But by the time she climbed into the waiting Rolls Royce, her satin beaded shoes had blistered nearly every toe on her feet and rubbed her heels raw. She’d tried taking her shoes off, but her full wedding gown was too long and she’d ended up tripping so many times she’d inadvertently pulled the bustled raw silk train down.
There was no traffic at such a late hour, and the drive from the Denzinger estate to the historic Four Seasons Biltmore, the premier hotel in Santa Barbara nestled in the exclusive Montecito enclave, was short. So short that Alexandra didn’t even have a chance to get her head around the fact that tonight she and Wolf were sharing a room.
Despite the late hour, the hotel manager was there in person to greet them when the Rolls Royce purred to a stop in front of the Biltmore. The hotel, with its soaring archways and Spanish-colonial detail, had been a mecca for the Hollywood elite since the 1920s when Greta Garbo and Errol Flynn helped put it on the map.
The hotel manager personally escorted them to their suite, the Odell Cottage, the resort’s premier accommodation. The luxury cottage, built in 1904, had three bedrooms, a large salon with fireplace, a fireplace in the master bedroom and an exquisite private patio larger than Alexandra’s whole house in Culver City.
Bottles of chilled champagne and a stocked refrigerator in the cottage’s kitchen came compliments of the hotel. There were plush robes in the marble bathrooms. Any need they had would be met. And then the manager was gone and Alexandra and Wolf were alone.
“I thought he’d never leave,” Wolf said, tugging on his white silk bow tie.
Funny how two people could have such different interpretations. Alexandra had wanted the manager never to leave. She wandered through the enormous cottage, thinking only in California would a house this size be called a cottage. The flat beamed ceiling, painted a glossy white, reflected the firelight from the salon’s and master bedroom’s fireplaces. Votive candles had been lit on the mantel. More candles flickered in the bathroom on the marble ledge beneath the mirror. And then she noticed the dresser in the master bedroom.
Oh, God. She turned away from the dresser groaning beneath the dozens of vivid red, passion-red roses, her stomach heaving up and down as though she were doing jumping jacks. What was she doing here?
“You can’t avoid me forever,” Wolf drawled from the doorway, startling her. She nervously glanced at him over her shoulder, suddenly feeling as though he were a complete stranger.
In ways he was.
She’d seen him in countless movies, had kissed him and been escorted around town by him, but she didn’t know him, didn’t know what he really thought about anything, much less her.
“I’m not trying to avoid you,” she said defensively, watching him pull his bow tie from around his collar and toss the silk onto the table near the bed. She heard the anxious note in her voice and moved past him to return to the cottage’s stylish living room.
The warm fire drew her, and she crouched in her full white bridal gown in front of the hearth, hands outstretched.
“You’re running away from me,” Wolf said with certainty, turning to watch her.
A lump filled her throat and she curled her fingers against the fire’s heat. He wasn’t far off the mark. She was scared. Scared of what would happen next. But she couldn’t tell him that she was still as inexperienced as she had been four years ago, that she still didn’t know how to pleasure a man or … be pleasured by a man.
Jerkily Alexandra pulled the Italian lace veil from her head and folded it into a neat square before rising. “Why should I avoid you?” she said, keeping her voice even, battling to keep her fear at bay. “This is just a studio stunt, a media ploy that will soon be resolved—”
“No,” he interrupted, still standing in the doorway, his coat now off, his shirt partway unbuttoned. “Wrong.”
Her heart stuttered. She was glad he was far away, glad he couldn’t see how she’d begun to shake. Give her a wild horse and she’d ride it, but give her a man like Wolf …
Alexandra licked her upper lip, her nerves making her mouth dry. During the reception she’d done everything in her power to keep from being alone with him, had done everything she could to pretend she wasn’t married to him, but it was awfully hard now that they were here, in the bridal suite, alone.
His dark eyes narrowed fractionally. “As I said while we were dancing, I wouldn’t marry just anyone. I certainly wouldn’t marry someone for publicity or for my career. I married you because I want you.”
Wolf’s voice was deep, thick, like honey in sunlight, and it drugged her senses almost as much as his heady, dizzying kisses.
“I want you,” he repeated again, quieter, deeper, his voice hypnotic.
Alexandra looked across the room at him and her brain felt slow, thoughts scattered, fuzzy. With Wolf’s dark hair falling forward on his brow he looked as wild and untamable as his namesake. “You don’t know me. You said so yourself.”
He stretched out his hands, the shirt pulling wider, revealing his chest and the bronzed plane of muscle. “Then this is where we start.”
He was a man, a beautiful, primitive, masculine man, and the idea that he wanted her, that he desired her, filled her with fear and nerves and curiosity.
He wasn’t even touching her, just looking at her, and yet she felt as though he’d already taken her in his arms, run his hands down the length of her. She felt edgy, taut, physical, aware of her skin, her face and lips, her body where it curved, her legs where they joined. She felt all her fingers and toes. The indentation of her waist. The fullness of her hips and breasts.
He made her aware that she was a woman.
But that was the thing—what did a man do with a woman? Oh, she knew the mechanics—how could a farm girl not know?—but the scenes from films, the love scenes and the heat and the passion and the desperation …
And what would a woman do with a man?
Wolf was unbuttoning the rest of his dress shirt now, and she stared at him, watching the way he moved, his hands, the corded muscles of his arms. She watched his eyes, the focus, the intensity, the flare of heat in his dark eyes.
He was waking something in her, stirring her as much as if she’d been on his lap, his hand on her belly, covering her, warming her, making her feel the hunger only he had ever made her feel.
Shirt off, he reached for the button on his trousers. Alexandra’s eyes grew wider, her mouth drier. Her heart thumped as she watched him undo the button. “We can’t,” she finally choked out. “I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“It’d be wrong—”
He started walking toward her. “We’re married.”
“In a fake ceremony with a fake minister and fake guests!”
“The minister and guests were real,” he said mildly, watching her take a step away from the fire, behind the couch, doing her best to avoid him, “which means the ceremony was real, too.”
She pressed her hands to the back of the elegant sofa. “But you know this is over as soon as your film wraps.”
She felt cornered, caught, as though he’d been a real wolf tracking her. And now he had her where he wanted her to be. A shudder coursed through her, a shudder of fear, a shudder of desire. “This is just temporary,” she insisted breathlessly, knowing she couldn’t manage him. Or this.
He suddenly moved so fast she didn’t have a chance to escape, and he was there at her side, circling her wrists with his hands. “I don’t
think I ever said that,” he said, the pads of his thumbs caressing her frantic pulse.
But I did, she thought, trying to keep from losing her head. “But I did. I do—”
“And the film,” he continued, interrupting her, “might never wrap. It’s a cursed film, has been from the start.” And then he tugged her toward him, one resistant inch at a time until she could feel the heat of his body scorch hers through the silk bodice of her wedding gown.
“You’re my wife,” he said, tugging her even more firmly, pulling her off balance so that she fell helplessly against him.
She inhaled sharply as his knees parted and she tumbled into his arms, his hips cradling hers, her breasts crushed against his chest. And then his head descended, and his mouth covered hers, stifling her gasp, catching her breath.
She was lost again, she thought, the pressure of his mouth on hers turning her inside out, making her lose track of all thought, all reason.
No wonder all his costars fell so hard for him. He kissed them senseless, kissed them into surrender and submission.
She gripped his shirt, desperate to find some center, some sanity, but his tongue was teasing the inside of her lip and she was shivering, burning from the inside out. Something about his mouth on hers made her want to open herself, open her mouth and body for him.
And the more she wanted him, the more certain she was that this was wrong, these feelings were wrong, and panicked, she now pressed at his chest. She’d intended to push away, but the sinewy planes of his chest felt shockingly good.
His body was warm and hard, his muscle dense and smooth beneath the palm of her hand.
He felt too good. This all felt too good. Anything this good had to be …
Wrong.
“Stop,” she choked out against his mouth.
His hand reached up, tangled in her hair. “Why?”
“This is crazy. It doesn’t make sense.”
She felt his chest lift, fall, as if filled with silent laughter.
“Passion doesn’t have to make sense,” he answered before drawing her closer again, his hand sliding from her hair, down her back, to rest on her hips. Despite the full skirt she felt him, his strength and hunger, as well as his hand as it curved over her backside, shaping her against him.