Australian Outback Kings / The Cattle King's Mistress / The Playboy King's Wife / The Pleasure King's Bride (49 page)

He groaned as she knelt between his thighs, his whole body tensing at the rhythmic caress of her mouth, and he lifted her hair, wrapping it around him like a fan of silk, taking a compulsive sensual excitement from it as the throbbing need for each other became more and more intense.

With an anguished cry, he hauled her up, then knelt himself, spreading her legs across his thighs as he rocked back on his heels, then bringing her onto him, plunging himself into her so hard and fast it was shockingly glorious, the sensation of his deep penetration and her sheathing him, holding him inside her. She wrapped her legs around his hips and arched back over his supporting arm, wanting the full length of him pushed as far as it was possible, revelling in the sheer ecstasy of encompassing the absolute extent of his male power.

Just as she sighed in blissful satisfaction, he leaned forward and began kissing her breasts, swaying her from side to side as he took each one in his mouth, drawing them into spiralling peaks of pleasure, possessing them as he reinforced the other more intimate possession, rolling her around him.

The sweet flow of climax came in exquisite waves, the rocking from side to side accentuating every ripple of it through her body. Her limbs were going limp. She was hazily conscious of her hair brushing the ground, their bodies bared to the night, the stars overhead pulsing their myriad pinpricks of light at her.

Then Jared rose onto his knees, lifting her with him, before lowering her onto the ground and looming over her, and she knew it was time for him. She did her best to move with him and he didn't seem to mind that her body was languorous. His control amazed her and she thought he must be the best lover in the world—the pleasure King—still inciting intense rolls of blissful sensation in her as he drove towards his own climax.

She loved him—all of him—and when she felt him spilling himself inside her, it seemed like the culmination of her entire life, the fulfilment of what she was born for…to have this man, to share herself with him, to be joined like this in the deepest intimacy there could be between a man and a woman.

They hugged each other, rolling onto their sides, prolonging and extending their togetherness, savouring all the contact they could have with each other; kissing, stroking, totally absorbed in immersing themselves in the communion of touch.

It was Jared who spoke. Christabel would have been content to be with him in silence. To her, it was best, simply feeling him as a beautiful entity who belonged to her, to whom she belonged in this time and place, untouchable by anything else. But he spoke, and connected them back to a world she didn't want to think about.

“Marry me, Christabel,” he softly pressed. “I can't imagine my life without you.”

It stilled the whole momentum of her silent loving. A chill seeped into her bones. She couldn't bear to
start
imagining a life without him. It would happen soon enough. Couldn't they have this night without bringing the future into it?

“We were made for each other. You know it,” he insisted, sliding her hand up his body and holding it over the strong beat of his heart.

She sighed, trying to ease the frozen tightness in her chest. “Ask me tomorrow night, Jared,” she pleaded. “Not now.”

For several moments she felt the rise and fall of his breathing and willed him to let the question pass, not wanting to face the conflict that would rob them of this all too short, peaceful idyll. But she sensed the gathering of purpose in him, even before he rolled her onto her back and propped himself over her, determined on pursuing the issue.

“Why not now?” he asked, gently raking her hair back from her face, intent on seeing all he could of her face, her expression, making evasion impossible.

She stared up at him, hating the circumstances that made accepting what he offered too heavy a burden on her conscience. “I can't tie my life to yours until I know what Rafael Santiso wants. What he's come for,” she prevaricated.

“What do
you
want, Christabel?”

“I'm not a free agent, Jared. Alicia is my child and I will not give her into the care of anyone else.”

He frowned. “I wouldn't expect you to. Though I'd be happy to adopt her and share the responsibility of parenthood with you. I would do everything in my power to protect her and give her a good home.”

Marriage…adoption…legal ties Rafael Santiso would undoubtedly see as possible threats to his trusteeship. And Jared was no pushover. He was demonstrating right now his will to fight for what he believed in, and he had the proven ability to run a multimillion-dollar business. Given a fair playing ground, he might even win against Santiso, but she was certain the Argentinian wouldn't play fair and Jared had too much integrity to play dirty.

“Alicia does like me, you know,” he said persuasively. “I'm sure I can win her acceptance to my being her dad.”

Being Alicia's
father
could very well lead to his death.

She sucked in a deep breath to calm the fearful flutter that thought evoked, then reached up to trace his lips with feather-light fingertips, desperate to recall the sensuality they had been wrapped in before. “I think you'd make a wonderful father,” she readily conceded.

“Then say you'll marry me, Christabel.”

“Please…let me think about it, Jared.” She moved her hand to his ear, caressing the inner coils. “Give me tonight to…”

“No.” He shook his head, dislodging her touch. His voice hardened. “This time I won't let you slip away from me as you did on Sunday night, leaving me with nothing but the memory of how it had been between us.” His eyes blazed down at her. “Tell me what's wrong with my proposition.”

The mood had changed. Irrevocably. Christabel recognised there would be no more lovemaking tonight unless he got his own way, and she couldn't agree to a marriage with him.

“I'm cold, Jared.” It was true enough. Her heart felt like a block of ice. “I want to get dressed. Let me up.”

He hesitated, hating the evasion, wanting to maintain his dominant position over her, yet force was not his style. It never had been in all the time she'd known him. Persuasion, persistence, determination, yes…but not force. Even today he had not forced her into his plane. He had simply taken charge of flying it to a destination of his choice, doing what he believed would work best for all of them.

He rose to his feet, a proud magnificent man bristling with barely leashed aggression. He offered her his hand to help her up but she didn't take it, sensing he meant to lift her into his embrace and press her into the surrender he wanted. She rolled aside and lifted herself, springing to her feet at a safe distance from him.

“You won't trust my hand?” he challenged harshly.

“It's not a question of trust,” she flashed back at him, then realising his hurt—all the hurt she had inflicted on him with her silence—she laid out the truth he refused to see. “I'm poison to you, Jared. I'm like a black widow spider. Bad enough that I've taken what I have from you. If you married me, I'd consume your life.”

“I'm prepared to take that risk, Christabel.”

“I'm not.”

“Then why put off saying so until tomorrow?”

“Because I'm selfish and greedy, and I wanted more of you before tomorrow came.”

Tears welled into her eyes and she tore her gaze from his, overwhelmed by a hopeless sense of defeat. She saw a piece of her clothing and snatched it off the ground, pulling it on in swift, jerky movements.

“Nothing is going to change tomorrow,” he stated, puzzled by her time limit.

“Wait and see,” she threw at him bitterly, hunting around for the rest of her clothes.

“I've done too much of that, Christabel,” he retorted fiercely. “Tell me what you expect to happen.”

“They'll come,” she grated out, hating the inevitability that hung over her, dressing herself with a sense of savage protection against it as she told Jared what she anticipated. “Your mother will bring them. Santiso will persuade her. One way or another, he'll persuade all of you that it's better to let him take Alicia and me back into his custody.”

“I'll never be persuaded of that,” he declared vehemently.

Fully dressed again and feeling more armoured to face his arguments, Christabel squared her shoulders and looked straight at him. He was still carelessly naked, his entire being so focused on fighting her conviction, she was instantly caught in the tension emanating from him, her own nerves snapping at the intensity of the conflict he would not stand back from.

“It won't be your choice, Jared,” she said quietly. “It will be mine.”

“You'd deny me the right to choose the life I want?
With you
, Christabel, whatever it takes and wherever it takes me. It's what I want above everything else.”

His voice was furred with the passionate emotion he was pouring out to her and she felt it curling around her heart, squeezing it. “I can't live with that sacrifice,” she pleaded. “Don't ask me to.”

“Even if you go with Santiso, I'll follow you. I won't give up.”

“You may kill us all if you don't, Jared,” she cried, deeply agitated by his resolve.

“Kill?” he echoed incredulously.

“The man I married, Alicia's father, stood in the way of Rafael Santiso's ambitions. He was blown up in a boat.”

It jolted the powerful flow of his will. “You said it was an accident.”

“It was officially declared an accident. I don't believe it. I have no proof but I don't believe it. Don't get in Santiso's way, Jared. I'll never forgive myself if you do.”

While he was still distracted by the shock of her claim, she turned and started up the slope to the homestead, forcing her legs to move away from him and keep moving.

He had to let her go.

That was the ultimate truth.

And fighting it was fatal.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

J
ARED LET HER
go.

The spectre of murder held him still, its ramifications swirling through his mind as he watched her walk away from him, trudging steadily up the slope to the homestead, a lonely figure bearing a dark knowledge, moving back into a darkness there was no escape from. Not for her.

He wanted to pluck her out of it, to promise her a different life with him, but he knew they would be empty words to her. Empty words to him, as well, until he could see a way past this final fatal barrier. As it was, he realised his continual pressing of the attraction between them must have been a torment to her all these months. It would be a gross act now to subject her to more pressure. He had no ready answers to ease her pain.

He'd forgotten her husband, dismissed him as irrelevant once he knew he'd died before Alicia was born. Five years—ancient history, he'd thought, while it had been five years of living hell for Christabel. And there was no end to it. No end to the Kruger fortune and the power behind it. That was a truth he couldn't dismiss.

He watched her until she was swallowed up by the darkness of the night. For several moments he was gripped by a haunting sense of loss, and a cold, cold loneliness pressed in on him. He looked up at the stars and felt the distance of them, unreachable yet there, twinkling their invitation to those who would dare cross space to get to them, dare anything to conquer the void.

A strong surge of determination burned through him. He would not accept that he and Christabel were ships passing in the night. He had taken it upon himself to bring her and her daughter to King's Eden, to stop her running. He would not let Santiso win. If there had been murder done, as Christabel believed, then any further threat of it had to be lifted and dealt with.

At least now he understood—why she ran; why she had tried to deny the attraction between them; why she'd given in to it, if only for a limited time; why the time—to her mind—had to be limited; the wretched weight she'd been carrying on her conscience about involving him in her life, a weight she'd wanted to put aside while having this one last night with him.

He understood that, too…the compelling need to feel all there was to feel between them while she still could. It wasn't selfish or greedy. It was as natural as breathing, the wish to extend the life of something beautiful, something he knew would never come his way again.

He believed she knew it, too, that what they shared went too deep to ever find with anyone else. It wasn't wrong to take what she could of it. She'd given him as much as she took.

But Jared had no intention of letting it end here. He set about picking up his clothes and putting them on. Christabel had her own brand of integrity. Not hurting others was high on her list. Perhaps that was a woman's way, doing her utmost to save those she loved from being harmed. But letting a predator win only put off other evil hours. The harm would come anyway. It had to be stopped.

Fully dressed again, he walked slowly up to the homestead, planning what he would do if Christabel was right in her reading of the situation. Fear might have distorted her view but he was not about to discount anything she believed. She'd acted on that belief with a determination that was stronger than her own personal desires. That said a lot to Jared.

The lights were on in the living room, Nathan and Miranda waiting in case they were needed. Jared glanced at the illumined numbers on his watch—21:43. His mobile telephone was still in his shirt pocket. He paused by the bougainvillea hedge that surrounded the majestic old house and its immediate grounds, took out the telephone and hit the computerised code for the Picard home in Broome. He wanted to talk to his mother before he spoke to Nathan.

But it wasn't his mother who answered the call.

It was Vikki Chan.

“It's Jared, Vikki.”

“She is not home yet, and she did not give me a time to be home,” came the reply, cutting straight to the point of his call.