A Bride for the Taking

‘What?’ He moved, tilting her head back, and smiled down at her. ‘What were you going to ask me?’

His eyes were dark and filled with promise. His mouth was inches from hers. She remembered suddenly how he tasted: clean, smoky, cool. And she wanted—oh, she wanted…

He bent and brushed his lips over hers ever so lightly, the kiss like the touch of a butterfly’s wings.

‘Kitten.’

Dorian closed her eyes as his mouth found hers again. His lips moved on hers, seeking response; she whimpered as he shifted, rolling her gently so that she lay back against the warm earth. Their bodies touched, and she could feel his desire for her.

‘Jake…’

‘I want you,’ he whispered. She caught her breath as his hand stroked her body. ‘I’ve wanted you from the beginning, Dorian. You know that.’

And she wanted him. It was pointless to pretend she didn’t. She’d wanted to be with him, to go with him that very first night…

His hand slipped under her blouse; she gasped as he cupped her breast. The heat of the sun was on her face, but it was the heat of Jake’s fingers against her skin that set her trembling.

‘Such a beautiful kitten,’ he whispered. ‘So soft, so sweet.’ Her lips parted as his mouth closed on hers again. Their breath intermingled and Jake groaned and gathered her closer.

He kissed her deeply, passionately, while his fingers stroked her nipple. Her head fell back in supplication as he kissed the long column of her throat, the soft rise of her breast. Her body felt molten, as if it had been waiting for the moment when Jake’s touch would shape it and claim it as his own.

‘Do you want this?’ he whispered, and she answered by sighing his name and linking her arms around his neck. She drew him down to her, her fingers tunnelling into his dark hair.

Somewhere high in the pale blue sky a bird of prey cried out in fierce exultation, its pagan cry mingling with Jake’s growl of triumph as he moved over her.

‘Tell me that you belong to me,’ he said in a fierce whisper. ‘Tell me that you are my woman.’

And, as suddenly as she had become fire in his arms, Dorian became stone.

‘You are what I say you are, until we reach Kadar.’

The words—Jake’s words—echoed inside her head. Oh, God, she thought, and she began to tremble, not with desire but with disgust for herself, for what she had almost let happen.

Jake lifted his head and looked down at her. ‘Dorian?’

‘Let me up,’ she said quietly.

His eyes fixed on hers. ‘Kitten—what’s wrong?’

Everything, she thought. I’ve just behaved like a fool. No. I behaved like a—a slave-girl, being seduced by her master.

Years of trading verbal barbs as a journalist came to her rescue.

‘You said you’d never awakened with a kitten in your arms, Jake,’ she said coldly. ‘Well, I’ve never awakened with a tomcat in mine—and it’s a species I don’t much care for.’

Jake went absolutely still. ‘What is this all about, Dorian?’

‘An experiment,’ she said, forcing herself to meet his eyes. ‘I thought it might be interesting to try—’

His hand closed lightly on her throat. ‘Something different? Like a barbarian, perhaps?’ His voice was deadly soft and dangerous.

‘Let go of me,’ Dorian had said calmly, although she knew he must feel the leap of her pulse under his fingers.

After a long, long moment he’d given her a cold, terrible smile.

‘I am like the wolf, Dorian. Left to my own devices, I bother no one. But force my back against the wall, and you risk the danger of my fangs.’

It had taken all her courage to smile back. ‘What is that, Jake, some quaint Barovnian proverb?’

‘Simply a reminder of your own vulnerability.’ While she’d still been struggling for a response, he’d rolled away from her and risen to his feet. ‘Go on into the bushes and do whatever you have to do,’ he’d said coldly, and she’d known that this, too, was a reminder—a reminder of their complete isolation. ‘We’ve miles to cover before nightfall.’

They had not exchanged another word in the hours since, not even after they’d finally reached the mountain and begun climbing.

Entry Three: The mountains in this part of the world are like none I’ve ever seen. They are incredibly high and treacherous. Although the Tamma Pass has been a steady climb, the going has been uneventful—except when rockslides from past avalanches block the way, but I scramble over them behind Jake, clutching at rocks and boulders, sometimes falling back a step for each two I take. I long to ask how much further there is to go, but I won’t. It’s becoming like some awful game, waiting to see which of us will be the first to break the silence…

‘…if you need it.’

She looked up, startled by the sound of Jake’s voice. He was standing a few yards away, looking back down the trail towards her, his face set, devoid of expression.

Dorian drew a deep, gasping breath. ‘Sorry,’ she said, pushing the hair from her eyes. ‘I didn’t quite get that.’

‘I said, we can take a break, if you like. Unless you’d rather keep going…?’

She knew what he expected her to say, what her own pride told her to say. But she was beyond such foolishness; besides, she’d won the game of who-speaks-first, and that was enough for the day.

‘I’d just as soon stop for a break,’ she said, and without further hesitation she sank down into the grass, fell back, and closed her eyes. Moments later, she sighed. ‘Do we have much further to go?’

‘Another mile, perhaps. And then—’

‘And then we’ll be in Barovnia,’ Dorian said, thinking how amazingly beautiful the name could sound when it marked the end of their journey.

She felt the brush of Jake’s leg against hers as he sat down.

‘Yes. Barovnia.’

She opened her eyes and looked up at him. His face was an emotionless mask, his voice without feeling, which was surprising for a man almost at the end of a difficult journey. She watched him from under her lashes. He was sitting with his legs crossed beneath him, looking out over the valley, but she had the feeling that he wasn’t really seeing any of it.

‘Jake?’ She hesitated. Would he be civil after what had happened this morning? Well, she had nothing to lose by trying. The worst he could do was give her more of the silent treatment. ‘Jake? What’s Kadar like?’

She was surprised to see a faint smile tilt across his mouth.

‘Primitive,’ he said.

Dorian bristled. ‘Look, I’ve apologised and apolo-gised—’

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‘I’m quite serious. I don’t mean that it’s uncivilised—my people’s culture is ancient and beautiful, and the city itself is a handsome mix of old and new.’ He sighed. ‘But it hasn’t the amenities it should have in today’s world.’ He looked at her. ‘Oh, there’s electricity, even a telephone service that works most of the time—but there aren’t enough physicians or hospital beds, there are horse-drawn carts on the roads and veiled women in the streets…’

‘Veiled women?’ She shook her head. ‘But Kadar is the capital of a European city, not a Middle Eastern one.’

Jake smiled thinly. ‘There’s a saying in my country: ”Barovnia is the tie between the continents and the chasm that separates them.”’

‘”My people—my country.”’ Dorian looked at him. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever heard you say that before.’

‘I told you, I was born there.’

‘Yes. But somehow I thought you saw yourself as part of the West.’

‘I’m an American,’ he said sharply.

‘And a Barovnian, as well?’

Jake shrugged. ‘It’s difficult to explain. Sometimes I feel—I feel…’ He blew out his breath. ‘I told you, it’s hard to explain.’

‘You don’t have to. I understand.’

He laughed. ‘No, you don’t. How could you, when I don’t understand it myself?’

‘Well, I know how I feel, when I go home for a visit. I always wonder if it will feel strange to be in Minnesota again. Am I a mid-westerner, I think as the plane takes off, or am I an easterner?’

‘And? Which are you?’

She smiled. ‘I’m still trying to figure that out.’

Jake smiled, too. ‘Somehow, I can’t quite see you as a mid-west farm girl.’

‘But I was, for almost nineteen years. And then…’

‘And then?’ he prompted, stretching out beside her and propping his head on his hand.

‘And then,’ she said with a little shrug, ‘I decided to see if all those high-school English awards I’d won had any meaning. So I packed up my typewriter and headed east.’

‘Where you found fame and fortune at WorldWeek,’ he said.