The Matchmaker (13 page)

"Yes." He pushed the thoughts out of his head because
there was no way to find the answers now. And he didn't
want to squander his time with Julia; very little would be
granted to him, he thought. She belonged to another man, and whatever she felt for her husband, the marriage, at least, was one she was all too conscious of—and had made him conscious of as well. "The city's becoming too crowded for my taste."

"I always loved the country," she said with a fleeting smile so sweet and shyly unlike her social mask, it nearly stopped his heart. "We lived in the country when I was a child. But Papa needed to be closer to the city because
of his business affairs."

"He and your mother were killed in an accident, weren't they?" Cyrus asked
,
needing to know more
about her than the facts he'd uncovered.
"A little over
two years ago?"

Julia was surprised that he knew about her parents'
deaths. "Yes, they were. It was—they were on a boat, on
the river. No one knows why it went down."

"I'm
sorry,
I shouldn't have brought up a painful
memory."

She managed another smile. "It's all right
. '

Cyrus hadn't intended to bring up any subject likely to trouble her, but heard himself say, "You married Drummond
two years ago." He couldn't leave the subject
alone, no matter how good his intentions were.

She looked away. "Yes."

"Why?"

"I told you I wouldn't discuss my marriage." She was
staring off toward the house, expressionless. "I meant what I said."

"Julia, I have to understand." He sat down beside her
on the stack of lumber, half turned so he could look at her. He knew he was pushing again, but he couldn't help
it. He wanted to banish the look of fear that so often
shadowed her lovely eyes, and he couldn't until he found
out why she was so afraid.

There was another reason, he knew.
A more selfish
reason.
He wanted her. She'd never been entirely out of
his mind since the first time he'd seen her, and her
refusal to accord him anything but social pleasantries was
maddening. He hadn't felt even a glimmer of interest in
another woman after he'd met her; it was Julia he
wanted, Julia he needed in some way he couldn't even
define, some way apart from the physical desire for her
that ached in him.

She set the bottle of juice aside and laced her fingers tightly together in her lap, still not meeting his gaze.
"There's nothing to understand."

"Don't lie to me." He didn't realize he'd spoken so
harshly until she flinched, and that tiny indication of
alarm went through him like a knife. He reached over quickly to cover her tense hands with one of his own, and made a conscious effort to hold his voice low and steady. "I'd never hurt you, Julia. It's just that I can't stand seeing you afraid, and I have to understand why you are. Is it Adrian? Does he threaten you? Has he hurt you?"

"I won't discuss my marriage." She turned her face
completely away from him, her entire body rigid.

Cyrus was determined to get his answers this time.
He looked at the fragile nape of her neck and told
himself he had to find a way of winning her trust. He was concentrating on the problem so intensely that, for a moment, he didn't realize what he was seeing. She was wearing a high-necked blouse with a tie, so there was little flesh visible, but just below her hairline behind her
left ear was a faint mark paler than the surrounding skin,
like a—

He reached up and hooked a finger under the high
neckline, pulling the material away from her neck
slightly. She started and made a muted sound, but Cyrus
barely heard it. The scar was nearly as wide as his finger
and angled down the back of her neck to disappear beneath the white linen.

He was very still for a long moment, staring, something inside his chest tightening with a slow pressure so intense it felt as if the breath were being crushed out of him. Then he untied her tie and cast it aside. His hands were shaking as he grasped her shoulders and gently turned her so her back was to him.

"No! Don't!" She tried to pull away.

"Be still, Julia." His voice was very soft, hardly more than a whisper.

She wanted to run from him, to hide herself away where he'd never find her. She didn't want him to see, to know. Not him. Fear, shame, guilt, the remnants of
her pride, all tangled together in a painful jumble inside her. But his voice held her more surely than his hands, and when he began unbuttoning the high neckline of her blouse she remained motionless, her head bent. She stared blindly at nothing, feeling every touch of his fingers as he unfastened the tiny buttons all the way down to her waist. Then she closed her eyes, her lips trembling, when he drew the edges of her blouse apart.

She heard an odd sound, a hoarse rumble like the
growl of some creature in the night, and his voice
sounded choked when he said, "Oh, my God."

Her frozen stillness shattered, she reached one hand back over her shoulder in a pathetic attempt to cover herself again, a shudder racking her body. But his arms closed around her, drawing her back against the hardness of his chest, and his embrace was so gentle and
protective she wanted to weep.

Cyrus couldn't believe it. When he'd asked if Drummond
had hurt her, he had thought her husband might
have slapped her or treated her roughly. That kind of
brutality would have been bad enough, but this— How any man could hurt a woman as Julia had been hurt was
beyond Cyrus's comprehension, but what he had seen
when he'd opened her blouse was a sight so starkly
vicious he knew he would never forget it. Even when he
closed his eyes the image wouldn't leave him.

He hadn't seen it all; he felt the sickening certainty of
that. Above the lace-trimmed edging of her chemise,
very little of her back and shoulders had been bare to his gaze. But it was enough. Thin, pale scars—God, so many
of them!—marked her creamy flesh with the pitiless
imprint of a horsewhip or some other kind of monstrous
lash, overlaid by more recent, half-healed welts that
were the wider marks of a belt or strap. And there were
tiny crescents, gouges in her skin that might have been made by the heavy blows of a buckle—or a ring on a
driving fist.

Drummond wore a heavy gold signet ring, Cyrus
remembered, and a black fury stronger than anything
he'd ever felt in his life twisted inside him.
He thought of Julia, so young and frightened, her body small and
delicate, unable to defend herself against the strength of
a man.
He thought of her in an agony that must have
been more than physical as the man who'd vowed before
God to love and cherish her had brutally scarred her body and soul.

Burning in hell was too good for the bastard. Cyrus wanted him to suffer now.

Julia could feel tremors rippling through his big,
powerful body as he held her silently, feel the hard
tension in his jaw as it rubbed slowly against her temple,
and she understood, with a wounded animal's bitterly
learned awareness, that he was so deeply angry he
literally couldn't speak. That anger made her apprehensive, but she was surprised by it as well, and a little
bewildered. Until then, she hadn't thought that a man
could feel both tenderness and rage in the same mo
ment.

She couldn't believe it was possible. His kindness had to exist only in her imagination. "Please let me go," she whispered, rigid in his gentle embrace. She wanted to
find some defense against him, and felt helpless. It was
all she could do to hold her body stiff when it wanted to
relax against his and accept a comfort her mind didn't trust. He knew the secret of her life, knew what no one outside her bedroom could ever have guessed, and she
had a confused idea that this was a greater betrayal of her
husband than infidelity could ever be.

"Julia.
.."
His voice was a low rasp, as if it hurt his
throat to speak at all. "You have to leave him. He's an
animal, you can't stay with him."

She swallowed hard and repeated, "Please let me go."

His arms tightened a little, and then Cyrus slowly
released her. She was painfully conscious of him behind
her and of her unbuttoned blouse. She was shivering
despite the heat, her emotions in turmoil.

"Julia—"

"My... my blouse.
Could you—?" The sheer un
seemliness of the entire scene struck her, and she
clamped her teeth together to hold back a wild sound of
despair.
Unseemly?
Dear God, what was the sense of
worrying about propriety now?

He swore, so softly she barely heard him,
then
silently
buttoned her blouse. She leaned down to pick up the tie he'd dropped to the ground and put it back in place, her fingers shaking. She couldn't look at him, didn't dare to meet his eyes.

"You can't stay with him," Cyrus said, a little roughly
now.

She rose to her feet and then went still, because he'd
gotten up as well and towered over her. "He's my
husband," she murmured, refusing to meet those black
eyes.

Cyrus grasped her shoulders. "Look at me, Julia."

"No," she whispered, more a plea than a refusal.

He surrounded her face with one big hand, gently pushing her chin up. "I said, look at me."

She flinched a little at the soft, fierce command and instantly obeyed. She thought his face was unnaturally
pale and curiously hard, as if all the flesh had been
stretched tightly over the bones beneath. And his
eyes.
..
so dark, for the first time nakedly expressive
and filled with an incredible gentleness she didn't be
lieve. She had the mad notion that there was safety in his
eyes, and peace, and caring.

"Leave him. Come to me," he said.

"No." She didn't believe what she saw in him was real.

"Julia, I won't let him hurt you anymore."

He didn't know Adrian, she thought wearily, if he believed that. There were so many ways to be hurt.
There was Lissa to fear for. Even if Cyrus could—and
would—protect both her and Lissa, even if he wouldn't hurt her as Adrian had, and even if she could bear the public and private shame of leaving her husband for another man, what would she do when he tired of her?
Men tired of mistresses, she'd heard.

"I won't leave my husband,'' she said quietly.

Cyrus swore under his breath again and pulled her into his arms, holding her so close that her breasts were
pressed to his broad chest. Before she could do more than gasp, his mouth covered hers.

If he had been the slightest bit rough with her, she might have been able to fight the instant, bewildering response of her body to his desire. But the powerful arms holding her, though hard and curiously inescap
able, were also gentle, and his warm lips moved on hers
with a hunger tempered by tenderness. When he held
her and touched her this way, her body had no memory of pain and her mind forgot even the last shred of reason.

She couldn't fight him.
Or herself.
Her mouth opened
to him, her body molded itself against his, and her arms rose of their own volition to slide around his lean waist. A wave of heat that had nothing to do with the summer
day washed over her, bringing all her senses so vibrantly
alive, it was as if she had never felt before.

She was less aware of the differences between their
bodies than she was of the Tightness of how they fit
together, as if all the contrasts had been designed specifically for this passionate contact. There was pleasure and excitement stirring to life inside her, a primitive and unfamiliar urgency she didn't understand, and a growing need to give
herself
to him that was almost a
compulsion. She had the strangely certain feeling she
already belonged to him, and if any man had the right to claim her, it was Cyrus.

"God, Julia," he muttered against her mouth. One big hand slid up her back and cupped her head as his other arm drew her even closer, and he deepened the kiss with
a surge of desire so intense she actually jerked at the
shock of it. Her breasts ached as they were pressed to his
hard chest, and somewhere deep in her belly she was
suddenly conscious of a throbbing emptiness. Fire inside
her, molten in her veins and licking along her nerves
until they felt seared and raw with a pleasure so acute it
bordered on pain. A muted whimper caught in her
throat and her hands clutched at his back almost desper
ately.

The strength of her own response was so stunning it brought her at least partway to her senses. She couldn't
believe this was possible, couldn't believe it was any more real than the intense emotions she'd seen in his
black eyes. Seduction... But that was it, wasn't it? He had a power over her she never would have thought any
man could have, and with that influence he would
compel her to do as he wanted.