Текст книги "Harrow Duet"

Автор книги: Scarlett Finn

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Текущая страница: 13 (всего у книги 38 страниц)

‘About us?’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘This can’t go on anymore. He has to know that… the wedding isn’t gonna happen.’

When she tried to turn, he had to loosen his embrace so that she could face him. ‘Do you mean that?’

‘I won’t let Trystan have you,’ he said, stroking her hair away from her face.

‘Will Maurice let us be together?’

Dax took a long breath because the truth was he didn’t know how Mauri would react, he’d never let the old man down before so his reaction to the disappointment was an experience that Dax had been spared. ‘He’s reasonable, so I sure hope so.’

‘And you’ll come back for me?’

‘By tomorrow afternoon, I promise,’ he said. ‘You won’t spend another night in here alone.’

And because he knew that if he didn’t leave now he wouldn’t want to, he kissed her forehead and climbed off the bed.

‘You’re leaving already?’ she asked, pushing onto her elbows and he had to avert his eyes from her naked body, with the vibrator, still rolling loose beside her ass. The last thing he wanted to do was take himself away from this view, so he had to stop admiring it or he would be here until morning.

‘I’m gonna come back,’ he said, doing his jeans again and retrieving his jacket from the floor. ‘Sit tight for one more night, babygirl.’

She nodded and smiled, that kind of trust was rare and he’d never expected to find it let alone have it entrusted to him, but it was.

‘We’re going to be together, Dax, aren’t we?’

‘Damn straight,’ he nodded, and went for the door.

Locking her in there felt wrong, but they had to keep up appearances for one night. He’d get home and think more about what he wanted to say to Mauri. He had to believe that Mauri would listen to reason because if he wouldn’t… the choice that was left at Dax’s feet was just unthinkable.

By the time breakfast rolled around Dax was amped and more than ready to have the conversation. He was going to get his girl today, no two ways about it, he couldn’t leave her in there any longer. She trusted him, and he couldn’t let her down, he wouldn’t. Seeing her married to Trystan would tear him apart, because he knew what pain that would cause her, and what pain it would cause himself.

He didn’t like to feel this sort of resentment toward Mauri, but there was no doubt that it was building up inside of him. Seeing Ivy again hadn’t helped alleviate that. All that had done was remind him of what she’d been through and how he’d played a part in that.

A piece of him wanted Ivy to be here at breakfast so that he could see her again, but seeing her in the company of others wasn’t what he wanted, Dax wanted to see her alone.

‘Why so glum?’ Mauri beamed over the breakfast table. ‘You’ve done an excellent job.’

‘I have?’ he asked, obviously Ivy had made a good impression on Mauri yesterday. Dax wondered if she had been resigned to her fate and fully intending to marry Trystan during her conversation with Mauri, or if it had been another fake out on her part.

‘The girl is magnificent, and eager to do anything to please you.’

‘She is?’

‘Yes,’ Mauri said, pushing back in his chair. Dax had never seen the man display such open happiness, the smile on his face was a positive aberration. ‘She will marry Trystan providing that you tell her to, which of course you will. At the moment she is dependent on you, but we can wean her from you to Trystan. All you have to do is make it clear to her that you want her to marry Trystan.’

‘Funny that you should mention that,’ Dax said, but Mauri carried on.

‘Trystan will be home tomorrow.’

Dax hadn’t expected him to say that. ‘Tomorrow? That’s earlier than planned, is it not?’

‘Yes,’ Mauri said. ‘But he and the girl have to go and get the marriage licence together, they have to both be there in person. So he’ll get back tomorrow, they’ll pick up the licence tomorrow or the following day and be married by the weekend.’

Mauri was thrilled, Dax had never seen him like this, if he said anything now, about how he felt for Ivy then all of that exuberance would turn into anger and when Mauri was angry someone paid the price. If Mauri chose to be angry at Dax then he could take that, but Dax knew the anger wouldn’t be aimed at him, not wholly.

Mauri would believe that Ivy had manipulated him and that he’d been the schmuck to fall for it, which would mean Mauri would discover that Ivy wasn’t quite as brainwashed and compliant as he’d been led to believe.

Maurice Stark didn’t like to be made a fool of and disliked being disrespected, if Ivy got the full force of Mauri’s wrath then Dax would have no way to counter it and protect her.

Chapter Sixteen

This had been the longest day of her life. It had started out like normal, with Rita bringing her breakfast, which she got to eat before Serg brought the treadmill into her room. During her workout Ivy focused on the door, waiting for it to open and reveal Dax. So intent was her gaze that she ended up running almost twice as far as she normally would, but she was glad to expend the energy and to kill the time.

Luxuriating in the shower after her exertion, she hoped that if Dax arrived at her bedroom now, he would seek her out here in the mist of steam and tell her that everything was resolved, then they could celebrate under the hot spray. That fantasy made Ivy deliberately take more time over her usual routine, but by the time she had done everything that a woman could do in the bathroom, there had been no sign of him.

Leaving the bathroom, there was nothing ahead of her, so she perused the selection of books and DVD’s in the entertainment unit. All of her focus was on Dax and when he would walk into her room to tell her that he had fixed their problem, so she struggled to relax and get engrossed in the novel that she’d selected.

Ivy had expected Dax to come to her first thing because he’d said his engagement with Mauri was for breakfast.  But as time slipped by she wondered if Dax had actually meant brunch. When lunchtime came and went, she speculated that maybe Mauri had delayed their meeting due to something unforeseen.

At three o’clock her bedroom door opened and Ivy abandoned the book she’d been lying with to sit bolt upright. The burst of expectation was met with disappointment when Ivy identified the entrant as Rita and not Dax.

‘You’re wanted downstairs,’ Rita said. ‘What are you wearing?’

Ivy got off the bed, and glanced down at the strapless white sundress that she’d had on all morning, in anticipation of Dax appearing to take her away from all of this madness.

‘Why do you care what I’m wearing?’ Ivy asked, digging her ballet pumps out from under the edge of the nightstand to stick her feet in them.

‘You need something that’s quick and easy to take off,’ Rita said. ‘Come on.’

Ivy didn’t like the sound of that at all, but Rita was already out of the room. Following her out, Ivy saw Serg was there to accompany them to wherever they were going. Mauri’s office had been upstairs and this time they went down, so the probability of seeing Mauri was low.

Hoping that she was about to find Dax waiting for her, Ivy stayed close to Serg and Rita, eager to reach their destination. Already she had been disappointed because Dax hadn’t come to her promptly, so she tried to keep herself calm because the later in the day it got the more her optimism was fading.

Entering another room with a heavy door, Ivy didn’t know what would be waiting for her. What she didn’t expect in the ground floor space was to be faced with a series of folded out mirrors, and two other women.

‘You are the bride?’ one of the women said. ‘I’m the seamstress, and I have to fit you.’

‘Fit me for what?’ Ivy asked. Rita closed the door from beyond it, leaving Ivy alone with these women.

The second woman rounded the portable mirrors. The swish of material sent a corkscrew of dread and alarm twisting under her skin. The two women were beaming with joy and pride and didn’t seem to see the anxiety in Ivy.

‘Your dress!’

The second woman brought the gown into view and held it up in triumph. ‘It’s just beautiful, you made a fantastic choice.’

The swathes of white silk and lace made her eyes bug. She hadn’t chosen anything, but someone had, and here it was.

‘We’ll help you on with it,’ the first woman said. ‘We have lingerie for you to try as well, you can make a selection today. I hope you’re not modest, though with a figure like yours, why would you be?’

Slipping out of her clothes, Ivy let the women parade lingerie in front of her, and did her best to be civil, but she couldn’t imagine that they missed her negative attitude. For some reason, they spent an age of time doing her hair; styling it in long, large curls and using half a can of hairspray to keep the diamond tiara in place.

Then before she knew it, she was wrapped in the dress. The ball gown style had a tiered skirt and a tight corset that clenched around her breasts and hung on capped sleeves. It was a beautiful dress, there could be no doubting that, but it wasn’t really her style. This dress screamed “look at me!” while Ivy was more comfortable standing in the corner doing the observing and going unnoticed.

‘We’re supposed to take some pictures,’ one of the women said, pulling out a makeup case and carefully applying some liner, shadow, and mascara to Ivy.

‘Pictures?’ Ivy asked while the woman worked. ‘Why would you need to—‘

‘Mr Stark wants to see how you look in the gown,’ the second woman said, fastening earrings into Ivy’s ears and hooking a necklace around her neck.

She was being pulled one way, then the other and trussed up like a model at a beauty pageant. These women were perhaps used to brides who were more exuberant, thus happier about the prospect of being gussied up.

Ivy found this whole experience uncomfortable, she didn’t like being preened like a Barbie doll. She had no trouble with dressing up and looking good, she just preferred to be the one making her own choices about hair and make-up.

Resigned to the fact that these women had a job to do, Ivy let them finish with the make-up and with the accessories and then stood static while they oohed and ahhed.

‘Perfect,’ one of the women said. The glaze in her eyes made Ivy think that she was about to start crying, but she couldn’t believe that to be true when this was the woman’s job. She had to see dozens of women in wedding gowns all the time, but maybe the tears were part of the sales pitch.

‘I’ll get the camera,’ one woman said, hurrying for the door.

‘No,’ said the other. ‘The veil, what about the veil?’

‘Did you bring it?’

‘It’s in the car. Remember a single person can’t carry it in alone because of its length. The last thing that we want is for it to be soiled or torn this close to the big day.’

‘Oh yes, yes of course,’ the first woman said and snatched Ivy’s hand to give it a pat. ‘You wait here, we’ll get everything that we need and be back in a jiffy.’

They rushed toward the door together. ‘Oh,’ the second woman paused when they opened the door. ‘Don’t sit down, or the dress will crinkle.’

Ivy’s first impulse after they left was to plant herself on the floor. The petulant act would wrinkle the dress, but she didn’t care. She didn’t care about the dress, or this wedding, or anything else that the Stark’s had planned for her.

‘Take it off.’

Inhaling what could be her last breath, she spun around so quickly that the dress whooshed around with a swooshing sound. Lurking in the shadows of the far corner was a figure; if he hadn’t come into the light just then she might have considered that his motives were sinister.

‘Dax.’

‘You heard me,’ he said, sounding far from pleased. ‘Take the damn thing off.’

Marching toward her, he got hold of her arms and tussled her to the side of the room until she was flat against a tall dresser the height of which reached her shoulder blades. The hard wood bit into her, but Dax kept hold of her, kept forcing her back.

‘Why are you doing this?’ she asked. ‘What’s going on?’

‘I told you to take it off!’

Forcing her to turn, he began to tug at the lace holding her corset together, but he wasn’t the most delicate of men and the rip of material was a foregone conclusion. He freed the lace and yanked at the corset, but it stayed on its sleeves.

Holding the garment to her chest, she wrestled around to try and look at the damage, but it didn’t matter, the dress was already ruined. ‘What have you done?’

Bringing her all the way around, he shook her. ‘You were right, goddamn it, Minx, ok? You were right!’

He didn’t sound happy about that at all. ‘Right about what?’ she asked, trying to reach for his face, but his agitation made him recoil from her touch.

‘I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t tell him. He’ll never accept this, Mauri will never accept us, not like this. He’ll never understand.’

‘You came here to tell me that it’s over? Or you came here to let me go free?’ Hope budded, but she couldn’t let it flower, not until she knew for sure what his intentions are.

‘There is no free,’ he said, looming closer, his eyes became slits. ‘You will never be free.’

‘You want me to marry him?’ she asked, trying to fight his grip. ‘You actually want me to walk down that aisle, just to make your life easier? So that you don’t disappoint your surrogate daddy?’

‘I’m here to take you with me,’ he said, bringing his hand to her cheek causing her breathing to stop. ‘I’m here to take the chance of walking away from everything I’ve ever had.’

‘Oh, Dax—‘

‘But make no mistake,’ he said, dropping his hand away to take hold of her again with a more ferocious grip. ‘You will never be free. If you walk out of here with me today, then you belong to me, forever. I will never allow you to leave me. You will be my female, mine. I will not let you marry him. I will not watch you do that. We leave here, now, and you will do as I say because while you’re in my custody, while I claim you, you are wholly mine, every part of you, every single breath that you take will belong to me. You are bound to be at my side. You’ve gotta accept that I will never let you go free.’

‘Dax,’ she sighed, allowing herself to smile.

‘It’s their prison or mine, your pick, Minx.’

‘Yours,’ she said. ‘But being with you is no prison. I want to be with you too.’

Encouraging him to move backward, she let the corset fall and went to work loosening the skirt. When it collapsed to the floor like a sunken soufflé, she used his arm to balance herself and step out of it. Her own clothes were on a chair, just a few feet away, but when she tried to go to them Dax wouldn’t let her go.

Glimpsing at him, to find out what the delay was, Ivy noticed that he was examining her figure, and her own attention fell to the prominent bulge in his jeans.

‘You’re going to have me forever,’ she said. ‘There’s time for that later. But the dress women—‘

‘Right,’ he said, letting her go and making a show of averting his eyes.

Flattery kept her smile in place, but she knew that there was no time to waste. Tugging up her strapless dress, she shoved her feet into her shoes and was back at his side.

‘How do we get out of here?’ she asked.

‘The same way I got in,’ he said and seized her hand.

In the corner he had materialised from was a smaller door that took them to a short corridor with a stairway at the end. But they didn’t go as far as the stairs, he took her through a narrow door, which couldn’t be any kind of official entrance, and there in front of her was a motorbike.

‘You’re kidding,’ she said when he handed her a helmet.

‘Do you want to leave here or do you want to debate mode of transportation?’ he asked, throwing a leg over the bike. ‘If I showed up here on anything other than my bike it would raise suspicions. Come on, Minx…’

Her apprehension evaporated because he was right, if the choice was getting on that bike with him or going back inside… well that wasn’t a choice.

‘Take that shit out your hair,’ he said and she was reminded of the tiara, which probably cost a small fortune.

She didn’t delay in grabbing it out of her locks and tossing it to the pebbles at her feet. Pulling on the helmet, she got on the back of the bike and wrapped her arms around him. In the hot, humid air of the day the seat was hot under her ass, but she tucked her skirt under her thighs and hung onto him again.

The bike roared to life and the deep vibrations of it racked through her body, warming and arousing her in ways that she hadn’t expected, but there wasn’t time to explore that now. Holding herself even closer to him, she closed her eyes as they sped away from the mansion toward a back gate that she didn’t know existed.

Her closed eyes weren’t a sign of fear, it was relief that poured itself through her now. Not just relief that she was free from her prison, but relief that Dax had come to understand the depth of his feelings for her because now they could be together and make what they had real.

They rode for less than an hour then Dax pulled off the highway and took them through residential streets to a storage area. He parked the bike and unlocked a garage while she stood eagerly anticipating what might be inside.

‘Are you ok?’ he asked her before he opened the door.

Her grin burst wider. ‘Yes, Dax, I’m… God, I’ve never felt like this.’

Straightening up, he frowned. ‘Felt like what?’

‘So… exhilarated and high and… it’s like… to finally be free and to be with you—‘

‘I told you that you’re not free,’ he said, approaching to take hold of her and spin her around so that she was flat to the outer wall of the storage unit.

‘Oh all that stuff about being your prisoner, it’s just foreplay, tough guy. I want to be with you and I don’t feel like a hostage with you. This is what I wanted all along. I wanted us to be together, and now we can be.’ Sliding her hands up his chest, she was about to beckon a kiss when he spoke again.

‘You haven’t asked about the rest of my plan.’

‘Plan?’ she asked, loosening from her projected action. ‘I thought the plan was to get out of there and we did that.’

‘It’s not that easy,’ he said. ‘We have to…’

‘Have to what?’

He backed off and opened the garage door to show that there was a car inside, among other things. Wheeling his bike past the car he stowed it at the back of the garage, covering it with a tarp then retrieving a backpack and a sports bag from a metal cabinet not too far from the bike. He tossed both into the trunk of the car, then got in and drove the car out of the garage, where he stopped.

‘Get in,’ he said, leaving the car to lock up the garage again.

‘Do you have a plan?’ she asked, having assumed that they would just leave the state and the Starks behind.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘My plan is to make sure that they can’t follow through with their plan.’

‘Ok,’ she said, sliding into the car, grateful to see that there was a bag of food and water on the seat and shades on the dashboard. ‘I thought that we already did that by leaving that house?’

‘No,’ he said as he got back into the car and showed her a key.

‘What’s that?’ she asked, retrieving a sandwich from the bag and unwrapping it. She hadn’t eaten anything since this morning and she hadn’t been particularly hungry then, now she was famished.

‘The key to get back into that storage unit if you ever need to. No one else knows that this place exists, so if I’m not around you’ll find everything in there that you’ll need to disappear.’

She didn’t much like the sound of that, him not being around, but she watched him put the key into his wallet and stuff it into his back pocket. Taking off from the storage compound, they got back on the interstate and she munched away on her sandwich, happy to finish it and one of the bottles of water before she spoke again.

‘I’m ready,’ she said, stowing her trash in the door compartment.

‘Ready for what?’

‘For you to tell me the plan. So out with it, what’s the plan? Why isn’t leaving there enough?’

‘Because I don’t plan to stay gone,’ Dax said. ‘We’re gonna go back.’

‘When?’

‘Tomorrow, maybe the next day.’

‘What? Are you serious? No! I am not going back there.’ If she could jump out of the car and run now then she probably would.

‘Yeah, you are,’ he said. ‘I’m not going to run forever and after we show Mauri that we’re serious about this, he’ll understand. He wouldn’t get it if he thought it was just about sex, that might make him angry, make him think that we were playing for sport, you know? You won’t have to worry about going back to the mansion, I’ll be taking care of this, I’ll go over there myself and show him that this isn’t a fling. I’m not cross-eyed over a dumb tramp that I’ll forget about next week.’

‘No! I don’t want you to go there either. If you do that and he’s pissed at you, god knows what he’ll do.’

‘I’ve been a part of his family for twenty years, Minx. I’ll make him see sense.’

‘You couldn’t make him see it this morning. Either he vetoed us being together or you didn’t tell him at all, but what makes you think that the situation will be any different in a day or two? If you needed more time—‘

‘There was no more time,’ he said. ‘Trystan is coming back to California tomorrow, Mauri planned to have you both pick up the marriage certificate as soon as possible and be married by the weekend. Why do you think there was a sudden rush with the dress?’

Considering this, a chill went through her. Married by the weekend, to the man who had tried to violate her, to the man who had insisted she be the one to go through this ordeal just because she had disrespected him. Dax had come to retrieve her just in time. Now that she understood the urgency gratitude overwhelmed her.

‘But you think that the situation will be different in a couple of days, why? Won’t Trystan be mad? Mauri might not listen to reason and Trystan could rile his father more. We could end up with more trouble—‘

‘It doesn’t matter,’ Dax said.

‘How can you say that?’

‘Because by then he’ll have no choice. He’ll have to accept that we’re together and that you’re mine. He won’t be able to do anything to keep us apart, he’ll know we’re serious.’

‘How do you plan to prove that to him?’ she asked. ‘And where are we going now? What’s the point in leaving if we’re just going back?’

‘We have something to do.’

‘Ok,’ she said, settling back against the seat. There was nothing she could do to defy him, and if he had a plan that he was sure would work then there was no point in arguing in opposition of it. Dax knew the Stark’s better than she did and her alternative was to go back to that mansion and marry Trystan. ‘What is this important thing that we just have to do?’

‘There’s only one way to guarantee that Trystan can’t marry you.’

‘What’s that?’ she asked, thankful that he’d found a silver bullet.

‘You have to be married already, before he gets the chance.’

‘I have to be married,’ she said, not sure that she had heard him right. ‘Dax, what is it that we’re going to do?’

‘We’re getting married.’

If lightening had struck her then, or aliens had landed, Ivy couldn’t have been more surprised. Sitting up, she fixed her eyes on him, but he was happy to remain looking at the road ahead as though he hadn’t said such a shocking thing.

‘We’re what?’

‘It makes sense,’ he said. ‘I don’t plan on letting you go, and if you’re married to me then they can’t force you to marry him.’

Logic wasn’t the number one reason for most people when they got married. Then again, most men didn’t propose in the way he just had either. ‘We’re getting married?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Just like that, we’re getting married?’

‘Why not?’ he asked. ‘You got a better offer on the table?’

‘What?’

‘You’re twenty-nine, you must have sewn your wild oats by now.’

‘Dax!’ she scolded and was then lost for words.

‘You agreed to do what I told you to do. I said before we left the mansion that you would be under my command and I meant it. You’re going to marry me. You don’t have a choice in the matter.’

She couldn’t decipher if his cool manner was arrogance or dominance. His suggestion – which wasn’t really a suggestion at all – didn’t offend or repulse her, in fact it made a lot of sense. But before she could agree to it, she did need to be sure of one thing.

‘Do you love me, Dax?’ she asked, now he did glance away from the road to face her, but she couldn’t make up much of his eyes that were shielded behind his own shades.

‘After everything I just did, you have to ask me that?’

‘I want to hear the words. I need to hear your answer,’ she said, just as she’d been taught to vocalise her answers in the beach house, she needed to hear him admit it aloud.

‘I wouldn’t have risked losing everything I have if I didn’t,’ he said.

‘That’s not saying it. That’s implying it. I’ve known you for two months, Dax Harrow, and I know that there’s nothing you’re afraid of. So if you can’t say three silly little words—‘

‘God damn it, babygirl, of course I love you!’

Satisfied, her lips curled and her hands settled in her lap. ‘You’re such a romantic, Dax,’ she teased. ‘I’d never have pegged you as the mushy type.’

‘Shut your mouth and get over here,’ he said, opening his arm to her.

She slid across the seat and kissed his jaw, then his cheek, prompting him to turn his head and steal a lip kiss too. Then she rested her head against his torso and his arm settled around her.

‘We have a few hours until we hit Vegas, get some sleep if you want to. You’ll want to be fresh when we get there.’

‘Won’t you want to sleep?’ she asked, nuzzling closer. ‘I can drive some of the way if you want me to.’

‘It’s not that far,’ he said. ‘I can handle it. You handle the wedding night.’

Which meant he wanted her to do the work in bed tonight, but after all that he’d done for her today she had no trouble accommodating him.

‘Ok,’ she said, turning her face into his body and closing her eyes, which were still covered by shades. ‘But if you need me to keep you awake, let me know.’

‘I will,’ he said.

She listened to him inhale her hair and her smile crept up again. This morning she had woken up with a glowing hope that had faded as the day got older. Ivy could never have imagined that her day could turn out this way.