What a Bride Wants (10 page)

There. Right there was the opening he needed. And he knew damn well that Ella had given it to him deliberately.
“Confession time, huh?”

“
Your call.”

It was time.
Past time. “There was a girl. My girl.”

Ella sipped at her wine and listened.

“Zoey was twenty-one, I was twenty-four and we were living together. I’d asked her to marry me.”

“
And she said no and broke your heart?”

“
She said yes and made me very happy.”

“
Hnh,” said Ella. “So much for that theory.”

“
Problem was, my brother wanted her too, and at the engagement party he stood up and told everyone that she was carrying his child and that she needed to marry him and not me. It was a complete lie. I knew it. Zoey knew it. My mother suspected it. But.”

“
But?”

“
You don’t know my brother. He had a lot of power, even back then. A lot of people positioned inside his web. He was very convincing.”

“
I hate him already.”

Sawyer smiled wryly.
“Zoey and I went ahead with our engagement, regardless. Richard didn’t get what he wanted that night, but the damage it did to Zoey’s reputation was irreversible. The gossip mongers attacked her.”

“
Tell me she stuck it out.”

“
Would you have?”

“
Yes.”

“
For a month, she did. Zoey’s no weakling. But it was a month during which my brother pursued her relentlessly; never mind that she wanted nothing to do with him; never mind that Zoey lived with me. He’d corner her on her way to work and on the way home, and when I started taking her to work and picking her up he’d get to her
at
work. He was at every social function we went to and he was obnoxious. And then…” Sawyer cleared his throat. “Then he tried to rape her. To make the statement he’d made at our engagement party true.”

“
Oh.”

There was a world of sick horror in Ella
’s quiet exclamation. And Sawyer let it sit there.

“
Anyway, that was the end of it for Zoey. She’d had enough. She was living in fear. I wanted her to press charges, but she broke the engagement and took off back to her family in Spain instead. In the end she did it with my blessing. Zoey’s fine now. She’s safe. She’s married and very much in love with her husband, who adores her.”

“
Didn’t your brother follow her?”

“
No. As soon as Zoey broke our engagement Richard lost interest in her. But he hadn’t quite finished with me. We were working in the family business, him in management, me in marketing – mainly because we were better off working apart. I’d had some success marketing one particular product we’d developed. A mixer – alcohol lite. It did good things for our bottom line. My father liked that and praised me for it. Richard and I had grown up with him getting all the praise and me getting none, so it was a big thing. A big change.”

“
Why did your father never praise you?”

“
I think maybe he wanted to at times, but there was always Richard and the fear of what might set him off. Even as a kid he was uncontrollable.” Especially as a kid.

He took a breath, let it out.
“My brother framed me for embezzlement and presented the evidence to my father. My father didn’t want to believe him, but he couldn’t get his head around the notion that Richard had framed me either. He couldn’t believe that anyone could carry that much hate. Easier to believe that I got stupid and greedy.”

“
Your father is a very foolish man.”

“
You
are
black and white, aren’t you?”

“
He should have dug to the bottom of it. The lies, the attempted rape… all of it. And
you
… maybe you should have stayed and fought for your rights and for your place within family.”

But Sawyer just shook his head.
“It was tearing my family apart.”

“
So you just up and left?”

You don
’t sound impressed.

“
Jesus, Sawyer.” She reached for a fat cushion and smacked him with it. It wasn’t particularly soft. “You let him
win
.”

“
I have a good life.”

“
Without
family
. Though by the sound of it they weren’t worth much anyway. How could they stand by and watch that happen, Sawyer? How?”

“
There’s big business involved. Someone had to take the fall for the embezzlement.”

“
How about
nailing the person who did it
?”

“
My father made his choice.”

“
Your father’s a moron.”

Yep. Definitely black and whi
te. Not that he didn’t enjoy Ella’s indignation and her fire on his behalf, because, well…

Maybe he had an ever
-so-mild craving for fierce, blind trust.

“
Is that it?” she wanted to know. “Any more skeletons?”

“
No, I think we’re done.”

“
Oh, we are anything but done.” Ella set down her wineglass on the little side table. She took Sawyer’s and set it there too, and then she was sliding into his lap, all warm and fragrant woman. “We’ve barely begun, and you don’t scare me, Cameron Sawyer. You and your screwed up family.”

“
You’re something else, you know that, don’t you?”

“
Do you like it? Do you like what I am?”

“
Yes.”

“
Then let’s get back to where we were at the park, shall we? You were showing me a few things about lust.”

She
’d just shown him a few things about loyalty and acceptance and there was every chance that she’d break him, regardless of relative size, but he summoned a smile and tried to get with the plan. But not before one last word of warning.

“
He’s still out there, Ella. My brother and his world of hate.”

“
I hear you. And now I want to touch you.” She followed her words with the brush of her fingers across his shoulders. “Fill up on you.” A kiss for the edge of his lips and then another, more centered and a moist lick of tongue. “Learn what makes you tremble and what makes you blush. We good?”

“
Yeah.” It was just lust, this trembling in his hands as he reached for her. Base need, not reverence, as he buried his hands in her silky dark hair and returned her kiss. “We’re good.”

“
What would you take from me, Sawyer, if your brother wasn’t hovering in the shadows? Would you want love as well as the lust? Would you be freer with your own heart?”

“
Probably.” She stole a kiss and then another. “Yes.”

“
Would you claim a home for yourself? Would you settle?”

“
I might.” She scraped her teeth along his jaw and reached for the buttons on his shirt. “Yes.”

“
You do know that I’m taking everything you say with a grain of salt, given that I’m seducing you while you’re saying it?”

“
Good idea,” he managed hoarsely, for the pad of her thumb had just stroked over one of his nipples.

“
Last question, I promise,” she whispered, and he groaned, because her hands had found his belt buckle and both body and brain heartily approved. “Have you ever thought of starting your own family? Have you ever dreamed of babies to love and a woman who’d fight for you and love you and stand by your side, no matter what?”

“
No.” While the candles flickered with revelation and his heart broke wide open. “Yes.”

Ella knew where she wanted him. Stretched out naked on the rug in front of the fire, with cushions and blankets all around him and his body a study of shadow and light. It had been a good look for him in her imagination. Enough to make her all flustered and needy.

The reality
was even better.

“
Let me,” she murmured, as she put her hand to his chest and encouraged him to ease back against the pile of cushions. “Can I?” she pleaded, as she drew his arms above his head and circled his wrists with his fingers and then dragged her nails back down his arms, skirting the outside of his armpits and then on to the muscles along the outer edges of his torso. Lines that ran in to his waist and then down over the cut of his hips and the silky skin of his inner thighs, and, oh, the noises he made. The ragged, jagged breath. “You’re so beautiful,” she whispered.

“
That’s my line.”

Ella
leaned over him, hands to either side of him now, and ghosted her breath across one of his nipples and watched it pebble tight. “I want another line.” She used the tip of her tongue to wet it, tease it, and finally to suck it into her mouth before releasing it with a pop. “A better line.”

“
Take your clothes off.”

Sawyer had undressed women before,
if his expertise in that area was anything to go by. And then he rolled her on her stomach, brushed her hair to one side of her neck and put his lips there and lit her up completely.

“
Lust,” he said in a voice that promised heaven. “Needs to be built.”

And then he trailed his lips down her back, finding all the best places. Spots that made her gasp and squirm and heat up and grow moist.
He lifted her up as her knees shifted into place beneath her and his big hands kneaded her buttocks, exposing her, playing her to perfection as he slid one hand lower until his thumb found the exact right spot and circled it.

She pressed into the touch, eager for more. She
’d become a wanton whimpering woman and she loved it. “Sawyer?” He added a blunt knuckle to the mix, giving her something to grind down on and, oh, sweet mercy, she needed it, needed more.

So this was lust
. Blind, mind-altering desire because why else would she be moistening her lips and spiraling beneath his touch, no intercourse required.

“
Not yet, not yet, not yet,” she whimpered.

“
You can go again,” he murmured, and then he was shifting around, his lips trailing over her buttocks before joining his fingers, gliding a path straight to her clitoris and taking over from his thumb. She screamed out, no inhibitions left, as hands and tongue brought her to soaring, trembling completion.

He let her topple sideways after that, onto blankets and pillows as he settled down on his back beside her, farthest from the fire, smug as a well fed wolf.

Ella felt her own lips tug into a smile at his obvious state of readiness. She’d get to that soon, just as soon as her sated body started moving again and her lungs had enough air. “Be right with you.”

“
Relax.” He eased back onto one elbow and curled around her, his knees tucked in under her buttocks. “I’m not going anywhere.”

Not tonight,
at any rate. She took his hand and threaded his fingers through her own. She let her eyes grow slumberous as she memorized every curve and plane of his body. And then slowly, deliberately, she slid her hand over the outside of his, raised it to her lips and licked a long stripe across the center of his palm. “Show me,” she said, and wrapped his hand and hers around his erection.

The effect on Sawyer was instantaneous. His eyes closed, he bit his lip and a ripple ran straight through him. She
’d never seen a more responsive man. “Kink?”

“
Big one.” As he set up a slow stroking rhythm, his grip firm and his body pushing into it. Ella looked, debated, and then set about adding the swipe of her thumb to the head on the upstroke. And then, well, maybe she had to leave him to it while she brought her hand back to her lips and tasted.

The sounds he made were another feast for her senses.
“I think we might need condoms now,” she murmured. “Please tell me you have some.”

He rolled back and reached for his jeans, and she let him coat up before sliding into place on top of him, wriggling until she felt the press of him against
her and then dipping inside. She shifted slightly at the insistent pressure, for he was proportional everywhere and no one could ever accuse him of being a slight man.

“
Easy,” he murmured, stilling beneath her and running a gentle hand down her side, but Ella didn’t want easy, she wanted
him
. Now. And inch by all-encompassing inch she made it so.

Ella had never felt so full, every sense engaged, drilling into her, he was all around her.
She’d never had her senses be so completely engaged. And then she put her hands to his hips and lifted all the way up and then slid back down, reveling in the friction and the drag, a drag Sawyer facilitated by splaying one hand low over her stomach and pressing down on her clitoris with his thumb.

“
You’re right.” She closed her eyes and bit down on her lip to stop the helpless noises from escaping. “I
can
go again.”

And th
en Sawyer began to move and Ella surrendered herself to him completely.

Lust.

Lost.

Love.

By the time they were done, Ella had felt them all.

“
Middle name?” Ella asked as they ate dinner in front of the fire some time later. She was dressed, sort of, in that she had her underwear on. Sawyer had opted for jeans, no shirt, and she wasn’t complaining.

“
Franklin.”

“
Seriously?”

“
Ask my mother. I have no idea why.”

“
Favorite movie?”

“
It’s got hobbits in it.”

“
Best friend?”

Sawyer hesitated.
“Zoey Alvarez.”

Spanish surname.
My
woman, he’d called her.
The
woman. The one who’d been driven away. Ella didn’t like the twinge of jealousy that went through her but it was there. “Are you still in love with her?”

“
No.”

“
Sure?”

“
Very sure.” He held her gaze with a steady one of his own.

Okay, then.
Maybe she really did need to let go of that jealousy. Sawyer and Zoey had shared good times and bad times. The worst times. The bond between them might not be love anymore but it was always going to be strong. “Okay, I can work with that. Favorite type of music?”

“
New Orleans Jazz. Sometimes Bluegrass. Yours?”

“
Country,” she told him. “And then Western.”

He grinned at her.
“We’re going to have to fix that.”

“
Greenhorn, you can try.”

Ella didn
’t quite know how this led to them ending up in bed again, her bed this time.

But it did.