The Bride He Stole For Christmas by Caitlin Crews

CHAPTER SEVEN

“THATMAYBEso,” she managed to say with what she hoped sounded like a great calm. “But I’m afraid it doesn’t matter.”

He looked astonished, taken back, and possibly outraged at the notion that she dared tell him that his feelings were not of paramount importance across the Commonwealth, if not the whole of the planet. He also looked, unusually for him, faintly disheveled.

Because he was Crete, more stunning than any one man had the right to be, that his hair looked like he’d run his fingers through it only made him look better. However impossible that should have been.

And Timoney kept telling herself all these ridiculous stories, thinking that she could handle this, handle him. Yet the look of surprise on his face didn’t thrill her the way it should have. It made her want to make it all better. To jump into his arms and race him back to London. Anything to make him happy—

But then, she’d already tried that.

She had to take solace in the fact that however he felt just now at the prospect of her wedding in the morning—and she could see how he felt, written all over his face—it was nothing compared with the way he’d made her feel that last night in London.

There was a part of her that was already racing to tell her exactly how much of a fool she’d been to allow this to happen. Because now it was all brand-new again. The feel of him, deep inside her body. His mouth moving over her tender flesh. The reality of him, so strong and hard and solid, pressing her down to the ground—

Just thinking about it made her tremble, everywhere, as if it was that close to the edge all over again.

Timoney tried her best to tamp it down, because the longer she stood here, looking at his rampant male splendor—his talk of taking her back to London with him ringing in her head, more temptation than any woman should have to bear—the more she had to face the facts. Chiefly that she already regretted this.

All of this.

Because she’d made a critical error here.

She had come alive again, with him. As if she had never been anything but a rush of brilliant color and raw sensation. Her two months of gray were over. She could feel again.

Timoney felt gloriously alive from her hair to her fingers to her toes and back. There was an electric current sparking within her once more, making her skin seem to glow. Her bones seemed to hum inside her limbs.

And every place he’d touched, inside and out, blazed still.

There was no undoing that. She wouldn’t want to undo it.

She told herself that it had to be better to take this memory with her when she sank down into the swamp again. And if somehow she couldn’t freeze herself solid again, well. Julian could do what he liked with her body. Timoney would go off in her head, come back here, and that, too, had to be better.

This way she wasn’t losing anything. Heading off to London with him again, on the other hand, was a recipe for loss. Would it be six months again? Less? And when he was done with her again, when he had truly destroyed her—again—what would she do then?

Maybe she shouldn’t have indulged herself with Crete, but she would have a long, safe marriage in which to consider the matter from all sides. She might not be happy, but she had chosen her path. It wasn’t a seismic event. Like meeting Crete.

Like losing him.

She told herself the choosing was what mattered.

“I do not think that you are understanding me,” Crete bit out. His grip on her upper arm felt like a band of steel. And that, too, felt like a gift.

Timoney would hoard it all up, these excruciating gifts like too-bright treasure. And her hoard was what would make the next few years fly by before Julian tired of her. As she knew he would.

She couldn’t wait.

“I think I understand you perfectly.” She forced herself to meet his gaze again. “I just don’t agree with you. I know that must be difficult for you, it being so rare.”

Temper flashed over his face, and something in her seemed to roll over at that. Not in fear. Not in anxiety of any kind.

It was pure exhilaration.

Because the man Timoney had lived with in London had never let his veneer crack, even a little. There had never been a question that she might see beneath the masks he wore. The hard-edged businessman. The intense lover. The remote man.

This, too, was an unexpected gift.

“I am the bastard son of a man who could have taken care of me but did not.” He bared his teeth at her. “You know this. You must also know that I would never, ever allow a child of mine to be raised apart from me.”

Timoney couldn’t let herself think about Crete as a child. It was too much. It had been bad enough to read those dry recitations of unfortunate facts in so many articles—but he had stood before her tonight and told her how little affection there was, how little kindness. She would dissolve where she stood if she let herself think about him as a small boy, surviving such coldness, and she couldn’t afford that. He was a man who capitalized on the weaknesses of others, always. She admired that in him. It had made him who he was today, and she loved him.

But she couldn’t allow him to use her own weakness for him against her.

“I’m sure you have nothing to worry about,” she told him, though she was not sure of any such thing. Her body had always seemed to delight in its irregularity. She did begin to wonder, as she watched that dark incredulity move across his face again, what exactly she was playing at here. “I don’t think it’s the right time of the month.”

“Somehow, this does not comfort me,” he growled at her, as if he knew exactly how unreliable her body was. To say nothing of her claims.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” she said in as British a manner as possible. Which was to say, she made it abundantly clear she was not, in fact, sorry. “Not everything is comforting. Some things hurt, Crete, and they keep right on hurting. Time doesn’t change them. Space doesn’t change them. Sooner or later, you either die or you learn to live with them.”

And she felt his hand contract on her bicep as he took her meaning.

She hardly recognized him then, his face was so hard. His gaze so cold.

“Was this your plan all along, Timoney? Is this some kind of sick revenge?”

She pulled her arm out of his grasp then, too aware that he let her do it. It was disconcerting.

“Did you know you were coming here tonight?” He only glared back at her. “I will take that as a no. And no, I did not, in fact, plot out some kind of revenge. I had no idea you would turn up here.”

Not this night. Not ever.

Not even though she’d spent two very long months wishing fervently that he would.

“But now that this has happened, you are happy enough to capitalize on it, is that it?” He shook his head in a kind of awe. Not a good kind. “I had no idea you were so ruthless.”

That was rich, coming from him, but she suspected he wanted her to lose her temper. One fire might lead to another, and then he would win. The way he always won.

“If you would like to sit down and answer more of my questions, fine.” Timoney tried to look as if she was casually moving toward the door. Instead of what she was actually doing, which was making a break for it. “But if you’re going to stare at me like that, as if you might at any moment begin to chew off pieces of me, I think I’ll pass.”

“You will not walk out that door, Timonitsa mou.”

The way he said that was alarming. She couldn’t deny it. Every hair on her body seemed to stand at alert.

Especially because he didn’t move.

As if he didn’t need to move to cut her off. He was that sure of himself.

She told herself it was fear that raced through her, making her nipples harden into points and her core melt, but she knew better.

“I couldn’t decide if I wanted to see you again or if I never wanted it,” she told him when she reached the door. She put her hand on the latch but turned to face him because she felt she owed him this much. It was more consideration than he’d shown her—and she also needed to convince him not to press her. Because her willpower to walk away from him and marry the man her uncle had picked for her was very flimsy indeed. “But I think that this has been good. It has eased something inside me, Crete. Though I doubt that was your intention, I’m thankful all the same.”

“You are thankful,” he repeated, his voice a dark and dangerous ribbon of sound that seemed to connect hard to all those places she was still trying to convince herself were fearful. And then set them all alight. “Oh, joyful day. You may be pregnant with my child. You insist that you will marry a man who disdains and disgusts you. But what can that matter when you are thankful.”

Timoney felt as if her lungs were wrung out. She could only seem to take tiny little sips of air, and none of it seemed to get where it needed to go. Her hand ached, and she realized she was gripping the door latch far too hard.

But she didn’t let go.

“Maybe he does disdain me,” she replied, her voice not quite as steady as she would have liked, because she might have been ignoring his other points, but that didn’t mean the blows didn’t land. “But at least he’s honest and up-front about it. Which is more than I can say for you.”

Crete reared back slightly, as if she’d struck him. “Try not to alter history of which I was a part, please. I was never anything but honest with you. I am nothing but honest, and to my detriment.” His hard mouth twisted. “Ask anyone.”

“You may be blunt and direct when it suits you, but that’s not the same thing.” She dropped her hand from the door and had the vague thought that she was making a strategic error, but she brushed it aside. And glared at him instead. “Are you ever honest with yourself?”

His eyes narrowed. And Timoney knew she shouldn’t have let go of the latch. She should have left by now. She should have flung open the heavy old door, hurled herself out to the chilly hall, and then run all the way through this house until she could safely barricade herself in her bedchamber and count the hours until morning.

When you will do what?asked a sharp little voice inside her. You will put on that dress you never liked but didn’t wish to argue about? And then march down the aisle and shackle yourself to a man who thinks you’re a whore?

There was a sour taste in her mouth. She couldn’t seem to stop flashing back to that particular look in Julian’s eyes when he’d stood here before her, called her my dear, and called Crete a mongrel. She couldn’t stop remembering the way his gaze had moved all over her, as if he was using his hands to find his way all over her body.

That was a preview.The voice inside her was certain. And whatever made you think that because you’ve had so much good sex that you’ll somehow be able to suffer through bad?

And more, why had she imagined that she would be okay with that suffering? She didn’t think Julian would hurt her. Meaning, she didn’t think he would strike her. Yet it was suddenly occurring to her, much too late, that there was a vast gap between something that hurt—like a blow—and anything that was even remotely tolerable.

Sex had been a revelation. Having sex with Crete had altered everything. How she felt about her own body. What she did with it. How she viewed herself. She tried to imagine the same scene that had just occurred here on the floor of the conservatory, but with Julian rather than Crete—

Her mind balked.

Timoney hadn’t been expecting revelations.

But she should have paid more attention to the cost of putting up with revulsion.

“Please,” Crete said, still standing where she’d left him. Still seething. “Please do not lecture me on honesty. I am not certain that you have a handle on the meaning of the term as you prepare to walk into a wedding with another man, possibly pregnant with my child.”

And this was not the time to think about what it might be like if she truly was—

It is not the time, she told herself sternly.

“Do you love me?” she asked him, her voice stark.

The way she had asked him once before.

Fatefully.

First she had said those words he didn’t want to hear, and then, when he had coldly explained to her the usual consequences for that, she’d asked him straight out.

Because she hadn’t believed what was happening. And more, she already knew the answer. Or she thought she did. And she’d been so sure that if she simply asked it, he wouldn’t lie. That he couldn’t lie to her face.

Not like that. Not to her.

But he had.

Crete had looked straight at her, straight through her, as if she was a stranger. And with no hesitation, he had said no.

Just that. Just the one word. No.

Timoney would have preferred it if he’d slammed his fingers into her chest, actually torn out her poor heart, and crushed it beneath his foot. That he’d done it metaphorically had left her gasping for air. Why not do it in fact and let the pain of it kill her?

Then again, it had. She just hadn’t had the pleasure of dying.

Now she was too alive for her own good and her wedding was at ten o’clock the next morning.

And she hadn’t run off to nail herself back into her coffin the way she should have when she’d had the chance.

Nor did she make a break for it now. She couldn’t read the expression on his face any longer. It wasn’t that cold, cruel mask from before. But there was nothing soft or loving about it, either.

Once again, she wished she hadn’t asked.

“Do you love me?” he asked, and there was a dangerous edge to his voice then. “Does anything that you have done tonight feel like love to you, Timoney? Because I will tell you, it feels a great deal like love to me. That is not a recommendation.”

After the story she’d gotten him to tell tonight, he could not have delivered a more devastating slap.

Somehow, she didn’t let it knock her flat.

“You were right all along,” she said quietly, when she could. “We are better off apart.”

Then, finally, she turned to walk away from him the way she should have done in the garden, but her fingers no longer seemed to work. She fumbled desperately at the latch.

And when the world seemed to spin out from her, tumbling around and around, she thought for a moment that she’d fallen.

It took her far too long to comprehend that he had come up behind her, spun her around, and tossed her over his shoulder.

“What are you doing?” she demanded.

She tried to brace herself against the wide wall of his back as he stalked through the conservatory. He swept up her cloak and draped it over her as she lay over him, then strode straight back out into the night.

The cold hit her hard, but mostly as a contrast to the heat of him beneath her. The cloak covered her and she was upside down, so there was no possibility that she could see where they were going—though she knew it was away from the house.

All she could do was hold on to him for dear life.

His strides seemed long. There was gravel underfoot, then grass.

She tried to roll off him, but his hand clamped down hard on her behind, holding her in place.

And, even now, making her melt all over him.

“Where are you taking me, Crete?” she made herself demand, because that felt like doing something. And surely she should do something.

His hand gripped her backside harder, the way he often did when he drove deep inside her. His shoulder was wide and sculpted beneath her belly, and she told herself the cloak was very warm and that was why she was suddenly too warm and given to squirm.

“Settle,” he ordered her.

And he did not slow his pace at all.

“You must be mad,” she threw at him. “You can’t simply... What are you doing?”

“I should have thought that was obvious,” he said, as he carried her off to the night. Walking tall and proud, as if it was his right, and gripping her backside as if he was claiming her. “As you cannot be trusted to make the right choices, Timoney, you are forcing me to make them for you.”

Funnily enough, though she would have been delighted for him to make any choices for her that he wished a few months ago, she hated it tonight.

You mean you want to hate it, came that insinuating voice.

That made her something like desperate. “I beg your pardon. You have no right! Put me down this instant. This instant.”

She tried to throw herself to the side and he quelled it before she really even formed the thought. With a laugh. And the quelling made the core of her seem to hum.

“I cannot do that,” he told her and if she wasn’t mistaken, he sounded...at ease.

More at ease that she’d ever heard him before, in fact.

“What can you possibly be thinking?” she demanded, hardly able to hear her own voice over the clamor inside her, all of it spiraling around and around blooming into sheer desire between her legs.

“The time for thinking is over, little one,” he told her, and if anything, his stride lengthened. “Now it is time for action.”

“This is an abduction! You are kidnapping me!”

And this time, the hand on her backside smoothed over her curves, just enough to make every nerve inside her seem to dance itself awake.

Then shudder, like she was on the very edge of shattering.

“It is,” Crete agreed, all dark male satisfaction. As if he knew. “You can thank me later.”