by Anne Stuart
“I’m here, Jake.” Her own voice sounded raw and frightened, and the next shell held her panicked, motionless, unable to move until the rattling, rumbling power of it passed by and the house was still standing.
“Where the hell are you?” His voice was desperately angry and blessedly close in the darkness. She vaulted off the steps in the direction of his voice, and a moment later felt her trembling body crushed in the fierce safety of his arms.
“Where were you?” he whispered, pressing her head against the solid warmth of his shoulder. He smelled of plaster and sweat and Jake, and the unexpected scent of crushed gardenias. Even chocolate paled next to his earthy scent, and she buried her face closer to him.
“I was looking for you,” she murmured against his shirt. “I thought you’d be with Sam, so I was trying to get up there.”
“Sam’s okay—you needn’t have worried,” Jake said, his gentle voice at odd variance with the rough strength of his hands on her body.
“I wasn’t worried about Sam. I was worried about you.”
He hesitated, and she could feel the tension running through his body, a new tension, not caused by the shelling and the house falling down around them. “You shouldn’t have bothered. Nothing gets to me.”
“I know. But if I was going to die I wanted to be with you.” It was very dark, but when she moved her head to look up at him she thought she could at last read his expression. It was a fierce, possessive joy.
“Why?”
What was the good of hiding? she thought wearily. They might be dead in another minute. “Because I love you. I always have, and I always will.”
It took her a moment to realize that the sudden stillness was without as well as within. The shelling had stopped, and she was standing there in Jake’s arms, having just bared her soul to him and wiped out any last defense.
Then he spoke. “You know I’m no good for you?”
“Yes.”
“You know I can’t go with you when you leave?”
“Yes.”
“And you know that I love you?”
It had been years since anyone had said that to her—not since her brother had died, and not often before then. She closed her eyes with a sigh. “Yes.”
His mouth gently brushed hers, a benediction, a promise made to be broken. He scooped her up in his arms, a fragile burden. “This has been a long time coming,” he said, and his voice shook just slightly.
“Yes,” she said, twining her arms around his neck through the long thick silk of his hair. “Yes.”
He made his way unerringly to the bedroom they’d shared the night before, kicking the door shut behind them and tumbling her down on the bed with a glorious disregard for the papers and books she’d left strewn on top of it. She knew a moment’s regret as she heard the papers hit the floor, and then regret was the last thing on her mind, as she felt her nightgown being stripped away by clever hands.
Very gently he removed her thin, wire-framed glasses, his mouth caressing each eyelid in a touch feather-light and unbearably moving. Her hands weren’t nearly so deft; she trembled as she tried to undress him, and finally he caught one struggling hand in the grip of his larger one, a soft laugh filling his voice. “I’ll take care of it.” He pulled away for a moment, and the loss of his hard, strong body against hers was an ache that was a sudden presage of times to come.
Then he was back, half beside her, half on top of her, his body naked against hers, hard where she was soft, muscled where she was lean, strong where she was weak. With a sudden desperation she clutched at him, trying to pull him over and onto her, and her mouth rained rapid kisses over his face, his mouth, his neck and shoulders.
“Slow down,” he murmured against her skin. “We’re in no hurry. We’ve waited fourteen years, we can wait a little longer.”
“I don’t know if I can,” she whispered against the hard, silky flesh of his shoulder. “I want you now.”
His hands were sliding down her trembling body, soothing and arousing feelings she’d never thought existed. When his hand reached the soft, damp mound of her femininity he groaned deep in his throat, a sound of pleasure and frustration. “I guess you do want me now,” he said between tiny, stinging kisses that trailed across her fevered skin. “But you’ll have to wait. I have every intention of doing this right.”
His lips, his teeth, his tongue performed wonders on every inch of her body, bringing her to a fever pitch. In return she covered him with frantic, hungry kisses, delighting in the smell and taste of him, the sharp edge of frustration that his deliberate pace incited only carrying her further along on the tide of sensuality that threatened to drown her. Just when she thought she was about to explode, his mouth found her, wet and warm and seeking, and the thrust of his tongue sent her gasping and clutching, over the edge into oblivion.
Before she had time to catch her breath he had moved, up and over her, poised and waiting between her legs. She opened her eyes then, meeting his in the flood of moonlight that washed through the garden window, carrying with it the tropical night breezes and the scent of gardenias. Slowly he pressed against her, filling her with his massive strength that seemed almost more than she could accommodate. But there was no pain, only a tightness that quickly faded to something beyond ecstasy, and she closed around him, her arms, her legs, her body, and arched up to meet the last tiny bit of his thrust.
“I don’t … want to hurt you,” he murmured in her ear, his voice ragged, his body taut with his fierce control.
“No,” she whispered. “You couldn’t … ever. …” And if she thought she’d reached the pinnacle of release before, the slow, diabolically clever movement of his hips against her, his body against hers, proved that she had only begun.
It built slowly, steadily, until it reached a fever pitch, and she was clutching at his sweat-slick body, his long hair all around her, in her eyes, in her mouth, and she could hear her voice sobbing, whimpering, weeping against him in a helpless litany of a pleasure that was almost pain.
And then she was there, past the struggle, in a white-hot flashpoint that shattered and scorched and disintegrated everything around her. She felt his body stiffen against her, rigid in her clinging arms, and knew he’d joined her in the conflagration.
Slowly, slowly she tumbled back to reality, back to the narrow bed in the barren room in the besieged villa. She wept then, burying her face against his salt-damp skin, and he held her as she wept.
When the storm of tears finally abated he pushed the wet, tangled curls away from her face. “No Kleenex,” he whispered with gentle understanding. “Do you want to use my shirt?”
She nodded, then realized he might not be able to see her, and opened her mouth to speak. But he’d already leaned over to retrieve the soft chambray shirt he’d been wearing, and she sat up to wipe the tears from her face.
“Are you that good in bed?” she said in a shaky voice. “Or did I just imagine it?”
She could feel his smile through the moon-shadowed darkness. “I’m not that good,” he said, and his voice was rich with amusement. “Love is a powerful aphrodisiac.”
She lay back down with a sigh, curling into his arms. “It certainly is. I didn’t know I could feel that way.”
He lay very still against her, and she could tell he was searching for the right words. “Haven’t you … felt like that before?” His voice was very careful, but she knew that he wanted to ask what he felt he had no right to ask.
“Never,” she murmured against his chest. “I waited for you as long as I could, Jake, but I couldn’t wait forever.”
“I didn’t want you to.”
“Didn’t you?” She was faintly, happily skeptical. “I’ve had two lovers. One in college who was straightforward, unimaginative, and short-lived in more ways than one. It didn’t seem worth the effort to get involved again, until I met Carl three years ago. He was the opposite of Tom, fiery, emotional, very inventive. I enjoyed being with him but something always seemed t
o be missing.”
He said nothing, but his hands began to move down her arm, long, lingering strokes that couldn’t disguise his tension. Then he spoke, and his voice was a deep rumble beneath her ear. “I don’t think I’ve ever been jealous before in my life except for the time I found you necking with Eric Thompson.”
Maddy laughed. “You don’t need to be jealous. There was something I forgot to tell you. Both those men looked exactly like you.” She reached out and ran her hand through his silky mane. “Without the hair, of course.”
She could feel the tension leave his body, and his hand slid down her arm to lightly catch her hip. “You don’t like my hair?”
“It’s very erotic. It might not do too well in the States nowadays.” The moment the words were out of her mouth she could have bitten her lip, and grief washed over her.
But Jake only smiled. “When I come back to get you I’ll cut my hair.”
Maddy said nothing. There were no guarantees. They could be killed in their sleep that very night, they could be separated by the fortunes of war and never see each other again. There was even the distinctly farfetched possibility that it might work, that he might come and find her in L.A.
But fate had never been their friend, and Maddy wasn’t about to trust in it at this late date. She was going to take what was hers, in front of her, warm and strong and close at hand, and the devil take the future, be it five years or five hours away. She reached up her arms to him, and the sudden desperation that sparked their coming together was an overlying veil of sadness that made their union bittersweet, and all the more glorious. This time her release was expected and, impossibly enough, even more shattering, so that she buried her face against the side of Jake’s neck to muffle her incoherent cries. And as he followed her in a tumult of hopeless love, she wept into the darkness of the San Pablo night.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Maddy was alone when she awoke. She was lying face down in the center of the narrow bed, her head buried in her arms, and the murky light that filtered in the single window was shrouded in early morning mist.
She lay there, unmoving, a thousand disparate emotions washing over her. Her body felt rich, warm, and full, blissfully sated and wondrously loved. But there was no sign of Jake, no evidence that he’d even shared that bed with her, apart from her physical well-being. There was tension in the air, as thick as the damp-laden fog, and the eerie sound of silence that permeated the villa brought her fully, completely awake, wiping out the last trace of lingering lassitude.
It took her only a few moments to dress. She pulled on jeans and a loose cotton shirt, slid her bare feet into her Nikes and headed for the door, determined to track down Jake. For all her vaunted common sense, she had no intention of leaving Puente del Norte without him. Too much time had been wasted already. If the dark hours of the night had made it all seem hopeless, even the filtered light of predawn made everything possible. Yanking the door open, she started into the hallway, only to be brought up short. Her door was guarded.
Richard Feldman, better known as El Nabo, or The Turnip, smiled apologetically, hefting the machine gun over one shoulder with a curious expression of distaste. “I’m glad you’re awake. I heard you moving around in there.”
It was an inane enough conversation. “Why are you guarding my door, Richard?” she asked carefully. “Are you keeping people out? Or keeping me in?”
The smile went beyond apologetic to downright miserable. “A little of both, I guess. Jake asked me to make sure you’re ready to leave. Are you packed?”
“No.”
“I’ll help you, then.” He herded her back into the bedroom with surprising efficiency, rather like a kindergarten teacher with a recalcitrant crew of toddlers. He pulled the rumpled bed together with a matter-of-fact air that wiped out any embarrassment Maddy might have felt and dumped her tumbled suitcase on top of it. She watched him fold her clothes for a moment, then motioned him out of the way, taking over the task for what seemed like the five hundredth time.
“Where’s Jake?” she questioned, placing the candy box squarely on top.
“He’s arranging for the jeep. Carlos and Ramon will be taking you and Soledad the northern route, up through Guatemala. You’ll be able to catch a plane from Puerta Pelota and be back in the States in no time.”
She thought she heard a plaintive note in his voice, and she turned to look at him, her hands still. He was about forty, with a head full of curly brown-gray hair and the saddest eyes she’d ever seen. His thin, dejected body didn’t suit the modified combat gear he wore, and the narrow hands that had held the machine gun were shaking slightly. A thousand questions rushed into Maddy’s mind, and for once she allowed them free reign.
“Why don’t you come back with us?” she suggested suddenly. “Don’t you miss the States?”
El Nabo smiled a wry, discouraged smile. “Didn’t Jake tell you? I can’t go back.”
“Why not?”
“I’m wanted. AWOL, for one thing. There are other charges against me too.” His voice was simple, resigned.
“I can’t imagine you could have done anything hideous,” Maddy said gently. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to impugn your machismo or anything, but I don’t think you could hurt a flea. How long have you been on the run?”
Richard looked at her then, and the expression in his muddy brown eyes was that of someone who had looked into the jaws of hell and never been the same. “Since 1970. I was Jake’s commander in Vietnam. At Den Phui. You know about Den Phui.”
It wasn’t a question. Indeed, Maddy knew far too well about Den Phui, about the civilian massacre and the subsequent army coverup. One day when she’d been feeling masochistic, a few months after Jake left, she had gone to the library and looked up the old newspaper accounts of the massacre, of the inept commander who’d let it happen. Of the soldiers who’d been unable to stop it. Of the massive smokescreen and eventual trials of those involved and Jake’s reluctant part in bringing it all to light. And then she understood why Richard Feldman looked so haunted.
“Yes,” she said. “I know about Den Phui. I’m sorry.” Somehow it seemed inadequate. And why should she apologize to the man whose ineptness allowed it to happen? But still, pity welled up in her. Richard Feldman carried the weight of that day with him, and would for the rest of his life. It was a burden too agonizing to contemplate.
He seemed to shake himself, like a terrier who’d taken an unexpected bath. “Well,” he said briskly, reaching past her and fastening the suitcase, “then you know why I can’t go back.”
A thousand objections came to mind. Surely after all this time the military tribunals would let the charges drop, or give him a token sentence and a dishonorable discharge. Looking at Richard, she knew that wasn’t the problem. He wasn’t afraid of too harsh a punishment. He was afraid of too lenient a one.
“Ready?”
“I want to see my father first.” And after that she was going to find Jake, she thought with a fiery determination. She’d twine her arms around his neck, press her body close to his, and beg him to come with them. And if he loved her even a tiny bit he would.
El Nabo shook his head, and Maddy didn’t even notice the furtive regret in his dark eyes. “You can’t, I’m afraid. Doc says your father needs all the sleep he can get. He had a … disturbed night last night, and he’s finally resting comfortably.”
“But he said—”
“I know. He asked me to give this to you.” Out of his pocket Richard pulled a dull gold chain. On the end was a medallion, a religious medal of some sort. It was obviously extremely old, extremely heavy, and extremely valuable. But what Samuel Lambert would be doing with an antique religious medal was beyond her comprehension.
She took it numbly, staring down at it. St. Paul, the patron saint of San Pablo. Wouldn’t you know it? “Why?”
He reached out and closed her fingers around the heavy medallion. “He said I should tell you it’s the most valuable thing he owns
and he wanted you to have it.”
Maddy stared down at the solid weight resting in her hand. The most valuable thing he owned, and it was for her. Perhaps he really did love her, and this was the only way he could tell her. The gold felt solid, warm, and tangible in her hand, and she closed her fingers around it tightly, managing a tremulous smile. If this medallion was Sam’s love for her, she’d accept it.
There was the faint sheen of tears in her eyes as they met Richard’s. “Tell him thank you,” she whispered. “And tell him—”
The heavy pounding on the door drew them apart, and she slipped the medallion around her neck, inside the loose cotton shirt, moments before Carlos swaggered into the room.
He must have been wearing twenty pounds of weapons, Maddy thought critically, and that smile was a little too sharklike to set her mind at ease.
“Ready to go, gringa?” he inquired with his usual charm. “The jeep is loaded.”
“Where’s Jake?” He couldn’t let her leave without saying good-bye, he couldn’t.
“Jake is with your father. He is far too busy to waste time seeing you off. I’ll give him your regards when I get back.”
“Will you be coming back?”
“Of course. Carlos the Jackal never misses a good fight,” he said simply.
“But if my father’s awake—”
“Gringa,” Carlos said in an amiable tone of voice, “either you come now, with no more foolish babble, or I will have my friend El Nabo tie you, gag you, and drag you downstairs by your hair. The choice is up to you.” His smile was curiously endearing, but Maddy had no doubts that he would do just that. Even if El Nabo refused, Enrique would doubtless be more than happy to do the honors.
“But—”
“Now!” He nodded at Richard. “Bring her suitcase, amigo. Vamanos!”
She had no choice. Wordlessly she followed Carlos down the plaster-strewn staircase. The shells of last night had done even more damage than she’d thought, and she wondered dizzily if the tumbled-down old villa would survive another such shelling. The weight of the medallion hung heavy between her breasts, and she took what comfort she could from it as she picked her way over the rubble and out into the humid morning, with the dawn light just breaking above the tangled jungle. Richard tossed her suitcase on the back of the jeep that looked suspiciously like World War II vintage. Soledad eyed her without comment, her narrow, composed face offering no greeting.
