Once in Paris (8 page)

It took her a long time to come back down from the feverish heights. She felt his warm mouth all over her body, tracing, touching, comforting while she trembled and tried to get one complete breath.

He chuckled at her look of unholy shock when he finally lifted his head. “I let you fulfill me,” he pointed out.

“Yes, but I didn't…I didn't…I don't think I could…I never even dreamed…” Her eyes sought his. “Is it…well…natural?”

He grinned. “That depends on your definition of natural. If you liked it, it is. If you didn't, it isn't.”

She hesitated. “I liked it,” she whispered, and flushed.

“So did I,” he replied softly. He slid alongside her and drew her to him, holding her in the lazy aftermath. “Not quite sex, but enough for now.”

She shifted on the towel, feeling aroused all over again. Her back arched and she moaned softly.

“Again, so soon?” he asked quietly, arching above her.

She opened soft, misty eyes and moved sensuously. “I'm sorry. Maybe I'm not quite normal.”

His hand lay gently on her flat belly. “You're completely normal, as well as an unexpected delight,” he replied with somber eyes. He moved his hand and touched her very delicately, gently at first, and then deliberately and with some insistence.

She opened her body to his slow probing, staring into his eyes as she realized what he was doing.

His face was somber and very still. “Is it hurting?”

She nodded. “Just…a little,” she replied huskily.

He leaned closer, his eyes filling her vision. He probed again and pushed, slowly.

She bit her lower lip, but her eyes never left his. She swallowed because the pain was burning her.

“Do you realize what I'm doing?” he whispered.

“Yes.”

He moved closer. “Don't look away,” he said huskily. “Don't close your eyes.”

Her back arched delicately, increasing the burning pain. She winced.

His hand moved again and his eyes seemed to fill the world. “Do you feel it tearing?” he whispered deeply.

“Yes!”

Her eyes dilated. So did his. It was the most intimate thing he'd ever done with a woman. It was more intimate than sex. His teeth ground together, and he made a sound in his throat just as she arched up to him and sobbed. He felt the barrier give. He felt it!

“Dear God!” he ground out.

She shivered again. Her eyes looked into his with a new knowledge of him. She saw the same expression in his broad face that she knew was in her eyes.

She lifted. This time there was no pain at all, just the faint discomfort. He pushed, feeling her body open to the slow thrust of his fingers as it hadn't been able to before.

Her long legs parted. She reached up, inviting him.

But he wouldn't accept the invitation. He shook his head slowly and withdrew his hand. She looked down, fascinated.

“When I have you,” he whispered quietly, “there won't be a glimmer of pain.”

“But…why not now?” she asked.

“Because I didn't want to arouse you to passion and have to hurt you, to give you a memory of sex that was forever linked with pain.” He bent and put his mouth softly to her own, smiling against the faint whisper of her breath against it. “Your first experience of me is going to be one long, sweet pleasure.”

She lifted herself against him and kissed him with pure possession, seductively sliding against his strong body. “I know,” she whispered. “So will yours, of me.”

He smiled to himself as he helped her to her feet. It didn't occur to him until much later that, for the first time in two years, he hadn't thought of Margo. He wanted Brianne with a white-hot
passion that he hadn't felt since his teens. It wasn't love, but it was certainly enough to build a foundation on. He was going to marry her to protect her from Philippe Sabon, but more than that, he was going to marry her to sate the passion she aroused in him. It was the most powerful emotion he'd felt in years. It felt good. It had been a long time since anything had felt good. He'd been living in the past, in Margo's memory. He had to stop.

Brianne was years too young for him, but when she tired of him and wanted someone younger, they'd do what they had to do. For now, he was going to enjoy her sweet, lithe body and drown in the forgetfulness of blind passion. He didn't consider his motives past that.

 

They flew to Las Vegas that very afternoon. Several hours later, they were standing together in a wedding chapel. Brianne wore a short white coatdress and a matching hat with a veil, and she carried a posy of white roses. It had been a rushed sort of buying spree, and it had been fun. Pierce had gone with her to pick out the ensemble, scoffing at the idea that it was bad luck for him to see her in her wedding dress
before the ceremony. He wore a tuxedo and drew eyes like magnets as they walked from the big black stretch limo into the wedding chapel where he'd arranged for them to be married.

She had a ring, also quickly purchased. It was a Victorian replica, of fourteen-karat gold, a wide band embossed with ivy leaves in an exquisite pattern of yellow gold. The ring was outlined by tiny bands of white gold. It suited Brianne's slender finger and she loved it. But Pierce was still wearing his old wedding ring. She didn't have the nerve to ask him to change it. That, she told herself, was probably a mistake. But she didn't have time to worry about it, because everything happened so quickly.

The minister performed the ceremony with two paid witnesses to attest to it. Pierce lifted Brianne's veil and bent to kiss her with careless tenderness. His face was very somber, and she wondered if he was remembering his first marriage. She was certain that it hadn't been performed someplace like this. She saw the need for a quick ceremony, because if they'd had a formal wedding, Kurt would surely have found some way to stop them from marrying. But she mourned silently for the beautiful long gown she'd always assumed she'd be married in, and
for the love that wasn't present on the bridegroom's face. That Pierce liked her, and wanted her, she knew for certain. But would that be enough to keep them together, with all the love on one side and Pierce living with a beautiful ghost?

She looked into his black eyes with faint misgiving.

He tapped the end of her nose. “Stop glowering,” he teased. “We're going to be happy.”

“Oh, I do hope so,” she said fervently.

He sighed. The teasing light went out of his eyes to be replaced by something entirely new as he looked at her in the modern coatdress that showed her long, elegant legs to their best advantage. “You're very young,” he said quietly.

“I'll get wrinkles soon enough, right now if you like. I can soak my face in water until it starts to shrivel,” she volunteered with a grin.

He chuckled. “Hooligan,” he accused. “You're going to run me ragged.”

“I promise to do my best,” she said.

They shook hands with the minister and his wife and the witnesses, concluded the paperwork and the fee, and went back outside to climb into the black limo.

“We're married,” Brianne murmured with a
wicked glance at her brand-new husband. “How about taking me to the nearest motel and loving me half to death?”

He only smiled, like an adult indulging a small child. “There's nothing I'd like better,” he said carelessly. “But we have to catch the next flight out of here.”

Her expression fell. “We aren't having a honeymoon?”

“Brianne, we got married to save you from Sabon,” he said seriously. “I enjoyed making love to you by the pool. Someday, maybe I'll do it properly. But this isn't the time. We've got some major complications cropping up that you don't know about yet. I couldn't bear to tell you and spoil our wedding. But the ceremony's over and you have to know.”

“Know what?” she asked with a cold premonition.

P
ierce grimaced, as if he didn't want to say it. She stared at him with her heart pounding and her eyes like green saucers.

“All right, I suppose I can't keep it from you any longer,” he said heavily. “I phoned Arthur at the beach house while you were changing at the hotel. Your mother called and asked for you. It seems she's had a slight…accident. She'll be all right,” he said quickly when her face began to pale. “She told Arthur that she slipped and fell on the steps, but he said she sounded pretty scared and she needed to speak to you urgently. He didn't tell her where we were, only that we'd be back today.”

She let out a breath. “I'll bet he hit her,” she said miserably. “He made all sorts of threats against her and the baby if I didn't cooperate with his plans. I suppose he'll find out what we've done?”

He nodded. “Sooner or later.”

“He said that Philippe was coming back today and he wanted to see me,” she told him. She smoothed back her hair. “Why did my mother marry Kurt?” she asked angrily. “Couldn't she see what sort of man he was?”

“Sure she could. He was rich,” he added.

She leaned back heavily against the seat. “Will he hurt her any more, do you think? And what about the baby?”

“They're probably safe enough for now. But Sabon's going to be out for blood when he learns what we've done. I've just put you out of his reach for good. He won't take it lying down. He'll be plotting his revenge on both of us, and on anyone connected with you. And probably, so will Kurt.”

Her pulse was racing. She put up a hand and brushed back her long hair. “What are we going to do?”

“Well, you're not going home, for a start,” he told her grimly. “We're flying back into
Freeport instead of Nassau. I've already phoned the house and told them to have a driver who doubles as my bodyguard to meet us. It wouldn't do for Arthur to pick us up, anyway, under the circumstances. We'll stay in Freeport for the time being, until things die down and I can get my security chief over here with a team.”

“You really think Philippe Sabon is a threat, don't you?” she asked worriedly.

He took her hand in his and held it warmly. “I know he is. But nothing's going to happen to you. You're my responsibility now. I'll take care of you.”

She gnawed her lower lip. “It's like a nightmare,” she said aloud. “This is the 1990s. Things like this aren't supposed to happen! Heavens, I can't have a total stranger trying to force me to marry him!”

“Sabon is filthy rich. He usually gets exactly what he wants. Your stepfather is in hotter water than he realizes.” He glanced at Brianne, who was visibly pale. “I think our best bet is to have you live in the States, where my security chief can keep an eye on you. You said once that you wanted to go to college and study math. Do you still?”

She stared at him with carefully concealed horror. He'd just married her. She was daydreaming about living with him, loving him, sleeping in his arms—and he was offering her a college education.

“I hadn't thought about college lately,” she confessed.

“You're not too old to start,” he said easily. “We'll enroll you in a small college near D.C., and under an assumed name, so that Sabon won't be able to find you. But even if he does, Tate Winthrop will be somewhere nearby, or one of his people will be. You'll be watched night and day until this is over.”

“I can't stay with you?” she asked, carefully avoiding looking directly at him.

He sighed. “I'd like you to,” he said bluntly, his expression solemn and intent. “But that isn't going to be possible after what has happened between us, Brianne.”

She was surprised. “I don't understand.”

“Don't you?” He laughed coldly. “Listen, honey, you're a tasty little banquet and I'm a starving man. All my good intentions won't spare you if we're under the same roof for very long.”

“But I want you,” she protested.

“Want!” he scoffed. “You're a child on fire with the forbidden. You've just discovered sensual pleasure and you want to explore it. I've done my exploring. I have nothing to offer you except a few feverish lovemaking sessions in my bed. I'd break your young heart. You wouldn't be able to let go, and you'd have to. I'm a loner. I don't want a wife.”

“You married me,” she said, making an accusation of it.

“Yes, to protect you from Sabon,” he agreed. He studied her. “You're barely twenty, naive and aching to lay your heart at my feet. Don't. I want you. I could take you and enjoy you and walk away from you the next morning with my heart intact. You couldn't. You're too intense for me, Brianne.”

“You mean if I could just have sex with you and disappear, you'd let me stay,” she said stiffly.

“That's it in a nutshell,” he agreed.

“Perhaps I could.”

“Not you,” he returned immediately. “You're already halfway in love with me,” he added, and watched the shock ripple across her features. “Did you think it didn't show?” he asked softly. “You're an open book. You
haven't yet acquired the sophistication it takes to hide your feelings.”

She took a deep breath and pushed back her hair nervously. She stared out the tinted window of the limousine instead of at him. “So where do we go from here?”

“You go to college and I get on with my new project,” he said carelessly.

“You wouldn't like to sleep with me?”

“Oh, I'd like it,” he said bluntly. “I'd love it. But I could take it in stride and you couldn't. We'll save it until you're a little older.”

She turned sad green eyes up to his. “It was a glitzy ceremony in a vulgar place, so you don't consider those vows binding? So now we go our separate ways.”

His heavy eyebrows lifted sharply. He'd only heard the first part of her comment. “Vulgar place?”

She turned away. “What would you call it?” she asked quietly.

He hadn't thought about it at all, until she hit him with the reality of their ceremony. It had been a vulgar place, a tawdry little legalized sex operation that made it easy for girls to forget their principles for a quick wedding that could be followed by an even quicker divorce.

He scowled. Brianne, for all her modern outlook, was a throwback to earlier times. She was the sort of girl who would expect to be married in church, in a trailing white gown with bridesmaids and a flower girl. Margo had been given just such a wedding. But Brianne had been hustled into a marriage mill. Despite the reason for their wedding, he could have found a more conventional way to bring it about.

“I'm sorry,” he said, and genuinely was. “I was so preoccupied with getting it done that I didn't quite think about the details. You'd rather have been married in church, wouldn't you?”

She didn't look at him. “Were you, the first time?”

“Of course,” he replied. “Margo said that she wouldn't feel married if we didn't have a proper service.” He saw Brianne wince, and for the first time he realized how badly he'd hurt her.

“Then we did it properly,” she said in an amazingly calm and collected tone. “It's a sham marriage to save me from a worse fate. Having it in church would be a sort of sacrilege. I'm sorry I said anything. I should be grateful
to you for what you've done, instead of criticizing how it happened.”

He reached out and took her cold hand in his. “We don't know each other very well,” he said, feeling the resistance in her fingers. “I suppose we'll step on each other's feelings a good bit until we become better acquainted.”

“No, we won't,” she said. “Not with me in the States, and you in Nassau.” She turned to him and smiled at him vacantly. “That's the way you want it, too, isn't it? Even if I weren't being pursued by a madman, you'd want me someplace where you didn't have to see me every day.”

His eyes began to glitter. “That's right,” he told her.

She sighed. “Okay,” she said after a minute. “I get the picture. I won't give you any trouble.” She pulled the wedding ring off her finger and handed it to him.

He scowled. “Would you like to explain this?”

“Sure,” she said. “You're still married to another woman.” She gestured toward the wedding band he wore on his big left hand. “That being the case, there's really no point in my wearing a wedding band, too.”

He jerked his hand back from hers and glared at her. “I won't take this ring off,” he said shortly. “Least of all to placate a child playing at being an adult!”

The whiplash of his voice was all the more potent for being so soft. She shivered with the coldness it intimated.

“Sorry I haven't enough maturity to play the game properly, Mr. Hutton,” she said. “But I'll learn soon enough.” She averted her eyes and clenched her teeth. “Since I'm not a true wife, I don't see why I can't date other men. That's what you want, anyway, isn't it, for me to find someone else and get out of your life.”

“I want you safe from Sabon,” he said through his teeth. “At the moment, that's my only concern. As for other men,” he added slowly, “if you break your vows to me, you'd better hide where I can't find you.”

She gaped at him. “I beg your pardon?”

“You heard me,” he said shortly. “We're married, glitzy, vulgar chapel notwithstanding, and no woman is going to cuckold me!”

“Well!”

“It has nothing to do with jealousy,” he continued harshly. “Sabon is the reason it has to be a true marriage and not a sham. Otherwise
your stepfather will leap at any opportunity to toss you to Sabon as a prospective bride. If he learns that you're out with other men, he won't believe you have a husband.”

“He isn't the only one,” she said under her breath.

He glared harder. “I've been honest with you,” he said coldly. “Would you have preferred it if I'd seduced you before we flew to the States?”

She wasn't going to touch that line with a ten-foot pole. She took the ring back and placed it on her finger. “You don't think that Philippe might just give up and go home if he knew we were married?” she asked, avoiding his pointed question.

He hesitated, as if he wanted to pursue the subject they'd been discussing. But he sighed and let her divert him. “No, I don't,” he said. “I think it will just make him more determined to have you.”

After that Pierce remained silent until they boarded the plane and took their seats. Brianne fell asleep, and then woke with a start. She looked at Pierce. He had a brooding look as he stared toward the front of the plane, where a waitress was bending to take dinners out of the
plane's warming ovens. This was one of the few flights that offered meals.

“They're going to serve dinner. Do you want a tray?” he asked.

“Yes.”

He opened the arm of her seat and lifted out the intricately folded table for her, smiling at her look of surprise. “Surely you flew home from Paris first class?” he teased.

“Actually, I came home tourist,” she murmured. “Brauer has been tight with money for the past year. Just between us, I think he's teetering on the verge of bankruptcy.”

“If he is, no wonder he's so itchy to placate Sabon,” Pierce replied thoughtfully. “And if he's sunk everything he owns into this development, in hopes of doubling his investment, he's in big trouble.”

“Why?”

He put his own tray into position. “Because we're working with a consortium of oil companies on a deal with the Russians to develop that well in the Caspian Sea that I told you about. We're going to run a pipeline right through—” He mentioned the country, and her eyes widened in surprise.

“The United States has economic sanctions
against it,” she exclaimed. “No wonder Brauer would be upset—everyone would take sides, and he'd lose money. But aren't you a United States citizen?”

“Brianne, I could be if I wanted to, but I'm not a United States citizen right now,” he said, reminding her with a shock of his European birth and nationality.

“I forgot,” she said quietly. “You speak such perfect English. You don't even have an accent.”

“I told you that my grandfather raised me. He was Greek, but he spoke several languages fluently. He insisted that I learn English to perfection. It was the language of the business world, he used to say, and I do spend a fair amount of time in the States.”

She shifted so that the stewardess could put down the meal, and then waited until Pierce had been served before she spread her napkin in her lap and glanced at him. “I guess I don't know much about the politics of other countries.”

He smiled. “You should learn. It's easier to get along with people if we have some understanding of their politics, as well as their social and religious beliefs.”

“How many languages do you speak?”