natalie. “I don’t like the way he hangs around you.”
“He likes me,” she said carelessly. “I like him, too. What’s wrong with that?”
“He belongs to Vivian,” he returned, and he didn’t smile.
She searched his hard face. “You can’t own people.”
The eyebrow that wasn’t under the string of the eye patch lifted sardonically. “She won’t thank you for making a play for him.”
She ached all over with frustration and misery, and she hated him for arousing her and pushing her away at the same time. It wasn’t logical, but then, she wasn’t thinking clearly. She didn’t mean what she said next, but she was so angry she couldn’t help herself. “What would you care if I did? You don’t like him. Maybe it would open her eyes.”
“Don’t do it,” he warned in a low, threatening tone.
“Or you’ll do what?” she challenged icily.
He didn’t answer. They were enemies in the blink of an eye. He was furious, and it showed. He went to the door and opened it with a jerk, waiting for her to leave.
She hesitated, but only for an instant. If that was the way he wanted it, all right! She went out the door without looking at him, without speaking, without knowing that she’d just altered the whole pattern of her life.
Mack closed the door sharply behind her, and she grimaced before she went to the kitchen to see if Whit was there. He was. He’d just made coffee, in one of the expensive modern coffee machines that did it in seconds. He’d poured two cups, one for himself and one for Vivian.
“Where’s the tray?” he asked, looking around.
“I haven’t got a clue,” she admitted. She looked in cupboards, but she couldn’t find one.
“Never mind,” he said. “I take mine black and she takes hers with cream. I can carry both cups if you’ll bring the cream, and we’ll forget the tray.”
“Okay,” she said.
He was gazing at her with an experienced eye, and it suddenly occurred to her that she must look pretty disheveled. She thought about taking a minute to repair her makeup before she went upstairs, but Whit was already out the door.
She followed him up the staircase and into Vivian’s room. It hadn’t dawned on her, either, that Whit had been out in the wind and his hair was disheveled. When the two of them entered the room, Vivian put together Natalie’s swollen mouth and mussed hair and Whit’s mussed hair and came up with infidelity.
“Go home,” she told Natalie in a vicious tone. “Go right now and don’t ever come back!”
“Viv! What’s wrong?” she asked.
“As if you don’t know!”
Whit didn’t say anything, but he had a very strange look in his eyes. “You’d better go,” he said gently. “I’ll look after Viv.”
Natalie looked at Vivian, but she turned her face away and refused to say another word. With resignation and bitter sadness, Natalie put down the cream and left the room.
Nobody was around when she went out the front door. She’d made a clean sweep tonight. Mack and Vivian were both furious at her over Whit when she hadn’t meant to cause trouble. She hoped it would all blow over.
For the moment, all she could think about was the close call she’d had in Mack’s arms on the sofa, and she wished with all her heart that things had been different between them. For better or worse, she loved him with her whole heart. But he had nothing to offer her.
She went home and fell, exhausted, into bed.
Whit was left alone with Vivian, who was in tears. “You were making love to her!” she accused, her blue eyes shooting sparks at him. “My boyfriend and my best friend! How could you?”
He hesitated before he spoke, with both hands in his pockets. He’d seen Vivian as a nice, biddable little source of gambling money and light lovemaking. But she’d become jealous and possessive of him, and he was getting tired of it. There were other women.
“So what?” he asked, not denying her charge. “She’s not as pretty or rich as you are, but she’s sweet and she doesn’t question every move I make.”
Vivian stared at him, almost purple with rage and frustration and hurt pride. “Then go with her,” she spat at him. “Get out. And don’t come back!”
“That,” he replied, “will actually be a pleasure. You’re no man’s idea of the perfect woman, Viv. In fact, you’re a spoiled little rich girl who wants to own people. It’s not worth it.”
“Worth what?” she choked.
He looked at her with world-weary cynicism and contempt. “I like to gamble. You had money. We made a handsome couple. I thought we’d be a match made in heaven. But there are other rich girls, honey.”
He laughed mockingly and walked out, closing the door behind him. Vivian went wild, throwing things and weeping horribly until Mack came into the room minutes later and helped her off the floor and into bed.
“What in God’s name is wrong with you?” he demanded, surveying the destruction of her bedroom.
“Whit and Natalie,” she choked. “They were…making love… Whit said she was everything I’m not.” Sobs choked the words for several seconds while her brother stood by the bed, frozen. “Oh, I hate them so. I hate them both! My boyfriend and my best friend! How could they do this to me?”
“How do you know they were making love?” he asked in a hollow tone.
“I saw them,” she lied viciously. “And Whit admitted it. He even laughed about it!”
Mack’s face became a mask. He drew the covers over Vivian with a strange, frightening silence.
Vivian wasn’t making connections. She was just short of hysteria. “They won’t come here again. I told them not to. I’m through with them!”
“Yes.” His voice sounded strained. “Try to calm down. You’ll make yourself sicker.”
“If either of them call,” Vivian added coldly, “I won’t speak to them.”
“Don’t worry about that,” he told her. “I’ll handle it.”
“I already handled it,” she shot back. “And don’t tell Bob and Charles. Nobody else needs to know!”
“All right, Viv. Try to get some sleep. I’ll have Sadie come in tomorrow and clean up in here.”
“Thanks, Mack,” she managed through her tears. “You really are a dear.”
He didn’t answer her. He went out and closed the door quietly, and the life seemed to drain out of him. Natalie, with Vivian’s boyfriend. He’d told her not to flirt with the man, and she’d been angry with him. Was that why? Did it explain why she’d go from his arms into another man’s in less than ten minutes?
Well, if her idea was to make him jealous, it had failed. He had nothing but contempt for her. Like Vivian, he didn’t want her in the house, in his life. He went downstairs to his study and immersed himself in paperwork, trying not to see that long leather couch where they’d lain together in the sweetest interlude of his life.
Maybe it was just as well. He couldn’t marry her. There were too many strikes against them. But he didn’t like the idea of her with that gambler. Or any other man…