Star of His Heart - Brenda Jackson [64]
“Trust me, Netherland. Trust me.” Then his mouth slowly came down on hers, demanding a response, eliciting her trust, binding her to him—body to body, soul to soul, heart to heart.
Netherland told herself that she would not get caught up in Ashton’s kiss, but found herself caught up in it anyway. The dappled sunlight that filtered through the window bathed her with heated rays while still another kind of heat consumed her.
Ashton’s heat.
His fingers moved up and down her back as he held her to him while his tongue plundered her mouth, taking everything she had and still demanding more.
He wanted her trust. He was demanding it.
“Ashton,” she moaned softly when he finally broke off the kiss.
“Seven days, Netherland. That’s all I want. I’m asking that you place yourself in my care for seven days. I left Rome a note letting him know that you’re with me. I also told him to let Rainey know to take care of Sisters while you were gone. And I packed you plenty of clothes. So there isn’t any reason I can’t have you to myself for the next seven days. Is there?”
At the moment, Netherland couldn’t think of one. She shook her head.
“And is there any reason why you can’t trust me?”
A warning sounded somewhere deep inside Netherland, and a part of her wanted to plead her case again, to make him understand. But she was tired of fighting him, trying to make him see that nothing, short of a miracle, would get her pregnant.
“Ashton…”
“Trust me, Netherland.”
After a tense moment of silence between them, she finally said, “I trust you, Ashton.”
“And you will give me seven days?”
“Yes.”
He pulled her back into his arms and held her close as relief coursed through him. “You won’t regret it. Now I suggest you get back in bed and get some rest. Later today I’d like to show you around.”
Netherland nodded slowly. A riot of emotions clamored within her, but when she gazed into the warmth of Ashton’s dark eyes, that held both assurance and confidence, she wanted to give him more than just seven days. The part of her that loved him with all her heart wanted to give him the rest of her life.
Chapter 18
The sun was setting low, barely skimming the treetops when Ashton and Netherland emerged from the thickets of the woods holding hands. He had shown her a portion of the land and had given her a history lesson while doing so. He had told her that the Cherokee Nation was the second-largest First Nations tribe in the United States and that its land was rich with woodland and pastures, hills and valleys, and rivers and lakes. The Cherokee People had lived in the southeastern United States until their removal during the Trail of Tears. He also told her that some members of the tribe now lived in Oklahoma while others lived on Cherokee land in the mountains of North Carolina.
He talked about his deceased father, who at the age of twenty-five and a member of the Cherokee Nation Tribal Government, had met and fallen in love with the daughter of a military general stationed not far away at Fort Smith. It had been a match doomed from the start with interference from the young woman’s family. The two eloped and he’d been conceived. However, within a year his parents had gotten a divorce. Ashton’s voice had become bitter when he’d said that, thanks to his maternal grandfather, it had been a rather nasty divorce that had torn him between two families and two cultures.
Netherland glanced up at him. Tall, dark and extremely handsome were words that didn’t quite do him justice. Neither did they cover the strength and masculinity he exuded without even trying. The stark blending of both cultures into his features, Native and African-American, made him so arrantly attractive it literally took her breath away.
She remembered how she had awakened that evening to find him gone. Getting out of bed she had showered and dressed in a long floral skirt and a peach pullover top, and after giving herself a tour of his home, she had sat on the sofa and waited for him to return. And while she waited,