Jayne Castle - Bridal Jitters

They both broke off, staring at each other. In the gloom it was impossible for him to read the expression in her eyes. If she was frightened of him, she was hiding it well, he thought.

He braced himself and tried again. "I'm sorry for what happened," he said evenly. "I don't know what else to say. I could promise you that it won't ever happen again, but I don't know if I can keep that promise."

She did not pretend to misunderstand. "I see."

He drew a deep breath. "I realize that you're probably having second thoughts about our business arrangement as well as our marriage. I don't blame you. I've been doing some thinking about it, too."

"You have?"

He glanced around the tranquil little room. "This is not the time or place to talk about how we're going to terminate our business futures."

"No, it's not." There was an unsettling, flat note in her voice.

"Yeah, well, let's save that conversation for later." He started toward the door, aware that even in the depths of the disaster, he was still trying to buy himself some time. The odds were strongly against him coming up with a way to talk her into going through with the marriage after what had happened, but he could not give up without a fight.

She looked at him as he went past her. "Sam, do you really regret what happened?"

"Hell, yes, I regret it." He planted one hand against the green stone doorway and turned to face her. "Making love to you was the last thing I wanted to do."

She stiffened. "I realize that you were rezzed up because of the afterburn."

"That was no excuse."

"Just tell me one thing. Would anything in skirts have worked for you two hours ago?"

He frowned at her trousers. "You aren't wearing skirts." She narrowed her eyes. "That was a figure of speech."

"It's never smart to use figures of speech when you're talking to a hunter who's still recovering from an afterburn. We tend to be literal, even on our good days."

"For heaven's sake, this is no time for wisecracks. We're talking about our future."

"I thought we just got through deciding to talk about it later." He took his hand off the wall and stalked into the fountain room.

"Damn it," she called out behind him, "don't you dare walk out on me when I'm talking to you. Come back here, Sam Gage."

"What the hell do you want from me?" He felt his temper ignite. "I said I'm sorry. I don't usually lose control, not even during an afterburn. But things got out of hand this time." She swept out her palm to indicate the quartz chest on which they had made love. "Didn't what happened in here mean anything to you?"

"Of course it did. It meant I screwed up everything. But what's done is done."

She raised her chin, eyes glittering with anger. "Would you undo it if you could?

"Didn't I just get through saying that I—" He broke off abruptly. There was no point lying about it. The damage was done. He set his back teeth. "I wish it had happened under other circumstances. I wish I had done things differently. I wish I hadn't scared the hell out of you."

"But you aren't really, truly sorry that you made love to me?"

He hesitated. "Well—"

"Just say it."

He felt cornered. Despair, anger, and frustration boiled together, a dangerous stew spiced with emotions he knew he did not handle well. "You want the truth? The truth is what I said to you just before I tossed you down onto that damned stone chest. The truth is that I've been wanting to make love to you since the first day I saw you."

A short, intense silence gripped the chamber.

Virginia's brows bristled in a ferocious scowl. "Good. Because that's pretty much how I've felt from the first moment I saw you, too."

He felt as if he'd just been struck by lightning. For a few seconds he was too stunned to do anything more than stare at her. "It is?

"Yes." She glared at him. "But you seemed so distant and cool. So businesslike. You kept talking about how many new clients we would attract working as a team. You went on and on about how much money we'd both make once we sold the house to developers."

He finally managed to unfreeze himself. He took a step toward her. "I never wanted to sell the house in the first place. I came up with the idea because I thought it would be a good way to talk you into a marriage-of-convenience. I figured if I—" He stopped. "Hell, I don't know what I was thinking."

She cleared her throat. "We're both adults. We're single. There's no reason we can't simply admit that we're attracted to each other. Marriages-of-convenience are designed for just this sort of situation."

"A legal, socially acceptable, two-year affair."

"Exactly." She shrugged. "If it's just passion, it will probably burn itself out in that length of time."

"Yeah. Sure." Never in a million years. How could he possibly let go of her in two years? Better not to go there in the first place if he knew that he would eventually lose her. But how could he not take what she offered, given the lonely alternative. "Virginia—"

"That's what you wanted, wasn't it? That was the deal. A two-year MC." She smiled a little too brightly. "And I agreed."

She was acting weird, and it made him more uneasy than ever. What the hell was the matter with him? He had gotten exactly what he'd asked for, what he'd wished for when he'd concocted the plan in the first place.

"You know, you were right when you said that this was not the time or place to discuss this sort of thing," Virginia said briskly. "We'd better get going."

He moved toward her. "Is sex all you want out of this?

"Isn't that what you want out of it?"

"Sex is good. Great." Anger pulsed in him. "I can work with sex."

Her face tightened in renewed concern. "You know, you really don't look normal yet, Sam. You could still be suffering from afterburn. Maybe you'd better get some more sleep before we attempt to go back through that waterfall."

"You're right about one thing. I'm not feeling real normal."

Her eyes widened as he closed the distance between them. "Now hold on just one damn minute. If you think we're going to have sex every time you claim to be in the throes of an afterburn buzz, you can think again. I'll admit it's interesting, but—"

She stopped talking abruptly when he caught her wrists and pinned her to the wall.

"You just got through telling me that you were in this deal for the sex," he reminded her.

"I've got nothing against sex." Her voice was tight with anger. "But the next time we do it, I want to make sure it's for real. Not just the result of a bad burn buzz. Don't you get it?"

"No." He leaned in closer. "Explain it to me in short words."

"I want to be sure it's me you want. I want to be absolutely certain that not just any female would do."

"Trust me, no one else will do."

There was a short, tense silence. Then she cleared her throat and wriggled her fingers in his grasp. "In that case, stop acting like some macho jerk hunter."

He kept her wrists anchored against the wall. "But I am a macho jerk hunter."

"No, you are not," she muttered, seriously disgruntled now. "Stop talking like that."

"You've as good as said I behaved like a macho jerk hunter a couple of hours ago when I made love to you just before I crashed. What happens the next time we get into this kind of situation? Am I going to have to listen to a lot of accusations about how anything in skirts would do? When it's over, will I have to explain that I knew it was you I was having sex with?"

"Just because I wanted to be sure you knew it was me—"

"Believe me. I knew it was you. Just like I know it's you now."

He kissed her, hard and deliberately, letting her feel the frustration and temper she had aroused in him, letting her know that this time he knew full well that she was the woman he had pinned against the glowing quartz wall.