A Bride for Jericho Bravo Read online

  A lot. Which was why he was here with her, drowning in her blue eyes, quivering beneath the soft, knowing touch of her slim hands as she pushed his pants down around his ankles and then cupped his shins, her touch gliding back up, over his knees. Higher.

  She would be gone within a few too-short weeks, he kept reminding himself. Why not enjoy her while he had the chance? She wanted it. And he wanted it. What harm could it do?

  Okay, a lot. He had to admit that. She could get hurt. He could get hurt. Already, because he couldn’t keep his hands off her, there was renewed tension between him and Ash.

  Ash didn’t get it—why he’d want to get into it with Tessa’s sister like this. Ash knew that Jericho was not about to make it permanent with any woman. And Ash still saw Marnie as a little unbalanced, as someone in need of support and extra care.

  Jericho didn’t see her as weak or unbalanced. Not anymore. He knew now that she was tougher than she even realized.

  She captured him in her right hand, wrapping her fingers around him, squeezing, but carefully. It felt so good. He closed his eyes and let a groan of pure pleasure escape him.

  And then her mouth was there, wet and hot, surrounding him, taking him in, deep, so he slid right past the back wall of her throat—and then letting him out again. She repeated the deep stroke. Again.

  And again.

  He let her take him right to the edge, moving in time with her, flexing his hips backward and then forward, into her eager heat. When he felt the end coming, he reached down, captured her face between his hands, and made a low, protesting sound to get her to stop before he lost it completely.

  She pretended not to understand. Or maybe, she was just lost enough, just carried away enough, that she really didn’t know what he was trying to tell her. She took him in and let him out, over and over.

  “Marnie, you have to…” Words failed him. He groaned low. “Marnie. Stop. You have to stop before I…”

  But she didn’t stop. And finally, he gave up trying to make her. He gave up everything. He let her soft hands and eager mouth take him over the edge, turn him inside out. Pleasure was a pulse, insistent, overwhelming, beating through him, carrying him to the far reaches of paradise.

  He clutched her silky head and poured himself into her.

  She took him. All of him. Every drop.

  Chapter Eight

  When his head stopped spinning and the world came into focus again, he looked down at her flushed face, her full, wet mouth. “I tried to…let you know I was about to lose it.” His voice sounded strange to his own ears, a rough husk of torn sound.

  “I knew it.” She smiled, her wet, swollen lips tipping up at the corners. “But I didn’t want to stop.” She swept upward, onto to her feet. And then she took him by the hand and pulled him down onto the bed with her.

  His jeans were tangled at his ankles and he still had his boots on. At that moment, he didn’t even care that he probably looked damn ridiculous, all tied up in his own pants. He shut his eyes with a low groan and put his arm across them.

  The bed shifted. She slid to the floor again, pulled off his boots, his socks and his jeans.

  A moment later, she came back to him. Her soft skin was warm against his side, the scent of her sweet and also musky now. It had turned her on, what she did to him. He could almost get hard again, just from smelling the evidence of her desire. She rested her chin on his chest and he lowered his arm and stroked her hair.

  She lifted up enough to press a kiss to his left nipple. And then, with a sigh, she turned over to her back and laid her head on his belly. “You make a great pillow.”

  “Glad I’m good for something.”

  “Oh, I do believe you’re good for a lot of things.”

  He traced her eyebrows, one and then the other. “Give me a few minutes. We’ll get into the other things I’m good for.”

  She was moving again, sliding off him, stretching out beside him, bracing on an elbow, resting her free hand on his chest. And then brushing it lower.

  He knew where her touch was headed—and it wasn’t anywhere sexy. Her fingers found the white ridge of scar tissue on his belly, to the right of his navel.

  “What’s this?” With the tip of her finger, she followed the long, white shape of the scar, but her gaze was locked with his.

  He wasn’t planning to answer that. He was going to take her hand and kiss her fingertips and tell her it was nothing.

  But then, why do that? Why lie? They didn’t have forever together. But at least they could have something honest while it lasted.

  “In prison. From a knife made out of a bed slat. Makes a pretty crude cut.”

  She didn’t say anything, which he really appreciated. She just watched his face with those big blue eyes of hers.

  He said, “I avoided affiliations inside. It’s a quick way to get yourself killed, not having anyone taking your back.” He tucked her hair behind her ear, one side and then the other. “There were power plays against me. No one likes a loner. I almost died from that one there on my belly. But I got through it. Sometimes, when I look back, I’m not really sure how.”

  She leaned closer, sliding across him, until she could press her lips to the scar. His gut tightened. He reached down and put his hand on the back of her head, fingers gliding under the warm strands of her hair.

  When she pulled away that time, she turned over on her back a second time, and used his stomach for a pillow again. He studied her profile. She had her eyes closed. She wasn’t smiling or frowning. She was just lying there, one hand on the inward curve of her bare stomach, knees drawn up. Quiet. Still.

  He smoothed her hair, combing it, finding pleasure in the feel of the strands between his fingers. “When I went in,” he said, “I told the family to stay away. My mom came a couple times. And Ash. And Caleb—he’s fourth-born. And Gabe, the family lawyer. I wouldn’t see them. Eventually, they stopped coming. Not Gus, though. Yeah, I had told him to stay away, too. I’d said if he’d just keep my chopper for me, the only one I had then, the first bike I ever built, that would be all I wanted from him.”

  She sighed, reached back a hand and brushed the side of his face, so lightly. But she didn’t say a word, didn’t open her eyes.

  He appreciated that. That she just listened, that she didn’t feel she had to pressure him with questions or act all sympathetic at hearing about his shady past. He said, “Gus came anyway, to see me. Once a week, without fail, for two damn years. Even though I refused, every time, to take his visits. Gus can be one determined son of a gun, you know?”

  Now she was smiling, a bare hint of a smile. She made a low sound in her throat. Of understanding, maybe? Or satisfaction.

  He ran a finger down the center of her forehead, over the clean line of her nose. To her mouth. He touched her lips. So soft. Plump. The rest of her was firm and lean. But those lips…

  She stuck out the tip of her tongue, but only enough to brush the pad of his finger with it. He moved that finger onward, over her strong chin, down the tight slope of her throat. Her clavicle was sharply defined. He touched the cage of bone, so hard, sharp beneath the satin of her skin.

  He went on, “Finally I got so mad at Gus for not giving up, I agreed to see him. Just once. To tell him what an ass he was being, wasting his time when I didn’t want to talk to him. I didn’t want to talk to anyone. I was so caught up in my own big drama, in my tough-ass nobility. I was going to go it alone and no one was going to try and help me get through it.”

  He touched her nipple. She sucked in a small gasp. And then he put his hand over her breast, cupping it, so that pretty little nipple pressed squarely into the center of his palm. His hand looked big and rough against her torso. Right then, as he contemplated the contrast between his rough paw and her slim body, she seemed delicate to him.

  But he knew that she wasn’t.

  He said, his voice barely above a whisper, yet still too loud in the quiet room, “The first thing he told me was that Karen had d
ied.”

  Her mouth tightened, her eyelids flickered. He watched a single tear escape the corner of her eye and track a gleaming path along her temple, into her hair.

  “I didn’t even know she’d been sick. She’d sent me letters and I never read them. And Gus wrote, too, along with coming to try and see me every week. But how could they tell me what was happening when I sent their letters away with the trash, when I wouldn’t talk to him, or even see him. I saw everything then, when Gus told me Karen was gone. I saw the sheer, mean, small-minded pride of cutting everyone off the way I’d done. The stupidity of it. Of all of it.”

  She put her hand over his, on her chest. He turned his over. Grabbed on and held tight.

  “Gus said to me, then, ‘You need to stop being stupid. You need to think, while you’re in here, what being stupid ever got you but trouble and loneliness. You need to get past it, you hear me?’ I nodded. I whispered how sorry I was, about Karen. I was pretty choked up. Gus said, ‘Prove that. Do it by respecting her memory, by taking my visits from here on in.’ I did, from then on. He never missed a visit. And after that, I even let myself be glad to see him.”

  Marnie sat up. She turned and came down to him, her body pressing close to his. She lowered her mouth and kissed him. A long, slow kiss, as with her hand, she caressed him, over his chest. And down.

  When she touched him, he groaned and wrapped his arms around her, good and tight, easing her over, onto her back, so that he had the top position. He took control then.

  She put up no resistance or argument, made no move to take the lead. When he eased himself between her thighs, she was wet and eager. Ready. He saw desire in her eyes, saw the clear blue softened to the color of a summer sky. As he moved inside her, he looked down into her flushed face and almost wished that this thing between them could go on and on. She was a fine woman. The very best.

  He wished he didn’t have to lose her in the end.

  But then he let go of the wishing, the hoping. He lost himself in the feel of her, so strong and soft, in her scent that was fresh and musky at once, like apples and rain and sex, all somehow perfectly blended together. She cried out his name.

  He answered by whispering hers.

  When he got up to leave after midnight, she watched him dress, her eyes low-lidded but still shining through the darkness of the bedroom.

  She said, “You could just stay here, if you wanted. I would like that, if you stayed.”

  He shook his head. It was better to go, to hold the line at least a little, to keep reminding himself that no matter how great it was with them, it wasn’t like they were taking it anywhere beyond the next few weeks. In the end, she would return to that small town in California where she’d been born and raised. And he would go back to life as he’d always known it.

  When he bent to brush a last kiss across those fine, full lips of hers, she said, “Saturday night, Gabe and Mary are having a big party out at their ranch.” The Lazy H was really Mary’s ranch, inherited from her first husband. Gabe had helped her fix it up—both the land and the house. Before Mary, Gabe was seriously into the player lifestyle. But now he was living the country life with Mary and her two-year-old daughter, Ginny—and apparently loving it, too. “I want you to take me,” Marnie added, just in case he didn’t know already what she was leading up to.

  He knew about the party, had gotten the invite along with everyone else in the family and any number of Gabe’s and Mary’s friends. Mary, who wrote freelance, had put together a family cookbook and the party was to celebrate the cookbook’s publication.

  Marnie wrapped a hand around his neck, holding him near, not letting him escape. “Jericho.”

  “What?”

  She spoke slowly, deliberately, as if there was something wrong with his hearing. “Will you go with me to Mary’s party?”

  He pulled on her arm until she let go of his neck and then he straightened above her. “I’m backed up with work. I’ve got bike orders waiting. The bike for the auction has taken up more time than I should have let it.”

  She refused to leave it at that. “Sorry you’re overworked. So will you go with me Saturday?”

  He thought about Ash, the previous morning, jumping all over him for messing with Tessa’s sister. He just didn’t want to get into it with the family over what was going on between him and Marnie. He didn’t want to see worry and disapproval in their eyes. He’d had enough of that in the bad old days. “I saw the family last weekend, at Bravo Ridge.”

  “Some of the family, yes. And that doesn’t answer my question.” She spoke softly, the way he did, when he was angry.

  “Look. I told you. I’ve got work I have to do.”

  “As in, no, you won’t go with me?”

  “What do you want me to say? This thing is between us. I like you. Okay, I more than like you. I’m flat-out wild for you, to tell it like it is. But it’s not like we have to get the family involved.”

  “I don’t get it. Last night, you ordered me to come to the charity ball with you.”

  “Yeah. And maybe we ought to rethink that.”

  “You don’t want me to go to the charity ball?”

  “Well, I just mean, we don’t have to go together. We’ll see each other there.”

  She looked at him for a slow count of five. Then she turned her head away. “Good night.”

  The next day at the shop, he kind of expected her to come looking for him.

  Most of the morning, he was down in the main shop, working on the auction bike with the help of Big Jake and a couple of the other builders. The charity chopper was almost ready to go to the airbrush artist, which would finally leave him free to play catch-up with a couple of important projects for good customers that he’d left on the back burner for the sake Ash’s auction.

  Zoe, his baby sister, was there that morning, too. She’d brought her cameras, both still and video. Zoe was twenty-five. She’d been to more than one college but never graduated and had yet to hold down a job for any length of time. She had some serious talent as a photographer, though, and she was keeping a record in pictures and video of the creation of the charity-ball chopper.

  As he worked and his sister took pictures, he kept thinking he would look up and Marnie would be standing there beside Zoe, waiting for him to get a free moment. Maybe she’d drag him upstairs to his workshop, with Zoe and Big Jake and the others standing right there watching, and make him kiss her senseless before she would let him get back to work. She would tell him she understood if he didn’t want to take her to Mary’s party or be her date for the charity thing, and she was willing to let that crap go.

  But she never appeared. Zoe left at about eleven. She reminded him about the party at Mary’s before she took off. He made noncommittal noises. A few moments later, he glanced through the window to the front office and saw her in there chatting with Marnie. Marnie said something and Zoe laughed. They seemed to be really hitting it off.

  Marnie went to lunch with Gus. He found that out when he wandered up front at noon, kind of thinking he would ask her if she wanted to get some food with him. Little Ted was there, watching the counter. He said that Marnie and Gus had gone to eat.

  Jericho went back to work.

  Around two, he went out in front again. She was there that time, as expected, working the counter, ringing up a sale. The customer had a little boy with him. She asked the customer if he wanted anything from the gift area. The kid’s eyes lit up. The boy ended up with an SA Choppers T-shirt, a skullcap and an SA Choppers keychain with his name on it.

  Jericho watched the whole transaction. She was really good, he had to admit. Not pushy, just friendly and professional and offering the customer a chance to add a little cool theme merchandise to his bill.

  He stood there, at the end of the counter, feeling edgy and out of place, waiting for her to ring up a second sale. He knew she must have spotted him by then. He was kind of hard to miss. But she never once acknowledged his presence.

 
Then Gus came out of his office. Marnie turned and started in with him about the SA Choppers Web site, how it wasn’t up-to-date and she needed to get with the Webmaster, add the new merchandise she’d ordered, get some specs and pictures of more recently built choppers up on there.

  “Especially the auction bike,” she said. “There should be a section about that. We could put it up now, show pictures of the bike in progress and then, as soon as it’s done, some shots of the finished product.”

  “So call him. Tell him what you want, say I’m good with it, that you’re in charge of getting things current on the site.” Gus turned around and went back in his office, shutting the door behind him. Probably in hopes she wouldn’t follow him in there with more stuff she wanted updated or improved.

  When she turned Jericho’s way again, her eyes slid right past him. There was another customer at the counter. She went to take care of him.

  By then, Jericho was tired of waiting for her to admit that he was standing there. He went back out to the shop and went to work. For the rest of the day, he did a pretty fair job of forgetting she existed.

  He stayed at SA Choppers until after eight that night. There was plenty of work waiting. And as long as he concentrated on that, he didn’t have to think about how she probably wouldn’t welcome him if he showed up at the guesthouse, about how it looked like this hot thing between them was over after two nights.

  Eventually, he went home, stopping on the way to get a couple of burritos and a six pack. He ate the food and drank three of the beers. And then he stayed up half the night mindlessly watching television, trying not to think about where he wished he was.

  Saturday was a half day at SA Choppers. They closed the counter and the front end at noon. In the back, the builders could stay if they had stuff they needed to keep working on. Jericho got there at 5:00 a.m., long before anyone else. He worked by himself until seven-thirty, when Little Ted and Gus showed up. At nine, Marnie arrived to take over the counter from Gus, who’d opened up. Jericho knew she was on time, because he kept an eye out for her appearance through the sliding window that separated the front end from the shop.