Bound By Desire (The Acadian Curse) Read online

  “I’m fine. Better than fine.”

  “I mean, did you check yourself out in the shower? Is anything…”

  “Broken?” Sarah shook her head. “No. I’m great.”

  Grant didn’t smile, but the corners of his eyes lifted as some of his fears were eased. He started down the hall.

  “Should I be expecting anymore of your nosy friends sniffing around outside for you?” he asked as he reached the door.

  “I doubt it. It’s my day off,” she called out to him.

  “And you think that’s going to stop Linda Reed’s of the world?”

  Sarah laughed as the door clicked closed behind him.

  After a few minutes it was obvious that Grant wasn’t coming right back. Sarah poured herself a cup of coffee and started to walk through the house. She poked her head into all the open rooms that she’d missed yesterday. It wasn’t snooping, not really. If a door was closed she left it that way. She was just getting a feel for the house, and the man who lived there.

  She found an office lined with bookcases, an entertainment room that had the biggest television Sarah had ever seen, and a living room with a wall of windows that looked out over the pine-covered Cascades. It was obvious that Grant was doing well with the ranch, better than the Armstrong’s had ever done, but he didn’t seem to be flaunting his wealth…giant television aside.

  “Do you like what you see?”

  Sarah started at the voice right behind her and spun around. “I didn’t hear you come back in.”

  “So it seems.” There was laughter in voice and eyes, even though his lips stayed in their stern line.

  “Sorry. I decided to look around a little when you didn’t come back right away.”

  He gave a little shake of his head as if to say it didn’t bother him in the least. “It’s already past seven, and people have started showing up for work. I had to give directions for the day since I’m not going to be here.”

  He held out his hands, and Sarah took the pile of folded clothes from him.

  “Thanks,” she said.

  “You can change in my bedroom.” He put his hand on her lower back and guided her back down the hall.

  Sarah didn’t waste any time getting dressed. Her belly was growling, and, after a night spent in a windowless basement, the thought of fresh air and sunlight was heavenly. In less than five minutes they were headed down the driveway in his shiny, new truck. She’d offered to drive, of course, but he’d refused the offer.

  “I’ve seen the way you drive that thing,” he’d said.

  Not that he was any better. The second she’d strapped herself in, he’d taken off towards town like the devil himself was behind them. Before she knew it, they were pulling in to the parking lot of Rutledge Diner.

  A few heads turned when they walked through the door together. The buzzing sound of whispers grew. Eventually, Jeanine Carmichael, the older sister of one of Sarah’s friends from high school, came out from the kitchen. Her plastered on, workday smile turned genuine when she saw them.

  “Well, good morning, you two,” Jeanine said as she fished out a couple of menus from the side of the cash register.

  Sarah returned the greeting. Grant remained silent.

  Jeanine had started to lead them toward the middle of the crowded dining room when Grant stopped her.

  “I was hoping we could get a table over there,” he said, pointing to the deserted line of booths on the other side of the diner.

  “Oh, um, yeah. Sure.” Her eyes widened as though her morning had just become a hell of a lot more interesting. “You want your privacy. I understand.”

  “Thank you,” Grant said.

  If avoiding prying eyes was his plan, it backfired terribly. Every head turned as Jeanine led them to the farthest reaches of the diner.

  “I heard you’d come back to town, Sarah,” Jeanine said as she walked. “Your dad was telling me the other day that he was trying to talk you into taking over his practice.”

  “Yeah,” Sarah said. “He’s still trying.”

  Jeanine smiled suggestively at Grant as he sat, then looked back at Sarah. “Well, I know what I’d do if I were you.”

  “Thanks, Jeanine,” Sarah said as she sat. “We would both love a cup of coffee.”

  Jeanine went right on talking. “Rutledge may not be big enough to have a fancy university, but this town has its own attractive qualities. But I guess I don’t need to tell you that,” she said with an exaggerated wink. “I’ll be right back with your coffee.”

  “I’m sorry about that,” Grant said as Jeanine walked away.

  Sarah arched her brows. “You’re sorry? For what?”

  “The looks. The stares. The whispers.”

  Sarah leaned back, sinking into the worn vinyl-covered cushion behind her. She chuckled a little. “Don’t be. You forget that I grew up in this town. Not only do I know what it’s like, I know all the people. Not a day went by without somebody gossiping about someone. No one was immune. I’m pretty sure I have ammunition against anyone in this place if they try to get too personal. Take Jeanine there. She probably doesn’t want to be reminded of the time she was caught underneath the bleachers with her sister’s boyfriend.”

  Grant slowly smiled. “I’m impressed. I didn’t realize you had such a dark side.”

  “Yeah, well, we all have our little secrets.” Sarah said with a wink as Jeanine came back with the coffee. She took their order, both variations on the eggs and meat and toast breakfast standard, before leaving them alone again.

  Grant took a long sip of his coffee, then another.

  “You wanted to talk?” Sarah prompted him when the silence had gone on too long.

  He took his time looking up from his cup. Sarah felt an uneasy swirl started to spin in her belly. She’d done her best on the drive over here to pretend that he didn’t mean that talk.

  “I won’t lie. I’m glad you came to me last night,” he said. He kept his voice hushed even though there wasn’t any one around to hear.

  “So am I.”

  “It was…amazing. But it can’t happen again. I don’t want you coming out to the ranch again.”

  Heavy disappointment filled her chest. His words weren’t surprising—he’d been trying to push her away since the moment she’d driven on to his property—but her reaction to them was. They’d only known each other for two days—or, more accurately, two nights—but even in that short time, Sarah felt like she had a connection to him. She had hoped that he felt the same.

  Yeah, of course she loved what the creature inside of him did to her, but it turned out that she liked Grant LaCroix, the man, too. He was an intriguing mix of strength and resolve and integrity. She didn’t like the idea of being pushed away before she had a chance to get to know him better.

  “Why?” she asked.

  Grant’s eyes widened as though he was surprised that she didn’t understand. “I don’t think you understand the danger you’re putting yourself in every time you’re with me.”

  “I was all right last night.”

  “I’m sure that’s exactly what my mother thought.”

  A hard lump formed in Sarah’s throat. “Your mother?”

  “I never heard my mother talk about what my father was. I can only imagine that she was as intrigued by the curse as you are at first, but things changed. After a few years, my father started to disappear during full moon. She had to know that he was with other women even though she never said anything. I can remember her becoming more silent and sullen every year.”

  He took a deep breath, then another swig of his coffee. Sarah gave him the time.

  “My father hated her passivity. He used to yell at her just to get a reaction. He’d scream until my brother and I could only hide under our beds to escape the sound, but she still didn’t respond. Then one day when I was sixteen, his rage toward her grew too strong.”

  His eyes went hard, his face blank. She knew the depths of his control, but he was barely keepin
g himself together. There were things that were too painful, even for him.

  “And he killed your mother,” she finished for him.

  “You’ve seen how big the creature can be, how strong. He literally ripped her apart.”

  The blood left Sarah’s face. Her jaw went slack.

  “When he woke up the next morning, he couldn’t face what he’d done. He put a bullet through his head, leaving my brother, Shane, and I alone.”

  “Oh Grant. I’m so sorry.” Sarah tried for something more to say, but there was nothing.

  He nodded distractedly, effectively brushing off her sympathy. He kept his eyes on her even though Sarah could see that they were filling up with a pain that had never healed.

  “I won’t allow you to make the same mistake my mother did.”

  Sarah leaned forward and reached across the table. He looked down at her open palm but didn’t take her hand.

  “I’m not your mother. I’m nothing like that.”

  “I know.”

  “No, I don’t think that you do. I don’t wilt. I don’t hide from trouble or run away from it.” She pulled her arm back across the slick Formica tabletop and straightened her spine. “And what’s more important, you are not your father.”

  “But the curse—”

  “Only says that you will reveal your true nature. You’re a good man, Grant, a decent one. Sure, you’re kinky and more than a little bit commanding, but that’s not so bad. The creature inside you isn’t evil because you’re not evil.”

  He looked at her long and hard, the corners of his eyes crinkling in concentration. She could tell he wanted to believe her, but she was just a single voice of encouragement after a lifetime of self-inflicted torture.

  “Listen, let’s not think about it right now. Let’s just enjoy being together today. We’ll hang out and see where the day takes us. Just like normal people,” she said.

  “Normal?” His laughter was skeptical. “I’m not sure that word has ever been used to describe me before.”

  “Well, there’s a first time for everything.”

  Sarah grinned, just in time for Jeanine to pop out the kitchen with their plates.

  Grant slid across the truck bench and tangled his fingers in the long strands of Sarah’s hair. Damn, she was sexy as hell. It had nothing to do with her clothes or makeup. It was something on the inside. A glow that radiated out of her and allowed him to believe that there was hope for a better life than the one that he had become accustomed to—a life without hiding, without shame.

  He pulled her closer, bringing her mouth to his again. One more taste, he thought. Even though he knew it wouldn't be enough.

  He’d been saying the same thing the whole day. Just one more kiss after breakfast and he would take her home. Just one more hour by her side as they walked by the lake. Just one more cup of coffee at the cafe. Before he knew it the whole day had disappeared. Now it was an hour before sundown and he was only now dropping her back at her house. And still he wanted more.

  When it came to Sarah McIntire, it would never be enough, he realized.

  But this time it would have to be. The sun was dipping down toward the horizon. If he didn’t leave now he never would.

  Sarah linked her hands behind his neck and pulled him closer. Her breasts crushed against him, soft and round. He instantly hardened. He felt her pulse quicken as his tongue swept across hers. Hell, he heard it. The change was closer than he thought.

  "Come inside," she whispered against his cheek. "Please."

  He shook his head, but he didn’t let go of her. He couldn’t.

  “Come back to the ranch with me,” he said. “We’ll be safe there.”

  “I don’t want safe, and I won’t be content with just some locked up part of you. I want you. All of you.” She laid a gentle kiss on the corner of his mouth and opened the truck door behind her. She slid out. “It’s time to make a choice, Grant.”

  Grant sat up straight and gripped the steering wheel.

  She was right. He had to choose and do it now. Long shadows stretched across the street. The horizon was already streaked with red. If he hurried he could still make it home, race down the stairs just in time for the door to slam shut. But the idea of spending another night, raving and alone, didn't hold the same appeal as passing it with Sarah’s warm, accepting body next to his.

  She would have made a phenomenal lawyer. For every doubt and concern she had a sane and rational argument. Her words never managed to dismiss his fears entirely. They ran too deep to be extinguished in such a short amount of time. Instead she appealed to his sense of hope. She made him want to believe.

  Sarah smiled at him as he stepped out the truck. “Good choice.”

  “We’ll see,” he said, stepping around the truck bed.

  She slipped her hand into his and led him up the short path to the front door. He felt a momentary awkwardness as he stepped through the entrance. This was her father’s house. Dr. Henry McIntire’s house. A man he knew and respected. The house was small and old in comparison to his own. The furniture was worn. There were cracks in a few of the entryway tiles, but it felt like a home, one that had been lived in and loved in for a long time.

  She could have brought him to a hotel. She could have insisted that they go to his bedroom once they were back at the ranch. But instead she had brought him here, to her childhood home. Not her apartment or her place, but her home.

  It was hard for Grant to wrap his mind around everything that her gesture of vulnerability meant. She didn’t just trust him. She believed in him.

  “Do you want to sit down?” Sarah asked. “I’ll get us a drink.”

  He shook his head. The beast inside him surged.

  Home. The beast surged within him, spurred on by the idea. Home. Inside of her.

  “Something to eat? I could whip us up something—”

  He pushed her up against the door, sliding his hands beneath her shirt and dragging it up over her head. She giggled, a sweet sound that rang in his ears.

  “Or we could do this,” she said.

  He unzipped her pants and pushed them down. She kicked them off onto the floor. Her bra and panties followed close behind.

  Sarah reached out to do the same to him. He grasped her hands before she had a chance and pinned her wrists to the door above her head. She hissed in a breath.

  “This.”

  He kissed her, drawing her full lower lip between his teeth. He sucked on it, teasing it with his tongue until she moaned and squirmed in his hands. Only then did he take a step back and take a long look over her naked body.

  His cock swelled with need. Images of all the things he wanted to do to her filled his head. His thoughts or the creature’s? Did it matter? They were one in the same, or so Sarah kept telling him. One the civilized veneer and the other the animal longing, but at the core they were fused, inseparable.

  Whatever he was, he knew what he wanted, and it was more than a frantic tumble in a hallway. He hooked his arm underneath her knees and lifted her up. She wasn't a tiny woman but she felt light in his arms.

  "Which room is yours?" he asked.

  "To the left, at the back of the house.”

  He followed her directions, kicked open the door and flicked on the light switch. The room looked like any other guest room. The bed was simple, the furnishing spare. The only remaining hint that this had once been Sarah’s bedroom was the colorful daisy paper that still clung to the walls.

  Grant laid her out on the bed so that she was sprawled out before him. She immediately started to sit up and reach for him.

  "Stay," he said. And she did.

  He loomed over her, taking in the sight of her. Her body was beautiful, lithe and strong and vulnerable. All that pale skin, just begging to kissed, to be touched, to be marked by him.

  He bent at the waist and stroked his fingers across the soft skin of her stomach. She fidgeted, trying to hide the little things she saw as imperfections. She brought her hands to
her sides trying to cover the lines of faded stretch marks that marred the swell of her hips. She bent her knees up so that her thighs wouldn't flatten on the mattress.

  “Stop,” he commanded.

  He knocked her hands away to the side. He pressed her legs down. She turned her head off to the side.

  "Look at me, Sarah."

  Slowly, she obeyed. Her eyes were swimming with reluctance. Too damn bad. She had demanded that he bare himself to her, that he reveal himself to the extent that he questioned everything that had come before her. If she thought that she could ask that of him and still cling to all her petty insecurities, she was dead wrong.

  He drank in the sight of her.

  And wanted more.

  He pressed two fingers against her cleft. They sank easily between the wet folds there. Grant rubbed them back and forth, back and forth, coating his fingers with her wetness. She moaned and tilted her pelvis back, giving him a better angle to find her clit.

  "I told you to stay still."

  Grant lifted his fingers to his mouth and licked them clean. Just one more taste.

  He grasped her ankles and yanked her down to the edge of the bed. Her ass hung precariously over the edge. He lowered himself between her outstretched legs.

  “Don’t move an inch. Don’t even shiver or I will be forced to show you what happens when you don’t obey.” Grant ran his tongue up the length of her. "Do you understand?"

  "Y-Yes."

  "Good."

  He tasted her again. He found the bud of her clit with his tongue and circled it. A soft moan came from her lips. She was so wet. So ready for him. He could take her right now and she would take him easily.

  But that wasn't what he wanted.

  He wanted to feel her break. He needed it. He needed to feel the moment that ceded her control to him instead.

  He curled his fingers around the curve of her thighs and pushed them apart. So hard that he felt her muscles begin to strain. He kept going, tasting her—testing her with his tongue. She moaned and mewed. Her breath came in great gasps. He felt her muscles tense until strong vibrations ran through her.