The Bride He Stole For Christmas by Caitlin Crews
CHAPTER SIX
EVERYTHINGINSIDE CRETEshifted into a long, low, simmering beat.
His chest. His temples.
Deep in his sex.
Timoney stood in the center of this curiously welcoming room bathed in buttery light. She was so beautiful it felt like a terrible ache to look upon her, and a greater ache that the man she thought she was going to marry had not seemed to notice.
He had looked at her as if she was a bauble, nothing more.
And Crete had no doubt that Julian intended to glut himself on her, but it was not the need in him it was in Crete.
It couldn’t be, or he would not have left her here tonight.
There were a great many things that Crete could have said on the topic of Julian Browning-Case, and surely one of them would have gotten through to her, but nothing as pointless as another man seemed to matter with Timoney’s gaze on him.
That endless sea. Enduring. Beckoning. Blue enough to make a man believe in miracles.
He could not resist her. Then again, he did not wish to try.
Crete stalked past her outstretched arms, crossing to the door to make sure that it was locked. That it would admit no further visitors this night—and would not require that he debase himself any further by concealing himself behind the furniture as if he was taking part in some noxious theatrical production of a play he would dislike. When he turned back around, she had dropped her arms and had twisted around to watch him.
With a look on her face that suggested she thought he might have been on his way out.
The way he knew he probably should have been.
But Timoney had haunted him when he had never before believed in ghosts. She’d stayed with him even after he’d scrubbed his home of any stray trace of her presence. She had woken him in the night. She had chased him through his days and all over the world, never giving him a moment’s peace.
He could remember, if vaguely, other women he’d been with for a time. He had always, eventually, felt a sense of great calm when away from them. That was usually how he knew that it was time to move on. When even sex could not give him a moment’s peace. When leaving their side was far preferable to suffering their presence.
This normally did not take very long. Six weeks at the outside.
But everything with Timoney was inside out. Six weeks had come and gone and turned into six months, and he had still felt undone by her. Tonight he wasn’t even touching her. He was gazing at her from across a room, having actually secreted himself behind some old pots so as not to distress her. All she was doing was looking at him with the expression he remembered best. The one that haunted him most.
Open and soft. Sweet and yielding.
It felt like peace.
And yet deep within that peace that only came when he was with her, and layered all around it, was this wanting that never seemed to fade.
When he had walked up to the house tonight, he had assured himself that all it would take was a glance in a window and he would feel the fool. That he would feel nothing when he saw her again. That he would melt off back into the night, taking his shameful obsession with her along with him when he left.
Alas, he had found her in the garden instead.
And foolish was not at all how he felt.
“Go back and sit on your little couch,” he ordered her, in that tone he had always used when he intended to indulge his dark desires.
And like she always had, Timoney shivered. Visibly. He watched with a familiar surge of delight as goose bumps tracked down her neck and over her bare shoulders. His sex was like iron. His mouth watered.
He wanted to taste her more than he wanted his next breath. He would have happily traded it in.
When she did not move as instructed, he only raised an eyebrow. And Timoney let out a rush of breath. Half a laugh, half a sigh.
A sweet music he had missed.
Then she turned, her dress rustling around her, as she set about obeying him.
“Pull up your skirts,” he demanded, his voice darker than before. Hungrier. “I want to see you, Timoney.”
She let out her little song again as she settled down onto the settee, the red cloak spread out around her like a scarlet frame.
And she kept her eyes on him as she pulled the skirt up, slowly, teasing them both.
He had taught her that, too.
Her legs were as perfect as he remembered them and he had to forcibly restrain himself from going over and getting his hands on her calves, her knees, her thighs. The hem of her gown skimmed along and then stopped at her thighs. She breathed in a deep, shaky breath.
Crete said nothing. He waited.
She took in another breath, then another, her gaze still locked to his.
He did not have to tell her to continue. And he did not wish to tell her. He wanted her to want him even a quarter as much as he wanted her. Even a sliver.
Timoney sighed a little, again, a soft surrender.
Then she pulled up the remainder of her skirt so that he could see the tiny scrap of fabric covering the V between her thighs.
“Bare yourself to me,” he told her, hardly recognizing his own voice.
He could see the way she melted at that, but even if he had somehow missed it, she gave herself away. It was the way her fingers shook as she lifted up her hips and wrestled to pull her panties down, then tossed them aside. And she didn’t wait for him to move his finger as he did, commanding her to take her place once more. She lounged back, spreading her legs wide, and holding her skirt up again.
The perfect picture of anticipation and abandon.
All his.
And because it made her shudder, he waited. Even though he was so hard he was surprised his trousers contained him, he waited.
Only when she sighed again, and there was that little catch in the sound, did he move toward her at last.
Crete stalked over to that couch, refusing to admit that he felt something less than solid himself. Something less than sure. Holding her gaze, he sank down to his knees before her, placing himself squarely between her outspread legs.
He leaned in and the scent of her arousal rose between them, that raw, sweet honey.
Another thing that was only and ever his.
He hooked his arms around her thighs, hauling her toward him, then lifted her up before him.
And she melted for him, her body lush and supple and entirely his.
Possibly the only thing in this world that was always and ever his.
Crete could have spent a lifetime watching the way that flush moved over her skin. It reminded him that when she flushed, it went everywhere. Her nipples would become rosier, darker. The hotter she became, the pinker she would grow.
He could have spent still another lifetime cataloging the ways she burned bright, but he wanted her too much.
As he had always wanted her too much.
So he bent forward and put his mouth to the very core of her need.
And felt her as she shattered around him.
But he was only beginning.
Crete licked his way into her, holding her hips where he wanted them no matter how she bucked and moaned. He knew every contour of her. He knew what she liked and what she pretended not to like, but loved. He knew what set her to trembling and what made her sob.
He knew her.
And it was not enough to simply taste her. It was not enough to add one finger, then another, to the rhythm he set.
It was not enough to bring her to the edge then retreat, then throw her over again.
Again and again, just to make sure.
Just to remind them both.
None of it was enough. And he was drunk on her taste, on the sounds she made, on the way she brought her whole body into this. The way her heels drummed against his back and her fingers gripped his hair.
The way she rocked herself against him, greedily. As if she, too, was as much a slave to these fires between them as he was.
Though he knew that couldn’t be true.
For he knew that there could be no wanting deeper or wilder than his.
“Please,” she cried out, arching up against him again. And then again. “Please, Crete. I need you inside me.”
And it all felt preordained. She had always tasted too much like fate. As if he had been heading right here, to her, since before he’d even thought to take a drive this night.
He reached between them, pulling himself out. And there was no fumbling. There was no hesitation. He found his way to her entrance and found her molten.
Always molten hot. Always his.
And he thrust himself deep inside.
Timoney shattered again, this time on a silent scream that still managed to echo around within him.
Filling him. Scalding him.
Changing him, he thought.
He pulled her off her little couch and on top of him, so that she was straddling him where he knelt. Timoney came easily, gracefully. She wrapped her arms around his shoulders and took her time straightening, lifting her head from where it had fallen back.
And he could see the chaos in the blue of her eyes then. He could growl at the way she bit her lip.
“If you want me,” he told her, in a low voice, “you must take me, Timoney.”
He watched the way all that heat flashed in her eyes. He could feel inside him.
It had always been like this. One fire burning too bright in both of them, consuming everything. Taking them over. Making them ash and cinder, flame and fury.
A more beautiful immolation Crete could not imagine, then or now.
And then he found himself gritting his teeth as she began to move.
He had remembered every inch of her. Every touch committed to memory and trotted out to haunt him each night. Every moment of need and hunger made real since that first kiss. Since she’d lowered herself before him, tipped back her head, and stolen his breath.
Here, now, he could admit—if only to himself—that he had thought of little else since she had quit his flat.
And still, somehow, it was as if he’d forgotten how bright she was, how intense. Or had diluted her effect on him, somehow, in the recollection.
It was the way she lifted herself, pulling away from his length and then dropping herself down again, making them both gasp a little at that slick, hot fit.
She was perfection, taking all of him and gripping him tight.
And she was his.
He had taught her this, this lush and lyrical dance. He had shown her all the different ways that they could light each other on fire. How to build these flames so that they danced high.
And how to ride them home, again and again.
He had taught her, and this seemed a celebration of that, of them. Her gaze locked to his. The way she rode him with all that artless determination made everything in him tighten as she rocked them closer and closer still.
Too good. Too right.
Too perfect to bear.
And then he could take it no more.
Crete tumbled her down to that soft rug beneath them, rolling her beneath him and placing his hands on either side of her head so he could change that rhythm. He went deeper, harder.
Her heels dug into the backs of his thighs as she met each thrust and everything then was fire.
That glorious fire, the delirious pounding, and when Timoney threw back her head to scream out her pleasure, he covered it with his own.
And only when she stopped shaking did he let go, thrusting jerkily within her until, finally, he surged over the edge at last—her name like a song inside him.
A song he took the time to sing to himself, for some time, while they both fought to find breath again.
It seemed to him a lifetime later when he could finally move. He took his time, rolling over again so that she was no longer beneath him, but instead splayed out across his chest.
And for another long while, another lifetime at least, she rested there, that soft weight Crete had not allowed himself to admit he missed.
More than missed.
“I’m glad we could settle this,” he said. Eventually. And it was more than an olive branch. It felt...revealing. “We should head back to London now. We can send for your things in a day or so, when whatever commotion there might be tomorrow has died down.”
And it was only when she did not make a happy, joyful sound, or nuzzle her face into the crook of his neck, that something cold moved through him.
“Timoney.” His voice hardly sounded like his. “Everything is settled, is it not?”
She pulled away from him and sat up, smoothing her dress down as she went. Then she took a moment to push the masses of her silvery blond hair back.
And when her eyes found his again, they were steady.
Too steady.
It was as if the floor fell out from beneath him when he was lying there upon it.
“Things were not unsettled,” she said, as if she was choosing her words carefully. Very carefully, and yet her blue gaze did not waver. “On the contrary, they have felt very settled indeed for some time. Two months, I might even say.”
Crete did up his trousers and then jackknifed up. He resented that he had revealed himself at all, while she was apparently more than capable of steady gazes and bizarre statements. So bizarre, he assured himself, that it was no wonder they put his back up. “I do not understand you. Not a word you’re saying.”
Because she could not possibly mean what he thought she did. It was not possible, surely.
“You should return to London, Crete, but I will not be coming with you,” she said softly. But directly. “I will be staying here. As I have told you all along, I’m getting married tomorrow.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” He could hardly get the words out, his jaw was so tight, and it seemed likely that it—that he—might shatter at any moment. “You have been rolling around on the floor with another man. With me, Timoney.”
“And it is very likely that my husband-to-be might even now be availing himself of the woman he intended to roll around on the floor with in here.” She lifted a shoulder, then dropped it, her gaze still offensively, outrageously calm on his. “It appears that I have found myself in a very open kind of arrangement.”
“Have you been hit in the head?” he gritted out.
Her gaze cooled. “I have not.”
“Because that is the only possible explanation,” he continued, despite her reply. “For one thing, you cannot possibly imagine that the likes of Julian Browning-Case, so horrified at my parentage, would ever think that what’s good for the gander is good for the goose, or whatever horrifying English phrase might fit.”
“Whether it is or isn’t, it is certainly no concern of yours.”
He rubbed his hands over his head because what he wanted was to put them on her. And conduct another lesson. Maybe this time, it would take. “Timoney. Do you think I can’t tell that you violently dislike that man? How can you possibly think you might marry him?”
But she only gazed back at him. Placidly. Even more placidly than before, as if the more he objected the more serene she became. “Because I have agreed to marry him, Crete.” She waved her hand at him. “He gave me a ring and I agreed to wear it. More than wear it, I agreed to honor what it represents.”
Crete was certain of two things then. One, that he needed to rip that diamond solitaire from her finger and toss it—and soon. And two, that she was taking some kind of perverse pleasure in this. In sitting there, still flushed from his touch, while she discussed her wedding as if it was something she wanted.
He could not believe it was something she wanted.
He did not believe it.
“Setting aside the fact that you looked at him with sheer horror,” he managed to get out from between his teeth, “there remains the small issue of the fact that we did not use any protection whatsoever just now.”
And he blinked when Timoney only smiled.
As if what he said was amusing, when he had never been less amused in his life. Since when did he forget protection? What madness did this woman stir up in him?
“How can this be?” she asked in mock amazement. “The pathologically overcautious Crete Asgar failing to use protection with a woman? Is this a typical lapse when you engage in one-night stands? Because for the six months we spent together, you never forgot it. Not even once.”
“I never forget.”
And at some point he was going to have to ask himself why, when that was an ironclad law he had followed for as long as he could recall, he hadn’t thought about protection at all tonight. Not once.
But Timoney was only shrugging again, as if it was of no matter either way. “You heard what Julian said. He’s prepared to accept any and all consequences of my liaison with you. What did you think he meant?”
Everything inside Crete went still. Like the moment before detonation.
Or the moment after. “I beg your pardon?”
“Surely you know that Julian has no heir,” Timoney said, as if this was a casual little conversation they could have been having at the sort of dinner party he despised. “He doesn’t even have a distant cousin to step up and take over someday. I think he’s desperate. Or maybe he simply doesn’t care. I don’t know. But whether or not I’m pregnant is no impediment, as far as he’s concerned.”
She even waved a hand at that, as if dismissing the whole topic. As if dismissing him. And then she rose to her feet with that innate grace that Crete had always found nothing short of mesmerizing.
Even tonight, when he thought he might implode with the rage that stormed in him, she was spellbinding.
But he shook off the enchantment when she went to move past him, very much as if she was headed for the door. Yet another unacceptable choice on her part in a series of the same.
Crete shot to his feet, then reached out to take hold of her arm, turning her back around to face him.
She had the temerity to look shocked.
“The matter of your possible pregnancy may not signify to your groom,” he gritted out at her, and was dimly surprised not to find himself shouting. “But I can assure you, Timoney, that it is of critical importance to me.”