Bargain With The Devil Part 14

For an instant Stacy was utterly speechless under the force of a sudden, overwhelming fury. It swept her from head to toe, and it took several seconds before she could manage to declare in a voice that shook with anger, "Like h.e.l.l it's that simple! If you think you can come into my life, turn it upside down, and then walk out again, you can d.a.m.n well think again. You have a wife now, Hunter Man-ning, and one of these days you'll have a daughter and perhaps a son. You may have married for revenge, but one way or another you're stuck with that marriage. You've got responsibilities!"

Something flickered to life in Hunter's cold, foggy eyes, some-thing new and warm, but Stacy didn't pause. She was too wound up, too emotionally charged to do more than draw breath before continu-ing with her tirade.

"You just heard me give my father lecture number fifty-eight on the subject of how your word is your bond. Are you going to make a liar out of me? You swore once, in front of witnesses, to love and cherish till death us do part. I realize you probably had your fingers crossed when you vowed to love me, but surely a Manning would have too much pride to turn his back on all the other promises!" Once again she paused for a split second to gather her anger and her breath, and in that short s.p.a.ce Hunter spoke.

"I didn't, Stacy," he said with an incredible gentleness. That which had flickered alive in his eyes was beginning to glow now, although his face was still a harsh landscape in the moonlight.

Stacy glowered at him. "You didn't what?" she demanded.

"I didn't have my fingers crossed during the part where I prom-ised to love. Did you?" Hunter put out his large hands and framed her shadow-etched features, his eyes sweeping her face with a curi-ous expression that she might, if she were feeling very optimistic, have labeled hope.

"No," she breathed in a small, amazed whisper. "No, Hunter, I forgot to cross my fingers during that part."

"Stacy," he said with great caution, as if he were almost afraid to ask, "do you think that perhaps someday you could do more than develop faith in my word of honor? Do you think," he grated, "you could learn to love the devil?"

"Does the devil want love?" she murmured, an overpowering sense of happiness warming every inch of her, the emeralds in her eyes coming alive with heat.

"The devil in me " He hesitated. "No, the man in me wants your love very, very much, Stacy, my little flower lady."

"Can " She swallowed tightly, hardly daring to hope. "Can the man in you give as well as receive love?"

"The man in me has wanted you, I think, from the first night when you stood out here on the patio and defied me so bravely, lec-turing me about the futility of revenge and finally bargaining with the devil. I'm not sure when the want turned to love. I only know that from the beginning I wanted to take no chances on losing you. I told myself then that the reason I was insisting on marriage was to deepen the revenge, but I know now that it was just an instinctive reaction. I wanted to create all sorts of chains with which to bind you. I wanted that warmth and spirit and strength to belong only to me...."

"Oh, Hunter..."

"You were wrong when you told your father I had no ulterior motives in befriending Eric or in making a good impression on your mother or in wanting you to have my child. I did all three because I saw them as ways to hold you," Hunter confessed, and she could feel the slight trembling in his fingers, which still framed her face. "Can you forgive all that and let me try to make you happy?"

"No." She smiled and for the first time since she was a very young girl, Stacy felt actual moisture behind her eyes. "No, Hunter, I can't forget that. I shall treasure all that!

I love you. In the beginning I told myself I was only marrying for my family's sake, but you were right that first night when you told me I'm not made of martyr material. Something in me recognized something in you and wanted it, needed it. There is a strength in you that has nothing to do with the devil, and a pa.s.sion and a capacity for gentleness. It was my pride and my natural stubbornness that made me drag my heels all the way. I never really wanted to be free of our bargain."

"Oh, my sweet witch," Hunter breathed, folding her close against his hard warmth. "We came together for all the wrong reasons, but if that was the way we were fated to meet, I can't regret any of it. I'm only grateful that that part is behind us now. When you're in my arms, I can only concentrate on the present and the future." Stacy felt a strange moisture on her face. She knew there were tears of her own on her cheeks, but with a feeling of wonder she realized Hunter's were there also.

With a sense of deep love and compa.s.sion, Stacy lifted a finger to touch the wetness on his face and smiled tremulously up into the gray mists of his eyes. Mists that shone now with a gentleness she had never seen in them. Stacy realized that neither of them was em-barra.s.sed by the tears. For the next few moments there were no words between them, only a communion that spoke volumes. Hunter held his wife with wonder and love and promise.

Eventually Stacy stirred in his arms, lifting her head from his shoulder and smiling. "I suppose we ought to be getting back inside. People will wonder " The words were barely out of her mouth when Eric's cheerful voice reached them from the sliding gla.s.s win-dow.

"Hey there, lovebirds, we're opening the champagne. Want to join the rest of us?"

"What are you-going to celebrate with it?" Hunter joked, wrap-ping his arm around Stacy's waist and starting reluctantly back to-ward the party.

"A great deal, I think." Eric smiled and then broke into a chuckle. "A great deal, indeed. You and I are very lucky men, Manning."

"Yes," Hunter agreed softly, glancing down at his wife. "We both seem to have had the devil's own luck recently, haven't we?"

Stacy's green eyes gleamed. She felt she ought to contradict that statement, but she was far too happy to do it just then.

It was a long time later when Hunter and Stacy finally walked through their own front door and the privacy of their home.

"I was beginning to think the evening would never end." Hunter grinned, closing the door and coming up behind his wife to pull her back into his arms.

"You were the model of the perfect new husband." Stacy smiled as his arms came around her waist, and she put her hands on top of his. His breath was warm in her hair.

"I was, wasn't I? I guess it comes naturally," he observed mod-estly. "But, then, I've been getting in some practice lately. How have you come to feel about the role of wife?"

"Haven't you noticed how well I'm adjusting to it?"

"Let's go practice some more," he suggested with a small groan of urgency. "I want to hear what it sounds like when you tell me you love me while you're lying naked in my arms."

"You think it's going to sound any different than when I stand here fully dressed and tell you?" she teased, turning in his embrace to wind her arms around his waist.

"I'm afraid you've married a very greedy man, flower witch," he growled softly. "I want to hear it both ways, always. I want to hear it across the breakfast table and while we're listening to Vivaldi and when I call you at work and when I make love to you..."

"I shall be just as greedy," she warned gently, lifting her lips in-vitingly.

"I love you, Stacy Rylan Manning...." he whispered huskily, his mouth hovering above hers.

"I have your word on that?" she demanded lightly.

"My word of honor. I will never go back on the bargain of our marriage." His lips captured hers in a kiss that conveyed the spec-trum of his love; the need, the desire, the gentleness, and the power of it.

And Stacy responded with all the warmth and depth of her own love, her arms tightening around him, her body pressing gently, intimately inward toward his heat.

"I was trying very hard to be n.o.ble out there on the patio to-night," he abruptly confided, bending to lift her into his arms, "when I said I was setting you free. In reality, I see now I couldn't have done it." He looked down into her glowing face. "I don't know whether or not there is still something of the devil in me, but I know I intend to hold onto my own. I will tend my garden very carefully for the rest of my life," he added in a hoa.r.s.e murmur, starting down the hall toward the bedroom with a determined stride.

"I told you once that gardens can be very demanding." Stacy smiled, toying with the silver in his hair. "They require a great deal of attention and love...."

"You have it from your father's own lips that I'm nothing if not thorough. I know how to sew up a deal so tightly, none of the parties involved can escape!"

"Hunter," Stacy said suddenly as he set her down beside the bed. "That was very kind of you to shake his hand when we left this eve-ning."

"That wasn't kindness, that was a realization that without him I would never have met you." Hunter smiled down into her loving eyes. "And nothing else in the world matters to me but you."

"Oh, Hunter, my darting Hunter," she breathed, her hands going around his neck. "I love you so much."

Slowly, with infinite care, Hunter undressed her, letting the black silk dress glide to her feet, where the orchids in the pattern looked like the contents of a scattered bouquet. As if savoring every inch of her, he gently removed the remaining garments and finally the pins holding her hair until she stood naked beneath his hands. Her own fingers, trembling a bit with need and love, undid the whiteness of his s.h.i.+rt and then went to his belt buckle. When they both were un-dressed, Hunter set Stacy very tenderly on the turned-back bed and lowered himself beside her.

"You're going to bare your little teeth at me and give me a lec-ture on the true nature of love when I tell you this, sweet Stacy, but I'm going to brave the storm and tell you anyway," he murmured with a small, faintly wicked quirk to his mouth. His hands stroked leisurely over her body.

"What is this awful confession you're about to make?" she de-manded in amus.e.m.e.nt.

"Only that it was those ^imes when you were in my arms that I dared have any hope of making you love me."

"Thought you could break down my resistance with old-fas.h.i.+oned l.u.s.t, is that it?" she teased, s.h.i.+vering as his hand moved to her breast and he sensuously thumbed the tip.

"Not exactly," he said with a low, husky laugh. "It was just that you seemed to be able to respond to me so sweetly, so intensely, I began to believe it must mean you felt something for me. On our wedding night "

"On our wedding night" she smiled, touching his lips with her fingertip to silence him "I was determined to show you that you weren't the only one who went a little crazy when we made love. I suppose it was the witch in me challenging the devil in you."

"I tried to restrain myself at first," he admitted. "I think there was a feeling in me that it would be easier to control you, make you re-spond if I kept a tight rein on myself."

"That ability you have of controlling your temper really annoyed me," she told him. "Then, when it turned out you could control your reaction in bed, also, it was too much! A woman can't let a man have everything his own way, you know."

"Witch," he growled, lowering his head to fasten his mouth over hers. "I've had nothing my own way since the day I met you!" His lips lazed across hers and then traveled along the line of her throat to her breast. His hand began weaving that delicate, enticing pattern on the skin of her stomach and lower, and Stacy moaned softly.

"Tell me you love me, Stacy," he said huskily, caressing her nip-ple with his tongue.

"I love you, Hunter. I will always love you."

Her fingers began clenching unconsciously in the thick darkness of his hair, and as his hands moved over her she began to arcn in response.

"Stacy, my sweet flower witch, I love you so much," he grated. His mouth was beginning to burn on her skin now, and his hands were exploring her warmth with rising urgency.

Stacy's legs s.h.i.+fted temptingly, and Hunter responded by increas-ing the intimacy of the embrace, letting her feel the male need in him.

"Ah, Hunter," she cried out softly as she clung to him.

"Are you ready to open the garden gate for me?" he whispered pa.s.sionately, pressing himself close. She felt the strength of him against her hip.

"Oh, yes, please!" she murmured. There would be no teasing games tonight, she realized, only the direct communication of their love and desire for one another. The teasing, the little love games would come later when this new seal on their latest bargain had been established.

Hunter moved, raising himself and closing what little distance remained between them with a fierce, urgent, mastery. He stretched along the length of her, absorbing the feel of his wife from head to toe before establis.h.i.+ng the rhythm that would lead them to the top of the familiar spiral.

But Stacy's own urgency was too great to permit any long period of contemplation now that he had completed the embrace. It was she who began to move this time, arching upward with her own wiry strength, making the demands he seemed to find so much satisfaction in fulfilling.

"Hey, flower lady," he said gently, warmly, "I was going to make this slow and gallant and loving..."

"Loving, yes," she agreed, green eyes gleaming up at him through her lashes. "By all means, loving...".

"Yes," he said, the heat in his eyes flaring into full flame. How could she ever have thought those gray depths cold? "Loving!" He wrapped her deep in the depths of his pa.s.sion with a sudden force-fulness that made Stacy tremble in response.

After that there were no meaningful words, only the cries and soft sounds of love. Hunter and Stacy, clinging to each other, set sail in the strange and wonderful cosmos known only to lovers. Together they gloried in the ancient, ever-new mysteries that led them from one star-bright planet to another, coming closer and closer to the sun until they fell headfirst into it, letting the fire consume them with total abandon.

At long last Stacy lay quietly in the aftermath of love, tangled in her husband's arms, and smiled dreamily into his love-gentled face.

"What are you thinking, witch?" he asked, playing with a lock of her red-brown hair. "That there is still a devil in me? I've warned you before that you arouse something primitive deep inside me. ^ut I would never willingly hurt you. You must tell me at once if I ever get too carried away "

"Hunter," she interrupted at once, "you have never hurt me and you know it! The only times I've been even mildly bruised are when I've dragged my heels a little too much "

"And found yourself hitting the side of your cage?" he finished, chuckling with male satisfaction.

"I can't promise it won't happen again in the future," she told him carefully. "I'm still stuck with a temper that it appears I haven't completely mastered, and I'm still blessed with a full degree of stub-bornness." She frowned slightly, wondering if he were under some false impression that her whole personality would change because of her love.

"Trying to frighten me, witch?" he teased, cradling her close, eyes gleaming. "I've told you before, your temper doesn't alarm me. And I've also told you I wouldn't allow you to do yourself any seri-ous injury by battling too ferociously with me. I think we can handle each other, Stacy Manning, don't you?"

She paused, considering that. "Well, I suppose so," she drawled. "As long as you promise not to resort to brute strength...."

"More bargains, flower lady?" He grinned. "Haven't you learned your lesson yet?"

"Will you promise?" she prodded, hiding her laughter.

"Stacy, beloved, I'm very much in love, but I'm no fool. Don't think you're going to get all the deals you want by waiting to make them until you've weakened me in bed!" She felt the rough humor in him, but she also sensed the underlying strength.

"Pity," she sighed. "I'd hoped I'd found your vulnerable point."

"I'm vulnerable enough as it is around you, witch," he retorted, lying back against the pillow and pulling her across his chest. "Speaking of bargains, darling," he went on in a lazy voice as she ran her fingers lightly through the hair of his chest; "Umm?"

"I expect this is probably as good a time as any to bring up the little matter of my wedding present...."

"No deal." She grinned at once. "I'm not dumb enough to agree to letting you teach me how to drive it!"

There was a significant pause, and Stacy lifted her eyes to meet his with a sense of curiosity. She could see the considering, waiting look in his face and shook her head warily.

"Oh, no, Hunter," she vowed. "I mean it. I will not have you yell-ing at me every time I fail to s.h.i.+ft properly. I'm sure you'll have absolutely no compa.s.sion or sympathy for someone who doesn't have your instinctive feel for machines and hardware."

"That's what you're afraid of? That I won't be patient enough?" he responded, looking quite hurt.

"I'm sure of it!" she declared firmly.

He smiled. And Stacy remembered how he had waited coolly for her to return to the house that first night when she had fled him and hidden behind the orchid greenhouse. She remembered how he had waited fourteen years for the revenge that had initially brought him back to Tucson, and she remembered how he had driven her neatly into marriage. Hunter knew all there was to know about bargaining and winning.

"I," he stated, pulling her abruptly close, "am a very patient man...."