JMcNaught - Something Wonderful (40 page)

Jordan's jaw hardened as he suddenly realized Tony had apparently lied about their "familial" feelings for each other. "Not without my consent, you won't," he clipped. "So you can forget the idea of marrying Tony."

"I haven't any intention of marrying Tony!" She blazed with such feeling that Jordan relaxed slightly. "And I haven't any intention of living as
your
wife, either."

His mood vastly improved by her denial of any wish to marry Tony, Jordan studied her without anger. "Forgive me if I'm being dense, but I'm rather surprised you want an annulment."

"No doubt you're amazed to discover there's a female on earth who finds you resistible," she retorted bitterly.

"And that's why you want an annulment? Because you find me 'resistible.' "

"I want an annulment," Alex replied, looking him right in the eye and speaking in a polite voice that completely belied her words, "because I don't
like
you."

Unbelievably, he smiled at that. "You don't know me well enough to dislike me," he teased.

"Oh, yes, I do!" Alex replied darkly. "And I refuse to be your wife."

"You have no choice, sweetheart."

The casual, empty endearment made her cheeks flame with ire. It was exactly the sort of thing she would have expected from a notorious flirt; no doubt she was supposed to melt at his feet now. "Don't call me 'sweetheart'! Whatever it takes, I'll be free of you. And I do have a choice," she decided on the spur of the moment. "I—I can go home to Morsham and buy a cottage there."

"And just how," he asked dryly, "do you intend to pay for that cottage? You have no money."

"But—when we were married you said you'd settled a large sum of money on me."

"Which is yours to use," Jordan clarified, "so long as
I
approve of the way you spend it."

"How very convenient for you," Alex said with stinging scorn. "You gave yourself money."

Seen in that light, it was close enough to the truth that Jordan almost chuckled. He stared down into her stormy blue eyes and flushed face, wondering why, from the very first, she had always been able to make him laugh—wondering why he felt this consuming, unquenchable need now to possess and gentle her without breaking her spirit. She had changed tremendously during the past year, but she still suited him better than any other woman he could ever hope to find. "All this discussion of legalities has reminded me rather forcibly that I have several legal rights I haven't claimed in more than a year," he said, and caught her firmly by the arms, pulling her between his thighs.

"Have you no decency—" Alex burst out, squirming in mindless panic. "I'm still legally betrothed to your cousin!"

His chuckle was rich and deep. "Now
there's
a persuasive argument."

"I don't want you to kiss me!" Alexandra warned furiously, pushing hard against his chest with her flattened hands and straining backward.

"That's too bad," he softly replied, and hauled her up against the solid wall of his chest, wrapping his arm around her back and effectively trapping her hands and forearms between their bodies, "because I intend to see if I can still make you feel 'overheated.' "

"You're wasting your time!" Alexandra cried, turning her head aside, drowning in humiliation at the brutal reminder of how openly besotted with him she had been when she told him his kisses had warmed her heart and body. According to all she'd heard, Jordan Townsende's kisses were responsible for raising the temperatures of half the female population of England. "I was a naive child. I'm a grown woman now and I've been kissed by other men who do it every bit as well as you! Better in fact!"

Jordan retaliated by plunging the fingers of his free hand into the heavy hair at her nape and tugging sharply, forcing her head back. "How many have there been?" he asked, a muscle leaping in his taut jaw.

"Dozens! A hundred!" she choked.

"In that case," he drawled in a soft, savage voice, "you ought to have learned enough to be able to make
me
burn."

Before she could reply his mouth swooped down and captured hers with angry possessiveness, his lips moving back and forth in a ruthless, punishing kiss that was nothing like Tony's gentle ones or the few stolen by the occasional overamorous gentlemen eager to see whether or not she would permit him some liberties. This kiss was unlike any other because, beneath the ruthlessness of it, there was flowing a demanding persuasion, an insistence that she kiss him back that was almost beyond denial—a promise that if she yielded, the kiss might gentle and become something quite different.

Alexandra felt the silent promise, understood it without knowing how she did, and her whole body began to shake with terror and shock as his mouth gentled imperceptibly and began molding itself to the contours of hers, exploring her lips with slow, searching intensity, urging her to participate in the kiss.

A gasp behind them made Jordan loosen his grip and Alexandra whirl around, only to have his arm tighten, clamping her firmly to his side as they both looked at a horrified Higgins, who was in the act of escorting three men, including Lord Camden, into the library.

The butler and the three men all stopped short. "I—I
beg
your pardon, your grace!" Higgins burst out, losing his composure for the first time since Alexandra had known him. "I understood you to say that when the earl arrived—"

"I'll join you in a quarter of an hour," Jordan told his three friends.

They left, but not before Alexandra had noted the amused expressions on all the men's faces, and she turned on Jordan in humiliated outrage. "They're going to think we mean to continue kissing for another quarter of an hour!" she burst out. "I hope you're satisfied, you—"

"Satisfied?" he interrupted with amusement as he studied this tempestuous, unfamiliar, wildly desirable young woman who had once regarded him with childlike admiration in her glowing blue eyes. Gone were her unruly curls. Gone was the admiration in her eyes. Gone was the ingenuous hoyden he had married. In her place was this ravishing young beauty of uncertain temperament whom he felt an uncontrollable, irrational need to tame and to make respond to him as she once had. "Satisfied?" he asked again. "With that pitiful excuse for a kiss? Hardly."

"I didn't mean that!" Alexandra cried miserably. "Three days ago I was marrying another man. Have you no idea how odd those men must have thought it was when they saw you kissing me?"

"I doubt if anything we do will ever seem 'odd' to anyone," Jordan answered with equal parts of amusement and irony, "not when they've already witnessed the entertaining spectacle of me barging in on your wedding to put a stop to it."

For the first time, it occurred to her how comical that must have looked to Society—and how embarrassing it must have been to him—and Alexandra felt a tiny bubble of satisfied mirth.

"Go ahead and laugh," he invited dryly, watching her visibly struggling to remain coldly aloof. "It was funny as hell."

"Not," Alexandra corrected, keeping her face scrupulously straight, "at the time, however."

"No," he agreed, and a lazy, devastating smile suddenly swept across his tanned features. "You should have seen the look on your face when you turned around at that altar and saw me standing there. You looked as if you were seeing a ghost." For one brief moment, she had looked overjoyed—as if she were seeing someone infinitely dear to her, he remembered.

"
You
looked like the wrath of God," she said, uneasily aware of the magnetic charm he was suddenly exuding.

"I
felt
ridiculous."

Reluctant admiration for his ability to laugh at himself blossomed in Alexandra's heart, and for the moment she ignored the things she'd learned about him. Time rolled back and he was once again the smiling, compelling, achingly handsome man who had married her, teased her, and fought a mock duel in a glade with her. Unaware of the seconds ticking past, she stared up into his bold, mesmerizing grey eyes while her dazed mind finally accepted, fully and completely, that he was truly alive—that this was not a dream that would end as all her earlier ones had ended. He was alive. And he was, unbelievably, her husband. At least for the moment.

So lost was she in her own thoughts that it took a moment before she realized that his gaze had dropped to her lips and his arms were encircling her, drawing her against his hard frame.

"No! I—"

He smothered her objection with a hungry, wildly exciting kiss. Temporarily robbed of the anger that had fortified her resistance, Alexandra's traitorous body lost its rigidity, and the scream of warning issued by her mind was stifled by her pounding heart and the shocking pleasure of being held again in the strong arms of the husband she had believed dead. A large masculine hand curved round her nape, long fingers stroking and soothing, while his other hand slid up and down her back, moving her closer and tighter to his full length.

His warm lips moving on hers, the sensation of his hardening body pressing against hers—it was all so achingly, poignantly, vibrantly familiar to her, because she had lived it in her dreams a thousand times. Knowing she was playing with fire, she let him kiss her, permitting herself—just this once—the forbidden, fleeting joy of his mouth and hands and body. But she did not respond, dared not respond.

Pulling his mouth from hers, Jordan brushed a warm kiss against her temple. "Kiss me," he whispered, his breath sending vibrant warmth spilling through her veins. "Kiss me," he coaxed hotly, trailing his mouth across her cheek, brushing insistent kisses along the sensitive curve of her neck and ear. His hands slid into her heavy hair, tilting her face up to his and his eyes held hers, teasing, challenging. "Forgotten how to do it?"

Alex would have died rather than let him believe he'd been the only man to kiss her on the lips in the last fifteen months, and she could see he'd already sensed that was true.

"No," she said shakily. His parted lips came down on hers again, in another long, searching kiss. "Kiss me, princess," he urged hoarsely, kissing her temple, her ear, her cheek. "I want to see if it's as good as I remembered it."

The achingly poignant discovery that he, too, had dwelt on their few kisses was more than Alexandra could withstand. With a silent moan of despair, she turned her head and met his lips with her own while her hands crept up his chest Jordan's mouth slanted fiercely over hers, and this time her lips yielded to his rough, tender kiss, parting beneath the sensual pressure and, at that moment, his tongue slid between them, invading her mouth and taking possession of her.

Lost in a stormy sea of desire, confusion, and yearning, Alexandra felt his hand splay across her lower spine, forcing her closer to him, but instead of resisting she slid her hands up over his shoulders, unwittingly molding her melting body to the hardening contours of his. A shudder racked his muscular body as she fitted herself to him and Jordan's arms tightened, crushing her to him, while his hand lifted, cupping her breast, his thumb brushing back and form across her sensitized nipple while his tongue plunged into her mouth and withdrew, then plunged again and again in a wildly exciting, ever-increasing rhythm that drove her half mad with forbidden yearnings. The endless, drugging kiss, the provocative warmth of his hands moving ceaselessly over her back, then possessively cupping her breasts, the taut strength of his legs and thighs pressing intimately against hers worked their pagan magic on Alexandra; she kissed him back with all the helpless ardor she had felt so long ago, only this time her shy uncertainty was overwhelmed by the desire to clasp him to her, to pretend for a little while that he was all the things she had wanted him to be.

Jordan knew only that the woman in his arms was responding to his kiss with more ardor than ever before, and the effect was devastating on his starved body. When her tongue darted out to touch his lips, he crushed her to him, drawing her tongue into his mouth, while desire surged through his bloodstream like wildfire, pounding in his loins. Fighting back the wild urge to lay her down on the carpet and take her then and there, he dragged his lips from hers and drew a long, unsteady breath, slowly expelling it. Evidently, his wife had learned a great deal about kissing while he was rotting in prison, he realized grimly.

Surfacing slowly from the mists of desire, Alexandra stared into his hypnotic eyes, dazedly watching their color and mood change from the smoky darkness of passion to their usual enigmatic light silver, while she felt reality slowly return. Her hand still lay curved around his neck and it finally dawned on her that, beneath her fingers, his skin was fiery hot.
Make me burn
, he had coaxed…

Pride and satisfaction drifted through her as she realized she apparently had done exactly that, and her soft lips curved into an unconsciously provocative smile. Jordan's eyes narrowed on that satisfied smile, then lifted to her knowing blue eyes. His jaw tightened and he dropped his arms, stepping back from her.

"My compliments," he said curtly, and Alexandra watched his mercurial mood take an obvious, abrupt, bewildering turn for the worse. "You've learned a great deal in the past year."

A year ago, her sluggish mind reminded her, he had thought her a naive, pitiful nuisance. Fixing a bright, artificial smile on her face, she said lightly, "A year ago you found me excruciatingly naive. Now you're complaining because I'm not. There's simply no pleasing you."