Bound By Marriage

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“I asked you to be my wife, not my roommate. Decide what you want.”

Not replying, Jess slammed through the connecting door between their rooms. Gabriel folded his arms behind his head and unclenched his jaw with conscious application of will. No woman had ever made the rules in his bed. And Jess wasn’t going to get the chance to be the first. He’d meant what he’d said—he had no intention of living in a sexless marriage, not when bed was the one place where he…Shoving away that thought, he sat up.

Sleep was not what he wanted right now. He’d been more than ready for a replay of their first time together before Jess had pulled her little stunt. The woman had turned into pure lightning in his arms, the most responsive lover he’d ever had. He hadn’t wanted passion when he’d chosen her, hadn’t thought she’d incite it in him. But she had. He was willing to live with that fact, so long as it was confined to the bed. The primitive in him liked knowing he’d been the only man to taste his wife’s screams.

Hard on the heels of that thought came a far less pleasant one. Damon. Gabriel had made it his business to keep tabs on the other man since learning of the separation and knew that he’d recently been sniffing around for information about Jess.

His hand fisted.

Jess could love Damon all she liked. It made no difference to Gabe except that it meant she’d never expect anything emotional from him. But he had no intention of putting up with a “friendship” between his wife and the younger man.

Jess might hate Gabe for it but she’d known who and what he was when she’d married him. He held on to what was his and Jess was now his. End of story.

Jess woke with gritty eyes. Checking the clock, she saw it was a few minutes before five. “Four hours of sleep. Great.” A sound reached her from the bedroom next door and she realized Gabe was probably already up. Trying not to think about him or what they’d done in the tantalizing privacy of the night, she tugged the blanket to her chin.

The scent that rose up around her was that of the very man she’d been attempting to ignore. Thoughts derailed by anger, she’d forgotten to take off Gabe’s shirt and now the lapse taunted her into full consciousness. “Arrgh!” She decided she might as well get up and shower.

The hot water poured a balm over muscles unused to the kind of activity she’d indulged in the previous night. An activity she definitely did not want to think about, but which she couldn’t seem to excise from her brain.

She’d just finished dressing and was standing in front of the window brushing her hair when a perfunctory knock sounded on the connecting door. Gabe walked in a second later. Clad in an old pair of jeans and a rough work shirt, his sexuality was somehow even more intense, more powerfully real. Her nerves quickfired, recalling the demands he’d made in the dark, the exquisite pain of sensual pleasure.

“Good morning.” He gave her an amused smile, clearly aware of his effect on her.

That arrogance snapped her back to her senses. “I didn’t say you could come in.” Pulling the brush hard through her hair, she returned her attention to the predawn darkness.

He closed the gap to stand next to her, a powerful presence she’d touched intimately but knew only as a shadow. “Be ready to head out at seven.”

“Where are we going?”

“To visit your parents.”

Her animosity disappeared. “Thank you.” Placing the brush on the windowsill, she forced herself to face him.

The eyes that looked back at her were completely unreadable. “Kiss me good morning, Jess.”

“I don’t take orders well.”

“Funny, you followed them perfectly last night.”

Her spine stiffened to ruler-straightness. “Exactly the kind of thing a woman wants to hear after her first time.”

He winced. “Point taken.”

Her mouth fell open at the oblique apology. Gabe took full advantage, sliding his hand to her nape and claiming the kiss he’d asked for. Still sensitive from the unbridled sexuality of the previous night, her defenses were pitifully weak. She was horrified to hear herself make a sound of protest when he began to pull away. But Gabe liked it. Folding her into his arms, he kissed her with even more intensity.

By the time he finally left the room, she was in complete emotional disarray. This had not been in the plan, this acute response to his touch. She’d always talked about love and sex in the same breath, always assumed she’d care deeply for any man she made love with. Yet here she was, shattering every time Gabe touched her. It shamed her deeply.

And the worst thing was, she had no idea how to fight it. Her love for Damon had insulated her against other men since the day she’d reached adulthood. But that shield had buckled under the potent seduction of Gabe’s masculinity.

Unable to think of anything that would make her feel better about her sudden descent into lust unaccompanied by love or romance, she did what she always did when she needed to think. She pulled out a sketch pad and began to draw.

She began every project with a detailed sketch, never putting oil paint to canvas until she’d worked out all the dimensions and angles. In truth, she wasn’t impulsive in any area of her art—she carefully thought through the subject before she created, step by slow step. But today she let her hand run free with no conscious interference. What emerged was an image of the face she’d carried in her heart for over a decade.

If only Damon hadn’t waited so long to make that drunken call, she wouldn’t be here. They would have been married long before her father’s death, would have found some other way to hold onto Randall Station. But he’d waited until it was eons too late, Kayla’s pregnancy combined with Jess’s debt to Gabriel opening an impassable chasm between them.

That distance hurt. Damon had been her closest friend since childhood, their relationship a combination of mischief and laughter. He’d helped her see the sunshine again after her mother’s early death, teasing her out of tears and forcing her to rejoin the world. She’d confessed her secrets to him, listened to his in return, and somewhere between childhood and womanhood, she’d fallen in love.

He’d broken her heart when he’d married Kayla. And he’d crushed it again with that phone call. “Why?” she whispered to the sketch. “Why did you wait so long?”

It was as well they hadn’t met before her wedding—Jess wasn’t sure she could have withstood his declarations in person. And now she was Gabriel’s. Not that it mattered. If Damon had truly meant what he’d said, he would have tracked her down the moment she arrived home. But he hadn’t. Why?

Throwing the pencil to the floor, she dropped her head into her hands. “Help me.” It was a tortured whisper. But no one was listening.

Several hours later, Jess looked out at the Dumont family plot from inside the Jeep. She’d forced this visit but now that they were here, she was no longer sure she’d made the right decision. It was apparent that Gabe would much rather be elsewhere.

“Are you coming?” she asked, opening her door. He’d surprised her by accompanying her to her parents’ graves. She had no idea what to expect from him this time, especially since he’d been so silent on the long drive back to Angel.

He undid his seat belt and got out, not saying a word as she opened the back door and reached for the greenery and flowers she’d gathered from around the station. But he was by her side when she walked toward the final resting places of Stephen, Mary, Raphael, Michael and Angelica Dumont.

Stopping in front of Raphael’s grave, she looked up at him. “Would you like to lay the flowers?”

“No.” His tone made it crystal clear he considered this a waste of time.

She was cut to the quick but refused to rush. This was important.

Gabe reacted only when she went to put flowers on his mother’s resting place. Striding over, he moved them to his sister’s instead.

“Gabe?”

“Are you done?”

“Yes.” She rose from her crouch, eyes on the harsh lines of a face she found impossible to read. “But…”

“But what, Jess? They’re dead and have been for twenty-five years.” He glanced at his watch. “I have to check some fencing. We’d better head back.”

She grabbed his hand to stop him when he would have turned away, acting more out of instinct than logic. His eyes slammed into hers, but she found the courage to stand her ground. “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize how much this would hurt you.”

He raised an eyebrow. “I’m fine. You’re the one who wanted to come out here.”

“Gabe,” she began, convinced she’d glimpsed a deep vulnerability behind his uncaring mask. Hope fountained in her blood. Perhaps her marriage wouldn’t be a soulless one after all. If Gabe could feel so intensely, then maybe what had gone on between them last night hadn’t been based on lust alone.

“Jess, you know me. I’m not some wounded hero you have to save. I was ten years old when they died. I barely remember them.” Turning, he shrugged off her hand and strode to the car.

Jess wanted to believe he was lying but the look on his face as he’d spoken had been nothing but calm, nothing but completely in control. Hope crumbled. No wonder Gabe never visited his parents’ and siblings’ graves—the man didn’t even have the heart to love their memory.

An entire day and a surprisingly undisturbed night of sleep later, Jess was sketching on the verandah when a battered old pickup roared down the drive. She waited for whoever it was to park and walk over, but the driver raced all the way to the edge of the verandah before braking to a sudden halt on the grass.

Frowning at the theatrics, she put down the sketch pad. Who in the—? The vehicle’s door swung open and out jumped the last person she’d expected to see.

“Jessie girl!” Running up the steps, Damon wrapped his arms around her waist and lifted her off her feet.

It was impossible not to be happy to see him, not when she’d missed him so very much. Blue-eyed with jet black hair, Damon had the looks of a movie star or a playboy. But it was his smile she’d fallen for, a bright slash that constantly proclaimed his amusement at the whole world.