Bound to Be a Bride (3 page)

“What?!” She was nearly sure these men were not going to kill her after all and her voice was probably starting to ring with its typical impatient confidence.

The devil waved his hand in front of his face. “The eyes closed and the mumbling thing you were just doing? You don’t have visions or any of that nonsense, do you?”

She shook her head slowly, still uncertain about what he was asking. “No…“ At least, she did not think she did.
How
would
you
know
, she wondered,
unless
someone
told
you
after
the
fact?

“Oh!” He snapped his fingers. “I know!”

Her heart sank. He probably knew her father and would be depositing her back on his doorstep by dawn tomorrow.

“You are running away!”

She nodded enthusiastically. She felt like she was shopping for ribbons at her favorite little shop in the small town outside of Burgos. But, instead of ribbons, this man could offer up frilly little stories and she could pick and choose whichever one she liked. “Yes!”

“And,” he continued, “your… husband will soon be chasing after us with a shotgun…”

She stopped nodding and slowly moved her head from right to left.

“No, he won’t come after us?” the devil asked. “Or, no, you don’t have a husband?”

“No, he won’t come after us.” She felt a slight pang of guilt about the man who thought he was marrying her that day. Would he come after her? She figured her father would send out a search party, but she had not given much thought to her jilted groom. He was probably hideously ugly and deformed. Francisco de la Mina was his name. From a long line of Francisco de la Minas. They were probably all inbred and cruel. The de la Mina men probably had perfumed, manicured hands and too much powder on their faces and padding in their jackets.
I
need
not
feel
sorry
for
someone
horrible
like
that
, she assured herself.

Francisco de la Mina certainly would not be as… intense… as this strong man invading her space. The thought made her smile.

She looked up again and realized all three men were staring at her, the devil Javier striking the most accusatory pose, arms crossed arrogantly in front of his chest.

“What?!” she cried. “I don’t—” She didn’t what? She halted to collect herself. Why had she not spent more time concocting the story of who she was and why she was traversing the Spanish countryside unaccompanied?

He began tapping his foot, the infernal beast.

“I don’t believe my husband will pursue me.”

“And why, may I ask, is that?”

“Because… because…” Her hesitation made her sound like a liar even to her own ears.

His toe tapped on.

“Could you untie my wrists please?” She held up her forearms and tried her best wide-eyed gaze. “Please, my lord?”

He turned away from her and scowled. He spoke to an empty area a few feet in front of him, as if he were talking to someone on the other side of the fire. “No. You will be fine with them. I am quite adept at tying knots.”

The taller man seemed to find that funny.

“Close your mouth, Sebi,” the devil chided the snickering one, then turned back to face her. “You aren’t going anywhere. And I am not happy about it. Where is your horse?”

Isabella tossed her head in the general direction of where she had tied up her horse. Nothing more. The last thing she wanted was a trio of rascals going through her personal belongings.

“Fine,” the devil added carelessly. “If you don’t care enough about your horse to make sure she’s comfortable for the night, you shall be similarly ignored. Your basic needs shall also wait until morning. Sleep well.” With that, he threw a coarse gray blanket toward her and then proceeded to watch in smug fascination as she tried to pull it over herself with her hands tied at the wrists and her legs tied at the ankles. It was not elegant.

***

Javier watched her closely from the cover of encircling darkness beyond the firelight. He had probably been overly harsh with her, but how was he to know she was an innocent? He kept up the charade of his initial fury, but he was not sure how to proceed the following day. There was no way he could turn back; the Duke of Feria probably had an armed group of men ready to begin their pursuit the next morning, if they were not already on their trail. Perhaps Javier should race to Aveiro with only one of his friends, and impose upon the other the task of returning her to the nearest village.

Or castle.

He was not fooled by the rough weave of the peasant dress she had thrown over her otherwise entirely aristocratic self. Her cheeks were as smooth and rosy as any he had seen in the ballroom at El Escorial, the royal palace outside of Madrid. Her eyes were direct. Disconcertingly so. Confident. Fiery. Everything about her exuded a banked heat, as if she had been waiting her whole life to fan the flames of… what? Her independence? Her intellect? And that haughty lift of her chin when he had insulted her purity was sheer aristocratic indignation.

She
might
be
many
things
, he thought ruefully,
but
she
would
never
be
good
at
cards
. Her face revealed every thought that sped—quite rapidly, from his brief observation—across her mind. Javier watched as she breathed the steady pace of exhausted sleep, almost still. She was a beauty. Her beauty did not move him, or so he told himself. But it was a fact with which they would have to contend at some point. She would stand out quite glaringly where they were going, if in fact he felt required to take her along for his own protection.

He froze in the darkness, momentarily lost in the brief moan that escaped her dreaming lips. Red, moist, slightly opened lips. He wondered what she dreamt of when she had that blissful expression on her face, her eyebrows slightly raised in what looked, to his experienced eye, quite like eager sexual anticipation.

What in Christ was he thinking? She was a burden, a liability he needed to discard as quickly as possible to ensure the safe transfer of himself and his two closest friends to Mexico. He had to get rid of her as soon as first dawn broke across the small area where they had made camp.

Javier was about to settle into his own rest when the witch commenced a low chorus of little hums of pleasure, made even more provocative by the sleep that wove through her and the way her expression was lit by the dim glow of the waning fire.

Suddenly, Javier heard, or felt, the rustle of Sebastián a few feet away.

“What?” Javier whispered harshly.

“Nothing… what?” Sebastián answered sleepily, then resumed the low steady inhale and exhale of deep sleep.

Just as he was about to turn away from the intoxicating vision of his little bound runaway, Javier was once again entranced. She was obviously enjoying whatever was happening in that active imagination of hers, because those tempting lips pulled back to reveal strong white teeth that bit down on the rope at her wrists, which were tucked close to her face to act as a makeshift pillow. When her lips wrapped around her teeth and touched the rope, she gave a sucking little moan of satisfaction. Javier’s cock went so hard, so fast, he worried it might break.

He watched in wretched delight as her hips moved several times in a tentative back-and-forth motion beneath the coarse army-issue blanket. Her lips dragged back and forth across the soft rope, as if in slow motion. Before he realized what was happening, she bit into the rope again with a satisfied groan and sucked with more urgency, her indrawn cheeks tensing with the effort. The rope at her lips muffled the tiny, high-pitched voice she gave to her pleasure, then her mouth opened wider and she gasped with the final pulse of her release.

Her hips settled back into stillness and she unconsciously curled her knees up tight near her chin. Then, damn her, she smiled a tiny, gratified, blissfully sleepy smile and rubbed her cheek against the rope as if it were the finest silk or the most elegant kid glove. Her exhale was a breath of innocent completion, followed by the renewal of her steady deep-sleep breathing.

Javier had lost his control somewhere between the first tilt of her hips and the sight of her teeth digging into the ropes he had tied with his own hands. He wanted to feel those teeth on his fingers, digging into the tendons of his neck, scraping along the length of his cock with those pretty hands tied beautifully at the base of her bare back.

He groaned in frustration and rolled over, quickly using his handkerchief to reach into his trousers to wipe away the evidence of his furtive midnight observations. He had to get rid of her quickly.

***

Isabella’s internal clock went off a few minutes before four in the morning as it always did from years of adhering to the strict schedule of the convent. Vigils at four, Lauds at dawn, Terce at nine, Sext at noon, None at three, Vespers at sunset, and Compline, the night prayer, before sleep took her. She lay there on the cold forest floor and let her eyes adjust to the predawn darkness. The fire still burned slightly, but more of a pale gray pile with hints of pink and orange than actual flames.

She started to reach for her face, to scratch an itch at her temple, when she remembered her wrists were bound and she was a prisoner. Isabella tried to collect her wits. She could try to escape, but what was the point? These men had not sent her back in the direction of her father, not right away at least. She had come upon them, after all. Perhaps they might help her. They seemed to be heading in the same direction, and at quite an admirable pace, some rational part of her brain pointed out.

Her stomach gave a pathetic groan and she dismissed it. Isabella had planned her rations with deliberate precision and she was not allowed to eat anything until dawn. Nor was she going anywhere the way that bastard had tied her wrists and ankles; of that, she was certain. During the night, she had dreamt that she had tried to gnaw her way out of the restraints, but…

She closed her eyes and let the feelings wash over her. Ah, yes. But.

Rather than being afraid or angry about the confinement, some strange and devilish part of her dreaming mind had pictured hands—his hands—slowly untying the complex knots, touching the tender skin of her wrists as he taunted her with the unhurried pleasure he took in controlling her release. That strange part of her had wanted to devour those hands, those strong fingers. She had wanted those hands on her body.

Those hands would know how to satisfy her, to make her feel right, to make those fires inside her burn. Isabella had spent her whole life being made to feel that she needed to curb her instincts. If you are hungry, do not eat. If you are thirsty, learn discipline. If you are eager to know about your dead mother, do not give in to morbid curiosity. And in all of those things, she had been obedient. She had even taken a certain pride in learning to master the art of controlling her impulses, repressing her whims, decrying her passions.

But in that world of dreams… she was free. In that world, her mind and her quivering, eager body were let loose. Only there, in that secret place, did she feel as though one was not just allowed to, but
meant
to
act on impulses, to cultivate whims, and, surely, to give voice to her passions.

She was ultimately grateful that it was only in dreams, for surely such feelings and… cravings… had no place in the waking world. How could they? How would people function if they were experiencing all those… feelings? Impossible.

Years of listening to the nuns hint around all sorts of “occasions of sin” finally convinced Isabella that those biblical warnings had something to do with destroying that dream world. Those vague words of caution and stronger admonishments of pending hell, were, Isabella was almost positive, meant to disabuse all humanity of the foolish notion that such a waking bliss might ever be realized on this earth. Hubris. Damnation.

Isabella respected order. She truly did. She had even convinced herself that her current act of rebellion was an adherence to a higher order, one that she felt had been desecrated by misinterpretations of God’s will for her. She opened her eyes and tried to see the rope that was only inches from her eyes.

By the light of the fire the previous night, Isabella had found herself admiring—reluctantly—the intricate work of the ropes. Words like
meticulous
and
adept
floated through her mind when she tested the firm pressure. As she fell asleep, the secure hold of the bindings took on a protective feeling; the trio of narrow ropes followed the subtle contours of her bone and muscle, holding her close. Maybe the leader of this small foray was a sailor and that accounted for his obvious skill with knots. Her friend Anna would have lowered her voice to a provocative pitch and declared him a pirate.

It was not entirely far-fetched. The three men were heading straight into Portugal, and if Isabella’s instincts were correct, they were on their way to the nearest harbor. Aveiro.

After a few minutes of lying perfectly still, Isabella sensed that someone else nearby was awake. There had not been a sound, but something in the air around the fire had altered slightly. She got herself to a sitting position with a bit of awkward maneuvering. The string at the neck of her dress had come loose while she slept and she could not twist her hands enough to remedy it.

Of course it would be the arrogant bastard of a devil who woke first. Why could he not be a lazy useless excuse of a man and sleep later than the others? Now they were alone while the other two continued to sleep.

Isabella watched as he circled the small area around the fire and came to stand in front of her. What would he do now? Kick her while she sat there, hunched around herself in her drab ill-fitting dress? She was about to hang her head, to let him think he was in charge, the way her father had taught her to behave around men, and then her anger got the best of her. Her head flew up to face him squarely and she challenged him outright. “Go ahead and kick me, if that is what you intend to do.”