The Gift-Wrapped Groom (20 page)

When she had been lucky, her scream had awakened her from these nightmares. When she had been lucky.

The scream that ripped through her lungs now was not a lucky one. It did not awake her from this nightmare.

A
n eternity passed as Noel stood staring out at the white, jagged, broken ice, an eternity in which she remained frozen in position, an eternity in which she lost all sense of time and all hope. The purple darkness turned black and hung over her and the broken pond like a shroud.

Until suddenly, a dark head appeared above the break in the ice. And then a neck and the top of two shoulders. And arms. And wrapped in those arms the body of a shaking, very wet little dog. Noel could barely believe her eyes.

Life flowed back into her limbs; joy leapt into her heart. She ran forward madly.

“Stop, Noel! Stay on the edge where the ice is still firm.”

Noel stopped instantly at the command in that voice and the quivering of the ice beneath her feet. Quickly, she backed up to the edge and dropped to her knees.

“I will send Mistletoe to you,” Nicholas called.

He laid Mistletoe's drenched, shaking little body carefully on the closest flat piece of intact ice. Nicholas gently gave him a shove that sent the dog skimming across the surface toward where Noel waited on the edge. Noel was ready to grab him, scoop him up into her arms. She hugged his wet body to her as she crooned to him and quickly shed her coat to wrap it around him.

By the time he was nestled securely inside it, she looked up to see Nicholas at her side. She dropped her head against one wet, stalwart, bare shoulder, icy cold from the water and the chilling air. She hardly dared believe yet that he was all right.

“When you went under, I thought... You never should have done it. I still don't know how you did. You should be dead. Both of you should be dead. Nobody could survive that icy water. Nobody could pull themselves out of it.”

She was crying, big hot tears that fell against her cheeks and onto his shoulder.

His arms came around her, and he drew her to his side and kissed the top of her head. There was warmth beneath the surface chill of his skin. A wonderful warmth. “It is all right, Noel.”

Mistletoe whimpered in her arms, his body still shaking from cold and fear.

“Quickly, now,” Nicholas said. “We must get him inside.”

Nicholas kept one arm around Noel as he urged her forward toward the house. He closed the door behind them and Noel carried Mistletoe to the fireplace and laid him in front of the blazing fire, rubbing the warm fleece lining of her coat against his skin and fur.

By the time Nicholas knelt beside her with fresh towels from his bathroom, her tears had stopped. Noel gently rubbed her little dog dry, crooning to him softly.

Gradually, Mistletoe's shaking began to subside. When he finally licked the back of her hand and even managed a small, rallying bark, she sat back on her heels and breathed a sigh of relief.

“He's going to be all right.”

“You'll want to keep him by the fire tonight, Noel, to make sure he remains warm.”

Noel looked up then to see that Nicholas was standing just behind her. He was wearing only a towel tied around his waist, his drenched clothes discarded in a pile. His hair was wet and sleek. But he didn't look cold. On the contrary, his black eyes were warm on her. The naked muscles in his magnificent chest and arms and legs flashed like liquid bronze in the firelight.

Noel slowly got to her feet. She stood in front of him, feeling all that magnificent male heat, and looked into those eyes, far hotter than the larch burning at her back.

“Why, Nicholas? Why did you risk your life to save Mistletoe?”

He stared into her eyes for a long moment and then he slowly bent down until his lips brushed hers in a soft, swift caress of tongue and breath.

Sharp, sweet heat shot through her so fast and so full that a tremulous gasp of surprised pleasure tore from her lips. She wrapped her arms around the tight muscles of his waist and leaned full against him, her face still tilted up to those diamond-black eyes.

His arms came around her then, crushing her to him. She felt him, every muscled, hungry inch of him. He held her tightly against his hard, full arousal, watching her eyes. And then he lowered his mouth to hers again like a sensitive probe, caressing and tender, dipping in to sample her softness, taste her heat.

The contrasting hardness of his body and tender probe of his tongue whirled through Noel in streamers of fluttering sensation from her belly to her breasts. A soft moan vibrated at the back of her throat. Her hands grasped the firm swell of muscle ridges riding up his back as she went deeper into the kiss, eager for more of the hot pleasures of his lips.

And he gave her more. Several delicious, dizzying seconds more of sizzling sensations. But then, suddenly, he drew back from her mouth, from her kiss.

His breath came in quick, labored gasps near her ear. His steel fingers clutched her shoulders, neither pushing her body away nor drawing it closer, rather holding on, as though he were hanging onto a slipping lifeline.

“Noel... Please... I must stop now. My pledge to you—”

“Nicholas, don't stop. I'm not holding you to that pledge. I don't want you to keep it. I want—”

Noel did not get a chance to say what she wanted. Nicholas was already giving it to her with his lips and with the steel hands that had snatched her to him. Only this time, he had not come for just a taste. This time, he had come to satisfy a hungry man's roaring appetite.

His mouth was hot and deep, his fingers burned into her as he stroked her back and ran them over her scalp in firm, incendiary sweeps that aroused the nerve endings clear down to her insteps. Noel, too, found herself ravenous at this long-awaited banquet. She opened her lips to his, shaking with each exquisite stroke of his tongue, her nipples growing to peaks against his chest. His hot, potent taste stirred an aching need that swirled deep in her stomach and rose in soft cries breaking through her throat.

He felt every one, answering in deep rumbling groans that vibrated through her every cell. His mellow, smoky, bark scent lit fires in her sinuses, fogged every coherent thought in her brain. When he finally released her lips, his mouth laid hot, firm kisses against the base of her throat and then circled to the back of her neck, concentrating on the very top of her vertebrae.

She shivered with the rippling heat of his tongue and lips and the nips of his teeth against the sensitive nerve endings that sent deep quivers all the way down the back of her legs. She arched against him as his burning hands lifted her sweater to claim the bare skin of her back, in great sweeps of hot, firm caresses.

And then his words, equally hot and firm, began to roll through her, standing every hair on her body on end and then singeing it off. They were sexy, ravenous words that slid into her ears, melting their way down her spine, liquefying it and her ligaments into a pool of boiling, bubbling desire.

She did not understand even one of those words because they were all Russian words. And yet, somehow, she understood every one in the reactions that vibrated through her body. They were growling, sexy sounds and every yearning inch of her was hot and wet with them.

His hands found her breasts, and he told her how beautiful and sweet and perfect they were with those low, breathless, growly sounds and her nipples rose hot and ripe beneath his touch. His lips followed his hands. He kissed her nipples and ran his hot, moist tongue over them, his exotic words again paying homage to their exquisite taste and texture.

Then he tugged her jeans off her hips and ran his fingers beneath the lace of her panties, his scalding words blowing against the skin of her stomach, running like sultry liquid fire between her legs. His touch over her most sensitive flesh brought an instant spasm of delight. And then another. She cried out with the pleasure and his words heated her further and she shuddered again and again beneath his touch and sounds.

Noel knew she was totally unraveling under those words, those hands, that mouth as they simultaneously seduced her body and every thought from her head except for this incredibly incendiary exotic language and the incredibly incendiary exotic man who had taken possession of her body.

And he did possess it. Totally. Unequivocally. He laid her naked body on the rug in front of the fireplace and burned her with the fire in his eyes, voice and touch.

His own naked body gleamed above her, his muscles cording to the symphony of his motion and words. He was fully aroused and arousing. Never had she seen a more magnificent man.

And never had she realized how empty silent lovemaking was until now. Until now, she never knew how a lack of words kept a man and woman separate from this overpowering, vibrating, sensuous sound that gave voice to the most primitive of life's celebration. Until now, she never knew that she had been experiencing a black-and-white silent movie. Until now, she had no idea what it was like to be right in the center of a vibrantly full Cinemascope, Technicolor production.

His hands never left her body, neither did his eyes or his words. His smoky, mellow bark scent was like an incense of scorched male heat. Noel's body quivered in anticipation as he lowered himself to her, devouring her with his every touch and sound and scent, telling her how good she smelled and tasted and felt.

He lay between her legs, stroked her nipples and then her thighs, rubbed his full arousal against her, sending shafts of rocketing pleasure through her, telling her every instant with every growly Russian word of the pleasure he wished to bring to her and the answering heat that was sweeping through him. She moaned against him and opened further, eager, so eager to feel more, to hear more.

Again and again he pressed against her, but did not enter. Again and again she moaned in pleasure at the hot tempting thrust against her sensitive skin, at the hot tempting words against her sensitive ears.

It was torture. Exquisite, intense, delicious torture. Just when Noel thought she would not be able to stand another second, he pushed past to her inner moist heat, so ready to receive him. She wrapped her thighs around him.

His exotic, hot words pulsed in her ears as his strong, hard body lay on top of hers and he thrust deep inside her. His husky, breathy words told her of his every sensation, of burrowing inside her until he felt the very core of her being, of the wondrous pleasure that soft center gave him, of the immense tidal wave rising inside him, a primitive and elemental ocean using him as its channel for the spark of immortality that his body would pass to hers.

For the first time in her life, she felt it all, she tasted it all, she smelled it all, she heard it all. And for the first time in her life, she understood it all.

Cries of delight and desire tore through her throat, her answer to his strong thrusts, to his scent, to his words, to the pleasure that rocked her so strongly, she wondered if she might tear apart.

And then his deep, growly voice became a roar, and she felt the rigid instant pause in every muscle of his body as he exploded warm and liquid within her and she convulsed around him, crying out with a release of pleasure so intense, it flowed through the very marrow of her bones.

She said his name in breathless wonder—over and over and over again. Her joy pouring out her heart in the syllables of that one word.

Nicholas.

For it was that word that most clearly represented this incredible feeling of life that had flowed into her tonight, this incredible feeling of love.

But only her heart heard. She did not say his name aloud.

She had spoken of her love to a man once before, and the pain of his rejection had been excruciating. She knew now that her love for Cade had been a mere light bulb compared to the sky-filled, crackling lightning in the thunderstorm of emotion she felt for this man.

Nicholas. Whose dead Dotnara still waltzed his heart.

No, she could not say his name aloud. She could not tell him of her love. She could not make the same mistake twice. To this man she could say nothing.

Because Nicholas Baranov, the man whose wonderful growly sounds had so seduced and claimed every cell of his wife's soul only seconds before, was now completely and absolutely silent.

* * *

N
ICHOLAS AWOKE
to the sound of the forced air heater turning on, signaling the return of electricity to the house. He looked down to find Noel resting her cheek against his chest, tangled in his legs, his arms, the beat of his heart. Early-morning light flicked through the skylight over their bed, shining through the red-gold strands of her hair. It touched the pillow of her earlobe, the sweep of her red-gold lashes, the soft curve of her pale cheek, the elegant line down her back and the round seductive globe of her bottom peeking out from the covers.

She was exquisitely beautiful.

She was his.

His body rejoiced to the realization, eagerly reawakening to the sight and sweet scent of her. He smiled as he remembered how open and ready she had been for him each time he had awakened during the night, hungry for her.

Now, once again, the hunger had returned. He told himself he should let her sleep. He had kept her awake many hours. But he couldn't help running the tips of his fingers along one lovely satin shoulder down to the edge of the seductive swell of her breast just beneath.

She stirred in her dreams, aware of him but not quite coming awake. Her lips opened and closed almost soundlessly into a smile. But he could see the word they formed, hear the faint echo of breathless wonder before she nestled her cheek back against his chest.
Nicholas.

Something like a pressure grew inside his chest. It filled him completely and then burst cleanly through the seal he had once thought so permanent—the sturdy seal that cracked open now like thin rice paper with the gentle, breathless sigh of his name on her lips.

She had reached past all his defenses, all his previous sorrow, found his heart and captured it in the simple sweet melody of that one small sound.

He was hers.

This news should have surprised him. It did not. He could see now that it had been happening to him ever since that first night when she walked into her grandfather's study, full of ice and fire, making his hands burn with his desire and need for her. Only this one incomparable woman could have made him finally bury his Dotnara, warmed the cold stone heart inside him, brought it back to life.