BargainWiththeBeast (8 page)

“Among mankind,” says Beauty, “there are many that
deserve that name more than you, and I prefer you, just as you are, to those
who under a human form hide a treacherous, corrupt and ungrateful
heart.”—Beauty and the Beast

“Beauty is only skin deep… That’s some
bullshit.”—Xavier St. James

Why don’t you leave money on the nightstand? That would
show me. Consider it a tip. Or better yet, just subtract it off the top of the
money I’m spreading my legs for.

You’re beautiful.

Gwendolyn’s words from the morning echoed in his head like a
CD stuck on replay. He gazed out the dark dining room window, his reflection
like a condemning finger pointing back at him. His fists tightened at his
sides. God, her words had hurt. Both her accusation about him treating her like
a whore and the lie about his beauty. It was a toss-up which stabbed deepest.

Xavier closed his eyes and for once it wasn’t to shut out
the sight of his ruined face. He could no longer bear the sight of the entire
man.

When had he become such a cowardly bastard?

His gutlessness shamed him. He’d considered himself strong.
Losing his brother had devastated him, but he’d endured. Then years later, the
sudden loss of his father followed by Evelyn’s abandonment had nearly brought
him to his knees. He almost hadn’t recovered from the blow of losing the man
he’d admired above all others. But he
had
survived. Then Evelyn had
walked out.

Her desertion had almost broken him. The signs had been
there—her refusal to look him directly in the face, her reluctance to be seen
with him in public because of the stares. Yet he still hadn’t expected her
betrayal because he’d believed they were in love. Or that he’d loved her.

No, Evelyn hadn’t broken him. But she’d damn well shattered
something inside him.

When she left, she’d broken the last tenuous link to his
life before the accident. The charmed years filled with family, friends and joy
were irrevocably gone, leaving him no clue how to deal with the new existence
fate had dealt him. His family would never be whole again. Those he’d called
friends had turned their backs on him and he was alone. So fucking alone.

Enter Gwendolyn.

He sucked in a breath and opened his eyes. Instead of his
likeness, he viewed flashes of the previous night in the darkened glass. His
stomach tightened with arousal and his cock swelled at the remembered slick
grip of her pussy. Of her skin pressed to his. Of her arms wrapped around him,
holding him close. Locked in her embrace, the loneliness had vanished.

And its absence had scared the shit out of him.

After she’d drifted to sleep, he’d curled up behind her and
dreams—impossible dreams—had stirred in his heart. Love. A woman who wanted him
in spite of his imperfections. A family of his own. Fear had spurred him out of
the warm bed and tangled sheets. As he’d jerked on his clothes, he shut down
the faint, burgeoning longings of love, acceptance and happiness. And he’d
refused himself one last look at the sleeping woman.

There were no happily ever afters for him.

He would be a fool to become attached to Gwendolyn. The only
reason she slumbered in his bed was due to fucking blackmail. If not for the
community center, he would be as alone as he’d been for the past year.

He and Gwendolyn had a business contract.

Nothing more.

But his determination to set their relationship back on the
agreed-upon terms didn’t excuse the hurt in her eyes this morning. Hurt he’d
inflicted. They could make love—
no, damn it, have sex.
They could
have
sex
and maintain the distance needed to walk away without wounding each
other.

Hell, he snorted, turning away from the window. He should
know. Before Evelyn he’d been the prince of casual affairs. He’d expected the
women he fucked not to become emotionally entangled
and
to remain
friends after their time together ended.

That shoe throbbed like hell since it had become wedged on
the other foot.

He scanned the dining room and then the empty doorway. A
quick inspection of his watch revealed the hour. Seven-thirty. Gwendolyn
should’ve been downstairs for dinner thirty minutes ago. Worry pinched his
chest. He frowned and hesitated just a moment before striding from the room. He
crossed the foyer and loped up the stairs, unease a steadily tightening knot in
his stomach.

What if she’d had a relapse? Damn. He should have granted
her another day to recover before demanding sex. He scowled, rushing down the
hallway. He’d assumed her absence today had been due to their argument at
breakfast, but maybe she’d been sick. Maybe the fever had flared up and she’d
been too angry to call for him.

Xavier swung open the door to her bedroom. His grip on the
knob prevented the wood from smacking the wall behind it. Finding the bed
empty, he skimmed the rest of the room until he located Gwendolyn, the picture
of perfect health, perched on the wide window seat, a book in her lap and
gaping at him as if he’d flown over the cuckoo’s nest.

Even as anger kindled in his gut and replaced the concern,
his body tensed, heated. Hardened. The smooth skin on her shoulders and toned
arms glowed in the soft light of the bedroom lamps. Bare feet peeked out from
under her thigh, the innocence of her position incongruous with the natural
sensuality she exuded like a perfumed scent. Maybe that explained his powerful
reaction. The animal in him detected some unique pheromone she emanated and
went wild with a whiff of it.

He shoved the door shut and her eyes widened at the loud
crack of wood meeting wood.

“What are you doing?” She laid the book aside and rose to
her feet, the motion slow as if she sensed his intention to pounce.

“Why weren’t you at dinner?”

She straightened her shoulders, her body as rigid as the
stern set of her full lips. “I didn’t see the point of going through
formalities. As you mentioned earlier, there’s no need for it.”

Anger flared bright and hot before chilling to an icy
resolve. And the bullshit he’d repeated to himself since leaving her bed last
night, the same he’d finished reciting in the dining room, sounded just like
that—bullshit.

If he’d wanted an automaton, he would’ve continued fucking
escorts instead of his hand. But not possessing the same passionate,
uninhibited woman he’d been balls-deep in the previous evening? Not an option.
He didn’t just want her body. He wanted her fire, her unselfishness.

He wanted Gwen. Nothing less than all of her would do.

From the moment she’d sought him out for help, he’d demanded
everything from her—her body, her submission, her trust—and had offered nothing
in return.

His turn to put up or shut up had arrived.

He fisted the front of his shirt. A pit yawned wide in his
stomach and his heart plummeted toward the dizzying, black depth. The last
woman to glimpse what lay under his shirt and pants had been so disgusted she’d
abandoned him. Fear coated his mouth, his nostrils. All he tasted and smelled
were ash and smoke. For a brief moment, he considered whirling around and
walking out. Shame flayed him and the stranglehold he had on his shirt
tightened. The idea of baring the map of scars disfiguring his body scared him
shitless.

But if he desired her trust, he had to battle his fears,
emerge from behind the false protection of pride and seize this last chance to
make amends with her. A last chance to show Gwen her fire, touch and
uninhibited response meant more than his pride.
She
meant more.

He inhaled. Exhaled.

And yanked the shirttails from the band of his pants.

The unyielding line of her mouth softened, her lips parted
and, as he freed the small buttons from their corresponding holes, her sharp
intake of breath reached across the room.

Damn, he loved witnessing the evidence of his effect on her.
Hours on a shrink’s couch couldn’t begin to heal his battered, broken spirit
like one soft, sensuous gasp from this beautiful, giving woman.

“What are you doing?” she demanded, the small tremble in her
voice undermining the show of bravado.

He gripped the sides of the black material, his fingers
tightening for a long instant before he shrugged it off his shoulders.

“Getting undressed.” He tugged his belt buckle open. “Now
get naked.”

* * * * *

Good God, the man is ripped.

Golden skin stretched taut over lean, firm muscles that
tugged and bunched in a mouthwatering display as he shed the shirt and let it
fall in a pool of black material behind him. The anger she’d nursed all day
melted under the heat of desire as soon as the first slice of skin appeared.
Her heart thumped hard and then drummed in a fast, deafening tattoo. Blood
pounded in her veins and filled the flesh between her legs. Dew gathered on the
swollen lips and her pussy clenched when he pulled his belt buckle free.

Then his order to “get naked” doused her in the face like an
arctic spray of water.

“What?” she asked and frowned. “Wait.” Was he kidding? She
shook her head. “No.”

Xavier arched an eyebrow but didn’t stop sliding the belt
from his pant loops. “Take your clothes off, Gwendolyn.”

“No.” She shook her head more vehemently. “Not like this.”

“Like what?” The rasp of his zipper lowering was a
discordant note in the quiet room.

“In anger.”

He paused and his eyebrows arched high, his lips slightly
parted. “Anger?” he repeated and resumed toeing off his shoes. “I’m hard, baby.
Not angry.”

He shoved his pants and underwear down his hips and thighs,
then stepped free of the clothes at his feet. Xavier straightened to his full
height, robbing her of breath and speech with the full impact of his naked
body.

Last night before removing his shirt and pants, he’d
extinguished the room’s lamp. As she’d caressed him, her fingers had skimmed
the raised edges that crisscrossed his chest, abdomen and back. His wish for
darkness had fully dawned on her then. His body had not been left unscathed by
the accident. And he feared her reaction. But now—standing before her in the
lit room, bare to her gaze—tears stung her eyes.

He is beautiful.

Honeyed skin melted over a body Hephaestus could’ve forged
himself. Toned, strong muscles contracted and relaxed with each movement like
an orchestra performing in perfect harmony. She lowered her inspection. God,
the man even had sexy feet! Her wry amusement converted to a hot, startling
rush of lust as she lifted her gaze to the long, ponderous weight of his cock.
It hung down his thigh, the wide flared head the size of a plum. As if all the
air had been vacuumed from the room, Gwendolyn experienced a moment of
lightheadedness. How in the hell had he fit all of that inside her?

But he had. He’d filled every inch of her pussy. His cock
had branded her, stamped its ownership. A disquieting sense of foreboding
curdled in her belly. For years no man, not even Joshua, had compared to
Xavier’s sensual vitality and beauty. And he hadn’t even touched her then. But
now…now that she’d been caressed and stroked by him, no one would fill
her—complete her—as he had last night.

Under her close scrutiny, the thick shaft lengthened another
impossible increment. Her heart thudded in a dull, heavy rhythm. Did
anticipation, arousal or fear pound through her veins and echo in her clit?
Maybe all three.

“I’m still waiting, Gwendolyn.” His husky tone transformed
the order into an invitation—an invitation to revisit the exquisite pleasure of
the previous evening. She’d lost herself in passion so overwhelming, she’d been
almost bruised by it, as if ecstasy had been the waves and she’d been the shore
they’d crashed upon.

Trembling, she slid the straps of her tank from her
shoulders and pushed the top down her torso, hips and legs, taking the cotton
bottoms with it. As she straightened, she tried to convince herself she
complied because their deal left her no choice. If he released her from this
devil’s bargain, she would snatch up her clothes, leave the room and house and
never see him again. But even if she could persuade herself she would’ve walked
away, the cream coating the sensitive flesh between her thighs branded her a
liar with a huge “L” stamped on her chest.

She drank in his battle-scarred beauty and confessed in the
most secret part of her soul she was glad he didn’t offer her the choice to
leave. Because then she would have to admit the community center and the people
there didn’t keep her in the bedroom. As much as she loved them, Xavier glued
her feet to the floor. Desire did.

Love did.

As angry and hurt as she’d been today, neither response
could override the potent emotion she’d harbored for years—an emotion so
powerful she’d driven hours with a raging fever just to spend a few days with
him. Even without the money for the center hanging over her head like Damocles’
sword, she would have agreed to this week with him.

That damn money.

She dropped her gaze. Hindsight had the vision of an eagle.
If she had never approached him about the grant, he wouldn’t have the money to
pitch in her face every time she dared rub too close to the festering wound in
his heart and soul. The irony didn’t escape her. He would never have allowed
her in his home, in his bed, without the deal. Xavier with his scarred face,
body and soul, wouldn’t have believed she wanted him—loved him.

So should she accept the money and stay with him, steal what
time they had left? Or tell him to hell with the money, she wanted to remain
because of her feelings for him, and be evicted so fast her ass would leave
skid marks on his pristine wood floors?

Either choice resulted in being thrown out of his house. But
only one granted her a precious slice of time in his bed, his arms…his life.