A/N
As promised, here are 2 new chappies. Just to let you know, there only 6 chapters and an Epilogue left, so enjoy it. Thanks for R & R and talk to you soon.
ZaZa, let me know if you still want to be on for the ending. Thanks.
~ Part 12~
“Georges! Rachel’s gone!”
Georges shrank lower behind his Wall Street Journal.
When he made no answer, Andrea broke one of Georges’ sacred rules and burst into his office without knocking.
Did Andrea really have to stand over him, pestering him with all this wedding madness when he had his elections to worry about?
Not that Georges didn’t adore her. Hell, he’d wanted her ever since she’d been sixteen and in love with that no-good Jonathan Sark.
Georges had been swimming underwater in the creek. Andrea had jumped from the rope swing. When she hit the water, her bikini top had come off. At the sight of her breasts, Georges’s goggles had steamed. He’d fallen instantly in love with her.
Georges still resented how hard he’d had to fight to win Andrea away from Sark. He’d hate the name Sark till the day he died. At fifty, Andrea was prettier than ever, thanks to diet, exercise, and a fortune on plastic surgery. Who cares if she cost plenty? She made him happy. She knew how to flatter him; she ran their domestic life smoothly; and she was a political asset.
“Georges!”
He flipped a page.
“Hell-ooo?” Andrea’s bright eyes all but burned a hole in his page. “Our phone’s ringing off the wall. We’re expecting hundred of guests. Rachel is gone. And you can sit there…”
He lowered his paper and stared at his wife.
“Her bed hasn’t been slept in!”
“So?”
“Maybe Mark knows something…”Before Georges could stop her, Andrea dialed the guest cottage.
At her horrified gasp, Georges shut the paper shut.
Andrea stared at her husband. “He hung up.”
Within seconds, their doorbell buzzed. Mark was on their porch, an ice pack pressed against his swollen, black eye. From the way he grimaced as he danced from one foot to the other, the man looked like he could do with a bag of ice on his crotch, too.
“Where’s Rachel?” Georges roared when he opened the door.
“He took her.”
Maybe it was the hot air gusting through the cracked door that swept Georges’s sanity away on a tidal wave of rage.
“Mr. Gibson, it was dark. One minute I was kissing her in on our trek in the woods. Then the cheap movie star slugged me.” Mark blurred in a hot red haze.
“Sark! I knew when he started buying up my town that he’d be trouble.”
“Georges! You’re purple! Your blood pressure!”
“We’re going after Sark.” Georges dug for his car keys in his pocket. “Andrea, you have to talk some sense into that crazy daughter of yours before she screws all our lives again.
Rachel’s head throbbed. Her muscles and joints even her bones felt achy. Her skin burned as if she had a fever. Yet, when she stirred sleepily, her body tangled in white cotton sheets and downy pillows, a gentle smile broke across her face.
Then her stomach growled. She was starving.
Mother had promised to cook eggs Benedict for her and Mark this morning, to serve it on the terrace overlooking the creek.
Rachel’s long black lashes quivered when squares of bright white, as harsh and hot as strobe of lights, flickered across her face. Cautiously, she opened her eyes.
When she saw gray, unpainted walls instead of her own familiar wallpaper with its tiny yellow roses and pink swirls of ribbons, she blinked jerkily.
She was in a cabin. Through grimy, dirt-crusted she saw green trees and golden sunlight. A mourning dove cooed, forming a chorus with buzzing cicadas.
What? How? Where?
Panic thudded through her, quickening her breath and sharpening her heartbeats.
Dimly she remembered waling onto the terrace last night, sick because Mark had been so jealous and furious about Julian. She’d called out to Mark in that soft moonlit darkness. He had answered. She had run lightly down to the boathouse.
The rest of the night was a terrifying blur.
Somebody had been with Mark. Another man. Paul, his brother. There had been music. She and Mark had danced, kissed. She had gotten too warm, become dizzy.
Vague disturbing images of Mark’s wet mouth hungrily devouring hers, of Mark carrying her somewhere into a frightening, misty void.
And then…nothing.
Absolutely nothing.
Gooseflesh prickled her skin. With an uneasy shudder, she rubbed her arms and opened her eyes wider. She must’ve had a bad dream.
The unvarnished rafters, walls, and dirty windows that came into sharper focus were no dream.
Where…
Outside a man hummed raspily. “they don’t know what love is…”
Startled, her gaze jerked toward the window. She sat up in a tense half crouch.
While singing, Julian was leaning back as far as humanly possible in a chair whose legs looked far too spindly to hold his muscular body. Nevertheless, he looked as maddeningly nonchalant, as cockily unconcerned as she felt uptight and terrified.
She cringed with fresh humiliation as he droned on about each garment the woman in his song could remover and how she should do so. Mesmerized, Rachel watched his brown fingers tapping out the beat of the song on his denim thigh.
Tears sprang to her eyes. Her nails dug into the cotton sheets as she scooted to the other side of the bed to get as far away from him as possible.
The springs groaned,
Bed…
She was in…in his bed.
The cotton sheets smelled of man. Of lovemaking. Of Julian.
There had to be a mistake.
She blinked rapidly as if that would make the nightmare dissolve. But as she peered out the window again, instead of vanishing , Julian loomed larger. With the sunlight back-lightening his blonde hair and massive shoulders, he looked even sexier than before. His upper arms bulged. He obviously tool time to work out. His pectorals were well defined, his waist narrow, his abdomen as flat as a washboard. Dressed all in black, his dangerous , chiseled face with that white, devil-may-care grin had the same devastating effect it always had on her idiotic, female senses.
Julian had been born knowing more about woman than most men learned in a lifetime. At least he knew about her. Doubtless, he’d used his fame and career, and all of those tabloid beauties, to hone the evil tricks that came so naturally to him.
Had he seduced her?
She would kill him.
Her parents would kill her.
The urge to run away was overpowering. Somehow she had to get out of here, away from him. Somehow she had to keep her parents and Mark from finding out about this.
When she sat up, she realized she was naked. In his bed.
Her clothes…what had he..
Shred of yellow cotton froth hung neatly from a nearby chair. Her stomach flipped queasily at the thought of him ripping her dress off. When her gaze leapt to her neatly folded silk slip, lacy bra and panties, her headache began to burn behind her eyelids.
Where were her shoes?
Shoes? Focus! An irrelevant detail like shoes didn’t matter. Julian Sark had blown her carefully planned life to bits…again.
Oh, God . When she licked her lips, they felt raw and bruised. Other parts of her body were sticky and tender, too.
In the next instant a fist full of brown knuckles rapped on the window pane beside the bed.
“You up yet, darlin?”
Her gaze darted toward the grimy window. Their eyes clashed through a gray streak of dirt.
She turned white and screamed.
“I’m coming in…”He said as he opened the door.
Again she screamed. Then she buried herself under the sheets and covers like a frightened child.
“No! Wait…Don’t…” She said peeking at him though a hole in his blanket.
“Don’t be such a coward. Come out from under that sheet.”
“I’m not dressed!”
“After last night, you’re got nothing to hide.” His smile and the cocky, low-throated chuckle that accompanied it were so erotic, her breath stopped in her throat.
“At least not from me, “he finished, laughing.
“I’m never coming out. I’d die of shame.”
“Embarrassment never killed anybody.”
Rachel felt Julian’s hand, gently easing the blanket away from her flushed face. He Didn’t stop pulling until the top of her golden head and her long-lashed, blue-eyes were revealed to him.
His broad-shouldered form leaned toward her.” You’re in a different mood this morning, babe, “he said. ”What’s wrong?”
His eyes watched her. There was something in them, some new awareness, an eagerness, that she didn’t want to acknowledge.
“Last night…you were most…affectionate.”
She stared at him with growing horror, her throat tight, her mouth dry.” I…I hate you.”
“You couldn’t get enough of me last night. You were…we were…well, pretty incredible.”
TBC
~Part 13~
Her gut twisted with fresh shame. “I don’t believe you.”
“I was afraid things would look different to you in the morning. You were so sweet, and so damned pretty.”
“I don’t believe anything you say!”
“Fine. Suit yourself.” He chuckled, but her words had wiped that tender eagerness from his gaze.
“Your head hurts, I’ll bet. You probably don’t remember much…Lucky for you, I remember everything. So, if you get curious, I could describe our night together un the most vivid detail. In fact I’d love to.”
“Spare me.”
His blue eyes sparked. “You’re sure?” As always he could read her mind and he could see that a big part of her wanted him to tell her or better yet, show her but she didn’t want to encourage him.
With a moan, she clamped her hands over her ears. “I am living in a nightmare.”
His smile died.” So am I.” With a low curse, he leaned down and jerked her toward him.
“Do you think I wanted this to happen?”
In outraged modesty, she struggled against him. “I-I want to know what’s going on? Why am I here?”
“You tell me.”
“You thanked me on Oscar night…”
A muscle clenched in his carved jaw line. “Oh, that, “he said. “Sorry, Chalk it up to stage fright.”
She sensed he wasn’t being entirely truthful. “You’re not telling me everything.”
“Neither are you. You have a little boy…Nicky.”
She went still. Staring up at him, her heart began to knock.
“He’s five. His hair is blonde. Like mine. In fact, he bears a rather startling resemblance to me. Whose is he?”
“Mine, “She breathed.
“And?”
“Please, don’t, “she whispered. “You have no right..”
Julian stared, his expression blank. Then his nostrils flared. “You told me our baby died.”
The blood drained from her face. Her mind spun backward to that terrible night when Ben had died and she lain in that hospital bed sick and brokenhearted. All she’d wanted was to do one thing right , to make her family happy and whole again.
Her voice shook. “I…I don’t want to talk about Nicky.”
“Nicky.” He repeated her son’s name with such soft, paternal reverence she was taken aback.
“I said I won’t talk about him.”
“Well, you’re going to talk about him. You’re going to tell me everything. And the sooner, the better.”
“Nobody’s supposed to know about him.”
“Not even me?”
“You? You…you’ve been out of my life for years. Why did you drag me here against my will…to thi isolated cabin?
“I’ve been trying to find out about Nicky for a week. Last night was an accident.”
“How could you sink so low as to seduce me?”
“You have it backwards, especially that last part, babe. It was the other way around. You seduced me. For your information I put up one helluva fight…defending my…er…virtue.”
“I don’t believe you for one second. “You’re a monster.”
“Maybe. But I’m your future husband, too.”
Her eyes thinned to black-lashed, blue slits. “No.”
When I’m through with you, you’ll beg me to marry you.”
“You’re insane, “Bunching the sheets above her breasts, her bare feet hit the cool wooden floor. She sprang out of his bed. “I’m going…”
When she took a step around the end of the bed and stared at him. “I’m going to marry Mark.”
He shook his head. “Not in this lifetime.”
Her face reddened. Her heart pounded.
“You!” She spat the word
Julian’s mouth thinned. “I want Nicky. Which means I’m stuck with you. I don’t like it better than you do.
When she sprang at him, her fingernails outstretched, Julian caught her easily. Her sheet tumbled to the floor, pooling at her ankles. Not that she cares as she trashed naked in his arms.
“I hate you.”
“you wanna bet…”
Then his hands were all over her.
She fought him madly, trying to kick his shins, to pummel his tick, powerful chest. All too soon she realized that wriggling female flesh and her passionate anger were having an effect upon him that was entirely opposite to the one she desired.
With an iron grip he yanked her closer. When he thrust her against the wall, he began to shake.
“Damn you , Rachel.” he backed her against the rough unpainted boards. “You and your hypocritical family made me feel like dirt, “He paused. “I want to feel nothing for you. Nothing. Do you understand? You destroyed me because of your damned daddy’s political agenda. I didn’t kill your brother. You weren’t fair to blame me. If it’s any comfort to you, I’m even happier about this mess than you are. When you seduced me last night, you trapped me in the same hell you are.
It took a long time for her to meet his gaze. Near tears, she gulped in air. He closed his eyes. Then he fused his mouth to hers and pushed his tongue inside, ravaging her. The heat of his kiss was hotter than anything she’d ever known. One taste of him, and fire burst like a blossom inside her. He flattened her soft breasts to his rock-solid chest. He cupped her buttocks.
Shameful longing dissolved her fury. In the next moment her lips parted of their own violation, and he ground himself against her.
“Oh, Julian…Julian…”She murmured in soft, breathy tones, arching toward him.
When her fingers circled his neck, combing the long blonde hair at his nape, his angry kisses gentled. With a desperate hunger, he lifted her closer, and she melted against him.
“You ever done it against a wall, babe?”
“Don’t ruin it, “she whispered.
“You know we did.” He laughed, remembering, too well.
She wanted him too much to care what he said. On a sigh of utter longing, she fashioned his name again.
“Julian.”
“You see, darling. You’re just as big a fool as I am.”
She tried to jerk free, her face hot with shame, her heart slamming Hard and quick. But he caught her hands and held her fast, interlacing his fingers with hers.
“After what you did to me last night, I can’t let you marry that bastard. He’s not adopting my son either.”
“Julian…”
“No kid of mine is gonna grow up with a daddy. The sooner you get used to that fact, the better. I’m not letting you go. Not after last night.“ He kissed her again. Each time his mouth touched hers, her blood surged. Instinctively she molded herself to him. His mouth was a brand searing her lips, her throat, her eyelids. “You are mine, senator’s daughter.”
When he finally stopped kissing her, she slumped against the wall. With purposeful strides he crossed the room. Yanking a dresser drawer open, he pulled out a loosely woven cotton shirt, a belt, and a pair of faded jeans. These he threw at her before he opened the door and left.
As she shakily dressed and smoothed her hair, her senses slowly came back to her. Her parents and fiancé were waiting for her in the house with some sort of rational explanation for her disappearance last night.
There wasn’t one.
As the mischievous daughter sandwiched in between a brilliant, studious sister and a coveted only son. Rachel’s parent hadn’t appreciated her penchant for devilment. Not her had they liked her soft heart. No matter how fiercely they’d disciplined her or how hard she’d tried to be good, her virtue never lasted. Her soft heart had made her easy picking for quite unsuitable boyfriends who’d cried on her shoulder. Still, for as long as she could remember she’d wanted them to be as proud of her as they’d been of her brother and sister.
TBC
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