The Matchmaker (18 page)

"Julia?" In the lamplight his lean, handsome face held
an expression of unusual anxiety. "I swear I won't make
you do anything against your will. I won't force you in
any way. But you have to let me take care of you. Please.
Give me a chance to prove you can trust me."

She swallowed hard, unable to summon even a flash of
resentment this time at how easily he was swaying her.
She wanted to give in to him, wanted to take the risk, no matter what it cost her. And it would cost her, even if he
didn't deliberately hurt her. Fleetingly, she thought of
how shameful it would be, and how people would condemn her for living with a man as his mistress with her younger sister under the same roof, but then she wondered vaguely if he meant to set her up in an establishment of her own. Wasn't that how it was done?
She'd never heard of a man moving his mistress into his
family home.

Not that it mattered where he meant to keep her. He
was right about one thing at least—she had to leave Adrian immediately, before he could do something
dreadful to Lissa. As for going to Cyrus, what choice did
she have? There was no place else she could go. Besides,
her body insisted she was his, and she was too tired to fight him anymore.

With a little difficulty she asked, "What did—did Lissa say when you told her?"

He smiled. "She just nodded. She trusts me, it
seems." His smile vanished. "But then, she trusted him too, didn't she?"

Julia nodded jerkily. "He made sure she did. This
summer though, she started to notice things. If I'd
handled her questions differently, perhaps she wouldn't have realized the truth, but I—I couldn't pretend anymore."

"She needed to know, sweetheart." He hesitated,
then
said in a soft voice, "I wish you could believe you'll be safe with me. I'll do everything I can to make you happy,
Julia, I swear it. Please, let me try."

Looking back later, Julia often thought how odd it was
that the storm broke at the same moment as her
resistance. Even as she was nodding, she heard the
heavy drumming of rain on the roof and felt a cool, damp
breeze touch her cheek.

"All right," she murmured, and the relief of simply
making any kind of decision was almost numbing.
"All
right, I—I'll leave Adrian.
I'll come to you."

Cyrus lifted one of her hands and kissed it, smiling.
His eyes were liquid, shining, and there was a note of
fierce satisfaction as well as tenderness in his voice when he said, "You won't regret it." Then his gaze dropped to
the hand he was holding, her left, and his smile faded
slowly.

Julia had seen it too. A flash of lightning had reflected
brightly off her wedding band. Very softly, she said, "A
few days after our wedding, Adrian took the ring he'd put on me in church and replaced it with this one. He had it made too small. I can't take it off."

Cyrus studied her hand in silence for a moment, his face very still. The ring was tight on her slender finger, biting into the skin. The lamplight was barely strong
enough to show him tiny scars on either side of her
knuckle where flesh had been torn when the ring had been forced over it. It made Cyrus feel sick. How insane would a man have to be to do such a thing to his own
wife?

"God damn him," he said quietly.

To Julia, his words sounded less like a curse than an
invocation, and one very deeply felt. She had the
sudden, surprising notion that Cyrus possessed a rare,
inborn conviction he wasn't even aware of. He would seldom set foot in a church, she thought with a flash of
intuition,
yet-he innately felt and understood the value
of faith in a way few overtly religious men could come
close to matching.

It seemed a strange trait for a man of his reputation, yet she felt certain she was right about it. For the first
time, Julia began to wonder if she had any real under
standing of the man he truly was. She stared at him as his
dark head bent slightly over her hand, then tensed a little, her thoughts scattering when she felt him take
hold of the ring with a light touch.

"It's all right, sweetheart," he said in a low voice. His
fingers turned the ring slowly,
then
eased it painlessly over her knuckle and off.

"How did you do that?" she asked in surprise, knowing only too well how tightly the ring had fit her. She hadn't been able to get it off no matter how hard she'd tried, yet he had slipped it from her finger as easily as though it
had suddenly grown two sizes larger.

Cyrus held the ring for a moment,
then
slipped it into
the-pocket of his vest, saying, "I'll get rid of it on the way
back to Richmond; I don't want it near this house."

"You didn't answer me." She watched his face as he
gently rubbed the mark the ring had left on her finger.

After a moment he lifted his gaze to meet hers. There
was something a bit hesitant in his black eyes and,
finally, he shrugged. "It didn't belong on your finger. I
didn't want it there," he said simply.

She managed a faint smile, although she felt unnerved
by what he'd done. "And you always get what you want?"

"I've been lucky so far." His free hand rose to touch her cheek, the long fingers softly caressing, and his expression tightened. "I want you," he said huskily, and
it was not quite a question.

Julia felt her heart begin to beat unevenly, and all the impossible sensations she'd tried to deal with these past
weeks surged inside her like a rising tide she hadn't a
hope of mastering. Perhaps this was what she'd been
waiting for, she realized dimly.
To belong to him—if it
was possible.
He had taught her body to want him, and
no matter what else she was uncertain of, she was sure of
that much. She wanted him, and she had to take the
chance. Whether it brought pain or pleasure, she had to offer herself to him.

She wondered briefly if he had put this price on her safety and Lissa's, but dismissed the idea before it could cause her any pain. It didn't seem to matter anyway.

"I—I want you too," she said unsteadily, still shocked
she could say those words to any man.

Cyrus made an odd, rough sound and leaned toward
her. His mouth touched hers, very gentle at first but
quickly hardening with desire. Julia felt herself being gathered into his strong arms, and for the first time she permitted herself to respond to him and to the hunger he had created inside her.

Her arms went up around his neck as her upper body molded itself to the hard contours of his, and her mouth opened eagerly to permit the kiss to deepen. She felt a
burst of heat somewhere near the center of her being,
and the force of it made her tremble. How could she feel this way? How could he make her feel this way? Her body seemed alive only when he held it, and she didn't
understand how it could be possible.

It was so strange, like her dreams, a restless, burning pleasure that was a growing ache inside her.
An empty ache.
The intimate touch of his tongue against hers
soothed the ache and yet made it worse, and she
wanted—needed—to be closer to him. The hunger he had brought to life in her body had some instinctive knowledge of its
own,
a certainty of ultimate satisfaction, and it demanded she reach for that.

She made a faint sound of protest when he lifted his mouth from hers and opened her eyes to stare up at him
dazedly.

"Julia," he said, kissing one corner of her mouth and
then the other as his hand cradled the back of her head.

The tanned skin of his face was taut and his eyes were burning, and his black velvet voice was low, a little
rough. "I had a better place in mind for our first time
together, sweet. But I don't think I can wait for you any longer."

The clean smells of new wood and rain, the shadowy,
lamplit room, unfinished though it was, and the pallet on
the floor all seemed perfect to Julia. There was so much
newness in this place, such a feeling of vigorous begin
nings. She no longer saw it as eerie. She wanted to lie with Cyrus where there were no bedroom memories of
pain and humiliation.

Even to the storm outside replenishing the parched earth it was an ideal place for her to start afresh.

"I don't want to wait," she whispered.

He kissed her again, then murmured against her
mouth, "You deserve better."

She hesitated, then slid her hands down over his
broad shoulders and reached for his tie. There was a part
of her still capable of being shocked by the brazen
action, but the compelling hunger she felt was too powerful to fight or deny, and she met his eyes steadily as she unknotted the cloth. "I don't want to wait," she repeated, beginning to unbutton his vest.

He was still for a moment, but when his vest hung
open and she had reached the third button of his shirt he groaned softly and bent his head to kiss her again. He removed her dark tie by touch alone, then just as blindly worked to release the tiny buttons down the back of her blouse.

He drew her to her feet, shrugging out of his vest and shirt, allowing them to drop carelessly to the floor. Julia unfastened her skirt and let it fall, then fumbled at the
tight cuffs of her blouse. Oddly enough, she didn't feel at
all the way she did while undressing in front of Adrian, a fact she hardly noticed at the time. All she was aware of was the need to rid them of the barriers of clothing.
She had to be closer to him.

Still, a pang of nervousness shot through her when she
saw his imposing torso. He was so big, so obviously
strong. His strength had been noticeable under layers of
clothing; without those civilized veils he was so starkly powerful it took her breath away.

And he was so undeniably male.
Golden skin taut over hard muscles.
A mat of thick black hair, almost like a
pelt, covering the broad expanse of his chest, narrowing
over his flat stomach.
She wanted to touch him, and yet
at the same time nagging little fears were pricking at her.

He could hurt her with such dreadful ease.... And even though his desire seemed to her both strong and genuine, what if Adrian had been right about her? What if there
were
something in her that would destroy any man's desire before it could be fulfilled? Would Cyrus turn from her, horrified and sickened, his skin clammy with disgust, when she caused his passion to wither?
Would he find that ironically, fate had cursed him to
want a woman he could never possess even though she
offered herself to him?

Please, God, don't let it happen. Not with him. I
couldn't bear it to happen with him.

For a brief instant Julia wanted to run to avoid
discovering what could be an agonizing truth. But then
he kissed her again, his fingers taking over the job of
unbuttoning her cuffs, and the heat of her own response held the stinging fears and desperate anxiety at bay. She
felt the blouse slip free of her, then her petticoat, and a
slight tug as he unfastened her stockings and began working to release her corset.

"Damn these things," he said, lifting his head reluc
tantly so that he could see what he was doing.

She helped him, more adept through sheer daily
experience, and drew a breath in relief when the
constrictive garment fell to the floor. "Fashion," she
murmured huskily,
then
gasped when he pulled her
closer and her aching breasts were pressed to the
hardness of his chest.

His lips were trailing over her throat, and she felt the
vibration of his words when he muttered, "Fashion can
go to hell." He wrapped his arms around her and pulled
her tighter against him.

Julia slid her arms around his lean waist, her fingers
probing the smooth, rippling muscles of his back. She felt him removing pins from her hair until it tumbled
freely below her waist, and then his hands slid down to
guide her hips firmly to his loins. Her head fell back to
bare more of her throat to his caressing mouth, a hot
shiver going through her when she felt the shockingly
intimate sensation of his hard manhood nestle against
her softness.

That evidence of his passion reassured her, if only for
the moment. He wanted her. He did. Nothing about her
would change that. She tried to push Adrian and his
bitter condemnation out of her mind, frantic to convince
herself
he'd been wrong. This was passion, not his
frenzied, desperate rumblings in the dark. This was so
incredibly
pleasurable,
fate couldn't be cruel enough to take it away from her....

A little moan of stunned desire escaped her trembling
lips, and she couldn't breathe properly. The sensations
were so acute, and she felt so vibrantly alive.
..
so
overwhelmed by something she couldn't begin to con
trol.
Frightening.
Yet wildly exciting.
She was dizzy and
felt drugged, feverish. Her breasts were throbbing, and
the worst of the heat had settled deep in her belly,
where it burned almost beyond bearing until she wanted
to cry out some desperate, wordless plea.