A Bride For Abel Greene (5 page)

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Authors: Cindy Gerard

BOOK: A Bride For Abel Greene
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Not until this morning in his office when he’d held her, and she’d felt the slight, but undeniable tremble of his big, strong body, had it occurred to her what was actually going on. She’d read the heat in his eyes, listened to the thunder of his heart as he’d fought for the control to back away—and she’d realized that he’d wanted to do more than just touch her. He’d wanted what men have wanted from women since the dawn of time. And he’d wanted it bad.
She’d tried to laugh herself out of that conclusion. It didn’t seem possible. A man like him did not get in a foaming, fizzing lather about a woman like her. But as she’d stood in the shower, reliving the look on his face, the fire in his eyes, she’d accepted the heady truth. The man was hot for her body. Amazing. Simply amazing.
It wasn’t that she was fooling herself into believing she’d suddenly turned into a siren. All she had to do was look in the mirror to be reminded of that. Hers was not the kind of face that launched ships—a dingy maybe—but never a luxury liner like Abel Greene. No. She knew that his physical response to her had more to do with—to use his word—
circumstances
.
He’d lived alone for a long time. Five years, if she remembered J. D. Hazzard’s account accurately. Five years was a long time for a man as physical as Abel Greene to be without the comforts of the softer sex.
Mackenzie had never considered herself an opportunist—but she’d live and breathe the part if it meant keeping Mark alive. She may not be the game of choice, but she was the only choice and she was going to play Abel Greene’s five years of solitude to her advantage. Sex was a powerful weapon. She’d never figured on owning the kind of firepower to employ it. Until this morning. And she’d been thinking about it ever since. Was it fair to Greene? No—but she was past the point of caring about fair play. And she wasn’t going to think about what that made her. Too much was at stake. If she had to, she was going to brazenly dangle the golden sexual carrot in front of him until he broke from the pressure. And when she had him on his knees begging for release, she’d deliver the moon—just as soon as he married her.
Before she resorted to sexual warfare, though, she had some facts to lay out for him. A big, hefty guilt trip wasn’t beyond her at this point. Even with her limited knowledge of his character, she was hopeful that he would buckle under the weight of it.
“You may feel you have a choice in this matter,” she said, surprised that her voice came out so strong when her knees felt so weak. “But the truth is,
I
don’t. When I answered your ad, I made a commitment. For me, there is no going back. I don’t have anything to go back to. I quit my job. I sold everything I owned. Paid off every bill I had.”
“Then I bought two one-way bus tickets, spent the last of my change in a crummy little truck stop for our breakfast yesterday morning, and as of right now I’m flat broke.”
She paused to let him digest the facts.
“And why did I quit my job,” she asked, when she was certain she had his full attention, “and deplete my funds? Because of you. Because
you
advertised for a bride. I answered that ad in good faith. And now I need you to fulfill your obligations.”
She could have told him more. For now, though, she sensed that he didn’t want to know the whole story. In the meantime, whether he knew or not didn’t change anything. The issue was still the same. They couldn’t go back.
Digging deep, she resorted to her big guns. Slowly, deliberately, she walked toward him and prayed the faraway sound of rap music meant Mark was still in the loft with his boom box. Heart pounding, her breath shallow, she stopped by his chair and with the sexiest look she could manage, gazed deep into his eyes. She didn’t wait for his reaction. She didn’t stop to ask herself,
Are you crazy?
She attacked.
With calculated, and what she desperately hoped were seductive, movements, she eased onto his lap. He was so taken off guard, he didn’t try to stop her. Instead his hands rose instinctively to her waist to steady her.
Running on the last of her resolve and a rush of breath-stealing adrenaline, she looped her wrists around his neck.
“Just so there’s no question in your mind,” she whispered, the uncertainty in her voice somehow coming out as a seductive rasp, “I want you to know that I intend to keep my part of the bargain.
Every
part of the bargain,” she murmured, holding his dark, dangerous gaze as she leaned into him, pressing her breasts to his chest in a conscious attempt to increase his physical awareness of her as a woman.
She’d never vamped a man in her life. She didn’t let that stop her from giving it her all now. Brushing her lips to his, slowly, provocatively, she played on one of the oldest laws of nature to drive her point home.
“I want to be your wife, Abel Greene.” She nipped him lightly on his lower lip intending to seduce. But with a quickening of her heart and an unplanned lapse of purpose, she got caught up in the taste of him.
He tasted of danger. He tasted of need...and of a man standing on the edge of control. When his big body tensed in anticipation, she forgot she had a plan. She simply reacted. Tentatively she licked away the little sting her bite had given him.
“In every way...
every
way,” she repeated, hearing a huskiness in her murmur that had eased in without conscious thought.
When she pressed deeper against his body, it was desire, not determination that prompted her. When he didn’t pull away, it was temptation not calculation that had her slipping her fingers into the wealth of his thick, coarse hair, anticipation not manipulation that drew his mouth into more intimate contact with hers.
Temptress. Seductress. Wanton. They were new roles for her. But with Abel Greene’s hard, hot body beneath hers, with his big hands stiffening in resistance, then clutching at her waist, she found herself melting to the task like butter over a flame.
His arms suddenly banded like steel around her. Against her breast she felt the thunder of his heart as he opened his mouth beneath hers and, with drugging urgency, stole the last conscious thought from her mind.
The plan had been to tempt him. The plan had been to tease with a kiss, suggest a promise. The plan had not included that he would respond with a passion so ravenous she thought he’d eat her alive with need.
She wasn’t sure, but she guessed that she lost control about the same moment he did. Control didn’t stand a chance as their bodies spoke, explored, tasted, then dissolved into a straining knot of feminine heat and masculine fire.
Without breaking the contact of their mouths, he lifted her, separated her thighs and resettled her so she was straddling his lap. Cupping her bottom with a possessiveness that stole her breath, he pulled her hard to his hips before tunneling up under her sweater, kneading, stroking, caressing.
She sucked in a harsh breath when his powerful, yet achingly gentle hand stole between their bodies, skated over her ribs and cupped a bare breast. Knotting her hands in his hair, leaned into the caress of his callused palm, all reason, all restraint eroded by the power and the explosiveness of his passion.
He groaned when she rocked against him. She sighed his name when he tore his mouth from hers and with teeth and tongue, laved the tender skin beneath her jaw.
When he roughly shoved her sweater up and out of his way, she arched toward him as he lowered his mouth to her breast.
“Help.”
It could have been her calling out. Lord knows, she needed help. She’d planned on a kiss, not a quagmire of hot, mind-spinning caresses. She’d planned on a controlled, choreographed seduction, not a skidding, careening ride straight to the heart and the heat of an explosion.
It probably
should
have been her calling out, but it wasn’t. The most she could possibly manage at the moment was a breathless, begging moan. And it couldn’t have been Abel—his mouth was otherwise occupied. Wonderfully occupied, as he suckled and tugged and made sweet, savage love to her breast.
Through a haze of electric sensations, she heard the call again.
“Help...I think I need some help up here.”
With a guttural curse, Abel tore his mouth away. Breathing hard, he cocked his head toward the sound.
Mark’s tremulous plea reached them again from the far reaches of the loft, tentative with worry and concern.
“Hey...can anybody hear me? I think Nashata’s having her puppies.”
Frustration was a benign, inadequate description of how Mackenzie felt. Aggressive, blood-boiling need sizzled and seared through her veins, as she sagged against Abel’s broad chest.
“I’ll be right there.” His voice rumbled against her ear, sounding strained, his breath serrated and irregular.
She was still trying to catch her own breath when his long, strong fingers tangled in her short hair. His grip tightened, then tugged her head back so he could look into her eyes. With his other hand he stroked his knuckles along her jaw, studying her face with eyes as hot as burning embers.
“You’re playing with fire, little bird.” He gave her hair a hard, but not hurtful, tug for emphasis. “If you come back to play again, make no mistake—you’re going to get your feathers burned. And then we’re both going to be sorry.”
With a last dark look, he lifted her off his lap, set her down hard on the table and sprinted toward the loft.
“Oh, boy,” Mackenzie breathed, lifting her hands to her cheeks and feeling the burn.
Nothing like that had ever happened to her before. Nothing even remotely like that had ever happened to her. She wasn’t a virgin—but she’d strayed into virgin territory just now. At twenty-six, she’d had exactly two lovers in her life. One she’d intended to marry. When he’d skipped out for a thirty-six C-cup and an inheritance, she’d cried on a friend’s shoulder. He’d been more than sympathetic. He’d taken her to his bed in a misguided attempt at loving away the pain.
In the end it had been a big mistake. But not nearly as huge as her little plan to seduce Abel Greene.
Neither one of her previous relationships had lit a fire like the one he’d just started. Sex with Steven had been safe, secure and totally predictable. Sex with Brian had been sweet and gentle. One brief, wild encounter with Abel Greene—hardly more than a kiss, really—had served notice on all of her erogenous zones that sex with this man would be unlike anything she’d ever experienced.
“Oh, boy,” she murmured again. His morning stubble had left an erotically pleasant burn on the tender flesh of her breast. She touched her fingers to her mouth, still sensitized and gently throbbing from his kisses. And she felt the aching heat between her thighs that even now, after he’d dumped her on the table, grew in intensity.
“He’s right about one thing,” she mumbled, burying her face in her hands. “Fire has never burned this hot.”
Gingerly she scooted off the table. With a trembling hand, she finger-combed her hair, made a valiant attempt at setting her clothes right and walked on shaky legs toward the loft.
Only a fool would follow him. But only a coward would avoid another confrontation. Besides, she needed an ally. Maybe she and Nashata could bond during the birth experience. And maybe she could use the time to figure out who had gotten the best of whom just now in Abel Greene’s kitchen.
 
The birth process was new to Mackenzie. It was also everything it was cracked up to be. Frightening, enlightening, heartwarming. It was, in short, a miracle. It wasn’t just the miracle of the new life of four wiggling, grunting puppies that brought tears to Mackenzie’s eyes. It was the miracle of watching Mark let go of some of his street-smart, tough-guy machismo that he wore like barbwire around the sensitive and giving boy he’d once been.
She wasn’t sure when or how it had happened, but somewhere between dusk and dawn, Mark and Nashata had found some common ground. And somewhere between adolescence and innocence, the sweet, impressionable little boy she’d watched grow into a troubled teen had turned a corner back toward the straight and narrow.
It was in the midst of this secondary miracle and Nashata’s spellbinding, three-hour ordeal, that the storm finally blew itself out. Mark, hovering like a fascinated midwife over Nashata and her brood, didn’t notice the welcome intrusion of crisp, clear sunlight streaming through the peaks of the cathedral windows running the length of the loft.
Mackenzie noticed. She noticed the sudden absence of the tumultuous wind. She noticed the wary stillness of the man at her side. And she noticed the moment when the focus of his attention had shifted from Nashata and her pups to her face.
She felt the effect of his laser-sharp gaze in the places where he’d kissed her. She felt the struggle he was waging deep within himself—and the wanting that he ached to deny but couldn’t.
But mostly she felt alive. Alive like she’d never felt in her life. She was aware of each breath she drew, of the rise and fall of her breasts beneath her sweater, of the fine, silky hairs at the nape of her neck, of the tenderness of her skin, the sensitivity of her nipples. And she knew he was aware of what his gaze was doing to her.
Slowly she closed her eyes. Slower still she opened them to look at the man who wanted so badly not to want her. Twin cylinders of glittering, golden light arrowed through the tall windows and poured over them like crystal rain as they knelt, side by side, near Nashata’s makeshift whelping bed.

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