“Raina—”
“I’ll never know if you don’t. I’ll never believe that sex can be anything but misery.” Her stare was merciless. “I’ll live alone here the rest of my life and no one will ever touch me.”
Raina held her breath as she refused to relinquish his gaze. “I understand that you’re leaving. I’m not asking you to stay. I only want this.” Amazed at her daring, she clasped one of his hands and brought it down to cover her breast.
And gasped at the feel of it tightening on her flesh.
More, was all she could think. Now.
“Close your eyes.” His voice was tight.
She glanced up. His face was hard.
“I have to rinse your hair first.” A muscle in his jaw jumped. “Do it, Raina,” he warned.
Exhilaration rose within her, right alongside nerves. She shut her eyes. Released his hand. Luxuriated in the warm water cascading over her heated flesh.
She brushed the water from her eyes, then opened them to see him staring into the fire. “Hal—”
“Don’t.” He faced her then. Fierce. Furious.
But also, she thought, a little sad. She started to speak.
He stopped her with a raised hand, studying her until she had to look away. “Forget it,” she said.
“No.” His voice was rough at first, then turned gentle. “Lie back, Raina. Give me—” For the first time, she heard uncertainty in him. “Just…give me a second.”
Raina obeyed, but beneath her skin, humiliation burned. She should have kept quiet. He didn’t want her, and she—
Without warning, he scooped her from the water. Set her on her feet before the fire. Wrapped her in a towel he’d warmed, trapping her arms inside.
He pulled her close and rested his head against the top of hers. She could hear his heart thudding.
Then, with a deep, shuddering inhalation, he stepped back, bringing the towel with him.
And simply looked at her.
His silence cast Raina into an agony of awareness. She was too thin, too ruined…too old in a way that had nothing to do with years. The crystalline rim of her daring shattered on the knife-edge of fear, and she lifted her arms to cover a body shorn of illusion. Drained by false hope.
“Raina—” Too carefully, he covered her once more.
“Don’t.” She gripped the towel and ducked her head, eyes stinging. “Don’t pity me.”
Liam caught her shoulders and cursed himself. Refused to let her slide past. “You misunderstand.”
It hurt to see her, so fragile beneath the bravado, her skin not all that was bruised. With her head bowed, she was once again the woman he’d first met, made small by despair.
She was trying so hard, and even now he had no idea what her demons were. Thought he shouldn’t ask because theirs were separate paths, crossing only this once, never again to meet.
But he couldn’t do this the way she wanted. Couldn’t simply demonstrate his much-admired skills with women—and then go.
He crooked one finger beneath her chin and lifted her face to his. “Judge the truth for yourself. It isn’t pity. It’s fear.”
Her eyes widened. “You’re afraid? Why?”
“There’s a sorrow in you that I want to heal, and I’m not—” His gaze shifted, then returned. “I’m not the right man. I couldn’t live with myself if I hurt you, instead.”
Raina forced herself not to shrink away. Not to run, though everything in her quivered to do just that. For too much of her life, she’d sought escapes of one kind or another. All of them had failed.
From somewhere within her, she found a tiny scrap of the iron she would need to forge the woman she wanted to become and stood straight. “I’ll survive you. I’ll survive all of this.”
Within green eyes turned gold by firelight, she thought she saw respect stir, crowded as it was by worry.
But when he would have spoken, she covered his lips with her hand. “Don’t talk anymore. Words are too complicated.” Her voice slid low. “I don’t need your healing. I only want to know how passion feels.”
The fire crackled, and sparks danced high in the air. Desire and nerves, hunger and longing leaped between them. His lips pressed against her hand, soft yet firm, while his gaze searched deep inside her.
And Raina shivered, sensing that she’d won. Half fear, half anticipation.
His hands, long and lean and so masculine, rose to lift the towel from fingers gone abruptly weak. Slowly, he drew it from her shoulders, the tiny cotton loops gently abrading skin suddenly sensitive to the slightest touch.
With his eyes still locked on hers, he blotted the moisture from her hair, then leaned to trace his lips over a drop escaping down her temple and over her cheek. His breath warmed her skin as his mouth drifted to hers.
He hovered there, not making contact yet, until her eyelids fluttered closed. Until she felt the heat of him all along the front of her body, her respirations adjusting to his, sounding unnaturally loud in her ears.
Every inch of her flesh strained toward him, every beat of her heart seeking, striving…she rose to tiptoe, her fingers flexed outward like a cat’s paws, nails stretching…retracting…
Teasing…
Longing…
When his mouth skimmed hers, shock sliced through her body like the crack of a whip. She grabbed his biceps, fingers clenched in his shirt to drag him against her, seeking to muffle the near-painful bite of primal need.
A quick graze of lips. Then his heat vanished.
Raina gasped. Blinked.
Stared down at the top of his head as he knelt before her like some knight pledging fealty.
Her own Prince Charming, for Raina indeed felt as if he were awakening her from years lost.
“Hold on to me,” he said, lifting her foot onto his hard, muscled thigh. Head bent, he focused on drying her with agonizingly slow, measured strokes. She bit back the pleas for him to hurry, to get to it because she was off-balance, she couldn’t stand this—
He drew his middle fingernail up the sole of her foot.
And Raina nearly screamed.
He chuckled and looked up at her, eyes both intense and alight with mischief.
Then, as if he hadn’t set her hair on fire, he returned to his task, so thorough yet neutral that he could have been a mere caretaker.
Except his hair brushed her thigh. His breath whispered over the parting of her legs…
A kiss skated over the inside of her knee, and Raina’s legs buckled.
He caught her to him, strong arms closing about her, his cheek to her navel, his hair tickling the lower curve of one breast.
Raina wanted to clasp him to her and never let go.
It frightened her so much that she tried to break away.
Liam tightened his grip, sensing that this might be the most important act of his life. “Sh-h,” he soothed, rising to his feet and cradling her, sweeping his hands over her back in unhurried, lazy arcs.
When she stilled again, he nibbled at her distress with soft, easy kisses, forehead to eyes, eyes to cheeks, cheeks to the racing pulse points at her throat. “Let me show you how beautiful you are,” he murmured.
Once again she tensed, shaking her head. “I’m not. No lies, Hal. No sweet words. I don’t need them.”
Hal. Liam squeezed his eyes shut, torn once again. She needed sweet words and so much more. If he stopped now and revealed his identity, even if she understood how he’d stepped into this trap without malice or intent, she would never let him back this close again. She thought she was ugly, believed herself without appeal. If he showed her with his body, if he made her see her own beauty, her courage and strength, then when he did explain, wouldn’t she be hard-pressed to believe he’d meant to hurt her?
Please. Let me do this right. He’d never been more uncertain in his life.
“No words,” he agreed. “I’ll let my body convince you, instead.”
He began an assault on her senses unlike anything Raina had ever k
nown. Tender kisses to unexpected places, the inside of her wrist…her ankle…the underside of an arm, tickled, made her nipples tighten. Tongue sliding the length of her collarbone, ending with a nip of teeth that shot arrows straight to her middle.
Hot, excruciatingly patient strokes turning suddenly so urgent that he pulled away. Let her go.
Liam dragged in one pained breath, then another. Too fast. Too crazed, he was. Too hungry, no matter that she was nothing like the women he’d preferred.
That was the problem. She was outside his experience, a woman he couldn’t dally with, comfortable that it wasn’t serious for either of them, that both would walk away whole. Kelly had been his one mistake, but there’d been no cracks in her veneer for him to recognize. Her fault lines had been deep but well hidden. She’d gone into it with the same light heart he had…at least at first.
But Raina was different. Right from the beginning, he’d known that everything about her was serious. There was no play in this woman, however desperately she needed fun.
She was porcelain, her finish crazed and yellowed, her insides hollowed out, her shell frighteningly thin—yet there were moments when he thought he could see a slender framework of pure steel.
The risk of guessing wrong, as he had with Kelly, broke him out in a cold sweat.
But he’d made her a promise, and promises were sacred to Liam.
So just as he saw her coming out of the spell he’d painstakingly woven, emerging into the unforgiving light of her own doubts, Liam lifted her into his arms and carried her to the ancient, too-small bed where he would do his best to teach her to believe in herself again.
Had she ever fancied it possible to feel this way? Had she even dreamed that she could release her vigilance, that she’d have no choice but to drift along the current and trust that there would be a hand beneath her back as she floated, that she could afford to let arms loosen, legs part…her whole body glide, weightless?
Trust. A small word, yes, but pregnant with meaning and menace and—oh, the relief of it after so many years alone. Raina’s deepest self unfurled from the tiny, terrified creature who’d sought to hide so long ago, lacerated almost beyond surviving by all the wrong choices, the promises not kept, the myriad failures.
As he held her close and let the sunlight of hope kiss her hair, taste her breasts, stroke her inner flesh, Raina felt herself expanding into someone she’d glimpsed only in passing, the faintest of possibilities.
And that burgeoning created room for something big and bold and prowling, a woman Raina had never even imagined. Passive acceptance shattered, swallowed up by avid seeking. Fevered craving.
By greedy demand. Her soul alight, her body humming, Raina turned the tables on the man who had brought her to the pinnacle of the mountain.
But even as he wondered about the next move, Raina decided for him. With one simple stroke of her tongue across his lips, she flayed him open, down to the bone.
That one hot, wet slide of flesh against his mouth staggered Liam. In an instant, he lost all power of thought, of speech, of hearing. He forgot about tenderness, cast away caution as she shattered any notion he had of restraint. Female called to male. Heat called to heat. She became woman, elemental and basic. Irresistible, unmanageable… He dove in and took it all.
Sweet mercy was all Liam could think as she rose, quick as a cat, from beneath him and bent her efforts to pleasing him. Tantalizing him as no woman had done before, her moves a fragrant, mouthwatering concoction of spices not fully ripe, not quite at peak but oh, dear, sweet hell—
Liam reared upward to mate with this creature, this goddess who roused the animal in him, the primal male whose world had narrowed to one woman. His woman.
Gasps. Moans. Clawing needs. Heights never scaled, depths untouched.
Recognition. Two halves become whole.
Liam now had her beneath him, poised to slake the thirst parching both of them, the near-furious demand that would not be denied—
Suddenly, her dazzled eyes flared with panic. “No. You can’t risk—”
With a shock, Liam realized that for the first time in his life, he’d been so consumed by a woman that he’d forgotten all about protection.
Brutal need balked. I’m not a risk, he nearly snapped.
But women had another concern. “I’m sorry,” he barely managed to say, launching himself off the bed in search of his bag, his movements clumsy and frantic.
Raina plummeted to earth—
But in seconds, he was back with her, catching her in freefall, his eyes dark, uneasy with yearning she could almost taste, apology she could nearly touch.
Raina perched on a razor’s edge, ready to topple into self-loathing at the slightest push, but instead of forcing her with his potent skills, he did, again, the unexpected.
He held her. Only held her, letting her chilled soul soak up his warmth.
And when he quivered as if lashed by fear strong as her own, Raina found herself the one to comfort, the one who could grant ease.
The one with the intoxicating, wholly new power to choose.
She chose life and hope. Survival and strength.
Then it became Raina’s hands that stroked, Raina’s mouth that kissed, that gave them both the freedom to fly.
With a heart-deep sigh, he met her. Matched her. Drew her with him to the heights until they were no longer two but one, a new being quicksilver and beautiful…and exquisite.
Complete.
And at last, Raina understood why it was called lovemaking. Why poets waxed eloquent and men died for it.
There was passion in her after all, just as he’d said, with the right man.
This man.
Beautiful…unattainable…impossible dream that he was.
Chapter Ten
Raina lay wide-eyed from terror.
Scenes played out, so many of them she could barely breathe. The man of her dreams, the prince of every girl’s imagination, reposed beside her, his body curved protectively around hers as if, even sleeping, he understood her fears and would soothe them.
Her whole body, still singing from the exquisite pleasure of his lovemaking, went stiff and miserable as the facts of her life re-emerged.
Though she’d had herself tested for disease and passed muster, no official verdict could cleanse the stain from her soul. Only time—please God—could do that. She had a lot to prove, and brushing against this man’s kind heart had both soothed the ragged edges of her heart and made her more aware than ever of the chasm between her and him.
He’d called her beautiful, and she couldn’t stand for him to find out just how wrong he was. If she thought about that moment when he’d poised over her, his body bare to hers as though he could trust—
She wanted a pill, just one. Or a drink. Raina had known the safest route was to pour out the jug of moonshine, but she’d kept it as a test for herself, a gambit whose danger she’d thought she’d assessed.
The trials, it seemed, were just beginning.
You should be proud of yourself.
He wouldn’t say that if he knew everything she’d done.
She thought of all the lovely pills she’d flushed down the toilet that night when she’d hit bottom.
Her little friends. With them, she’d feel strong, not afraid to be here. Calm instead of doomed. Brave enough to stay, to be alone again after Hal left.
This minute. This one minute is all you have to get through.
More than ever, she was afraid she couldn’t manage. The slide back down that cliff she’d crawled up with bleeding fingers pulled at her, cajoled her, the precipice so near and hypnotic. One instant of inattention—
She had a flash of Mick’s hand strapping the rubber strip above her elbow, tapping the veins. Telling her that bliss was only a needle away.
The rush of it, the warmth. Ecstasy had raced through her veins like molten gold. She’d been powerful, invincible—
Calm, for a change.
Then senseless,
lost in the beauty of oblivion.
Until she’d awakened to the man who wanted her body as payment. In one instant of understanding, she’d seen her future. Her failure.
She’d become her mother after all.
Raina jerked. Hal grunted in protest.
Before his arms could tighten around her again, she slipped from the bed.
She crossed to the fire and stoked it with slow, careful movements, focusing only on the logs, the poker…even as her heart turned to ashes at what she knew she must do for him.
His list—their list—had to be abandoned. She had to find the strength to make him leave.
Before she gave in and begged him to stay.
For right now, however, fatigue dragged at her. Her entire body ached from Frank’s beating. She forced herself up from the chair and began to quietly gather Hal’s belongings, trying not to think about the fact that, Hal’s threats notwithstanding, Frank could still be out there somewhere, lurking. Vengeance simmering.
He’d always been more about brute force than brains. She’d found the danger of him attractive, back when he’d been whipcord-lean and edgy. Before she’d understood that edgy could mean unbalanced and deadly.
The unconscious man sprawled all over Gran’s bed would soon be gone, anyway. There was no reason for Frank to believe that tale about hiring bodyguards when Raina herself didn’t buy it.
They were strangers, she and this city boy who had the skills to hunt and repair porches. Intimate though their last hours had been, he didn’t have the most fundamental facts about her and wouldn’t like them if he did.
While she, Raina realized, stopping dead in the center of the room, hadn’t even asked his last name.
Good Lord. How could it be that they’d shared so much, yet so little that mattered?
Except that he’d made her laugh, the way she hadn’t laughed since childhood, if even then. He’d chopped wood for her, replaced a roof, cleared brush, worked like a slave—
Charged into danger to rescue her.
Taught her what love was and how badly she wanted it.
And she only knew that his name was Hal-short-for-Harold.
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