Page 22 of All I Want for Christmas… Is You
“What the devil are you about?” He hovered over her, worried that she’d finally reached the edge of her sanity.
“This floor has a dip right here about the size of my shoe,” she said around the labor of her digging. “After I tripped this last time, I thought, if Carrie was a clever girl, she mightburyher most prized possessions to make certain they weren’t discovered. Even if the Chamber of Sorrows was.”
Something within him ignited. He wished he could grab something and rake at the earth next to her. That he could reach into it and pull whatever might be down there above ground. But the bland weight of weakness still tugged his limbs until they were heavy, and he began to admit to himself that the torpor was calling to him.
Every moment he spent with her cost him, dearly.
But the darkness would have to drag him away. He’d not go willingly. Not while he could bask in her presence for one more moment.
She worked until she was winded, and the helplessness he felt made him want to throw things. To shake his fist at whichever angry god cursed him to such an existence.
Until a hollow sound announced the bayonet had struck something.
Their eyes met for a breathless moment.
Then, she attacked the ground around it with renewed vigor, scraping out a small, square wooden box. She stood, and John could hear Vanessa’s heart beating hard enough for the both of them as she opened the simple container.
Every jewel inside the box glittered gem-bright in the golden glow of the lantern.
But it was the twin rubies he found that suffused him with a lightning bolt of sensation.
“Vanessa. The ring.”
With trembling fingers, she plucked it out and held it up so they could both gawk at its magnificence.
He could feel it pulsing with a magnetism no inanimate object should possess. The lion stared at him from hot ruby eyes.
Claiming him. Calling to him.
He thrust his hand between them, splaying his fingers. “Put it on.”
Her forehead crimped. “What if it doesn’t work?”
“Vanessa.”
She nodded, lowering her hand to slide it onto his finger.
His boots hit the earth with a heavy thud. He had weight. He had mass. The air bit at his cheeks and filled his lungs with a cold incredible breath. His heart threw itself against wide ribs and his muscles corded with strength. Veins pulsed with blood.
With need.
His hand gripped hers. Slim, cold fingers trembled against his flesh. His skin.
Her eyes were wide and watery as she stared at him without blinking.
“John?” she whispered.
He was almost sorry.
Almost sorry that a strangled groan was all the warning she had before he crushed her to him and captured her already open mouth.
CHAPTER6
His kiss was a sweet violence. Both a conquest and a claiming.
Vanessa welcomed the assault on her senses as thisman, this solid, starving, sexual man clamped her entire body to his and devoured her mouth as if her kiss could restore his very life.
The sensation of his lips—his skin—was more than a tingling suggestion now. He was tactile. Warm. Almost as if fed by lifeblood.
