Sacrifice (2 page)

“She’s going to make me crazy. A
year. I’ve chased the woman for a blasted year and still she’s running from
me.”

Jared pushed his fingers restlessly
through his short hair as he paced the length of his mother’s kitchen two days
later, uncomfortable under the eagle-eyed scrutiny of his too perceptive
mother, Carolyn Raddington Madison.

He couldn’t get Kimberly out of his
head. It was frustrating, aggravating, driving him insane with the liquid heat
pulsing through his bloodstream and keeping his cock in a constant state of
readiness. But even more was the ache in his arms to hold her. Fuck, he just
wanted to hold her close to his heart, to shelter and protect her from the pain
he had glimpsed in her shadowed green eyes. He wanted to see laughter there.
Wanted to see warmth and passion and naked need, and happiness.

He couldn’t sleep for the image of
her lying across that table, fighting for her orgasm. And he knew, deep in the
darkest hours of the night that it wasn’t the orgasm she was reaching for as
much as it was a sense of freedom and escape. It was her escape. As extreme as
it was, coming to The Club and baring her tempting little ass for a fucking was
Kimberly’s way of escaping the pressure, hopelessness and needs that had not as
much to do with the sexual, as it did with the emotional.

“Really, Jared, as you say, she’s
been running for a year. What has you so upset over it now?” Carolyn’s voice
was lightly amused and more than a little curious.

Jared stopped his pacing before
turning his head to look at his petite, conservatively dressed mother. Her soft
graying brown hair was upswept and held at the back with a silver clasp his
father had given her for their tenth anniversary. Around her neck she wore
pearls he had bought her for a birthday. She wore a plain wedding band on her
left hand; on her right she still wore the simple engagement ring and thicker
band she had worn as Judge Victor Raddington’s wife.

She was still a beautiful woman,
one of the most beautiful Jared had ever known. With her pretty features and
dark blue eyes, she wasn’t classically beautiful, but there was an air of calm
stateliness about her that always comforted him. At least, at most times.

“I’m tired of this,” he finally
sighed roughly as he turned back to her and paced over to the light oak kitchen
table and returned to his seat. “I can’t get her out of my head. I can’t let
her keep running like this.”

She was destroying herself. He had
seen that much, had glimpsed the bitter rage that filled her the moment before
he kissed her. And that kiss. He breathed in deeply, still affected by the
sensations that had swept through him. It was wildfire. It was an explosion of
the senses, too intense to fight, too deep to ever let go.

“And how do you intend to stop her,
Jared?” His mother lifted her coffee cup to her lips, but he saw the grin
edging her lips. “Kimberly is a grown woman. You can’t force her into a
relationship with you. Those days have long since passed, son.”

She was amused. Hell, had there
ever been a time when she hadn’t been amused when he and his father displayed
what she called their “male quirkiness”?

He leaned back in his chair,
watching her silently for long moments. She was married to Senator Madison, and
though she didn’t appear deliriously happy, she did appear content. The shadows
still lingered from her first husband’s death, though. That veil of sadness
that he knew would never completely lift.

Her relationship with Victor
Raddington had been tempestuous, passionate and, he knew, deeply loving. He had
been raised in the shelter of their love, and later, after his adult years, in
the unspoken knowledge of the fact their sexuality wasn’t what others would
consider “normal”.

His father had helped found The
Club. The secretive membership of highly public figures that had created the
group had done so out of a need of privacy and protection. A judge, a governor,
a vice president hopeful. Their sexuality would have been a smear on their
public images.

“What do you know about this Trust
her father’s holding over her head, Mother?” He finally asked the question
eating at his mind. There had to be an answer to this, though after his meeting
a few hours before with Senator Madison, it wasn’t looking as though it could
be answered in his favor.

Carolyn glanced back at him with
some surprise before a glimmer of understanding entered her gaze.

“She told you about it?” she asked
curiously.

Jared shook his head. “Not in so
many words, but this is Washington, you forget—there are few secrets.”

She sighed in acknowledgement. “It
was established generations ago. It states that she must marry a man her father
approves of and that she must be a virgin to inherit Briar Cliff, the estate
that has passed down in her mother’s family for generations.” She held her hand
up when Jared would have protested. “It’s entirely legal, Jared, I checked this
myself. Her father enforces an exam every three months to ensure that she’s
fulfilling the terms of the trust. It’s all entirely legal and unbreakable. In
five years, the conditions of the Trust will become null and void. If there is
no female child, or the female child has lost her virginity and not married
with the approval of the father, signed and notated before the Trust lawyers,
then Briar Cliff reverts completely to the oldest male heir or to the father.
If neither father nor surviving male heir is in existence, then and only then,
does it revert to the female child unconditionally. Daniel is determined that
she will marry a man who can restrain her passions, not someone who will
encourage them.”

Rage tightened his chest, clenched
his jaw as he stared back at her. The bitterness in her gaze, the pain in her
voice was beginning to make sense now. He had hoped, hell, prayed that the
information he had been given at The Club had been wrong. Though he had
suspected it wasn’t.

“Why did you marry this…” he bit
off the words with a snap of his teeth, “…person?”

A soft smile curved her lips as he
covered the more explicit terms he would have used.

“Really, Jared, my marriage to
Daniel has nothing to do with his relationship to his daughter. Though I was
unaware of the conflicts between them at the time.” She shook her head as she
wrapped her fingers around her cup, staring into the remains of her coffee
pensively. “It pains him, the distance between him and Kimberly, but he does
what he feels is right. And the terms of the Trust were not his doing. It was
done five generations ago by a strict, straight-laced mother who entirely
disapproved of what she called the ‘unnatural’ desires of the females of her
family. She was determined that her ancestors would comport themselves with all
respectability, and she made it stick.”

Jared breathed in roughly as he
began to suspect the obstacles that now stood in the way of possessing the
woman his heart seemed attached to.

“If it pained him, he would do
something to right the situation, such as allowing her to marry someone she
cares for rather than someone he chooses.” He restrained the fury burning in
his gut. “Are you aware he considers me unacceptable as a husband to his
daughter?”

Why he had bothered to approach the
Senator that morning he still wasn’t certain. He hadn’t formally stated an
intention to marry Kimberly, but he had been curious as to the qualifications
the Senator approved.

Carolyn’s lips thinned with
carefully controlled anger. The news didn’t sit well with her any more than it
had with him.

“I understand why he feels that
way,” she surprised him with her statement. “Wait, Jared.” She shook her head
when he opened his mouth to argue. “As you said, this is Washington, there are
few secrets that aren’t told in glistening detail. The rumors of The Club, the
Trojans, and their lifestyle have been prevalent in the past year or so. Your
name was linked to it no sooner had you joined. Daniel considers The Club and
its members, the epitome of what he’s determined to save his daughter from.”

Jared rubbed his hand over his face
wearily. Some people couldn’t keep their mouths shut if their lives depended on
it. In this case, a bitter divorce and a less than sober ex-wife had broken the
secret of the exclusive men’s club to a society that soaked up the rumors.

“His daughter’s sexuality isn’t his
business,” he growled.

“No more than yours is my
business,” she pointed out. “Yet, I’ve fielded questions concerning your
membership there for several months.”

There was no censure in her voice,
only the acceptance he had always known from her.

“I’m sorry.” He could only shake his
head wearily. “I won’t apologize, I knew the risks.”

Carolyn sighed deeply. “Tell me,
are the rumors concerning Kimberly’s membership there exaggerated, or true?”

She picked up her cup as though the
question wasn’t dropped like a bomb.

Damn! The leak was worse than he
had been warned it was. They were going to have to find the person or persons
responsible for it.

Jared watched her carefully.
Anything between them, he had no doubt, would stay between them, but this was
Kimberly’s secret to bear, not his.

“You’re so like your father,” she
chuckled then. “I will assume she is, and I will assume that your temper this
week is due from learning of it yourself.” She leaned forward somberly then,
her blue eyes dark and intent. “Jared, that estate means everything to
Kimberly. Everything. Her mother’s last words were a plea for her to stop the
cycle that the women of her family have endured for over five generations. If
she loses her virginity, her father gains control of the estate, the house,
everything that has been passed down, mother to daughter, for so very long now.
In each case, the mother was forced to wed a man chosen by her father, one
deemed capable of restraining her passions and her sexuality. The cycle is
destroying her and, in many ways, Daniel as well.”

“He can break it,” Jared pointed
out, aware that the anger pulsing inside him colored his voice as well. “He’s
destroying her.”

“He believes he’s saving her.”

“For God’s sake.” He came out of
his chair in a surge of energy born of the fury pulsing inside him. “When did
we return to the Middle Ages, Mother? She’s a woman, not a child.”

“Jared, you can’t fight this,” she
said softly, regretfully. “I’ve discussed this with Daniel until I’m blue in
the face. He won’t relent. It’s the only conflict we’ve had in our marriage in
a year now. He believes he’s right. He believes Kimberly should marry a man of
restrained passions, one capable of controlling what he considers her ‘wild
inclinations’.”

“He’s a self-righteous prig,” he
snapped.

“Why do you care?” she asked him,
frowning now as he paced the room. “I understand your desire for her, Jared,
but there have been other women you’ve desired and couldn’t have as well. What
makes her different?”

“She makes me crazy,” he growled,
pushing his hands into the pockets of his slacks as he hunched his shoulders
against the tension invading them. “She makes me want to throw her over my
shoulder like a damned caveman, and at the same time I want to wrap her in
cotton and protect her from anything and everyone who could hurt her. I want
her happy.”

His voice, his body, vibrated with
that need, with the complete certainty that he could make her happy.

“And you think marrying her will do
that?” she questioned him with a shadow of mockery. “Jared, Daniel will never
allow Kimberly to marry a man as sexually intense as you so obviously are. And
she’ll lose everything she’s fought for to this point if she accepts you.”

“She’s mine.” He winced as the
words tore from him. “Damn, didn’t that sound arrogant enough?” He laughed with
an edge of self-mockery.

But he couldn’t escape the claim he
had just made. As the words came from his lips, the knowledge wrapped around
his heart. She was his, even if he couldn’t have her. He had seen the pain in
her eyes, the sexuality that tormented her, the ache that shadowed her eyes.
And so much more. He saw the need to be touched, to be held, to let go and
share the passion, the heat that built within her.

“Do you love her, Jared?” his
mother asked again, her voice firm now, demanding.

He stared back at her, meeting her
gaze with a determination of his own.

Did he love her? He sighed with
weary acceptance. Yeah, he loved her, more than he had thought it possible to
love a woman.

“More than you know,” he finally
said, his own need echoing through his body. “More than you could ever know,
Mother.”

For a moment compassion filled her
eyes. She had waited years for him to find the one woman he felt he could spend
the rest of his life with, and settle down into a relationship that fulfilled
him, as much as her marriage to his father had fulfilled her.

“Then you have a choice to make,”
she said gently. “All her life Kimberly has been forced to choose, and always
it’s been a choice that’s ripped another wound in her soul. Can you ask her to
add your heart and your needs to her burden?”

He stared back at her, restraining
the fury erupting inside him. Swallowing tightly, he shook his head with a
rough, negative movement. He couldn’t force her to make such a choice, and they
both knew it. But he didn’t know if he could force himself to let her go,
either.

Carl Stanton had a lot to pay for.
It had been the nasty divorce with his wife that had spurred the first of the
rumors. Kia Stanton had wanted out of that marriage, and when Carl had refused,
she had let the first rumor free. But Kia was no longer associated with the
membership there, so how had the rumors of his and Kimberly’s membership leaked
out? Even more worrisome though, was the threat that his father’s previous
association would be revealed as well.