“Keep me from harm?” Her voice soared with disbelief. “You failed! You hurt me worse than anything else ever has in my entire life!”
“Have you kissed Quinn yet?” he roared.
“No! I haven’t kissed Quinn yet!” she shouted back. “Is that all you care about? You don’t give a damn that you hurt me.”
The goblet clattered to the floor as Grimm lunged to his feet. His hands came down with unbridled fury. Trenchers flew from the table, untouched pottage stew showered the room, chunks of flatbread bounced off the hearth. The candelabrum exploded into the wall and stuck like a cleft foot between the stones. Soapy white candles rained down upon the floor. His rampage didn’t stop until the table between them had been swept clean. He paused, panting, his hands splayed wide on the edge of the table, his eyes feverishly bright. Jillian stared at him, stunned.
With a howl of rage, he crashed his hands into the center of six inches of solid oak, and Jillian’s hand flew to her throat to smother a cry when the long table split down the middle. His blue eyes blazed incandescently, and she could have sworn he seemed to be growing larger, broader, and more dangerous. She’d certainly gotten the reaction she’d been seeking, and more.
“I know I failed!” he roared. “I know I hurt you! Do you think I haven’t had to live with that knowledge?”
Between them, the table creaked and shuddered in an effort to remain whole. The wounded slab tilted precariously. Then, with a groan of defeat, the ends slumped toward the center and it crashed to the floor.
Jillian blinked as she surveyed the wreckage of their meal. No longer seeking to provoke him, she stood dumbfounded by the intensity of his reaction. He knew he’d hurt her? And he cared enough to get this angry at the memory?
“Then why did you come back now?” she whispered. “You could have disobeyed my da.”
“I had to see that all is well with you, Jillian,” he whispered back across the sea of destruction that separated them.
“I’m well, Grimm,” she said carefully. “That means you can go away now,” she said, not meaning a breath of it.
Her words evoked no response.
How could a man stand so still that she might think he had been cursed to stone? She couldn’t even see his chest rise and fall as she watched him. The breeze blowing in the tall window didn’t ruffle him. Nothing touched the man.
God knows she’d never been able to. Hadn’t she learned that by now? She’d never been able to reach the real Grimm, the one she’d known that first summer. Why had she believed anything might have changed? Because she was a woman grown? Because she had full breasts and shiny hair and she thought she could entice him near with a man’s weakness for a woman? And since he was so damned indifferent to her, why did she even want him?
But Jillian knew the answer to that, even if she didn’t understand the how of it. When she’d been a wee lass and tipped her head back to see the wild boy towering above her, her heart had cried welcome. There had been an ancient knowing in her child’s breast that had clearly told her no matter what heinous things Grimm stood accused of, she could trust him with her life. She knew he was supposed to belong to her.
“Why don’t you just cooperate?” Frustration peeled the words from her lips; she couldn’t believe she’d spoken them aloud, but once they were out, she was committed.
“What?”
“Cooperate,” she encouraged. “It means to go along. To be obliging.”
Grimm stared. “I canna oblige you by leaving. Your da—”
“I am not asking you to leave,” she said gently.
Jillian had no idea where she drew her courage from at that moment; she knew only that she was tired of wanting, and tired of being denied. So she stood proudly, moving her body exactly the way it felt whenever Grimm was in the same room: seductive, intense, more alive than at any other time in her life. Her body language must have signified her intent, for he went rigid.
“How would you have me cooperate, Jillian?” he asked in a flat, dead voice.
She approached him, carefully picking her way over broken platters and food. Slowly, as if he were a wild animal, she reached her hand, palm out, toward his chest. He stared at it with a mixture of fascination and mistrust as she placed it upon his chest, over his heart. She felt the heat of him through his linen shirt, felt his body shudder, felt the powerful beating of his heart beneath her palm.
She tilted her head back and gazed up at him. “If you’d truly like to cooperate”—she wet her lips—“kiss me.”