The Bride He Stole For Christmas by Caitlin Crews

CHAPTER THREE

TIMONEYHADTHOUGHTthis would never happen again.

She’d been sure. He’d made certain she was sure.

But now he was kissing her again, as if there had been no separation. She was kissing him back as if her heart had never been crushed. And all her dreams, all her memories, faded away as the searingly beautiful reality of it took hold, sweeping through her and lighting her up as if she had never dimmed.

As if there had never been the faintest hint of darkness.

The taste of him. The heat. The way a kiss from this man was nothing so simple as the word implied. There was no fairy tale here. There was no swelling soundtrack in the distance with magic all around. It was too intense for any of that. Too wild.

Too much.

And even though Timoney knew better now, even though he had taught her too well that the abandon she felt when she was close to him was a lie—

How could any of that matter when his mouth was on hers again?

When finally—finally—she felt alive again?

As she always had, Timoney melted into him, and that, too, was an opportunity for more intensity. Because the wall of his chest was hard and hot, and far better than she remembered it. When she had remembered it in excruciating detail. And it was this particular stone, this wall of toned muscle, that she had tried so hard to shatter herself against, hadn’t she?

And had. Over and over again.

Like every kiss, it was like the first.

Unlike so many others, Timoney knew, now, that it could also be the last.

But the mad storm of sensation washed over her and through her, and it didn’t matter that now, she knew this would end.

It didn’t matter because it was too much in all the ways she’d grown to adore. It was too wicked, too impossible, too good.

Crete’s tongue found hers and once again, he led her on that ancient dance that he had taught her.

And she knew each and every one of the steps by now. The angle of his jaw, the low, distant growling sound he made that had always made her shudder. It did again.

Deeper. Wilder.

It seemed preordained that he should have found her tonight, in this barren garden while seasons of flowers slumbered beneath their feet. It seemed right, somehow, that he would appear like one of her dreams and kiss her like this, making the choice before her—the choice she had already made, though her memories had plagued her—so stark. So desperate.

So unfair.

It was that last thought that had her pulling her mouth from his, so that their breath sawed out at once and made their own clouds.

But for once, she felt as if her own mind was remarkably clear where he was concerned. Though to make sure, she stepped back and put some space between their bodies. Better not to put her yearning for him to the test.

“This is wrong.” Timoney was surprised that she could use her mouth to speak when what she wanted to do was curl into a ball and cry. Or pound actual stones to sand. Maybe both at once. “I’m engaged to marry Julian.”

Crete’s hard mouth curved. She would not call it a smile. “I hardly think that counts.”

“How liberal you are,” she replied, doing absolutely nothing to hide the bite in her voice. It felt like a weapon. Maybe the only one she could muster. “I hope you take this same position when, should you ever condescend to marry, you find your betrothed in another’s arms only hours before the ceremony. Somehow I do not think you will.”

“It does not count, little one, because you did not choose to marry him.” That impossible dark blue gaze of his seemed to pin her back down to the stone bench behind her. “Did you?”

“Of course I had a choice.” She should have left it at that. But instead, her mouth kept moving, and not in the right direction. “It might not have been a choice I liked, but I chose it. I chose Julian.”

Maybe if she said it enough it would feel more like a gift and less like a noose.

“Did you indeed? Out of all the men in the world, you looked around and selected him?” Again, that curve in his mouth. That too-sharp amusement in his gaze. She wanted to claw at his face—but her hands couldn’t be trusted to stick with violence. Crete continued as if she’d answered him. “Or was he rather chosen for you? Presented to you as the only option, to better serve your uncle’s interests?”

“I’m astounded that you know Julian exists in the first place,” she managed to say. “Or that my uncle does, for that matter. And I’m awash in pure astonishment that you have ever bothered to consider the business interests of men you so clearly disdain.”

“I know other people exist, Timoney.” His arrogant expression intensified. “I don’t care that they exist. There’s a difference.”

“Only if you’re a raging narcissist.”

He shrugged, looking wholly unbothered by that. “Narcissists claim power that is not theirs and attempt to profit off of it by any means necessary. My power is earned. And it doesn’t take more than a cursory examination of the financial pages to know that your uncle has grand ambitions.”

In all the intense and heartbreaking dreams and daydreams she’d had since leaving London, Timoney had not thought to imagine what it might be like to finally see Crete again...only to discuss her uncle. Or Julian, for that matter.

She had imagined, fervently, that if he came for her, it would be to declare his undying love at last. To beg for her to come back to him. To tell her that he’d missed her terribly, that he couldn’t live without her, that he would do anything if she would only come back to him...

But none of those words seemed to be forthcoming. And the longer she stared up at him, waiting for him to even hint a little in that direction—she had that little pride, apparently—the more arrogant he looked.

And the more a new sort of stone hardened into shape inside her.

“What does it matter?” She shook her head, trying to keep it clear. It didn’t matter how he kissed. What mattered was how he’d disposed of her when he was done. She needed to remember it. “The choice was made.”

“Unmake it,” Crete urged her.

Her heart, her poor heart, broke. Then melted. Then broke anew as he reached over and cupped her face in his hands.

As if this was a romance. As if this was the part where that pretty music rose to a crescendo while the credits rolled and happiness was assured all around.

When she knew better.

“The guests are already here,” she told him, furious that it was so hard to keep her voice even. To fight back the emotion that threatened to spill out from her eyes. “The contracts have already been signed.”

“And yet we do not live in the Dark Ages, where such things might be considered irrevocable. Do not marry him, Timoney.” His thumbs moved against her cheekbones, spreading warmth and heat spiraling through her. Once upon a time, she had confused that for affection. Once, she’d imagined that no matter what he said, moments like this told a different tale. Back then, when he’d told her he could not love, she’d been so sure that she knew better. Because she had known so much love from her parents, and how could that all have been lost forever? She had been certain she could show him. “Come back to London with me. Surely you want that more than this.”

And the truth was that Timoney wanted nothing else.

In the distance, she could hear music from the house, the piano’s sweet melody spilling out into the dark. Silent night. Holy night. Yet all was not calm. She had felt nothing for so long that it was like being much too cold only to leap into hot water. Everything tingled, so sharp it was very nearly painful.

In some ways, it was worse than pain. Pain would have taken over and blocked out everything else.

She was entirely too aware of the things she felt.

Each and every one of the things she felt.

“You don’t want me,” Timoney said quietly, though she didn’t want to. Oh, how she didn’t want to. But she couldn’t hide behind convenient fictions any longer. If she couldn’t tell the truth now, when could she? And if she couldn’t tell the truth...who was she? “When you had me in every possible way, you threw me out.”

“Timoney—”

“Have you changed your mind, Crete?” she asked him then, cutting off whatever excuse he might have offered. If, indeed, he would have bothered to make any excuses. “Have you come here to tell me that you love me, after all?”

And her curse was that even though she knew he had not—that he could not—she wished he had. That he was about to drop to his knees, make speeches, pull out a ring. Make any or all of the grand gestures she would have sworn she neither wanted nor needed...but, it turned out, she would very much have liked to have experienced. With him, the only man she had ever loved.

The only man you ever will love, a voice within her intoned.

As if her heart wasn’t already broken enough.

His face didn’t change. And he was such a magnificent specimen of a man. She had never seen his like, his beauty so ferocious it hurt to look upon. Yet once she had, it was impossible to look away. She felt as if he’d burned himself into her, a terrible brand, and yet the fact that she could smell her own charred flesh didn’t keep her from tracing her fingers over the marks he’d left.

Again and again and again.

Something softened in his gaze, but his mouth stayed in its usual hard line.

“Come back,” he said again, more command than entreaty. “I don’t have to tell you how good we were together. You already know. I do not pretend to understand why you would walk willingly into a marriage that can give you nothing you need. Or want. Come back and we need never speak of this chapter again.”

The longing was so intense then that surely she should have doubled over. Crumpled to the frozen ground. Cried, at the very least.

Timoney would never know how she remained upright. Her gaze clear. “I will take that as a no. Nothing has changed. Because you can’t change, can you?”

She thought she might hate him, then, and that felt like an upgrade from the mess inside her. Because it was easier to be numb. It was far easier to lock up all the things she felt far away, where none of it could torture her. Where she could observe what happened to her from a distance. Where she could feel nothing.

Now she felt everything.

Now she felt, and that might have been the most unforgivable thing he’d done yet.

“We don’t need to change a thing,” Crete said, as if he was warming to the subject. It made her wonder what he’d come here to say, if not this—but she pushed it aside. It didn’t matter. None of this mattered. “It can be as it was.”

“It can’t be as it was.” She shook her head at him. “Because I’m in love with you, Crete, and your reaction to my daring to say that out loud was to end everything. On the spot. Why would I sign up for that again?”

His expression hardened, and she knew that look. It was one she’d seen him wear often enough while tending to his many business concerns.

“Surely it is better to be with someone you love than this animated corpse who you will never love at all,” he said, mildly enough, though she could see that considering gleam in his gaze.

Timoney wanted to scream at him not to imagine he could handle her the way he handled his legion of underlings.

But screaming would prove to him that she needed handling and kid gloves and all the other things that set her teeth on edge. Or would, if he had ever offered them. He hadn’t before.

“On the contrary,” she said, with a great, icy calm that she hadn’t known she had inside her. “Far better to be in a relationship where I know exactly what I’m getting and what I can expect. Far better that than dying of loneliness with a man who could love me, but refuses. If I’m not to be loved, Crete, I’d rather not pretend. I’d rather immerse myself fully in the lovelessness.”

What she didn’t say was, I would rather not break my heart all over again.

He actually laughed. Timoney felt nothing short of murderous.

“I have never heard anything so absurd,” he said. “You cannot mean it. Might as well march yourself off to a stint in a prison, no?”

Timoney did not choose to tell him that her upcoming wedding rather felt like a prison, actually, and that she welcomed it. Better unmistakable iron bars than a touch like fire and that look in his gaze when he was inside her. Better not to avoid confusion.

“Surely you’ve had other mistresses who moved on to other men,” she said, scowling at him. “I don’t understand why this is such a surprise to you.”

“It is true.” Crete shrugged again and looked almost...philosophical. “But they did not love me. Many times they said they did, but it was not so. Not like you. You, Timoney, I believed.”

“Your arrogance is breathtaking.”

That wasn’t hyperbole. She felt as if she’d fallen from a great height and had landed hard on her back, knocking all the air out of her body.

Timoney stepped back even farther, because she didn’t want to. She wanted to move closer to him. She wanted to fling herself into his arms and promise him anything at all if he would simply take her back.

Did it matter if he loved her? Surely she could love him enough for the both of them...

But this was the trouble with Crete. He felt like a dream come true, but she knew better. She’d lived it once already. This time, she knew there was no happy ending here. There was only misery—and that dispassionate look on his face gone cruel when he dismissed her.

She couldn’t sign up for that again. She wouldn’t. “If you’ve come all this way simply to tell me that you don’t like the idea of my marrying Julian, it’s a wasted trip. You could have saved yourself the trouble.”

“What would make it something other than a waste, then?” he asked, in the silky manner that set off little fires all over her body—and also reminded her that whatever else he was, he was almost supernaturally gifted at making people do as he pleased. It was one of the reasons he had made himself too many fortunes to count.

She had never been any match for him.

But then, Timoney wasn’t the same woman he’d met outside that club, was she? She was the woman who’d survived him the only way she knew how.

“You have nothing to offer me,” she told him quietly. “It’s Christmas Eve, Crete. This is a season of miracles, but you have none on offer. You decided long ago that you are incapable of such things, of any and all human emotion. And once your mind is made up, there’s no changing it. I wouldn’t dream of trying.”

“But you cannot wish for this fate, Timoney,” he said, his voice still a rough thread of silk against the night. “Do you think I have forgotten how you came apart in my hands? How you sobbed out my name? How you told me you might die if I did not return to you quickly enough each evening?”

She swayed on her feet, still breathless. And she didn’t like him reminding her of those days, those weeks, that life. How desperate she’d been for him, always. How needy.

But he wasn’t finished. “And yet you truly plan to shackle yourself to a man who will use your body to pleasure himself? You wish to endure a lifetime of his touch?”

“For all you know Julian is a marvelous lover,” she threw at him.

And then, at last, she saw Crete change.

It was instant and overwhelming. As if they’d moved from a bright, sunny summer’s day to a howling winter storm in the blink of an eye. He seemed to grow larger, wider.

Darker.

It took her long moments, her heart stuttering in her chest, to recognize that though it felt like he’d gone volcanic—though she could see the explosion all around them—he actually hadn’t moved at all.

“And have you had many lovers since we parted?” he asked. Softly. So softly.

But the threat there was unmistakable.

Not that he would hurt her with his hands. That would be easier to handle, because if he was that kind of brute, she wouldn’t feel so torn by this. By him. Rather that he would make his displeasure known in other ways—and heaven help her, but she didn’t think she could survive that again. She wasn’t entirely sure she’d survived it the first time.

Her heart was pounding so hard that she hurt. It hurt. And she had never been a liar. But she didn’t think that any good would come of telling truths here. Not when he looked molten and dangerous, and too likely to express himself with his mouth on her body—

And no matter that her body responded enthusiastically to that notion, she couldn’t let that happen. Not because she was so virtuous, but because the only way to live through this was to go cold turkey from Crete and his dangerous, intoxicating touch. That he’d kissed her tonight was bad enough. Anything more and she would be lost.

Julian wasn’t anyone’s idea of a savior, but there would be safety in marrying him all the same.

“A lady doesn’t kiss and tell,” she said, lifting her chin.

But Crete only laughed, as he closed the distance between them. “I don’t believe you.”

“Luckily, I don’t require your belief. That’s the thing about facts, Crete. They remain facts whether or not you believe in them.”

There was a curve to his hard mouth. A gleam far harder in his dark gaze. “I believe in this.”

Then he was kissing her again, and this time, it was as if he’d taken all that heat, all that fire, and thrown gas on it.

It was a mad spiral of sensation and need. Timoney could feel him everywhere, swirling around inside her, pooling low in her belly, and making her melt between her legs.

He bent her backward and she arched into him, jubilant and joyful, her blood pumping out a rhythm that sounded like At last, at last, at last.

And it was only when a shock of cold hit the heated flesh of her breasts that she remembered herself.

Or tried.

She pushed him away again, unable to tell if she was gasping for breath or sobbing.

More likely, it was something in between. She glanced down at the bodice of the dress she wore, and readjusted it. Then pulled her cloak tight over breasts that ached, because, she knew, all they wanted was more.

All she ever wanted from Crete was more.

And she knew that as long as it was physical, he would give her all the more she could possibly want. More than she could handle. Almost more than she could take.

Timoney had lived like that for months. And when he’d taken all that more away, with such brutal finality, she’d thought it might kill her. Maybe it had killed her, in a way, because she wasn’t who she’d been then. Not anymore. She couldn’t pretend that she was.

Somehow, she knew that it was only possible to fall in love so heedlessly once.

Because ever after, it would be impossible to forget what it was like to crash back down to earth.

Or what it was like to live like that, in so many pieces.

She had gathered herself together and loved again after her parents died. But how could she possibly be so reckless again? She couldn’t. She wouldn’t.

“I can’t tell you how many times I dreamed that you would come,” she told him softly. “But it makes no difference, in the end. At least I know that now.”

She told herself that was a kind of gift. A bit of grace in an otherwise bone-chilling December. Something she would find a way to live with, going forward.

The way he looked at her then was in no way graceful. “I think you will find it a stark difference, indeed, to wake the morning after next to find a man half in the grave heaving away on top of you.”

Timoney did not particularly wish to imagine that. Some demon moved in her, however, and she found herself smiling serenely at him as if the image did not bother her at all.

“Crete.” She tried to sound something like pitying, because it felt good. To pity someone other than herself. “You’re too late.”

His hard mouth moved. That was all. Maybe she needed to examine why it was she wanted it to mean more than it did. “That sounds a great deal like a challenge.”

“It’s really not.” She thrust her hands deep into the pockets of her cloak, not sure that she would ever truly be warm again. Not now that he’d reminded her what true heat was like. True fire. “I do appreciate you coming here and reminding me exactly why I’m making the decision that I am.”

Crete studied her. The moon came out from behind the clouds again and shone down all around them, making everything feel magical and miraculous—and a great many other things that were not true. She blamed Christmas. And him.

“You’re getting married in the morning,” he said, after a moment. “That means I have the whole of the night to change your mind.”

And like that, she lost the ability to breathe again. “It...absolutely does not mean that.”

His eyes glinted with a hint of heat. “I don’t mind telling you, little one. I like my chances.”

“What do you think will happen? Do you think you’re going to so muddle my head with sex that I’ll forget what you did to me? That you had me bodily removed from your flat?” And she still couldn’t breathe, but it turned out, she didn’t care about that as much as she could have. As much as she should have. “Because let me assure you, Crete. I won’t forget that. Ever.”

“Forget or do not forget,” he said with a shrug. A shrug. “All I ask is that you allow me to remind you of everything else.”

Timoney couldn’t understand why he wanted to do this. It didn’t make sense, not after the night he’d so cruelly tossed her aside. When he’d been brutally clear that there was no future here, no matter what.

She stared at him in the mist and moonlight, that beautiful face of his set and unreadable, the way it always was.

And she reminded herself that she had survived him. She had survived that night, though she’d thought it might kill her. Dead inside though she may have felt, she had not, in fact, died. She wasn’t the same woman he’d crushed so easily.

And she was marrying Julian tomorrow, no matter what he did tonight.

If, as she suspected, the light of day would remind Crete how little he wanted the things he seemed to think he wanted here in the dark, that was fine.

What would it hurt to treat this as a little exercise in wish fulfillment until then? She wasn’t susceptible to him now—not the way she had been, anyway. She could have lost herself completely in him only moments ago, but she hadn’t. She’d found her footing. She’d held it.

And this was the first time she’d been around him for more than a few minutes without the passion between them erupting, rolling on into that same inferno no matter where they were. The cloakroom of a club. Too many vehicles to count. The bathroom at an upscale restaurant with most of fashionable London on the other side of the door.

There you go, she told herself. It’s already different. You’re fully clothed.

She told herself that the heat she felt inside her then was shame. And then felt a tiny ribbon of real shame, because it wasn’t.

“You’d better come into the house,” Timoney told him, after a moment. After making sure she felt steady enough with the invitation. “But you mustn’t be seen.”

Then she whirled around and started back up the cold stone path, not checking to see if he followed her.

For she knew that he did.

Like something out of a Greek myth.

Are you afraid that if you look back that he’ll be gone?she asked herself as she walked. Or that he won’t?

She led him to one of the doors on the far side of the manor that led to the conservatory, where no one but Timoney ever seemed to go. Her uncle and his guests had moved into one of the sitting rooms, as she’d seen through the brightly lit windows, and she couldn’t think of a reason any of them would venture away from the warmth and the drink to come all the way across into the old part of the house.

It would be safer to take Crete to her bedchamber, where she could lock the door, but she hoped she wasn’t quite that foolish.

Once inside, she sat down on her favorite settee, where she’d spent hours and hours as a child. And she wasn’t prepared for the sight of Crete, then, prowling around this particular room as if he was altering her childhood with every step. He was so male. So reckless and bold in this place she thought of as soft. Sweet.

She told herself it was a rude intrusion, that was all. He didn’t belong here. He belonged in that flat of his, sharp and chilly. Not in a room of books and cozy throws, soft woven rugs, and the promise of plants come spring.

Timoney ignored that melting sensation, molten hot between her legs, that suggested she was interested in other intrusions, the ruder the better.

This was for her, she reminded herself sternly. She would indulge Crete, but only to please herself. Because she hadn’t imagined she would ever be alone with him again. And this was her opportunity to ask him all the things she’d always wanted to know, but had been too afraid—or perhaps too overawed—to ask while they’d been together.

And this time, he might actually answer.

He might deny it, but she knew that he would leave. Possibly as soon as he realized that she was not the girl he’d known. That he’d made her into the woman she was now, and he might not like what that meant.

But before he understood that shift, he would answer a few questions.

Like the one she’d asked the version of him she carried around in her head every night since she’d last seen him.

“So. Crete.” She cleared her throat. “Why are you like this?”